Priestly Subversion: The Argentine State and the Second Vatican Council

During the 1960’s the Argentine state developed an intense surveillance apparatus directed at what it understood to be the “subversive” elements in its society -- these were trade unionists, student organizers, and members of the exiled Juan Perón’s political faction. But they also conducted intense surveillance and analysis of members of the Catholic Church, specifically priests whom they perceived as the allies of communists and Peronists, at precisely the same time as conservative elements in the Church were pushing against what they understood as the liberalization of their institution in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. The state’s investigations of these priests, which occupy mountains of files in the archives of the former secret police and elsewhere, reveal a telling confluence between how the state and the Church discussed this priestly subversion, with police intelligence officers repeating the seemingly esoteric arguments of conservative theologians in their internal memos. This paper looks closely at this confluence to explain how and why these state policemen came to be so concerned about issues as particular as Catholic ecclesiology and Mariology and how this impacted their understanding of and interaction with the political world they were asked to police.