What determines national Catholic hierarchies’ interaction with political parties in morality policy debates? A comparison between Portugal and Spain

Despite the intense academic interest on the religious factor in morality policy processes in recent years, little attention has been paid to the influence of Catholic liberal doctrines deriving from the Vatican Council II (1962-65) in restraining clerical intervention in the political arena during processes of morality policy liberalization. This paper will explore the link between a national hierarchy’s liberal or conservative ideological inclination and the use of political parties as agents of the church by comparing the Portuguese and the Spanish church hierarchies’ strategies during debates on moral policy debates. Whereas the Portuguese Church abstained from promoting church agents within political parties and refrained from supporting civic movements involved in the process, in Spain the hierarchy was in close contact with Catholic sectors of the Popular Party and coordinated and supported the actions of civic protest movements. By process-tracing the morality policy change in the two countries between 1990 and 2014, the paper considers that beyond considerations of power and authority, the top hierarchy’s liberal or conservative inclination had a determinant influence in the way the national hierarchies’ related with political parties and with civic movements during these highly divisive debates. The issue has wider relevance, as it shows that the links between church hierarchies and political parties, even in societies marked by centuries of Catholic monopoly of the religious space, are not predetermined by pre-set relations, but subject to the agency of top hierarchies.