The Participation of the Catholic Church in the Debate on Morality Policies in Portugal: A Comparative Analysis of Recent Debates on Assisted Death and Gender Identity

Between 2016 and 2018, the political agenda in Portugal was partially occupied by the debate around two issues that are often considered morality policies: medically assisted death, included under the sub-typology of life and death issues, whose legalization was proposed through four bills issued by leftist parties but was rejected in May 2018; and gender self-determination, that may be included under the sub-typology of sexual behavior by association with other LGBT+ issues, whose legalization was proposed by three bills issued by two leftist parties and by center-left government itself and was approved in April 2018. According to recent literature on morality policies, the political debate of this kind of issues is often characterised by the use of arguments related to ethical, moral and deontological values, which are usually outside the everyday political debate, and by dichotomized positions. This is particularly true in the so-called ‘religious world’, where Portugal is still often included regardless the increasing secularisation of the country’s society and state structure. Another element that is characteristic of the debate of this type of policies is the involvement of several stakeholders beyond the usual political actors, namely societal actors, which may be conceived as ‘interest groups’. An often-active actor in the debate of morality policies in the so-called ‘religious world’ is church-related actors, particularly when there is no admittedly confessional political party with seats in Parliament, which also happens in Portugal. Taking this context into consideration, the aim of this paper is to analyse the participation of the Catholic Church in the recent debates about these two policy issues. To do so, one developed document analysis using two different sources: first, the official Catholic church media agency (Ecclesia); and, ‘news’ and opinion pieces about these two policy issues that somehow mention the Catholic Church that have been published in two Portuguese newspapers (one more politically associated to the right-wing and another to the centre). With this analysis, one aim to assess if the Portuguese Catholic Church decided to participate in these two debates, unlike what happened, at least formally, regarding the discussion about abortion and same-sex marriage, as Resende & Henning (2015) mention. Moreover, one aim to assess if there were differences in participation between these two policy issues, since the literature suggests that church-related actors tend to participate more actively in life and death issues than in other morality issues. Co-authors: Bruna Fernandes, University of Aveiro, Portugal, brunafernandes@ua.pt; Susana Gonçalves, University of Aveiro, Portugal, douradogoncalves@ua.pt