Os Vencidos do Catolicismo: do poema de Ruy Belo, Nós os vencidos do catolicismo (1970), ao problema do “vencidismo” católico

Based on a poem by Ruy Belo (1933-1978) and its historical context, this article seeks to analyze and understand in a preliminary way the critical attitudes that an amount of Catholics took towards the Church during the sixties and the seventies. It refers to some positions taken at the time, focusing on the personal role of Ruy Belo, a paradigmatic case of the criticism and conflict that marked the relationship between some Catholics and the church hierarchy, mainly with the institutional dimensions represented here. The idea of “vencidismo católico” (to be vanquished by Catholicism), built and brought up with his poem, is studied within concepts such as Secularization and Post-Catholicism, for the purpose of trying to evaluate this dynamics’ impact in the reconfiguration of the Portuguese Catholicism.