'Saberei sustentar a cruz de Cristo e a bandeira da Pátria': o espiritualismo integralista na doutrina do Partido de Representação Popular : (1945-1950)

摘要

The present dissertation aims to analyse the integralist spiritualism of the Popular Representation Party (PRP), composing a political-religious discourse. The temporal outline covered the years of the formation and the consolidation of the party, 1945 to 1950, the period in which the integralist doctrine was readapted in the context of the Brazilian return to democracy. The spiritualism was one of the elements used as a way to legitimate the party, flitting by its political conception and creating a specific form of communication. This work was guided by three basic questions: the definition of spiritualism; its relation to the organized religions; and the penetration of the religious discourse into the political formulation. The spiritualism was intrinsically connected to the concepts of integralism, which gave its philosophical foundations, and materialism, its antithesis. It was understood as the principle that postulated the belief in God, a supreme and intervening being, and the human soul, giver of liberty and responsability. The integralism divulged the existence of a supernatural order, to which the material plane was submitted; because of that, the human activities should aim the promotion of the values of the spirit, above all the material contingences. These values were identified as being Christian, with priority to Catholicism. The integralism doctrine resembled the Catholic doctrine and its partisans sought to emphasize this resemblance. The religious bias was explored in the PRP’s discourse not only as a way to attract the faithful, but also because it gave a meaning to its proposals, acting as a justification of its conservative, and sometimes authoritarian, project. This bias had na enormous influence on the PRP’s conceptions of democracy, nationalism and anticommunism. The spiritualism wasn’t just a simple part of the party’s program; it was one of its doctrinaire cornerstones, which worked as a mean of identification and as a theoretical support for the intervention of the Integralism in the post-war era.