Uma Revista bem moderna e bem Cristã A Revista Maria entre o passado e o futuro (1915-1965)

Abstract

The Maria Magazine was specially designed for the members of the Pia União das Filhas de Maria (Daughters of Mary), a congregation of only single women with no theological training. This association represented a project of norms and disciplines of Catholic girls, at the same time, tried to organize this public as support for the demands of the Catholic Church that has undergone intense changes since the end of the Empire. In the first decades of the twentieth century, in all the parishes of the country there was at least one Pia União das Filhas de Maria (Daughters of Mary), bringing together the young women of the middle class. As a means of leveling knowledge, it was offered the groups up-to-date instructions on contemporary issues in society. The magazine was designed as an instrument that would allow the Daughters of Mary, in the words of Archbishop Dom Luis de Britto, to "achieve the strength of unity." Defining itself as an "illustrated magazine, literary and apologetic," Maria was a print work made for women and partly by women. Varying between the norms of tradition and the news of modernity is the interaction of these layers of time in the behaviors and demands of the readers that constitute the focus of this research. Maria lasted a long time, being read for decades throughout the national territory. The period studied includes the edition of 1915, a year that the magazine returns to circulation after a pause of approximately one year, until 1965, when the determinations of the Second Vatican Council arrive in Brazil, giving a new face to the Catholic Church, which would gradually discourage the practices of the model of Romanized Church, among them the existence of the Pia União das Filhas de Maria (Daughters of Mary).