A bulletin that forms and informs. The Military Vicariate for the Armed Forces through its official publication (1982-1983).

Abstract

In the following article we analyze the official bulletin of the Military Vicariate, within the spectrum of the Catholic press. We analyze part of the documents, information and meanings present in its pages, particularly around two key junctures: the Malvinas War with its consequent military collapse and the return of democracy. Its informative objectives, its target audience (religious personnel, military personnel of all hierarchies and civilians linked to the Armed Forces [hereinafter, the Armed Forces]), the proposed meanings of obedience, discipline and hierarchy and the impossibility of issuing any critical judgment towards military or ecclesiastical institutions, allowed it to sustain an editorial line without contradictory or disparate tendencies. For this reason, we maintain that his concerns, turns and silences in relation to the issues he addressed (or those he did not include) were linked to the political processes and situations of the Armed Forces and not of the Church. En una coyuntura de  fuerte clima antimilitar y de reconfiguración de las instituciones castrenses como fue el período  de la transición democrática, el vicariato a través de su boletín oficial obvió cualquier tipo de crítica, apostó a fortalecer la unidad militar y a resguardar su legitimidad.