A Study of Intra-Religious Factors of Secularization in Catholicism

Using the descriptive-analytic method, this article aims to identify intra-religious factors involved in secularization within Catholicism. The research findings are included into three categories: the historical-inherited background, the biblical and theological background, and religious intra-structural factors (the institution of religion). Given that because of the church-oriented structure of Catholicism the community of believers had been more linked to the most tangible manifestation and external representative of religion i.e. the institution of religion than to theology and the historical background of the religion, the wrong performance of the institution played a more crucial part in discrediting religion than the two other factors.