Abstract
The “Modernist” crisis in the Roman Catholic Church is not well understood apart from the social-cultural backgrounds of the principal figures involved in it. This essay attempts to describe the context of the crisis from various anthropological perspectives - geographical, cultural, social - and so to illuminate its inner dynamics. The essay's underlying hypothesis is that, since cultures give rise to culture-dependent behaviors, one should be able to discern culturally qualified reactions on the part of protagonists involved in the crisis. The analytical tool used is the geographical anthropology of Emmanuel Todd as modified by the social-cultural anthropologies of Mary Douglas and Bruce Malina.