Thresholds of Self-Organisation in Catholic Religious Education: A Complex Analysis of Curricula in Latin America

This article analyses the official Catholic Religious Education (CRES) programmes in Chile, Brazil, Costa Rica and Colombia from the perspective of complexity sciences, using the concept of self-organisation as a central analytical axis. Given Latin American contexts marked by religious pluralism, cultural transformation, institutional crisis and youth subjectivities, it is proposed that the adequacy of CRES does not depend solely on content or methodologies, but also on the systemic architecture that articulates students, classrooms and institutions in relation to their environment. Methodologically, the study develops a framework of three thresholds of educational self-organisation—reactive, reflective, and ecological—and applies it comparatively to the four national programmes, examining how they distribute agency, learning capacity, and openness to context at the student, classroom, and school-environment levels. The analysis reveals that, although all programmes activate relevant forms of reactive and reflective self-organisation, only some partially enable thresholds of ecological self-organisation capable of sustainably integrating contemporary sociocultural and religious complexity. The results allow us to identify structural tensions between current curriculum designs and the demands of increasingly complex environments.