Early Social Catholics in Italy
Beginning the Long Struggle toward Postwar Democracy
In previous posts, I have introduced the work of social Catholics in Germany, in the United States, and in France, and the kind of Catholics who have opposed them.
We have already seen some common characteristics of these social Catholics. They are deeply motivated by their Catholic faith. They tend to be theologically “orthodox” in the sense of holding the Catholic faith and see their emphasis on justice and love of neighbor as reflecting fundamentals of that faith. They care about social injustices against their neighbors and work to rectify them. They favor the constitutional and democratic governments that allow them to do so. They explicitly oppose fascism, and also reject socialism, but agree with socialists regarding many social injustices and are willing to collaborate with them. They neither look nostalgically for a lost—and perhaps mythical—Christendom, nor do they support paternalistic or authoritarian regimes that would prevent them from working for the common good in a manner consistent with their human dignity. They participate in the political process in their work for the common good, regardless of the differing views of their fellow citizens on deeply held matters of faith and morals. They engage in careful study and dialogue to understand the ends or goals that will rectify social problems and the means to achieve them. In all of this, they often encounter opposition from fellow Catholics—both lay and clergy—who do not reflect the same solicitude for the temporal good of their neighbors. These opponents often include the most erudite metaphysicians, dogmatists and moral theologians who tend to pay less attention to historical context, to social injustices, or to the social doctrine of the Church, especially as it has developed since the Second World War.
This post is the first of two that introduce some leading Italian social Catholics whose efforts over many years eventually resulted in the Christian democracy that was instrumental to building a peaceful and prosperous Europe after the Second World War. The participation of Italian Catholics in the political process had been forbidden since 1868 by the non expedit (it is not expedient) policy of Pope Pius IX, a policy that was meant to emphasize that the Church did not recognize the Italian state that had taken the Papal States from the Church.
I introduce these social Catholics by drawing upon Paul Misner’s Social Catholicism in Europe: From the Onset of Industrialization to the First World War.
Stanislao Medolago Albani and the OC
In chapter 13 of Social Catholicism in Europe, Misner summarizes the long path to Italian Christian Democracy. He begins by discussing how Catholic associations in Italy during the last quarter of the nineteenth century were grouped under a national umbrella organization called the Opera di Congressi (OC). From before the publication of Pope Leo XIIIs Rerum novarum: On Capital and Labor (1891), the social and economic section of the OC was led by a prominent social Catholic named Stanislao Medolago Albani. He had been a major figure in the Fribourg Union study circle of social Catholics, which was one of many that had formed in Europe under the inspiration of Bishop Wilhelm E. von Ketteler. Their work on “the social question” in response to the industrialization that had been upending European society for some decades was among the major influences leading to the publication of Rerum novarum.
[Stanislao Medolago Albani, seated at left with general group of the OC. Wikipedia]
Despite Albani’s eminent qualifications and opportune placement, Misner describes how “he had great difficulty” in moving the OC to prioritize “the social question.” The obstacle was that the overarching priority for Italian Catholicism at the time was “the Roman question,” which concerned the restoration of the Church’s sovereignty in Italy. This echoes the restorationist efforts in France by the proto-fascist Charles Maurras, who provided the intellectual leadership of the Action Française (AF) movement against the Third French Republic. Readers will recall that Maurras and AF were opposed by social Catholics including the philosopher Maurice Blondel before the fall of that Republic, which was replaced by the pro-Nazi Vichy regime which Maurras supported.
Giambattista Paganuzzi: Papalist and Intransigent
Misner describes these “papalist” Catholics as “intransigent,” manifesting an “unyielding opposition to the Italian state that had trampled on the rights of the church…” (241). Such views were advanced by the President of the OC, a lawyer named Giambattista Paganuzzi, who Misner quotes as seeking “five years of dictatorship” to convert what he saw as the merely “legal country” into a “real country” of a “Catholic Italy” (241-2). In 1898, however, the government lost patience with such subversive activities and “took measures to repress both socialists” and these OC Catholics.
[Giambattista Paganuzzi. Wikipedia]
Misner describes this government intervention as “a watershed in the development of Christian democracy” because the Catholics decided to distinguish themselves from the socialists by a commitment to promote “social harmony on principle.” This, at least potentially, “opened the OC up to Christian democratic activities…” (243) but the Vatican’s 1868 non expedit prohibition of participation by Catholics in Italian politics remained an obstacle. Subsequent papal interventions into the question of Catholic participation in Italian politics—by both Pope Leo XIII and later Pope Pius XI—largely prevented Christian democracy from developing in Italy and elsewhere until after the Second World War.
Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo
Another important development on the long path toward Christian democracy was the establishment in 1889 of the “Catholic Union for Social Studies” by Medolago Albani and Giuseppe Toniolo (243) to study the plight of farmers and laborers. Although it overlapped with the social and economic section of the OC that was also led by Albani, the separate organization gave them some distance from what Misner describes as the suffocating influence of Paganuzzi. Whereas social Catholics were used to thinking in historical terms, which enabled them to recognize the rapid changes that were occurring, Toniolo combined such historical consciousness with a neo-Thomist framework, which offered a potential bridge to conservative Catholic scholastics. Toniolo merits a separate post in the future, especially as he was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012
[Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo. Wikipedia]
This attention to historical developments distinguished the social Catholics from their integralist opponents like Louis Billot, SJ, who I discussed in a prior post. Misner notes how the Italian “intransigents” were also characterized by an “immutabilism” and insistence on the sacred principles of Christian society. This ahistorical perspective was widespread and its implications for how Catholic social doctrine was understood were significant. The following citation illustrates their mindset.
For if the Christian society (Christendom) of yesteryear was a just and humane order of society, and if it was stable and stratified, then this kind of hierarchical order, with its subordination of the lower classes to the higher, is a sine qua non of Catholic social doctrine. Pius X stated this directly as a principle of Catholic social action in his Motu proprio of 18 December 1903 (ASS 36:341).
Given the papal endorsement of this paternalistic approach to social ethics, which was a call to reestablish Christendom, it was not possible for social Catholics like Toniolo to challenge it directly. He tried, however, to find ways to overcome the paternalism of influential Catholics that contemporary society increasingly resented. The people increasingly and understandably wanted to speak for themselves in a democracy, not have churchmen or aristocrats decide for them as if they were children or imbeciles. As social Catholics like Toniolo realized, the plight of the working class and the inroads of socialism required that Catholics develop our social doctrine (244) to deal with the real world, and not nostalgically work to restore a lost Christian paradise.
Toniolo proposed the so-called “Milan Program” of reforms in 1894, which combined a traditionally Catholic emphasis on blaming social disorders on the “atomistic liberal views of society,” on the one hand, with four positive points on the other. According to this program, these positive points would be addressed through “vocational unions (or corporations)” made up of “both employers and employees of a given sector or trade” (245). In the search for consensus with conservatives, such reforms presupposed a normative order of Christendom, a hierarchical Catholic society. As Misner observes, Toniolo’s proposal reflected an attempt to advance social reforms while “bracketing the Roman Question” (245).
Romolo Murri
Misner also discusses the work of Romolo Murri who had been ordained a priest in 1893 and had taken note during his studies of the challenge presented to Catholicism by the socialist attention to time and history, which enabled them to recognize and respond to the injustices facing the working classes. Murri “was convinced, as were so many other social Catholics, that the reform of civil society depended” not on Marxism but “upon a religious moralization coming from the church” (246). He “got into trouble” with the Church, however, starting with his insistence that this reform must begin with the hierarchy and clergy (246). Murri was suspended a divinis from priestly ministry in 1907 for his democratic activities and then excommunicated in 1909, before being reconciled to the Church in 1943 when Pope Pius XII lifted the excommunication.
Murri saw the Catholic alternative to socialism in an “alliance of the people and the church.” To realize this vision, he established “a publishing house that would put out a whole range of periodicals and other works.” The OC—with its nostalgic priority on reestablishing Catholic sovereignty—had been in crisis since the government crackdown of 1898. Since then, especially younger members of OC were advocating “a more popular and democratic course” while others prioritized the need “to maintain harmony with conservative Catholics” (247). If a democratic path were to be followed, however, the Vatican would need to lift its restrictions on Catholic participation in the political process, which Pope Benedict XV would later grant in 1919 with the founding of the Italian People’s Party (PPI) by Fr. Luigi Sturzo, who I will discuss in my next post.
With these younger members of the OC on the verge of taking charge by 1903, Pope Pius X promptly dissolved it in 1904, “leaving its diocesan committees to carry on under the control of local bishops” (248). Leo XIII had previously intervened regarding Christian democracy in 1901 with his Graves de communi rei, “declaring it to be entirely nonpolitical, despite the associations that the term ‘democracy’ naturally called forth” (248). Misner writes that Leo wanted to keep the term “Christian democracy” to “maintain the vigor that the young Christian democrats had brought into the otherwise moribund OC.” He defined “Christian democracy” paternalistically, however, as “beneficent action on behalf of the people.”
Whereas Christian democrats like Murri saw democracy as “inherently derivative from Christianity,” they were at odds with the Pope, at least regarding politics in Italy, since Leo XIII held that “any of several forms of government, including political democracy, may be morally acceptable” (248-9). In defining Christian democracy paternalistically, Misner describes how Leo XXII’s 1901 intervention “cooled the democratic ardor that gave the movement [of Christian democracy] its popular force.” This force came from “the drive toward the assumption of responsibility by the people” (249). It is not surprising, therefore, that the OC remained moribund.
Although these early Italian Christian democrats had been inspired by Leo XIII’s social encyclical Rerum novarum to enter into the political process to realize the renewal it could potentially effect, they were prevented from making much progress by the stalemate between the Church and the Italian state. This provided an ongoing opportunity for alternatives to grow stronger, including socialism in the short term followed by fascism.
It my next post, I will consider the contributions of the Italian social Catholic Fr Luigi Sturgo, who built on the work of men like Albani, Toniolo and Murri to establish what would eventually be postwar Christian democracy as Catholic Social Doctrine comes to explicitly favor constitutional democratic states.