James Chappel's Catholic Modern

The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church

In previous posts, I have discussed how social Catholics—beginning in the mid nineteenth century with Bishop Wilhelm E. von Ketteler—represented a minority position of reformist and fraternal participation in the political process that both informed the emergence of modern Catholic Social Doctrine and embodied it. This minority of social Catholics were opposed, however, by some of their most intellectually accomplished and influential contemporaries who sought to restore a lost Christendom through an integralist and paternalistic alliance between Church and state. I also discussed how many Catholics thereby supported the interwar rise of fascism, not only in Europe but in the United States, to the extent that only a few Catholic venues—like Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker—would even publish argumentation explicitly against fascism and in support of constitutional democracy.

How, then, did the postwar Catholic Church quickly emerge as an indispensable champion of European integration, of human rights, of constitutional and democratic states, and of the key international institutions of the liberal world order? Perhaps the best recent answer to this question is provided by Duke University historian James Chappel in his 2018 monograph Catholic Modern: The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church. Although his historical study focuses on key figures in Germany, France and Austria, he does so considering the international Catholic networks through which they worked, which makes his study relevant for understanding broader trends in the Church.

In this post, I will outline some of the most basic features of Chappel’s narrative, which sheds valuable light on the emergence of the fraternal and participatory socio-political stance of the social Catholics that I have treated in previous posts.

Catholic Antimodern: 1920-1929

To understand how the response of the Catholic Church to the experience of totalitarianism led to what Chappel calls a “remaking of the Church”—precisely in her relation to the modern, secular state—after the second world war, we must understand the antimodernism that marked the Church in the early decades of the twentieth century.

The largely antimodernist stance that the Church maintained through the 1920s traced back especially to the 1907 interventions of Pope Pius X against modernism, which, as I previously noted, seemed to reflect the influence of Louis Billot, SJ who later resigned the cardinalate rather than break ties with the protofascist Charles Maurras. Chappel describes how Catholic intellectuals of the 1920s were largely characterized by nostalgia for medieval Catholic Europe that Pope Leo XIII had previously warned against. He writes that “the central fact of Catholic intellectual life in the 1920s” was “a sweeping rejection of the modern world of church-state separation, capitalist economies, liberal democracy, and the nation-state.” The social Catholics were among the relatively small percentage who emphasized pragmatic coexistence within the postwar democracies that were struggling to rebuild. There was a dearth, however, of Catholics working to articulate a Catholic reconciliation with political modernity.

As we saw in a previous post on Yves Simon’s The Road to Vichy, this “sweeping rejection” of “liberal democracy” by interwar European Catholics was a significant factor in the failure of those democracies and the subsequent rise of fascism, which I think is a significant reason why contemporary Catholics should take note of this grave historical lesson.

To what extent are prominent contemporary Catholics indifferent or hostile to constitutional democracy? Do they think the actual alternative being advanced by the American right, namely the “illiberal democracy” of Hungary’s Victor Orbán or the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is an improvement? Do they not realize the importance of our public institutions to the common good as Pope Benedict XVI had affirmed¹ and regarding which the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was just awarded,² as I will discuss in an upcoming post? And where are the prominent Catholic voices in defense of American democracy, especially given our history during the interwar decades?

In the period from 1929 into 1944, Chappel describes two overlapping emphases among Catholics.

Anti-Communism and Paternal Catholic Modernism: 1929-1944

The first emphasis Chappel describes as “anti-communism and paternal Catholic modernism.” The anti-communist dimension of this stance evolves from the earlier antimodernism, as Catholics after the 1919 Russian Revolution come to see communism as not only a form of modernism, but more importantly as the primary threat facing the Church, especially in light of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). This threat of communism justifies, for such Catholics, an alliance with fascism, since the Church seemed to reject the liberal or secular state, although Pope Leo XIII had previously encouraged Catholics to rally in support of the Third French Republic. By the “modern” in paternal Catholic modernism, Chappel refers to the fact that these Catholics have accepted the modern separation between Church and state, largely because any possibility of a Catholic state is excluded by fascist authoritarianism.

Chappel’s use of the word paternal, on the other hand, has at least two dimensions. On the one hand, the Church and fascist state of this era could agree on the importance of the procreative family unit under the authority of the father. On the other hand, the state could cooperate in a paternalistic fostering of Catholic “family values” as Mussolini did, for example, by closing the brothels to please the Church. Charles Maurras hoped for a similar paternalistic collaboration through the restoration of a Catholic monarchy. A more morally significant result of the collaborationist Vichy regime he supported, I would argue, was its complicity in helping the Nazi’s send over 70, 000 French Jews to their death in the concentration camps. Chappel notes that this anti-communism and paternal Catholic modernism often coincided with antisemitism. Such biases were stoked by the Nazi propagation of a conspiracy theory called Judeo-Bolshevism, which saw the Jews behind the Russian Revolution.

Antifascism and Fraternal Catholic Modernism: 1929-1944

Chappel describes the second socio-political stance of Catholics between 1929 and 1944 as the combination of “antifascism and fraternal Catholic modernism.” This is basically the minority orientation that characterized those influenced by social Catholicism, such as Yves Simon and Jacques Maritain. These thinkers accept the modern separation between Church and state but explicitly reject the fascist form of it as contrary to the dignity of the human person, and to a proper understanding of the Catholic faith. This emphasis rejects the temptation to align with the coercive power of the state in order to paternalistically impose an understanding of Catholic family values on the population. Instead, it fosters a fraternal participation in society where Catholics work as leaven to infuse a Christian spirit through example, cooperation and persuasion, an approach that will become increasingly clear in the social doctrine of the Church.

Christian Democracy: 1944 Through the Long 1950s

Chappel further treats of how this Catholic reconciliation with the modern separation of Church and state evolves during the postwar decades when Christian democracy is born (1944-50), and flourishes during what he calls “the long 1950s” before unraveling in the 1960s. The emphasis on antifascism and fraternal democracy might have seemed the obvious path for the Church after the experience of fascism, since the combination of anti-communism and paternalism had aligned the Church with fascism and against democracy. The ascendence of the fraternal model was obstructed, however, by the Cold War with the Soviet Union which fostered ongoing anti-communism. Postwar Christian democracy, therefore, continued to reflect a majority position of Catholics that emphasized anti-communism and a paternalist concern for upholding these family values, with a minority emphasis on antifascism and fraternal participation in society. The postwar decades thus reflected a considerable but fragile consensus that combined anti-communism, a paternal emphasis on family values, and at least a modest embrace of fraternal cooperation within democratic societies.

The Unraveling of Consensus Since the 1960s

By the late 1960s, however, the consensus that had been the basis for Christian democratic parties as part of a social democratic consensus in Europe collapsed as the conditions on which it relied changed. These changed conditions included intellectual threats from the Catholic “New Left” that engaged with the intellectual currents flowing from Marx, Freud, Heidegger, and existentialism. These changes also included the sexual revolution that eliminated any possibility of consensus for a paternal enforcement of the Christian family values by the state. These new conditions have provided the occasion for the culture wars that have raged ever since. Chappel’s rich narrative merits further discussion in future posts, especially because it provides essential background for understanding the choices before us in the 21st century.

On the Contemporary Relevance of Chappel’s Narrative

In this post, my goal has been to offer a brief sketch of James Chappel’s narrative of how the Catholic Church came to embrace the modern, and liberal or secular state after the Second World War. Compared to the largely authoritarian alternatives, such constitutional and democratic states provided not only support for human rights, but also a participatory framework enabling collaboration in efforts to build a more just and peaceful world. In this concluding section, I will summarize how I think Chappel’s Catholic Modern can contribute to the goal of this substack, which is to foster the retrieval of the social Catholicism that Pope Francis refers to as “a better kind of politics” so we can work in solidarity to address the grave challenges of our century.

Whereas Chappel’s narrative presumes that the Catholic Church has definitively embraced political modernity, I would emphasize the distinction between the magisterium of the Church which has certainly done so, and leading Catholic intellectuals and politicians who apparently have not. The contemporary position of some influential American Catholics, moreover, now seems closer to the “sweeping rejection” of liberal modernity that characterized Catholicism from 1907 through the 1920s, or to the paternalistic alignment with fascism through the 1930s. Although Catholic theology does not equate the differing views of Catholic intellectuals and politicians to the authoritative teaching of the Pope in union with the college of Bishops, we live during a time in the United States when the Papal magisterium is subject to critical scrutiny while the views of American conservatives are widely propagated as reflecting Catholic teaching.³

My hope, however, is that works like Catholic Modern can foster greater understanding of the prior mistakes from which we should learn, of previous successes like postwar Christian democracy, of how the postwar consensus for Christian democracy broke down, and of how we can draw upon the insights about the past to meet the challenges of the present.

I would first hope that no contemporary Catholic would want to return to the antimodernist era of oaths, censorship, and threats of excommunication. I would secondly hope that any serious Catholic who understands the Christian faith and the history of fascism would recognize the danger of seeking to empower an authoritarian for supposed help in winning the culture wars through a paternalistic enforcement of traditional family values. I would thirdly hope that Catholics would recognize that the fraternal mode of socio-political engagement that characterized the social Catholics follows naturally from the preeminent Christian virtue of charity, which is classically understood as a form of friendship. This fraternal mode of socio-political engagement, moreover, is highlighted in the title of Pope Francis’s 2020 social encyclical Fratelli tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship, reiterating a consistent but neglected characteristic of Catholic Social Doctrine.

If these three hopes are not in vain, it seems to me that the key issue to be worked out concerns the right way to approach the Christian tradition of sexual, conjugal and life ethics. At one extreme, I have discussed the integralist model in previous posts where the Church employs the coercive power of the state to enforce traditional moral norms. I would argue that this would be unjust and therefore imprudent, besides being a violation of the virtue of charity. Sadly, as we face the upcoming election, influential contemporary Catholics seem to think that this integralist approach would follow from Catholic teaching, whereas I would argue that it clearly does not. A related and unsuccessful approach, which the Catholic Church in the United States has largely but tragically followed during recent decades in contrast with the “integral and solidary humanism” of Catholic Social Doctrine,⁴ is the culturally conservative prioritization of culture war issues, tracing to dubious origins.⁵

At the other extreme, some have advocated a radical revision of Catholic sexual, conjugal and life ethics, which is not going to happen.

Between these extremes, there are various ways the Church could both uphold the challenging tradition of sexual, conjugal and life ethics while also living out the integral and solidary humanism of Catholic Social Doctrine. One way would be to go back to the conciliar directives for the renewal of moral theology, which have considerable magisterial weight. These emphasize grounding morality in Scripture, pointing people to their high calling in Christ, and to the obligation that is theirs of bearing the fruit of charity for the life of the world, which is the living out of Catholic Social Doctrine. This, in itself, would provide sufficient grounds for the needed renewal.

Pope Francis emphasizes the need for a pastoral approach that emphasizes mercy over judgment and “accompaniment” of those who might be struggling to live out these teachings. Sound moral theology also distinguishes between the moral law that rules and measures every human act, and the civil law that is ordered to the common good. It does not require that the entire moral law be reflected in civil law and recognizes that civil laws should not be imposed against the wishes of those who would live under them. Besides this, there are various teachings that could be further refined if an ecclesial climate that permitted reasonable discourse could be achieved, which is not currently the case.

1. In this regard, I refer frequently to no. 7 of his 2009 social encyclical Caritas in Veritate: On Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth. Here he exhorts Catholics—and all those of good will—to “take a stand for the common good” by being “solicitous for …and avail oneself of, that complex of institutions that give structure to the life of society, juridically, civilly, politically and culturally…” He calls this “… the institutional path — we might also call it the political path — of charity, no less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbour directly, outside the institutional mediation of the pólis.”

2. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2024/press-release/ . This press release reads in part: “This year’s laureates in the economic sciences – Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson – have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity. Societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better. The laureates’ research helps us understand why.” Such scholarship can be read by Catholics as an extended argument for we should recover the fraternal and participatory tradition of social Catholicism, and why an alternative antiliberal stance threatens a dystopian future.

3. Indeed, one senior Catholic journalist has written that “Wealthy conservative Catholics are the new US magisterium.”

4. This is the heading under which the 2004 Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, published during the pontificate of St. John Paul II, offers an invaluable synthesis of the topic.

5. This model came to the forefront based on the machinations of Republican Party operatives like Paul Weyrich, who had moved from the Roman Rite to the Eastern because he saw the postconciliar Church as too liberal. He not only participated in the founding of think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, which is currently in the news due to its Project 2025. Weyrich also helped to forge the socially conservative alliance between Catholics and Evangelical Protestants around the issue of abortion, and both named and helped launch the so-called “Moral Majority” under the leadership of Jerry Falwell. For a timely new documentary on these matters, see https://www.badfaithdocumentary.com/ .

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