Christian Democracy

CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY. - The term C. D. was used several times during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but only toward the end of the latter century did it give its name to a vast social movement (v. CHRISTIAN SOCIAL DOCTRINE) which, having developed in various

Catholic countries, was largely encouraged by the Holy See itself. C. D. therefore indicated the tendency of Catholics to establish a new social order that would put an end to the iniquities of liberalism without falling into Marxist collectivism. It is thus defined by one of its greatest architects, G. Toniolo: "A civil order in which all social, juridical and economic forces, in the fullness of their hierarchical development, cooperate proportionally for the common good, converging in the final result to the prevailing advantage of the lower classes." When at the end of the last century the use of the term C. D. alone aroused polemics among Catholics, Leo XIII approved it in the aforesaid sense, but urged that no political meaning be given to it, since, while all Catholics were bound to follow it as a social movement, they were on the other hand free, in the political field, to be monarchists, aristocrats or democrats, the Church being unable to declare itself in favor of this or that form of government.

This did not preclude, however, that social aims might at certain moments give rise to political parties of militant Catholics. Indeed, in various countries political movements promoted by Christian democrats arose: these held that social aims could not be achieved or safeguarded without the conquest of public powers through political action, without the democratic renewal of the State (v. CHRISTIAN SOCIAL DOCTRINE).

This passage, owing to various historical contingencies, aroused particular difficulties in Italy, where moreover the political movement of the Christian democrats had, among others, greater importance and historical significance.

Following the example of the Catholics of Germany and Belgium, in Italy too, to help the hierarchy in the defense of religion against the assaults of the liberals, an organized and concerted action of Catholic laymen had arisen. After various attempts, a vital institution was the one founded in 1868, the Society of Italian Catholic Youth (v. ITALIAN CATHOLIC ACTION), which promoted the first congress of Italian Catholics held in Venice in June 1874. The congress was divided into several sections: religious works, charitable works, education and instruction, the press. Political action was excluded. Instead, participation in the administrative life of the communes and provinces was recommended. In Rome itself the "Roman Electoral Union" arose (1877), which replaced G. Garibaldi in the Capitol with Duke Salviati. In Venice the Supreme Council of Catholic Youth constituted itself as a permanent committee for the future congress. This met the following year in Florence and there constituted the "Work of Congresses and Catholic Committees." The work was presided over by Acquaderni of Bologna, from 1878 by Duke Salviati and, after the latter's resignation (1884), by Marcellino Venturoli. But its flourishing began when the Venetian Giambattista Paganuzzi rose to the presidency (1889). It comprised 5 sections or groups: organization and Catholic action — Christian popular action, or Christian-democratic, education and instruction — the press — Christian art. The most important group was the second: Christian popular action, whose program was summed up in the motto: for the people and with the people.

Meanwhile the encyclical Rerum novarum of Leo XIII appeared (15 May 1891). It was illustrated in its doctrinal bases and in its practical applications and directives by the Catholic Union for Social Studies, which at the Milan convention of January 1894 enunciated the "program of Catholics in the face of socialism." According to which, to confront the socialist tide, the organization of society into professional associations of employers and workers, officially recognized, on the model of the medieval guilds, was necessary. There was further claimed proportional representation, administrative decentralization, communal and regional autonomy, the fixing of a maximum number of working hours and a minimum wage, protection of small property and of collective properties, the institution of the indivisible and inalienable family estate, tax reform, freedom of teaching, reconciliation between Church and State. This is the program of C. D.; whose principal elaborator was G. Toniolo. It aroused enthusiasm, especially among the young, who founded the Christian Democratic Fascio of Milan and others elsewhere, gave life to professional associations and obtained from Card. A. Ferrari, archbishop of Milan, the institution of labor chaplains. On the political plane, in the regional assembly of the Work of Congresses (Milan 1896), Fr. D. Albertario proposed replacing the dead formula "neither elected nor electors" with the living formula: "preparation in abstention." Albertario, with F. Meda and others, longed for Catholics to participate, besides in the administrative life of the communes and provinces, in the political life of Parliament and government. The State came to be considered the necessary organ of social life.

Such an initiative, in Italy especially, given the ever-open Roman question, could not be taken without the approval of the Holy See and with the rights of the supreme pontiff safeguarded. Moreover, the body most qualified at the moment for such initiatives was the national assembly of the Work of Congresses. A group of young men, led by Fr. Romolo Murri, proposed to "modernize and democratize" the Work, fully embracing Toniolo's program, which moreover the Work of Congresses had also made its own.

The Catholic Congress held in Milan in 1897 marked the beginning of a youth campaign for the renewal of the entire Catholic organization. Unfortunately Romolo Murri, leader of the most daring wing of the Christian democrats, was to let himself be carried too far in this battle. In 1897 Il popolo italiano was born, of Genoa, directed by Giambattista Valente, and in 1898 Cultura sociale of Rome, directed by Romolo Murri, who then left the Roman university review Vita nova. From the new newspaper Fr. R. Murri undertook the campaign that was intended to be one of modernization, not only of the social action of Catholics, but of the culture of the clergy and of Catholics, of their civil, moral and religious life: although the political-social interest prevailed over the others.

The government repressions of '98, which led to the dissolution of 6,000 Catholic works, did not mitigate the antagonisms, which indeed sharpened upon the resumption. Then began that struggle of Murri against Paganuzzi which, though with periods of truce, was to last until Paganuzzi's resignation and the dissolution of the Work. Murri wanted Catholic action to draw advantage from the persecution suffered and to side with republicans and socialists in protesting against the unjustified violence and the limitations on political liberties that, in liberal circles, were then being contemplated. In the face of the conflict that arose in Parliament between the majority, which supported the king and Pelloux in the attempt to restrict political liberties, and the obstructionist minority, Murri sided with the latter, observing that resistance to reaction, the campaign in defense of the constitution, the attempts to educate and introduce the lower classes to political life, deserved a not unfavorable judgment and sometimes praise.

In his language Murri is in the early period very similar to Fr. Albertario, a determined opponent of the liberal State and defender of the Pontiff's cause. His intransigence and his exasperated Guelphism recall, however, too closely the early attitude of Lamennais and Gioberti.

This intransigence of Murri was not shared to an equal degree by other groups of "young people": certainly more conciliatory were the Milanese Christian Democrats who gathered around the editorial staff of the Osservatore cattolico (Meda, Vercesi, Arcari, Molteni, Mauri) and who held that the struggle against liberalism should not be confused with the struggle against the State: the latter was not to be destroyed, but renewed and defended. There then arose a polemic between Murri and Meda which revealed two tendencies within Christian Democracy, tendencies that indicate not so much a clash of ideas as a diversity of temperaments and of methods of political action.

All these young people, however, found themselves in agreement in the discontent that had already for some years been spreading through the ranks of Italian Catholic Action against the defensive and static system established by Count Paganuzzi and defended by the "old guard." The old generation, formed — while the conflict with the liberals was growing ever more bitter — in a closed environment, well protected from the winds of contemporary heresies, had seen in the defensive method, in segregation, in isolation, the only way to remain uncontaminated and faithful to revealed truths and to the cause of the Church: yet that isolation constituted at the same time a weakness, because it made Catholics incapable of confronting lay civilization, just as it was developing independently of them. The young people demanded a more intense social action and the internal democratization of the Opera. After having made their voice heard at the Congress of Fiesole (1896) and at that of Milan (1897), they intensified after 1898 their attacks against the existing system and against the man who had created it and defended it with passion, but also with tireless enthusiasm for the cause of the Church. The old ruling class, composed mainly of nobles, defended Paganuzzi and the "Venetians," against the young bourgeois professionals, from the columns of the Difesa (editor Zocchi) of Venice, of the Riscossa (editor Scotton) of Breganze, of the Unità cattolica (editor Sacchetti) of Florence.

If Leo XIII encouraged and approved the social tendencies of the "young people," he was on the other hand keenly worried by the political tendencies that manifested themselves among them. Pope Pecci wanted an absolute political intransigence; if the participation of Catholics in Italian political life was condemnable, far more dangerous was, according to the Pontiff, the transformation of Christian Democracy from a social movement into a political one: this would have bound Catholic Action and the Holy See to a well-defined political current.

In his last years Leo XIII had to make great efforts to prevent the irruption of the Christian Democrats into politics. When the rise of the Christian Democratic Party invoked by Murri seemed imminent, the Holy See was always ready to intervene and to prevent it. To the announcement of 1 November 1900 of a new Christian Democratic newspaper, the Domani d'Italia, which was to carry out the program published at Turin in 1899 and to be the expression of forces tending "to give Catholics unity and strength as a political party," the Pope responded, in January 1901, with the encyclical Graves de communi, in which was reaffirmed the duty of Italian Catholics to carry out social but not political action, and the absolutely non-political character of Christian Democracy. When then, in November 1901, a circular was disseminated announcing the official constitution of Italian Christian Democracy, having political aims, there followed the "Pontifical Instructions" of 27 January 1902 which removed autonomy from the youth movement and reaffirmed the direct and formal dependence of the Opera on ecclesiastical authority. Murri attempted to rebel, but the majority of the Christian Democrats, and first among them those of Milan, obeyed: Murri himself had to submit.

The action of the Pontiff and that of the Christian Democrats more attentive to his directives, such as Prof. Toniolo, had prevented the rupture and led to an apparent pacification at the Congress of Taranto of 1901 (cf. Deliberazioni del XVIII Congresso cattolico italiano tenutosi in Taranto nei giorni 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 sett. 1901, Venice 1901). It seemed that the word of Leo XIII, who, in the Graves de communi, had invited social action in the name of Christian Democracy and had opposed political action, was accepted by all: Romolo Murri, a few months after the Congress, wrote an important article entitled: Con Roma e per Roma sempre! But unfortunately the calm was only apparent. There remained at the base of the Opera dei Congressi the dissension that had arisen between those who still looked upon the organization as Catholic Action pure and simple, and those who now looked upon it as a social and political movement: this contrast, already outlined at the end of the nineteenth century, was to be brought into vivid light by the events that unfolded in the first years of our century. Beyond this, there could not be hidden also a twofold tendency on the political-social plane itself between a conservative part, formed predominantly of the old, and a reformist and progressive part, formed of the young.

The inertia of the "old guard," who were unable to make an effort of understanding, the impatience of the "young people," and mutual suspicion soon caused the hopes conceived at Taranto to fade. On 14 August 1902 there appeared in Cultura sociale under the title "Il crollo di Venezia" a most violent article against Paganuzzi, the man who had sacrificed everything for Catholic Action. After this attack the president, although re-elected by the permanent committee of the Opera, tendered, "in view of the state of minds," his resignation; he was succeeded by Count Grosoli, pleasing to the young people. Almost simultaneously the leader of these, in a speech delivered on 25 August at San Marino, extolled the modernism of Tyrrell and Loisy. Thus there were revealed, at the very moment of the triumph of the Christian Democrats, the motives that were most gravely to compromise it. Murri had always wanted Christian Democracy to be not merely a political movement, but "a religious movement." When then the Holy See began to oppose him in his attempt at political action, he transferred the contrast ever more onto the religious plane. That religiosity which was to pervade the political and social activity of the Christian Democrats then began to lose the characteristics of Catholic orthodoxy: Murri's Christian Democracy and theological modernism drew a little little by little until they became identified with one another. Murri therefore moved toward heresy, nor were the recommendations of Toniolo, who saw the conquests of the young men placed in jeopardy, able to stop him. When in fact, at the Congress of Bologna in November 1903, the "young men," that is, the followers of Murri, won a definitive victory within the Opera dei Congressi, the fate of the latter was sealed. How could the Pontiff permit that Catholic Action, with whose stances responsibilities of the Church were also involved, should now be practically directed by one who gave ever new proofs of doubtful orthodoxy? In July 1904 the Opera, which was by then, according to Murri, "a hybrid and jarring mixture," was dissolved by order of the Pope. This dissolution struck Christian Democracy full force both in its political and in its social aspect: it destroyed in fact the organism destined, in the desire of the Christian Democrats, to direct in the future the intervention of Catholics in Italian political life in support of a program of their own, and it determined the arrest and decline of the social movement, especially the workers' movement: the professional unions, which at the Congress of Bologna numbered 229, fell in 1905 to 195, in 1906 to 185 and in 1907 to 135. The following year Pius X also dissolved the second group, replacing it with the Unione economico-sociale, and instituted the Unione popolare on the model of the German Volksverein, and the Unione elettorale (Il fermo proposito, 11 June 1905). Alongside the new organizations the old Società della gioventù cattolica italiana continued.

Murri's vicissitudes after 1904 are at first confused with those of the Lega democratica nazionale, to which a part of the Christian Democrats adhered. With Pieni l'animo of 28 July 1906, Pius X forbade priests to be members of it. Murri did not obey and in 1907 was suspended a divinis; in 1909 he had just won a seat in Montecitorio when excommunication reached him. He now dreamed of a new Catholic synthesis of what is alive in Christianity with what is alive in modern civilization: on this path he could not be followed by the Catholics who collaborated with him in the league, not by Giuseppe Donati, Eugenio Vaina de Pava, Eligio Cacciaguerra. The latter, at the Congress of Imola in 1910, declared: "In this conflict between Murri and the Roman Church, I do not follow Murri, I follow the Church." Murri then abandoned his companions, who took up again the name of Christian Democrats, and continued his journey toward the deification of democracy and of the State.

Pius X had struck down Murrianism at its roots, not Christian Democracy; the former exhausted itself and died out, the latter spread throughout the whole Catholic mass, preparing the advent of the Partito popolare whose Christian Democratic program was accepted by the great majority of militant Catholics. The Christian Democratic ideal in fact lived on even after 1904, not only in its social aspect but also in its political one, in the soul of many young men who, though distancing themselves in ever greater numbers from Murri, though not renouncing the strictest religious orthodoxy, expected to be able to take up again their old political program. "Catholic deputies," such as Filippo Meda, Angelo Mauri and Giuseppe Micheli, union organizers, leaders of Catholic Action and municipal administrators, such as d. Luigi Sturzo, upheld and spread the political principles of Christian Democracy. In the letter Il fermo proposito Pius X, reaffirming the principle, relaxed the discipline of the non expedita and licensed Catholics, for special reasons, to go to the political polls.

They therefore participated in the elections of 1909 and, in an even broader and more organic manner, in those of 1913. Several militant Catholics were elected. But the Holy Father did not see, at least for the time being, a Catholic parliamentary party: Catholic deputies, not Catholic deputies as a party. The participation of Catholics in political life revived their activity, so that the Unione elettorale, unlike the Unione popolare which was not understood and appreciated, had days of great prosperity. The period from 1904 to 1919 therefore constitutes a necessary moment of transition so that Christian Democracy might free itself from the heterodox religious infiltrations that had compromised it and had determined the pontifical condemnations. The Catholics now grouped in the Unione popolare, the Unione elettorale and the Unione economico-sociale depend directly on the ecclesiastical authorities; but the Holy See itself, opposing the constitution of a Catholic party and distinguishing, on the occasion of the war, its position from that of Italian Catholics, was preparing to give free rein to the rise of an autonomous and non-confessional party.

Its creator would be the Sicilian priest Luigi Sturzo who, in the speech Per un partito nazionale di cattolici in Italia delivered at Caltagirone in 1905, had already traced the lines of the new party: it must not be clerical but autonomous, not confessional but non-confessional, not conservative but democratic; it must in short overcome the clerico-moderate system that places Catholics, guided by the clergy, at the service of liberal conservative forces. On 18 January 1919, when clerico-moderatism had exhausted its function, the Partito popolare italiano made its appearance on the political scene. Its program is substantially Christian Democratic, many of its leaders have been Christian Democrats (Sturzo, Valente, Bertini, Micheli...), but a new name is preferred to the old, both because the latter "recalls a past that had lights and shadows and was too much discussed," and because in reality the Partito popolare is not only the continuation of Christian Democracy, but the synthesis of various currents, which loyally accept the program of the new party or hope, through it, to make their particular political conceptions triumph. In reality the party succeeded in drawing to itself Catholics of all shades, even if this breadth of alignment could constitute a weakness of the party itself. It launched its program on 18 January 1919 and in the elections of 16 November 1919 succeeded in sending 100 representatives to the Chamber. But then came the phenomenon of fascism, then the IV Congress of the Partito popolare at Turin with the accentuation of two wings. D. Sturzo, secretary of the Party, a centrist, was substantially the victor, but while the Party's representatives were traveling to the Congress, an old Catholic, Hon. Cornaggia Medici, launched the appeal-program for a "constitutional union" among Catholics who did not intend to adhere to the Partito popolare. Then came the government crisis provoked by Mussolini's intransigent attitude and the withdrawal of the Popolari from the government, with the accentuation of the two tendencies of right and left within the party itself and the departure of a certain number of deputies.

The Partito popolare, by now deprived of many of its men of the left (Miglioli, Speranzini, Cocchi, Cavalli) and of the right (Cornaggia, Boncompagni, Pestalozzi, Tovini, Martire, Cavazzoni, Mattei Gentili), could not offer effective resistance to fascism, and followed the fate of the other democratic parties.

After 1941 the threads of the movement began to be reconnected and contacts multiplied between the survivors of the Partito popolare (De Gasperi, Spataro, Tupini, Gronchi, Cingolani, Fuschini...) and other groups of young Catholics nine years of ideas, most of them coming from the ranks of Catholic Action. Thus was born the Partito democratico cristiano, which took up the old name both because the reasons that had prevented its adoption in 1919 no longer existed, and in order to meet the wishes of the young and of groups that had no link with the old party (the Milanese "Guelphs"). The d. c., after actively participating in 1943-45 in the anti-German resistance, came out in 1946, in its majority, for the republican institutional form. Today it constitutes the strongest political current of the new Italian democratic State.

Fausto Fonzi