CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY. — The term d. c. was used several times during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but only toward the end of the latter did it give its name to a broad social movement (v. DOTTRINA SOCIALE CRISTIANA) which, having developed in various Catholic countries, was extensively encouraged by the Holy See itself. D. c. therefore denoted the tendency of Catholics to establish a new social order that would put an end to the injustices of liberalism without falling into Marxist collectivism. It is defined thus by one of its greatest architects, G. Toniolo: «Civil order in which all social, juridical, and economic forces, in the fullness of their hierarchical development, proportionally cooperate for the common good, with the ultimate result flowing chiefly to the advantage of the lower classes». When, at the end of the last century, the use of the term d. c. alone provoked controversy among Catholics, Leo XIII approved it in the sense indicated above, but urged that it not be given a political meaning, since, while all Catholics were bound to follow it as a social movement, in the political sphere they were free to be monarchists, aristocrats, or democrats, the Church being unable to declare in favor of one or another form of government.
This did not, however, preclude social aims from giving rise, at particular moments, to political parties of militant Catholics. Political movements promoted by Christian democrats in fact arose in various countries: they held that social aims could not be achieved or safeguarded without gaining control of public authority through political action, without the democratic renewal of the State (v. DOTTRINA SOCIALE CRISTIANA).
This transition, owing to various historical circumstances, gave rise to particular difficulties in Italy, where, moreover, the political movement of the Christian democrats acquired, among other things, greater importance and historical significance.
Following the example of the Catholics of Germany and Belgium, organized and coordinated action by lay Catholics had also arisen in Italy to assist the hierarchy in defending religion against liberal attacks. After various attempts, a vital institution was the one founded in 1868, the Society of Italian Catholic Youth (v. I)), which promoted the first congress of Italian Catholics, held in Venice in June 1874. The congress was divided into several sections: religious works, works of charity, education and instruction, the press. Political action was excluded. Participation in the administrative life of the municipalities and provinces was instead recommended. In Rome itself the «Roman Electoral Union» arose (1877), replacing G. Garibaldi with Duke Salviati in the Capitoline administration. In Venice, the Higher Council of Catholic Youth constituted itself as a permanent committee for the future congress. The latter met the following year in Florence, where it established the «Opera dei congressi e comitati cattolici». 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 it began to flourish when the Venetian Giambattista Paganuzzi became president (1889). It comprised five sections or groups: organization and Catholic action — Christian, or Christian-democratic, popular action — 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, Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum novarum appeared (15 May 1891). Its doctrinal foundations and practical applications and directives were expounded by the Catholic Union for Social Studies, which, at the Milan conference of January 1894, proclaimed
the «program of Catholics in the face of socialism». According to this, in order to confront the socialist tide it was necessary to organize society into officially recognized professional associations of employers and workers, modeled on the medieval corporations. Proportional representation, administrative decentralization, municipal and regional autonomy, the establishment of a maximum number of working hours and a minimum wage, protection of small property and collective property, the establishment of an indivisible and unseizable family estate, tax reform, freedom of education, and reconciliation between Church and State were also demanded. This was the program of d. c.; its principal formulator was G. Toniolo. It aroused enthusiasm, especially among the young, who founded the Christian Democratic League of Milan and others elsewhere, established professional associations, and obtained from Cardinal A. Ferrari, archbishop of Milan, the institution of labor chaplains. On the political level, at the regional assembly of the Opera dei congressi (Milan, 1896), don D. Albertario proposed replacing the lifeless formula «neither elected nor electors» with the living formula: «preparation through abstention». Albertario, together with F. Meda and others, wished Catholics to participate not only in the administrative life of municipalities and provinces but also in the political life of Parliament and government. The State was regarded as the necessary organ of social life.
An initiative of this kind, especially in Italy, given the still-open Roman question, could not be undertaken without the approval of the Holy See and without prejudice to the rights of the supreme pontiff. Moreover, the body most qualified at that moment for such initiatives was the national assembly of the Opera dei congressi. A group of young men, led by don Romolo Murri, set out to «modernize and democratize» the Opera, fully embracing Toniolo’s program, which the Opera dei congressi 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 allow himself to be carried too far in this struggle. In 1897 Il popolo italiano was founded in Genoa, directed by Giambattista Valente, and in 1898 Cultura sociale in Rome, directed by Romolo Murri, who at that time was leaving the Roman university journal Vita nova. In the new journal, d. R. Murri undertook the campaign, intended to modernize not only the social action of Catholics but also the culture of the clergy and of Catholics, their civic, moral, and religious life, although political and social concerns predominated over the others.
The government repressions of 1898, which led to the dissolution of 6,000 Catholic organizations, did not lessen the antagonisms; indeed, they intensified upon the resumption of activity. It was then that Murri’s struggle against Paganuzzi began—a struggle that, despite periods of truce, was to last until Paganuzzi’s resignation and the dissolution of the Opera. Murri wanted Catholic action to take advantage of the persecution it had suffered and to join republicans and socialists in protesting against the unjustified violence and restrictions on political freedoms that were then being contemplated in liberal circles. Faced with the conflict that had arisen in Parliament between the majority, which supported the king and Pelloux in their attempt to restrict political freedoms, and the obstructionist minority, Murri sided
with the latter, observing that resistance to reaction, the campaign in defense of the constitution, and attempts to educate and introduce the lower classes into political life deserved a favorable judgment and, at times, praise.
In his language Murri was at first very similar to d. Albertario, a determined adversary of the liberal State and defender of the cause of the Pontiff. His intransigence and his impassioned Guelfism, however, recall too closely the early position of Lamennais and Gioberti.
This intransigence of Murri was not shared to the same degree by other groups of “young men”: certainly more conciliatory were the Milanese Christian democrats who gathered around the editorial office 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. A controversy then arose between Murri and Meda, revealing two tendencies within d. c.—tendencies indicating not so much a conflict of ideas as a difference in temperaments and methods of political action.
All these young men, however, were united in the discontent that had already for several 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 men.” The older generation, formed in an enclosed environment as the conflict with the liberals grew more bitter, well protected from the winds of contemporary heresies, had seen in the defensive method, in segregation and isolation, the only means of remaining uncontaminated and faithful to revealed truths and the cause of the Church. That isolation, however, also constituted a weakness, because it made Catholics incapable of confronting secular civilization as it developed independently of them. The young men demanded more vigorous social action and the internal democratization of the Opera. After making their voices heard at the Congress of Fiesole (1896) and that of Milan (1897), after 1898 they intensified their attacks against the existing system and against the man who had created it and defended it passionately, but also with inexhaustible enthusiasm for the cause of the Church. The old ruling class, composed chiefly of nobles, defended Paganuzzi and the “Venetians” against the young bourgeois professionals from the pages of the Difesa (editor Zocchi) of Venice, the Riscossa (editor Scotton) of Breganze, and the Unità cattolica (editor Sacchetti) of Florence.
If Leo XIII encouraged and approved the social tendencies of the “young men,” he was instead deeply concerned by the political tendencies emerging among them. Pope Pecci wanted absolute political intransigence; if the participation of Catholics in Italian political life was condemnable, the transformation of d. c. from a social into a political movement was, according to the Pontiff, much more dangerous: this would bind Catholic Action and the Holy See to a clearly defined political current.
In his final years Leo XIII had to make great efforts to prevent the Christian democrats from bursting into politics. Whenever the emergence of the Christian Democratic Party invoked by Murri seemed imminent, the Holy See was always ready to intervene and prevent II. On the announcement, on 1 Nov. 1900, of a new Christian Democratic newspaper, the Domani d'Italia, which was to implement the program published in Turin in 1899 and express the forces seeking “to give Catholics the unity and strength of a political party,” the Pope responded in Jan. 1901 with the encyclical Graves de communi, in which the duty of Italian Catholics to engage in social but not political action was reaffirmed, as was the absolutely non-political character of d. c. When, in Nov. 1901, a circular was distributed announcing the official establishment of Italian d. c., with political aims, the “Papal Instructions” of 27 Jan. 1902 followed, depriving the youth movement of its autonomy and reaffirming the direct and formal dependence of the Opera upon ecclesiastical authority. Murri attempted to rebel, but the majority of the Christian democrats, first and foremost those of Milan, obeyed: Murri himself was forced to submit.
The action of the Pontiff and that of the Christian democrats most attentive to his directives, such as Prof. Toniolo, had prevented a rupture and led to an apparent pacification at the Congress of Taranto in 1901 (cf. Deliberazioni del XVIII Congresso cattolico italiano tenutosi in Taranto nei giorni 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 sett. 1901, Venezia 1901). It seemed that the words of Leo XIII, who, in Graves de communi, had called for social action in the name of d. c. and opposed political action, had been 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. At the foundation of the Opera dei Congressi there remained the disagreement between those who still viewed the organization as Catholic Action pure and simple and those who by then regarded it as a social and political movement: this conflict, already taking shape at the end of the nineteenth century, was to be brought vividly to light by the events that unfolded in the early years of our century. Moreover, a twofold tendency could not be concealed even on the political-social plane: one conservative faction, composed predominantly of the old men, and one reformist and progressive faction, composed of the young.
The inertia of the “old men,” who were unable to make an effort at understanding, the impatience of the “young men,” and mutual suspicion soon caused the hopes conceived at Taranto to fade. On 14 Aug. 1902, Cultura sociale published, under the title “Il crollo di Venezia,” a violently worded article against Paganuzzi, the man who had sacrificed everything to Catholic Action. After this attack the president, although reelected by the permanent committee of the Opera, tendered his resignation, “given the state of people’s minds”; Count Grosoli, who was acceptable to the young men, succeeded him. Almost simultaneously, their leader, in a speech delivered on 25 Aug. at S. Marino, extolled the modernism of Tyrrel and Loisy. Thus, at the very moment of the Christian democrats’ triumph, the motives that were to compromise it most gravely were revealed. Murri had always wanted d. c. to be not merely a political movement, but “a religious movement.” When the Holy See began to oppose him in his attempt at political action, he increasingly shifted the conflict onto the religious plane. That religiosity which was to permeate the political and social activity of the Christian democrats then began to lose the characteristics of Catholic orthodoxy: Murrian d. c. and theological modernism drew somewhat closer to one another.
until they came to identify with one another. Murri thus set out toward heresy, nor were Toniolo’s recommendations, who saw the achievements of the young people placed in jeopardy, able to stop him. When, in fact, at the Congress of Bologna in November 1903, the “young people,” that is, Murri’s followers, achieved a definitive victory within the Opera dei Congressi, its fate was sealed. How could the Pontiff permit Catholic Action, whose positions also involved the Church’s responsibilities, now to be practically directed by one who continually offered new evidence of doubtful orthodoxy? In July 1904 the Opera, which was by then, in Murri’s words, “a hybrid and clashing mixture,” was dissolved by order of the Pope. This dissolution struck d. c. at its very heart, both in its political and in its social aspect: it destroyed the organization intended, in the hopes of the Christian democrats, to direct in the future the intervention of Catholics in Italian political life in support of their own program, and brought about the arrest and decline of the social movement, especially the workers’ movement: the professional unions, which numbered 229 at the Congress of Bologna, fell to 195 in 1905, to 185 in 1906, and to 135 in 1907. The following year Pius X also dissolved the second group, replacing it with the Unione economico-sociale, and established 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 to exist.
Murri’s fortunes after 1904 were initially intertwined with those of the Lega democratica nazionale, to which some of the Christian democrats adhered. With Pieni l’animo of 28 July 1906, Pius X prohibited priests from belonging to II. Murri did not obey and in 1907 was suspended a divinis; in 1909 he had scarcely won a seat in Montecitorio when excommunication reached him. He now dreamed of a new Catholic synthesis of what was living in Christianity with what was living in modern civilization: along 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, or Eligio Cacciaguerra. The latter declared at the Congress of Imola in 1910: “In this conflict between Murri and the Roman Church, I do not follow Murri; I follow the Church.” Murri then abandoned his companions, who resumed the name of Christian democrats, and continued on his path toward the deification of democracy and the State.
Pius X had struck Murrism at its roots, not d. c.; the former ran its course and died out, while the latter spread throughout the Catholic mass, preparing the advent of the Partito popolare, whose Christian-democratic program was accepted by the great majority of practicing 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 hearts of many young people who, although increasingly distancing themselves from Murri and refusing to renounce the strictest religious orthodoxy, expected to be able to resume their former political program. “Catholic deputies,” such as Filippo Meda, Angelo Mauri, and Giuseppe Micheli; trade-union organizers; leaders of Catholic Action; and municipal administrators, such as d. Luigi Sturzo, upheld and disseminated the political principles of d. c. In the letter Il fermo proposito, Pius X, reaffirming the principle, relaxed the discipline of the non expedita and, for special reasons, gave Catholics permission to go to the polls in political elections.
They therefore took part in the elections of 1909 and, in an even broader and more organized manner, in those of 1913. Several practicing 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 such. The participation of Catholics in political life revived their activity, so that the Unione elettorale, unlike the Unione popolare, which was neither understood nor appreciated, enjoyed a period of great prosperity. The period from 1904 to 1919 therefore constituted a necessary transitional phase, enabling d. c. to free itself from the heterodox religious infiltrations that had compromised it and brought about the papal condemnations. The Catholics now grouped in the Unione popolare, the Unione elettorale, and the Unione economico-sociale were directly dependent upon the ecclesiastical authorities; but the Holy See itself, opposing the establishment of a Catholic party and, on the occasion of the war, distinguishing its position from that of Italian Catholics, was preparing to clear the way for the emergence 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 outlined the principles of the new party: it was not to be clerical but autonomous, not confessional but non-confessional, not conservative but democratic; in short, it was to overcome the clerical-moderate system that placed Catholics, guided by the clergy, at the service of conservative liberal forces. On 18 January 1919, when clerical moderatism had exhausted its function, the Partito popolare italiano appeared on the political scene. Its program was essentially Christian-democratic, and many of its leaders were Christian democrats (Sturzo, Valente, Bertini, Micheli...); but a new name was preferred to the old one, both because the latter “recalls a past that had lights and shadows and was too much debated,” and because the Partito popolare was in fact not merely the continuation of d. c. but the synthesis of various currents, which either loyally accepted the program of the new party or hoped, through it, to make their particular political conceptions triumph. In reality, the party succeeded in drawing Catholics of every shade to itself, although this breadth of alignment could constitute a weakness for 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, and the Fourth Congress of the Partito popolare in Turin, with the sharpening of two wings. D. Sturzo, the Party’s secretary and a centrist, was essentially the victor; but while the Party’s representatives were traveling to the Congress, an old Catholic, the Hon. Cornaggia Medici, issued an appeal-program for a “constitutional union” among Catholics who did not intend to join the Partito popolare. Then came the governmental crisis provoked by Mussolini’s intransigent attitude and the withdrawal of the popolari from the government, with the strengthening of the two tendencies, right and left, within the party itself and the departure of a certain number of deputies.
The Partito popolare, 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 shared the fate of the other democratic parties.
After 1941, the movement’s scattered forces began to regroup, and contacts multiplied between the surviving members of the Partito popolare (De Gasperi, Spataro, Tupini, Gronchi, Cingolani, Fuschini...) and other groups of young Catholics, young in age and ideas, most of them coming from the ranks of Azione cattolica. Thus was born the Partito democratico cristiano, which revived 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 people and groups that had no connection with the old party (the Milanese «guelfi»). The d. c., after actively participating in the anti-German resistance in 1943–45, declared itself, in 1946, in its majority, in favor of the republican institutional form. It now constitutes the strongest political current of the new Italian democratic State.
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