Integrism (Spain)
The so-called neocatólicos was an intellectual movement initiated during the early Isabelline years;[3] its founding fathers, Juan Donoso Cortés and Jaime Balmes, tried to accommodate orthodox Catholicism within a framework of the liberal monarchy.
[4] With leaders like Antonio Aparisi, Cándido Nocedal, Francisco Navarro Villoslada, Gabino Tejado and Ramón Vinader,[5] in the 1860s the neos strove to save the crumbling rule of Isabel II by building a grand, ultraconservative Catholic party.
[8] Advocating the dynastic claim of another Borbón branch, the Carlists, nominally led by successive claimants, repeatedly attempted to overthrow Isabel II by means of military insurgence.
[17] Within Carlism, Nocedal represented the trend known as inmovilismo or retraimiento,[18] pursuing abstention in official political life and trying to mobilize support along purely Catholic lines, like the massive 1876 pilgrimage to Rome.
[20] Opposition to Pidalistas, the Traditionalists who – guided by the principle of Catholic unity – accepted the Restoration project in the early 1880s helped to format the Nocedalistas as religious intransigents;[21] this was to be reflected in another pilgrimage, planned for 1882.
[25] The conflict soon evolved into a bitter guerra periodistica,[26] usually fought on religious grounds; titles supporting both factions claimed to have represented the genuine faith against the arbitrary usurpation of their opponents.
Though according to the traditional judgment the 1888 breakup resulted chiefly from Nocedal's overgrown ambitions or at best from the clash of personalities,[32] today most scholars agree that ideological conflict constituted an important if not a vital component of the secession.
Some present the friction as growing competition between two visions of Carlism, pointing that while Nocedal clearly aimed at formatting the movement along religious lines and at reducing monarchical, dynastical and fuerista threads to secondary roles, Carlos VII intended to keep balance between all components of Traditionalist ideario.
With ultramontanism gaining the upper hand over more conciliatory political incarnations of Catholicism after the First Vatican Council, and with the new approach made popular in the neighboring France by Louis Veuillot, the 1888 schism was nothing but a local Spanish manifestation of the trend.
[39] However, many of the secessionists were counted among the top intellectuals; they were also overrepresented across the editorial boards, which resulted in an impressive array of periodicals joining the nocedalistas; in Vascongadas all Carlist titles left the claimant.
[47] In the 1880s adamant not to take part in the Restauración political system, in the 1890s the Íntegros approached elections mostly as a battlefield against Carlism, and they occasionally formed electoral alliances, even with their arch-enemies, the Liberals, if doing so would produce a Carlist defeat.
Led by Nocedal, mainstream Integrists clung to their intransigence; refusing to reconsider the project, they thought it their moral duty to represent orthodox Christian values and confront Liberalism against all odds.
[61] Some contemporaries concluded that Integrism died together with Nocedal,[62] the opinion which reflected his immense personal influence on the party but which underestimated the mobilizing potential of ultraconservative, militant Spanish Catholicism.
[66] Despite gradually shrinking social base[67] and continuously losing strength[68] in 1910–1914 Integrism seemed reinvigorated, as a new breed of young Guipuzcoan activists launched its youth branch, Juventud Integrista[69] and the party stimulated emergence of its Catholic trade unions.
Attracted by its similarly anti-modern, traditional and fanatical religiosity, the Íntegros decided to forget their accidentalism and in early 1932, still led by Olazábal, they joined a united Carlist organization, Comunión Tradicionalista.
[94] There was no work which served as official or semi-official lecture of the Integrist doctrine; its theoretical body was laid out mostly in press articles,[95] with the so-called Manifestación de Burgos[96] the most frequently cited piece.
[101] The party rejected Liberal constitutional monarchy and despotic absolutism alike; its ideal envisioned a king which would rule and govern,[102] with his powers executed along and limited by the Catholic principles, as well as by traditional liberties of the social bodies making up the country.
[106] In terms of political representation the Integrists favored organicism; it envisioned a society as an organism composed of traditionally established components, like families, municipalities, provinces, institutions or professional corporations.
Electoral campaigns provide evidence that practical considerations had some moderating effect on the Integrist outlook, as local juntas not infrequently closed deals even with parties at the other end of political spectrum.
[126] When Traditionalists led by Pidal accepted the Conservatives’ Restauración project as a “hypothesis” and assumed that party politics should not stand in the way of Catholic unity, this line received the Rome's blessing in 1881.
[127] Future Integrists vehemently opposed the Pidalists and advanced their own interpretation of papal teaching, claiming that those who embraced the Liberal principle of religious tolerance excluded themselves from the Church and did not merit the benefit of moderation.
[130] Conciliatory position of the Holy See during a mid-1880s crisis versus the Cánovas government alienated the belligerent Íntegros further on; with Ramón Nocedal explaining in public what rights the bishops were entitled to exercise and Francisco Mateos Gago accusing them of laicism,[131] the conflict soon involved papal nuncio.
[132] When Liberalismo es pecado was initially approved by the papal Congregation of the Index the Íntegros declared their triumph; at this point Vatican backtracked and noted that while doctrinally correct, the work was not necessarily valid as political guidance, a reservation which undermined the key message of the book.
[133] Though the conflicts kept mushrooming over many issues, as evidenced by the Fuerista controversy in the early 1890s,[134] the bottom line was that the Church was careful to stay on good terms with all governments, while Integrism was assuming an increasingly anti-establishment format.
While most hierarchs supported the idea of Catholic unity as a catchword for conciliatory approach towards the Restoration regime,[135] intransigence was rife amongst the lower clergy[136] and some scholars, with incidents of bishops closing the seminaries and dismissing professors and seminarians alike.
[144] Around 1900 the Spanish hierarchy started to abandon their traditional strategy of influencing key individuals within the liberal monarchy[145] and began to switch to mass mobilization, carried by means of broad[146] popular structures and party politics.
[147] The Integrists, as usual reluctant to be one of many Catholic parties,[148] despised the semi-democratic format of policy-making[149] and refused to accept malmenorismo;[150] as a result, in the 1910s and 1920s Partido Católico Nacional was dramatically outpaced by new breed of modern Christian-democratic organizations.
[164] Despite vehemently anti-Francoist stand of key former Integrists,[165] there are authors who maintain that Integrism enjoyed its triumph in the Francoist Spain;[166] they point out that the regime was founded on national re-Christianisation concept of "reconquista" and "cruzada", nacionalcatolicismo gained upper hand over syndicalist falangism[167] and the 1953 concordat was “reproducción de ideal integrista”.
[169] Other students claim exactly the opposite, namely that it was the Spanish Integrism which assumed a universal shape as an anti-modernist campaign, promoted by Pius X in the 1900s; most of the measures adopted by the pope[170] allegedly stemmed from the Integrist proposal.
[172] When viewed as part of a wider phenomenon Integrism is usually approached as tantamount to fundamentalism or fanaticism;[173] the name is sometimes applied as abuse or insult, also by the progressive Roman Catholic theorists.
