Catholic Church and politics
[2] In the modern era, which saw the rise of electoral democracy and secularism, the Church strongly rejected and clashed with regimes of anti-clerical and anti-Catholic nature.
[3] Despite its struggle against democratic and liberal anti-clericalism, the Church's commitment to a communitarian and Christian type of democracy was officially established by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclicals Au Milieu des Sollicitudes and Graves de communi re.
[4] In terms of political development, Catholic social teaching endorsed democracy on the condition that it constitutes a protection of human dignity and the moral law, and valued common good over individualism.
[1] Prior to World War II, numerous Catholic thinkers advanced the idea of a Catholic political regime; Jacques Maritain argued that democracy was a "fruit of the Gospel itself and its unfolding in history", writing that political Catholicism in its essence promotes democracy based on "justice, charity, and the realization of a fraternal community".
It requires that the necessary conditions be present for the advancement both of the individual through education and formation in true ideals, and of the “subjectivity” of society through the creation of structures of participation and shared responsibility.
Nowadays there is a tendency to claim that agnosticism and skeptical relativism are the philosophy and the basic attitude which correspond to democratic forms of political life.
It must be observed in this regard that if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power.
[1]In the 1960s, the Second Vatican Council and Pope Paul VI endorsed the notion that the Church must fight not only for democracy itself but also for human rights, and it was concluded that participation in public affairs, to the degree that the country's level of development allowed, was a human right; the council also confirmed the Church's duty to promote democracy as a system that best ensured the protection of the common good.
[5] According to the teachings of Pope John Paul II, any political regime must be measured by its ability to protect human dignity, which is "rooted in man’s living in both freedom and truth".
Benedict XVI warned that "without a consciousness of the moral law, democracy cannot be sustained and degenerates into the dictatorship of relativism or what Tocqueville famously called the “tyranny of the majority.”[1] As a program and a movement, political Catholicism – a political and cultural conception which promotes the ideas and social teaching of the Catholic Church in public life through government action – was started by Prussian Catholics in the second half of the 19th century.
[6] According to a German historian Herbert Lepper, the Kulturkampf was a "war of annihilation waged by the Prussian state against the Catholic Church as a spiritual-religious and political power".
[7] Gordon A. Craig points out that German liberals were not coerced by the Prussian state into supporting the Kulturkampf legislation in any way, but willingly backed it despite the fact that it betrayed their principles and included provisions that enabled ethnic cleansing in Poland.
[13] Defunct Political changes in Spain during the second half of the nineteenth century led to the development of Catholic Integrism and Carlism struggling against a separation of Church and State.
The clearest expression of this struggle arose around the 1884 publication of the book Liberalism is a Sin by Roman Catholic priest Félix Sardà y Salvany.
These political developments led to the creation of Italian People's Party as well as the Confederazione Italiana dei Lavoratori, a Catholic socialist confederation of trade unions.
[15] Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum (Of New Things) gave political Catholic movements an impulse to develop and to spread the area of their involvement.
With this encyclical, the Catholic Church expanded its interest in social, economic, political and cultural issues, and it called for a drastic conversion of Western society in the 19th century in the face of capitalist influences.
[16] In addition to political parties, Catholic/Christian trade unions were created, which fought for worker's rights: the earliest include: After World War II, more such unions were formed, including: In the 20th century, and especially after the Second Vatican Council, the church came to be associated with moderately social-democratic and economically left-wing causes - after the encyclicals Rerum Novarum of 1891 and Quadragesimo Anno of 1931, the church firmly established its Christian Democrat outlook which supported "pluralistic democracy, human rights, and a mixed economy".
"[18] According to John Hellman, "Not long before he died, Lenin told a French Catholic visitor that "only Communism and Catholicism offered two diverse, complete and inconfusible conceptions of human life".
[20] According to a historian Elisa Carrillo, the Vatican was sceptical of "condemning any variety of communism", and Italian Catholics cooperated with Communists in the anti-fascist resistance.
After WWII, members of the Italian Catholic Action "saw no essential incompatibility between Marxism and Catholicism" and established close ties with Communists such as Mario Alicata and Pietro Ingrao.
The church made "no attempt to suppress or condemn the efforts of these young people to reconcile Catholicism with Marxism", and in 1943, Cardinal Luigi Maglione intervened on behalf of 400 Communist Catholics who were arrested for anti-government demonstrations.
[22] The 1974 Bishops Conference in Chile harshly criticized the regime and urged for a return to democracy, and in 1975 the clergy started actively partaking in anti-government demonstrations.
[23] The growing opposition to the dictatorship forced the regime to start "fining priests for their sermons, jailing members of the clergy, and considering the expulsion of a bishop, thereby risking the excommunication of the government".
"[25] Left-wing Catholic organisations that were common in Latin America and Europe, such as the Movement of Priests for the Third World, French worker-priests or Christians for Socialism not only provided aid to and organised working-class and urban poor Catholis, but also "provided a forum for contact between the middle class and the working class", especially in the context of opposing authoritarian regimes.
[25] In dealing with hostile regimes, the Church has sometimes signed concordats, formal treaties which limit persecution of Catholic practices in return for concessions to the state.
Similar purposes were served by the 2018 Holy See-China agreement which allowed Chinese government recommendation of bishops' appointments while permitting some practice of the faith.
American Catholics of that era were generally New Deal liberals who actively supported the CIO, viewed government as a positive force for social reform and often participated in non-communist trade unions, becoming a prominent group of the United Auto Workers.
[27] Catholics are instructed to participate in the political process, be informed voters, and to encourage elected officials to act on behalf of the common good.
