Don Luigi Sturzo—Christian Democrat

Abstract

The future government of Italy portends a challenge of enormous magnitude for the Catholic Church. Subject as it has been to periodic attacks for reactionism, the Church has been hard pressed to throw off the stigma of its association with Franco in Spain and its willingness to deal with Mussolini's Fascist régime. In the light of these accusations, coupled with rather widespread doubt whether church orthodoxy is compatible with political democracy, it seems altogether appropriate to examine the political theories of one of the leading exponents of liberal Catholicism—Don Luigi Sturzo.A little over twenty years ago, foreign correspondents, eagerly seeking a label for the “mystery man of Italian politics,” referred to him as a clerical socialist. If the term “clerical socialism” is synonymous with Christian socialism, such a characterization might be a proper one for this Sicilian priest. Certainly Sturzo was a champion of the Christian socialist movement which urged the correction of economic injustices but decried the materialism of the Marxists. He approved of the Guild of St. Mathew's sympathy for the unionism and socialism of the nineties and the Roman Catholic Social Guild. The latter found its incentive in the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum and the “scholastic traditions in restraint of usury and economic injustice.” Both of these organizations were associated with Christian socialism. But, although Christian socialism and clerical socialism have occasionally been placed in the same category, the latter is too ambiguous a term to permit a precise classification.