The Origins of the Crisis of Christian Democracy: The End of Catholic Italy or the End of Cold War Italy?

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe article aims to provide a political reading of the phenomenon of secularization, examining, in particular, the relationship between the Christian Democracy (D.C.), the Italian Catholic world, and the process of secularization. It is divided in four different levels of analysis. First of all, it investigates: (1) contemporary discussion, reconstructing the assessments and readings most common in the circles of the D.C. and the varied world of Italian Catholicism. Then, it analyses: (2) the reactions of Christian Democrats and leading figures of the Catholic world, particularly identifying what solutions they proposed to respond to the challenges posed by the process of secularization. It seeks, then, to compare: (3) the perspectives of these leading figures, with some possible hypotheses of the real effects of secularization on the political attitudes of Italians, paying particular attention to its consequences on the identity of the Christian democratic membership and on the electoral choices of citizens. By way of conclusion, the article formulates: (4) some hypotheses to help reconsider a shared interpretation about the existence of a causal relationship between ‘secularization-crisis/end of the DC’, identifying instead in other processes (specifically the role the Cold War played in the sacralization/desacralization of political cultures) the key factors underlying the identity of the D.C., the support it gathered, and the party’s collapse.