Catholic Politics Research Articles

Catholic politics of the past. Culture war, National Catholicism, and commemorations in Spain, 1881-1908

ABSTRACT This article aims to analyze the politics of the past implemented by Spanish Catholics during the so-called “age of anniversaries.” The promotion of Catholic commemorations in Spain was a reaction to the culture war which was waged around the role of religion in the public sphere during the Spanish Restauration (1874–1923). Historiography has tended to analyze these commemorations in the light of the political tensions that existed between factions of the Spanish right. This focus has obscured, however, the important role that these commemorations played in the development of a Catholic reading of the past, as well as in the formation of a National Catholic political culture. This essay offers a complete study of the catholic commemoration in Spain from the pioneering celebration of Calderón de la Barca in 1881 to the first centenary of the War of Independence in 1908. By doing so, the paper aims to demonstrate the role played by these politics of the past in the construction of a National Catholic political culture in Spain.

Catholic Political Thought and Calvinist Ecclesiology in Samuel Rutherford's Lex, Rex (1644)

AbstractThis article presents a significant reinterpretation of an essential text in Scottish (and British) political thought, Samuel Rutherford's Lex, Rex, by analyzing its relationship with Catholic scholasticism. While scholars have observed Rutherford's use of Catholic authors, there has been no sustained analysis of how Rutherford strategically applied this intellectual tradition to the religious and political context of the British civil wars. Ideas about human liberty, the law of nations, and popular sovereignty that were developed by Catholic scholastics in the School of Salamanca allowed Rutherford to defend limited monarchy and fulfill an ecclesiological purpose in seventeenth-century Britain. He, and the majority of his Covenanter contemporaries, believed in jure divino presbyterianism: scripture mandated that elders and synods, not bishops, should rule the church. To ensure a presbyterian settlement, Rutherford needed to disprove royalist absolutists who claimed that presbyterianism threatened absolute monarchy (the divinely ordained form of civil government) by limiting royal supremacy over the church. By building on Catholic scholastic political ideas, Rutherford was able to argue that human beings could change the form of civil government and that absolute monarchy was not required by God. Ironically, to make a civil state safe for presbyterianism, Rutherford resorted to Catholic scholastics rather than those of his own confessional tradition. This analysis urges reconsideration of not only the porosity of traditional confessional boundaries in early modern political thought but the respective positions of both Calvinism and Catholicism in shaping the political ideas underlying the British revolutions of the mid-seventeenth century.

Pioneers of Clerical Fascism? Mythical Language of Revolutionary Political Catholicism in Slovakia and Visions of a “New Nation”

Konštantínove listy/Constantine’s Letters is an international scientific journal which has been published in Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra since 2008. The main goal of the journal is to present problems and themes intertwined with the cultural and political history of Great Moravia during the 9th century as well as continuity of Cyrillo-Methodian tradition in later times. Next, there is also space for other adjacent topics connected with Slavonic and Byzantine history, philology, philosophy, literature, cultural relations as well as medieval and early modern age ecclesiastical history and iconography.

Theology of Carl Schmitt

The paper addresses the theology of Carl Schmitt. Schmitt often stresses his ‘natural born Catholicism.’ At the same time he also claims repeatedly not to be a theologian in the professional sense. On the other hand, his main ideas like the concept of the political (Der Begriff des Politischen), the public character of the church (Römischer Katholizimus und politische Form), and finally, his Politische Theologie II in reaction to Erik Peterson’s refutation of Politische Theologie I show that Schmitt’s ideas imply deep and problematic theological positions. The role of the katechon, or the Grand Inquisitor and his criticism of Peterson’s patristic arguments, especially the rejection of the anti-Arian reasoning of Gregory Nazianzen show a markedly unorthodox theological stance reminiscent of Charles Maurras’ political Catholicism. Schmitt’s transcends patristic orthodoxy in order to apply his historically conditioned 19th-century theology to sacralizing his idea of the political.

When the Physician Becomes an Apostle

Abstract Missionary medicine, especially healthcare offered by Catholic missions, is a rather neglected field in the study of colonial medicine. In addition, the potential of analytical tools such as the circulation of knowledge or attention for professional identities has not been fully explored yet. In this study of physicians in the Belgian Congo, we argue that a new professional identity – or persona – of the Catholic colonial doctor arose as a result of Catholic religious doctrine, missionary politics and biomedical developments. The persona of the mission’s main healthcare provider, with a strong commitment to curative medicine, was a metropolitan professional identity shaped by older missionary narratives. In colonial day-to-day reality, however, where tensions between physicians, missionaries and state officials abounded, this discursive identity proved difficult to maintain.

Catholicism and European Politics: Introducing Contemporary Dynamics

Recent research on political Catholicism in Europe has sought to theorize the ways in which Catholic politics, including Catholic political parties, political ideals, and political entrepreneurs, have survived and navigated in a post-secular political environment [...]

Christian Democracy and the Birth of the European Union

Christian Democracy and the Birth of the European Union Bryan Fanning In the aftermath of the Second World War Christian Democracy quickly became a prominent political force in several European countries, though not in Scandinavia or Great Britain. It became influential in countries with large Catholic populations, other than Spain and Portugal where totalitarian regimes remained in control. By 1948, Christian Democrat political parties had become dominant or politically prominent in Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and, following its establishment in 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany. It filled a political vacuum left by the defeat of totalitarianism. In the immediate post World War Two era Christian Democrats in Germany and elsewhere could present themselves as harbingers of a new democratic era and, with the onset of the Cold War, as enemies of communism.The post-war Christian Democratic project was one that supported religious pluralism and Western democratic values. It looked West in opposition to the Soviet-controlled Eastern Bloc. The mostly-Christian democratic political and technocratic architects of what would become the European Union perhaps shared what has been called l’esprit européen.1 However, the main impetus was the need to recover from the war and to prevent the re-emergence of subsequent conflicts. The Christian Democratic architects of European integration variously blamed the war on modern nationalism, the rise of authoritarian fascism and the decline of Christian values. As put by Rosario Forlenza: ‘In the narrative of Christian Democracy, the order of European history and civilisation had been destroyed by modern nationalism and then by its association with the authoritarian political theologies of fascism and Nazism. Furthermore, political Catholicism had long experienced the nation state as a homogenising force threatening communities, from the churches to families. Taming nationalisms and nations, healing the European civil war and overcoming the past through close cooperation beyond the borders of nation states were explicit goals of the Europeanism of Christian Democracy.’2 Studies • volume 110 • number 437 52 Champions of Christian Democracy and of what became the European Union like Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967) combined Catholic ideas with liberal economics to create a distinct Christian Democratic antidote to what were perceived as the causes of totalitarianism. In the immediate aftermath of the war Christian Democratic parties co-operated across borders. By 1950 these formed national governments or were the largest party in coalition governments in the six countries that became founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), established in 1951–52, and of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957–8.3 Adenauer, who served as the West German Chancellor from 1949 to 1963, was born in the Rhineland where he became a member of Zentrum, the German Catholic political party, in 1906 and mayor of Cologne from 1917 to 1933. He came into conflict with the Catholic hierarchy when he advocated extending membership of Zentrum to Protestants, thereby diminishing its role as a Catholic confessional party. Adenauer lived in seclusion for much of the Nazi period, although he was imprisoned briefly in 1934 and was sent to a labour camp for some months in 1944, following the assassination attempt on Hitler. After the war he was reinstated by the Allied occupation forces as Mayor of Cologne and in 1946 he became a founding member of the Christlich-Demokratische Union (Christian Democrat Union).4 The CDU, in alliance with the smaller, more conservative Christlich-Soziale Union (Christian Social Union), dominated the West German Federal Republic from its establishment in 1949 to 1963.5 It was built on the foundations of Zentrum and several pre-Nazi era conservative and moderate parties supported by Protestants as well as Catholics.6 What brought these disparate elements together and what defined the CDU for its members was its selfimage as a Christian party.7 Its main post-war rival was the reconstituted Social Democratic Party (SPD), which did not win power until 1969. In France, the Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP) was founded in November 1944 under the chairmanship of Robert Schuman (1886–1963), who became one of the most significant political architects of what became the European Union. Schuman, the French foreign minister, was the leader of the...

Where Did ‘Human Dignity’ Come from? Drafting the Preamble to the Irish Constitution

Abstract This article addresses the correctness of Samuel Moyn’s contention that the inclusion of ‘dignity’ in the Irish Constitution of 1937 reflects a particularistic, sectarian and conservative Catholic viewpoint, rather than (as some other scholars do) seeing the inclusion of ‘dignity’ as the first tentative step towards the instantiation of a universalistic, liberal human rights ethic into the Irish Constitution. For Moyn, ‘dignity’s’ sectarian, political origins in Ireland add weight to his sceptical approach to human rights more generally, given the extent to which human dignity is now seen as underpinning the justification of human rights. In arguing against Moyn’s conclusions, the article provides a detailed re-examination, based on archival research, of the drafting of the Preamble to the Irish Constitution in which the term ‘dignity’ is located, situating it in the intellectual changes in political Catholicism and Irish nationalism at that time. In particular, the article examines for the first time to what extent insights can be gleaned from the contemporaneous translation of ‘dignity’ into the Irish language version of the Constitution, and the significance of the choice of ‘uaisleacht’ in the Irish text. Drawing from this, the article identifies the various different influences that appear to have contributed to the use and meaning of dignity in the Preamble, before returning to consider how far Moyn’s assessments are correct in light of the re-examination of the drafting history.

Michael E. O’Sullivan. Disruptive Power: Catholic Women, Miracles, and Politics in Modern Germany, 1918–1965

Michael E. O’Sullivan. <i>Disruptive Power: Catholic Women, Miracles, and Politics in Modern Germany, 1918–1965</i>

Od projektu ideowego do pragmatycznej polityki: Chrześcijańska demokracja we Włoszech w początkach zimnej wojny 1943‑1948

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The paper attempts a comparative analysis of competitive concepts of development of the Italian Christian democratic party (Democrazia Cristiana, DC) in the immediate post-WWII period. RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The Italian Christian demo‑ cratic party was created in 1942 as a joint effort of various currents of political Catholicism in Italy. The common denominator of groups originating from pre[1]war Christian democratic circles, student organizations and catholic, antifascist intellectuals, was an urge to overcome the legacy of fascism and to create an Ital‑ ian democracy founded on Christian principles. Between 1943 and 1948 DC un‑ derwent an evolution from a cadre party of a distinctive ideological profile to a mass party with loosely defined ideological principles. The application of a his‑ torical reconstruction of the subsequent phases of clashes between competitive conceptions of party allows to identify the timing and positions in this debate. THE ARGUMENTATION PROCESS: The analysis opens by recalling the context of the dissolution of the Christian democratic party in Italy in 1926 which is followed by the reconstruction of the consolidation process that took place during the WWII. Next, the focus is shifted towards the wartime ideology and programmatic achievements of catholic groups. The fourth part of the text focuses on the discussions between the leader of the DC, Alcide De Gasperi conducted with Giuseppe Dossetti – on one hand – and the conservative mem‑ bers of ecclesiastical hierarchy – on the other. The stake of this debates was the future of the party: while De Gasperi argued for remaining in the centre of the political scene, Dossetti wanted an alliance with the “popular parties” – social‑ ists and, not unconditionally, communists, whereas the hierarchy pushed for the establishment of a catholic-conservative bloc. RESEARCH RESULTS: The attempted re construction allowed to point out that De Gasperi’s success – which consisted in holding the party unity and autonomy from the Church, had its price, which was the loosening of the ideo‑ logical cohesion of the party. DC entered the cold war as a federation of circles and interest groups held together by a will of prolonging their power. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS AND RECCOMENDATIONS: In the concluding part of the paper I stressed the need for an in-depth study of the catholic political culture of the post-WWII period in order to fully understand the differences between Christian democrats and Christian democratic ideas from the interwar period, the hopes and goals of the wartime programmatic work, and the Cold War period when often these ideas were confronted with the pragmatism of a day-to-day politics. This is particularly important given the secularisation of the Christian democratic party in the post-1945 period.

Orel – the Catholic physical education association : foreign relations up to 1929

This paper looks at the history of Orel, the Catholic physical education association, and its foreign relations up to 1929. The origins of the Orel movement in the Czech region of Austria-Hungary go back to the turn of the 20th century when the first local Orel associations were established. These associations were strongly connected with Czech political Catholicism. Shortly after being formed, their functionaries began to establish their first contacts with existing foreign organizations. Most of these organizations were from the area of contemporary Slovenia. Their number rose significantly after the First World War when the newly independent Czechoslovakian Orel became a member of the Catholic physical education union – UIOCEP. The members of this organization were all around the world. The number of foreign contacts it had established was also on the increase. The first international physical educational festival, which helped Czechoslovak Orel with its development, was organized in Brno in 1922. But the Czechoslovakian Orel had planned a second big festival of physical education for 1929, hoping to further extend its number of foreign friends. The second physical educational festival was also successful. It helped Czechoslovak Orel to increase its influence in UIOCEP where it became the second-largest organization.

Communicants, Community, and Capital: Parish Boundaries, Race, and Catholicism

Communicants, Community, and Capital:Parish Boundaries, Race, and Catholicism Thomas J. Sugrue6 On a beautiful spring Sunday in 2009, I visited my childhood parish, St. Mary's of Redford, in northwest Detroit. The most impressive building in a low-rise neighborhood, St. Mary's had an elegant granite façade, designed by celebrated Boston architect Ralph Adams Cram, in a Romanesque revival style with some Art Deco details. 7 As I opened the ornate oak doors, I felt a rush of cool air, infused with the scent of lit candles. The altar came into view, garlanded with white flowers. The polished tile floors reflected the red and blue and yellow light streaming through the impressive stained-glass windows. As I sat in the pews waiting for Mass to begin, I realized that this was not an ordinary Sunday. About ten children sat in the first row, girls wearing lacy white dresses and boys dressed in suits and ties, fidgeting under the watchful eyes of their parents and grandparents, all adorned in their Sunday best. It dawned on me that exactly forty years earlier, I had been one of those children about to receive the Holy Eucharist for the first time. Arguably no moment in the ecclesiastical year is more important in a Catholic parish. Saint Mary's of Redford changed a lot in the four decades after I and about 160 other second graders received our First Communion. Our cohort was so large that we could not all attend the same Mass. That year, the parish's primary and secondary schools educated 2,419 students.8 All of us were white. In 2009, what had once been the largest parish in the Archdiocese of Detroit served only 27 children in its after-school religious education program.9 Every first communicant that year was Black. [End Page 8] My childhood parish could have been a case study in John McGreevy's Parish Boundaries. Its history was a microcosm of mid-twentieth-century American urban Catholicism. Parishioners shared a cognitive map of the city which began and ended with the question, "What parish are you from?" My mom grew up in Gesu, my dad in Epiphany and then St. Cecilia's. They were proud to live in St. Mary's, especially my dad, whose move signaled a step up from the world of his working-class, Irish immigrant parents. Even Detroit's real estate brokers—Catholic or not—were keenly attentive to the importance of parish boundaries. On one randomly chosen day, January 21, 1968, the city's morning paper listed homes for sale in St. Mary's of Redford, Gate of Heaven, St. Scholastica's, Christ the King, and Our Lady of Grace. Click for larger view View full resolution Advertisement, Detroit Free Press, January 21, 1968. Parish Boundaries offers a compelling history of Catholic urban communities like mine. McGreevy documented a world that was largely invisible to social, cultural, and political historians (including this Catholic school alumnus) who were trained at major, secular universities in the second half of the twentieth century. As a fledging scholar, I learned about class struggles, labor movements, ethnopolitics, migrations, and urban politics, but little about religious history other than Puritanism, the first and second Great Awakenings, and the role of black ministers in the Southern struggle for civil rights. Influential social historians like Paul Johnson taught us that religion was a means of disciplining unruly laborers and regulating disorderly urbanites. In our grad classes, Catholics made a few cameo appearances, mostly in discussions of nativism and immigration restriction. The only cleric to get much attention was right-wing radio priest, Father Charles Coughlin. Those of us venturing into twentieth-century America at best superficially considered the role of Catholics in the rise of trade unions, the role of Catholic politicians and citizens in shaping the New Deal, or the role of Roman Catholicism in the Cold War and in human rights politics. We learned how immigrants transplanted their local cultures from southern and eastern Europe to American cities, but very little [End Page 9] about how their religion gave meaning to the places they left or settled. Our reading lists were silent about...

Thomas Brodie. German Catholicism at War, 1939–1945; Jeffrey T. Zalar. Reading and Rebellion in Catholic Germany, 1770–1914; Michael E. O’Sullivan. Disruptive Power: Catholic Women, Miracles, and Politics in Modern Germany, 1918–1965.

T<scp>homas</scp> B<scp>rodie</scp>. <i>German Catholicism at War, 1939–1945</i>; J<scp>effrey</scp> T. Z<scp>alar</scp>. <i>Reading and Rebellion in Catholic Germany, 1770–1914</i>; M<scp>ichael</scp> E. O’S<scp>ullivan</scp>. <i>Disruptive Power: Catholic Women, Miracles, and Politics in Modern Germany, 1918–1965</i>.

“My Name is Maria Dolores Porris Montez”: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Revolution in Bavaria and Beyond, 1846–61

ABSTRACT In this article, I examine depictions of Lola Montez, a self-professed Spanish dancer whose relationship with the Bavarian king Ludwig I contributed to his abdication during the Revolutions of 1848–49. First, I examine the ways in which pamphlets and the press helped transform the Montez affair into a cause célèbre that hastened revolutionary unrest in Bavaria. Next, I examine satirical libels that focused on Montez’s political power, her sexual libertinism, and her foreign identity. Finally, I examine the ways in which Montez responded to her critics in letters and autobiographical projects by fashioning herself simultaneously as an innocent victim of political Catholicism and as an emancipated woman who challenged social expectations. These divergent depictions of Montez provide a rare opportunity to analyze her objectification and agency during the middle decades of the nineteenth century.

Disruptive Power: Catholic Women, Miracles, and Politics in Modern Germany, 1918–1965. By Michael E. O’Sullivan. German and European Studies, volume 31. Edited by Jennifer J. Jenkins. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. Pp. xiv+322. $80.00 (cloth); $80.00 (e-book).

<i>Disruptive Power: Catholic Women, Miracles, and Politics in Modern Germany, 1918–1965</i>. By Michael E. O’Sullivan. German and European Studies, volume 31. Edited by Jennifer J. Jenkins. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. Pp. xiv+322. $80.00 (cloth); $80.00 (e-book).

1967/1969: The End, or (Just) a Pause of the Catholic Liberal Dream?

The aim of this paper is to explore the strong connections between the topics of this special volume of Religions: the current crisis of political Catholicism and religious Catholicism; the new questions posed about the relationship between Catholicism and advanced modernization; the relationship between Catholicism and European institutions; and the importance of the North Atlantic relationships within Catholicism. The paper sheds light on these questions through an analysis of a particular but indicative case study, namely, the “Catholic 68” in Italy. Deconstructing the predominant narrative about the relationship between Vatican II and the events of 1968 (or, better, those of the 2-year period 1967–1969) helps to clarify the connections between the topics of this volume in important ways. In fact, the predominant narrative about the “Catholic 68” still pays undue tribute to both an oversimplified reconstruction of the “parties” who fought one another during the Second Vatican Council and an oversimplified reading of the late 1960s. In this perspective, the Italian case is particularly relevant and yields important sociological insight. The starting point of the paper is the abundant literature on the “long 60s”. This scholarship has clarified the presence of an important religious dimension to the social and cultural processes of this period as well as a (generally accepted) link between the Council-issued renewal and “1968”. At the same time that literature has also clarified that the “long 60s” paved the way for a deep social transition which has also marked the first two decades of the 21st century. The nature of this religious renewal and social change has often been described as the triumph of liberal parties over conservative parties. This paper instead proposes a “three parties scheme” (conservative, progressive and liberal) to better understand the confrontation that occurred at the Council and that at the end of the same decade and its consequences for Catholicism and European politics today.

The afterlives of Galway jail, ‘difficult’ heritage, and the Maamtrasna murders: representations of an Irish urban space, 1882–2018

AbstractThis article explores the spatial history and ‘afterlives’ of Galway jail, where an innocent man, Myles Joyce, was executed in 1882 following his conviction for the Maamtrasna murders; in 2018 he was formally pardoned by President Michael D. Higgins. The article traces how the political and cultural meanings of this incident were instrumentalised in the building of Ireland's last Catholic cathedral on the site of the former Galway jail. It analyses how the site was depicted – in different ways and at different moments – as one of justice, of injustice, of triumph, and of redemption. It investigates how these different legacies were instrumentalised – or at times ignored – by Irish nationalists and later by the Catholic bishop of Galway, Michael Browne. It uses Joyce's execution to explore the site's legacy, an incident that at times dominated its representations but at other moments faded from prominence. The article situates the former jail site within theoretical writings on memorialisation, ‘difficult’ heritage, and studies of architectural demolition, while also commenting on mid twentieth-century Irish Catholic politics and culture.

Catholic Cosmopolitanism and the Future of Human Rights

Political Catholicism began in the 20th century by presenting a conception of confessional politics to a secularizing Europe. However, this article reveals the reworking of political Catholicism’s historical commitment to a balance of two powers—an ancient Imperium and Sacerdotium—to justify change to this position. A secular democratic faith became a key insight in political Catholicism in the 20th century, as it wedded human rights to an evolving cosmopolitan Catholicism and underlined the growth of Christian democracy. This article argues that the thesis of Christian democracy held a central post-war motif that there existed a prisca theologia or a philosophia perennis, semblances of a natural law, in secular modernity that could reshape the social compact of the modern project of democracy. However, as the Cold War ended, human rights became more secularized in keeping with trends across Europe. The relationship between political Catholicism and human rights reached a turning point, and this article asks if a cosmopolitan political Catholicism still interprets human rights as central to its embrace of the modern world.

Pope Francis’ Constitutionalism and Catholic Politics

To understand better impulses and conflicts that are characterizing the Catholic Church under pope Francis, it could be helpful to look back at the dialectical relation between Catholicism and Modernity in the context of the European constitutional history. The legislative activity of pope Francis concerning the Vatican City State has in fact a profound constitutional nature, intending to modernize State institutions of the Holy See. Pope Francis' constitutionalism goes together with an unprecedented endorsement and appreciation of the European Union as a supra-national institution and political body. Drawing on these two key issues, and looking at the modern European constitutional history, the article tries to outline some main aspects of a Catholic politics to come within the European context.

PEMAHAMAN UMAT KATOLIK MADIUN TERHADAP KONSTITUSI GAUDIUM ET SPES DALAM KEHIDUPAN POLITIK PRAKTIS

Apolitical praxis has been grown widely. Being a qualified Catholic politician is a fundamental matter because it serves as a mediator between Church and state. A Catholic politician comprhensive understanding’son GS is one of parameters for a qualification to involve in social and political practices. The research was designed to answer some fundamental guestions as the following: How far the Catholics in Madiun understand about the document of GS on political praxis? This research conducted by using a qualitative method. The results of research showed that 100% respondents were knowing about GS, although some of them did not deeply knowing. Respondents then disclosed that the contents of GS was related to both divine and human vocation to participate and being responsible in social and political life for human well-being (62,5%). According to respondents, bonum commune was main goal of the Catholic Church’s involvement in social and political praxices (75%). The result all of research showed that the formation for social and political addres can be be started from the familly pastoral ministry, and to introduce such Christian social and political values for Catholic faithful started from the early ages.