Catholic Politics Research Articles

Friedrich Dessauer (1881-1963): the forgotten medical physicist, politician, and philosopher.

Today, the name Friedrich Dessauer is almost forgotten; however, his scientific, social, and political works should not be. Dessauer's professional career began at ayoung age as aprofessor of physics in Frankfurt am Main. It is said that he published 400 papers and 65book chapters and pamphlets. He was atechnical inventor who established laws that dealt with theories to explain the limited understanding of the effects of radiation on cells. He advocated for methods to improve the therapeutic ratio. As adevout Catholic politician, Dessauer was an early opponent of National Socialism. This led to him being thrown into prison for political reasons in 1933. He did not leave until 1934, and then for Istanbul, largely thanks to Turkish efforts and his appointment as director of alarge new institution. While he was already awell-known physicist in Germany, he had to start from scratch in order to build amodern institute. Arecent article in the journal Radiotherapy and Oncology celebrated his important contributions to radiology from Turkey. After his contract in Istanbul expired in 1937, he left for the small University of Fribourg in Switzerland, where he was unfortunately unable to continue his scientific productivity. Dessauer wrote textbooks as well as political and philosophical books, and attempted to bridge the gap between Catholicism and science. Additionally, after the war, he began to teach again in Frankfurt. In photos of Dessauer, radiation-induced skin changes on his face and hands were clearly visible. Towards the end of his life, he received many medals and honors for his achievements in Germany, some of them posthumously.

Populist Authoritarianism and Catholic Political Ethics: A Framework for a Moral Review

Can there be an ethics of politics or political ethics in populist authoritarian democracies? Given that politics operates under potentially risky and morally ambiguous methods that involve strategic calculations with some elements of irrationality, developing an ethics of political leadership can be an abstruse exercise. The frequent mismatch between political methods, objectives, and outcomes exemplifies the complexity of political reality and its unpredictability. The existential tension between utilitarian and deontological approaches to ethics frequently arises in politics. However, to address the failures of democracy in political leadership, it is imperative to explore the ethical implications of populist authoritarianism. By scrutinizing how populist authoritarianism undermines democratic principles and polarizes societies, one can better understand its moral challenges and work towards developing a more ethical framework for political leadership. This article discusses Catholic political ethics in response to populist authoritarianism from three different perspectives: first, it analyzes what populist authoritarianism entails and its limitations in political governance; second, it discusses diverse components of political ethics, highlighting realistic dilemmas in the application of each component; and third, it makes an ethical evaluation of populist authoritarianism from the Catholic social ethics perspective, emphasizing human dignity, common good, and solidarity as key to countering populist authoritarianism. The article makes two ethical suggestions in line with Catholic political ethics to address populist authoritarianism. The first is the principle of social cohesion, aimed at addressing the social, ethnic, racial, political, economic, and religious divisions that characterize populist authoritarian leadership. The second is the principle of social recognition, used as a strategy for safeguarding the common good by centralizing human dignity.

Christian democracy as political spirituality: transcendence as transformation—Italian politics, 1942–1953

AbstractThis article deals with the transformation of Catholic politics in Italy between 1942 and 1945 and the emergence of Christian Democracy as the dominant political party in the postwar years. It analyzes how Catholic politicians turned from reactionary critics of democracy to its champion. The article foregrounds a dimension that has not been given sufficient attention in scholarly works on political Catholicism and Christian Democracy, namely the religious content of thought. In the experiences of politicians and thinkers living through Fascism and war, transcendence and spirituality emerged as new markers of certainty that came to re-direct and ground democracy. Our conceptual argument is that Christian Democracy can be understood as a distinct form of “political spirituality,” pace Foucault. The article further shows how this political spirituality became “applied” in a series of ways in the immediate postwar period.

The Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey

An often overlooked aspect of New Jersey history is that of the Ku Klux Klan activities throughout the state during the 1920s. Driven by a resurgence of anti-immigration rhetoric, the diversity of urban centers, and the general fears of some white Protestant residents of New Jersey, the Klan targeted immigrants, participated in public demonstrations and parades, hosted social events, and attempted to intimidate Catholic politicians in particular. This paper will examine this aspect of New Jersey history by using underutilized sources like the George Moss Collection at Monmouth University’s Murry and Leonie Guggenheim Memorial Library. Hopefully, by understanding the influence the Klan had on local politics, the mistakes of the past can avoid being repeated.

Croatian and Slovak Political Catholicism and Clericalism in the Period Between the First and the Second World War

In this article, the presence and influence of clericalism on Croatian and Slovak political Catholicism between the two world wars is examined through a comparative analysis, based on some Croatian interwar Catholic periodicals, recent Croatian and Slovak historiographical studies, as well as studies by some foreign historians. Also, the focus of the research attention was on re-examining the causes of the findings. At the very beginning, the terms clericalism and political Catholicism are defined as key terminological determinants used later in the article. That is followed by a brief review of some peculiarities of the modern Croatian and Slovak nation genesis, as one of the variables that had great influence on the peculiarities of Croatian and Slovak society and political culture as a whole. The central part of the article analyses the development and activities of Croatian and Slovak interwar political Catholicism, primarily through political activities of the Croatian People's Party and the Slovak People's Party/Hlinka's Slovak People's Party. Finally, a comparison of similarities and differences between the Croatian and Slovak political Catholicism follows, with explanations of possible causes for such a situation, and a quantitative analysis of the presence and impact of clericalism on Croatian and Slovak interwar political Catholicism.

Hans Kelsen on political Catholicism and Christian Democracy

Hans Kelsen was one of the most important legal thinkers of the 20th century, and he is known for mounting an elaborate defense of liberal party democracy at a time when the latter was hardly the most popular form of regime. This article examines how Kelsen responded to two major political movements he experienced in his intellectual prime: political Catholicism, which he was confronted with in interwar Austria, and Christian Democracy, which became a hegemonic political force in Western Europe after World War II, when Kelsen was already in exile. The article reconstructs Kelsen's complex critique of these two religious movements and ends by reflecting on what we can learn from his arguments about current attempts to revive Christian political thought.

Theology and politics. political attempts to subordinate the Church

The article reviews a cultural hybrid, which is defined as religious political science or “theopolitics”. Within the framework of this phenomenon, according to the author, the language of church mission and catechetical practices is subordinated to the discourse of political activists. Among the examples of such subordination are the so-called “maidan theology”, the Declaration on the “Russian World” Teaching, Polish political Catholicism, the accession of the Hrodna episcopate clergy to the “zmagar” political opposition in 2020, etc. Religious political science tends to consider politics itself as a religious practice; political theology, on the contrary, looks at political issues as something that should be brought in accordance with a theological canon. The goals of theopolitics are reached with the close application of modernist theology. The latter seeks to transform the Christian canon according to the secularism, in particular, to sacralize specific events in secular history - this principle is characteristic of concepts from the category of the so-called “theology after” (after Auschwitz, after 9/11, after the global pandemic, etc.) According to the author, the field of church mission is thus taken under control, preaching is reinterpreted in line with the political propaganda, the church is represented as a subsystem of a “civil society”. The author emphasizes the importance of the motives of the “weak Church” and “weak God” for creating a “theological” justification of the ideas of religious political science and concludes that theopolitics is one of the manifestations of the “new Reformation” (otherwise: secular reformation) aimed at secularisation of church institutions.

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE PASTORAL LETTER OF THE SLOVAK AND SUBCARPATHIAN RUTHENIA BISHOPS OF 1924

The Slovak and Subcarpathian Ruthenia bishops of the Catholic and Greek Catholic Churches published a pastoral letter in November 1924 to respond to the fact that some members of these churches were members of communist, socialist, or progressive organizations that rejected belief in God, criticizing the churches from atheistic positions and striving to create a secular society. In an effort to expand their membership and electorate, the socialists went so far as to formally present themselves with Christian symbolism, which was supposed to deceive Catholics in a difficult social position and attract them to their ranks. The bishops reflected on this fact and, through the Pastoral Letter, explained to the members of their churches the destructiveness of socialist and progressive theories and recommended that they leave anti-Catholic organizations. Those Catholics who deliberately failed to take their teachings and warnings into account had to expect that the Church would not administer certain sacraments to them. The publication of the Pastoral Letter provoked a fierce reaction in socialist and progressive circles as an attack against the state, its constitution and laws, the government, and the democratic system that threatened the very existence of the Republic. The Pastoral Letter and its authors, the Catholic Church, the Holy See, and Czech and Slovak political Catholicism were violently attacked by journalists, triggering a press affair. Subsequently, the question time of German Social Democrats in the Chamber of Deputies resulted in a government crisis solved not only by the government, parliament, and political parties but also by the so-called Pětka (Committee of Five) as the supreme body of Czechoslovak politics. The search for a way out of the government crisis showed that the socialists, especially the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party, did not want to defend their own ideology in the case but used the publication of the Letter to pressure the Czechoslovak People’s Party, which, as part of the government coalition and the Švehla government, hindered the solution of the issue of regulating the relationship between the state and the Catholic Church. They wanted to force a change in its attitude by acting tactically with the idea of a minority government without the participation of the Czechoslovak People’s Party. However, the Czechoslovak People’s Party’s leaders handled the difficult situation it found itself in due to pressure from its coalition partners and the Catholic Slovak People’s Party and the Prague radical wing of its own party formed around Rudolf Horský, thanks to the prudent policy of its chairman Jan Šrámek. Although it agreed to negotiate a regulation of the relationship between the state and the churches, it defended the membership of the Czechoslovak People’s Party in the governing coalition, agreed to prosecute only those priests who manifestly violated the law, and defended the right of bishops to act independently in public within the limits of the law. This paper analyses and evaluates the current Slovak and Czech historical production on the topic of the Pastoral Letter, draws attention to the agreements and differences in the concept of the case individual authors presented, and indicates other possible research directions.

K reflexi pastýřského listu slovenských biskupů z roku 1924 Československou stranou národně socialistickou

The Slovak and Subcarpathian Ruthenia bishops of the Catholic and Greek Catholic Churches published a pastoral letter in November 1924 to respond to the fact that some members of these churches were members of communist, socialist or progressive organizations that rejected belief in God, criticizing the churches from atheistic positions and striving to create a secular society. The socialists, in an effort to expand their membership and electorate, went so far as to formally present themselves with Christian symbolism, which was supposed to deceive Catholics in a difficult social position and attract them to their ranks. The bishops reflected on this fact and, through the Pastoral Letter, explained to the members of their churches the destructiveness of socialist and progressive theories and recommended that they leave anti-Catholic organizations. Those Catholics who deliberately failed to take their teachings and warnings into account had to expect that the church would not administer certain sacraments to them. The publication of the Pastoral Letter provoked a fierce reaction in socialist and progressive circles as an attack against the state, its constitution and laws, the government and the democratic system that threatened the very existence of the Republic. The Pastoral Letter and its authors, the Catholic Church, the Holy See and Czech and Slovak political Catholicism were violently attacked by journalists and it triggered a press affair. Subsequently, the question time of German Social Democrats in the Chamber of Deputies resulted in a government crisis solved not only by the government, parliament, and political parties, but also by the so-called Pětka (Committee of Five) as the supreme body of Czechoslovak politics. The search for a way out of the government crisis showed that the socialists, especially the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party, did not want to defend their own ideology in the case, but used the publication of the Letter to pressure the Czechoslovak People’s Party, which, as part of the government coalition and the Švehla government, hindered the solution of the issue of regulating the relationship between the state and the Catholic Church. They wanted to force a change in its attitude by acting tactically with the idea of a minority government without the participation of the Czechoslovak People’s Party. However, the Czechoslovak People’s Party’s leaders handled the difficult situation it found itself in due to pressure from its coalition partners and the Catholic Slovak People’s Party and the Prague radical wing of its own party formed around Rudolf Horský, thanks to the prudent policy of its chairman Jan Šrámek. Although it agreed to negotiate a regulation of the relationship between the state and the churches, it defended the membership of the Czechoslovak People’s Party in the governing coalition, agreed to prosecute only those priests who manifestly violated the law and defended the right of bishops to act independently in public within the limits of the law. The article analyses and evaluates the attitudes and behaviour of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party in this case.

Vývoj vzťahu Andreja Cvinčeka k episkopátu vo svetle jeho politickej činnosti pred prvou svetovou vojnou, v medzivojnovom období a v rokoch 1945 – 1948

Andrej Cvinček was a politically active priest. His involvement in politics was also noticed by the episcopate, especially by his superiors, the bishops of Nitra, who were authorised to control and approve his political activity in the light of canon law and the doctrine of the Church. In the present paper we want to analyse both Cvinček’s relations with the bishops and the influence of the episcopate on his views and actions in politics. For the sake of comparison, we have chosen three periods of Cvinček’s life that had different parameters in his political and ecclesiastical position. Before 1918, Cvincek was a young enthusiast of popular politics, but also a poor chaplain interspersed among Slovak village parishes. In the interwar period he became a canon, but found himself in the minority in Slovak political Catholicism. After the Second World War, Cvinček experienced a remarkable return to politics, in which he achieved a much more important position than in previous periods, and so his political importance also increased in the eyes of Slovak bishops. The aim of this paper is thus to examine Cvinček’s political career in the light of the fact that he was a Catholic clergyman. The priestly component of Andrej Cvinček’s personality is as essential to our research as the political one. Against this background, we can also observe the development of the ideas that were promoted in the ecclesiastical milieu. Therefore, our study intends to be a contribution not only to the knowledge of Cvincek in the light of political changes, but also to place his personality in the context of ecclesiastical development.

Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America by Theresa Keeley

Reviewed by: Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America by Theresa Keeley Joseph P. Chinnici Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns: The Catholic Conflict over Cold War Human Rights Policy in Central America. By Theresa Keeley (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2020. Pp. xii, 352. $49.95. ISBN: 9781501750755.) Awarded the John Gilmary Shea Award by the American Catholic Historical Association in 2021, Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns is an important work. It richly illuminates multiple dimensions of post-conciliar divides in the Catholic community in the United States: the movement away from the Cold War alliances with conservative political structures in Latin America; the emergence in the 1960s of a leftward critique of U.S. foreign policy; the importance of missionary experiences and international exchanges as shaping internal divisions within the American Catholic community; the mirroring in the United States of polarized views on the presence of the Church in society, and different implementations of the Council in the 1980s. All of this is done through a singular focus on developments in El Salvador and Nicaragua (with some reference to other Latin American countries) and the role of the Maryknoll sisters. The bulk of the work covers the period from the murder in El Salvador of Maryknoll nuns Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, the Ursuline Dorothy Kazel, and the lay missionary Jean Donovan (December, 1980) to the murder of the members of the Society of Jesus and their co-workers in November, 1989. After a very comprehensive and summary Introduction, Keeley breaks the period up into chapters. Chapter One describes the evolution of the missionary vision and its alliance with the option for the poor, while Chapter Two covers the opposition in Nicaragua between the Maryknoll congregation and U.S. backed strong man and the familial consortium of Anatasio Somoza. The third, fourth, and fifth chapters describe developments in El Salvador leading up the killing of Archbishop Romero and the strong alliance between the missionaries, liberation theology, and the Sandinistas. Here, the politically driven divide between the Reagan administration and its support by conservative Catholics fuels the domestic image campaign against allegedly pro-communist, radical religious women, liberation theology, and left-wing Catholicism. Politics and theology begin to blend as the various sides take different approaches to liturgy and the understanding of the “people’s Church.” Chapter 6, entitled “Real Catholics versus Maryknollers,” details the alliance between Tip O’Neill and the sisters. In doing so, it brings the divisive picture into particular sharpness by analyzing the gender bias of the conservative campaign when it paints a picture of the relationship between developments in Nicaragua and the role of women in society and Church. The last two chapters (7 and 8) cover the Nicaraguan Iran-Contra affair and the murders in El Salvador. The epilogue moves beyond the careful attention to documented historical data that marks the whole work and attempts to identify analogous divisions in the debates over the Catholic Church and the government’s health-care directives in the second decade of the twenty-first century. [End Page 221] The author is to be congratulated for providing a close analysis of how presidential policies, international developments, and religious perspectives crisscrossed and enabled the solidification of political Catholicism in the United States. While the argument is for the most part sound, it is also provocative and probably awaits modification. Attention to the economic disparity in Latin America is hinted at but never treated as a component part of the right-left divide. Relying on newspaper reports, the interpretive methodology offers little critique of the virtual reality created by the press, both left and right, for its own purposes. The analysis may also be modified when other archival depositories become available: the religious and political interventions of the Holy See, the discussions among the bishops, government sources that remain untapped. Still, this reviewer recommends Reagan’s Gun-Toting Nuns for all students of contemporary Catholicism and its divides. Joseph P. Chinnici Franciscan School of Theology at the University of San Diego Copyright © 2023 The Catholic University of America Press ...

Pro-Life Champion: The Untold Story of Monsignor Philip J. Reilly and His Helpers of God’s Precious Infants by Frederick W. Marks

Reviewed by: Pro-Life Champion: The Untold Story of Monsignor Philip J. Reilly and His Helpers of God’s Precious Infants by Frederick W. Marks Robert N. Karrer Pro-Life Champion: The Untold Story of Monsignor Philip J. Reilly and His Helpers of God’s Precious Infants. By Frederick W. Marks. (np: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017. Pp. 204. $29.75. ISBN: 1545234973, 9781545234976). Frederick Marks is an accomplished historian who has explored the nuances of the foreign policy of selected American presidents. Here in Pro-Life Champion Marks travels a different path, describing the inspiring life of pro-life activist, Monsignor Philip Reilly. Part biography, part apology, Marks’s 2017 book is a welcome addition to the growing list of memoirs of leaders published in recent years. Marks’s book contains a few blemishes. The first third is somewhat disjointed with the author jumping from topics. It is not as chronologically arranged as expected. Because Reilly’s ministry is sidewalk counseling, Marks draws inspiration from activist groups like Pro-Life Action League and American Life League while totally ignoring larger organizations like the National Right to Life Committee and Americans United for Life despite their superior roles in helping to enact pro-life laws and leadership in the movement. Having expressed the negatives, the positives far outweigh any deficiencies. Philip Reilly is pictured almost larger than life. A man of humble beginnings, Reilly became a priest, a teacher, and later a high school principal in New York City. Even while administrator at Cathedral Prep, in October, 1989 he formed Helpers of God’s Precious Infants, a pro-life ministry that centers on prayer outside abortion clinics, not Operation Rescue-style civil disobedience. Marks explains that Reilly formed Helpers to counter the disastrous image presented by “pro-life” terrorists whose exploits included bombings, arson, and later murder at abortion clinics, a strategy that was not only detrimental to the movement’s peaceful message, but counter-productive in trying to win the hearts and minds of the American [End Page 222] public. Reilly’s many dedicated and committed Helpers, armed with prayers and rosaries, do not block clinic entrances and are not arrested. Several times a week in all kinds of weather, they counsel women not to abort their babies. Much to the frustration of abortion clinic personnel, Reilly’s Helpers lead many women to choose life for their babies. Monsignor Reilly traveled the world preaching his message of prayer and compassion and Helpers expanded internationally. Here in America 60 chapters have formed in 37 states. Marks provides many historical events in the final third of the book. The June, 1990 prayer vigil at New York’s largest abortion clinic included 1,000 Helpers. Another vigil in June, 1992 featured Reilly and Cardinal O’Connor and thousands more, an event dutifully reported by the New York Times the following day. In 1996 another clinic sued Reilly and Helpers for $117 million. Reilly won the case. In 2001 the New York City Council tried to pass a buffer-zone restriction on Helpers. Again, Reilly diffused the effort with an impassioned statement. Reilly, while preaching peace and love, holds strong convictions about those who advocate for abortion. He has little regard for pro-choice Catholic politicians who vote for abortion rights, endorsing the policy of denying them Communion unless they repent. Marks also notes that Reilly believes America is in deep spiritual decline and quotes Bishop Fulton Sheen with an appropriate comment about a decaying civilization and man’s unwillingness to see his own wickedness. Marks gives the reader a glimpse of the Monsignor’s character through many quotes. In challenging abortion’s legality, Reilly said, “Evil is evil and good is good whether the law permits it or not. You cannot make evil good by legislating it. Neither can you make good evil by making it illegal.” Seeing victory in the future, Marks quotes Reilly, “A culture of life will be restored,” while referring to abortion-rights as “the tree of death.” Pro-Life Champion applauds Monsignor Reilly’s heroic life and his Helpers’ dedication: lives saved, women restored, God victorious. Robert N. Karrer Kalamazoo, MI Copyright © 2023 The Catholic University of...

HRIŠĆANSKA DEMOKRATIJA U AUSTRIJI

The aim of this scientific paper is an understanding and an explanation of the place and the role of the Catholic Church in Austrian society but also in the Austrian political system for which say that is secular. After the introductory part which indicates on the opposition of the Catholic Church according to communism and liberalism in the past and which underlines the so-called Catholic third way actually the way of Christian Democracy, the first part of the scientific paper describes in detail the basic elements that led to the creation of Christian Democracy, among which is primarily the continuous Political Catholicism from which grew up the so-called Catholic Corporatism, and then follows the second part of the scientific paper which explains the implementation of such Political Catholicism in the Austrian political system through a formation of the so-called Social Partnership which forms the fondation of the Austrian political system and which is in fact the successor of Catholic Corporatism. Key words: Political Catholicism, Catholic Corporatism, Austrian People`s Party, Social Partnership, Christian Democracy.

Srovnání krize parlamentarismu v Německu a Rakousku, 1930–1934

The main goal of the article is to compare the crisis of the role of the German Reichstag und Austrian Nationalrat in the early 1930’s and how the relationship parliament-government/president was influenced in that respect. We argue that the German system of emergency decrees of the President (Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution) systematically undermined the German parliament in favour of state bureaucracy and a technocratic government. In Austria, since March 4, 1933 Dollfuss coalition of the right wing of Political Catholicism with the Heimwehr implemented a degree law with the War Economy Empowering Act (KWEG) as a tool to govern without parliament. The period of the Chancellors H. Brüning (1930–1932, presidential government) and E. Dollfuss (April 1932 – March 4th, 1933, parliamentary government Dollfuss) constitute the first stage of the weakening of the parliamentary system. In the second stage in Germany since June 1932, the reactionary anti-parliamentary option of the Chancellors F. v. Papen and K. v. Schleicher (presidential dictatorship) created a power vacuum without any viable alternative. We found comparable anti-Marxism aspects of Austrian and German administrations. The difference was the final “totalitarian result” of the analysed period. In Germany the Nazis won, and Adolf Hitler was appointed German chancellor on January 30th, 1933. In contrast, Dollfuss withstood the onslaught from Austrian Nazis in the critical time 1933/1934, and established so called “Estates state”, conservative oriented dictatorship.

The Grodno Narrative in the Context of Modern Political Post-Theology

The author of this article studies the religious political science, characteristic of the ideologists of church liberalism on the example of the Byelarussian Maidan. The model object of the analysis is the situation in the eparchy of Grodno, sermons and speeches of archpriest Artemiy (Kishchenko) and his entourage, with the help of which the church was supposed to switch the influence from preservation of civil peace to civil and religious conflict and delegitimation of the political electoral process’s results. The article defines religious political science as a post-secular cultural hybrid. This phenomenon, according to the author, is contrasted by church liberalism with a normative and dogmatically-inspired theology, whose ideas legitimately extend into the realm of politics. Religious political science is also defined as a postmodern dualism and a manifestation of contemporary post-theology. The role and consequences of the intentional politicization of the Catholic factor are considered in the context of the Byelarussian events among other factors, including the connection between political Catholicism and the problem of Polish participation in fomenting the conflict inside Byelarus. The article analyzes the difference in the understanding of freedom in the secular-right discourse and in the Christian sense. The author emphasizes that the idea of theologizing political discourse proper is a gross substitution of political theology, that is, the solution of political issues in a theological spirit. This post-secular hybrid or the phenomenon of postmodern quasi-religiousness aims to secularize the Church by inducing it to take ultra-right positions in the political spectrum and imputing secular political concepts and categories at the level of theoretical basis. Overall, this leads to a political secularization of Church preaching, when theology becomes a religious political science unrelated to Christianity.

Croatization of the Bosnian Middle Ages in Light of the Religious Character of Stećak Tombstones (About a model of the changing the historical memory)

The nationalist approach to Croatianhood formed within the Croatian Party of Rights and and the concept of political Catholicism were both introduced into the Croatian historiography of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. This phenomenon, along with a new historical perspective on Croatia as „mother-land“, led to attemptsto Croatize the Bosnian Middle Ages. As a result, an extensive historiography was created with the aim of presenting the Bosnian Middle Ages as part of Croatian medieval national history. These efforts were also reflected in a false ethnic and religious attribution of stećaks – Bosnian medieval tombstones – which were and still are attributed exclusively to Croatians andCatholics. The extent of the Croatization of the Bosnian Middle Ages, and thus of stećaks too, changed withthe changing political regimes. In the Austro-Hungarian period (1878–1918) two authors, Fran Milobar and Ivo Pilar, published books and articles based on the theory, propagated by the Croatian Party of Rights, about the „original territorial acquisition.“They set up and developed a pseudoscholarly thesis about the ethnic and dynastic Croatian character of the Bosnian Middle Ages. During the first Yugoslavia (1918–1941) the thesis was picked up and further developed by Josip Horvat in his monumental synthetic work on a thousand years of Croatian culture. During the same period a number of articles were published in an issue of the People’s Calendar, put out by Napredak, the Croatian Cultural Society of Bosnia-Herzegovina,which propagated this historiographic error to a wider readership. During the quisling state called The IndependentState od Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, 1941–1945), the Croatization of the Bosnian Middle Ages was “standardized” in a publication produced by Napredak and entitled The History of Croatian Lands in Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Earliest Times until 1463; the main contributors were Filip Lukas, Oton Knezović, Ćiro Truhelka, Ljubo Karaman, VladimirVrana and Mate Tentor. The theory of Croatian Bosnia was also popularized through textbooks. Ante Pavelić, the head of The Independent State od Croatia, dealt with the same topic in his writings, using the Bosnian Middle Ages as the central motif. Particularly manifest in these writings are historiographical and geopolitical delusions concocted in order to legalizeThe Ustasa regime: 1. The Drina river – the civilizational boundary between two worlds in the context of national and ideological topography with the inclusion of the Drina river in the lyrics of the Croatian national anthem. 2. Croatians – the outer wall ofWestern Europe. 3. Iranian/Gothic origin of Croats. 4. The supposed centuries-old continuity of Croatian statehood as a legitimizing factor for The Independent State of Croatia. 5. Bosnia – body and heart of the Independent State of Croatia.In the period since 1945, father Dominik Mandić – a prominent name in historic scholarship to this day – went further than anybody else in the Croatization of the Bosnian Middle Ages. Some encyclopedic publications, even the latest ones, as well as of course the Internet as the most suitable tool for the globalization of such delusions, were not exempt from the“virus” of bad scholarship. Abandoning the Croatian myth of Greater Croatia, invented by the Croatiann Party of Rights, of Croatian Bosnia since “the seventh century” and the placing of the “Croatian question” in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the context of its creation – since the nineteenth/twentieth century – ought to be the primary goal of historical scholarship as a “secondary” discipline in the creation of democratic political culture. The Croatization of stećaks and of the Bosnian Middle Ages cannot contribute to the achievement of this goal because, apart from being factually unsound, it reflects a state of political immaturity. Scholarly maturity is a prerequisite to the maturity of political culture and its „relocation“ from the worldof submissive and parochial culture into the world of participatory and civic culture.

Regime and Sociology: A Comparative History of Sociology in Postwar Europe with Qualitative Comparative Analysis

AbstractUsing Qualitative Comparative Analysis, this article presents a systematic comparison of differences in the institutional success of sociology in 25 European countries during the academic expansion from 1945 until the late 1960s. Combining context-sensitive national histories of sociology, concept formation, and formal analyses of necessary and sufficient conditions, the article searches for historical explanations for both successful and inhibited processes of the institutionalization of sociology. Concretely, it assesses the interplay of political regime types, the continuous presence of sociological prewar traditions, political Catholicism, and the effects of sociological communities in neighboring countries and how their various combinations are related to more or less well-established sociologies. The results can help explain adversary effects under democratic conditions as well as supportive factors under nondemocratic conditions.

Factory and workshop legislation and convent laundries, 1895–1907: campaigning for a Catholic exception

AbstractConvents and convent-run institutions occupied an undefined legal space during the late nineteenth century. As homes for unmarried women, they combined religious ideas of holy seclusion with contemporary ideas of the feminine private sphere. However, women religious were also major providers of charity and welfare in Britain and Ireland, with many running charitable institutions. This brought them in closer contact with the state. As factory and workshop legislation towards the end of the nineteenth century expanded to include laundries, Catholic politicians used this ambiguous societal role to argue that Magdalene asylums deserved less inspection than for-profit laundries. In so doing, they both re-enforced nuns’ right to domestic privacy and promoted their operations as a social good. This created a legal exemption for convent-run laundries, which allowed them to operate with limited scrutiny or interference. An examination of the debates surrounding factory and workshop legislation from 1895 to 1907 exposes a precedent which continued well into the twentieth century.

Anton Korošec in štajerski liberalci

One of the most important Slovenian politicians of the 20th century, Dr. Anton Korošec (1872–1940), started his political career in Styria, which was the foundation for his later ascend in the Austrian, Slovenian and Yugoslav territory. During the Austrian era, as he was a Catholic politician, his main adversaries in his local Lower Styrian surroundings were liberals, which coincided well with the then prevailing political division. They named him as the "general" of the Catholic political party, the Slovenian Peasant Union in Styria, which won the state (1907, 1911) and parliamentary (1909) elections and had absolute dominance in Styria.

The Long-Term Effects of Oppression: Prussia, Political Catholicism, and the Alternative für Deutschland

Contemporary political behavior is often affected by historical legacies, but the specific mechanisms through which these legacies are transmitted are difficult to pin down. This paper argues that historical political conflicts can affect political behavior over several generations when they trigger an enduring organizational mobilization. It studies how the oppression of German Catholics in the nineteenth century led to a regionally differentiated mobilization of political Catholicism that still affects political support for the radical rightAlternative für Deutschland(AfD) today. Using newly collected data on historical oppression events, it shows that Catholic regions where oppression was intense saw greater mobilization of Catholic lay organizations than Catholic regions where oppression was milder and show lower support for the AfD today. The paper thus contributes to the literature on the historical determinants of political behavior as well as to the question of which regional context effects strengthen or weaken the radical right.