Catholic Politics Research Articles

Did the Irish Save Civilization?: The Secret History of Constitutional Dignity

In their 1937 constitution, the Irish gave human dignity foundational placement, as a religiously-inspired root concept connected (as in the later West German case of 1949) to the subordination of the otherwise sovereign democratic polity to God, and for many to the moral constraints of his natural law. This essay takes up this neglected but revealing fact. It is critical that dignity came to the world as part of the establishment of an alternative, religious constitutionalism; this newer constitutionalism crystallized precisely in the 1930s when it seemed to many as if secular liberalism had no future. To understand the original meaning of constitutional dignity, in summary, it is necessary to attend to the confusing years just before war and genocide, for it was a response to different circumstances. The most illuminating context for the move to constitutional dignity, it turns out, is not in the shocked conscience “after Auschwitz” but in political Catholicism before it, which remained its dominant framework for decades, when the Holocaust still did not figure in moral consciousness. Focusing on dignity's Irish constitutionalization shows why this matters.

Democracy, Islam, and secularism in Turkey

Introduction, by Ahmet T. Kuru and Alfred Stepan 1. Rethinking Ottoman Management of Diversity: What Can We Learn for Modern Turkey, by Karen Barkey 2. The Historical Roots of Kemalism, by M. Sukru Hanioglu 3. Turkey-Plural Society and Monolithic State, by Ergun Ozbudun 4. Laicite as an Ideal Type and a Continuum: Comparing Turkey, France, and Senegal, by Ahmet T. Kuru and Alfred Stepan 5. A New Politics of Engagement: The Military, Society, and the AKP, by Umit Cizre 6. The Constitutional Court and Political Crisis, by Ergun Ozbudun 7. Turkey's Accession to the European Union and the Role of the Justice and Development Party, by Joost Lagendijk 8. The Turkish Model in the Matrix of Political Catholicism, by Stathis N. Kalyvas Selected Bibliography Contributors Index

For Both Cross and Flag: Catholic Action, Anti-Catholicism, and National Security Politics in World War II San Francisco

For Both Cross and Flag: Catholic Action, Anti-Catholicism, and National Security Politics in World War II San Francisco

<i>The English Catholic Community 1688–1745: Politics, Culture and Ideology</i> (review)

Reviewed by: The English Catholic Community 1688–1745: Politics, Culture and Ideology Anna Battigelli Gabriel Glickman. The English Catholic Community 1688–1745: Politics, Culture and Ideology. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2009. Pp. ix + 306. $99. Mr. Glickman has mined archives to expose the paradoxes and complexities of English Catholic self-definition, demonstrating how it was shaped by both domestic and foreign influences following the Revolution of 1688. The result is a fresh look at a portion of English Catholicism from the inside out: he demonstrates how Jacobite English Catholics, steeped in Gallican ideas, tried to align their religious and political allegiances. The dispersal of Catholics after the Revolution of 1688 was both physical and ideological. Where earlier anti-Catholic flashpoints affected clergy, the Revolution affected the Catholic laity. Divisions within the Catholic community resulted from both dismay at the militancy of James’s Catholic advisors and wariness of Louis XIV’s increasing absolutism. When James was ousted, the same loyalism that for a century led Catholics to defend their monarch at great personal and financial cost now led some of them to work against the post-Revolution settlement. And yet “an idea of irenic patriotism became the dominant position within English Catholic thought over the course of the century.” Because most of the evidence comes from correspondence of the gentry [End Page 134] and clergy, we do not get a vertical study of Catholicism in all its complexity and variety, but Mr. Glickman’s meticulous scholarship reveals many of the contradictions experienced by English Catholics. Far from withdrawing into an enfeebled opposition culture, the English recusant gentry rebuilt itself as a prosperous and well-connected society engaged with its culture, even as it cultivated an outlawed inner piety shadowed by Jacobitism. Catholics drew on friendships with Anglicans to protect their estates, forge strategic family alliances, and engage in both shrewd estate management and commercial activity to sustain a patrician sociability and hospitality. Spirituality focused on the cult of the family and was informed by a Salesian merging of the worldly and the otherworldly. The existence of the Jacobite Court lent recusant society a cosmopolitan culture supported by convents, monasteries, and colleges. One of this study’s strengths is its demonstration of how “tutors and soldiers, merchants and musicians, and wives” enlarged English Catholic social networks. The imagined communities that resulted from these cosmopolitan networks provided English Catholics with “an alternative conception of the English nation.” Yet the exiled Court remained divided by those who held revanchist views of kingship as absolute and those who insisted on conciliation. Within England, Catholic politics split over competing efforts to articulate an oath of allegiance that Catholics could sign. Members of the Catholic Jacobite diaspora viewed Rome as a spiritual authority, but their correspondence reveals “hostility toward the Catholic world order” that had turned its back on England. By the middle of the century, “the institutions of the diaspora continued to protect ‘rebellious’ forms of the faith, even as they intoned ideals of Catholic unity.” Torn “between the universalist outlook of the Catholic Church and the traditions of a community conscious of their unusual minority status in their native kingdom,” they experienced a contradictory identity. Their clergy were similarly divided between those who worked to relieve fears that Catholics had potentially treasonous plans and those who worked to keep Jacobite hopes alive. That we wish for more information and a broader canvas testifies to Mr. Glickman’s success at demonstrating the perplexity and richness of post-Revolution English Catholicism. Appendices include a list of English Catholics at the Court of St. Germain, Commissions to English Catholics given by the exiled court, a list of Vicars Apostolic, and genealogies of the Howards of Norfolk and the Carylls of West Harting. Anna Battigelli SUNY Plattsburgh Copyright © 2012 Roy S. Wolper, W. B. Gerard, E. Derek Taylor, and David F. Venturo

The Tensions of Internationalism: Transnational Anti-Slavery in the 1880s and 1890s

In 1888 Cardinal Lavigerie, the Archbishop of Algiers and Carthage, launched his ‘anti-slavery crusade’. Drawing attention to slave raids in Africa and to the East African slave trade, this initiative resulted in the foundation of several new anti-slavery associations. Many of them maintained close connections to Catholic politics and missionaries, yet also co-operated with two older – and predominantly Protestant – groups in Britain: the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFAS) and the Aborigines’ Protection Society (APS). By stressing how anti-slavery associations collaborated through international congresses and periodicals, the article traces the emergence of a new anti-slavery internationalism in the 1880s and 1890s. It discusses the transnational context of such activism and highlights the shared language developed by its protagonists. However, the timing of these efforts makes its necessary to consider the relationship between humanitarianism and the ‘new imperialism’ of this period – a connection that was reflected in diplomatic events such as the Brussels Conference of 1889–90. Anti-slavery discourse fed into notions of a ‘civilising mission’ which seemed to legitimise imperial expansion. Portrayals that contrasted the actions of Western powers with those of so-called ‘Arab’ slave-traders (a term which Europeans also applied to African Muslims) were one element of this discourse.

Bob Drinan: The Controversial Life of the First Catholic Priest Elected to Congress (review)

Reviewed by: Bob Drinan: The Controversial Life of the First Catholic Priest Elected to Congress James F. Garneau Bob Drinan: The Controversial Life of the First Catholic Priest Elected to Congress. By Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. (New York: Fordham University Press. 2011. Pp. xviii, 393. $32.95. ISBN 978-0-823-23304-5.) It is difficult to categorize this book. It lacks the depth of research and analysis to be considered a scholarly biography, but is more than a simple memoir by a sympathetic fellow Jesuit. Raymond A. Schroth, currently an associate editor of the Jesuit magazine America, has had a long career as a journalist, teacher, and commentator on culture, politics, and religion. Perhaps it is the result of Schroth's own social and political perspectives that this book might provide the reader with more of an insight into the tenor of the radical politics of the 1970s than into the life and motivations of the subject, Robert Drinan (1920-2007). Schroth is careful to acknowledge the difficulty of exploring the early as well as the inner life of a man who, although a very public figure, appeared to maintain the cloak of privacy intact throughout the course of his life. There is [End Page 862] little insight provided even by those who lived and worked with him in academia, Congress, or Jesuit communities. This was, apparently, a man of some enigma and mystery. To compensate for what we do not know, Schroth embarks on some lengthy explanations of the Jesuit subculture of the 1940s and 1950s in the hope of suggesting what might have influenced and motivated the man. If this was his purpose, he is not very successful. The result is two stories: the somewhat inexplicable contradictions involved in the public life of Drinan, the professed Jesuit and the politician, and a thickly descriptive account of some aspects of the Jesuit world that provided a platform for his public life. Admirably, Schroth is not hesitant to raise repeatedly the question of Drinan's changing position on abortion as well as his apparent dissimulation with regard to ecclesiastical permission to run for public office. What Schroth does not directly address or explore is the culture of support within the leadership of the New England Province of the Society of Jesus for Drinan's political and moral public stances. This culture is what perhaps provided the grounds as well as the "political cover" for the generation of self-identified Catholic politicians who have believed that their support for "abortion rights" is compatible with their religious commitment and profession as Catholics. As Schroth points out, Jesuit superiors in the United States were ever-ready to threaten their superiors in Rome with the supposed dire consequences of intervening in the case of Drinan. The authors of fin-de-siècle Americanism would have been proud that their tactics were still proving useful. Schroth's perspective on Drinan's opponents is at least partially summed up in his scathing judgment on those who strongly disliked him . . . because of his abortion position; they were one-issue pro-life, often more concerned for life in the womb than for starving children of the poor throughout the world, the victims of war and torture, and prisoners on death row. (p. 344) In the end, on this matter particularly, we know much less about Drinan than Schroth appears to know about the motives of his critics. As to Drinan's own take on his opponents in any of the significant battles of his life, we are left with little insight into his thoughts. He was evidently a very hard worker who had ambitions for influence on the national scene. As the Jesuits did not provide this opportunity for him as a university president, the Democratic Party of the day did. According to Schroth, Drinan often was publicly ruthless with those who did not agree with his moral judgments, which appear to have consistently coincided with the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Schroth paints a picture of a man who believed himself to be "the moral architect" of a new generation, particularly suited to pronounce judgment, and dismissive [End Page 863] of those who...

Review: For Both Cross and Flag: Catholic Action, Anti-Catholicism, and National Security Politics in World War II San Francisco, by William Issel

Review: <i>For Both Cross and Flag: Catholic Action, Anti-Catholicism, and National Security Politics in World War II San Francisco</i>, by William Issel

Sheep Without a Shepherd (but With an Archbishop): Foucault's Pastoral Power and the Denying of Communion

In 2003 and 2004, Raymond Burke went from being a little known bishop in Wisconsin to one of the most controversial figures in the Catholic Church. Burke created controversy by saying he would deny communion to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and other pro-choice Catholic politicians, and for denying communion to Polish Catholic parishioners who refused to cede control of church assets. This study explores Burke's rhetoric in these two unique and important conflicts in light of Michel Foucault's work on pastoral power to analyze the usage of the shepherd concept, its limits, and implications for power within church organizations.

For Both Cross and Flag: Catholic Action, Anti-Catholicism, and National Security Politics in World War II San Francisco (review)

For Both Cross and Flag: Catholic Action, Anti-Catholicism, and National Security Politics in World War II San Francisco (review)

Book Review: More Catholic Sexual Politics

Book Review: More Catholic Sexual Politics

Catholic Politics in the Penal Era: Father Sylvester Lloyd and the Delvin Address of 1727

Catholic Politics in the Penal Era: Father Sylvester Lloyd and the Delvin Address of 1727

Richard Schmitz and the Tradition of Imperial Catholic Politics in Austria 1907–1934

No AccessRichard Schmitz and the Tradition of Imperial Catholic Politics in Austria 1907–1934John W. BoyerJohn W. BoyerSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:Jan 2019https://doi.org/10.7767/demokratie.2010.1314.1.95SectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail About Previous article Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Download book coverVolume 13-14Issue 1December 2010 ISSN: 2227-7633eISSN: 2307-2881HistoryPublished online:January 2019 PDF download

The Politicization of Religion: Political Catholicism and Political Islam in Comparative Perspective

While religious politics have been a widely discussed topic in the social sciences in recent decades, few studies develop general explanations based on systematic and detailed comparative analysis. This article seeks to explain when and how successful religious parties rise. To that end, I comparatively analyze the politicization of German Catholicism in the second half of the nineteenth century (1848—1878) and Turkish Islam in the post-1970 period (1970—2002) and briefly examine the negative case of nineteenth-century German Protestantism. According to the theory of revival-reaction-politicization I propose, successful religious parties rise when major religious revivals confront social counter-mobilization and state repression, provided that existing political parties do not effectively represent religious defense. The study's findings challenge the pervasive tendency to treat Christian and Islamic politics as incommensurable.

Sharon Achinstein and Elizabeth Sauer, Milton and TolerationMilton and Toleration. Edited by Sharon Achinstein and Elizabeth Sauer . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. xi+320.

<i>Sharon Achinstein and Elizabeth Sauer,</i> Milton and Toleration<i>Milton and Toleration</i>. Edited by Sharon Achinstein and Elizabeth Sauer . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. xi+320.

Structure versus Culture: A Comparative Study of the Influence of Political Institutions and Cultural Modernization Factors on Voter Turnout in Swiss Sub-national Parliamentary Elections

How can the differing levels of voter participation in sub-national parliamentary elections be explained? To answer this question I start from the current literature on cross-national comparative research, and apply explanatory approaches from this literature to the analysis of electoral turnout in sub-national units. I focus on two competing influential assessments in the literature, institutionalism and cultural modernization. The first assumes that formal political institutions generate important incentives and habits that are capable of shaping and constraining voting behavior. In contrast, a cultural modernization approach predicts that cross-sectional differences in turnout are determined by cultural habits arising from the socialization process and societal modernization. The systematic examination of electoral democracy in the Swiss cantons shows that the differing rates of electoral participation in these sub-national units are primarily attributable to the strength of political Catholicism. In this vein, rather than differences in turnout being a function of institutional and electoral procedures, they reflect cultural norms in the Swiss cantons. Moreover, the findings suggest that cultural conditions may be more significant for electoral behavior on a sub-national than on an international level.

Politics despite themselves

Through a comparative study of two Catholic associations, the Ligue patriotique des Francaises (French Women's Patriotic League, LPDF) and the Unione fra le donne cattoliche d'Italia (Union of Catholic Women of Italy, UDCI), this article sheds some light on the role of gender and the Church in the politicization process. Working alongside Roman Catholic politicians, the women in the LPDF established a conservative feminine repertoire of collective action and participated, albeit indirectly, in electoral politics. The Italian political and religious context, in contrast, did not allow any such scope for Catholic women to get involved in politics. This article aims to gain some new insight into the various ways conservative women did politics before their eventual enfranchisement.

Católicos de todo nação, uní-vos! – o catolicismo político no Brasil (1890-1934)

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of political Catholicism in Brazil between 1890 and 1934. At first, how this Catholicism has taken an eminently nationalist form, producing a language that would be developed by a set of clerical and lay’s actions aiming at the emergence of the Catholic Church (CC) as a strong political force will be discussed. Then, we move on to how this political Catholicism, undoubtedly influenced by the nationalist discourse - but going beyond it - becomes a militant one as well as conquestoriented, to the point of taking the lead of the political and constitutional decisions which took place during the aforementioned period of time.

Richard Schmitz and the Tradition of Imperial Catholic Politics in Austria 1907–1934

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Catholic Moral Demands in American Politics: A New Paradigm

Although it has been quickly forgotten, Rudolph Giuliani, who considers himself a Catholic, was the Republican frontrunner for most of the 2008 presidential primary campaign. This evoked mixed reactions within the church hierarchy, from silence to notable opposition to “hizonner’s” pro-choice policies. While Giuliani’s loss of the Republican presidential nomination appears to have been for reasons other than religion, 1 it still leaves open the question of what difference a candidate’s Catholicism makes in U.S. politics. Thus, it is important to articulate and understand the influence of Catholic thought and teachings on candidates, especially since more critical moral demands have been placed on Catholic politicians since the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade 2 in 1973. Since then, the Church has asserted that a candidate for public office must work in the public arena to support public policies that protect all life. Catholic religious doctrine and its attendant social teachings, known as the “magisterium,” are both profound and pervasive, and they are meant to influence candidates’ platforms, citizens’

The Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin America: The Dominican Case in Comparative Perspective by Emelio Betances

The Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin America: The Dominican Case in Comparative Perspective by Emelio Betances