Social Catholicism Research Articles

Karl Marx and the Catholic Church’s praxis

This article addresses the question of whether a spiritual institution can be influenced by a secular ideology, which is conceived as ‘atheist’. Can a secular ideology influence and shape the nature and praxis of an institution which prides itself as having a predominant spiritual foundation. This article’s objective is not necessarily meant to provide an absolute doctrine but seeks to stimulate debate based on a reasonable connection of Socialist influence on the development of the Catholic Church’s praxis. This article argues that the Catholic Church’s praxis, which is explicitly embodied in the Catholic Social Teachings might have been influenced by a Marxist or Socialist/communist wave of the 19th Century. This article is guided by a literature-related historical enquiry method, which compares historical events in a bid to identify possible logical connections. Literature reveals that in as much as some Catholic related movements such as the Liberation Theology had an obvious connection with Marxism, the praxis of movements embodied in both the ‘Social Catholicism’ and ‘Catholic Action’ was shaped by the Church’s beliefs and contextual circumstances of its time. Literature further shows the Catholic Church neither subscribe to the Socialist revolutionary stance nor approve of its methodology, but it recognised the effects of these socialist movements toward the workers. Hence, the influence of these secular institutions cannot be totally dismissed, even though they did not shape its praxis.

Workers Like All the Rest of Them: Domestic Service and the Rights of Labor in Twentieth-Century Chile

For several decades, labor history has been a key part of Chilean history. Anyone entering the field will read about miners, rural laborers, artisans, and industrial workers, to name a few. Throughout her career, Elizabeth Quay Hutchison has focused on women, a group often left out of the standard narrative. In her first book, Labors Appropriate to Their Sex: Gender, Labor, and Politics in Urban Chile, 1900–1930 (2001), women workers took center stage, and a rather different history of Chile came to light. In this new book, Hutchison homes in on a figure so omnipresent in Chilean society yet also lacking coverage in recent scholarship: domestic workers. This is not to suggest that there is a total absence of scholarship on domestic workers, but Hutchison argues that the limited literature tends to think of them as marginalized and oppressed, not active agents of change themselves. Instead, Hutchison brings out the voices of domestic workers, their histories of migration and organizing, and how they—in conjunction with other parts of society, such as the Catholic Church, labor unions, and social workers—helped to shape the contours of twentieth-century Chilean history.Built on research in archives, periodicals, and interviews, Workers Like All the Rest of Them brings the reader into the lives of domestic workers with extraordinary care. Drawing from interviews conducted between 2002 and 2005, Hutchison makes the reader feel the conversations, as though they had taken part in them, and in turn become more involved in the narrative. These interviews are surely one of the book's high points.Over the course of the book, the reader traverses a century of history, beginning with shifts in rural economies that pushed women into domestic labor and to migrate to cities. Here Hutchison is careful to point out that some women embraced the move to a larger city, seeing in it new possibilities and space away from the family. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the category of domestic worker (a category that undergoes repeated name changes) shifts away from including both women and men to one identified almost entirely with women. Domestic workers were simultaneously marginalized and included through different presidential administrations and new labor laws. Hutchison makes it clear that throughout the decades, domestic workers were themselves also organizing for improvements in their working conditions and for greater inclusion by and involvement in the state. That she sees this as a history of state formation is no coincidence, and one can find a similar line of inquiry in the work of Chilean historians María Angélica Illanes and Juan Carlos Yáñez Andrade.This history of organizing is one of connections to the Catholic Church. Part of this has to do with social Catholicism and the desire to do social work, as well as some of the more traditional Left ignoring domestic workers. Hutchison details the ins and outs of the different Catholic organizations and their relationship to more formal labor unions. Although at times the shifts and overlaps are confusing for the reader, this is probably also a consequence of the nature of these organizations.One of the more fascinating parts of the book comes in chapter 4, when Hutchison discusses the Socialist deputy Carmen Lazo's proposal of a bill on domestic workers and their rights. Domestic workers met in the early months of 1971 to discuss it, only to return a more radical bill. To quote Hutchison's take on it: “In contrast with the more paternalistic framing of Lazo's presentation, the revised text of the bill situated domestic workers' exploitation within the larger frame of class struggle and revolutionary transformation” (pp. 120–21). The revolutionary moment of Popular Unity and liberation theology meant that domestic workers and their allies put forth the double liberation of domestic workers, as women and as workers. The momentum for the bill, however, was cut short by the military coup of September 1973.To close out the book, Hutchison argues that while some domestic workers were targeted during the dictatorship, it was nowhere nearly as bad as the targeting of those tied to traditional left-wing labor unions and parties. They did not face as much repression and were allowed a certain amount of political space due to the protection of the church and a level of “invisibility” compared to other unions (p. 129).Workers Like All the Rest of Them touches on important themes in twentieth-century Chilean history while showing how domestic workers were part of many of these conversations and movements. Hutchison opens the book by mentioning that many told her that the source material for such a history did not exist. While at times I did wonder about the possibility of more sources—of different archives, more interviews, other periodicals, and more connections to recent scholarship—Hutchison did indeed prove them wrong.

Conservative Catholicism versus social Catholicism? Contrasting patterns in the political engagement of highly religious young Catholics in France and Italy

AbstractCurrent academic literature has proposed contrasting interpretations of the developments of youth religiosity. While some scholars have claimed increasing secularization of younger generations, others have noted the growing importance of religious values in young people's lives. To go beyond this debate, this article explores the restructuring of youth religiosity in Western European countries, characterized by the resilience of religion in secularized societies. With this purpose in mind, the article investigates the under‐researched topic of the political activism of highly religious young Catholics and compares the political engagement of two recently established youth organizations: Sens Commun (SC) (rebranded Mouvement Conservateur, MC) in France and the Comunità di Connessioni (CdC) in Italy. Although both SC and CdC were founded by young Catholics, their engagement has followed diverging trajectories. While SC/MC's ideas and politics bear the imprint of conservative Catholicism, CdC's initiatives and values are inspired by social Catholicism. This article claims that the diverging trajectories of SC/MC and CdC are influenced by the long‐lasting socio‐historical factors that regulated the relations between religion, politics and civil society and the emerging post‐secular reconfiguration that can open the way for a renewal of the forms of political engagement of young Catholics.

Hitler's Priests in Slovakia? On the Convergence of Catholicism and Fascism in Nazi "New Europe"

This paper deals with the fascistization of Catholic clergy on the eastern periphery of the Nazi “New Europe”, specifically within the Slovak State (1939–1945), a Nazi satellite in East Central Europe. In reference to recent historiographical debates, “clerico-fascism” serves here as a tool for an analysis of the ideology of the most prominent Slovak “clerico-fascist”, the president and Catholic priest Jozef Tiso (1887–1947). Specifically, it examines the transformation of social Catholicism into an instrument of fascist discipline. In addition, the article examines the fascistization of three other Slovak clerics: Karol KĂśrper (1894–1969), Ladislav Hanus (1907–1994) and Viliam Ries (1906–1989). Focusing on individual agencies of both moderate and radical “clerico-fascists” on the basis of the regime of Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party (Hlinkova slovenskĂĄ ÄžudovĂĄ strana) during the Second World War, the article seeks an explanation for political and religious radicalization in East Central Europe during the first half of the twentieth century.

Irish Social Catholicism and the Development of the Living Wage Doctrine

Abstract This article traces the development of the living wage concept in the social thought of Irish Catholic intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Revs. John A. Ryan and Walter McDonald, and Edward Phelan, who helped establish the International Labour Organization. The debates in which these thinkers engaged highlight the importance of gendered understandings of work and the significance of the family unit in the development of a moral critique of the capitalist system. This led to their differing views on the role to be played by the state in regulating the economy, and revealed how inseparable religion and economics were in their social thought. Social Catholicism played an important role in framing social policy in Ireland after independence; through the living wage doctrine, it played a significant part in a wider transatlantic debate about the moral questions posed by capitalism, in ways that continue to reverberate today.

The Memoirs of Wendell W. Young III: A Life in Philadelphia Labor and Politics

The Memoirs of Wendell W. Young III: A Life in Philadelphia Labor and Politics

Левый вираж перонизма в «долгие» 1960-е гг.

The Argentinian 60s of the ХХ century were a time of growing political tension and the emergence of new ideological and political movements that constituted the era of revolutionary activism and ideological search. The key actor in this process was left-wing Peronism, which experienced a sharp evolution in the direction of Marxism, new left ideological currents, and the anti-imperialist unity of the «Third world» countries during these years. The rapprochement of the Peronist left with Marxism in its classical (Soviet), Maoist, Gramscian and even Trotskyist versions gave rise to the emergence of a fruitful current of the «new left», which had a decisive influence on Argentine social thought and political agenda. The 60s were key for the further history of Argentina, both politically, ideologically and socially. Left-wing Peronism brought a lot of new things to Argentine politics, both revolutionary violence and the desire to perceive ideas from other left-wing currents, not only Marxism, but also social Catholicism, «liberation theology» and terсermundism. Ideological and political processes within left-wing Peronism in the 60s, its interaction with the «new left», communists and socialists, castrism and Maoism, the development of its own concept of the national liberation revolution and national socialism is devoted to this work.

The Gathering Storm: Eduardo Frei's Revolution in Liberty and Chile's Cold War

The Gathering Storm: Eduardo Frei's Revolution in Liberty and Chile's Cold War

Right-Wing Anarchism: A Philosophical Left-Wing Concept

The article discusses the issue whether anarchism should be considered a right-wing ideology. Anarchism as an ideology, formulated in the works of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon of the 1830s-1840s, was originally in the leftwing political spectrum. The anarchist Joseph Dejacque, who advocates equality of rights for men and women and does not agree with Proudhon on this issue, called himself a libertaire . The French word libertaire has been translated into English as “libertarian.” Due to the fact that in the 20 th century, economic theories justifying state intervention in the economy became widespread among those who called themselves liberals, the word “liberal” came to mean “socialist.” American liberals (in the original sense of the word) adopted anarcho-communist Dejacque’s neologism “libertarian.” The author shows that, according to the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, unlimited liberalism and socialism have common origins, since these two ideologies proceed from the fact that human freedom is innate, which means that traditional values should not restrict human behavior. Thus, the ideological roots of anarcho-capitalism and libertarianism are to be found in the corpus of doctrines of the French left wing. In the 1970s, the French economist Henri Lepage translated the English word “libertarian” into the French, coining new world libertarien and not using the word libertaire, which is due to the fact that libertarianism began to be perceived as a right-wing ideology, and therefore it was necessary to distinguish it from its roots – libertarisme, which was considered a leftist movement. The author refutes the idea, which became widespread in the 20 th century, that, due to the emergence of the Libertarian party and anarcho-capitalism, a part of the anarchist movement joined the right wing.

Entre o espectro aterrorizante do comunismo e as desigualdades sociais: teoria e prática dos Centros Sociais da Companhia de Jesus na América Latina (1950-1966)

O artigo aborda a atuação dos Centros de Investigação e Ação Social (CIAS) da Companhia de Jesus na América Latina em sua primeira geração, entre 1950 e 1966. Partindo da hipótese de que as formulações teóricas e práticas concretas dos CIAS desempenharam um papel importante na transição entre o Catolicismo Social da primeira metade do século XX e o Cristianismo de Libertação sistematizado a partir da década de 1970, demonstra, a partir da análise de fontes documentais de diversos arquivos da Companhia de Jesus na Europa e na América Latina e da discussão com a produção intelectual da época e com a literatura especializada, de que maneira as concepções e ações dos centros sociais jesuítas, a princípio marcadas por um forte conteúdo anticomunista, passaram a assumir uma postura de denúncia e combate às crescentes desigualdades sociais.

Years of hope: the new left in Bolivia, 1960—1980

This work is devoted to the emergence of the "new left" movement in Latin America in the 60s, considering as an example Bolivia. Here it is proposed to analyze the “new lefts” that arose as a result of the crisis of traditional orthodox Marxism and communism, and not those leftists that emerged on the continent after the collapse of the USSR and the dramatic changes in the left political space, the emergence of various variants of “socialism of the 21st century”, also called "new". In Bolivia, the “new left” was formed from the search for a synthesis of Marxism and nationalism, the renewal of the ideas of socialism at the expense of Western, unorthodox Marxism, and an alliance with social Catholicism. All the political and ideological currents of the "new left" arose under the dominant influence of the Cuban revolution, the guerrilla of Che Guevara, “theology of liberation” and the "world revolution" of 1968. This phenomenon had a short existence, entering a deep crisis in the late 80s, but at the same time leaving a rich legacy for the next generations of the Bolivian left, and there is a clear continuity between the “new left” of the 60s and 70s and today's Latin American left.

Od idealisty do katolickiego Talleyranda Andrzej Micewski – ideolog, działacz i gracz polityczny w środowiskach katolickich w powojennej Polsce

The article focuses on the political and ideological evolution of Andrzej Micewski, with a particular study of the years 1945–1956. This journalist, initially associated with Tygodnik warszawski and Stronnictwo Pracy, made a connection with the group „Today and Tomorrow” after the fall of the independent Christian Democratic trend. Initially, he was a spokesman for the Catholic „third Road” there, but with time he became one of the most ardent supporters of „Catholic socialism” and ideologist of the „PAX” Association. His journalism fully supported the mainstream of official propaganda, expressing his enchantment with the system, incl. in assessing the internal and international situation, as well as in the context of the relationship between the state and the Church, in which he clearly stood on the side of the authorities repressing independent clergy. In 1956, however, he left PAX, founding the weekly magazine “For and Against” and co-creating the concept of a “non-partisan democratic left”. Its defeat probably caused him to believe that there were no prospects for ideological public activity. With time, his activities became more and more machiavellian, also he establishing cooperation with state security agencies. He was active in the “Znak” movement, trying unsuccessfully to build his own faction in it, and in the 1980s he collaborated with the Polish Episcopate and “Solidarity”. In the Third Polish Republic there was deputy to the Sejm, however, already expressing disappointment with political activity. His fascination with Prince Talleyrand was symbolic - it meant that he covered his opportunistic game with great ideas. Thus, he turned from an idealist, a believer in socialism, into a cynical official. He treated politics only as a zero-sum game, despite his excellent understanding of the arcana of politics, which he proved in his extensive historical journalism.

Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States by Massimo Faggioli

students and teachers to formulate prayers in their own words according to their specific needs and circumstances. Part 5 is entitled ‘Ignatian Tips for Keeping Balance in our Mental Health: An Advisory’. Once again, Gleeson borrows from McManus for this section. This part begins with an excellent synopsis of the common-sense advice that McManus prepared for young people trying to cope with fragile mental health. Immediately following this advice is a prayer from Edith Stein, or St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who died in Auschwitz. In a delicate ‘Afterword’, Gleeson recalls the ‘togetherness’ that Australians feel on ANZAC Day and teases out the universal implications of this sentiment by recalling the radical sense of union and harmony that St Ignatius and his early companions felt both in the universe and among each other. The book finishes with a Hope prayer inspired by Liam Lawton’s Hope Prayer-Words to Nourish the Soul, published in Ireland in 2009. This beautiful little book, Springboards, is clearly one inviting collective action rather than individual contemplation. It has the flavour more of a set of spiritual exercises, than a lectio divina. From his vast educational experience, Chris Gleeson has provided a valuable spiritual guide-book to students, teachers and the wider educational community, to help all of them navigate leadership challenges in a discerning, balanced way. Springboards is much more than a book of prayers. Ashley Evans SJ (as above). Massimo Faggioli, Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States (New London, CT: Bayard, 2021), 176 pages. Pope Francis’ speech to the US Congress on 24 September 2015 focused on the American dream of both civil liberty and civil rights. When he gave his speech, he was flanked by two Catholic congressmen, John Boehner and Joe Biden. His speech focused on some key intellectual sources of Christianity in the United States that moved the dial away from a conservative reading of the history. He proposed Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton as four of its key figures. The latter two are significant because they shaped the thought of left social Catholicism, and argued for radical social justice in early and mid-twentieth-century America. Both Day Studies • volume 110 • number 439 389 Autumn 2021: Book Reviews and Merton wrote about the spirituality of non-violence and civil rights, especially focusing on eradicating poverty, racism, the death penalty and war. Inhismostrecentbook,MassimoFaggioli,achurchhistorianandProfessor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University in Philadelphia, who has written some important scholarly works on the reception of the Second Vatican Council within the Catholic church, reflects on the role and significance of Catholicism in the life of the incumbent US president Joe Biden and in the US more generally. His focus here is on the impact of a Biden administration on US Catholicism. He describes the election of Biden as ‘a particularly Catholic moment’, but also one that reflects deep tensions between two different ideological camps within the church in the US. In fact, Biden’s Catholicism has divided American Catholics in a way that was unthinkable during John F Kennedy’s presidency. The change, according to Faggioli, is to be understood in the light of the developing political culture wars in the country. It also encompasses a neo-conservative, neo-traditionalist shift towards a new form of illiberalism, which is critical of the main thrust of American democracy, itself rooted in a strain of liberalism to be found uniquely in the US. Faggioli’s work probes a significant question: what does it mean to be both American and Catholic in the twenty-first century? This has wider significance because of the influence of American Catholicism on political life within the United States. The American church in the last century was the largest and richest domestic Catholic church in the world, with indirect implications for Irish Catholicism. For many decades in the US, Catholic progressive politics had contributed to issues of economic justice, human rights, healthcare, education, social welfare, the anti-war movement, racial justice, and refugees and migration, and all this had a global reach and influence. Following on from the Kennedy era, Catholics had begun to feel they were...

De Juan Ambrosio Huerta a Mariano Holguín: episcopado, ultramontanismo y modernidad en Arequipa (1880-1935)

En el Perú, ante el avance de sectores liberales en Lima, Arequipa se constituyó como una ciudad baluarte del catolicismo. En este proceso, el episcopado jugó un papel clave como dinamizador de espacios de formación ultramontana para el clero y el laicado, de promoción de sociedades laicales apologéticas y ociales, de consolidación de prácticas piadosas y de construcción de una legitimidad pública para la Iglesia en la ciudad. En este sentido, este artículo estudia el proceso de afianzamiento del ultramontanismo y del catolicismo social de los episcopados de José Ambrosio Huerta, Manuel Ballón y Mariano Holguín. De esta manera, la Iglesia fortaleció su presencia en el espacio público regional y pudo articular un discurso sobre la modernidad desde la perspectiva católica, a favor de la presencia pública de la Iglesia como estructuradora de la vida política, social y moral en la ciudad.

El catolicismo social en la Semana Trágica de Buenos Aires (1919)

La Semana Trágica de enero de 1919 catalizó distintas tendencias sociales presentes en la ciudad de Buenos Aires durante la inmediata posguerra. En un contexto de polarización política, la Iglesia Católica y el catolicismo asumieron un rol activo en la defensa del orden. En el artículo se analizan las perspectivas con que el catolicismo social porteño –especialmente aquel organizado en torno a los Círculos de Obreros (1892) – intervino en la coyuntura del final de la I Guerra Mundial, qué posición tomaron en relación a la violencia estatal y paraestatal durante la huelga general, y qué tipo de iniciativas promovieron en lo sucesivo.

European integration and the reconstitution of socio-economic ideologies: Protestant ordoliberalism vs social Catholicism

ABSTRACT Christian Democratic socio-economic ideology underwent a paradigm shift through the Europeanization of its party networks. Christian Democratic networks started with a distinctive Catholic socio-economic ideology emphasizing corporatism, welfare transfers and a coordination of the economy. This institutional blueprint influenced the early years of European socio-economic integration. The original social Catholicism was gradually replaced by Protestant and secular inspired socio-economic ideology, emphasizing undistorted market competition with successive enlargements of the European Union and the European People’s Party (EPP). The article empirically reconstructs the contested process of transformation of the EPPs socio economic ideology through the inclusion of mainstream conservative and Protestant Christian Democratic parties and its impact on European Christian Democracy and the European integration process.

»Kaj naj storim v slučaju, da naši častiti zadružniki ne bodo hoteli povišati deležev?«

Članek se ukvarja s konflikti v Prvi žebljarski in železo – obrtni zadrugi v Kropi in Kamni Gorici v letih 1924 – 1927. Zadruga je bila sprva organizirana kot običajna delniška družba, vendar se je zaradi nezainteresiranosti lokalnih podjetnikov že pred prvo svetovno vojno približala načelom Krekovega – Raiffeisnovega zadružništva. Razvoj podjetja v delavsko produktivno zadrugo je dosegel vrh v letu 1922, ko so vsi člani za glasovanje na občnih zborih pridobili pravico enega glasu ne glede na število vplačanih deležev. Bolj demokratični princip delovanja zadruge se je v času dolžniških težav in boja s konkurenco za vodstvo izkazal kot ovira, iz česar so izšli številni konflikti. V tem pogledu je namen članka opozoriti na idejne in praktične probleme socialnega katolicizma, zlasti njegovega poskusa preseganja kapitalizma.

La aldea perdida, de Palacio Valdés, alegato anti-industrialista

En La aldea perdida (1903), de Armando Palacio Valdés, encontramos un buen muestrario de los principales planteamientos anti-industrialistas del momento. De hecho, la novela enlaza con el anti-industrialismo “fin de siglo” y también con los recelos del catolicismo social español frente al mundo industrial. Sin embargo, su fuerte componente anti-industrialista quedó muy difuminado en la adaptación cinematográfica llevada a cabo por Sáenz de Heredia en 1948, en pleno primer franquismo: eran años en los que la retórica oficial agrarista se combinaba con una orientación abiertamente industrial de la política práctica.

Communism as Religious Phenomenon: Phenomenology and Catholic Socialism In Yugoslav Slovenia, 1927-42.

Between the years 1927 and 1942 the Slovene Catholic socialist, Edvard Kocbek, developed a political philosophy that drew on biocentric and phenomenological concepts to promote a project of social revolution and spiritual renewal. This philosophy underpinned his eventual involvement in the anti-fascist partisan struggle of WWII. Through an excavation of Kocbek's interwar thought, this article highlights the breadth of phenomenology's political applications and the plurality of political visions within interwar Catholic thought.

The 'angelification' of girls: Winx Club as a neo-liberal Catholic project

Abstract This article examines and contextualizes the socio-economic model and values system from which the transmedial, transnational text that we call the Winx Project derives and in which it is produced. The Winx Project centres on an animated television series for girls and tweens, Winx Club, produced in Italy and distributed in 150 countries worldwide, but includes spin-off television formats, films, live and interactive entertainments, an amusement park and merchandising and fashion to compose a multifaceted, multiple 'text'. This plural text is employed to measure the functionality of the Winx Club within a global and transnationalized discourse of neo-liberal economics on the one hand and, on the other, a local context that reaches deep into the regional character of Social Catholicism to purvey on a global scale its ethics and values system.