New idols: Catholicism in the face of Fascist totalitarianism

Abstract

This article explores the attitudes of the Vatican and Catholic culture towards Fascism and Fascism's political religion during the pontificate of Pius XI, in the context of the Catholic church's rejection of modernity as a new epoch of paganism that took the form of political mysticism. It shows that despite the Concordat of 1929, the papacy reacted with growing alarm to the Fascist regime's ‘sacralization of politics’ that threatened to make Catholic religion a handmaid of the totalitarian state.

Keywords:

• Catholicism
• totalitarianism
• antifascism
• neo-paganism
• political religion

Notes

1 This article anticipates the content of a forthcoming book about the relationship of religion and totalitarianism. This book grew out of a larger research project on the sacralization of politics, subsidized by the Hans Sigrist Prize of the University of Bern, awarded to the author in 2003.

2 The historiography on relations between the Roman Catholic church, Catholicism and Fascism is so extensive that just to provide a list of titles would demand more space than is occupied by this article. Therefore, I am limiting the bibliographic notes only to the sources cited and to historic studies mentioned in the article.

3 A first treatment of the topic is found in Baget Bozzo (1974).

4 See Gentile (1996); Maier (1996, 1997, 2003); Huttner (1999), and in Menozzi and Moro (2004); Moro (2005). Moro provides numerous examples that illustrate the attention that Italian Catholicism paid to the Fascist sacralization of politics, even though his conclusions strike me as unpersuasive when he claims that for the church, the Fascist religion of politics was ‘bound up with internal currents within the regime rather than with the underlying structure and substance’ (p. 66). There are no elements that might be useful for an analysis of relations between Catholicism and Fascist totalitarianism to be found in the attempt to refute the interpretation of Fascism as a political religion made by Klinkhammer (2004: 185 – 203), because the critical observations made show a substantial misunderstanding of this interpretation, as well as an inadequate knowledge of the debate over the phenomenon of political religion and the Catholic attitude toward that phenomenon.

5 Report of the Apostolic Nuncio Cesare Orsenigo to the Secreteriat of State, published in Sale (2003: 362 – 64).

6 This is the thesis set forth, with respect to Nazism, by Steigmann-Gall (2003).

7 De Gasperi (1981: vol. II, 438 – 439). Concerning the use of the concept of mystique in Italian Catholic culture, see Moro (2005: 31 – 33).

8 Interview published in La Stampa, 10 February 1924, republished in Sturzo (1925: 7 – 16).

9 Quoted in Aga Rossi (1969: 248).

10 La Civiltà Cattolica, 1926, I, p. 15.

11 Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero dell'Interno, Direzione generale di Pubblica sicurezza, Atti speciali, busta 4.

12 A photocopy of this anonymous note, without any indication of source, was given to me by the late Renzo De Felice, and in this connection I wish to express my grateful memory of the favor and of the man himself.

13 Il Popolo d'Italia, 27 February 1937.

14 Sale (2003: 450). On the interpretation of Nazism as a totalitarianism and political religion by Pious XI, see Chenaux (2003: 207 – 11) and Godman (2004).

15 Quoted in Brucculeri (1938b: 31).

16 The text of the Encyclical is published in Passelecq and Suchecky (1998).

17 Archivio dell'Ordinariariato Militare d'Italia (from here on AOMI), ONB-GIL, busta 1 A/5, fascicolo ‘Arezzo.

18 AOMI, ONB-GIL, busta 4 A/5, fascicolo ‘Genova’.

19 AOMI, ONB-GIL, busta 3, fascicolo ‘Cava dei Tirreni e Sarno’.

20 AOMI, ONB-GIL, busta 6 A/5, fascicolo ‘Pinerolo.’

21 AOMI, ONB-GIL, busta 2B, fascicolo ‘Bari’.

22 AOMI, ONB-GIL, busta 1 A/5, fascicolo ‘Acerenza e Matera.

23 AOMI, ONB-GIL, busta 6 A/, fascicolo ‘Pinerolo.

24 AOMI, ONB-GIL, busta 6 A/5m fascicolo ‘Oria.’

25 Quoted in Beltrame Quattrocchi (1985: 262 – 3).

26 The expression is used by Scoppola (1976: 281).