Catholicism in Modern Italy: Religion, Society and Politics since 1861 (review)

In his multidimensional study of Catholicism in Italy from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, John Pollard explores the impact of modernization on the Catholic Church. Contrasting official religious policy of the clergy with the popular enthusiasms of the laity, he explores the creation of a self-confident and durable Catholic subculture that served to insulate the faithful from many of the challenges of modernization. Pollard offers a valuable overview of modern Italian religious history.

Liberalism sought to curtail the influence of the Church in the early-nineteenth century by divesting it of much of its property. The movement for Italian unification was a secular manifestation of this challenge that eventually succeeded in capturing Rome and removing the temporal power of the papacy itself. The Church experienced a revival in the late-nineteenth century because unification meant that an Italian national church could be created for the first time under the leadership of the papacy. This led to the development and definition of a Catholic subculture, uniting clergy and laity in popular religious celebration while addressing some of the more pressing social issues of the times through the organization of credit unions, workingmen's associations, and charitable and youth organizations.

This Catholic revival enabled the Church to assist with the impact of the prima industrializzazione and to respond to the rise of socialism by entering clerico-moderate political alliances. During World War I, the clergy achieved popular acclaim through their activities on behalf of the national war effort, and, as a result, the Catholic political party Popolari was launched in 1919 with the blessing of Pope Benedict XV.

Although this party received strong electoral support, it emerged at the same time as the rise of fascism and, after 1922, became an impediment to Pope Pius XI's quest to resolve the Roman Question with the new Mussolini government. The pope sacrificed the Popolari and sought to meet the challenge of fascism by protecting parts of the Catholic movement within the nonpolitical organizations of Catholic Action. Because he did not challenge the dictatorial tendencies of Mussolini, Pius XI was able to achieve a restoration of the temporal power, a financial settlement, and the protection of Catholic Action in the 1929 Lateran Agreements.

During the fascist regime, the Church used Catholic Action as a vehicle for training a postfascist leadership cadre. After 1945 the continuing institutional power in Italy was that of the papacy under Pope Pius XII, just as Catholic Action produced the future leaders of the Christian Democratic Party. The Church and Christian Democracy together met the postwar challenge of communism in Italy, which, like the Church, had fashioned its own proletarian subculture but was unable to gain power.

The "Economic Miracle" of the 1950s and 1960s brought a population shift from south to north along with the American secular values of a consumer society. Coupled with the changes of the Second Vatican Council, the Church had to deal with a loss of membership, reduced numbers of clergy, and a decline in support for the Christian Democrats. From the early 1960s, the Christian Democrats sustained their electoral base by relying on support that could be bought by judicious expenditure of state funds to develop new political clients.

By the end of the 1980s, the corruption of the Christian Democrats was evident and prompted the rise of the Northern League, dedicated to an end to Roman corruption and the separation of the progressive north from the retrograde south. The tangentopoli investigations resulted in the breakup of the Christian Democrats in the 1994 elections. Although it proved impossible to re-create one Catholic political party in the 1990s, the Catholic subculture continued into the twenty-first century under the leadership of the papacy and the Conference of Italian Bishops as the voice of the Catholic interest in Italy. Pollard concludes that Catholicism managed to survive the modernizing [End...