March 2022 Print

Catholic Action and the Interwar Era

By John Rao, D.Phil., Oxon.

Perhaps no word characterizes the interwar era better than “intensity.” This intensity was enormously encouraged by the sense in the minds of many contemporaries that the First World War and its revolutionary aftermath had somehow offered an unparalleled opportunity for a general “purification” of Western Civilization, interpreted by social and political activists in a kaleidoscope of ways. Believers at least began the era by joining in this intense battle for purification, possessing as they did a nineteenth and early twentieth century treasure trove of theological, philosophical, and socio-political writings on just how a Christian order should be constructed—the so-called “thesis”—a sense of the life and death importance of putting this thesis into practice, and a network of organizations with an experience of the manifold, practical, historical difficulties of actually working to achieve their goal through “Catholic Action”—what thinkers labeled the “hypothesis.”

Attempting a practical Catholic purification of the social order based upon sound doctrine has always been a daunting enterprise, even where such a labor has been undertaken in societies publicly confessing the Faith. When evangelization of a non-or anti-Christian world has been at stake, it has involved the taking of serious risks that might or might not be successful; risks whose mistakes could only be handled through maintenance of a truly self-critical attitude on the part of believers prepared to entertain objections to their hypothetical decisions and correction of them in line with the Catholic thesis. Pius XI’s establishment of the Feast of Christ the King in his encyclical letter, Quas Primas (December 11, 1925), might be looked upon as the most solemn of calls for continued commitment of the entire Church to the thesis in its broadest strokes, and documents like Quadragesimo anno (May 15, 1931) a proof of the presence of the thesis in dealing with precise economic and social questions as well.

Consideration of the “hypothesis” to which the “thesis” had to be applied in the years 1918-1939 involved dealing with a number of forces—philosophically hostile liberals, friendly but primarily politically rather than religious focused monarchists, military men of unpredictable faith, and even some fascists and communists. All of these, either for the sake of maintaining a “Party of Order” against a greater and obvious common menace, or by appealing seductively to one or two emphases of Catholic Social Doctrine, sought to forge an alliance with activist believers. But here, unfortunately, the actual “hypothetical” interwar decisions of popes, local episcopacies, and many lay leaders left contemporary observers, anxious friends and hopeful enemies alike, with serious doubts as to just how efficacious the thesis supporting substantive Catholic Action would ever be permitted to be.

Italy provides the basic key to the Roman outlook and its potential deficiencies. Already before the Great War, St. Pius X had brought its free ranging and basically lay dominated national Catholic Action movement, organized in 1874 in what was called the Opera dei Congressi, to heel. Pope Pius XI confirmed his approach through his abandonment of the Partito Popolare Italiano, which had appeared on the national political scene in 1919 to fight for control of Parliament with initial Vatican support. In Italy and elsewhere, Rome was worried that political parties could easily nurture the temptation both to call “Catholic” whatever might appeal to the voters at large, as well as to make “being Catholic” seem to demand support for all manner of party programs about which believers could legitimately disagree. The Holy See came to the conclusion that a suitable lay activity that could justly be given the name “Catholic” would have to be more lobby-like in character; a “Catholic Action” composed of a variety of organizations. Each of these would be entrusted with specific tasks—such as the defense of education—whose doctrinally solid goals could clearly be identified for the sake of a proper purification of the precise “spaces” of political and social life that they targeted. This unambiguous, lobby-like Catholic Action, carried out by laymen, would then be kept to the straight and narrow path under a firm and properly doctrinally and spiritually focused parish, diocesan, and Vatican clerical control.

No one should underestimate the difficulties of the issues concerned. The willingness of a number of Popolari leaders to value an alliance with the militant Socialists of the time and to demonstrate commitment to liberal Italian political institutions that had not been particularly friendly to Catholics in the past did not seem particularly suitable for attainment of the Catholic thesis. Moreover, it was still not fully clear exactly what Italian Fascism really was all about in the early 1920s, thereby offering some justification for allowing its leadership the benefit of the doubt, especially given its “Party of Order” appeal to a joint front against the obviously anti-Catholic “Red Menace.” Nevertheless, trustworthy Italian Traditionalist friends of mine have always been very critical of the Lateran Accords, signed by the Holy See with the Mussolini government in 1929, as a long-term disaster.

Yes, they would admit, these did set up an independent base for the Papacy in Vatican City, proclaim a respect for at least those Catholic moral teachings that fit in with Fascist goals, and promise freedom for the Italian-style Catholic Action movement to function. And, yes again, they would agree that abuses on the part of the government were met with Vatican reiterations of practical commitment to the theoretical demands of the Catholic thesis, very firmly so once Mussolini started to adopt Nazi-like racial laws in 1938. Still, their chief complaint is that the general spirit that was created and maintained among Italian Catholics was really one of “not rocking the boat.” With sacramental life guaranteed, the clergy free to teach the catechism, divorce prohibited, and the Reds in check, the grumbling was to remain just that—impotent lamentation.

In fact, all too many Roman interventions in Catholic affairs elsewhere in the interwar era seem to me to presume that the local hypothesis would continue forever; that the best one could do was to obtain governmental guarantees: either from friendly “Party of Order” forces or from liberal, Enlightenment-minded, constitutional or Concordat-backed “laws” somehow infallibly preventing anyone—hostile dictators and the devil included—from arbitrarily violating them. In other words, they indicate a general papal desire simply to get along with the “powers that be” in a way that would keep clergy and cult alive while consigning the project of “transformation of all things in Christ” to the practical, historical trash can.

Rome had to tread much more lightly in imposing any Italian-like policy in lands where strong lay leaders of obvious Catholic inspiration directed government policies. This can be seen in the Portugal of António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970), or in Austria, where a Christian Social Party had long existed, under Engelbert Dollfuss (1892-1934), aided by the editor of the newspaper that the chancellor funded to promote his vision, the great Catholic philosopher, Dietrich von Hildebrand. Both Salazar and Dollfuss sought to construct the kind of holistic, thesis-friendly “corporate” society that many nineteenth century thinkers had described and Quadragesimo anno seemed to approve: an anti-totalitarian, anti-materialist “society of many societies” honoring the principle of subsidiarity that would jointly protect the freedom of the human person and social equity. Rome realized that interference in their overwhelmingly lay-dominated ventures could have disastrous consequences—in Austria’s case, the victory of the National Socialists, the prevention of which led the Vatican to back away considerably from its Italian anti-Catholic Party position.

The Low Countries were equipped with long-established and successful Catholic Action organizations that continued to exercise an enormous influence in the Interwar Era. In these lands, local episcopacies served as the organ for clerical influence over lay social and political activity, especially to torpedo any new, potentially boat rocking personalities and forces, as happened in Belgium with Léon Degrelle (1906-1994), the Christus Rex Movement, and his Rexist Party.

Belgium was also the home of Fr. Joseph Cardijn (1886-1967), who became convinced of the need to create a “specialized” form of Catholic Action that sought to target and develop a fervor within specific “milieu” giving birth to evangelists ready to bring the light of Christ to others like them in the world at large. His Jeunesse Ouvrières Chrétienne (1924), aimed uniquely at young workers, was very influential as a model in the “years between,” spreading to France in the following decade, where it paralleled the similarly inspired Scouting Movement, and was looked upon by the bishops as the great hope of the future. But here, too, dangers lurked for the Catholic “thesis,” which I will return to at the conclusion of this article.

Germany was the home of the oldest organized Catholic Action movement, ranging from political parties to mass cultural organizations and labor unions. All of these had different emphases that could pull them in contradictory secular directions, with those interested in economic justice ready to work together with leftist Social Democrats and others eager to pursue nationalist goals more inclined to ally with rightist forces. They became so divided by the late 1920s that the Papal Nuncio, Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, urged the more rigidly parish and diocesan-focused Italian Catholic Action model upon them.

In fact, the only way that the Catholic Centre Party itself could retain some unity was by reinforcing its religious base and naming a priest, Msgr. Ludwig Kaas (1881-1952), as its head. The final interwar result was clarified in 1933 when the Centre, many of whose members were influenced by fears of the “Red Menace” and eager for a “Party of Order” response to it, voted full powers for the Hitler Regime and dissolved itself. A much reduced and generally persecuted remnant of German Catholic Action, aided by certain courageous bishops, managed to survive within an Italian-like framework under the new Concordat, signed in July. Pursuit of the “Catholic thesis” in Germany was quite clearly gone with the wind—and here not only or even perhaps chiefly due to the Vatican.

Two other examples of Catholic Action can complete this overview of the interwar era, the first of them in France, whose story was complicated by divisions regarding the form of government and the absence of any serious political party representing believers’ interests. Before the First World War a number of French Catholics had been attracted to Marc Sangnier’s (1873-1950)’s republican movement, the Sillon. It was condemned by St. Pius X in 1910 for falling prey to the error of treating a political system—in this case, the democratic one, which was also proving to be highly anti-Catholic in behavior in France–as though it were itself redemptive, and thereby more important than the Faith for the purification of society.

Charles Maurras’ (1868-1952) Action Française was fervently in favor of a return to the legitimate monarchy. Although the Holy Office had deemed his movement worthy of censure as well as that of the Sillon, Pius X had blocked it, on hypothetical grounds, given that it so strongly defended the French Catholic Church. When Pius XI did proceed to its condemnation, as he did between December 29, 1926 and January 7, 1927, the grounds given were, broadly speaking, similar to those used against the Sillon and, more recently, the Popolari. He argued that it put support for a political system, the legitimate monarchy, before things spiritual in importance, thereby overturning the hierarchy of values for Catholics, who, in Maurras’ case, were compounding their error by following a man who was not even a believer.

Aside from alienating many practicing Catholics, who now saw the only hope for their particular political views to succeed as involving the same kind of reliance on other apparently acceptable Party of Order forces, the condemnation did nothing to prevent the victory of the ”politics first” mentality. What it actually accomplished was a resurrection of the “democratic politics first” position of the Sillon. Rome reshaped the French episcopacy with anti-Action Française bishops more and more open to a democratic secularist vision of society, which, through men like Achille Lienart (1884-1973), appointed Archbishop of Lille in 1928, was to be one of the central radicalizing forces of Second Vatican Council. Pius XII ultimately lifted the condemnation of the Action Française in 1939, after the damage had long been done.

Our second example, the vigorous Mexican Catholic Action movement, had no quarrel with the form of government as in France, only with its anti-clerical and anti-religious policies. These became so outrageous by 1926 that they forced Catholics into an outright rebellion, the Cristiada, which lasted until 1929 and the sacrifice and even martyrdom of the Cristeros, men and women specifically invoking the call of Pius XI to make Christ their King. There is no space here to go into detail regarding the Arreglos of 1929, supposedly bringing the persecution to an end. Suffice it to say that the agreement in question turned out to be yet another “save the basics and chuck the rest” decision. Brokered by the Vatican, several Mexican bishops, and an American government worried more about restoring peaceful, profitable business south of the border than anything else, it proved to be incapable even of guaranteeing its main goal, since persecution soon broke out again with even greater intensity in parts of the country. Mexican Catholics ultimately had to rely more on a change of heart on the part of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party after 1940 than on assistance from Rome or the local bishops.

Portugal and Austria tried their best, but as Salazar openly admitted, such little countries could not do much to defend Christendom if the Great Powers were not “converted.” The murder of Dollfuss and the abandonment of his successor to a Nazi takeover in 1938 proved this to be true. General Francisco Franco’s victory in Spain on the eve of the Second World War seemed promising, and certainly saved clergy and cult from destruction, but the pyramid of Party of Order forces on which his power was based did not allow for any really solid Catholic direction. Portugal at least had the stimulus of Salazar’s brilliant writings and the message of Our Lady of Fatima to help the Catholic cause, and Austria the private devotion of Dollfuss, but all three countries were working mostly from the top downwards, and Austria, once again, with a gun aimed at its head.

The interwar era’s failure to tie hypothetical policies together with the thesis in a more constructive, long-sighted, evangelical manner—as did the missionaries of the Middle Ages, who were highly conscious of all manner of cultural issues as being central to the success of their labors—set Catholic Action up as a sitting duck for the annihilation that it was to face by the 1960s. Catholic activists still loyal to the movement were left like unguarded sheep, open to seduction by the clever wolves laying traps for them throughout the broad cultural environment in which they daily lived and breathed. All that was needed to blow the entire hypothesis and thesis argument sky high was for these wolves, whether conscious predators or self-deceived, to exploit the failures of the mainline Catholic approach.

Significant intellectual support for this demolition were very much already available in “the years between” in the writings of men such as Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950), the founder and editor of the journal l’Esprit (1932). Mounier’s “Communitarian Personalism” argued that Catholics were losing the battle for control of society because their thesis was corrupted by a doctrinal and philosophical “rationalism.” Victory required an expansion and perversion of Cardijn’s vision of the importance of cultivating specialized “milieu,” going beyond the Belgian’s more limited approach to urge “diving into,” ceasing to criticize, and bringing to fruition the “energies” unleashed by successful contemporary cultural and political “milieu,” Fascist and Marxist in particular. This was because such successful energy indicated the obvious presence of the Holy Spirit, whose guidance would cause the present contradictions of these vibrant movements to converge for the benefit of mankind and the greater glory of God. In other words thesis and hypothesis would have to merge, since the embrace and acceptance of the strongest existing hypotheses is being urged upon us by the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity as the sole guide to Catholic Action.

Fascists lost energy, the Second World War, and, therefore, the support of the Holy Spirit. The more energetic Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union, in alliance with the United States, the representative of another “vital milieu”—that of Pluralism—won it, proving that they both had a pneumatic friend in the Godhead. The divine merits of the latter conduit for the voice of the Holy Spirit were underlined by Jacques Maritain (1892-1973), whose work on Integral Humanism of 1936 had pointed the way to his later evangelization of the American message, itself already a cultural giant in the interwar era.

Marxism-Leninism made an appeal to Catholic Action because of a superficial connection with its concern for an economic social justice neglected by individualist American Pluralism. American Pluralism made an appeal to Catholic Action against Marxist-Leninist atheism. Acceptance of the voice of the Holy Spirit found in the message of American Pluralist “liberty” by the Church of the Conciliar Era opened the door to the ravages of every conceivable “milieu” foisting its loud-mouthed, vital, energetic teaching upon the Catholic sheep as channels of irresistible pneumatic prophesy: Marxist, sexually perverse, psychotic, and, yes, once again Fascist and racist as well. The intellectual and cultural time bombs for the sell-out were laid down in the Interwar Era, at least partially through the failures of Catholic Action. And the only way to deal, “hypothetically” with the ruins is to dive into, cease to criticize, and bring to fruition the Catholic Thesis.