The Clerical Response to a Totalitarian Political Religion: La Civiltà Cattolica and Italian Fascism

Abstract

This article offers a close reading of the discourse on Italian fascism within the authoritative Italian Jesuit periodical La Civiltà Cattolica. The author shows that, when confronted with the fascist movement, La Civiltà Cattolica made no moves to oppose the regime, instead positioning itself so as to negotiate with and accommodate the fascist rhetoric. This decision was driven in part by the close alignment between the politics of Catholicism and fascism, and further fostered by the absence of a viable alternative political power.

The article also illustrates the manner in which Catholic intellectuals intuitively perceived some aspects of fascist totalitarianism and the ‘sacralization of politics’ as threatening, particularly when confronted with manifestations of what was termed ‘political heresy’, along with certain features of fascist associationalism. However, despite their concerns no explicit rupture between Church and regime ever eventuated; on the contrary, some accounts imply an intended merger, however unstable it may have proven, between the ‘religious’ and ‘totalitarian’ goals of both parties.