Entwicklungslinien des europäischen Katholizismus im 20. Jahrhundert

Abstract

Developmental Aspects of European Catholicism in the 20th Century

European Catholicism retained into the 1960s essential principles it had formed in the 19th century as a European social movement against economic liberalism and socialism. It focused on the Catholic idea of an ideal society, a utopia critical of modernity, on the evolution of manifold social and socio-political activities as well as on the centralisation and modernisation of Church organisation according to the model of the modern nation state. The development of specific milieus or exclusive societies in this kind of Catholicism was successful in particular in those countries of Central and Northwestern Europe where Catholics formed the minority. World War I introduced a process of depolitising Catholicism, individualising religious ties and developing Catholic professional and elite organisations. World War II marked the end of the corporatist social utopia as well as the rise of Christian democratic parties. The Second Vatican Council concluded the cultural struggle between the Catholic Church and the liberal-pluralistic nation state in Europe. It introduced the orientation toward a global society, which has, since then, been accompanied in Europe by vastly differentiated changes in religious practice, organisational forms and Catholic values.