Antonio Gramsci

Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks

Catholic Social Policy, the Hierarchy and Popular Religion in Italy

23 Catholic Action [2]. Catholic Action's History and Organisation

Catholic Action, which as a specific form post-dates 1848, used to be very different from the current one, as reorganised by Pius XI. Catholic Action's original position after 1848 (and in part even during the incubation period that lasted from 1789 to 1848, when there arose and took shape both the concept and the fact of the nation and the fatherland, which became the element that introduced an intellectual and moral ordering of the great popular masses in victorious competition with the Church and the Catholic religion) may be characterised as extending to the Catholic religion the observation made by a French historian (check) about the `legitimist' monarchy and Louis XVIII: it appears that Louis XVIII could not bring himself to accept that, after 1815, the monarchy in France needed to have a specific political party to support it.

All the reasoning of Catholic historians, aimed at explaining the birth of Catholic Action and connecting this formation back to movements and activities that have `always been in existence' from the time of Christ onward, together with the claims made in papal encyclicals about the incontrovertibility of such reasoning, is extremely fallacious. Throughout Europe after 1848, the historical-political-intellectual crisis, which in Italy assumed the specific and direct nature of anti-clericalism and a struggle -- to the point of being a military one -- against the Church, was resolved
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through the clear-cut victory of liberalism (understood as a conception of the world as well as a particular political current) over the cosmopolitan and `papal-temporal' 35 conception of Catholicism. Before 1848 one saw the formation of more or less ephemeral parties and single individuals who rebelled against Catholicism while, after 1848, Catholicism and the Church `had' to have a party of their own to defend themselves and lose the least possible amount of ground. They could no longer speak as if they knew they were the necessary and universal premiss of any mode of thought or action (except officially, since the Church will never admit the irrevocability of this state of affairs). Today there are many who can no longer bring themselves to believe that such could once have been the case. To give an idea of this, one can put forward the following model: no one would today seriously think of founding an anti-suicide association (it is not impossible that in some place there does exist some such type of society, but that is quite another thing), since there exists no current of opinion that attempts to persuade people -- even with the most limited success -- to commit mass suicide (although it seems that single individuals and even small groups who upheld such forms of radical nihilism have existed in Spain). It is obvious that `life' is the necessary premiss for any manifestation of life.

Catholicism has played this role, traces of which still abound in the language and modes of thought of the peasantry in particular: Christian and man are synonymous, or rather Christian and `civilised man' are synonymous (`I'm not a Christian!' `Then what are you, some kind of beast?') The penal colonists still say `Christians and colonists'. (Amazement at first when the confinees, arriving on the ferry boat at Ustica, 36 were heard to say, `They're all Christians', `There's nobody but Christians', `There's not a single Christian among them.') Those in prison, on the other hand, more normally say `civilians and detainees', or, in joking fashion, `soldiers and civilians', although the southerners still say `Christians and detainees'.

In this same way, it would be intersting to study the whole series of semantic-historical passage that have been
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gone through in French, starting at `Christian' and ending up at `crétin' (whence the Italian `cretino') or even at `grédin'. This phenomenon must be similar to that whereby `villein' has, from `countryman', ended up meaning `boor' and even `lout and scoundrel'. In other words the name `Christian' used by the peasantry (the peasants of some Alpine regions, it would appear) to refer to themselves as `men', has, in some cases of local pronunciation, become detached from its religious meaning and has had the same fate as `manant'. 37 Perhaps the Russian `krestyanin' = peasant has the same origin, while `Christian' in the religious sense, the more cultured form, has kept the Greek aspiration X (in a pejorative sense, `muzhik' is said). To this conception there is maybe also to be connected the fact that in some countries, where Jews are unknown, it is or was believed that they had a tail or the ears of a swine of some other animal attribute.

A critical historical examination of the Catholic Action movement can give rise, analytically, to a number of studies and lines of research.

The national Congresses. How they are prepared by the central and local press. The official preparatory material: the official and the oppositional reports.

Catholic Action has always been a complex body, even before the formation of the white Confederation of Labour and the Popular Party. 38 The Confederation of Labour used to be considered as being organically a constitutive part of Catholic Action, while the Popular Party on the other hand was not, except that in actual fact it was. In addition to other reasons, the foundation of the Popular Party was advised in the light of a post-war democratic advance, considered to be inevitable, and for which an organ of expression and a brake were deemed necessary without putting at risk the authoritarian structure of Catholic Action, which officially is directed in person by the Pope and the bishops. Without the Popular Party and the democratically-oriented innovations brought about in the trade union Confederation, popularist pressure would have subverted the entire structure of Catholic Action, calling into question the absolute authority of the ecclesiastical hierarchies. The same complexities
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were, and still are, to be found in the international field; although the Pope represents an international centre par excellence, there exist in fact a number of offices which work to co-ordinate and direct Catholic political and trade union action in all countries, examples being the Malines Office which compiled the Social Code 39 and the Freiburg Office for trade union activity (a check to be made on how these offices are functioning after the changes that have happened in the German countries, as well as in Italy, in the field of Catholic political and trade union organisation).

The holding of Congresses. Subjects put on the agenda and those left out so as to avoid deep-seated conflicts. The agenda ought to spring from the concrete problems that have compelled attention in between one Congress and the next and from future perspectives, as well as from those points of doctrine around which general currents of opinion are formed and factions come to group themselves.

On what basis and with what criteria do the leaderships get chosen or renewed? On the basis of a generic doctrinal tendency, giving a mandate of confidence to the new Executive in broad general terms, or after the Congress has established a concrete and precise direction for its activity? The internal democracy of a movement (i. e. the greater or lesser degree of internal democracy, that is to say the participation of the rank-and-file members in decision-making and in determining the line of action) can also and perhaps can especially be measured and judged by this criterion.

Another important element is the social composition of the Congresses, the speakers and the leadership elected, as compared to the social composition of the movement as a whole.

Relationship between the adult generations and the youth. Do the actual Congresses concern themselves with the youth movement, which ought to be the main source of recruits and best school for the movement, or are the youth left to fend for themselves?

What is (was) the influence at the Congresses of the subordinate and subsidiary (or what should be subordinate and subsidiary) organisations, the parliamentary group, the trade union organisers, etc.? Is there a special position
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created at the Congresses for the parliamentary deputies and trade union chiefs in an official and organic way or only de facto?

As well as what emerges from the Congress discussions, it is necessary to establish the development undergone both geographically and in time by the most important concrete problems: the trade union question, the relationship between the political centre and the trades unions, the agrarian question, questions of internal organisation, in all their various overlappings. There are two aspects to each question: how it has been treated theoretically and technically, and how it has been confronted practically.

Another question is that of the press in its various aspects -- daily, periodical, pamphlets, books, centralisation or autonomy of the press etc.

The parliamentary fraction: when dealing with any given parliamentary activity, a number of criteria regarding research and judgement have to be borne in mind. When a deputy or a senator of a Popularist movement speaks in Parliament there can be three or more versions of his speech:

1) the official version of the Parliamentary Proceedings, which usually is revised and corrected, and often made more palatable after the event;

2) the version given by the official papers of the movement to which the deputy officially belongs, this being put together by the deputy in conjunction with the parliamentary correspondent in such a way as not to offend certain susceptibilities, either of the official majority of the party or of the local readership, and so as not to create any premature hindrance to certain current or desired agreements;

3) the version given by the newspapers of other parties or by the so-called organs of public opinion (widely read papers), which is composed by the deputy in agreement with the respective parliamentary correspondents so as to favour certain current agreements: such papers may change from time to time, depending on changes that have come about in respective political leaderships or in the governments.

The same criterion can be extended to the trade union
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field, in respect of the interpretation to be placed upon certain events or even upon the general direction taken by the given trade union organisation. For example, La Stampa, Il Resto del Carlino, Naldi's Il Tempo have in certain years served Catholics, as much as Socialists, as sounding-boards and instruments for the political deals made. A parliamentary speech of a Socialist or Popular Party deputy (or a strike or a declaration made by a trade union leader) would be presented in a certain light by these papers for their public, in a different one by Catholic or Socialist organs. The Popularist and Socialist papers kept their public in the dark about certain statements of their respective deputies that tended to create the possibility of a parliamentary-governmental agreement of the two tendencies and so on and so forth. It is also essential to bear in mind the interviews given by deputies to other papers and the articles published in other papers. The doctrinal and political homogeneity of a party can also be tested by the following criterion: what are the orientations favoured by party members in their collaboration with the papers of another tendency or with the so-called organs of public opinion? Sometimes internal dissent is shown up solely by the dissidents' writing articles, signed or unsigned, in other papers, or giving interviews, or adducing polemical reasons, or letting themselves be provoked in order to be `forced' to reply, or not denying certain opinions attributed to them etc.

Q20§1.

24 Catholic Action and the Franciscan Tertiaries

Can any comparison be drawn between Catholic Action and institutions such as the Franciscan tertiaries? 40 Certainly not, although it is as well to mention by way of introduction not only the tertiaries, but also the more general phenomenon of the appearance in the Church's historical development of the religious orders so as to be able to define more clearly the nature and limits of Catholic Action itself. The creation of the tertiaries is a most interesting fact of a
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democratic-popular origin and trend which sheds rather more light on the nature of Franciscanism as a tendential return to the ways of life and belief of primitive Christianity -- the community of the faithful and not just of the clergy as it increasingly and constantly became. It would thus be useful to make a thorough study of the outcome of this initiative, which did not really yield a great deal since Franciscanism did not become the whole of religion, as was Francis's intention, but was reduced to one among the many existing religious orders. Catholic Action marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the Catholic religion -- the moment when, from an all-embracing 41 conception (in the dual sense -- that it was a total world-conception of a society in its entirety) it became partial (that too in the dual sense) and had to have its own party. The various religious orders represent the reaction within the Church (community of the faithful or community of the clergy), either at the top level or among the flock, against the partial disaggregations of the conception of the world (heresies, schisms and so on, and even degeneration of the hierarchies); Catholic Action represents the reaction against the apostasy on an imposing scale of whole masses, that is to say against the mass supersession of the religious conception of the world. It is no longer the Church that determines the battlefield and weapons; it has instead to accept the terrain imposed on it by the adversaries or by general indifference and make use of the arms borrowed from the adversaries' arsenal (the mass political organisation). The Church, in other words, is on the defensive, has lost its autonomy of movement and initiative and is no longer a world ideological force, but merely a subaltern one.

Q20§2.

25 On Poverty, Catholicism and the Church Hierarchy

In a booklet on Ouvriers et Patrons [Workers and Bosses] (a work that was awarded a prize in 1906 by the Parisian Academy of Moral and Political Sciences), reference is made to the reply given by a French Catholic worker to the
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person who put to him the objection that, according to the words of Jesus as quoted by one of the Evangelists, there must always be rich and poor -- `Well, let's leave at least a couple of poor so Jesus won't be wrong.' The reply is epigrammatic but worthy of the objection put forward. From the time that the question took on a historical importance for the Church, i. e. when the Church had to face up to the problem of the so-called `apostasy' of the masses by setting up Catholic unions (worker's unions, because the entrepreneurs were never required to give the organisations that united them a confessional nature), the most widespread opinions on the `poverty' question to be found in the encylicals and in other authorised documents can be summarised in the following points:

1) private property, especially landed private property, is a `natural right' that may not be violated even by means of heavy taxation, and from this principle stem the political programmes of the Christian-democrat tendencies for the distribution with compensation of the land to the poor peasants, as well as their financial doctrines;

2) the poor must be content with their lot, since class distinctions and the distribution of wealth are disposed of by God and it would be impious to try and eliminate them;

3) alms-giving is a Christian duty and implies the existence of poverty;

4) the social question is first and foremost moral and religious rather than economic, and must be resolved through Christian charity and through the dictates of morality and the judgement of religion. (This to be compared with the Social Code of Malines, in its successive developments.)

Q20§3.

26 Catholic Action [3]. The Pre-History of Catholic Action

For the pre-history of Catholic Action, cf. the article in the Civiltà Cattolica of 2 August 1930 entitled `Cesare D'Azeglio and the Dawn of the Catholic Press in Italy'. By `Catholic
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press', one is to understand the `press of the militant Catholics' among the laity, outside the Catholic `press' in the strict sense, i. e. as expression of the ecclesisatical organisation.

The Corriere d'Italia of 8 July 1926 published a letter from Filippo Crispolti, which is of great interest in the sense that Crispolti `observed that whoever wanted to bring to light the first impulses of that movement from which there sprang in Italy the alignment of the "militant Catholics", i. e. the innovation which in our camp gave rise to every other one, should start from those singular Piedmontese societies which went under the name "Friendships" [Amicizie] and which were founded or animated by Abbot Pio Brunone Lanteri'. In other words, Crispolti recognises that Catholic Action is an innovation and not at all, as the papal encyclicals always say, an activity that has always existed from the apostles onwards. It is an activity closely linked -- as a reaction -- to the French Enlightenment, to liberalism and so on, and to the action of modern states in separating themselves from the Church, in other words to the secularising intellectual and moral reform which (for the ruling classes) was far more radical than the Protestant Reformation; a Catholic activity that took shape especially after '48, i. e. with the end of the Restoration and the Holy Alliance.

The movement to set up a Catholic press, bound up with the name of Cesare D'Azeglio and under discussion in Civiltà Cattolica is also of interest for the stance that Manzoni adopted towards it. One can say that Manzoni understood the reactionary nature of D'Azeglio's initiative and, in elegant terms, turned down the offer of possible collaboration in the venture, frustrating D'Azeglio's hopes by sending his famous letter on Romanticism, which, Civiltà Cattolica comments, `given the reason that caused it, may be considered a declaration of principle. Obviously, the literary banner chosen was only a screen for other ideas, other sentiments, which divided them,' in other words their difference stances on the question of the defence of religion. The Civiltà Cattolica article is essential for a study of the preparation of the ground for Catholic Action.

Q6§183.
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27 Catholic Action [4]. Catholic Action's Origins

On the origins of Catholic Action, look at the article `The Success of La Mennais's Ideas and the First Manifestations of Catholic Action in Italy' (Civiltà Cattolica, 4 October 1930 for the first part of the article, whose continuation will appear at a much later date as we shall have occasion to note), which links up with the previous article on Cesare D'Azeglio etc. 42 Civiltà Cattolica speaks of `that broad movement of ideas and action which showed its face in Italy just as in the other Catholic countries of Europe during the period between the first and second revolutions (1821-1831), a period which witnessed the sowing of some of the seeds (we shall not say whether for better or for worse) which were subsequently to bear fruit in more mature times'. This means that the first Catholic Action movement arose through the impossibility for the Restoration really to be what its name says, viz. the impossibility for it to turn the clock back to the Ancien Régime. Catholicism in this respect is just like legitimism: from integralist and all-encompassing [totalitarie] positions 43 in the field of culture and politics, they became parties opposed to other parties and, what is more, parties that adopted a position of defence and conservation, and thus forced to make a lot of concessions to their adversaries so as to be better able to sustain themselves. This, moreover, is the significance of the whole of the Restoration as an overall European phenomenon and it is of this that its fundamentally `liberal' nature consists.

The Civiltà Cattolica article poses one essential question: if La Mennais is at the origin of Catholic Action, does this origin not contain the germ of subsequent liberal Catholicism, the germ which, through its successive development, was to give La Mennais Mark II? 44 It is to be noted that all innovations within the Church, when they do not stem from an initiative on the part of the centre, contain within themselves something heretical and end up by explicitly taking on this character until the centre reacts decisively, throwing the innovatory forces into disarray, reabsorbing the waverers and excluding the refractory
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elements. It is of note that the Church has never had a really well-developed sense of self-criticism as a central function, despite its much vaunted ties with the great masses of the faithful. On this account, innovations have always been imposed rather than proposed, a virtue made of necessity. Historically, the Church has developed by sub-division (the various religious companies being in actual fact fractions that have been absorbed and brought under discipline as `religious orders'). Another fact about the Restoration: governments made concessions to the liberal currents at the expense of the Church and its privileges, and this is one element that created the need for a Church party, in other words Catholic Action.

A study of the origins of Catholic Action thus brings us to a study of the varying success that La Mennais's ideas have had in different areas.

Q6§188.

28 Catholic Action [5]. Catholic Action and Neo-Guelphism

Cf. the annotations made in another notebook 45 on the two studies published in Civiltà Cattolica on `Cesare D'Azeglio and the Dawn of the Catholic Press in Italy' and `The Success of La Mennais's Ideas and the First Manifestations of Catholic Action in Italy'. These studies refer in particular to the rich growth of Catholic periodicals in various Italian cities during the Restoration which tried to combat the ideas of the Encylopaedia and the French Revolution, ideas which however were of lasting duration etc. This politico-intellectual movement encapsulated the beginnings of Italian neo-Guelphism, which cannot be viewed separately from that of the Sanfedista Society. 46 (The moving spirit of these reviews was the Prince of Canosa, who lived in Modena, where one of the most important reviews of the group was published.)

There were two main tendencies in Italian Catholicism:

1) a clearly pro-Austrian one, which saw the salvation of the papacy and religion in the imperial gendarmerie as guardian of the Italian political status quo:
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2) the Sanfedista one in the strict sense, which upheld the politico-religious supremacy of the Pope above all in Italy, and was thus a covert adversary of Austrian hegemony in Italy and favourably disposed towards a certain national independence movement (if one can in this case speak of national).

It is to this latter movement that Civiltà Cattolica refers when it enters into polemics with the liberals of the Risorgimento and upholds the `patriotism <and unitary nature>' of the Catholics of the period; but what was the stance adopted by the Jesuits? It appears that they were more pro-Austrian than `pro-independence' Sanfedistas.

One can thus say that this preparatory period of Catholic Action found its clearest expression in neo-Guelphism, i. e. in a movement of totalitarian return to the political position of the medieval Church, to papal supremacy etc. The catastrophe suffered in '48 by neo-Guelphism reduced Catholic Action to what was then to become its role in the modern world: an essentially defensive one, despite the apocalyptic prophecies of Catholics regarding the catastrophe brought about by liberalism and the triumphal return of the rule of the Church in the wake of the wreckage of the liberal state and its historical antagonist, socialism (thence clerical abstentionism and the creation of the Catholic reserve army).

In this, the Restoration period, militant Catholicism adopted different attitudes according to the state concerned. The most interesting position was that of the Piedmontese Sanfedistas (De Maistre etc.) who supported Piedmontese hegemony and the Italian function of the monarchy and Savoy dynasty.

Q7§98.

29 The Risorgimento 1848-49

It seems to me that, given their spontaneity, the events of 1848-49 may be regarded as typical for studying the social and political forces of the Italian nation. In those years we can discern a number of basic forces: the moderate
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reactionaries, 47 municipalists; the neo-Guelphs-Catholic democracy; and the Action Party-national bourgeois left liberal democracy. These three forces fought among themselves and all three were successively defeated in the course of the two years. In the wake of their defeat these tendencies both regrouped their forces and shifted rightwards after a process of clarification and break-aways that all of them underwent. The most serious defeat was that of the neo-Guelphs who disappeared as Catholic democracy and reorganised as bourgeois social elements of the countryside and city alongside the reactionaries, thereby constituting the new force of the conservative liberal right. A parallel may be drawn between the neo-Guelphs and the Popular Party, the new attempt at creating a Catholic democracy, which failed in the same way for similar reasons. Equally, the failure of the Action Party resembles that of the `subversivism' of 1919-20.

Q8§11.

30 Catholic Action [6]. The Role of the Catholics in Italy

In the Nuova Antologia of 1 November 1927 G. Suardi published a note, `When and How Catholics Could Take Part in General Elections'. The article is very interesting and may be regarded as a documentary record of the activity and role of Catholic Action in Italy.

At the end of September 1904, in the aftermath of the general strike, Tommaso Tittoni, Foreign Minister in the Giolitti government, sent a telegram summoning Suardi to Milan. (Tittoni was in his villa at Desio at the time of the strike and it appears that, given the danger of Milan being cut off by the interruption of communications, he had to assume special and personal responsibilities -- this reference of Suardi's would seem to me to mean that the local reactionaries had already dreamed up certain initiatives in agreement with Tittoni.) Tittoni informed him that the Cabinet had decided to call elections immediately and that there was a need to unite all the liberal and conservative
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forces in an effort to bar the way to the extreme parties. Suardi, a leading liberal from Bergamo, had managed to form a pact with the Catholics in that city for the local elections. It was now necessary to get the same result for the general election by persuading the Catholics that the non expedit 48 was of no use to their party, was harmful to religion and of grave damage to the fatherland since it left the way open to the Socialists.

Suardi took on the task. In Bergamo he spoke with the lawyer, Paolo Bonomi, and succeeded in convincing him to go to Rome and obtain a papal audience to add the weight of the Bergamo Catholics to that of Bonomelli and of other authoritative personalities who were pressing for the non expedit to be dropped. Pius X at first refused to remove the ban but, terrorised by Bonomi who painted him a catastrophic picture of the consequences that would have been caused at Bergamo by any break between the Catholics and the Suardi group, `slowly and in grave tones exclaimed "Do then, do what your conscience dictates." (Bonomi): "But have we understood this well, Your Holiness? May we interpret this as a yes?" (The Pope): "I repeat: do what is dictated to you by your conscience".' (Immediately afterwards) Suardi had a talk with Cardinal Agliardi (who was of a liberal tendency), who put him in the picture about what was going on in the Vatican after Bonomi's audience with the Pope. (Agliardi [was] in agreement with Bonomi that the non expedit should be dropped.) The day after the audience an unofficial Vatican newspaper published an article denying the rumours that were circulating about the audience and about any new position as regards the non expedit and asserting strenuously that nothing had changed on this argument. Agliardi immediately asked for an audience at which the Pope, who, in reply to the question put to him, repeated his formula: `I said (to the people from Bergamo) that they should do what their conscience dictated'. Agliardi then saw to it that a Roman paper printed an article in which it was stated that for an interpretation of the Pope's views on the coming general election, Catholic organisations should address themselves to Bonomi and to Professor Rezzara, as depositaries of this. So it was that Catholic candidatures
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were put forward (Cornaggia in Milan, Cameroni in Treviglio etc.) and in Bergamo there appeared posters in support of political candidatures on behalf of citizens who up to then had been abstentionist.

For Suardi, this episode marks the end of the non expedit and represents the completed moral unity of Italy; he exaggerates somewhat, although the fact is in itself important.

Q3§25.

31 Catholic Action [7]. Gianforte Suardi

Gianforte Suardi, in the Nuova Antologia of 1 May 1929 (`Costantino Negri and the XX September 1870') 49 adds a detail to what he had written in the 1 November 1927 issue on the participation by Catholics, with the consent of Pius X, in the 1904 election, a detail which before the conciliation he had omitted for reasons of discretion. Pius X, in welcoming Paolo Bonomi and the others from Bergamo is said to have added: `Inform Rezzara', who had not taken part in the audience and who, as is known, was one of the most authoritative heads of the Catholic organisation, `of the nature of the reply I have given you and tell him that the Pope will remain silent'. It is the part emphasised here that was omitted in the first article. A detail of rare charm, as may readily be appreciated, and one of the greatest importance morally.

Q5§47.

32 Clergy and Intellectuals [2]. Leo Xiii

Commemorative number of Vita e Pensiero on the 25th anniversary of the death of Leo XIII. Useful article by Fr Gemelli on `Leo XIII and the Intellectual Movement'. Pope Leo was linked, in the intellectual field, to the renewal of Christian philosophy, to social studies, to the impetus given to biblical studies. A Thomist 50 himself, his animating idea was to `bring the world back to a fundamental doctrine
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thanks to which intelligence will once more be capable of showing man the truth that he must recognise, with this not only preparing the way to faith but giving man the means of safely finding his direction as regards all life's problems. Leo XIII thus presented the Christian people with a philosophy, the scholastic doctrine, not as an immobile and exclusive, narrow framework of knowledge, but as a body of living thought, capable of being enriched by the thought of all the doctors and all the fathers, able to harmonise the speculation of rational theology with the data of positive science, this being a condition for stimulating and harmonising reason and faith, profane and sacred science, philosophy and theology, the real and the ideal, the past and the discoveries of the future, prayer and action, inner life and social life, the duties of the individual and of society, duties towards God and towards one's fellow-men.'

Leo XIII completely renewed Catholic Action. Recall that the encyclical Rerum Novarum was almost simultaneous with the Genoa Congress, 51 i. e. with the passage of the Italian working-class movement from primitivism to a realistic and concrete stage, even though still confused and indistinct. (Neo-) scholasticism has allowed the alliance of Catholicism with positivism (Comte, whence Maurras). With Catholic Action, we saw the pure mechanical abstentionism of the post-1870 period being left behind and the beginning of a real activity that led to the dissolution in 1898. 52

Q1§77.

33 Catholic Action [8]. The Church's Reduced Role in the World

Don Ernesto Vercesi has begun publishing a work I papi del secolo XIX [The Popes of the Nineteenth Century] whose first volume on Pius VII has now come out. A study of Catholic Action requires one to study the general history of the papacy and its influence on the political and cultural life of the nineteenth century (perhaps even from the era of the enlightened monarchies, of Josephism, etc., 53 which was the
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`preface' to the limitations placed on the Church in civil and political society). Vercesi's book has also been written as a counter to Croce and his History of Europe. The gist of Vercesi's book would seem to be summed up in these words: `The nineteenth century attacked Christianity in its most varied aspects, on the political, religious, social, cultural, historical, philosophical terrains, and so on. The definitive result was that, at the close of the nineteenth century, Christianity in general, and Roman Catholicism in particular, was stronger and more robust than at the beginning of the same century. This is a fact that cannot be called into question by impartial historians.' That it can be `called into question' is illustrated by this sole fact: that Catholicism has become one party among all others and has passed from the unchallenged enjoyment of certain rights to the defence of the same or to having to claim those that have been lost.

It is certainly unquestionable that the Church, in certain aspects, has strengthened some of its organisations, that it is more concentrated, that it has closed its ranks, that it has proceeded to a better determination of certain principles and directives, but this means just that it has a lesser influence in society, hence the need for struggle and for a more vigorous, militant involvement. It is also true that many states are no longer engaged in active struggle against the Church, but this is because they want to make use of it and subordinate it to their own ends. One could compile a list of specific areas of activity in which the Church counts for very little and has fallen back on secondary positions; in certain respects, i. e. from the standpoint of religious belief, it is, after all, true that Catholicism has been reduced to a large extent to a superstition held by the peasantry, the infirm, the elderly and women. What does the Church count for today in philosophy? In what state is Thomism the predominant philosophy among the intellectuals? And socially speaking, where does the Church use its authority to command and direct social activities? It is exactly the ever greater impetus given to Catholic Action that shows that the Church is losing ground, although it does happen that by retreating it concentrates its forces better, 54 puts up a firmer resistance and `seems' to be (relatively) stronger.

Q14§55.
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34 On Catholic `Social Thought'

On Catholic `social thought', it seems to me that one can make the preliminary critical observation that we are not dealing with a political programme that is compulsory for all Catholics and towards whose attainment the forces of organised Catholicism are oriented, but purely and simply with a `bundle of political argumentations', both positive and negative, which are lacking in political concreteness. This may be said without entering into the merit of the questions, i. e. without entering into an examination of the intrinsic value of the measures of a socio-economic nature on which the Catholics base these arguments.

In actual fact, the Church does not want to compromise itself in practical economic life and does not involve itself to the hilt either to put into effect those social principles which it asserts and which have not been put into practice, or to defend, maintain or restore those subsequently destroyed situations in which a part of those principles had already been put into effect. For a good understanding of the position of the Church in modern society, one must understand that it is ready to fight only to defend its own particular corporative freedoms (those of the Church as the Church, as an ecclesiastical organisation), i. e. the privileges which it proclaims are bound up with its divine nature. For this defence no holds are barred for the Church: neither armed insurrection, nor attempts on the life of individuals, nor appeals to foreign invasions. Everything else may, in relative terms, be overlooked, as long as it is not linked to the conditions of existence of the Church. By `despotism' the Church means the intervention of a secular state authority aimed at limiting or suppressing its privileges, not much more than this. It recognises any de facto power and legitimises it, as long as this power does not lay hands on its privileges, but if by chance these are increased, that authority is exalted and proclaimed an arm of providence. 55

Given these premisses, Catholic `social thought' has a mere academic value. It has to be studied and analysed not as a directly active element of political and historical life, but
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in so far as it is a sort of ideological opiate, tending to prolong given states of mind that may be termed a religious type of passive expectancy. Certainly it is a political and historical element, but one that is absolutely particular in kind: a reserve rather than a front-line element. As such it may at any moment be therefore `forgotten' in practice and `elided', while never being completely given up, since an occasion might present itself when it will be brought to the fore. The Catholics are very wily, but in this case it appears to me they may be too wily.

On Catholic `social thought', the book Notes d'économie politique [Notes on Political Economy] (Paris 1927) by the Jesuit Fr Albert Muller, who teaches at the St Ignatius commercial high school in Antwerp, should be borne in mind. A. Brucculeri reviews the book in the 1 September 1928 number of Civiltà Cattolica (`Thought and Social Action'); Muller, it seems to me, expresses the most radical point of view that the Jesuits can arrive at on this question (family wage, co-participation, control, co-management etc.).

Q5§7.

35 Catholic Social Thought

An article to be kept in mind for an understanding of the Church's attitude when faced with different political-state regimes is `Authority and "Political Opportunism"' in the Civiltà Cattolica of 1 December 1928. Some ideas could be gleaned for the notes headed Past and Present. 56 It should be compared with the corresponding points of the Social Code.

The question was posed at the time of Leo XIII and the ralliement 57 of one part of French Catholicism to the French Republic. The Pope resolved it by means of these essential points: 1) acceptance, or rather recognition, of the established power; 2) established power to be respected as being representative of an authority stemming from God; 3) obedience to all the just laws promulgated by this authority, but resistance to unjust laws through an agreed effort to amend the legislation and Christianise society.
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For Civiltà Cattolica this is not `opportunism', but it would be `opportunist' to adopt a servile attitude and to exalt en bloc those authorities that are such de facto and not by right [diritto]. (The expression `right' has a particular value for Catholics.)

Catholics have to distinguish between the `the role of authority' -- an inalienable right of society, which cannot live without an order -- and the `person' who carries out this role and who may be a tyrant, a despot, a usurper etc. Catholics submit to the `role', not to the person. But Napoleon III was called a man of providence after the coup d'état of 2 December, 58 which means that the political vocabulary of the Catholics is different from the common one.

Q5§18.

36 Catholic Action [9]. The `Worker's Retreats'

See the Civiltà Cattolica of 20 July 1929 for `How the People are Returning to God' and `The "Worker's Retreats" Organisation'.

The `Retreats' or `closed spiritual Exercises' were founded by St Ignatius Loyola (whose most commonly available work is the Spiritual Exercises, published by G. Papini in 1929) and from these stem the `Worker's Retreats', begun in 1882 in Northern France. The Worker's Retreats Organisation began its activity in Italy in 1907 with the first retreat for workers held at Chieri (cf. Civiltà Cattolica, 1908, Vol IV, p. 61: `The "Worker's Retreats" in Italy'). 1929 saw the publication of the volume Come il popolo ritorna a Dio, 1909-29. L'Opera dei Ritiri e le Leghe di Perseveranza in Roma in 20 anni di vita. [How the People are Returning to God, 1909-1929. The Work of the Retreats and the Leagues of Perseverance in Rome in Their Twenty Years of Life]. From the book, it appears that from 1909 to '29, the organisation itself has brought together more than 20,000 workers, many of them recent converts, in the Leagues of Perseverance in Rome and Lazio. In the years 1928-29 there was a greater success rate <in Lazio and the neighbouring provinces> than there had been in all the
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previous eighteen years in Rome.

Up to now in Rome, there have been 115 closed Retreats that have seen the participation of about 2,200 workers. Civiltà Cattolica writes that `In every retreat there is always a core of good workers who serve as a positive example and leaven, the others being collected in various ways from ordinary people who may be cold, indifferent or even hostile, and who are persuaded, in part out of curiosity, in part through passive acceptance of their friends' invitation and not infrequently even out of the convenience of having three days' rest and good treatment free.'

The article gives other details regarding the various towns in Lazio: the Rome League of Perseverance has 8,000 members with 34 centres and in Lazio there are 25 branches of the league with 12,000 members. (Monthly communion, while the Church is content with an annual communion.) The organisation is led by the Jesuits. (A section could be put together for the heading Past and Present.)

The Leagues of Perseverance tend to keep up the results obtained through the retreats and broaden them out into the masses. They create an active `public opinion' in favour of religious observance, thereby turning upside down the previous situation in which the climate of public opinion was negative, or at least passive, or sceptical and indifferent.

Q7§78.

37 Catholic Action [10]. Catholics and Insurrection

The article `A Serious Problem of Christian Education: On the First (Brussels) International Congress on Teaching in the Free Secondary Schools, Held at Brussels (28 -- 31 July 1930)', published in Civiltà Cattolica, 20 September 1930, is of interest as regards the measures taken in 1931 against Italian Catholic Action. 59

The Malines Social Code, as we know, does not exclude the possibility of armed insurrection on the part of Catholics. Of course, it restricts the cases in which this is possible, but leaves vague and uncertain the positive conditions under which it becomes possible. It is, however,
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understood that this possibility regards certain extreme cases of the suppression and limitation of the privileges of the Church and the Vatican. This Civiltà Cattolica article, right on the first page and without any additional comment, quotes a passage from Ch. Terlinden's book Guillaume I, roi des Pays bas, et l'Église Catholique en Belgique (1814-1830) [William I, King of the Netherlands, and the Catholic Church in Belgium (1814-1830)], Brussels, Dewit, 1906. Vol. 2, p. 545: `If William I had not violated the liberties and rights of the Catholics, they, being faithful to a religion that commands respect for authority, would never have thought of rising up, or of uniting with the liberals, who were their irreconcilable enemies. Neither would the liberals, whose number at that time was small and whose influence over the people weak, have been able by themselves to shake off the foreign yoke. Without the contribution of the Catholics, the Belgian revolution would have been a barren revolt, leading nowhere.' The whole quotation is most striking in each and every one of its three sentences, and in fact the whole article, in which Belgium represents a polemical reference point for the here and now, is of interest.

Q7§78.

38 Catholic Action [11]. The Lille Conflict

The Civiltà Cattolica of 7 September 1929 published the full text of the judgement pronounced by the Sacred Congregation of the Council on the conflict between Catholic workers and industrialists in the Roubaix-Tourcoing region. Approval is contained in a letter dated 5 June 1929, sent by Cardinal Sbarretti, Prefect of the Congregation of the Council, to Mons. Achille Liénart, Bishop of Lille.

The document is important in part because it integrates the Social Code and in part broadens its framework, as for example where it recognises the right of Catholic workers and unions to form a united front even with socialist workers and unions on economic questions. One must bear in mind
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that, even though the Social Code is a Catholic text, it is however a private or only an unofficial one and could, wholly or in part, be disowned by the Vatican. This document, on the other hand, is official.

The document is certainly linked to the labours of the Vatican in France aimed at the creation of a Catholic political democracy, and the admission of the `united front', even if susceptible to cavilling and restrictive interpretations, is a `challenge' to Action Française and a sign of détente with the radical socialists and the CGT.

In the same number of Civiltà Cattolica, there is a wide-ranging and interesting article commenting on the approval by the Vatican. This approval consists of two self-contained parts: in the first, comprising seven short theses, each of them amply accompanied by quotations taken from papal documents, especially those of Leo XIII, a clear summary is given of Catholic trade union doctrine, while the second part deals with the specific conflict under examination, i. e. the theses are applied and interpreted in the real situation.

Q2§131.

39 Davide Lazzaretti

In an article published in the 26 August 1928 number of the Fiera Letteraria, Domenico Bulferetti recalls certain facts about the life and cultural background of Davide Lazzaretti. Bibliography: Andrea Verga, Davide Lazzaretti e la pazzia sensoria [Davide Lazzaretti and Sensorial Madness] (Milan 1880); Cesare Lombroso, Pazzi e anormali [The Mad and the Abnormal]. (Such was the cultural habit of the time: instead of studying the origins of a collective event and the reasons why it spread, the reasons why it was collective, the protagonist was singled out and one limited oneself to writing a pathological biography, all too often starting off from motives that had not been confirmed or that could be interpreted differently. For a social élite, the members of subaltern groups always have something of a barbaric or a pathological nature about them.) A Storia di David
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Lazzaretti, Profeta di Arcidosso [The Story of David Lazzaretti, the Prophet of Arcidosso] was published in Siena in 1905 by one of the most distinguished disciples of Lazzaretti, the former Oratorian friar 60 Filippo Imperiuzzi; other apologetic pieces exist but according to Bulferetti this is the most noteworthy.

The `basic' work, however, on Lazzaretti is that of Giacomo Barzellotti, entitled in the 1st and 2nd editions (published by Zanichelli) Davide Lazzaretti and then enlarged and in part modified in successive editions (Treves) under the title Monte Amiata e il suo Profeta [Mount Amiata and its Prophet]. Bulferetti thinks that Barzellotti maintained the causes of the Lazzarettian movement to be of a `totally special character, due solely to the state of mind and culture of the people living there' and just `a little through natural love for their own fine native places (!) and a little through the influence of the theories of Hippolyte Taine'. It is instead more obvious to think that Barzellotti's book, which served to mould Italian public opinion about Lazzaretti, is nothing more than a manifestation of literary patriotism (for the love of one's country! -- as they say) which led to the attempt to hide the causes of the general discontent that existed in Italy after 1870 by giving explanations for the individual outbursts of this discontent that were restrictive, particularist, folkloristic, pathological, etc. The same thing happened on a bigger scale as regards `brigandage' in the South and the islands.

Politicians have never bothered about the fact that the killing of Lazzaretti was of a ferocious and coldly premeditated cruelty. (In actual fact Lazzaretti was, quite simply, shot 61 and not killed in combat; it would be interesting to know the secret instructions that the government sent to the authorities.) Neither have the republicans bothered about it (look this up and check on it) despite the fact that Lazzaretti died glorifying the republic (the tendentially republican nature of the movement, which was such as to be able to spread among the peasantry must have contributed especially to making the government decide to exterminate its main leader), perhaps because the tendentially republican strain within the movement contained a bizarre mixture of prophetic and religious elements. But it is just this mix that
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represents the affair's main characteristic since it shows its popularity and spontaneity. It is further to be sustained that the Lazzarettian movement was bound up with the Vatican's non-expedit and showed the government what sort of elementary-popular-subversive tendency could arise amongst the peasantry following on clerical political abstention and the fact that the rural masses, in the absence of regular parties, 62 sought local leaders who came up out of the mass of the people themselves, mixing religion and fanaticism up together with the set of demands that were brewing in an elementary form in the countryside. Another political element to keep in mind is this: that the left had been in government for two years, and its coming to power had caused the people to bubble over with hopes and expectations that were to be deluded. The fact that the left was in power may also explain the lukewarm support for a struggle that led to the criminal slaying of a man who could be depicted as a reactionary, a clerical, a papist and so on.

Bulferetti observes that Barzellotti did no research into Lazzaretti's background culture, despite the references made to it. Otherwise he would have seen that even at Monte Amiata there arrived an abundance of leaflets, pamphlets and popular books printed in Milan. (!? Where does Bulferetti get this from? Further, for who knows peasant life, especially as it used to be, `abundance' is not necessary for explaining the breadth and depth of a movement.) Lazzaretti was an insatiable reader of them and, as a wagoner, could get hold of them easily. Davide was born in Arcidosso on 6 November 1834 and followed his father's profession up to 1868 when, from being a blasphemer, he became a convert and went into retreat in a grotto in the Sabine Apennines where he `saw' the vision of a warrior who `revealed' to him that he was the founder of his line, Manfredo Pallavicino, illegitimate son of a king of France etc. A Danish scholar, Dr Emil Rasmussen, found that Manfredo Pallavicino was the protagonist of a historical novel by Giuseppe Rovani, called in fact Manfredo Pallavicino. The plot and adventures of the novel can be seen in just that form in the grotto `revelation' and it is from this revelation that Lazzaretti's religious propaganda starts
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off. Barzellotti had, on the other hand, thought that Lazzaretti had been influenced by fourteenth-century legends (the adventures of King Giannino of Siena) and Rasmussen's discovery led him just to introduce in the last edition of his book some vague mention of Lazzaretti's reading, without however referring to Rasmussen and leaving the part of the book on King Giannino quite intact.

However, Barzellotti does study Lazzaretti's subsequent spiritual evolution, his journeys to France, the influence on him of the Milanese priest Onorio Taramelli, `a man of rare intelligence and wide culture', who was arrested in Milan for having written against the monarchy and then fled to France. It was from Taramelli that Davide received his republican impetus. Davide's red banner bore the words `The Republic and the Kingdom of God'. In the procession of 18 August in which he was killed, he asked his faithful whether they wanted the Republic. To the resounding `yes' he answered, `This day marks the beginning of the Republic in the world. But it will not be that of '48: it will be the Kingdom of God, the Law of Justice [Diritto] that follows that of Grace.' There are certain interesting elements in David's reply, which must be linked to his recollections of Taramelli's words -- the desire to put a dividing line between himself and '48 which was anything but positive in the memory of the Tuscan peasants, and the distinction between Justice and Grace.

The drama of Lazzaretti must be linked up with the `exploits' of the so-called Benevento bands, which were near-contemporary happenings. The priests and peasants involved in the Malatesta trial thought in a very similar way to that of the Lazzarettians, as one can see from the judicial proceedings. (Cf., for example, Nitti's book on Socialismo Cattolico where mention is quite rightly made of the Benevento bands; see whether there is also a mention of Lazzaretti). 63 At any rate, the drama of Lazzaretti has up to now been seen just from the point of view of literary impressionism, whereas it merits a politico-historical analysis.

Giuseppe Fatini, in the Illustrazione Toscana (cf. the Marzocco of 31 January 1932) draws attention to present-day survivals of Lazzarettism. It was thought that
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after Davide's execution by the Carabinieri, all traces of Lazzarettism had been dispersed for ever even on the slopes of Amiata in the Grosseto hinterland. Instead of this, the Lazzarettians or Jurisdavidic Christians, as they like to call themselves, are still very much alive in the Arcidossian village of Zancona for the main part, but with some converts scattered among the neighbouring hamlets. The World War gave them a new motive for drawing closer together around the memory of Lazzaretti, who, according to his followers, had foreseen everything, from the World War to Caporetto, from the victory of the Latin people to the birth of the League of Nations. From time to time the flock of the faithful come out of their little circle distributing propaganda pamphlets addressed to the `brothers of the Latin people' and containing some of their Master's (even poetic) writings which had not seen the light of day and which had been jealously guarded by his followers.

But what do the Jurisdavidic Christians want? To someone who as yet has not been blessed with the grace of being able to penetrate within the secret of the language of the Saints, it is not easy to understand the essence of their doctrine. This latter is a mixture of religious doctrines from times gone by with a good dose of vaguely socialistic maxims, together with generic references to the moral redemption of man, a redemption that cannot come about except through the complete renewal of the spirit and hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Article XXIV, which closes the `Symbol of the Holy Spirit' (a sort of `Creed' of the Lazzarettians), declares that `Our teacher David Lazzaretti, the anointed of the Lord, judged and condemned by the Roman Curia, is really Christ, Leader [Duce] and Judge, in the real and living figure of the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ on Earth, the Son of Man come to bring to completion the ample Redemption of the whole of mankind by virtue of the third divine law of Justice [Diritto] and general Reform of the Holy Spirit, the law which is to reunite all men in the faith of Christ within the Catholic Church in one sole point and one sole law in confirmation of divine promises.' It seemed for a time after the war that the Lazzarettians were taking `a dangerous road', but they were
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able to draw back from it in time and gave their full support to the victors. Certainly not for their divergences with the Catholic Church -- `the sect of papal Idolatry' -- but rather for the tenacity with which they defend the Master and Reform, Fatini considers this religious phenomenon from Amiata as worthy of attention and study. 64

Antonio Gramsci: Religion, the Lottery and the Opium of Poverty