Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective

Clerical fascism

Ideology combining fascism and clericalism From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Remove ads

Clerical fascism (also clero-fascism or clerico-fascism) is an ideology that combines the political and economic doctrines of fascism with clericalism. The term has been used to describe organizations and movements that combine religious elements with fascism, receive support from religious organizations which espouse sympathy for fascism, or fascist regimes in which clergy play a leading role.

When coined in 1920s Italy, the term referred to the political ideology of the Roman Catholic Italian People's Party which supported Benito Mussolini and his fascist regime. The term was also used for Catholics in Northern Italy who advocated a synthesis of Roman Catholicism and fascism.

Remove ads

History

Summarize
Perspective

The term clerical fascism (clero-fascism or clerico-fascism) emerged in the early 1920s in the Kingdom of Italy, referring to the faction of the Roman Catholic Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI) which supported Benito Mussolini and his regime. It was supposedly coined by Don Luigi Sturzo, a priest and Christian democrat leader who opposed Mussolini and went into exile in 1924,[1] although the term had also been used before Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922 to refer to Catholics in Northern Italy who advocated a synthesis of Roman Catholicism and fascism.[2]

Sturzo made a distinction between the "filofascists", who left the Catholic PPI in 1921 and 1922, and the "clerical fascists" who stayed in the party after the March on Rome, advocating collaboration with the fascist government.[3] Eventually, the latter group converged with Mussolini, abandoning the PPI in 1923 and creating the Centro Nazionale Italiano. The PPI was disbanded by the fascist regime in 1926.[4]

The term has since been used by scholars seeking to contrast authoritarian-conservative clerical fascism with more radical variants.[5] Christian fascists focus on internal religious politics, such as passing laws and regulations that reflect their view of Christianity. Radicalized forms of Christian fascism or clerical fascism (clero-fascism or clerico-fascism) were emerging on the far-right of the political spectrum in some European countries during the interwar period in the first half of the 20th century.[6]

Fascist Italy

See also: Fascist Italy (1922–1943), Roman Question, and Freedom of religion in Italy § History
Thumb
Mussolini (far right) signing the Lateran Treaty (Vatican City, 11 February 1929)

In 1870, the newly formed Kingdom of Italy annexed the remaining Papal States, depriving the Pope of his temporal power. However, in the 1929 Lateran Treaty, Mussolini recognized the Pope as Sovereign of Vatican City State, and Roman Catholicism became the state religion of Fascist Italy.[7][8]

In March 1929, a nationwide plebiscite was held to publicly endorse the Lateran Treaty. Opponents were intimidated by the fascist regime: the organisation Catholic Action (Azione Cattolica) and Mussolini claimed that "no" votes were of those "few ill-advised anti-clericals who refuse to accept the Lateran Pacts".[9] Nearly nine million Italians voted, or 90 per cent of the registered electorate, with only 136,000 voting "no".[10]

Almost immediately after the signing of the Treaty, relations between Mussolini and the Church soured again. Mussolini "referred to Catholicism as, in origin, a minor sect that had spread beyond Historical Palestine only because grafted onto the organization of the Roman empire."[11] After the concordat, "he confiscated more issues of Catholic newspapers in the next three months than in the previous seven years."[11] Mussolini reportedly came close to being excommunicated from the Church around this time.[11]

In 1938, the Italian Racial Laws and Manifesto of Race were promulgated by the fascist regime to persecute Italian Jews[12] as well as Protestant Christians,[8][13][14][15] especially Evangelicals and Pentecostals.[13][14][15] Thousands of Italian Jews and a small number of Protestants died in the Nazi concentration camps.[12][15]

Despite Mussolini's close alliance with Hitler's Germany, Italy did not fully adopt Nazism's genocidal ideology towards the Jews. The Nazis were frustrated by the Italian authorities' refusal to co-operate in roundups of Jews, and no Jews were deported prior to the formation of the Italian Social Republic following the Armistice of Cassibile.[16] In the Italian-occupied Independent State of Croatia, German envoy Siegfried Kasche advised Berlin that Italian forces had "apparently been influenced" by Vatican opposition to German anti-Semitism.[17] As anti-Axis feeling grew in Italy, the use of Vatican Radio to broadcast papal disapproval of race murder and anti-Semitism angered the Nazis.[18] When Mussolini and his regime were overthrown in July 1943, the Germans moved to occupy Italy and commenced a roundup of Jews.

Around 4% of Resistance forces were formally Catholic organisations, but Catholics dominated other "independent groups" such as the Fiamme Verdi and Osoppo partisans, and there were also Catholic militants in the Garibaldi Brigades, such as Benigno Zaccagnini, who later served as a prominent Christian Democrat politician.[19] In Northern Italy, tensions between Catholics and communists in the movement led Catholics to form the Fiamme Verdi as a separate brigade of Christian Democrats.[20] After the war, ideological divisions between former partisans re-emerged, becoming a hallmark of post-war Italian politics.[21][22]

Remove ads

Examples of clerical fascism

Summarize
Perspective
Thumb
Roman Catholic priest Jozef Tiso (right), who was president of the Slovak Republic, a client state of Nazi Germany
Thumb
Catholic prelates led by Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac at the funeral of Marko Došen, one of the senior Ustaše leaders, in September 1944
Thumb
Lapua Movement members praying, Vihtori Kosola in the middle.
Thumb
Francoist minister Esteban Bilbao (left) and Catholic archbishop Enrique Pla y Deniel (center) doing the Fascist salute in Toledo Cathedral, Spain, March 1942.

Examples of political movements which incorporate certain elements of clerical fascism into their ideologies include:

The National Union in Portugal led by Prime Ministers António de Oliveira Salazar and Marcelo Caetano is not considered Fascist by historians such as Stanley G. Payne, Thomas Gerard Gallagher, Juan José Linz, António Costa Pinto, Roger Griffin, Robert Paxton and Howard J. Wiarda, though it is considered Fascist by historians such as Manuel de Lucena, Jorge Pais de Sousa, Manuel Loff, and Hermínio Martins.[26][27][28][29] One of Salazar's actions was to ban the National Syndicalists/Fascists. Salazar distanced himself from fascism and Nazism, which he criticized as a "pagan Caesarism" that did not recognise either legal or moral limits.[30]

Likewise, the Fatherland Front in Austria led by Austrian Catholic Chancellors Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg is often not regarded as a fully fascist party. It has been called semi-Fascist and even imitation Fascist. Dollfuss was murdered by the Nazis, shot in his office by the SS and left to bleed to death. Initially, his regime received support from Fascist Italy, which formed the Stresa Front with the United Kingdom and France.[31]

Use of the term

Scholars who accept the use of the term clerical fascism debate about which of the listed examples should be dubbed "clerical fascist", with the Ustaše being the most widely included example. In the examples which are cited above, the degree of official Catholic support and the degree of clerical influence over lawmaking and government both vary. Moreover, several authors reject the concept of a clerical fascist régime, arguing that an entire fascist régime does not become "clerical" if elements of the clergy support it, while others are not prepared to use the term "clerical fascism" outside the context of what they call the fascist epoch, between the ends of the two world wars (1918–1945).[32]

Some scholars consider certain contemporary movements forms of clerical fascism, such as Christian Identity and Christian Reconstructionism in the United States;[33] "the most virulent form" of Islamic fundamentalism,[34] Islamism;[35] and Hindutva in India.[33]

The political theorist Roger Griffin warns against the "hyperinflation of clerical fascism".[36] According to Griffin, the use of the term "clerical fascism" should be limited to "the peculiar forms of politics that arise when religious clerics and professional theologians are drawn either into collusion with the secular ideology of fascism (an occurrence particularly common in interwar Europe); or, more rarely, manage to mix a theologically illicit cocktail of deeply held religious beliefs with a fascist commitment to saving the nation or race from decadence or collapse".[37] Griffin adds that "clerical fascism" "should never be used to characterize a political movement or a regime in its entirety, since it can at most be a faction within fascism", while he defines fascism as "a revolutionary, secular variant of ultranationalism bent on the total rebirth of society through human agency".[38]

In the case of the Slovak State, some scholars have rejected the use of the term clerical fascism as a label for the regime and they have particularly rejected the use of the term clerical fascist as a label for Jozef Tiso.[39]

Remove ads

See also

References

Bibliography

Loading related searches...

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Remove ads
Remove ads