Christian Democracy - Essay Example

Running Head: CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY Christian Democracy [The [The of the Christian Democracy Introduction Democracy is at its root an attempt by people to satisfy two seemingly contradictory (if not contradictory then at least mismatched) emotions. The first is a desire to be led. Each of us desire within our soul to have someone lead us when times get rocky. We often do not want the responsibilities that come with managing a country. We, much like a good parent who cannot tell one child that he/she loves one more than the other cannot bring ourselves to destroy either desire that burns within us, so we strive to satisfy both at once. We devise a sole, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. We combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty. Christian Democracy had, for all intents and purposes, begun with the immediate pre-war period. Thus, unlike political movements like socialism, or even liberalism, Christian Democracy became an important political force before it had matured ideologically. As a result, the development of its ideology was inhibited by the pressures of political responsibility. The Italian Christian Democratic Party, for example, was founded in 1943 and came to power in 1948. It was never able to develop its autonomous self separately from a close and intimate relationship with the state. Christian Democracy The Christian Democratic phenomenon raises several puzzles: the contradiction between these parties' religious roots and their enduring success in the heart of one of the most secular social environments in the world, western Europe; the success of religion in structuring impressively successful political parties at a time of general secularization and decline of the institutional power of the church; the translation of religion, a supposedly premodern cleavage, into mass parties, the modern political weapon par excellence; the emergence of confessional parties in some countries but not in others; the domination (and often monopolization) of the bourgeois political space by confessional parties; the integration into liberal democratic regimes of initially aliberal social movements; and the self-promoted secularization of these parties with the simultaneous retention of a religious label and traces of a confessional identity. Solving these puzzles requires a theory of Christian Democracy. Such a theory should specify the conditions under which parties that appeal to voters on religious grounds form and succeed; account for the failure of such parties to emerge in seemingly favourable environments; and determine the impact of confessional parties on the politics of the societies in which they operate and the ways in which they shape the relationship of religion and politics. (Stathis, p.2) European Scenario One of the initial problems that European Christian Democratic leaders had to overcome was the traditional reluctance of many devout Catholics to get involved in politics. After the unification of Italy by a liberal, anticlerical movement in 1870, the popes exhorted their followers to stay aloof from politics. At the time of the virulently anti-Catholic phase of the French Revolution, many French Catholics adopted similar positions of separation and intransigence. Both the French Revolution and the Italian unification were accompanied by substantial increases in state power. This meant significantly less respect for traditional ecclesiastical prerogatives. The Church and many faithful Catholics reacted to this state usurpation by attempting to withdraw from the political system and withholding their cooperation. This attitude split the Catholic faithful, with some believers maintaining that they ought to participate in politics, even under a liberal, anticlerical state, to "Christianize" the political process. (Einaudi, 187-90) By the beginning of the twentieth century, the official Church position toward the liberal state had softened somewhat. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII lifted a long-standing ban on political activity by Italians. Leo evidently came to agree with those Catholics who pressed for a Catholic presence in politics. He also concluded that, as dangerous and rapacious as the liberal state was, it was less threatening than Marxism and socialism. The central theme of Christian Democracy is the determination to reconcile the values and traditions of premodern society with the demands of the twentieth century. Christian Democrats are particularly determined to save traditional ideas of the importance of the family, the inviolability of private property, and the value of social diversity. A related theme is the determination to redirect the political system toward more human ends. Human beings must be primary in the state individual relationship. The state must respond to man to be a just state. Making this happen in the context of the modern world is one of the challenges of Christian Democracy. For many Christian Democrats, the persistent conflict between the Church and state, this absorbs so much energy that other concerns are never addressed, has denied to Christians their proper role in the political system. Thus a third theme of Christian Democracy is its determination to resolve this conflict and to restore to the political sphere criteria of action and values that had been discarded because of the Church/state conflict. Thus many Christian Democratic theorists stressed their independence from the official Church and sought to "resolve" the Church/state conflict by ignoring it. The existence of a Christian Democratic party in a political system, with no official connection to the Church, would force the secular authorities to address other important Christian concerns. Friction between the Church and various Christian Democratic parties would become the norm, although with important differences of degree. Conservative politicians resisted the formation of confessional parties. Their alliance with the church was not intended to be a permanent and structural association. Political issues come and go, and religion was no exception. Conservatives expected instead to retain the loyalty of Catholics and absorb them as individual voters. They rejected the use of confessional labels to avoid becoming identified with religion and the church and described themselves as Conservatives. (Stathis, 58) As the twentieth century progressed, Christian Democracy came to mean organized political action by Catholics and their allies, acting in a self-consciously Catholic manner, within a democratic political framework. Maritain gave the movement an even simpler definition when he wrote that Christian Democrats were simply Christians who were serious about their faith. Most European Christian Democratic parties are really coalitions of a number of different political tendencies. Disagreements over exactly what it meant to be a politically committed Christian led to great ideological diversity among Christian Democrats. The grave situation of post-war Europe, including as it did a strong communist electoral challenge, also encouraged diversity. Christian Democrats realized that a wider ideological straddle yielded a broader electoral base, especially in the exhausted world of post-war Europe. Imprecise ideology also allowed the Christian Democratic parties to display slightly different faces, depending on the political needs of the moment. In the words of one analyst, Christian Democrats maintain their electoral base by acting like an "ideological chameleon." (Irving, 54) In the Italian party, ideological diversity became official, with different factions, known as correnti, acknowledged in the party bureaucracy. This willingness to bend ideology to fit immediate political goals would become more pronounced. Its early success, therefore, distorted Christian Democracy. Its entry into power, and its determination to remain in power in Italy and to remain influential in other European states, forbade the sort of incremental ideological development that leads to greater cohesion and coherence. In many cases, it seemed that Christian Democracy could be defined as that philosophy most likely to appeal to large numbers of voters. Confessional parties were not the historically predetermined and automatic reflection of pre-existing identities and conflicts, nor were they the emanation of structural, economic, or political modernization. They were, instead, a contingent outcome of the struggle among various organizations facing a multitude of challenges under tight constraints. Neither the Catholic church nor the various conservative factions desired or planned this outcome. Confessional parties emerged despite the preferences and intentions of both actors as a by-product of the church's response to Liberal anticlerical attacks. This response produced new collective entities, mass Catholic organizations, and new individual political actors, Catholic activists. The spectacular and surprising electoral successes of the temporary coalitions of church and Conservative parties turned these new actors into significant political players, permanently and structurally associated with both the religious cleavage and the nonsocialist political space. These parties radically transformed the existing categories of social and political action. Through its quick normalization, the association of religion and politics under the particular form of confessional parties established itself in the minds of collective actors and citizens alike as the obvious state of political affairs and the obvious category of political thought and action. (Stathis, 257) Conclusion A political analyst can hardly express shock and indignation when a political party acts like a political party. Most political parties act differently when they exercise power and seek to use their power to perpetuate themselves. Neither the French nor the Italian Christian Democratic parties do much to distinguish themselves from their more secular counterparts. Yet this is exactly the point. The Christian Democrats, at least at the beginning, had a divine calling. They aimed at nothing less than an approximation of the Kingdom of God on Earth. To be reduced to the tawdriness of buying votes through pandering and clientism is a different matter for Christian Democrats than it is for other, less committed parties. Only by staking out a unique area of the political spectrum can Christian Democracy hope for sustained success. The area of greatest promise, and the one most consistent with the original principles of Christian Democracy, is a position of skepticism with regard to state power. To express serious doubts about the efficacy of state interference would indeed risk alienating the minority of voters who are dependent upon the state, but it would energize and mobilize the great majority of voters who wish nothing more from the state than to be left alone. Thus, there is no tension between ideological consistency and electoral pragmatism. Furthermore, holding a "moderate" position on extending state power, besides being logically inconsistent, is also bound to be unproductive electorally. Once a party accepts the premise that state intervention makes an economy work better than private enterprise, it inevitably gets into a bidding war with other statist parties. A "mod erate" statist party cannot win such a war, since immoderate statists can always promise more state intervention than the Christian Democrats can accept. (Mario, 4-5) This makes Christian Democrats particularly vulnerable in any electoral or philosophical struggle with Socialists or Communists. Latin American Christian Democratic parties have also succumbed to the statist temptation, and have paid a price in electoral success and originality. They have also left themselves vulnerable to the challenge of more radical statist movements, including Liberation Theology, which not only seeks to outdo their statism, but also their Christianity. In the demand for freedom of association the left-wing congregations generally appealed to the independence and structure of the early Christian churches as the model. In doing this they aimed to recover the idea of the church as the covenanted people of God (and, as we have seen, Roger Williams extended the concept to that of a civil covenant). They set themselves in opposition to the coordination of the hierarchical political-ecclesiastical hierarchies, the church-state establishment. In short, they broke away from the Constantinian order: they called for a separation of church and state and for a church of congregational polity. Under congregational polity these churches aimed to be self-governing, self-supporting groups in which every member had the right and responsibility to participate in the shaping of policy--a radical dispersion of power. They therefore rejected the coercive taxation that supported the established church. Believers alone were depended upon for the financial support. One might say that the passing of the collection plate became almost a sacrament, as did the reading of the Bible in public and private. It has often been observed that this latter practice brought about a high degree of literacy. Accordingly, this whole movement is often referred to as "radical laicism." In this spirit one of my professors in theological school used to remind us "that Jesus was not a parson." In these congregational churches the covenant was "personalized" by placing responsibility upon the individual conscience and by affirming the priesthood of all believers. In accord with this view, congregational polity incorporated the principle of separation of powers into the structure of the congregation. The clergy were ordained by the congregation and, of course, were not under the aegis of apostolic succession; they were given restricted powers, other powers being reserved for the laity (in the church meeting). Among the Quakers the congregation had the obligation to protect and listen to minorities within the congregation, an anticipation of the idea of loyal opposition in government. This demand for respect for minorities was related to a general characteristic of these independent congregations, the rule of Scripture as known through the witness of the Holy Spirit. They held that Christ demanded of them a church in which the Spirit is "free to blow where it listeth and make all things new." Hence, the term "radical laicism" is scarcely adequate as a description. Here again we encounter an intermediary factor, a church in which the authority is pneumatocratic. (James, 210-14) In principle the authority was theonomous and charismatic, though one readily finds also a biblicist literalism. To be sure, some of the groups to the left of the independent congregations gave rise to wilding growths. John Dennis, a critic in the eighteenth century commenting on the "enthusiasts" in these groups, said, "Where one is inspired, ten thousand will be demented." The basic conviction in the independent congregations, however, was that the Holy Spirit, properly listened to, engenders consensus. Another feature of congregational polity should be noted here. The dispersion of power was so radical and the authority of the local congregation was so much stressed that one may speak of the protest against the centralization of power as a drive toward localism, the geographical localism of scattered independent congregations. The question as to the relationship between congregations was soon raised, and gave rise to attempts at non-hierarchical "connectionalism," a search for a broad, if loose, unity in the midst of variety. (Michael, 91-108) It is a striking fact that this move toward localism found a parallel in the concurrent protest of small businessmen against the concentration of power and against special privileges in the chartered monopolies granted by the crown. Indeed, it is likely that some members of the independent congregations were also small businessmen. Nonconformity was to become the haven of the emerging middle class. A similar parallel can be found with the emergence of democratic political thought in these circles. Some historians have suggested that the idea of political democracy was born in part as a consequence of analogy drawn from congregational polity. References Einaudi Mario, and Goguel Franois. Christian Democracy in Italy and France. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1952. 187-90 Irving, R. E. M. "Christian Democracy in Post-War Europe: Conservatism Writ Large or Distinctive Political Phenomenon" Western European Politics, 2, 1 ( 1979): 54. Mario Einaudi and Franois Goguel, Christian Democracy in Italy and France (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1952), 4-5. Stathis N.Kalyvas, The Rise of Chritian Democracy In Europe, Cornell 1996.) p.2, 58, 257. James Hastings Nichols, Democracy and the Churches (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1951), 210-14 Michael Novak, "The Meaning of 'Church' in Anabaptism and Roman Catholicism: Past and Present," in D. B. Robertson, ed., Voluntary Associations: A Study of Groups in Free Societies ( Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1966), pp. 91-108. Read More