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The Dossettiani and the Concept of the Secular State in the Constitutional Debates: 1946–7

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Gino Bedani
Gino Bedani*
Affiliation:
Department of Italian, University of Wales Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK. E-mail G.L.C.Bedani@swansea.ac.uk
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Summary

It is now generally accepted that the members of the Constituent Assembly who were charged with drafting the Constitution concentrated their efforts on formulating the ideals to be expressed in it at the expense of the institutional arrangements of the new Republic. This has generally been viewed as resulting from a combination of two factors: their weak grasp of the liberal principles underpinning liberal parliamentary democracy, and a concomitant error of judgement in assuming that sufficient stress on the ideals of the Constitution would guarantee the basis of a healthy democracy. This article sets out to examine the input of the most influential Catholic group, the dossettiani, and argues, against the error of judgement thesis, that in fact their rejection of the concept of the secular state was a more fundamental denial of important principles of a pluralist democracy than has usually been supposed. The article also places their contribution within the context of the Church's aim to create a ‘Christian civilization’, and further suggests that the model of Catholic Action which inspired its collateral vision of Catholic forces was corrosive of a pluralist vision of correct institutional arrangements. The article ends by suggesting that these factors may have weighed more heavily on subsequent distortions of Italian democracy than has so far been supposed.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , 1996 , pp. 3 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

∗ For an explanation of terms marked with an asterisk please refer to the preceding glossary.Google Scholar

1 ‘Il fantasma della costituente’, la Repubblica, 15 February 1996, p. 4.Google Scholar

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3 See Scoppola, P., La repubblica dei partiti, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1991, pp. 161–207.Google Scholar

4 In this respect, the relatively more secular Sturzian tradition represented by the Christian Democrat leader De Gasperi was not so attuned to developments in Catholic social teaching, and was largely marginalized among Catholic intellectuals by the late 1930s. For more detailed accounts of these developments see Pombeni, P., Il gruppo dossettiano e la fondazione della democrazia italiana (1938–1948), Il Mulino, Bologna, 1979, pp. 152ff, and Giovagnoli, A., La cultura democristiana. Tra chiesa cattolica e identità italiana 1918–1948, Laterza, Bari-Rome, 1991, pp. 211ff. See also Scoppola's illuminating observations in La ‘nuova cristianità’ perduta, Edizioni Studium, Rome, 1986, pp. 45–46.Google Scholar

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10 The membership of Catholic Action grew from 2,156,000 in 1938 to 2,774,719 in 1941.Google Scholar

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20 In this regard the papal Christmas radio messages of 1942 and 1944 were interpreted by the dossettiani as confirmation of the view of democracy ‘as the formal system of state sanctioned by natural law’, Pombeni, , Il gruppo dossettiano e la fondazione della democrazia italiana, p. 123. See Dossetti's ‘Il problema della democrazia’ in Giuseppe Dossetti, Costituzione e Resistenza, Sapere 2000, Rome, 1995, pp. 63–68, written in 1945, where he outlines his conception of ‘a true democracy based on the unchanging principles of natural law and revealed truths’ (p. 68). For an analysis of the factors which contributed to giving the dossettiani a unique position of influence on the Catholic side see Moro, R., ‘I movimenti intellettuali cattolici’, pp. 166ff. Google Scholar

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23 La Costituzione della Repubblica nei lavori preparatori, I, p. 322–323.Google Scholar

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25 Ibid., I, p. 318.Google Scholar

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28 See, for example, Dossetti's arguments (La Costituzione della Repubblica nei lavori preparatori, VI, pp. 633–634), and those of La Pira (Ibid., p. 655 and Ibid., I, p. 315) against their interlocutors from the ‘area laica’∗. The integration of democracy into the new giusnaturalismo led Moro to present ‘the family […] as a limit on the state, not in the normal sense of the word, but as the guarantee of democracy itself (p. 635).Google Scholar

29 Ibid., VI, pp. 375 and 655–660.Google Scholar

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32 Ibid., I, p. 549.Google Scholar

33 La Pira, , ibid., VI, p. 147.Google Scholar

34 Dossetti, , Costituzione e Resistenza, p. 116.Google Scholar

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36 La Costituzione della Repubblica nei lavori preparatori, VI, p. 805.Google Scholar

37 Ibid.Google Scholar

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39 Fanfani, A., ‘Storia dei primi tre articoli della Costituzione’, Humanitas, a.I, 1947, pp. 422–425 (p. 425).Google Scholar

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44 Dossetti, , La Costituzione della Repubblica nei lavori preparatori, I, p. 551. See also La Pira, , ibid., VI, pp. 720–721. This refers to the agreement to include the Lateran Pacts in the Constitution.Google Scholar

45 La Pira, , ibid., I, p. 322.Google Scholar

46 Ibid., p. 323.Google Scholar

47 Moro, , ibid., VI, p. 147.Google Scholar

48 Ibid., p. 792.Google Scholar

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51 There were, however, for a brief period, some openings in this direction in the Osservatore Romano between 1943 and 1946, which included discussion among Catholics of the difference between the concepts of ‘laicità’ and ‘laicismo’. But such openings were unrepresentative and overshadowed by the insistence on the rejection of secularization, the first cause of the crisis of civilization, and on the affirmation of religion as providing the ‘most important elements of public life’. Freedom of conscience, moreover, was clearly defined as approving of tolerance towards individuals but decisively not ‘the coexistence of different beliefs’. See Long, G., Alle origini del pluralismo confessionale. Il dibattito sulla libertà religiosa nell'età della Costituente, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1990, pp. 224–225.Google Scholar

52 Moro, , Al di là della politica, p. 203.Google Scholar

53 Fanfani, A., ‘Prospettive di sviluppo democratico’, in Malgeri, F. (ed.), Storia della Democrazia Cristiana, 3 vols, Edizioni Cinque Lune, Rome, 1987–88, m, pp. 427–472 (p. 461).Google Scholar

54 See his articles, written in 1955, now contained in Sturzo, L., Politica di questi anni. Consensi e critiche (dal gennaio 1954 al dicembre 1956), Zanichelli, Bologna, 1968, especially pp. 198–203 and 259.Google Scholar

55 See Fontana, S., Il destino politico dei cattolici, Mondadori, Milan, 1995, pp. 26ff, where the author discusses the corrosive influence of Dossetti in relation to the notion of the ‘neutral’ state, and Fanfani's role, after De Gasperi's death, in transporting ‘at the level of organization and statutes the Dossettian idea of the party’ into the service of ‘the historical project of a new Christianity’ (p. 27).Google Scholar