EDITORIAL
from issue no. 01/02 - 2006
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Italy, Holy See, USA
What Italian Christian Democracy might be was not easy to explain to the Americans; whereas they had no difficulty understanding the essence of the analogous parties in Germany, in Chile and other countries. In Rome there is the Pope and it wasn’t easy to conceive that a Christian movement could stand apart from that fact
Giulio Andreotti
Pius IX: he was the first Pontiff to set foot on American territory on board the frigate “USS Constitution”, in the picture above taken in the Gulf of Gaeta
For ideological clarification Ciriaco De Mita, Secretary of the CD, organized three roundtables on the theme, with joint Italo-American chairmanship. In New York former President Nixon and myself should have been in the chair. Unfortunately, without knowing it, Party Headquarters in Rome had entrusted the organization to the Public Relations Agency that had previously mounted the campaign against Nixon, forcing him to resign. So the third roundtable was cancelled and I could only, at lunch with Nixon and Haig, sketch in the outlines of a debate that didn’t in fact take place.
In recent times, no longer regarding the Christian Democratic party but on an even deeper matter, one feels the need to help the Americans understand Italy. I am referring to the correspondence they publish echoing the frequent debates on the philosophical – let’s say – position of the Italian State. We can’t impute to them difficulties in understanding when there are disputes and quarrels here back home confusing secularity and secularism. Despite the fact that the Constitution is extremely clear: (art. 7) “The State and the Catholic Church are, each in its own sphere, independent and sovereign. Their relations are regulated by the Lateran Pacts. Changes to the Pacts, approved by both parties, do not require constitutional revision procedure”.
An audience given by Pius XII to our Ambassador in Washington, Alberto Tarchiani, was conclusive in removing the opposition to a military agreement, very widespread
in Catholic circles, and in leading to the approval of the Atlantic Treaty. He explained that only in that way (being militarily stronger than the Soviet Union) was Moscow’s aggressivity to be discouraged and blocked.
The voting of this article (25 March 1947, in the
Constituent Assembly) was meant to put a definitive end to the disputes
linked to the Italian process of unification that lasted for a good number
of decades (after the “Taking of Rome” on 20 September 1870) in
which the Vatican took a stance of long-lasting protest, with the
invitation to Catholics not to participate in public life (“neither
elected nor electors”).
Civic hostility toward the Church is due prevalently, but not only, to this historical cause. And if the great philosopher Benedetto Croce is often quoted for his essay “Why we cannot not call ourselves Christians”, it is also true that in his diary Croce himself inveighed against the “wretched priests” who politically opposed the liberals.
Recently not a few politicians have attacked the so-called Italian Catholic world, accusing it of encroachment because it steadfastly takes sides to defend the right to life. Unfortunately there is no agreement – in Italy and elsewhere – between scientific progress and philosophico-moral positions. If, in fact, science now claims that there is life from the moment of procreation, abortion that obliterates that life should be banned. To support it gains you the invective of Church people. I cite by analogy also the topic of the family that is based on marriage. Already divorce and unmarried couples had given a hard knock to the model of the Constitution. But recently the demand to legalize the unions between homosexuals (in the wake of what the Zapatero Government decided in Spain) is at the center of blatant manipulation by a modernism that runs counter to all the traditional rules.
Another matter are the quarrels about schools, great confusion being created by classing them only in two categories: State school and private school. A distinction should be made between the Catholic school – and by analogy the Jewish high schools also – and the non-State institutes created solely for commercial purposes.
However the Catholic school – and it should so claim – played a great historical role in the training of the Italians. When the State didn’t have – and refused to have – public institutes of professional training, in Piedmont the schools of arts and crafts were created by the Salesians and the Giuseppines. And it is no accident that industrial Italy arose in the North.
Cardinal Francis Spellman, Archbishop of New York, with Pius XII.
But I also want to add a historical memory, that I document in my Diary for 1949, now at the printers. An audience given by Pius XII to our Ambassador in Washington, Alberto Tarchiani, was conclusive in removing the opposition to a military agreement, very widespread in Catholic circles, and in leading to the approval of the Atlantic Treaty. He explained that only in that way (being militarily stronger than the Soviet Union) was Moscow’s aggressivity to be discouraged and blocked.
That it was a peace agreement nobody can now deny. The Soviet Union collapsed without NATO having to fire a single shot.
The discourse should be expanded, but for the moment I limit myself to these indications in order to prevent people abroad remaining in thrall to essential disinformation on the attitude of Italy and, specifically, of Italian Catholics.
