Catholic Action in Italy: The Sociology of a Sponsored Organization 0804702926, 9780804702928

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Catholic Action in Italy

GIANFRANCO POGGI

Catholic Action in Italy The Sociology of a Sponsored Organization

1967 STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

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A substantial part of this work, including the basic argument and historical data, appeared in Italy in 1963 under the title II clero di riserva.

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 1967 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America L.C. 66-22985

To Pat

Acknowledgments

Most of the empirical material that this study is based on was produced by a research project conducted by Professor Joseph LaPalombara of Michigan State University (now of Yale Uni¬ versity), and sponsored by the Social Science Research Council. I took part in the project as a research assistant, and later, thanks to a grant from the same council, I was able to spend a few months at Michigan analyzing the material I had collected while working on Italian Catholic Action, as well as other pertinent data that had been collected by Professor LaPalombara himself (especially through extensive, unstructured interviews). I am thankful to him both for allowing me to use such material and for encouraging me to complete the dissertation on which this study is based. Thanks are due also to Professors Seymour M. Lipset and Wil¬ liam Kornhauser of the University of California at Berkeley, from whose advice and criticism I benefited while working on that dis¬ sertation. My greatest debt on the professional level is to Professor Juan Linz of Columbia University. This would be a much better study than it is if I had been able to follow through at least half of the valuable leads in Professor Linz’s detailed comments on previous drafts. As it now stands, it has greatly benefited from the intelli¬ gent care devoted to the manuscript by its editor, Marlene Charyn of Stanford University Press.

viii

Acknowledgments

Otherwise my greatest debt is to my wife, who has been in¬ volved in the production of various versions of this study, and when she could not help saying how much she hated it always managed to make it sound like a joke. However, her true feelings stand revealed in the fact that no matter how much the study owes to her she still refuses to take any responsibility for it. G. P.

Contents

Abbreviations Introduction

xi xiii

part i The Church’s Appeal to the Layman and the

Sponsorship Relation 1 The Church in the Contemporary West 2 The Development of ACI 3 A Descriptive Introduction to ACI 4 The Sponsorship Relation

3 14 30 45

part ii The Impact of the Requirement of Control on

ACI’s Structure 5 The Authority Structure in ACI

6 The Lay Leaders 7 The Ecclesiastical Assistants 8 The Strategic Structuring of the Organization

65 7^ 98 109

part hi The Impact of the Requirement of Faithfulness on

ACI’s Culture 9 The Ideological Creed 10 The Youth Branches and Everyday Values 11 The Ambiguity of ACI’s Goal

127 138 162

Contents

X

part iv

Aspects of ACI’s Policy After the War (1945-1958)

12 Organizational Expansion

177

13 Organizational Centralization

190

14 Political Action

216

15 “The Conquest of the Far Ones” and the “Missionary Base”

220

16 The Main Criticisms of the Gedda Line: A Review

231

Conclusion: In the World but not Of the World?

239

Notes

251

Bibliography

271

Index

275

Abbreviations

ACEC

ACI

Associazione Cattolica Esercenti Cinematografici Catholic Association of Movie-House Managers Azione Cattolica Italiana Italian Catholic Action

ACJF

Association Catholique de la Jeunesse Fran^aise Catholic Association of French Youth

ACLI

Associazioni Cristiane Lavoratori Italiani Christian Associations of Italian Workers

AGIS

Associazione Generale Italiana dello Spettacolo General Italian Association of Performing Arts

ASCI

Associazione Scautistica Cattolica Italiana Italian Catholic Boy-Scout Association

CA CCC

Catholic Action Centro Cattolico Cinematografico Catholic Film Center

CGIL

Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro General Confederation of Italian Labor

CISL

Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori Italian Confederation of Workers’ Unions

Abbreviations

xii

CSI

Centro Sportivo Italiano

Italian Sports Center CTG

Centro Turistico Giovanile

Youth Tourism Center FARI

Federazione Attività Ricreative Italiane

Italian Federation for Recreational Activities FUCI

Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana

Italian Federation of Catholic University Students GF

Gioventù Femminile (di Azione Cattolica)

Young Women of Catholic Action GIAC

Gioventù Italiana di Azione Cattolica

Italian Catholic Action Youth (Young Men’s Branch) GIOC

Gioventù Italiana Operaia Cattolica

Italian Catholic Working Youth JOC

Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne

Young Christian Workers MSI

Movimento Sociale Italiano

Italian Social Movement PPI

Partito Popolare Italiano

Italian Popular Party SSRC UCID

Social Science Research Council Union Cattolica Imprenditori e Dirigenti

Catholic Organization of Businessmen and Managers UCIIM

Unione Cattolica Italiana Insegnanti Medi

Italian Catholic Union of Secondary School Teachers UDACI

Unione Donne d’Azione Cattolica

Women’s Branch of Catholic Action

Introduction

This study deals with the largest Roman Catholic laymen’s or¬ ganization in Italy, and one of the largest in the world, Azione Cattolica Italiana (Italian Catholic Action, hereafter ACI).1 It draws most of its data from a research project on Italian pressure groups, conducted with my assistance in 1957 and 1958. The year 1958 must be taken as the culmination of the phase of ACI history that I consider, while the point of origin of this phase lies in the last war years, 1944 and 1945. The last year of Pius XII’s pontifi¬ cate was, of course, 1958, and his figure overshadows this whole period of ACI’s history; his general policy accounts ultimately for many features of ACI’s life that are examined and criticized in this book. It might be surmised that ACI entered a vastly different phase with the succession of John XXIII to Peter’s chair. I have not sought to trace the impact of that momentous event on ACI, al¬ though I have occasionally acknowledged that John’s policies may have modified the terms in which I pose the wider problem of the relationship between the Church and the contemporary world. I have not sought to determine if and how these modifica¬ tions (to the extent that they have actually taken place, and more important, to the extent that they are going to persist) have af¬ fected Catholic Action in general, or ACI in particular. There are, in fact, some signs that ACI reacted rather sluggishly to the

XIV

Introduction

considerable novelty of John’s policies, as well as some signs that on the whole ACI seemed to suffer rather than prosper under his pontificate. Both indications are consistent with my underlying thesis that there is a necessary correspondence between a “closed” Church and a strong Catholic Action (where, as I shall argue at length, “strong” does not mean “competent”).2 At any rate, for most purposes I have considered ACI only during the latter twothirds of Pius XII’s pontificate. This does not mean that my study is a historical study. Al¬ though there are two “historical” chapters in Part 1, and episodes of ACI’s recent history are discussed elsewhere, such discussions are exclusively meant to prepare the ground for a sociological analysis of the organization. The sociological analysis itself, al¬ though it draws the bulk of its data from a study of pressure poli¬ tics, does not develop in the framework of political sociology; I am not concerned with ACI’s activity as a pressure group.3 Also, mine is not, properly speaking, a study in religious sociology, although it deals with a religious, evangelizing organization. In establishing the parameters of the analysis, I make use of one of the most important—and most controversial—hypotheses in the literature on religious sociology, the “secularization hypothesis.”4 But the existence of a process of secularization is, in fact, assumed here, not argued ex novo. The proper framework of my analysis is organizational sociol¬ ogy. Some reasons for the choice of this framework will be men¬ tioned in Chapter 4. Here I shall simply suggest that this study is not meant to blaze new trails in organizational sociology. It does not aim to generate new insights applicable to all organiza¬ tions or to classes of them, but rather to utilize existing insights in the examination of one particular organization; it purports to be mainly analytical. To employ a well-established distinction, it emphatically adopts a sociological, not a sociographic, perspec¬ tive. However, for reasons which will also be taken up later, I have raised certain questions that are not the most commonly treated in organizational sociology; I am interested not so much in ACI’s internal problems as in some problems attendant upon its relationships with the Church on the one hand and with the general social environment on the other. In dealing with this

Introduction

XV

order of problems I have been led to develop at length a tentative new construct, the “sponsorship relation” existing between the Church and ACI, and to draw from a pioneering work by Selznick some features of a model that emphasizes an organization’s external commitments and its competence for fulfilling them. My basic analytical concern is to discover to what extent and in what manner the Church-ACI relationship affects the relation¬ ship between ACI and the wider society.

'

’

PART I

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman and the Sponsorship Relation

Chapter one

The Church in the Contemporary West

“The opposition between political and religious charisma is pri¬ meval.”* Thus Max Weber begins a discussion of the relation¬ ship of religious and political power in which he shows that the contrast between the two is not only very ancient, but also nearly universal.1 It is in the post-Classical West, however, that the con¬ trast has developed most fully and continuously. Here the course taken by Christianity separated religious allegiance from civil allegiance by directing the former toward a Church rather than toward the City or the Empire.2 By the same token, the original contrast between two forms of charisma became embodied in the tension between two institutions, two polities.3 Such a contrast could only be terminated by one polity asserting its superiority over the other. In modern Western history, however, this has only happened in a few imperfect and unstable instances, which are exceptions. Weber remarks that as a rule, even within those exceptions, the occidental hierocracyf has lived in a state of tension with the political authority, and has represented the specific factor that has set a limit to the state’s power, in contrast to the purely caesaropapist or purely theocratic regimes of the ancient West and of the Orient.4 * Weber uses “charisma” here in a wider sense than in his well-known discussion of types of domination. •j- Weber uses the term “hierocracy” to designate not only a certain type of Church-State relationship, but also the Church itself, viewed as a polity.

4

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

On the other hand, although this state of tension often led to se¬ rious crises, it did not usually amount to a sustained conflict. The tendency was instead for the powers to seek accommodation and transform the tension into a kind of mutual agreement. As Weber puts it, “the rule is the compromise of the two powers.”5 In our time, the contrast between political and religious insti¬ tutions has assumed a unique form—that of a thoroughgoing secularization of social life in general, its political side included.6 I will merely mention some of the major intellectual and institu¬ tional aspects of this process. One of its intellectual aspects is the emergence of a theory and a practice specifically pertaining to the nature and use of political power.7 Another is the formation of a natural-law doctrine explicitly or implicitly based on the assump¬ tion that whether God exists or not, there is a certain, single, orderly “nature of things.”8 Perhaps the two most important institutional aspects are the growth of modern science, with its typically “disenchanted” view of the world, and the development of capitalism and the later industrial economies, which Weber especially emphasizes. He points out that the “depersonalization of the economic process engendered by the progressive institutionalization of market re¬ lationships” creates an insuperable resistance to the penetration of the religious ethos into the dominant sphere of contemporary social life.9 The emergence of constitutional democracy also threatens the churches because it devaluates their role in legiti¬ mizing the existence and the attributes of the State, and (to use Weber’s expression) in “domesticating” the State’s subjects. Mod¬ ern democracy represents a radically new, secular solution, based on the distinction between the civil society and the State, and on new standards of efficiency and concepts of the constitutional order.10 In all these aspects, the process of secularization poses basically the same threat to those vessels of religious charisma, the churches —the threat of “unemployment.” This process thrusts them out of the form and content of contemporary life, and denies them the possibility of influencing, through their ethos, the increasingly complex social contexts which condition modern man’s life.11 As Weber recognized, among the Christian churches only the Catholic Church has proved able to sustain a particularly chal-

The Church in the Contemporary West

5

lenging and serious contest with the political powers.12 More con¬ sistently and intensely than any other denomination, the Catholic Church has asked of the State an explicit and exclusive recogni¬ tion of its existence and its institutional mission. Through this claim the Church has traditionally sought to be identified with the totality of social life without losing its sense of identity or the primacy of its specific religious mission. Historically, the medieval organization of Christendom most nearly approximated the Church’s ideal of the relationship be¬ tween secular and religious power. That situation is depicted by Dansette, a historian of the French Church, as follows: We are in the epoch of St. Louis.... The cathedrals are being built. In Paris, a third of the town is taken up by churches and their annexes, churches built by the enthusiasm of the faithful. Shrines, statues of the Virgin Mary and of saints are posted in the city squares and at the crossroads. Religion is mixed with all the acts of human existence: the rhythm of daily life is marked by prayers. The church dictates to men their duties, even social duties. The knight receives his weapons during a religious ceremony, a kind of sacrament that promises him to the service of God and country. The oath taken by the apprentice who is about to become a master craftsman is a religious oath. The people belong to a set of closed communities—the family, the parish, the town or the village—which they cannot evade, and which concur in strengthening the all-powerful bond of religion. From their cradles to their graves they breathe a Christian atmosphere; their lives evolve in a Christian framework.13 The source of that atmosphere, the cornerstone of that frame¬ work, was the Church. Accordingly, it was the only institution en¬ titled to the benefits of authority, prestige, and wealth, which is¬ sued from the social indispensability of religious charisma. These benefits were considered fundamental if the Church was to carry out its mission. It is thus understandable that even to this day the Catholic Church considers the rupture of the religious unity of the West wrought by the Reformation responsible for secularization.14 In fact, as the Roman Church ceased to be the Church, it entered an entirely new and vastly more difficult phase of its history. The Church itself, however, was not quick to perceive the gravity of the crisis at hand. The calling of the Council of Trent in 1545 was a potentially adequate solution; but it came late. By

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

6

that time the size of the threat had required a principled, outright rejection of all past, present, and future developments of the re¬ form movement. Drawing inspiration from the Council of Trent, the Church renewed its consciousness of being the Church, in the face of all facts to the contrary, and committed itself both to a posture of doctrinal and disciplinary rigidity, and to an aggressive policy of reconquest and defense, which made it all the more nec¬ essary to gain and maintain the political and military support of the dominant social forces.15 This policy was the basis of what became for the next two or three centuries (varying from country to country) the modal ar¬ rangement of the Church’s relation to the political powers, the so-called alliance of throne and altar. Through its intimate rela¬ tion with the absolutist State, the Church was assured a kind of total identification with the society, as well as a measure of con¬ trol over it. The advantage was reciprocal. The State found in Catholicism the most convincing and pervasive support of its legitimacy, the source of its most vital symbols; and in turn, the Church’s officials and institutions were accorded an exalted posi¬ tion. Moreover, the State, by calling itself “Catholic,” identified itself with Catholicism. There were, however, certain inherent disadvantages for the Church. The very intimacy of the connection between the State and the local hierarchy often interfered with the relations be¬ tween the hierarchy in any given country and the Holy See (par¬ ticularly in the case of France and later of Austria). But the pri¬ mary disadvantage, and one usually recognized too late, was that such comfortable arrangements caused the Church to ignore, or to sense only uneasily and uncomprehendingly, the significance of the economic, technological, and intellectual developments that were slowly undercutting its hold on the evolving realities of modern life. It was the French Revolution that most dramatically and most painfully brought home to the Church the import of these devel¬ opments. In the words of the Italian historian Luigi Salvatorelli: The French Revolution led, for the first time in the history of Chris¬ tian Europe, to the complete laicization of the State and of public life. It carried out for the first time since Constantine the complete

The Church in the Contemporary West

7

and total separation of Church and State.... Up to that time the birth of one’s children, their education, marriage, and death, the or¬ ganization of collective life, and the constitution and functioning of political power—this whole set of facts—had remained in the shadow of religion, and indeed of confessional, sacerdotal, hierarchical re¬ ligion. True enough, the foundation of the absolutist state in the six¬ teenth and seventeenth centuries had brought about, much more neatly than in the Middle Ages, a de facto division between the two organisms; but that distinction had not yet become an integral part of the spirit of peoples and governments.16 The French Revolution broke the Church’s organic link with autocratic regimes, the link through which the Church had sus¬ tained its identification with prerevolutionary societies. Further¬ more, with the failure of the post-Napoleonic restoration and the advent of liberalism as the organizing principle of society and the main ideology of the new ruling groups, the Church found itself isolated and cut off from the predominant trends and groups of society. The civil society that had asserted first its independence from the State, then its right to be ultimate master of the State, had matured and had discovered its rights and powers outside the Church, out of the reach of its ethos, its traditions, and its understanding. The bitter truth forced upon the Church in the nineteenth century was that a new world had been built up out¬ side it, or as a French Cardinal put it more recently, that “con¬ temporary life had taken shape outside of Christianity.”17 Faced with the reality of this outside world since the French Revolution, the Church has felt at times the impulse simply to reject, denounce, and condemn it. This reaction found its purest expression in the pontificate of Gregory XVI (1831-46) and in some acts of his successor, Pius IX (1846-78). Indeed, it consti¬ tutes a permanent (although often hidden) strain in the attitudes of all the following popes up to John XXIII. Pius IX’s successors, however, and to some extent Pius IX himself, adopted a different line, which shows their awareness that outright rejection could be suicidal for the Church. Wicked, steeped in inequity as it was, the secular world was yet able to offer inducements to the people, to structure their daily life, to give rewards, to apply sanctions, to attract loyalties. By the same token, it would exert a powerful pull on the Church’s own faithful. Their attachment to the

8

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

Church would be weakened through their immersion in a daily life that was becoming more and more secularized, but that attachment could be utterly severed if the Church did not man¬ age to come to terms with the outside world in some way other than simple rejection and condemnation. Therefore, the Church had to make sure that it would have a certain amount of control over the outside world, and a certain amount of recognition by it. This has been the goal of the mas¬ ter plan followed by Pius IX and his successors, an aim no dif¬ ferent from the aims the Church has always pursued in confront¬ ing the political powers. What is novel is the problem the plan intends to meet—the problem of the Church having to seek con¬ tact with a world foreign to it, which is viewed as basically hostile. Finally, some of the means for achieving this contact are new, and on the whole they display a remarkable resourcefulness. Among the most important of these is the combination of an unrelenting ideological “maximalism” with an extreme realism. This formula allows the Church to use any vestige of its previous total identification with the society, and at the same time it en¬ ables Rome to adjust to every defeat without yielding an inch of doctrinal ground. The Jesuit theory of the “thesis and hy¬ pothesis,” a theory designed to permit the Church to adjust to all possible changes without altering any basic commitments, consti¬ tutes an important attempt to clothe that formula in dignified arguments.18 Diplomacy is another major instrument. The concordat, for instance, is a vehicle for the reciprocal accommodation of claims and granting of favors between a state and the Holy See. This policy was fully developed with varied success particularly by Pius XI.19 Its greatest danger lies in the extent to which it commits the Church to stand by the political force in the country willing to uphold it. This often results in the Church’s supporting a regime that is authoritarian, or conservative, or both. Furthermore, in striving to gain control over the outside world, the Church attempts to develop and modernize its moral doc¬ trine so as to bring it to bear on the ethical problems raised by contemporary life. The typical instruments of this effort are papal encyclicals, especially those called social, and the increasing num-

The Church in the Contemporary West

g

ber of statements by popes and bishops that treat current social problems from the viewpoint of Catholic morals. The intrinsic value of these documents, the validity of their diagnoses, their timeliness, and the adequacy of the solutions they propose are all disputed matters, even among Catholics. Perhaps their real value lies in their supplying the main ideological inspiration, in fact the basic charter, of the various Catholic movements operat¬ ing in many countries.20 Another of the Church’s modern instruments—one that draws its inspiration from those documents—is its policy of acknowl¬ edging some of the values of the contemporary civilization. The Church’s purpose here is to identify itself as a defender of in¬ dividual and social freedoms; but it seems doubtful whether the Church in modern times may rightfully claim to have been com¬ mitted consistently to the preservation of civil rights qua civil rights. According to the Church historian Jemolo, Rome’s deal¬ ings with totalitarian and authoritarian governments, especially in their early phases, suggest that “it would be difficult for the Church to oppose any regime that does not hinder the practice of religion or actually favors it positively. Generally the Church has stood against only the regimes that persecuted it, hindered its teaching, or wanted to interpose themselves between itself and its faithful.”21 More bitterly, the founder of the Italian Communist Party, Antonio Gramsci, in his critical examination of the so-called so¬ cial doctrine of the Church, declares it to be really a “reserve ele¬ ment,” a mere instrumental addition to the Church’s original message. The Church, he writes, is willing to fight only to defend its own particular organizational freedoms (those of the Church as a church, an ecclesiastical establish¬ ment), that is the privileges that it declares to be owed to its divine essence.... Everything else is of relatively minor importance unless it somehow affects the conditions of the Church’s existence. Thus by “despotism” the Church only means the exercise of state power to limit or suppress Church privileges, not much more than that. The Church recognizes any de facto power whatsoever, and is willing to legitimize it provided it does not encroach on those privileges. In¬ deed, if it should be willing to increase those privileges, then the Church will exalt it and declare it providential.22

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

10

In its effort to gain control over the outside world, the hier¬ archy has often taken advantage of some characteristics connected with traditionalism that make the Church a useful instrument for the defense of established interests. When the appearance of cap¬ italism threatened the ancien régime, remarks Weber, the Church saw large numbers of nobles, monarchs, and other traditional power groups “converted” back into the fold. He continues: “The bourgeoisie takes the same road as soon as its own position is threatened by the rise of the working classes. Once capitalism had established itself, the Church at once made a settlement with the bourgeoisie.”23 These frequent alliances between the Church and the powersthat-be should not be interpreted as purely tactical devices. In the first place, as I have implied, they suggest themselves as obvi¬ ous political “translations” of the traditionalism inherent in in¬ stitutionalized religion.24 In the second place, it is a fact that the rise of the new classes has often meant a serious threat for the Church. On the other hand, a strategy of alliance with traditional powers also implies remarkable disadvantages for the Church it¬ self. The threatened social groups generally undergo only super¬ ficial and transitory conversion, and seem to feel for the Church only a somewhat doubtful attachment, which finds its extreme ex¬ pression in Maurras’ “clericalisme sans Dieu.”25 By accepting or encouraging such a development, and by presenting a united front with temporal powers, the Church widens the gulf between itself and the rising classes, and undermines its chances of influ¬ encing them.26 The extent to which these dangers have been per¬ ceived by the Church, the timeliness (or lack of it) with which the Church has reacted to them, and the type of reaction have varied greatly from situation to situation. All these developments may be viewed as essentially concern¬ ing the Church’s relation to external forces—the State, social classes, newly emergent values, and ethical problems. Obviously, another important part of this master plan was the Church’s ef¬ fort to summon and to better deploy its internal resources to¬ ward the goal of self-assertion. There are two chief patterns in the

The Church in the Contemporary West

11

Church’s organizational response to the problems posed by secu¬ larization, patterns that if viewed superficially may appear con¬ tradictory. The first is the remarkably successful effort to con¬ centrate decision-making powers at the top and to vest them specifically in the Holy See, especially in the pope. The internal church movement that led to this development, which was known generally as Ultramontanism, had as its central theme the doc¬ trine of the supreme and universal episcopal mandate of the Roman bishop, and the doctrine of his infallibility.27 The two crowning achievements of this movement were the proclamation of the dogma of papal infallibility by the first Vatican Council in 1870, and the publication of the Canon Code in 1918. In fact, the Canon Code was the disciplinary counterpart of the assertion of the pope’s magisterial supremacy made in 1870. The Code com¬ pleted an internal tightening of the ranks, which made for in¬ creased homogeneity and uniformity of action within the Church, and insured the strict dependence of the whole clerical army on two levels of unified command, the pope and the bishops. The second pattern of the Church’s organizational response to its situation may be called “the appeal to the layman.” Those faithful who are willing are invited by the Church to take per¬ sonal responsibility for its welfare, and to defend and further its mission in the world. Those who respond to the appeal are as¬ signed various tasks, and they are asked to consider themselves for some purposes at the disposal of the Church. Thus, that appeal seems to somehow “dilate” the Church, in contrast to the ten¬ dency to “tighten” it represented by Ultramontanism. Actually, there is continuity rather than contrast between the tightening of hierarchical relations and the appeal to the layman. I shall at¬ tempt to demonstrate this continuity throughout my study. In fact, because of its massive nature, the appeal to the layman amounts to the Church’s sponsoring of large-scale organizations in which and through which the layman is called to actively sup¬ port the Church’s general policy. Though the arrangements vary, the ultimate command over these organizations is in the hands of the two commanding officers of the Church’s hierarchy—the pope at the center, and the bishops locally. Far from being a strategy of decentralization, the appeal to the layman constitutes a call for

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

12

the mobilization of greater forces within a single, consolidated structure. As such, it presupposes an established and authorita¬ tive system of controls never possessed by the Church to such an extent before the first Vatican Council and the publication of the Canon Code. The appeal to the layman has assumed a great variety of orga¬ nizational forms. However, there are three main types of organi¬ zation, which have been present in some countries simulta¬ neously, and which in such situations often overlap.28 I am exclusively concerned in this study with the type that best ex¬ presses the strategy behind the whole appeal to the layman—the Catholic Action organizations. These are characterized by a stricter dependence on the hierarchy (in spite of being generally structured as associations of laymen) and by the more properly religious content of their activity. Ordinarily, the approved mo¬ tivation for joining is the layman’s intention of taking personal responsibility for the Church’s welfare in the world by cooperat¬ ing in its religious mission, by helping the clergy spread the Good Word, and by asserting and defending the truth vested in the Church. In short, he becomes a “lay apostle.” There are also organizations that might be said to comprise the “Catholic movement proper.” These serve varied social needs, but do not (or do not primarily) have strictly understood religious functions. When serving religious needs, they do not place a special stress on them. Rather, their religious inspiration is ex¬ pected to provide a general ideological orientation for their ac¬ tivities, wherever their specific functions may lie (labor, welfare, culture, etc.). These organizations cater to the Catholic com¬ munity at large, and attempt to organize as many of its members as possible. They are generally led and serviced jointly, under various arrangements, by clerical and lay personnel. Here only those laymen in some kind of leadership positions are expected to be motivated by the desire to answer personally the Church’s ap¬ peal to the layman. When they are fully developed in any one country, these organizations become the backbone of what is gen¬ erally called a subculture.29 In some respects, the Catholic political parties may be consid¬ ered another type of organizational expression of the appeal to

The Church in the Contemporary West

13

the layman.80 Indeed, these parties have their main electoral sup¬ port and membership in the Catholic movement proper, and often find a major source of leadership personnel in Catholic Ac¬ tion organizations. However, they generally qualify themselves as nonreligious (especially in their comparatively recent develop¬ ments, that is after World War I); and since they appeal for votes to as large a section of the general population as possible, they often overstep the boundaries of what might be called the Cath¬ olic subculture. At any rate, in general they are not formally de¬ pendent on the hierarchy. Furthermore, many of these parties were formed to contend with national hierarchies that were com¬ mitted to a “restorational” policy, and therefore opposed the idea of a Catholic political organization that would accept and act in the constitutional framework of a democracy. This study is a discussion of the first type of organization, Cath¬ olic Action, as the most typical expression of what I have called the Church’s appeal to the layman. Catholic Action is the only type of organization that the Church does not have in common, at least in anywhere near the same proportions, with the Protes¬ tant denominations. This fact suggests that a close study of one national Catholic Action organization, ACI, may help to bring out more clearly the peculiarity of the Catholic Church’s predica¬ ment in the modern world.

Chapter two

The Development of ACI

The history of ACI, especially in its early phase, is an integral part of a wider historical development, which in the course of the last century has seen the Holy See lead Italian Catholics from a position of defiant rejection of the Italian government to one of identification with it and mastery over it. Thus, it is nearly im¬ possible to treat the history of ACI in isolation from other aspects of the Church’s evolving response to her situation in Italy.* The major historical peculiarity of the Church’s predicament in Italy in the second half of the nineteenth century is that the construction of a unified, liberal State required the forceful de¬ struction of the Papal State. As Aubert, a historian of Pius IX’s pontificate, puts it: The tragedy of Italy and the Holy See in the nineteenth century was this: the two aspirations of the people (to freedom and to indepen¬ dence), which today seem so legitimate, appeared then, to the eyes of the pope and his closest advisers, for a number of reasons incompati¬ ble with the things the Church’s supreme government required for its own spiritual independence.1 It was only natural that when Catholic Action began to develop in Italy (later than in other European countries),2 it should be a * It is not my intention in this chapter to give more than the barest outline of the development of the Italian Catholic movement. Readers of Italian are referred, for further information, to the books by Jemolo, Spadolini, De Rosa, Candeloro! and Scoppola. References to most of these books can be found in the best available account for the English reader: Webster, The Cross and the Fasces.

The Development of ACI

15

movement of opposition, of principled and bitter reaction to the political events of the time. This is quite apparent in the first call to organized action by the Catholics. The appeal was actually sounded by laymen, at a time when the pope and many of the top clergymen felt themselves utterly powerless in the face of the triumphant “revolution.” In 1867 two young men, Mario Fani from Viterbo and Gio¬ vanni Acquaderni from Bologna, founded in Bologna the Società della Gioventù Cattolica Italiana (Society of Italian Catholic Youth). The historical significance of this act lies in the fact that for the first time laymen were initiating an effort to build up a national association for the defense of the Church. This plan superseded both the separate and sporadic previous attempts to base such a group on one of the ancient laymen’s congrega¬ tions, and the more recently instituted small associations of local groups.3 It quickly gained the support of the ecclesiastical au¬ thorities and was soon sanctioned in a papal bull. On the basis of this immediate papal recognition—which makes it legitimate to consider ACI a sponsored organization—the Società gained mo¬ mentum at once. The movement’s interest was initially focused on religious and ideological themes. Its action was meant to be mainly educational and nonpolitical. Nevertheless, it was to function within a frame¬ work dictated to a large extent by political developments. The first major step taken by the Società—the calling of the first Ital¬ ian Catholic Congress, in Venice in 1874—was to acquire a marked political significance. Delegates to the Congress came from asso¬ ciations that had been sprouting among Catholics in various parts of the country, generally under the leadership of titled laymen. The hierarchy’s support was warm and confident; the proceedings were marked by a unanimous emphasis on the need for Catholics to organize on a large scale. The dominant attitude was one of radical opposition to the current political developments in the country. The Opera dei Congressi

The Opera dei Congressi e dei Comitati Cattolici, a loose fed¬ eration of parochial societies of committed laymen, was born at the Venice Congress. The political line of the Opera for a

i6

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

number of years could be characterized by its policy of “organiz¬ ing political dissent on religious grounds.” The men who gained positions of leadership (supported by and in some cases appointed by the Holy See or the hierarchy) belonged mostly to the section of Catholic opinion that was tellingly characterized as intransigenteA

The Opera held its main meetings at the yearly congresses. The meetings were organized by a general standing committee, whose president was appointed by the pope. At the grass roots there were parochial societies controlled by pastors but made up of laymen. Following the model of the Church’s government, regional and diocesan committees were constituted at the intermediate level.6 This ensured the strict dependence of the whole organization on the Church’s hierarchy, a dependence that was, and still is, more necessary for the Church in Italy than in any other country. Later, the Sezioni (Sections), functional organs of the general standingcommittee, were also developed. Each Section was in charge of directing the Congress’s activities and the movement’s efforts in one of five fields—organization, welfare, education, the press, or cultural activities. The Organization of Protest

Especially after 1878, with the beginning of the pontificate of Leo XIII, the Opera’s policy went markedly beyond both the sterile expectation of the “revolution’s” collapse, an expectation that had paralyzed the Vatican for years, and the prevalently re¬ ligious-ideological concerns of the Società della Gioventù. It be¬ came a forceful effort to organize the protest against the state—to build up, outside the reach of secular ideology and official institu¬ tions, an integrated network of organized Catholic groups. The term catholic action as it was used in these years (without capi¬ tal letters) refers, therefore, to a vast number of associated groups connected by the Opera’s parish and diocesan committees, and loosely brought together at the top by their participation in the annual congresses. These groups were especially numerous and large in certain regions of northern Italy. In central Italy their number decreased; and in the south there were even fewer, and they were organizationally weaker as well.

The Development of AC I

^

They catered to all sorts of needs—religious, economic, chari¬ table, recreational. They were unified by the distance they kept from the established legal order, and by the command of absten¬ tion from voting (except in municipal elections). As Jemolo writes: The Catholics tended to stand aside from national life, to make up a mass unto themselves,... to sever connections with any association, even one that was only vaguely political, in which they might have come into contact with people who had ideas different from theirs. This gradually created a custom that was to last until the first Euro¬ pean war. It is because of this custom that the politically minded Catholic had professional associations, reading clubs, leisure circles, and schools for children that belonged exclusively to him. In this way a closed society is formed, in which the chances that one will meet with people who do not share his faith are minimal.6

Within this huge aggregate of groups, the Società della Gio¬ ventù, which must be considered the only important expression of Catholic Action proper in this period, risked the loss of its identity. It actually had to fight to remain autonomous from the Opera dei Congressi. From 1887 on, the Opera, under the leader¬ ship of Paganuzzi, made a vigorous drive not only for expansion, but also for organizational centralization.7 This policy responded to the novel impulse given to Catholic movements all over Eu¬ rope by the grandiose plan of Leo XIII for the reconquest of the masses. The Opera’s new policy, which resulted in the creation of vast numbers of economic, labor, and welfare groups, was in part a re¬ sponse to a threatening new development that affected Italian Catholics—the rise of socialism among industrial and rural work¬ ers. For the Catholic movement this meant the opening of a “second front,” and raised the question which of two evils might be the worse—the consolidation of the bourgeois regime, or the strengthening of the “subversive” forces. Around this problem there unavoidably arose serious dissensions within the movement; it brought out marked differences of interests, orientations, and styles of action, which had never before shown themselves so clearly. Previously the diffuse sense of bitterness and revulsion over the outrage done to the Church, or later the surge of hope

i8

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

caused by the movement’s organizational successes, had kept those differences from manifesting themselves as divergent strategies. Such divergencies now began to emerge, and eventually became polarized in the opposition between “right” and “left” factions. A “center” sought to establish a compromise between them, al¬ though, as usual in the Catholic world, the factions were them¬ selves bodies of conflicting opinion, and in some areas the lines separating them became rather blurred.8 What had started as a disagreement over means and tactics soon developed into a fight over strategies and goals.9 The left wing, led by the ardent young priest Romolo Murri, might well have gained the upper hand. But the death of Leo XIII and the pecu¬ liar convictions of his successor, Pius X (1903-14), arrested this development. Pius X saw the “Christian democratic” movement led by Murri both as a challenge to hierarchical control over lay organizations and as a sociopolitical expression of the modernistic heresy he was determined to drive out. The Opera dei Congressi, thirty years after its birth, had ac¬ quired great importance, and was preparing to act more positively in the nation’s public life. Previously it had merely promoted electoral abstention and organized certain social strata. It was at this very time that Pius X beheaded it by suppressing its only na¬ tional executive organ, the general standing committee. In 1904, all the regional, diocesan, and parish units of the Opera were made responsible exclusively to local pastors. The New Organizational Setup One year later, the whole Italian Catholic movement was given a new organization based on three “unions.” The first, the Unione Economico-Sociale, was to coordinate the economic, labor, and welfare organizations. (There were a total of 2,545 such organiza¬ tions in 1906.) The second, the Unione Elettorale Cattolica, was to serve as the organizational instrument for Pius X’s political plan. In the face of the growing strength of the socialist left, Pius X allowed Catholic voters to go to the polls. Without permitting the formation of a Catholic party, he channeled the popular Catholic vote toward reliable “moderate” candidates of the bourgeois parties through the Patto Gentiioni of 1913.10 Finally,

The Development of ACI

Xg

the Unione Popolare, modeled after the German Volksverein,11 was meant to gather in a single organization (on a direct member¬ ship basis) all adult members of the minor organizations federated by the other two unions. Nevertheless, the Unione Popolare was not to constitute a center for the whole Catholic movement. Its main activity was educational action and propaganda. Side by side with the three unions, in a relationship never made too clear in my sources, the Società della Gioventù was kept in existence. It had been steadily progressing since its beginnings in 1867. During the years of Pius X’s pontificate, under the leader¬ ship of Paolo Pericoli, it made great strides toward becoming a mass organization by systematically organizing youth from social strata other than the well-to-do—toward whom the Società had previously oriented its efforts.12 Less directly connected with the three unions was FUCI, the Catholic university students’ orga¬ nization founded by Father Murri in the last decade of the nine¬ teenth century. Furthermore, in 1908 the Unione fra la Donne Cattoliche d’Italia was founded. Originally it was a splinter group from a civic women’s-rights organization. In 1911, having asserted its independence from the Unione Popolare, it attained the status of the fourth union of the Catholic movement. The local activity of all these unions was under the control of the bishops. Throughout Pius X’s pontificate their action appears to have been hampered both by the lack of efficient coordination among the various unions and by the atmosphere of suspicion generated by the current battle between the Holy See and the modernist movement. Organizational Differentiation Under Benedict XV Shortly before Italy entered World War I, Pius X’s successor, Benedict XV (1914-22), reorganized what was coming to be called “Catholic Action” (i.e., with capitals). The general direc¬ tion of the movement was entrusted to a committee elected by the council of the Unione Popolare. The president of the Unione was the committee chairman, and the presidents of the other four national organizations were members. The same type of order, which implied the primacy of the Unione Popolare and therefore a tightening within the movement, was to be established locally

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

20

by means of diocesan committees. At the end of 1918 another branch of ACI was created. It was originally an offshoot of the Unione Donne, and was known as the Gioventù Femminile Cat¬ tolica Italiana (Italian Catholic Young Women). It organized un¬ married women under thirty. But the end of the war brought with it more significant inno¬ vations for the movement. A complex process of differentiation initiated by Benedict XV sharply separated Catholic Action from the Catholic movement in general and the new Catholic party in particular. The latter was the Italian Popular Party (PPI), which presented itself formally as secular (i.e. nonreli¬ gious) and independent of ecclesiastical authorities.13 The areas of activity previously covered by the organizations belonging to the Unione Economico-Sociale (which was dissolved at the same time) were now covered by three independent groups—the Con¬ federation of Labor, the Confederation of the Cooperatives, and the Confederation of Mutual Aid and Insurance Societies. This development, which was inspired and controlled by the Vatican, signified, as Civardi notes, that “it was necessary to distinguish the religious-moral sector from the political sector and to ensure the continuity of Catholic action in the first. The second was to be left to Catholic citizens to control, according to their views of civic duty and their feeling for the fatherland.”14 Since CA was now to relinquish direct activity in this field to “the free initiative of Catholic citizens,” the Unione Elettorale was also dissolved. As the Communist historian Candeloro points out: The new situation in the Catholic movement was characterized now by the existence of a strictly political organization (the PPI), which was made up of Catholics but did not depend directly on the Vatican and the episcopate, and an ideological-cultural organization (CA), which had indirect political functions but did depend on the Vatican and the episcopate.15 The Catholic movement responded eagerly to the appeal of the new, formally independent political and labor organizations in the immediate postwar period. With energies dispersed in new directions, there was soon a loss of interest and participation in the mother organizations (those devoted primarily to religious and educational tasks). The new organizations were, in fact, at-

The Development of A Cl

21

tractive. Moreover, neither the laymen nor the hierarchy fully recognized the weight and quality of the tasks that now occupied CA as a result of the Holy See’s master plan. This plan, as we have seen, sought to regain for the Church its position of primacy and prestige in society. By encouraging a formally independent political party with a progressive, if not actually radical, political program and with a serious commitment to democratic methods, the Holy See put an end to the attitude of protest and isolation that had been the basic posture of the Italian Catholic movement for decades. An association was created (in addition to those constituted by the Catholic trade unions, cooperatives, etc.) for an active, responsi¬ ble, yet distinctive Catholic participation in the public life of the country. So the question arose: to what purpose, then, carry on the commitments to Catholic Action? Pius XI, “The Pope of Catholic Action” Both the attitudes and the concrete developments in the policy of the following pope, Pius XI (1922-39), were to meet the new need for a reorientation and redefinition of the institutional pur¬ pose of CA.16 Pope XI is called “the Pope of Catholic Action” be¬ cause of the vigor and persistence with which he urged the crea¬ tion and establishment of CA organizations not only in Italy but throughout the world. It is in Italy, however, that his activity re¬ veals most clearly how vital he considered CA to the master plan he inherited from his predecessors. Actually, Pius XI’s favorite direct instrument for bringing that plan to bear was diplomatic action. Typically he preferred con¬ cordats to “action from below” by a Catholic political movement. The Catholic movement’s role was to be played more in the back¬ ground, through educational and religious action, and was to de¬ velop at the level of the civil society, rather than of the state. The development of this strategy, particularly in Italy, was largely conditioned by the political situation confronting Pius XI at the beginning of his pontificate, in February 1922. Fascism was then posing its grave challenge to constitutional politics, which the Catholic movement had recently chosen to use and support through the PPI. The PPI was unequipped to conduct mass poli-

22

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

tics, and was overcommitted to the constitutional instruments of political action that were being threatened. In Pius XI’s eyes, the inadequacies of the Popular Party were exacerbated by three fac¬ tors: his suspicions regarding Benedict XV’s plan for a Catholic party, his distaste for some aspects of the party’s line on social and economic matters, and his attraction to a strong-man strategy for defeating “bolshevism.”17 Thus he was immediately susceptible to the line held out to him by the “strong man,” Mussolini. He ex¬ pected a handsome reward if the Holy See helped Mussolini to power. On the other hand, the Fascists threatened to make the Holy See pay dearly if it did not put pressure on the PPI to stop resisting Fascism, especially in the rural areas, and if it did not disown the PPI, or at least weaken it by forcing the resignation of Sturzo, its leader. In short, Mussolini was asking the Holy See to put its interests under the wing of a strong authoritarian state in¬ stead of a party committed to democratic processes. Faced with this proposition, Pius XI relinquished the plan for an Italian political party ultimately accountable to the Holy See. The strong man and his regime were entrusted with the tasks of protecting the Church against bolshevism and granting the Church, by means of a concordat based on years of secret negotia¬ tions, privileges that the liberal democratic ruling class was com¬ pelled to deny. (I am referring particularly to the Concordat and Treaty of February 11, 1929, which is described below.) After the Concordat, the Vatican concentrated its efforts on strengthening and developing a newer, stricter conception of Catholic Action. This conception was realized after the Holy See had allowed the political and labor-economic wings of the Italian Catholic move¬ ment to die. The political organizations were outlawed by the Fascists in 1925, and the labor-economic groups fell victim to the ensuing Fascist Gleichschaltung. A Cl Under Fascism The changes Pius XI made in Catholic Action had a threefold character. Two aspects, the organizational and the ideological, were paramount; the third, the diplomatic aspect, was intended basically to serve and sustain the other two. (1) The Organizational Aspect. The Unione Popolare was dis-

The Development of ACI

23

solved and the Italian Federation of Catholic Men was created to take its place. This new organization was to be one of several with equal status, which were encompassed by a larger one—ACI. The others included the ancient Società della Gioventù, the univer¬ sity students’ federation (FUCI), the Unione Donne, the Italian Catholic Young Women (GF), and the girls’ branch of FUCI. These six organizations were to be coordinated and directed at all levels (parish, diocesan, national) by “coordinating” organs com¬ prised of the leaders of all of them. These organs were the Parish Council, the Diocesan Committee, and the Central Committee of ACI. The six groups were governed by their own laws, and were to act autonomously in whatever concerned the recruitment and training of members and the performance of their required duties. Whenever two or more of these organizations had to act together, the coordinating organs were to direct their action.18 The top coordinating organ, the Central Committee, consisted of the presidents of the six organizations plus three members ap¬ pointed by the Holy See, one of whom was the chairman of the Committee and also president of ACI as a whole. (2) The Ideological Aspect. This aspect amounted to nothing less than a new and explicit definition of the institutional pur¬ pose of Catholic Action itself. In various speeches, Pius XI de¬ fined this purpose as “the participation by the laity (or the collab¬ oration of the laity) in the hierarchical apostolate of the Church.” On the basis of this definition he often emphasized that “the com¬ plex of activities, institutions, and individuals so dear to Us, which go under the name of Catholic Action,... are undeniably an element of the pastoral function and of Christian life, since the restoration of the kingdom of Christ is indissolubly connected with them.”19 Thus Catholic Action took its place as a specific part of the organized appeal to the layman. The goals of the new ACI were defined as religious and educational, although a number of cul¬ tural and political themes were also encompassed within the ample folds of the definition.20 Viewing the political side of this development, Gramsci defined ACI as “a great concentration of Catholic culture.” (3) The Diplomatic Aspect. In its earlier phase, between 1922

24

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

and 1928, Pius XI’s diplomatic activity in Italy concerning Cath¬ olic lay associations was directed mainly toward salvaging the social and economic organizations from the Fascist persecution, which resulted from the friction between Fascist aims and the very existence of the Catholic organizations. Pius XI had to resign himself to their destruction, and seek a solution that he hoped would not damage his simultaneous secret negotiations. In its second phase, the action concerning ACI was merely an aspect of the Concordat and Treaty of 1929, that complex bargain made between the Holy See and the Italian state as the final settle¬ ment of the Roman Question. Article 43 of the Concordat (still binding) reads thus: The state recognizes the organizations depending on Italian Catholic Action insofar as they develop their action outside any political party according to the Holy See’s own decisions, and remain in a position of immediate dependence on the Church’s hierarchy for the dissemina¬ tion and the fulfillment of Catholic principles.

From the Fascist standpoint, the purpose of this article was obvi¬ ously to make it impossible for this extant core of the once much larger Italian Catholic movement to ever become a foundation for a new Catholic party, or to become the center of a distinctive political orientation and activity for Italian Catholics or any other potential opposition group. The third phase, after 1931, put an end to a short-lived con¬ flict over ACI between the Holy See and the regime. This con¬ flict expressed the state of latent hostility between the Fascist youth organizations and their only competitors in the drive to organize all of Italian youth—the Catholic youth organizations, especially GIAC (Italian Youth of Catholic Action), formerly the Società. The conflict was occasioned by GIAC’s attempt in 1931 to devise a form of organization by occupational category. Fascist organizations made raids on various local GIAC headquarters; then state authorities formally dissolved GIAC. An exchange of protests between the Holy See and the government followed. Neither side, however, had any interest in strongly antagoniz¬ ing the other. Diplomatic action led to an agreement in Septem¬ ber 1931, which was exclusively devoted to the status and scope

The Development of ACI

25

of CA. According to the agreement, “Catholic Action is essentially diocesan and it depends directly on the bishops who appoint its clerical and lay leaders. Those who have belonged in the past to parties opposing the regime cannot be chosen as leaders.” All internal units were to pursue merely religious and professional goals. The GIAC locals were to “refrain from organizing any type of sport activity, and devote themselves exclusively to recreational and educational activities having religious purposes.”21 Thus, this third phase of the diplomatic action had important consequences for the organization. It assumed that ACI leaders were henceforth to be nominated by ecclesiastical authorities, and it gave the status of leaders and members-ex-officio to the clerics formerly considered “Assistants.” By affirming that ACI was “es¬ sentially diocesan” and was to depend primarily on the bishops, this third phase stressed geographical rather than organizational and functional coordination and command. Some of these modi¬ fications were to remain in part, or at least to create signifi¬ cant structural biases in the future development of the organi¬ zation. On the basis of the 1931 agreements, ACI entered a very im¬ portant period of its organizational history. As Civardi, a semi¬ official historian of ACI, puts it: In spite of the limitations and the exclusion of some types of activity, ACI saw both an increase in membership and an improvement in its quality. The organizational structures were elaborated, and discipline improved.... A characteristic of ACI in this ... phase was a methodi¬ cal development of improved activities for the formation of the mem¬ bers’ consciences.... Prevented as they were from expanding into some types of external activity—political, economic, social, sport, etc. —the militant Catholics concentrated with greater fervor on internal educational activities and on the less distracting external activities, such as those aiming at religious and moral apostolates.22 Favored by the lack of any open conflict with the regime, the three national organizations (GIAC, GF, and the Unione Donne) were able to organize younger members. The Unione Donne did this through a sort of extension service for the youngest male chil¬ dren (called to this day Catholic Children); the other two organi¬ zations created new divisions to serve younger members. Another

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

26

development, among the alumni of the male university students’ group (FUCI), was the growth of a movement specifically devoted to the spiritual, religious, and cultural care of Catholic university graduates.23 The Pontificate of Pius XII In 1939 Eugenio Pacelli was elected successor to Pius XI. He took the name Pius XII. The first phase of his pontificate (1939— 45) coincided with World War II, and his first major act concern¬ ing ACI expressed his concern over the effect that deteriorating political and social conditions might have on the discipline of the CA organizations. The statute he approved in June 1940 practi¬ cally eliminated the participation of laymen in the coordinating organs of ACI. These organs were put into the hands of ecclesi¬ astical personnel at all levels. At the very top, a commission of cardinals, as representatives of the Italian episcopate, was given “the responsibility of top management of ACI, of stating general principles whenever they might deem it necessary, and of pro¬ moting ACI’s development and controlling its operations in the country and in the individual dioceses.” This commission was also responsible for nominating the lay presidents of the six na¬ tional organizations and their ecclesiastical Assistants. At all levels the highest executive official of ACI had to be a cleric. This reform struck the heaviest blow yet to the nature of ACI as a layman’s organization. Earlier, the election of lay officials from below had been disposed of; now the leaders were not even required to be laymen. According to some historians, this reform stimulated negative reactions on the part of the “most sensitive and conscious among the ACI members.”24 The reform seems to have been caused by two things: the political circumstances, which suggested that “times of trouble” loomed distressingly near, and the pope’s authoritarian bent, which in time of threat found ample room to express itself. Thus unified under clerical control, ACI played a key role in supplying the membership and leadership of the new Catholic party in the course of the following years, especially toward the end of the war. It made a great contribution to the complex his-

The Development of AC I

27

torical operation that secured the Holy See’s hold on the country even in the face of the disintegration of Fascism, the regime whose establishment the Holy See had to some extent aided and abetted. The remarkable success of this operation makes it worthy of particular mention. Examination of the available discussions in the secondary literature suggests the following among the many reasons which account for that success. (1) During the very last years of Pius XI’s pontificate, the Church was alarmed by the closer and closer ties between the Fascist regime and the Nazi regime (given the latter’s neo-pagan and racist ideology), and slowly adopted a somewhat more cau¬ tious and reserved position toward the Fascist regime itself. The emergence (or reemergence) of covertly anti-Fascist tendencies within the Italian Catholic movement, and particularly the grad¬ uates’ movement, also goes back to these years.25 (2) During the early phases of World War II, the Holy See’s insistent appeals for peace, as well as the Church’s strict neutral position, had helped erase from the “social memory” of the Ital¬ ian people the image of a hierarchy that had openly encouraged the Fascist war exploits in Ethiopia, and above all in Spain. (3) In the later phases of the war, Catholic groups, often led by men and women trained in ACI and assisted by members of the lower clergy, took part in the Resistance movement; the Vati¬ can, many bishops, and members of the clergy and of the religious orders lent their aid to Jews and political offenders; some mem¬ bers of the hierarchy did not hide their hostility to the Quislingtype regime set up by Mussolini in the north. The Church and the Catholic forces were later able to cite all these developments as legitimizing their participation in the new postwar political contest. (4) Immediately after the war, when organizational resources were at a premium in the competition among various political forces to win the electorate and claim a position in the new politi¬ cal system, the recently constituted Christian Democratic Party was able to draw on ACI as a source of leadership personnel. Many ACI leaders at various levels, as well as a number of former PPI leaders, had not compromised with the Fascist regime, and were

28

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

most eager to enter new fields of activity. The critical significance of this factor has been stressed in some of the interviews held by LaPalombara for the SSRC project.26 (5) Faced with the problems created by the disastrous conclu¬ sion of the war and by Italy’s constitutional crisis, all important political forces, including those on the left, refrained from mak¬ ing any serious demands that the Church pay a price for its sup¬ port of Fascism, thus avoiding further reconstruction difficulties. (6) The traditional “moderate” political forces had thoroughly compromised with the Fascist regime, and were accordingly very weak when the regime broke down. In this situation—in spite of some aspects of its specific political program, which stressed the necessity for extensive social and economic reform—the Christian Democratic Party (and the Church behind it) was able to pre¬ sent itself as the bulwark of the social order and the natural spokesman for “moderate” political opinion. (7) To these factors connected with the breakdown of the Fas¬ cist regime and the return to parliamentary democracy, I must add one that is part of the Church’s own permanent resources: the Church’s ability to face and overcome crises, to give the best of itself in difficult situations, to appear as a moral force of the first magnitude in the face of social and political upheaval. This quality can be variously accounted for, but at any rate many his¬ torical developments show it. I will just mention one—Bismarck’s comment on the condition of the people in the French country¬ side when the Germany army moved in after Sedan: “The only people we found standing were the cures.” With the return to political freedom at the end of World War II, the Holy See felt the need to “legitimize” ACI in the new atmosphere, by restoring to it the character of an association of laymen. There were, however, some important and indeed criti¬ cal limitations imposed, which will be discussed subsequently. A new statute for ACI was authorized by the Holy See in 1946. I shall comment on it in some detail in the next chapter; here I will only mention its three chief characteristics: (1) a reaffirma¬ tion of the unity of ACI (in the sense of the relationship of the coordinating organs to the branches); (2) a greater responsibility

The Development of ACI

29

for the lay leaders in the practical direction and performance of apostolic activities; (3) the affirmation of a “coordinating func¬ tion” of ACI toward other Catholic organizations, now viewed as “qualified instruments of its apostolate.”27 The 1946 statute also sanctioned three new divisions of ACI alongside the four larger branches (for boys, girls, men, and women). Newly insti¬ tuted were branches for university graduates, elementary school¬ teachers, and university students, the latter (FUCI) divided into men’s and women’s sections. The main lines of ACI policy from 1945 to the end of Pius XII’s pontificate will be discussed in the last part of this study, after I have completed a properly sociological analysis of the organization and its main problems. To prepare the ground for such an analysis I shall describe Catholic Action as it presented itself when I conducted my research—in the last years of Pius XII’s pontificate, while Luigi Gedda was General President of ACI.

Chapter three

A Descriptive Introduction to ACI

Today ACI is a federation of seven related organizations com¬ monly called branches (rami). Of these seven branches four can be considered basic: the young men’s (GIAC), the young women’s (GF), the men’s (Unione Uomini), and the women’s (UDACI). The other three, the Catholic university students’ (FUCI), uni¬ versity graduates’ (Movimento Laureati), and elementary school teachers’ (Movimento Maestri), are organized only on the na¬ tional and diocesan level, while the organization of the basic four extends to the parish level. At every level, as we shall see in Chap¬ ter 5, each organization is supervised by the appropriate ecclesi¬ astical authority. Furthermore, at every level each organization is connected to the others through the coordinating organs, which direct the activities of the various branches and of ACI as a whole. However, membership in ACI may be sought only through the local units of the individual organizations. One cannot be a member of ACI except by belonging to one of its branches. And each of these branches has its own internal statutes as well as a large, if not well-defined, degree of autonomy. For instance, the ACI statutes recognize only one lay leader at each level in the branches (generally called a president), but according to the pro¬ visions of the branch statutes, each leader can delegate some of his powers to subordinates, each having charge of some internal unit. In a well-organized parish unit of GIAC, for instance, in

A Descriptive Introduction to ACI

gi

addition to the president there will be three delegates, one for each of the age sections into which the unit is divided: Aspiranti (ages ten through fourteen), Juniores (fifteen through nineteen), and Seniores (twenty through thirty, unmarried). There are age subdivisions in the girls’ branch as well. Each of these (as in the case of GIAC) has a special organizational unit on the diocesan and national level. However, there are no such subdivisions in the Unione Uomini and UBACI, nor in the three other branches (although in the three some of the activities are organized sep¬ arately according to sex). Most ACI publications are put out by the branches indepen¬ dently. By paying his annual dues, each member automatically subscribes to his branch’s periodical, which is generally a weekly and is a purely internal publication for the members. The youth branches publish separate periodicals for their major age divi¬ sions, and often different editions for the various categories to which the members belong (i.e., rural workers, urban workers, students, white-collar workers). Each branch also publishes a number of other periodicals for its own diocesan and parish leaders, designed both to further their training and to brief them on the organization’s activities. In addition, in many dioceses the diocesan presidenzas* together or singly publish similar or¬ gans for members and leaders, besides producing a great deal of mimeographed material to assist the local leaders. Still more material is published by the coordinating organs at the national and diocesan levels, but these publications (includ¬ ing the Presidenza Generale’s official organ, Iniziativa) are meant only for the leaders, not for the rank and file. This is one symp¬ tom that in spite of an increased dependency of the branches on the coordinating organs, and particularly in spite of President Gedda’s determined centralizing drive between 1952 and 1958 (which will be described in Chapter 13), the organizational life of * The supreme executive organ of each ACI branch is called a Presidenza Cen¬ trale. It includes a central president, a vice-president, a central secretary, a central treasurer, and a central ecclesiastical Assistant. The supreme coordinating organ of ACI as a whole is called the Presidenza Generale, and consists of the general president, two vice-presidents, a general secretary, a general treasurer, and a gen¬ eral ecclesiastical Assistant. This refers to the national structure; by and large, the same arrangement is repeated at the diocesan and parish levels.

32

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

ACI still takes place to a greater extent in the branches than in the framework of ACI as a whole. It is the branches that get the members’ primary loyalty. Mem¬ bers tend to identify with GIAC or FUCI, UDACI or the Movi¬ mento Laureati rather than with ACI, whose components are merely groups of leaders. The branches all have histories and organizational characters at least partly their own. They were established at different moments in the development of the Ital¬ ian Catholic movement. Much of their language is distinct and unique—for instance, GIAC’s jargon includes a great number of terms taken from mountaineering. The ideology of each branch and the style of its leaders are often the legacy of an an¬ cient and now nearly legendary chief, who led it for a long time and left on it the imprint of his personality and a distinctive spir¬ itual message. Similarly, those diocesan or national branch lead¬ ers who are appointed to coordinating organs generally preserve for a long time the characteristics of the branches from which they came. I stress this in order to point out one major limitation of this investigation. My study concerns ACI as a whole and thus is somewhat removed from the most authentic and immediate ex¬ pression of the organization’s life—the activity of the branches. It is true that especially in Parts 2 and 3 I will often refer to the operations and problems of one of the branches (usually CIAC). But these references will be made mostly to illustrate and ex¬ emplify an analysis focused on ACI as a whole; they are not meant to give the reader an all-around sense of what Catholic Action is, how it operates, and what it does, a sense that probably could only be conveyed by a treatment focused on one branch and dealing mostly with the diocesan or parish levels of the organi¬ zation. Some Data on ACI Membership As I have said in the Introduction, my study does not aim at a sociographic reconstruction of ACI’s structure during the Gedda Presidency, but rather it discusses some of the organization’s criti¬ cal problems. I have not found it necessary, in this perspective, to

A Descriptive Introduction to ACI

23

devote much attention to certain traditional themes of the sociography of organizations, such as the social composition of the membership and its geographic distribution. The statistical data that ACI itself possesses on this and other problems are neither plentiful nor easily accessible, and thus do not make for a thoroughgoing quantitative analysis. At any rate, such an analysis, if conducted on data relating to ACI during the Gedda Presidency, would have a merely historical interest. For my own purposes I have found it useful to supply only those data that might give an idea of the dimensions of ACI in that period, thus lending con¬ creteness to the analysis which follows. The first table illustrates an important trend in ACI’s policy after the war—the expansion of membership. It shows the re¬ turns of the annual recruitment campaigns for the four major branches of ACI in three postwar years. (Figures are from An¬ nuario dell’Azione Cattolica Italiana, Rome, 1954, as well as recruitment data supplied by the Presidenza Generale of ACI.) 1946 GIAC GF Unione Uomini UDACI

367,000 884,000 150,000 369,000

1951 503,000 1,100,000 237,000 514,000

1957 583,000 1,241,000 309,000 630,000

Here the first major characteristic of ACI membership, which one leader has called its “pyramidal character,” is made clearly apparent. The membership tends to thin out toward the higher age reaches. Data on GIAC underscore this phenomenon. As pointed out above, each GIAC local is made up of three sections, each organizing a different age group. One of these sections, Aspiranti, is further subdivided into Aspiranti Minori (ten- and eleven-year-olds) and Aspiranti Maggiori (twelve- through four¬ teen-year-olds). The next section in the age scale, Juniores, or¬ ganizes young men from fifteen through nineteen. To make the data comparable, therefore, I have standardized the returns of the recruitment campaigns for selected years by taking into account the different lengths of the age span in each case. The data in the second table clearly bear out the pyramidal pattern. This would

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

34

actually be even more visible if I were also to standardize the data for the higher age section, Seniores; but it might also be mis¬ leading, since in their age group (twenty to thirty) a great many members become ineligible merely because they get married. The table shows membership in the different age divisions of GIAC in selected postwar years. (Figures are from recruitment data supplied by the Presidenza Generale of ACI.) Aspiranti Minori Aspiranti Maggiori Juniores

1951

1954

1957

65,200 52,300 29,400

64,700 59,900 33,800

60,400 58,700 38,000

In this table, the “thinning out” is more sharply visible at the passage from Aspiranti Maggiori to Juniores. The same pattern appears in the case of the girls’ branch, GF. The three comparable GF age divisions are Beniamine (ages six through nine), Aspiranti (ten through thirteen), and Giovanissime (fourteen through sev¬ enteen). The third table shows membership in the age divisions of GF in selected postwar years. (Figures are from recruitment data supplied by the Presidenza Generale of ACI.)

Beniamine Aspiranti Giovanissime

1951

1954

1957

294.400 262,500 166.400

324.900 264.900 189.900

364,700 249,100 180,200

These age breakdowns within the youth branches emphasize the membership loss occurring between them and the correspond¬ ing adult branches. This phenomenon, incidentally, affects many youth organizations (including the Komsomol, a Soviet orga¬ nization in many ways comparable to ACI) and is viewed with mixed feelings in ACI. It is considered largely a natural process by which the unfit painlessly select themselves out, leaving only the fit to constitute the organization in the more mature age reaches. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the more numbersminded leaders would be glad to keep these membership losses under control. Some attempts are being made in this direction, for instance by giving special assistance to the members in those ages when the tendencies toward desertion are strongest. Hence

A Descriptive Introduction to ACI

^

the policy o£ further breaking down the Aspiranti section in GIAC and forming another division called Pre-Juniores for those members about to become fifteen, in order to lead more of them to seek membership in the Juniores section. The rationale for this policy is formulated thus: The membership loss that takes place when the Pre-Juniores are due to join the Juniores section is a natural selection brought about by the phase in which these boys find themselves ... the phase of puberty, with its attendant crises. With regard to this problem we find that the efforts to provide special pedagogical aids and to define the proper methods to be used with the Pre-Juniores are very promising. They consist of a special catechism, special meetings, and other programs aimed at solving, at least partially, the problems both of adolescence and of the reassertion of one’s Christian ideals.1

Other policies pursued by GIAC to the end of controlling the loss of members are: (1) the practice of celebrating each year true rites de passage, which, by making the passage of members from one section to the other into a solemn, memorable occasion, try to reinforce the single member’s motivation to “pass”; (2) the creation, in some diocesan headquarters, of an “Office for Draft¬ ees,” which aims to protect the member from the negative moral consequences of his experience as a recruit in the armed forces by keeping in contact with him by mail, by urging him to get in touch with the military chaplain, by arranging for him to be called on by the members of the corresponding “Office” in the city where he happens to be;2 (3) and the efforts made—or at any rate which the national leaders urge the local leaders to make— to increase the appeal of meetings in the Seniores section by allowing the members to take the floor, by adopting an informal tone, and so forth.3 Generally GIAC does not try to recruit new members directly into the older levels of the organization. It is felt that only young men who have acquired “the GIAC spirit” as Aspiranti and per¬ fected it as Juniores can attach themselves smoothly and effec¬ tively to the Seniores section.4 In general, the proper strategy for controlling the loss of mem¬ bers in the higher age groups is seen to consist in deliberately

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

36

keeping the membership pyramid’s base as wide as possible, so that its body will remain sizable after thinning out. ACI re¬ cruitment directions reflect this strategy: In the lower age sections of ACI [Catholic Children, GF’s Beniamine, GIAC’s Aspiranti] recruitment criteria may, and in some cases must, be very wide. In the youth sectors [GIAC’s Juniores, GF’s Giova¬ nissime], given the characteristics of the age group, the members should be given a chance to make up for any possible transitory faults. In the adult sectors [GIAC’s Seniores, GF’s Effettive, the Unione Uomini, and UDACI], the educational difficulties should be largely overcome. What matters by then is the member’s personal en¬ gagement in apostolic work.6 One of those interviewed for the SSRC project, a functionary of the Presidenza Generale of ACI, expressed more or less the same line by asserting that “in the youth branches one merely tries to keep out the bad ones; in the adult branches the effort is toward getting in all the good ones,” who are expected to seek membership when “maturing” from the youth branches.6 Geographical Distribution of Membership The data on the geographical distribution of ACI membership are not very substantial. The following table is based on the cal¬ culations made by a competent critic of ACI on the data for 1954.

It shows the number of members, number of parish units,

and number of members per unit in four branches of ACI in the north and in the rest of Italy in

1954.7

Parish units

Members

Members per unit

8,612 10,049 9,028 6,778

355,567 663,445 344,499 161,576

41.2 65.8 30.1 23.8

205,054 471,027 221,642 109,311

29.0 53.0 30.7 22.7

Northern Italy

GIAC GF UDACI Unione Uomini

Central and Southern Italy and Islands

GIAC GF UDACI Unione Uomini

7,065 8,873 7,267 4,796

A Descriptive Introduction to ACI

^

These figures clearly show that the organizational strength of ACI reflects the general pattern of the “two Italies.” The more modern north shows a greater number of locals and members than the rest of the country. This pattern was apparent from the very beginnings of the Catholic movement.8 The pattern is re¬ versed, however, where the minor branches are concerned. Most of the membership of the university students’, university grad¬ uates , and elementary school teachers’ branches comes from the regions of central, southern, and insular Italy. Of the members of the university graduates’ branch in were residents of the north, while

7,420

1954,

12,643

only

5,223

came from the other

regions.* It is difficult to interpret this deviation from the overall pattern because of the absence of data on the number of ACI members qualified for membership in the minor branches who choose (as they are permitted) to stay in one of the “big four.” Social Composition of the Membership Data are also scarce on the important question of the so¬ cial composition of the membership of ACI. The three minor branches have, by definition, a relatively homogeneous member¬ ship. In

1957,

FUCI organized about

7,000

of the

250,000

Italian

university students (it was relatively stronger among the women). In the same year the Movimento Maestri had about Italy’s

180,000

8,500

of

elementary school teachers among its members.

The Movimento Laureati had the largest membership of the three in absolute terms—nearly ship, according to the

1951

14,000.

Its potential member¬

census, amounted to over

420,000,

to which should be added those artists, writers, and others who are not university graduates, but are welcome to join the gradu¬ ates’ branch nevertheless. Of the main branches, neither the Unione Uomini nor UDACI

* There are two possible interpretations of this pattern, which are not mutually exclusive. (1) In view of the greater status-consciousness of southern Italians, south¬ ern ACI members who become qualified to join the “intellectual” branches are more likely to do so than northern members, who are presumably often willing to remain in the main branches. (2) In the south more often than in the north, mem¬ bership in an “intellectual” ACI branch may have meant a better chance of ob¬ taining certain kinds of positions—teaching posts in particular—especially in the 1950’s.

g8

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

ever made any sustained effort to recognize the diversity of their members’ social backgrounds, occupational status, etc.; therefore no data are available on these matters. GF publishes particular issues of its paper in special editions for its three main member categories (students, workers, and peasants) but from my infor¬ mation I cannot determine how the membership distributes itself within these categories. Usable data are available on the social composition only of GIAC, since GIAC has made a long-term effort to distinguish among its members by dividing them into students, agricultural workers, and industrial workers. It should be stressed that these distinctions refer to the occupations of the members, not their backgrounds. The best such data relate to the Juniores. The table below shows the occupational composi¬ tion of the Juniores sections of GIAC for

1955-57.

(Figures were

supplied by the GIAC Presidenza Centrale.) 1956

1955

44% 23 33

43% 25 32

Industrial workers Farm workers Students

1957 45% 21 34

Other data made available by interviews and relative to the Seniores section show that during

1955, 1956,

and

1957

the per¬

centage of agricultural workers in that movement was remark¬ ably larger than among Juniores, but tended to decrease (as it did among the Juniores, very slightly). Peasants and farm laborers made up cent in

32

per cent of the Seniores movement in

1956,

and

30

per cent in

Region by region, in

1957

1955, 31

per

1957.

the occupational composition of the

Juniores varied as shown in the table below. (Figures were sup¬ plied by the GIAC Presidenza Centrale.)

Northern Italy Central Italy Southern 8c Islands Italy as a whole

Workers

Farm

Students

Total

50% 41 36 45

25% 18 14 21

25% 41 50 34

100% 100 100 100

The differences here reflect the differences in the “organizability” of these groups of youth in the various areas. The potential mem-

A Descriptive Introduction to ACI

gg

bership in the agricultural sector is possibly larger in the south than in the north; but it is much more difficult to recruit the agriculturally employed or self-employed boy in the south for reasons attendant upon the general degree of social and cultural development in this sector of the population. At any rate, it appears that a remarkable proportion of the Juniores members are young workers. The GIAC leadership sees in this fact great hope for achieving the Church’s plan to regain the confidence of the industrial proletariat and the working masses in general.9 Finally, ACI membership (and ACI leadership even more, if my impression may be trusted) is a family trait. If one family member belongs to an ACI branch, it is likely that other mem¬ bers of the same family will belong to the same or another ACI branch. The extent of this phenomenon cannot be precisely as¬ sessed. One sample survey made by the Presidenza Generale of ACI showed that out of

280,000

members, over

137,000

came

from families that included more than one ACI member. The Meaning of Membership An official statement defines the nature and goals of ACI as follows: Italian Catholic Action is the national organization of the Catholic laity for a special and direct collaboration with the hierarchical apostolate of the Church. In view of this, ACI guides ... the spiritual and apostolic formation of its members, directs their activity toward the practice, the diffusion, and the defense of Christian principles in in¬ dividual, familial, and social life, and professes a particular devotion and obedience to Christ’s Vicar.10 Only a few of the elements in this statement need further clarification. The function of the apostolate is the expansion in time and space of Christ’s own saving mission on earth. Because of the nature of the Church, this function originally pertains ex¬ clusively to the pope and the bishops, and to their appointed clerical collaborators. However, laymen may seek to collaborate in the apostolate, albeit in an “auxiliary and subordinate” posi¬ tion. ACI organizes this collaboration. Membership in it in-

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

40

eludes a mandate from the Church, investing the layman with the responsibility of being an apostle—in a “derived and analogi¬ cal” fashion. The ideal picture of the members’ commitment is reflected in the pledge to be read in their behalf on the day annual member¬ ship cards are distributed: Called upon by the grace of God to collaborate with the hierarchical apostolate of the Church in Italian Catholic Action ... we renew our adherence to the ideals and the program of ACI through this membership card. We promise: To engage, under the guidance of the pope, the bishop, and the priests, in a solid Christian education and in a life lived in full con¬ formity with the laws of God and the Church. To assert courageously our Roman Catholic religion. . . . To employ all our forces and all means available to us to spread the teachings of Jesus Christ our Lord and the Holy Church in our fami¬ lies, in the environment where we work, and in society, so as to con¬ vert everyone to the faith and the love of Jesus Christ and the pope. This pledge naturally constitutes no adequate picture of what the majority of ACI members actually are and act like. There are a number of reasons for the discrepancy between the ideal and the actual content of ACI membership. In the first place, it is an established principle in ACI that its youth organizations (particularly in the lower age reaches) stress the “formation” of the members rather than their “deployment” in apostolic action. With reference to the male branches, Pius XI made this clarify¬ ing statement in

1924:

“The youth organizations are especially

devoted to the formation and the education of the consciences and the minds,.. . whereas the mature energies of men already strongly endowed with faith and piety shall primarily be applied to defend, spread, and give practical application to Christian principles in the various circumstances of life.”11 According to an authoritative ACI commentator, this implies that the youth organizations will engage not exclusively but primarily in the molding of right consciences. The actual performance of apos¬ tolic tasks is for the most part left to the adult organizations.12 In the second place, the policy of mass membership pursued by the whole organization, especially since the war, has inevitably

A Descriptive Introduction to ACI

^

been accompanied by a drop in the quality and the seriousness of the members’ involvement. This is decried, for instance, in an attack by an ACI leader, who denounces the ways in which some locals swamp their membership rosters: [They] go from house to house in quest of membership dues merely to have the parish cut a good figure in the diocesan records; [they] request membership cards from diocesan headquarters by the pound, regardless of the fact that the people have not yet signed up for mem¬ bership, and that their intention to do so is all in the parish leader’s mind; [they] give out cards to those ill-fated people called to the parish house without the faintest notion of why they have been sum¬ moned; [they] reassure the recipients of those cards that the ceremony in question does not commit them to take any trouble in the future, and that the pledge they were asked to take during that ceremony was merely an exercise in choral chanting.13 The final reason that the gap between ideal and actual involve¬ ment is perhaps even greater than in most mass organizations lies in the difficulty of the ideal. This ideal requires nothing short of the total commitment of the individual to the “subordinate and auxiliary’’ apostolic tasks—that is to the service of the Church. In effect, when taken seriously, ACI membership creates a tie between the member and the Church that has some of the qual¬ ities of a primary relationship.14 It is therefore a key term of selfidentification, a sort of generalized and diffuse blueprint for everyday action. It implies a fairly heroic degree of self-denial with respect, for instance, to the sexual life of the unmarried members. Thus ACI leaders must lead a continuous and often futile battle to have members wear organization lapel buttons. The ideal obligations are not only heavy, but in some respects distinctly unpleasant. It requires a rather substantial amount of transvaluation to view them as joyfully and proudly acceptable. With the above responsibilities in mind, the figure of an ideal ACI member can be briefly sketched. It is a figure approximated only by a hard core of members and by most leaders. This person wears his lapel button at all times, receives communion every time he attends Mass (two to five times a week), has a “spiritual director’’ in the person of a priest, besides going to weekly con¬ fession. He does not dance, even if he is in his late teens or early

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

^2

twenties, nor does he attend films judged unbecoming by eccle¬ siastical authorities. He reads the Catholic newspaper, and at elec¬ tion time is an active propagandist for the Catholic party. At work (or in class, if he is a student) he does not tolerate blasphemy and promptly reacts to any criticism of the Church, priests, or the Catholic party. He is very keen on apologetics, especially on such themes as the existence of God. Most of his leisure time is spent within the framework of the parish and the ACI local. Be¬ sides attending the weekly meetings, he goes to the parish house to watch TV, to play cards, or to help the priest with the young¬ sters. He thinks of himself primarily as a Catholic. Organizational Activity Local ACI branch headquarters are generally in the parish house. In the afternoon they are play areas for the children, and at night they become meeting places for the older members. The adult meetings generally have a spiritual part, when the ecclesi¬ astical Assistant speaks, and a cultural part, when the weekly installment of the “annual campaign” theme (the Christian fam¬ ily, the social doctrine of the Church, etc.) is expounded by one of the lay leaders and discussed by the members. It is also during the weekly meeting or in special meetings that the members dis¬ cuss the apostolic needs of the parish, such as contacting a family of newcomers or counteracting the bad influence that a new high school instructor with leftist leanings is having on his pupils. Election time generally brings an increase of activity directed to getting votes for the Christian Democratic Party. A number of members also meet in Church on Sundays, both at the pastor’s Mass in the morning, and at the afternoon services (but their attendance at the latter, alas, will always leave much to be desired). In preparation for major festivities, or for special activities that the parish organizes for all the faithful, ACI as a whole takes the responsibility for organizing various aspects, and its leaders see to it that those responsibilities are carried out. Three or four times a year, perhaps, the members gather for a day of recollection and hear various sermons. All the parish units of a single branch are under the jurisdic-

A Descriptive Introduction to AC I

43

tion of a Diocesan Center, comprising the diocesan Presidenza (whose composition is regulated by the branch’s statutes) and some special offices concerned either with single sections of the membership (e.g., the age sections of the youth branches) or with particular aspects of the branch’s activity at the diocesan level (e.g., the recruitment and training of local leaders, or the circu¬ lation of the “good press” among and by the members). The di¬ ocesan leaders very rarely work full time; they are generally not paid; and they devote their leisure time to ACI activities. There may also be one or more paid employees in charge of routine aspects of the organization. However, as I shall discuss later, ecclesiastical Assistants often perform important functions in the day-to-day running of the organization at the diocesan level. In some dioceses, the Diocesan Centers of all the branches, as well as the diocesan coordinating organs, have their offices in the same building, which thus becomes a kind of headquarters for ACI in the diocese. Here, under the guidance of the bishops, through the Assistants, the plans initiated by the national head¬ quarters are organized and directed to the local level. In addi¬ tion to acting as channels for translating national directives into operative terms, the diocesan organs originate plans of exclu¬ sively local significance; and above all they assist what is called in ACI jargon the periferia (“periphery”), that is the parish level of the organization, in giving concrete, grass-roots meaning to both national and diocesan directives. They do this by collabo¬ rating with the parish Assistants in the choice and training (for¬ mazione is the ACI word) of local leaders, by periodically call¬ ing on the parish units, and by providing advice or perhaps arranging financial support for plans initiated at the parish level. The same relationship exists, mutatis mutandis, between the national and the diocesan organs of the branches.* One relevant difference is that at the national level the work of the leaders tends to become full time and to be remunerated. Also, activities of a merely routine nature are the responsibility, at this level, of personnel employed by the organization. The national organs # The same holds, of course, for the Presidenza Generale and its counterparts at the diocesan level—the ACI Diocesan Committees with their Presidenzas.

44

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

are responsible for organizing the more important plans, the “annual campaigns,” which the local units of the ACI branches all over the country are expected to become involved in. In Part 4,

when I discuss the policy of the Gedda Presidency, I will de¬

scribe the type of messages through which the relationship be¬ tween “the top” and “the periphery” is maintained.

Chapter four

The Sponsorship Relation

In the first chapter, in suggesting some of the historical reasons why Catholic Action began, I adopted a diachronic perspective. At this point, as an introduction to the sociological analysis of the organization described in Chapters

2

and

3,

it seems appro¬

priate to look again at the situation of the Church in the con¬ temporary West, this time in a synchronic perspective. Although it is huge, complex, and diverse, I shall treat the Church as a unit. This is in keeping with the Church’s traditional self-image, which has emphasized its unity both in theological terms (e.g., the doctrine of the Church as the “mystical body of Christ”) and in organizational, legal terms. The latter perspec¬ tive has been emphasized since the Council of Trent, and finds expression in St. Robert Bellarmine’s classic definition: “The Church is the society of the baptized, united in their confession of the selfsame faith, in their participation in the same sacra¬ ments, under the authority of their legitimate pastors, and par¬ ticularly of the Roman pontiff, the Vicar of Christ on earth.” Like all definitions, this one focuses on some aspects of its object and leaves others out of focus. Among those aspects left out are the Church’s universality and its mystical continuity with the person of Christ and with his twofold nature as man and God. The Church, that is, views itself as sharing the divinity of its founder. This concept forms the basis of the unmistakable socio-

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

46

logical physiognomy of the Church as a charismatic institution.1 That is, on the strength of this divine nature, the Church con¬ siders itself endowed with transcendental powers, which are dif¬ fused throughout its whole body, but administered by those in positions of authority within that body’s visible structure. Thanks to the unity resulting from that structure, the Church views itself as an embodiment, in time and space, of the saving charis¬ ma originally brought into the world through the person of Christ; his charisma has become institutionalized in the Church, which in the course of its organized life now shares it with the world. This self-image of the Church has historically inspired it to make two major claims: (1) that its peculiar powers, grounded on its participation in the nature of the Godhead, are its title to a unique, exclusive position in the world; (2) that it is the keeper of a total message, which ought to be taken as the principle for a regeneration of worldly reality in all its aspects.2 These two claims have long constituted both a dimension of the Church’s sense of identity and a standard for its evaluation of the various situations in which it has found itself. On the basis of many standards of judgment, the countries of the contemporary West could hardly be said to constitute a sin¬ gle, homogeneous situation for the Church. Yet, if viewed in terms of the Church’s claim to a unique and exclusive position in society and its claim to possess a total message, the contem¬ porary West may be said to represent, for the Church as a whole, a single, relatively homogeneous situation. Western civilization, indeed, is characterized by two principles that run directly coun¬ ter to those two claims and are common to all Western coun¬ tries, although institutionalized to a different extent and in a different manner in each: the principle of pluralism (which chal¬ lenges the Church’s claim to uniqueness) and the principle of secularism (which challenges the Church’s claim that it pos¬ sesses a message for the total regeneration of the world). The seriousness of this contrast becomes apparent when one reflects how deeply the cultural and institutional character of the West is marked by pluralism and secularism. The West can¬ not, without rejecting the significance of centuries of its his-

The Sponsorship Relation

47

tory, concede the two claims that flow from the Church’s image of itself. On the other hand, that contrast also means that the Church cannot, without a serious risk to its sense of identity, entirely sacrifice those claims to the pressures of the situation. The awareness of this risk is clearly present in the following pas¬ sage from Pius XII’s Christmas message of

1957:

Even today, the action of Christians cannot renounce its own title and character just because someone views today’s society as a so-called “pluralistic” one, split into opposing mentalities, each anchored to its own positions and unwilling to enter any cooperation except on a purely “human” plane. If by “human” one means, as seems to be the case, a refusal to commit oneself as far as religion and the true values of existence go, then Christians may not accept an invitation to col¬ laborate, which is tantamount to a request for abdication. At the same time, however, the Church cannot afford to simply ignore and condemn those features of the situation that threaten its own sense of identity. In fact the Church is aware that some risk is also implied in the attempt to merely hold on to its claims, no matter how unlikely their realization. The risk here is that of a progressive, possibly fatal isolation of the Church, of an erosion of its chances for historical survival. From the standpoint of the observer, it would seem as though the Church is thus confronted with a truly inescapable dilemma. In this perspective, the configuration its relationship to the world will eventually take (to the extent that the Church itself may in¬ fluence its shaping) seems to depend on whether its actions will be primarily motivated by the awareness of one or the other of two risks: first, loss of the certainty of its own unique identity, or second, a progressive process of isolation, a status of “perma¬ nent unemployment,” so to speak. John XXIII seems to be the only modern pope who clearly saw the latter risk as more serious and deadly; the actions of all his predecessors in modern times, and particularly those of Pius XII, reflect primarily the horror of the former. However, it is important to realize that the Church’s behavior seems to stem mainly from a hope—or a theologically grounded certainty—that it is no true dilemma it is confronted with: that neither risk need be taken, that the apparent dilemma can be

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman escaped. Thus, its typical behavior represents an effort to be maximally present in the situation with a minimum of compro¬ mise with it—to enjoy a maximum of expansion and welfare in the world, of recognition on the part of the world, at the mini¬ mum cost to its own institutional integrity. In this effort the Church is aided by many and varied resources. Some of these are of an ideological nature—such as the Church’s certainty that God is on its side, and that “the gates of Hell shall not prevail.” This certainty does not rest only on dogmatic formulas; it seems to have become imbedded in the “social mem¬ ory

of the Church, in a vast fund of historical experiences that

teach the Church to wait, to bide its time, never to despair. But in addition to the ideological certainties grounded in its tran¬ scendental creed and the legacy of hope and patience from its past, the Church has resources that range from the effectiveness of its organizational structures and the technical perfection of its internal legislation to the unlimited devotion to duty the Church can evoke from its clergy, from the high degree of intellectual refinement of its theology to the spontaneous emotional response that its officials, symbols, and rituals evoke in the souls of its humblest faithful. The Limits of the Internal Resources All these resources give the Church a formidable power of re¬ sistance, and the potential for a massive thrust forward, if the present predicament were overcome. But the question is can it be overcome merely though internal resources? Can these resources, m their historically given configurations, enable the Church to reestablish enough contact with and enough hold on the con¬ temporary social environment to validate its claim vis-à-vis the forces that make up the world outside itself—the State, the in¬ dustrial economy, the professions, the institutions of learning, political parties, social classes, the masses? I doubt it. If one mentally juxtaposes the Church, in the full¬ ness of its internal resources, with the world outside, one is struck by their fundamental lack of connection, a lack that seems to be progressively growing. At least some of the Church’s traditional resources, when applied to its relationships with the outside.

The Sponsorship Relation seem to generate difficulties, to become liabilities. I can give two examples of this. The first is the almost exclusive role played by Thomistic philosophy and theology in the professional training of the Catholic clergy, and as the basic point of reference and standard of judgment for contemporary lay and clerical Cath¬ olic philosophers and theologians. This semicanonization of Thomism presents a number of advantages from the standpoint of the Church’s internal requirements. However because of the position given Thomism it seems all the more difficult for the Church to establish a confrontation between the core of Cath¬ olic belief and the main themes of intellectual debate in the out¬ side world, even those themes on which a theological perspective as such might conceivably have a bearing. This will be discussed further in Chapter 9. Another example is the successful policy adopted by the Church toward the various lay religious movements that have flourished within Western Christianity since the Middle Ages. The Church’s strategy has generally consisted of disciplining and dominating those movements through the formation of religious orders, which found a distinctive place within the Church’s struc¬ ture, and which were thereafter employed to the advantage of the Church as a whole. Through this successful operation, how¬ ever, the Church has largely deprived those movements of their original aptitude for establishing a new and more vital relation¬ ship with the outside world, for inserting themselves into the texture of its daily life. As a result, today’s average believer (and even more the average nonbeliever) is bound to view the mem¬ ber of any religious order as just a different kind of priest, and thus as a very different kind of human being from himself. Given this poor fit between the characteristics of its traditional internal resources and the requirements of the external situation, the main strategy of the Church in trying to overcome its dilem¬ ma has been to develop new instrumentalities for creating a link between itself and the world. I stress the word instrumentalities because for the Church it is important not to confront the prob¬ lem in other than instrumental terms, or else the effort of over¬ coming the dilemma would have to be abandoned, and the Church would have to resign itself to jeopardizing either its own

50

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

sense of identity or its chances of historical survival. In a speech of February

1952,

Pius XII stressed this commitment not to pose

any such fundamental question, by asserting that the peoples of Christianity above all await actionI This is no time for discussion, for seeking new principles, for allocating new tasks and goals. All these things are already known and ascertained, through Christ s own teachings, through their secular elaboration by the Church, and through their adaptation to specific circumstances by the last pontiffs. Now we await only one thing: concrete realization. An Organizational Instrumentality: Catholic Action Sociologically, the most significant aspect of Catholic Action is its status as a mass organization sponsored by the Church. As such, any specific national CA organization lends itself to socio¬ logical analysis from two main standpoints: the organization it¬ self as a system, and the system of the relations between this or¬ ganization and the institution that sponsors it—the Church.3 This latter standpoint appears to me to be the more interesting of the two. It also happens to be the more difficult to adopt be¬ cause though the study of an organization’s internal system is one of the most developed fields of inquiry in contemporary sociology, the study of the relations between one organization and another raises a series of much less familiar problems.4 In particular, the sponsorship relation, which, I propose, exists be¬ tween CA and the Church, is a relatively new concept that has not so far been intensively studied sociologically. The reason I have chosen this topic lies in my feeling that no conclusions can be reached by trying to understand the structural and cultural configuration of CA and the sources of its internal problems by focusing on CA itself apart from its relationship with the Church. Viewing CA primarily as a sponsored organi¬ zation—that is, focusing the analysis on the Church-CA relation¬ ship—also gives, as I shall try to show, an important key to the more important problems of the traditional, “inward-looking” sociology of organizations.5 The sponsorship relation, in turn, is to be understood in its essential features as deriving from the historical circumstances that have led the Church to make its appeal to the layman. Those

The Sponsorship Relation

gi

features are meant to cope with some serious problems that Pius XII made explicit in a message to the Italian bishops in January i95o:

This notion of the subordinate and complementary function of a chosen phalanx of proven and generous faithful with respect to the clergy’s action appears to Us worthy of sustained attention. In realiz¬ ing such a program one must pay heed to a principle that is of the greatest practical significance—the principle of organization. In order to be carried out and produce good results, this graft of the layman’s collaboration onto the apostolate of the hierarchy requires that the greatest care be taken to avoid any disturbance of ecclesiastical dis¬ cipline. The discipline, in fact, ought to become greater, more widely extended, more demanding. This requires on the one hand a deep respect for the authority of the Church, and on the other hand the adoption of a well-thought-out organization of those laymen who gather under the peaceable standard of the Christian apostolate’s spiritual militia. These are the main lines of my argument: Catholic Action is a structure promoted by the Church in an effort to establish and maintain a viable contact with an estranged world. However, this very operation presents some dangers in the eyes of the Church itself. Some critical aspects in the concrete structural and cultural configuration of CA can be derived from the Church’s awareness of those dangers and interpreted as embodying an effort to keep them under control. However, that configuration, in turn, pro¬ duces certain functional difficulties for CA itself—difficulties, I hold, that seriously limit CA’s “competence” in view of the goal assigned it in the Church’s master plan. Before going on to argue this thesis in detail in Parts

2

and 3,

I shall describe four groups of sociological problems relevant to the relationship between the Church and CA, and particularly to its unintended consequences. Some Sociological Problems in the Church-CA Relationship At the highest level of generality a first cluster of problems concerns an institution’s sponsorship of a “subordinate and com¬ plementary” organization in order to serve the institution’s own needs. Sociological analysis is particularly sensitive to such prob¬ lems; some of its most suggestive catchwords—Heterogonie der

52

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

Zwecke, displacement of goals, etc.—have been worked out with reference to them.6 I have in mind the processes by which the organizational instrument refuses, as it were, to be treated wholly as an instrument, pursues different goals from those that caused it to be brought into being. Some such phenomena undoubtedly take place in the Church-CA case, but they are not likely to be empirically very significant, and at any rate they can be easily understood in terms of relatively well-established sociological generalizations. Therefore, I shall not focus on this group of problems. I am interested, however, in a second cluster of problems, which can be related analytically to the type of institution the Church is. Again from the perspective of the Church’s self-image, the Church is a charismatic institution in the sense indicated above; the problems in question pertain to the phenomenon of a charismatic institution that sponsors an organization meant to connect it with an environment which does not acknowledge the institution’s charismatic nature. At first glance it might seem that there is an analogy between the relationship of the Church to CA and that of a Communist Party to the “front organizations” (unions, recreational organiza¬ tions, youth organizations, etc.) sponsored by it. One may in fact claim both that the Communist Party often assumes the configu¬ ration of a charismatic institution,7 and that it therefore faces, as does the Church, the twofold problem of maintaining its integ¬ rity in a given environment, and of acting effectively in it. If a valid analogy could be established between CA and a Commu¬ nist-controlled “front organization,” whatever knowledge is avail¬ able on the relationship of the Party to the organization might be expected to shed light on the relationship of the Church to CA. However, even if one were to ignore some significant differ¬ ences between the Church and a Communist Party as to the type of institution each is, the suggested analogy between CA and the “fronts,” and thus between their respective relationships to the sponsoring institutions, presents certain difficulties. First, the coincidence between the goals of the sponsoring institution and those of the sponsored organization is supposed to take place at the level of the proximate goals of the organization in the Church-

The Sponsorship Relation

53

CA case, and at the level of the remote goals in the CP-front case. Second, the methods employed in the sponsoring operation by the sponsoring institution tend to be covert and manipulative in the CP-front case. This is clearly not so in the Church-CA case, where, for instance, those agents of the sponsoring institution who occupy controlling positions in the sponsored organization are priests, made socially visible by the very clothes they wear. Third, through the fronts, the CP generally organizes “dupes” or at most tepid sympathizers, while CA tends to recruit the more committed and aware among the Church’s faithful. One can think of situations where these differences in the re¬ lationship of sponsor to sponsored become less marked. In par¬ ticular, where a Communist Party is the only party in govern¬ ment, the fronts’ dependence on the party becomes more overt, and politically conscious elements in the population tend to be recruited by them. However, these aspects of the Church-CA re¬ lationship can only be approximated because the analogy has ceased to hold in terms of the situation confronted by the spon¬ soring institution. Namely, in the countries in which it is in power, the Communist Party no longer confronts a situation that denies it recognition as the embodiment of a form of charisma; yet this is the situation I postulate as the background of the Church-CA relationship. For this reason, as well as others, I do not feel that much light can be shed on the latter relationship by viewing it as an analogy to the relationship of the CP with its front organizations. Among the problems in the second cluster, those that will form the main topic of my discussion in Parts

2

and

3

concern both

the precautions the Church must take in the sponsorship opera¬ tion in order to protect its charismatic identity, and the extent to which those precautions prevent the sponsored organization from acting effectively in its context. One could also frame the opposite question, and ask to what extent the requirements of the sponsored organization hamper the sponsor’s maintaining its charismatic nature. However, I do not feel that this question would lead to exploration of truly significant phenomena. It seems to me that all the relevant effects of the relationship flow the other way around—the critical unintended consequences lie

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

54

in the effects of the Church’s concern to protect its identity on the operational effectiveness of Catholic Action. From the Church’s standpoint, there are two main potential dangers in the sponsorship operation. The first is that the orga¬ nizational instrumentality (CA), in its attempt to make its action more effective, may (perhaps inadvertently) begin to share the values of its context (the outside world) and particularly the prin¬ ciples of secularism and pluralism. The second danger is that the organizational instrumentality, to the extent that it becomes aware of its own importance in the Church’s plan, may reclaim a sizable amount of autonomy in its own operation and view itself as a somewhat independent broker between the Church and the world, thus challenging the supremacy of the Church’s leader¬ ship. Accordingly, there are two requirements that the Church is determined must be met in its relationship with the sponsored organization. First, the requirement of faithfulness, meant to protect it against the first danger, assumes that the organiza¬ tion in all phases and aspects of its operation must be oriented by the Church’s own values, and thus “immunized” against those of the context in which the organizations operate. Second, the requirement of control, meant to guard against the second dan¬ ger, assumes that ultimately the leadership of the sponsored or¬ ganization must rest with the Church’s hierarchy. The ways in which these two requirements are implemented vary from one national CA organization to another, and they vary in time as well. Before going on to examine their imple¬ mentation in the Italian case, and the effect that implementation has on ACI, I shall point out the main generalizations my analy¬ sis has yielded. (1) The manner and extent of implementing the requirement of control hinders the development of leaders sensitive to the needs and problems of the sponsored organiza¬ tion’s following. The nonelective character of the most impor¬ tant leadership positions, flowing from that requirement, blocks the process of redefining the organization’s goals and reorienting its action, which might develop through the open competition of prospective leaders for the members’ support. (2) The manner and extent of implementing the requirement of faithfulness

The Sponsorship Relation

55

limits the organization’s ability to elaborate new forms of pre¬ senting the Church’s message. The organization’s receptivity to stimuli from the outside world is also severely limited. In sum, the organization cannot operate as a communication channel be¬ tween the Church and the outside world. Furthermore, the primacy of the rule that the organization must see all situations and alternatives of action from the Church’s viewpoint creates ambiguities in CA’s definition of its own nature and prevents it from evolving its own distinctive institutional purpose. The im¬ pact of both requirements on ACI is the main axis of the analysis to follow; in addition, some of the problems in the following two clusters will be taken up in that context. A third cluster of problems in the Church-CA relationship is related to the Church’s nature as a religious organization. Here the central problem, of which all other problems in this cluster are specific expressions, is that of the place of religion in an in¬ creasingly secularized world. For the purposes of this discussion we may visualize seculariza¬ tion as the extent to which questions of religious belief and loyalty cease to be considered socially legitimate sources of cleav¬ age and conflict in the society at large. In other words, seculariza¬ tion can be defined as the progressive institutionalization of the principle that religion should not become a force for creating social (political, economic) divisions, that it should not generate overriding ideological differentiations.8 The Catholic Church, as a carrier of religious charisma, rep¬ resents one of the most considerable obstacles to the institutional¬ ization of that principle, especially in those countries where it can count on the organized support of many faithful. In this situation every organization sponsored by the Church—and par¬ ticularly CA—is entrusted with the task of upholding the Church’s certainty that its message is directly relevant for the social and political order, for the treatment of society’s ills. While it must necessarily view this assignment as essential, the sponsored organization exposes itself to certain risks in carrying it out. Since CA normally operates in a context shot through with political and economic conflicts, by stressing the social signifi¬ cance of the Church’s message, it may alienate social groups

56

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

whose ideologies contrast with some aspect of the Church’s ethos, and thus lose the opportunity of making those groups aware of the more properly religious and spiritual part of the Church’s message. In fact, its necessary commitment to the Church’s social doc¬ trine can not only limit CA’s chances vis-à-vis its historical en¬ vironment (or parts of it), it can also damage the internal welfare of the sponsored organization. The contrasts at work in the en¬ vironment may find a reflection within that organization and disrupt it. Furthermore, the organization’s emphasis on the “tem¬ poral” significance of the Church’s message can become so in¬ tensive as to attenuate its awareness of “eternal” religious values. There are two other problems in this cluster. First, the tran¬ scendental nature of the Church’s goals, belief system, rewards, and sanctions, to the extent that they are reflected in CA’s struc¬ ture, may conflict with the specific (and necessarily “secular”) re¬ quirements of a mass organization qua mass organization. Second, there are ambiguities in the role of clerical personnel in CA. Priests operating within CA as agents of the Church are charismatically qualified; but the context in which they operate may compel them to behave primarily as organizational leaders, that is to take on a “style” that plays down their charismatic qualifi¬ cations. The problems in a fourth cluster can be derived analytically not so much from the religious nature of the Church or from the type of institution it is, but from some peculiarities of its history, to the extent that they are reflected in the orientation of Catholic Action toward the world, and in CA’s mode of action. One may surmise that these problems will vary in intensity from situation to situation much more than is the case with those in the previous clusters. Particularly, the Second Vatican Council’s fairly com¬ prehensive reassessment of some of the modern world’s historical trends, and its criticism of some features of the Church’s tradi¬ tional culture, probably made such problems less serious than they were in ACI during Pius XII’s pontificate. At any rate, my analysis of the latter situation suggests the following con¬ clusions:

The Sponsorship Relation

^

(1) The “reactionary and antithetical” posture adopted by the Church toward the main cultural and institutional developments in the West since the Council of Trent induces in the sponsored organization a basic ambivalence toward the values of its own context.9 These values are perceived merely as motives to be played upon in a strategy aiming essentially at a “restoration.” This makes it difficult for the organization to understand the problems relating to those values, and to propose an interpreta¬ tion of them that might be acceptable to the outside world. (2) Some characteristics of the Church’s culture acquired dur¬ ing the last centuries of its history negatively affect CA’s mode of operation. First, there is a nearly obsessive concern with sexual and familial morality, whose problems are viewed mostly in a “inhibitory” perspective. This is compounded by an insufficient awareness of the problems of the occupational life of the layman, as well as other problems that are increasingly important on the ethical horizon of contemporary Western society. Second, nar¬ row devotional practices are overemphasized as a means of the spiritual edification of the laity. Third, the training of the laity on religious matters displays a prevalent concern with petty apol¬ ogetic themes, and (until very recently) did not encourage a di¬ rect acquaintance of the faithful with the Scriptures. Finally (and this last difficulty somehow underlies all previous ones) the spe¬ cific traits of the Catholic layman have not been adequately dealt with by theology and Canon Law.10 These historically acquired traits of ecclesiastical culture af¬ fect the ways in which CA recruits and trains its members and leaders, and thus they deeply (and negatively) affect the organiza¬ tion’s style of operation. Because of these traits, to the outside CA tends to appear basically foreign to the problems, the demands, and the tastes of its own time. At least in the Italian case as I know it, often the very name of Catholic Action evokes in the outsider (who ought to be the object of its apostolic action) an image whose dominant traits are a petty puritanism in sexual matters, semisuperstitious bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. This is in spite of the fact that CA, conscious of its responsibility for creating a contact between the Church and the world, likes to

58

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

see itself as a modern, open-minded organization. There is in fact a contrast between the image ACI presents of itself “for in¬ ternal consumption’’ and the image it presents to the outside. A Methodological Warning In this chapter I have set up the main thesis of this study: the sponsorship relation has a series of dysfunctional consequences for the Catholic Action. In Parts 2 and 3 ACI becomes the ob¬ ject of a sustained analysis that aims to prove this thesis. Often it will not be possible to “isolate’’ satisfactorily the functional bearing of the sponsorship relation; in fact, I do not contend that that relation can fully explain any concrete configuration. Usu¬ ally the effect of the variable (or cluster of variables) at the cen¬ ter of my analysis will be confounded empirically with the effect of other variables with which I am not concerned. I have adopted a circumscribed analytical focus on the assump¬ tion that within a metamethodological frame of reference which asserts the multivariate nature of social causation it is still methodologically legitimate to build one’s own framework of an¬ alysis on the assumed primacy of one variable or cluster of re¬ lated variables. Apart from this generic justification for my sys¬ tematic preference for one set of explanatory factors, the same preference seems justified by the fact that the set in question—the sponsorship relation and its unintended consequences—is a rela¬ tively novel one. Thus its treatment can but have an exploratory character, and this in turn builds into the discussion a systematic bias toward the preferred explanation. The imbalance that this emphasis has produced in my ap¬ proach can ultimately be corrected only by a confrontation with alternative interpretations, stressing other sets of explanatory factors. Much of the extant literature on Catholic Action and on ACI in particular lacks any comparable analytical focus; thus it has supplied me mainly with documentary information (however valuable) and with critical hunches (however enlight¬ ening). It is to be hoped that the interpretation I advance will lead other students to propose other interpretations that are also analytically focused, and to sustain other hypotheses, which em-

The Sponsorship Relation

59

phasize aspects of ACI that here have been deliberately over¬ looked. So much the better if my own interpretation will thus be qualified or superseded.11 A Theoretical Base Line for the Assessment of the Sponsorship Relation I repeat, then, my main contention is that the sponsorship relation has dysfunctional consequences for CA, and critically limits the chances of its serving the very task for which the Church sponsored it. The main analytical concern of much of what fol¬ lows is to develop and support this statement with reference to ACI. An empirical validation of this hypothesis and the lower-level hypotheses with which it is connected presupposes a set of criteria for the functional evaluation of various aspects of the organiza¬ tion. Most of the criteria that can be derived from organizational sociology refer primarily to the internal, integrative aspects of the organization, and are based mainly on the concepts of the equilibrium or adjustment of its internal system. Such criteria are not necessarily irrelevant for my purposes. Some negative effects of the sponsorship relation, in fact, can best be traced with reference to ACI’s internal system. For instance, a sense of insecurity is generated in the organization’s lay leaders by some aspects of the sponsorship relation; the relation hinders communication between leaders and members. Where such ef¬ fects are concerned, the more established criteria for functional assessment are sufficient, and they clearly suggest that such traits contradict important requirements of the regular functioning of large-scale organizations. However, the assessment that I am primarily interested in concerns not so much the organization’s internal system and the conditions for its cohesiveness and smooth functioning as the “competence” with which it pursues the ends for which it was sponsored. This makes the question of the theoretical base line rather more problematic. In the first place, one may wonder, why look for a theoretical base line? Would it not be preferable to determine concretely

6o

The Church’s Appeal to the Layman

whether ACI is a success or a failure by deriving some specific targets from its overall goal, verifying whether they have been actually reached or not, and then imputing eventual failures to various aspects of the sponsorship relation? In the abstract, this is a valid way to proceed. However, I was unable to follow it sys¬ tematically because, as I have pointed out, my study is based on the secondary analysis of data not collected specifically for it. In those data the only information concerning the organizational effectiveness of ACI pertains to its action as a pressure group—an aspect of its activity that does not concern me here. Most of the other data available to me bear on ACI’s ideology, its organiza¬ tional structure, and the articulation of its main policies by the Gedda Presidency. In the absence of specific data on ACI’s opera¬ tion as an apostolic organization, the available data could be used in the kind of evaluation I am interested in only through the mediation of a theoretical model. Although from time to time I do try to assess specific lines of action pursued by ACI (or by single branches), generally I am trying to determine whether ACI fits a rudimentary model of the “competent organization” —an organization whose structure and culture allow it to operate effectively in its context.12 In constructing such a model I have employed the results of Selznick’s recent imaginative inquiry into the process of the “in¬ stitutionalization” of large-scale organizations.13 His study is concerned with the “natural,” “adaptive” aspects of the process by which an organization, originally conceived merely as a mecha¬ nism for the performance of certain tasks, acquires a “character,” and through a series of complex transactions with the context of its operation, absorbs from the context certain values that its “identity” focuses on. While this theory to a large extent shares the concern with “internal” problems that is prevalent in the sociology of organization, in a number of ways—and particularly by placing the problem of leadership at the center of the analysis —it goes in the opposite direction. Ultimately, it specifies some of the traits of an organization that has learned to cope with its environment, recognizes certain values outside itself, makes spe¬ cific valuable contributions to the environment, and lends itself fully to the pursuit of the goals that brought it into existence.

The Sponsorship Relation

gj

These are the aspects of Selznick’s work that I have employed, since taken together they go a long way toward providing a model of the competent organization. I have adopted this model as a base line for my assessment of the impact of the sponsorship rela¬ tion on ACI’s “competence.” As I have said above, the distinction between the requirement of control and the requirement of faithfulness provides the main axis for Parts 2 and 3 of my study. I have superimposed that dis¬ tinction on the one between the structure and the culture of ACI, although the correspondence is not perfect and (as was unavoid¬ able, given the analytical character of both distinctions) there are a number of overlaps.

.

PART 2

The Impact of the Requirement of Control on ACI’s Structure

Chapter five

The Authority Structure in ACI

In the history of the Church there have been numerous lay as¬ sociations that did not have their own leaders and had no locus of authority within themselves. Some of these various types of fraternities, congregations, and third orders exist to this day. They are generally attached to an ecclesiastical body, and the clergyman in charge of the ecclesiastical body usually has the title of Director.1 One of the novel features of the various lay religious move¬ ments that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and particularly of those called Catholic Action, was that they were constituted as associations having their own authority struc¬ tures. This difference probably came about because, unlike the earlier types, the new lay movements were meant to serve inter¬ ests going beyond the mere self-edification of the members. At any rate, the principle according to which the CA movements pos¬ sess leadership structures of their own has been implemented in ways that vary significantly from time to time and from place to place. To some extent, the variety of arrangements may be due to a tension between that principle and one at least as im¬ portant: the principle that CA depends on the hierarchy, consti¬ tuting an “auxiliary and subordinate collaboration with the hier¬ archy’s apostolate,” and must accordingly be viewed—in the words of Pius XII—as “an extension of the hierarchy’s arm.”

The Requirement of Control

66

Although logically speaking there is an immanent tension be¬ tween these two principles, that tension does admit of various working accommodations. These differ especially on such mat¬ ters as the election or appointment of lay leaders, the mixed clerical-lay or only lay composition of certain bodies, etc.2 There¬ fore, the arrangements worked out in ACI’s case, which we shall examine in this chapter, are not the only possible solutions to the problems posed by those two contrasting principles.3 The Requirement of Control The insistence that ACI’s authority structure make of it “an instrument in the hands of the hierarchy” (another of Pius XII’s expressions), is generally articulated in theological terms, with reference to the organization’s religious, apostolic mission. As a French bishop put it: Were Catholic Action nothing but the organized action of the Catho¬ lics in the social and civic field,... it would have a different relation¬ ship to the Church’s hierarchy. Given the character of its own mis¬ sion, the Church would be entitled only to an indirect control over such an organization, and might only occasionally act on it.... But once the normal and specific goal of the laymen’s action becomes apostolic, the need for a more exacting dependence can be derived from it.4 The same connection between CA’s apostolic goal and its close dependence on the hierarchy has also been affirmed by Pius XII: “The lay apostolate is always subordinate to the Church’s hier¬ archy; the latter has been divinely constituted, therefore the lay apostolate may not be independent from it,” and by Cardinal Montini (now Pope Paul VI): “If it is true that all laymen may and must associate themselves with the Church’s apostolic action, it is also true that such action requires discipline; thus, whoever wants to become an apostle must offer his services, not reclaim his own freedom.”6 The point argued in these quotes recalls a generalization pro¬ posed by Parsons in his essay on the sociology of organizations: “In the most general sense, the values of the organization legiti¬ mize its existence as a system. But more specifically they legitimize the main functional patterns of operation which are necessary to

The Authority Structure in ACI

67

implement the values, in this case the system goal, under typical conditions of the existing situation.6 Thus, if we take into account both CA’s nature as an organiza¬ tion of laymen seeking to help in apostolic work—seeking to help spread God’s grace—and the nature of the Church as the sole depository of grace, then it is only logical that “the main func¬ tional patterns of operation” of Catholic Action include an au¬ thority structure that effectively puts control in the hands of the hierarchy. This demand can also be construed as a straightfor¬ ward expression of the “requirement of control,” as a precaution the Church takes against a danger implicit in its own appeal to the layman. The danger is that the laymen, as they willingly seek apostolic responsibilities, may claim from the Church an amount of autonomy more or less commensurate with the extent of their effort.* The requirement of the sponsorship relation that is meant to curb this danger operates through a variety of mechanisms. In this chapter I shall examine those imbedded in ACI’s constitu¬ tion; in the following chapters of Part 2, I shall discuss those re¬ flected in the organizational roles of the lay and clerical leaders. Two Imperatives The constitutional mechanisms can be analytically derived from two basic imperatives issuing from the requirement of con¬ trol. Since ACI is to have lay leaders, the first imperative is that they should not, even within the organization, confront the * Note a very significant passage from a speech by the present pope, Paul VI, then Cardinal Montini, made in Rome in 1957 at the Second World Congress of the Lay Apostolate (printed in Coscienza, voi. 2, p. 21): “The first concern of the apostle, and particularly of the lay apostle, must be that of presenting to the world an attractive, admirable, likeable Christian message. We must bear witness to this ideal in the first place through our mutual love, and then through the love we feel for those we are seeking to evangelize.... Such love, however, implies a process of getting closer to the world [un accostamento col mondo] which may be full of dangers. Those who lead the Church establish how far such apostolic relativism may go, so that love and respect should not become eclecticism and defection.” The logic of what I call the sponsorship relation could not be expressed more clearly than in this passage. My problem in this study is this: to what extent is it possible for the Church to safeguard the lay organizations against the dangers of getting closer to the world, without seriously limiting the ability of those or¬ ganizations to establish the relationship with the world that they are supposed to establish?

68

The Requirement of Control

members of the hierarchy on an equal footing. The constitutional provisions ensuring this are: (1) Above ACI’s organizational structure, not merely at the summit of it, there exists a supreme governing body made up exclusively of members of the hier¬ archy. (2) The key leadership positions within the organization are held by laymen appointed by the hierarchy; these officials are responsible to those who have appointed them. The second imperative is that there must be no “strategies of independence” available to the lay leaders to allow them, in spite of the unequal terms on which they confront the hierarchy, to gain any self-sustaining control over the operations of the orga¬ nization. By strategies of independence I mean those devices that persons or groups put in a position of dependence toward other persons or groups can employ in order to diminish or evade such dependence without directly negating it.* Generally through these devices the dependent tries to acquire progressively wider margins of discretion in his own conduct, although as a matter of principle he operates under the control of more highly placed persons or groups. Some typical strategies of independence pur¬ sued by members of bureaucracies consist in manipulating the amount and the kinds of communications they bring to their superiors’ knowledge, or in keeping various aspects of their ac¬ tivity secret, or in performing disagreeable tasks in a deliberately slow and inefficient manner. These and other such strategies are generally not available to ACI’s lay leaders because for the most part they work on a nonprofessional basis, in their leisure time, employing not particularly rare skills, and above all under the continuous actual or potential control of ecclesiastical Assistants acting as delegates of the hierarchy. More complex problems are posed by the possibility that the lay leaders might employ a different strategy of independence. As Merton has observed, a role-holder can sometimes evade the claims of one among a set of different role-partners without nec¬ essarily rejecting those claims outright as illegitimate, simply by pointing to the opposed or competing claims put forth by others * This concept is meant to embrace, at a relatively high level of generality, such other concepts as “withdrawal of efficiency,” “goldbricking,” etc.

The Authority Structure in AC1 in the same set.7 In this sense, a strategy of independence for the lay AC I leader could possibly involve resisting some specific re¬ quests of a member or representative of the hierarchy by point¬ ing to the contrasting claims coming from the organization’s own leadership, or from the rank-and-file, which, as a layman, he somehow represents. However, the ACI constitution makes this strategy of independence unavailable to the lay leaders in two ways. First, since the leaders, being appointed by the hierarchy, do not derive their authority from below, they cannot legitimately appeal to a constituency in the face of the hierarchy’s commands. Second, the possibility of the leader’s appealing to the clear line of derivation of his own authority from above is ruled out by three factors: the patterning of ACI local organization on the ecclesiastical territorial organization (the parishes), the principle of the primary accountability of ACI leaders to the local repre¬ sentatives of the hierarchy (the pastors), and the marked vague¬ ness in the definition of the respective powers of the territorial and functional lines of authority.8 The distinction between the two imperatives of the require¬ ment of control—the inequality between lay leaders and hierar¬ chy, and the prevention of strategies of independence—is mainly analytical, as is shown by the fact that some mechanisms serve both imperatives (e.g., the appointment principle). In the re¬ mainder of this chapter, therefore, it will be necessary to discuss the constitutional mechanisms of the requirement along more concrete lines. I shall consider first those constitutional provi¬ sions that positively confer controlling powers on the hierarchy. Then I will discuss the features of ACI’s constitution that serve the same purpose by default, so to speak, because they fail to provide a clear-cut allocation of authority among different levels and types of leadership instances, and also fail to set up an in¬ ternal mechanism for settling conflicts of jurisdiction. Constitutional Provisions: The Power of the Hierarchy As we have seen in Chapter 3, ACI has a complex structure composed of seven branches. Both ACI as a whole and all of the branches are governed by executive and deliberative organs of

70

The Requirement of Control

their own at the national, diocesan, and parish levels. The mem¬ bers of these organs, as listed in Article 4 of the ACI Statute, are all lay people. The statute makes it quite clear, however, that the ultimate governing powers are seated with appropriate ecclesiastical au¬ thorities at the various levels—outside the organization itself. Article 5 implements the requirement of control by speaking of ACI’s dependence on the hierarchy. Given its nature, and its purpose—maintaining a special and direct collaboration with the Church hierarchy’s apostolate—ACI depends on the Holy See, and in keeping with the Holy See’s directive norms, ... at the national level it depends on an Episcopal Commission and particularly on the prelate who is the secretary of this commission. In the dioceses it depends on the local bishops; in the parishes, on the pastors. Such dependence finds expression in three major principles established by the statute. First, at all levels the supreme govern¬ ing power over ACI’s functions and activities is held by the au¬ thorities mentioned above. For example, Article 34 reads: “In each diocese ACI depends on the bishop who governs it [dirige] in keeping with the Holy See’s supreme directives.” Article 52 reads: “In the parish, ACI is under the authority of the pastor, who exercises his authority in keeping with the directive norms issued by his own bishop.” Second, all the units that make up ACI at all levels have ecclesiastical Assistants. The Assistant is in charge of “representing the hierarchy inside the units, and of seeing to it that the hierarchy’s norms and directives are faith¬ fully observed.” Third, all key leadership posts (as well as the ecclesiastical Assistantships) both in the branches and in the co¬ ordinating organs are filled by ecclesiastical appointment, and their holders are responsible to those who appoint them. Obscurities and Gaps in the Constitution of ACI The constitutional provisions appear most inadequate in de¬ fining the relationship between the functions of the lay leaders and those of the hierarchy. The statute makes no attempt to specify concretely just what are the respective provinces of these two types of authority. It is only clear that the hierarchy’s powers

The Authority Structure in ACI

71

are overriding, and that any further concrete definition of the various powers and where they lie is left to the hierarchy itself. There are other obscurities regarding the relationship between the respective powers of the branch and the coordinating organs at the various levels. The statute says, for instance, that “The Presidenza Generale is the executive organ responsible for the direction of ACI as a whole... . [It] has authority over the vari¬ ous national associations [branches] and governs their activity in keeping with the present statute.” Yet when the statute goes on to specify the powers of the Presidenza Generale over the branches, it mentions a few irrelevant ones (such as that of requesting from the branches and submitting to the Episcopal Commission the yearly programs, the reports on the previous year’s activity, and the balance sheet and budget) or some that are very vaguely de¬ fined—the Presidenza Generale, for instance, is supposed to “pro¬ mote the regular functioning of all organizations [it is not even clear whether this term does include the branches] and their apos¬ tolic activity.” Also, the powers of the supreme deliberative body, the Central Committee, are too amply defined, especially if one considers that its meetings may be called as infrequently as twice a year; its powers include coordinating the branches’ activities, safeguarding the “unity of spirit and action” among them, and issuing “directive norms and general initiatives” for ACI’s ac¬ tivity. Even less is said about the powers of the General Assembly. Taken by themselves these specifications might conceivably appear adequate; the problem is that each branch, at every level, has its own governing organ with a lay leader called a president, the same title given to the leaders of the coordinating organs. In these conditions, that very vague term “coordination,” which the statute repeatedly uses to define the main task of those organs, gives no sufficiently clear notion of the relationship between them and the branch organs. The statute is equally vague on the matter of the relationship between the organs at one level and those at another within each branch and among the coordinating groups. It seems clear that all branches are considered not loose confederations, but rather tight groups; the statute calls them “national associations.” In each, “the authority of the Presidenza Centrale . .. extends to all

72

The Requirement of Control

diocesan and parish units of it.” However, Article 61 of the stat¬ ute says that ‘‘in the single dioceses ACI depends on the local bishop,” and that ‘‘the parish council of each branch deliberates on all that concerns the development, organization, and activity of the association, and the recruitment and training of the mem¬ bers.” Both the parish and the diocesan leaders are made responsi¬ ble to their bishops, not to the national organs. Clearly, given the nature of the sponsoring institution, the chief problem here is to reconcile the authority of the bishop over his diocese with the nationwide authority of the national organs of ACI. As the interviews for the SSRC project on Italian pressure groups have revealed, these indeterminacies in the constitutional structure of ACI are not clarified by a set of accepted working arrangements. The question of what is meant by the “coordinat¬ ing” powers of the central organs, for instance, was very much an open one throughout the Gedda Presidency. It was clearly felt that the ultimate decision on this and similar problems lay with the hierarchy.9 All these ambiguities are made more striking by the absence of any provisions for regulating or solving the conflicts and dissen¬ sions involving jurisdictional competence that might arise be¬ tween coordinating and branch organs at the same level of the organization, or between two levels in the same branch. Again, these are not merely formal gaps. Although they are almost never openly discussed in the ACI press, jurisdictional problems of both types do arise;10 and the SSRC project could detect no informal working arrangements for dealing with them. In such conditions, all conflicts are necessarily solved by the hierarchy’s ad hoc deci¬ sions, made in the framework of the clearly established powers of the ecclesiastical authority. A Tentative Functional Evaluation of the Constitutional Provisions From the standpoint of the better-known principles of “organi¬ zational engineering,” these aspects of ACI’s constitution clearly do not meet many serious functional requirements, such as that for a neat layout of the lines of command and communication,

The Authority Structure in ACI

^

clearly specifying the respective spheres of decision of the vari¬ ous organs. A more detailed examination of the statute would also show that the provisions concerning such typical staff organs as the Offices” and “Secretariats” operating in the branch and coordinating organs at the diocesan and national levels are again inadequate to the task of preventing and limiting conflicts be¬ tween the lay leaders and the hierarchy. However, this is not the kind of functional evaluation I am concerned with; of much greater interest is an attempt to specify how these constitutional features of ACI affect its competence— its ability to act effectively within its context of operation. There¬ fore, I shall ask whether an organization with ACI’s constitu¬ tional features can contain enough “functional space” for the emergence of what Selznick calls “institutional leadership.” By this term he means those activities that go beyond the mere trans¬ mission of directives coming from outside the organization, the detailed programming of their execution, and the performance of instrumental and expressive tasks having mainly internal sig¬ nificance. In Selznick s model of the “institutionalized” organization, these activities do not exhaust the responsibilities of a correctly understood leadership function. Instead, a leadership function is seen to be involved primarily in the following tasks: (1) The definition of institutional mission and role. This implies the re¬ sponsibility (and, I might add, requires the freedom) for develop¬ ing a focused, widely accepted, and shared understanding of the generally vague and abstract original definition of the organiza¬ tion’s goal in the light of both its external and its internal situa¬ tion. (2) The institutional embodiment of purpose. This implies the shaping (and reshaping) of the organization’s structure so that it will reflect its commitment to its properly defined goal, and in¬ crease its “distinctive competence” for pursuing it.* (3) The de¬ fense of institutional integrity. This is the effort to maintain, in the organization as a whole and its main components, a lively sense of the values on which its identity is grounded, so that it * Later, in Chapter 8, I shall refer to this “task area” as that of the “strategic structuring of the organization.”

74

The Requirement of Control

will not degenerate into a self-serving mechanism aiming at sheer survival. (4) The ordering of internal conflict, so that the inter¬ play of pushes and pulls inherent in the composite nature of the organization and in its ramified structure will not distract the organization as a whole from its main commitments.11 Keeping in mind this way of conceptualizing the peculiar re¬ sponsibilities of an organization’s leadership, I would ask to what extent ACI’s statute actually delegates them to those laymen ap¬ pointed to the coordinating and branch organs at all levels. With respect to such a question, the burden of the points previously made in this chapter is nicely summarized by Msgr. Urbani, then General Assistant of ACI (now he is Patriarch of Venice), in a statement on the nature of ACI’s dependence on the hierarchy: It [the dependence] expresses itself in the hierarchy’s power to confer its approval on the statute of ACI, to appoint its leaders, and to keep watch on its activities through an ecclesiastical Assistant.... It ex¬ presses itself in the leaders’ duty to submit for approval both general and detailed plans of action, to execute them faithfully, and finally to report on them to the hierarchy.12 Msgr. Bortignon, Bishop of Padua and for many years an in¬ fluential member of the Episcopal Commission for ACI, lists the hierarchy’s prerogatives concerning ACI thus: “to define its goals, to explain what is meant by the laity’s collaboration with the hierarchy’s apostolate, to establish what is to be done, and to pass judgment on various forms of organization and on various tactics, which necessarily may vary from time to time.18 In the light of these statements, and by referring again to Selznick’s conceptualization of the critical responsibilities of “insti¬ tutional leadership” (which means the leadership appropriate to a competent organization), we can reach the following conclu¬ sions about the functional significance of ACI’s constitution. (1) The definition of institutional mission and role is outside the province of the lay leadership because it is embodied in the constitutional definition of the nature of ACI. This definition issues from the hierarchy, antecedes logically the very existence of a lay leadership in ACI, and is a precondition for that existence. I shall show later that this definition is actually rather vague and admits of various interpretations. At any rate, even locating from

The Authority Structure in ACI time to time the appropriate interpretation appears to be a pre¬ rogative of the hierarchy. (2) In the absence of rules for the settlement of jurisdictional conflicts and dissensions over policies, which are made inevitable by the gaps in the formal normative structure of the organization, it is to be assumed that at the various levels the ordering of even¬ tual internal conflicts would “naturally” belong to the hierarchy or to its ecclesiastical delegates inside ACI.

(3) As for the institutional embodiment of purpose, a factual experience in the recent history of ACI suggests that even this function is outside the actual province of the lay leadership. As we shall see later, one of the critical policies initiated by the Rossi Presidency in GIAC (1952-54), which led to Rossi’s dismissal by the Holy See, was precicely his attempt to restructure GIAC in order to develop and foster its “distinctive competence” for per¬ forming its apostolic tasks. Thus, of the four key leadership functions listed by Selznick, only the third, the defense of institutional integrity, is not put outside the province of the lay leadership by ACI’s constitution. However, given the necessarily close relation between the cen¬ tral values of the organization and its institutional integrity, it may be suggested that this area is largely entrusted to the eccle¬ siastical Assistants in their constitutional role. In terms of Selznick’s model, then, we must conclude that through the requirement of control the sponsorship relation dysfunctionally affects the sponsored organization, depriving it of vital functions and thus limiting the chances it has of effectively doing the job for which it was originally sponsored.14 This negative conclusion is confirmed by a theological dis¬ cussion published by the organ of the French Young Christian Workers’ organization (JOC): Who has the leadership in Catholic Action? The Assistants or ... the leaders? ... How can CA be “the laymen’s business” if its higher gov¬ ernment is in the hands of the hierarchy? The hierarchy leads, the Assistants lead, the lay leaders lead, the pastors intend to lead their parishes. Who are the leaders in CA ? These are cavils to which life pays no heed, it is often protested. Perhaps so; but a price may be paid for that. The lack of clear ideas

76

The Requirement of Control

may well get in life’s way. If the movements of CA often seem to drag and fidget, perhaps the lack of a coherent theology is partly to blame for it.15 Whether the solution of such a difficulty may be sought through theological clarification is a point one may argue. At any rate, the sociological aspects of the difficulty are formidable by them¬ selves. A Word of Caution As I have previously warned, my selective interest in the spon¬ sorship relation, and more precisely in its dysfunctional effects on the sponsored organization, leads to an emphasis that the reader may often have to correct, or even discount, if one-sided impressions are to be avoided. For instance, in this chapter the reader might be led to misread into my discussion of the contra¬ dictions and gaps in the constitutional system of ACI an implicit charge that they were expressly designed to induce a sort of power vacuum which would make the appeal to the ecclesiastical authorities inescapable. The familiar distinction between the assessment of the effects of a given trait and the imputation of a conscious purpose to those ultimately responsible for the exis¬ tence of that trait should easily dispel this impression.16 Or a reader may conceivably imagine a similarity between my view of the ACI constitution and Hannah Arendt’s argument that the “shapelessness” of the power system of the totalitarian state is designed to foster the Fuehrer principle.17 The analogy holds as far as it goes; but it should not lead the reader to miss the significant differences between the two cases at hand, and view ACI as a “totalitarian polity.” In fact the gaps and contradictions in ACI’s constitution have the effect of bringing the members and leaders face to face with the overriding authority of the sponsoring institution only in crisis situations, which the insti¬ tution itself has no intention of multiplying, but indeed seeks to avoid. On the other hand, according to Miss Arendt’s construct, it is of the essence of totalitarianism that its subjects be continu¬ ously led by the driving dynamics of the movement to confront the authority of the leader. Actually, the difference goes so far that one cannot call ACI’s

The Authority Structure in ACI

^7

system or its relationship to the sponsoring institution “shape¬ less.” For all its gaps and contradictions, there is a definite and potentially stable authority structure. The possibility of the hier¬ archy s recalling certain powers of decision from the lay leader¬ ship exists, but it is not in the hierarchy’s style to take advantage of that possibility either frequently or willingly. Indeed, the more efficient and more confidently and consistently trusted “controls” of the hierarchy over the exercise of leadership functions by the laymen lie rather in the culture of ACI, in the leaders’ loyalty to the hierarchy. These controls have a consensual basis, and their vital supports come from the criteria for recruitment and the in¬ doctrination of the leaders rather than from the constitutional powers vested in the hierarchy. It is these controls that I shall consider in the next chapter.

Chapter six

The Lay Leaders

The constitutional provisions discussed in the preceding chapter, although they prevent the lay personnel from performing some critical functions of “institutional leadership” (to use Selznick’s expression), do not obviate ACI’s need for a large and active body of lay leaders in all branches and at all levels. I shall ex¬ amine some of the problems presented by this need, seeking mainly to determine the impact of the sponsorship relation on the ways in which it is met. Safety First The sponsorship relation makes itself felt chiefly in making the leader’s loyalty to the hierarchy, over and beyond his com¬ mitment to ACI itself, the key criterion for the selection, train¬ ing, appointment, and deployment of lay leaders. This is implicit in the logic of the sponsorship relation, and is the response to the threat potentially present in the exclusive, single-minded loyalty of a leader to his organization. Some structural and cul¬ tural arrangements that ensure the primacy of this criterion will be described later. Here I shall merely sketch analytically the main mechanisms in operation. (1) For the leaders who perform their duties well, the institu¬ tionally approved rewards are of a spiritual nature and as such

The Lay Leaders

79

are administered by the sponsoring institution through its sacra¬ ments. The same applies to the sanctions for defective perfor¬ mance. (2) The same institution, the Church, is seen as the only ap¬ propriate organ for assessing and reaping the results of effective apostolic action performed under the leader’s immediate respon¬ sibility. (Note, for example, the recurrent recommendation that the last step in apostolic activity by the layman should consist in his entrusting his “spiritual ward” to the priest.) (3) The leader’s awareness of the two factors above—that owing to their transcendental nature, the targets, the standards, and the sanctions of his own operation are not to be manipulated by him¬ self—tends to create in him a feeling of insecurity about the sense and the value of his own effort. The approved response to this feeling, within ACI, consists in the leader’s reinforcing his com¬ mitment to the Church, which alone can operate with authority and certainty within that meta-empirical sphere. As a result, the lay leader tends to identify himself more and more with the hierarchy and the Assistants. Because the layman and the hierarchy are on very different planes, with the layman in a condition of marked inferiority, his identification tends to express itself mainly as a generous, self-denying dedication to the service of the hierarchy. Thus the lay leader’s personal “avail¬ ability” to the hierarchy tends to occupy the central position in his own values. This is also the result, in most cases, of the leader’s more or less conscious interest in preserving his position in the organization, and of his awareness that he may be unable to keep it if he ceases to be wholly “available.” For all its compelling logic, the imperative of “safety first,” which issues from the sponsorship relation, must come to terms somehow with other imperatives: (1) the leader must be accept¬ able to the led, and (2) the leader’s docility with the hierarchy must not hamper or limit his sense of initiative and responsibil¬ ity. The complex interaction of these and other imperatives with “safety first” accounts for the complexity of the problems atten¬ dant on the selection, training, motivation, and deployment of lay leaders in ACI. However, in the following treatment of this

8o

The Requirement of Control

theme, I shall do only partial justice to its complexity, because of my primary interest in tracing the effects of the sponsorship relation. The Makings of the Lay Leader Joseph Fichter, S.J., in his Social Relations in the Urban Parish, has worked out a typology of Catholic parishioners from the standpoint of their motivational systems. The first of his types, the “nuclear parishioner,” makes a good starting point for a de¬ scription of the stuff ACI leaders are made of. Father Fichter him¬ self remarks that all the leaders and most of the members of American parish lay organizations are drawn from the nuclear parishioners. One could say that the following list of the salient features of his nuclear parishioner is a good description both of what the proven ACI leader actually is, and of the ideal ACI member: He has a perfect orthodoxy in all matters of faith, and a con¬ stant tendency to think with the Church in all domains of life. In his evaluation of cultural institutions it is the religious in¬ stitution that holds the first place. The roles prescribed by the Church have a central value in his eyes. These institutionalized roles dominate all other behavioral models prescribed by the social environment. The Church’s re¬ ligious commandments and precepts are “not exclusively reli¬ gious principles which operate only within the formal eccles¬ iastical structures. They are principles for a ‘philosophy of life’ according to which he acts in every institutional situation he enters.” His relations with the clergy tend to be cordial and spontane¬ ous.1 This is an adequate but partial description of the ACI leader. Fichter also felt this to be the case, and his discussion of parish lay organization leaders refers to the result of a poll he took to determine specifically what qualifications are required of the lay leaders. Each of his 245 American informants (who were de¬ scribed as “experienced persons”) suggested two to four qualities. Their 745 answers, tabulated, show that specifically religious qualities (being a good Catholic, etc.) are mentioned in 18 per

The Lay Leaders

g}

cent of the answers; moral qualities in 32 per cent, and various social skills in 50 per cent of the answers. Since these returns do not match my own notion of the qualifi¬ cations required of ACI leaders, I took a small poll of my own, putting the same question to 32 experienced past and present ACI lay leaders and ecclesiastical Assistants (mostly from GIAC). As I expected, their answers practically reverse the emphasis found by Father Fichter in the United States. Specifically reli¬ gious qualifications were dominant (40 per cent), while social skills appeared least frequently (25 per cent). Responses men¬ tioning moral qualities were about as frequent as in Fichter’s sample (35 per cent). The sharp discounting of social skills by the Italian respon¬ dents may be due merely to cultural factors. It is significant, how¬ ever, that the specifically religious qualifications gain so much by the social skills loss. It is also noteworthy that among the re¬ ligious qualifications mentioned, the majority have more to do with actual religious commitments (“must have the sense of the Church, . . . must be loyal to the hierarchy, . . . must have a spiri¬ tual director”) than with religious feelings. These commitments express the priority of considerations of “availability” to the hier¬ archy. This is also indicated by the SSRC interviews, and by the criteria involved in the selection of ACI leaders. There are not many such references in the SSRC interviews, since this topic was rather peripheral to the main concerns of that project. The most important reference is the answer given by a former leader of GF to the question “How are the GF leaders selected?” She said: At all levels, starting from that of the parish organizations, the quality most sought in the GF leaders is that they be good girls—but good here is to be taken in a particularly exacting sense, as meaning girls deeply committed to prayer and the sacraments, of irreproachable, indeed exemplary, morality, and above all much devoted to the Church and the clergy. This quality is the central one, and becomes more and more important the higher up one goes in the organiza¬ tion’s pyramid.... The reason why some rather old national leaders of GF seem to be irremovable in spite of their being, because of their age, quite out of touch with the problems and the preferences of the girls who make

The Requirement of Control

82

up the organization’s membership, is probably just that over the years they have proved to the hierarchy’s satisfaction that they are wholly, unreservedly devoted to its service.2 The following quote from the article “We and the Church,” published in the Presidenza Generale’s fortnightly newspaper, which goes to all ACI organs, gives an idea of the breadth and depth of the commitment to obey the hierarchy that is expected of the ACI leaders: What is asked of us is an integral and total devotion to the Church’s hierarchy.... True obedience is characterized by promptness, integ¬ rity, and confidence. A truly obedient person asks not to know where he is being sent, does not concern himself with how far he is sup¬ posed to go; he simply picks up and goes. His intelligence is to be employed not in arguing about his destination, but in detecting the better, speedier road to it, supposing that a road has not been shown to him already. If he has been assigned not just a destination, but a road, his only concern must be to walk that road without deviating from it or slowing down.3 Indirect proof that the lay leaders, as I surmised, identify them¬ selves primarily with the hierarchy, is offered by the frequency of “late vocations” among ACI leaders—and particularly, for obvi¬ ous reasons, among GIAC leaders. A parallel and equally signifi¬ cant phenomenon, which I understand to be as frequent, is GF leaders’ becoming nuns. Unfortunately I have no hard data on the extent of these phenomena—except perhaps for the recollec¬ tion that between 1951 and 1954, five leaders entered the seminary from the diocesan GIAC presidenza to which I was attached at the time. In the light of reference group theory,4 at any rate, such a phenomenon seems to indicate that the ACI lay leaders are not supposed to view the organization as the exclusive or even pri¬ mary object of their dedication, but to take the Church itself as the central point of reference in their role conception. It can also be said that joining the clergy-availing themselves of the clergy’s peculiar character as simultaneously a highly “segregated” and highly “accessible” elite5-is the most radical way ACI leaders can respond to the ambiguities, contradictions, and uncertainties that tend to beset their roles. Finally, such a phenomenon is sig¬ nificant for what it reveals not only of the configuration of the

The Lay Leaders leaders roles, but also of the nature of the organization as a whole. When a parish or diocesan leader of GIAC, possibly one who is vastly popular, highly skilled, and “organizationally indispens¬ able,

leaves the organization to enter the seminary, the organiza¬

tion does not ordinarily view this as a “loss” for itself; in fact such an event is joyfully saluted, much unlike what happens when an equally qualified leaders leaves his post to become a leader of a coordinating organ or to get married. This confirms my attribu¬ tion of a “sponsored” character to ACI—a wholly self-sufficient organization could only view with concern the departure of such qualified leaders. Natural Leaders The term “natural leader” is not current in ACI parlance, al¬ though it is a well-known slogan, for instance, in the French CA’s youth movements. Nevertheless, the problem that the term con¬ veys is felt in ACI as well. This problem, when seen from the viewpoint of the sponsoring institution, is that the appointment principle and the criteria for the selection of leaders, which issue from the sponsorship relation, must be somehow balanced by other imperatives if the appointed leadership is to be effective as well as legitimate. The chief other imperatives are these: (1) There must be a kind of consensus among the membership con¬ cerning the distinctive qualities that make one of the members a potential leader. This imperative is implied by the fundamental “theorem” of political sociology—that whatever the constitutional details of his selection, the legitimacy of the leader rests ulti¬ mately on the recognition by those led that he is legitimate. (This recognition in turn activates the members’ compliance with the leader’s command, thus indirectly fostering his effectiveness.)6 It may also be suggested that this exigency tends to be all the more cogent and articulate in the case of a voluntary organization. (2) The leader should be to some extent autonomously motivated to perform his leadership functions; otherwise his effectiveness will be impaired. (This would in turn impair members’ motiva¬ tion to comply, and in the long run their recognition of the leader’s legitimacy.) It is easily seen that if carried to their logical consequences,

84

The Requirement of Control

these exigencies are in potential contrast with the principle of appointment and the primacy of the leaders’ commitments to the hierarchy. The overriding cogency of the sponsorship rela¬ tion has the effect of preserving both the appointment principle and the primacy of such commitments; thus the imperatives mentioned above are met only half way. According to evidence from the SSRC interviews as well as documentary evidence from the magazine of the ACI ecclesias¬ tical Assistants, the lower-level leaders and especially the pastors and ecclesiastical Assistants are often advised: (1) to seek out po¬ tential ACI leaders who have some popularity among the organi¬ zation members, but who are “ascendant over them”; (2) not to let a shortsighted interest in “peace around the house” lead them to select as ACI leaders those members who are the meekest and most at their own beck and call.7 Yet no opportunity is lost to repeat frequently that the first and foremost criterion of selection is the prospective candidate’s unreserved devotion to the hier¬ archy’s service. This strategy is, of course, to a good extent a matter of wanting to have the cake and eat it too. Yet relative success for so seem¬ ingly hopeless a strategy is assured by a number of working mech¬ anisms.8 I cannot treat them in detail but I shall point out some critical ones. The chief response to the potential contrast between the ap¬ pointment principle and the need for recognition of the leader by the members consists as a matter of course in giving legitimacy m the members’ eyes to the appointment principle itself. This is naturally easier in the adult branches and in the upper reaches of the youth branches, where the greater maturity of the mem¬ bers allows them to comprehend the reasons for the appointment principle, or at any rate their seniority in the organization leads them to take that principle for granted. In these sectors of the organization, the policy of selecting, de¬ veloping, and appointing “popular” leaders, with its obvious democratic implications, strikes a compromise with the appoint¬ ment principle: the leader generally does turn out to be the member who in the other members’ eyes upholds and embodies the group norms to the greatest extent.9 But the power to judge

The Lay Leaders

8r,

and evaluate each member’s adherence to normative standards does not belong to the membership; and one of these normative standards consists precisely in the member’s identification with a source of authority outside ACI, and in his commitment to serve that authority over and above his commitment to the group itself. In the lower reaches of the youth branches the age of the mem¬ bers and their necessarily low seniority in ACI makes it unlikely that they have internalized the reasons for the appointment prin¬ ciple; and the chances are greater that the criterion of popularity in the members’ eyes may lead to a dangerous choice from the standpoint of safety first. A solution seems to lie in the creation of a sub-leader whose selection is controlled by popularity. For instance, among the CIAC Aspiranti (ages ten through fourteen), the strong tendency of adolescent groups to produce a number of nuclear subgroups10 is sanctioned by the creation of the gruppi within the parish sections. Each gruppo has five to ten members, and has its own capo. The capo is appointed, but both documentary evidence and the logic of his position as a “nuclear leader” suggest that popularity has a great deal to do with his selection. However, the capo is not at all a statutory leader; and in the selection of the statutory leader (the “Delegato Aspiranti”) popularity is ignored to the extent that a Delegato is usually at least five years older than his charges. Such persons are not required to be overly pop¬ ular.11 Furthermore, the imperative that the leaders be energetic per¬ sonalities, capable of initiative and responsibility, contrasts po¬ tentially with the priority of considerations of “availability.” However, the culture of the organization (and of the sponsoring institution) allows a number of devices to control the danger of such a contrast. Two such devices are these: (x) The priest with whom the lay leader is usually in touch (mainly the ecclesiastical Assistant of the organizational unit where leadership is held) is seen not merely as a “giver of commands” but also as the adminis¬ trator of sacramental rewards for compliance, sanctions for in¬ adequate compliance, and incentives for relatively independent, self-initiating action. The often-repeated warning that “the ACI leader must lead an intense sacramental life” (should often hear

86

The Requirement of Control

Mass and go to Confession and Holy Communion) is a most effec¬ tive device for whipping the leader into action.12 (2) The ideas of service and sacrifice are made to occupy a central position in the indoctrination of leaders, and they can be expected to impart a certain drive to his role performance. In fact, an attitude of sheer docility toward the hierarchy’s representatives is made to appear somewhat short of perfection. The hierarchy itself stresses that it expects the leader not to have all his action directives formed by its command. Insecurity in the Lay Leader's Role A number of structural, cultural, and psychological factors in the role of the lay leader of ACI build into it a subtle sense of in¬ security. Here are a few, some of which have already been dis¬ cussed: (1) the spiritual nature of the institutionally approved in¬ centives, rewards and sanctions for the lay leader’s action; (2) the continuous proximity of the ecclesiastical Assistant in his dual role as a supervisory officer and as an informal organizational leader, a proximity that is likely to induce a sense of anxiety and possibly of inferiority in the leader;13 (3) the constitutional gaps and contradictions in the delicate matter of formal allocation of decisional powers; (4) the fact that the key functions of “institu¬ tional leadership’’ are outside the lay leader’s scope of action; (5) the reference-group identification with the clergy, with the frustration inherent in the fact that for those leaders who are married this identification cannot reach fulfillment by the lead¬ er’s joining the clergy (or an order of nuns); (6) subtle polarities in the leader’s feelings about being a leader, such as the dis¬ tinction between approved feelings of aristocratic superiority (fierezza), and reproved feelings of inordinate pride (orgoglio); (7) finally, the perception of a certain amount of friction between the spiritual, religious mission of ACI as a collaborator with the hierarchy’s apostolate, and its mode of operation as a large-scale organization (insecurity because of this affects the clerical leaders as well). Actually, the more intensely preoccupied with religious values the leader is, the more he is led to feel both the inadequacy, the basic

otherness

of the organizational instrument, and the

The Lay Leaders

87

alienation from spiritual values threatening the members who put too much trust in it. In reference to this last factor, it is easy to note that a similar problem exists for the Church itself—indeed for any church inso¬ far as it ceases to be an exclusively spiritual believers’ commu¬ nity, and takes corporate shape as an institution.14 However, as Troeltsch and Weber, among others, have remarked, the Church has long since coped with this problem by taking shape as a charismatic institution, by ritualizing most of its organizational practices, by investing them with sacramental significance, and by sharing its charisma with its officials. None of these arrangements are open to ACI, given its nature as merely a sponsored organization. For ACI does not share the charisma vested in the hierarchy, and cannot apply its own cri¬ teria and modes of operation with the same assurance of super¬ natural efficiency. Thus, the ACI leaders assuage their anxieties over the significance of their own conduct in the organization by renewing and intensifying their commitment to the sponsor¬ ing institution. Only a continuously renewed consciousness of serving the Church through a devoted and unquestioning obedi¬ ence to its hierarchy can overcome the ambivalence that most sensitive ACI leaders feel toward their own organization. Their commitment to it finds its own reasons and, at the same time, its own limits, in an overriding disposition to serve the Church and obey the hierarchy. Some Concrete Aspects of the Selection and Progression of Lay Leaders I have already warned the reader that my prevalent concern with the logic of the sponsorship relation is bound to introduce imbalances and inadequacies into my argument, especially from the viewpoint of those who—unwisely—seek in it a full-blown concrete description of “the way things go” in ACI. In the last few paragraphs, for instance, I have found it useful to conduct my analysis as if I were watching the hierarchy handpick the lay leaders of ACI, from the branches’ Central Presidents to the heads of the Aspiranti gruppi, by following an explicit and rigid opera-

88

The Requirement of Control

donai code that spells out a number of criteria for the choices, and carefully weights them. This way of conducting the analysis could lead to misunderstandings. In reality the selection and training of leaders takes place in a variety of ways that reflect what I call the logic of the sponsorship relation, without its being present in the minds of the actors. The formal act of appointing a lay leader concludes a process that is very complex. Let us take a brief look at some of these concrete configurations: (1) Co-optation. The ACI statute arranges for the appointment (and in a few cases the election) of a small number of leaders. Generally, at the various levels, but especially at those above the parish, there are other de facto posts, instituted as required by the degree of organizational development and as allowed by the num¬ ber of available personnel. Thus a “diocesan GIAC Center,” for instance, generally comprises many more posts than those estab¬ lished by the statute. This is because the statutory positions them¬ selves are part-time and unremunerated; thus in many cases the discharging of the responsibilities inherent in them requires that more than one person carry them out (whereas a single full-time leader might conceivably be able to do so on his own). The same policy is also due to the strong feeling that potential leadership personnel is in very short supply in ACI, and that each organ should therefore try to “hoard” as much of it as possible, perhaps by dividing the formal sphere of responsibility of a single statu¬ tory leader. Thus practically every ACI leader, in his contacts with the rank and file or with lower-level leaders, is always more or less covertly hunting for available leadership talent. Generally when a qualified person is spotted, he is immediately co-opted and assigned his share of work within the framework of a higherlevel organ, side by side with the statutory leaders. Those who do a good job of carrying out these assignments are successively con¬ sidered for more formal and more exacting responsibilities. Thus, between each level in the formal organization and the next lower one, there is usually not a clear gap, but a body of co-leaders, often with a high turnover, which continuously absorbs other leaders from the lower level through a diffusely and loosely operating process of co-optation. (2) Mobility and career. Formally speaking, the neat hierarchy

The Lay Leaders

89

of leadership positions within ACI does not constitute a succes¬ sion of steps through which a leader must go before he attains the highest posts; the hierarchy, in fact, is technically free to place in any appointive post any member of the organization, whatever his previous leadership experience, if any. Concretely, however, a small number of standard sequences of career steps can be de¬ tected. There is a diffuse understanding that in the first place no one can become a leader who has not been a bona fide member for some time, and in the second place, only the successful hand¬ ling of a post at a certain level qualifies a leader to be considered for higher ones. Thus, for example, a number of years ago the current president of a GIAC parish association might have been a

capo” in the Aspiranti section, then perhaps the secretary of

the Juniores section, then Vice-Delegate and successively Dele¬ gate in charge of the Aspiranti section, then Delegate in charge of the Juniores section. Another young man’s career may include the same steps as the former one, but as an Aspiranti Delegate, his success with his charges may have impressed a visiting diocesan Aspiranti leader, who took him into the diocesan Aspiranti Office to help manage its students’ branch, then successively he may have become the diocesan Aspiranti Vice-Delegate and finally Delegate. From this post he could advance either by becoming GIAC’s diocesan President; or by joining the national Aspiranti Office, again to manage the students’ branch at this level. (3) Leadership in ACI as a family tradition. I have already suggested that becoming a member of ACI is often a matter of family tradition. The same thing can be said for the holding of organizational posts, especially at the parish level. Here often no more than half a dozen or ten families, naturally among the more religiously committed, where the child’s religious socialization is very early and very intense, may supply the personnel to lead all the local ACI associations, perhaps over several generations. (4) Secret clusters of leaders and candidate leaders develop. It happens in many mass organizations that access to leadership positions, formally open to all members, depends in fact on a member’s standing with (or formal adhesion to) a group that is organized, perhaps secretly, within the wider organization, and that forms its own members according to a variant of the larger

The Requirement of Control

90

group’s ideology, controls some of its key leadership posts, and tends to monopolize as many of them as possible. There are a number of indications that something like this occurs—or at least did occur until a few years ago—within ACI, and particularly in the two youth branches. In the GIAC case reliable information comes from Falconi, an author who has had access to much con¬ fidential material produced by the Società Operaia (literally, Workmen’s Society), a religious order for lay people founded by Gedda before the war, which for years has supplied the bulk of the national GIAC leadership, and a sizable proportion of its diocesan leadership.15 As the published material shows, there is nothing intrinsically mysterious, much less sinister, about the “Società.” Its ideology is but a purer, more crystalized expression of the ideal of a total dedication of the laity to the hierarchy that is the central value in the normative configuration of the leader’s role. The members of the Società make this particularly radical commitment by taking temporary vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and maintaing close touch with one another. In sum, the Società’s goal is to make available to the hierarchy a tight, homogeneous hard core of ACI leaders whose “spiritual tempera¬ ture” is particularly high, whose commitment is total, and whose “availability” is integral. Little wonder, then, that the hierarchy has liberally used the Società as a preferential source of leader¬ ship personnel. The same apparently can be said of the “Opera della Regalità di Nostro Signore,” a lay religious order for unmarried women, who also take vows. According to what I was told by an ex-leader of GF, the Opera operates within GF and supplies the bulk of its leadership at the national level and in a number of dioceses. Opera members who reach a leadership position in GF generally are expected to co-opt other Opera members into such positions, and eventually to hand over to them their own positions. The hierarchy is aware that this happens, but has no objections, since only well-trained and utterly devoted young women can join the Opera, and they are entirely dependable as leaders. The fact that a good number of key positions in GF are held by Opera mem¬ bers is one factor making for homogeneity and continuity in GF’s

The Lay Leaders

gj

educational policy, which still reflects the ideal pattern personi¬ fied by GF’s founder, Armida Barelli (the so-called “elder sis¬ ter”).16 Concrete Aspects of the Reward System As the reader will have noticed, in referring to the “rewards” that motivate the ACI leader, I have mentioned so far only those which are normatively recognized and approved by the organiza¬ tion and are of a spiritual nature. The reward system of the orga¬ nization, however, comprises other rewards, some of a moral na¬ ture, some material; some of these are normatively not approved, but merely permitted; others again (particularly those of a ma¬ terial nature) are disapproved, but often in practice tolerated as concessions to the pressures of everyday reality. There are probably quite a few ACI leaders whose activity is motivated not only by the wish to receive God’s grace (approved spiritual rewards), but also by their pride in being useful to the Church (approved moral rewards), by the satisfaction they feel in running their particular organizational sectors well (permitted moral reward), or pehaps by the proud feeling of being leaders (disapproved moral reward). Finally, one should not discount the motivating significance of the certainty that the service rendered the hierarchy can more or less directly bring the leaders valuable opportunities for good jobs, for occupational advancement, for economic gain, and for social recognition (disapproved material rewards). I would like to look more closely at a few of these types of re¬ wards. Perhaps the most important among the “permitted moral rewards” are those we could call “psychological,” namely the def¬ erence the members generally show the highly placed leaders, and in general those gratifications that tend to increase the esteem felt for a person by himself and others. As is the case in many orga¬ nizations, there is a remarkable discrepancy between the psycho¬ logical rewards that the leader receives within ACI, and those he gets outside ACI. On the whole, one’s social standing in Italian society at large is not perceptibly bettered by the fact that one occupies a position even of some importance within ACI. Italian

92

The Requirement of Control

society, and particularly those sectors of it that control the social standing and prestige of people, has always paid scant attention to ACI and its leaders, and in fact it seems to hold (and to project) a basically negative, perhaps outright contemptuous, evaluation of them. On the contrary, within the organization a capable and successful leader generally receives numerous rewards of this kind. The diocesan and national ACI press will often carry his name and his picture; his speeches are generally respectfully lis¬ tened to, and are invariably followed by generous applause. A leader with above-average talents and achievements will be re¬ warded by seeing that the faces of lower leaders and of members light up as they look at him, that every word of his is attentively heard, that his attention is sought, and that his features have be¬ come familiar to wider and wider circles among the members. He will be particularly thankful for the esteem and the affection shown him by the priests and prelates he often will have among his audience; after all, the unique charismatic qualification every clergyman enjoys allows him to be quite free with his applause and encouragement of a layman. As for material rewards, although it is clear that they are against the ethos of the organization, this does not prevent them from playing a part—and possibly an increasingly important part—in motivating a number of ACI leaders. I do not mean primarily the material rewards directly deriving from a leader’s organiza¬ tional position—although it is clear that particularly at the na¬ tional level the time is past when the ACI leaders received from the organization “sums barely sufficient to keep them alive,” as was the case before the end of the war.17 The most relevant ma¬ terial rewards are those only indirectly connected with the ex¬ perience of leadership-for example, a leader’s chances of profes¬ sional success or career advancement are unquestionably im¬ proved by the credit gained through services rendered the hierarchy, irrelevant as those services may be to the merit of one’s own professional performance or to the proper requirements of one’s business. A man who has served his stint generously as an ACI leader, probably without making a penny out of that ac¬ tivity and in fact giving generously of his time and energy, can confidently expect to find later that this has much strengthened

The Lay Leaders

^

his hand, particularly in that unofficial spoils system Italians call sottogoverno. His trump cards in that game will be precisely the gratitude of bishops, who are always eager to have “one of our people

in any available position; the support of previous co¬

leaders, now safely entrenched in key positions in the Catholic party, in this or that public agency, or in another position in the sottogoverno; and finally the reputation he has acquired in ACI as a capable organizational manager and an honest man. The multiplicity and variety of rewards of this kind are of no interest here. However, I would like to suggest that this kind of reward seems to have become more and more significant in the organization, and that this phenomenon may have negative con¬ sequences for it. It may not be so dangerous if after years of gen¬ erous activity motivated by a disinterested commitment, some leaders begin to expect also some material advantages from those years; it may be more dangerous, however, if such expectations should become shared by ever increasing numbers of leaders. The greatest potential danger (from the standpoint of the organiza¬ tion’s morale, and perhaps even of its usefuless to the Church, not to speak of its apostolic effectiveness) is the emergence of a new generation of leaders who have in fact joined ACI and sought positions of leadership in it exclusively in view of the immediate or future material advantages to be gained. This is not likely to happen, at least in the foreseeable future, so far as the top posi¬ tions are concerned, since these are accessible only to people en¬ tirely above such suspicions; but locally it is conceivable that something of the kind has been taking place, although it is im¬ possible to estimate its extent. It is primarily up to the hierarchy, and particularly to the As¬ sistants, to take measures against this danger, which already seems to cause some uneasiness among the leaders. It remains to be seen whether the hierarchy and the Assistants will be up to such a task. It seems doubtful if one considers that some years ago even such an authentic homo spiritualis as Msgr. Sargolini, then national Assistant of GIAC, could pronounce the words we quote below without seeming to perceive that the policy he suggested might in the long run negatively affect the composition and the motiva¬ tional makeup of ACI’s membership and leadership. After assert-

The Requirement of Control

94

ing that in Italy freemasonry is still quite strong, and that at any rate “the bourgeois element still prevails in the judiciary, in the business world, and in the public bureaucracy,” Msgr. Sargolini drew the following conclusion before an audience of GIAC dioc¬ esan leaders: Thus, my friends, it is not enough to win an election if we want to reform things and build a Christian social order in the country. It is a matter of bringing up people, reshaping them, and then placing these people in all sorts of positions. This, then, is the function of GIAC ... to become a great nursery of men, who can on their own responsibility go on to all sectors of public life.18 The pursuit of such a policy—no matter how good its inten¬ tions—might expose the organizations to those grave dangers Luigi Gedda pointed out in 1951, in an article on the principle of “voluntarism” in ACI: Our members come to CA spontaneously, disinterestedly; they sign up for membership and renew it from year to year for ideal reasons and not in a search of some personal advantage. This is shown by the dues they pay, the sacrifices of all kinds they willingly make, and above all the brotherly, apostolic spirit that reigns in the organiza¬ tion, and would certainly vanish if subtle calculations of opportunity and personal advantage were to contaminate it. Our poverty, and the fact that Catholic Action brings no material advantages to the mem¬ bers, is still today an excellent guarantee of the basic voluntaristic spirit that characterizes our organization.19 The Dysfunctional Effects of Not Protecting the Elite As we have seen, Selznick’s work (on which my model of the competent organization is based) analyzes the “institutionaliza¬ tion” of an organization—the process through which the organi¬ zation transcends its original character as a pure instrument, as a mere aggregate for the formation and carrying out of decisions, and becomes established in its own environment, becomes identi¬ fied with values to be realized in that environment. We have also seen that this process sets a number of key tasks for the organiza¬ tion’s leadership. Selznick suggests that in order to perform those tasks effectively the organization’s leaders must be “protected,” i.e. must be granted certain conditions of existence that guaran¬ tee their “self-consciousness and confidence.”20

The Lay Leaders

qp-

I have already shown by analyzing ACI’s statute that the struc¬ ture of controls denies the lay leader the “functional space” cor¬ responding to the key tasks articulated by Selznick. What we have seen in this chapter suggests furthermore that the configura¬ tion of the leader’s role denies him “self-consciousness and confi¬ dence.” These two conclusions, of course, are closely related; a leadership that cannot lead can hardly be self-conscious and con¬ fident; and vice-versa, insufficiently self-conscious and confident leaders cannot be safely entrusted with proper leadership respon¬ sibilities. As one of the reasons for the sense of insecurity that characterizes their role, I have indicated that the critical leader¬ ship functions are beyond the reach of the lay ACI personnel.21 In the perspective I have adopted—the determination of the negative impact of the sponsorship relation on ACI’s competence —the “non-protection” of its elite appears as one further dysfunc¬ tional consequence of that relation. This conclusion is already implicit in a passage by Father Fichter, where the author sum¬ marizes his findings on the configurations of the leaders’ roles in lay organizations operating within American Catholic parishes: All that has been said above indicates that leadership as a general and abstract concept has very little practical meaning in the parochial situation... . Leadership in the lay societies of a Catholic urban par¬ ish presents peculiar elements.... The following fact highlights the peculiarity: ... the lay person can never be a “total” leader... the priest is above him.... The incentives which motivate the leader and with which he motivates his followers are intangible.... The paro¬ chial organizations in which he works are not “total” organizations.22 Accommodations to Insecurity and Their Limits If we were to work out a typology of ACI’s lay leadership per¬ sonnel, it would probably be built around two contrasting major types. I call the first the normatively oriented leader. He is char¬ acterized by the prevalance of spiritual values, of religious mean¬ ings, in his role-conception; in the youth branches he is particu¬ larly committed to educational activity; purely organizational problems are of little interest to him; in fact he shows some con¬ cern over other leaders’ tendency to view organizational achieve¬ ments (the success of a recruitment drive or of a public ceremony) as successes of ACI in the pursuit of its proper apostolic goal,

96

The Requirement of Control

since he does not consider these activities truly apostolic. I call the other type the organizationally oriented leader. He thinks in terms of means rather than of ends; he assumes that the orga¬ nization’s ultimate goal can only be reached by strengthening its structures, by expanding its membership, by making it a more efficient and disciplined machine. Naturally most ACI leaders would represent a mixture of both these types; however, none of these composites would produce the kind of leadership personnel that might be called political. In ACI there are leaders who are in the first place religiously inspired persons, men of vision, deeply committed to spiritual values; there are others who are eminently skilled in drafting plans of operation for activities initiated by others; and there are many who are, as I mentioned, composites of these two types. But there is a lack of leaders who can think up strategic programs, and who can argue in terms of principia media, beyond minute attention to the details of the plan, but this side of grand perspec¬ tives and involved theological arguments about ACI’s mission. Although there are many people who can to some extent both keep ends in mind and work out tactics, there seem to be few who can size up situations and design strategies. As we shall see in Part 4, Gedda himself, with his penchant for analysis of situations in terms of the whole world and in the perspective of centuries, and with his tendency to mistake short-term tactical devices for strategies, clearly reflects ACI’s incapacity to “create and protect” political leaders. This incapacity might be interpreted in purely cultural terms, as an expression of the tendency for Catholicism to support an ethic of intention ; while only an “ethic of responsibility” ap¬ pears to supply the appropriate moral framework for the activity of political leadership.23 In the present context, however, it seems possible to assume that the polarization of leaders into two types represents an accommodation to the sense of insecurity inherent in the lay leader’s role in ACI. This interpretation, again, finds support in Selznick’s contention that insecure leaders tend to take refuge in a definition of their own role that is either generic, vague, and utopian, or alternatively very restrictive, opportu¬ nistic, and myopic.24

The Lay Leaders

97

Again Fichter s conclusions on the role of lay leaders of par¬ ish associations confirm this diagnosis. He writes: “Thus, the inherent nature of the parochial substructures excludes the prob¬ ability of ‘bureaucratic leadership’ as defined by Max Weber, and of

executive leadership’ as defined by Chester Barnard.

Those two types of leadership may be found among the clergy of the Catholic Church, but not among the voluntary lay leaders of the parish.”25 The Functional Import of the “Secondary Criteria” I have suggested that in analytical terms “safety first” is not the only criterion affecting the recruitment and training of the lay leaders. I have mentioned two secondary criteria: the acceptabil¬ ity of the leader to the membership and his personal sense of initiative and responsibility. What is the functional significance of these criteria? I think it is limited to the internal, integrative demands of the organization. Basically, they protect the organiza¬ tion’s interest in having “effective and legitimate” leaders—be¬ cause only such leaders can become the object of identification on the part of the members, exert an “exemplary” influence on them, and so on. These “eufunctional” effects of the secondary criteria, however, cannot outweigh the dysfunctional effects of the dominant criterion: the priority of the actual religious com¬ mitments of the lay leaders. The lay leader finds the only radical and definitive response to the frustrations and limitations of his role in becoming a priest (or a nun)—if that is possible. If not, the best he can do is approx¬ imate as closely as possible the figure of the priest. A leader so oriented, however, cannot be of great help in making his orga¬ nization competent for carrying out its fundamental assignment: creating an effective contact between the Church and an increas¬ ingly secularized world. His own basic frame of reference is the Church; to the Church belong the only incentives and rewards that the culture of the organization approves. He cannot be expected, in these conditions, to acquire a distinctive capacity for understanding, evaluating, and interpreting the needs, problems, and values of the world.26

Chapter seven

The Fxclesiastical Assistants

As we have seen in Chapter 5, an ecclesiastical Assistant must work side by side with the lay leaders of ACI at all levels of the organization, according to the statutory provisions issuing from the sponsorship relation. Article 107 of the ACI statute describes the Assistants as follows: (1) They represent within their own organizational units the ec¬ clesiastical authority, and must see to it that this authority’s prescrip¬ tions and directive norms are faithfully observed. (2) Through the means of their sacred mission, they take care that the members and leaders receive the appropriate spiritual, catechetic, liturgical, and apostolic training. (3) In view of this, after receiving the approval of their superiors, they sponsor courses of spiritual exercises, and days and weeks of prayer and study, the religious aspects of which are under their di¬ rection. Article 108 continues, with reference to the Assistants in Central and Diocesan Committees of the various ACI branches: (1) They ensure within their own spheres the spirituality and the Catholic orthodoxy of the organization. (2) With a view to this end, they follow the activity of the organs they are attached to; and in the event of their absence the delibera¬ tions of the organs must be submitted to them for approval. (3) Tliey collaborate with the presidenzas in organizing the forma-

The Ecclesiastical Assistants

99

tive, cultural, and religious parts of the activity programs, according to the master plan for the apostolate. (4) They organize meetings and conventions of Assistants in order to deal with problems regarding their functions. On the basis of these provisions (whose content is further ex¬ panded in the bylaws of the individual branches), the formal assignments of the Assistants appear to fall within three overlap¬ ping categories. First, “professional” duties: the Assistant as a “divine” is in charge of the more properly religious and spiritual side of the organization’s activities—note article 107 (2) and (3), and article 108 (3) and (4). Second, duties stemming from the re¬ quirement of faithfulness: the Assistant is to watch over the or¬ thodoxy of the organization—note articles 107 (1) and 108 (1). Third, duties that involve policing the requirement of control: the Assistant is an executive line official of the hierarchy, that is of the “supreme government” of ACI—note articles 107 (1) and 108 (2). In terms of Parsons’s four-phase schema for the analysis of so¬ cial systems, the formal responsibilities of the Assistants seem to fall largely into the area called “latency,” or “pattern mainte¬ nance,” which comprises both the preservation and the cultiva¬ tion of the organization’s values, and the area of “tension man¬ agement,” which involves the smoothing of frictions between the members’ organizational roles and their other roles. The Assis¬ tant fulfills these responsibilities mainly by teaching and advising on religious and moral matters, and by acting as the confessor and the “spiritual director” of members and leaders. In view of the inherent significance of these assignments, it is difficult to see much more than sheer legalistic pleading in some ACI officers’ insistence that the Assistants are not to be considered leaders of the organization.1 The Extra-Statutory Responsibilities of the Assistants Important as they may be, the duties specified by the statute are not the Assistants’ only responsibilities. If the actual scope of their activity in the organization’s everyday life is considered, it becomes even more obvious that they have other functions, which are properly directive, and extend to the (Parsonian) areas

ÌOO

The Requirement of Control

of goal attainment (achieving a satisfactory relationship between the organization and the environment) and of adaptation (pro¬ curing and processing resources for the organization’s function¬ ing). However, the Assistant generally becomes a full-fledged orga¬ nizational leader only under certain conditions. The most im¬ portant of these is that he be a full-time or nearly full-time Assis¬ tant. This happens rarely at the parish level, except perhaps in some of the largest parishes and those best supplied with priests. Only there can the pastor afford to detail one of his priests on a full-time or nearly full-time basis to assist the parish units of one or more ACI branches. At the diocesan and national level, on the other hand, it is almost a rule that a priest be attached to a branch of ACI as a full-time Assistant. In this chapter my main interest is to bring out some of the key features of the role of the full-time Assistant as a leader in ACI. This role will be shown to reflect, although to a lesser ex¬ tent, some of the ambiguities inherent in the lay leader’s role. However, I shall not systematically derive those features from the logic of the sponsorship relation. This logic dictates that the priest be sent into ACI as an Assistant, and his becoming (under certain conditions) a leader is a forceful reminder of the spon¬ sored nature of the organization. However, I shall not be asking what happens to the organization by virtue of the Assistant be¬ coming a leader, but rather what happens to the priest by virtue of his becoming a leader. To this extent the present chapter will constitute a departure from the prominent place in my analytical concerns held by the dysfunctional effects of the sponsorship re¬ lation on the sponsored organization. In fact, here I am con¬ cerned rather with some of the effects the sponsorship relation has upon the sponsoring institution. This is not a theme I am in¬ terested in exploring systematically, but some of the following considerations move in that direction. The process by which an Assistant becomes a leader is markedly “circular.” Being sent into ACI evokes a number of problems and strains for the priest in his role as a priest. One typical pat¬ tern of response to these strains for the full-time or nearly full¬ time Assistant, is for him to invest more and more of his time in

The Ecclesiastical Assistants

101

organizational responsibilities, thus exceeding the already broad limits of his constitutional assignment. In turn, this response may induce a greater estrangement of the Assistant from his typical role as a priest, and thus foster further commitments as an orga¬ nizational leader. A convenient starting point for a (necessarily ideal-typical) discussion of this process is given by the peculiari¬ ties of the situation in which the Assistant finds himself. The Parish Priest and the ACI Priest J. O. Hertzler, in his discussion of the significance of social in¬ stitutions for the individual, after asserting that no single institu¬ tion can satisfy all the interests of a person, has pointed out a lone exception to this—the priest under celibacy rules.2 As is apparent from the context, he had in mind primarily the Catholic priest. Only in this case can the institution a person belongs to be seen as the exclusive frame of reference for his conduct. Actually, Hertzler’s remark should not be accepted without reservation. Max Weber has pointed out, for instance, that prac¬ tically every Seelsorger—every priest “in charge of souls”—is by this very quality put in a special relation to a “clientele,” a phenomenon that necessarily constitutes a departure from the ex¬ clusiveness of the Church as his frame of reference. To have charge of souls is the normal assignment of the priest. However, the charge of souls includes a variety of possible jobs, only one of which is highly institutionalized in the Church—the assignment to a parish where the priest has charge of the souls of the parishioners. The parish is the basic unit of the Church, and upon it is built the Church’s whole legal-administrative framework. As Father Fichter points out, the status of the parish priest is quite different from that of the priest who teaches in a seminary, gives missions and retreats, edits a paper or a magazine, or acts as a military or institutional chaplain. The parish priest is in a traditionally stable position, whose status is fixed by canonical prescription and whose function is regulated by tradi¬ tional usage and by synodal decrees.3 The contrast is possibly even greater in the case of the priest attached as a full-time Assistant to a branch of ACI at the dioc¬ esan or national level, and was greater in the nineteenth-century

102

The Requirement of Control

German Catholic movement, which “produced a new type of clerical personnel, the social chaplain.”4 The contrast was such that there were often attritions between the chaplains of the Volksverein and the parish clergy. We have seen that some pro¬ visions in its constitution insure ACI (or the hierarchy) against such a risk. Nevertheless, even though it does not as a rule en¬ gender such tensions and attritions, there is a marked contrast between the parish priest and the “ACI priest.” Governing a parish as a pastor or helping govern it as an assis¬ tant pastor is a priest’s normal assignment. In the framework of the internal law of the Church (Canon Law), this assignment has a markedly territorial character. Purely geographic and demo¬ graphic factors determine which souls the pastor has charge of. In Italy, where the overwhelming majority of babies are baptized and belong to parishes, most of the pastor’s activities develop as an orderly routine of sacramental, magisterial, and disciplinary ministrations to the fairly stable aggregate of people who make up the population of the parish. Even when, as is most often the case, the pastor and his assis¬ tants are also involved in organizational activities like those of ACI, the activities are made to fit into the framework of the parish administration. They develop under the shadow of the bell tower, often on the premises of the parish house itself.* In this framework, a priest’s organizational responsibilities do not require his taking on different styles of action. He could hardly do this anyway, since he must supervise many different groups, and he could not possibly switch from one “style” to another just like that. He always remains the benevolent spiritual ruler of a large, differentiated flock, is not particularly interested in expanding it, and regards his assignment as potentially destined to last for his entire lifetime. His canonical powers are perfectly adequate to his situation; he is responsible exclusively and unequivocally to his bishop. He brings to fruition the professional training re* In the latter part of Pius XII’s pontificate, the establishment of ACI units in all parishes became a declared objective of the Italian episcopate. Many such units were set up without much enthusiasm, and it is not likely that managing them became an important part of the pastors’ activity, much less made a serious difference in their style of operation.

The Ecclesiastical Assistants

103

ceived before his ordination, a training which was designed spe¬ cifically to prepare him for his situation and which covered in the abstract most of the concrete problems he is confronted with. An appointment as ACI Assistant at the diocesan or national level is a widely different kind of assignment, one for which normally no Catholic priest has been trained in the seminary.5 The religious needs he must meet (the core of his assignment as formulated in the statute) are not, in this case, those of the popu¬ lation of a territory, but those of the membership of an organiza¬ tion. This membership is relatively homogeneous. It is made up of people of the same sex and from more or less the same age bracket, further homogenized by the extent of their religious commitments. At the national level and in most of the larger dioceses, the Assistant’s assignment is generally with an even more homogeneous group, possibly with the GIAC students of Juniores age, or with the members of the girls’ branch of FUCI. It is a relatively unstable membership, with a generally high rate of turnover—which must be checked if possible—and there may be a commitment to increase it numerically year by year, or at least to avoid a decrease. It is an associational membership that will be sought and renewed on the basis of the way the organiza¬ tion looks to the outsider or the member, of his judgment on its policies, and of his satisfaction with the way it is directed and managed by the leaders and the Assistants. The organization has a history and tradition of its own, evolved not in response to the dictates of Canon Law nor to the slowly changing characteristics of a parish, but built up as a result of choices made to meet rapid changes in the political framework and the spiritual landscape of the country. An organization likes to think and talk of its “battles,” its “campaigns,” its “victories,” but this is not true of a parish. The organization has an ideology, an internal jargon, a style of its own, which it likes to see re¬ flected and upheld in the manners, the vocabulary, and the pre¬ occupations of the Assistants themselves.6 Finally, by inserting himself into a unit of ACI (e.g. as dioc¬ esan Assistant of a branch) the priest may even become somewhat uncertain who is his superior—whether it is his bishop only, or his opposite number at the national level as well; and he may

104

The Requirement of Control

wonder what amount of control he has, in turn, over the actions of others—to what extent he may tell a parish pastor what to do in his Aspiranti section. Role Difficulties and Accommodations to Them In sum, the priest assigned as a full-time Assistant to ACI must orient his activity, his aspirations, and his style of action to a context different from the one his professional training antici¬ pated. Unlike the parish priest, whose role is oriented exclusively toward the Church, the ACI priest—though he must remain ori¬ ented primarily toward the Church—is pressed also by the de¬ mands of his organizational role. As we have seen, the configura¬ tion of this role is liable to be much less clear to him; thus it typically entails a certain sense of insecurity and estrangement, deriving from his having to carry out his sacerdotal mission in a context that can only appear to him, at least at first, unpredictably structured. This is just one source of difficulties in the Assistant’s role; another source is his peculiar position in the sponsored organiza¬ tion as both a “religious expert” and as an agent and immediate representative of the sponsoring institution. As we have seen, some of his statutory responsibilities give him the somewhat awkward task of inspecting and supervising on a mandate from a third party; whereas the duties I have labeled “professional” relate more to the organization’s internal requirements. Further¬ more, in fulfilling both kinds of responsibilities, the Assistant can never dismiss his specific charismatic qualification as an or¬ dained priest—a person involved in a special and privileged rela¬ tionship to the sources of grace. It is likely that all these features introduce in the Assistant’s role serious difficulties that can per¬ haps be subsumed under the concept of “marginality.”7 The mention of this concept suggests the possibility of looking at better-known “marginal” roles in order to clarify that of the Assistant. The figure of the foreman—the most obvious compari¬ son—much discussed in American industrial sociology, is not likely to be of much use here, since his role lacks some of the features of the ACI Assistant’s role, and particularly its charis¬ matic quality.8 From this standpoint, a more appropriate com-

The Ecclesiastical Assistants

105

parison might be drawn between the ACI Assistant and, for ex¬ ample, the Political Commissar in a Communist military unit, or the plant secretary of the Communist Party in an industrial plant under a collectivist regime. Although still not completely satisfactory (the Soviet industrial plant is not a sponsored orga¬ nization in my sense of the term), the latter analogy is the better one. So far as I can reconstruct it from the studies of Soviet indus¬ trial management by Granick and Berliner, the position of the plant secretary has some features in common with that of the ACI Assistant.9 There is the same structural source of role prob¬ lems—an insufficient institutionalization of the situation itself.10 In the accommodation of the difficulty, there is the same basic dynamic, which consists of a progressive expansion of the assign¬ ment, from plain supervision to wider control and then to the assumption of clear-cut managerial responsibilities.11 There is, finally, the same threat in this accommodation, from the stand¬ point of the institution the role-holder represents, namely the possibility of lessening the charismatic prestige of the agent him¬ self, the possibility that he may unwittingly “compromise” the charisma with which he is invested and the charisma that he represents. One important difference, however, is that the potential cost of a serious interference with the requirements of efficient man¬ agement is felt to be much higher in the case of the Party secre¬ tary in the plant than in the case of the ACI ecclesiastical Assis¬ tant. The reason is that at least at the diocesan level the Assistant is generally the only person operating full time in the organiza¬ tion; thus the progressive widening of his duties may be (or ap¬ pear to be) called for by the inherent inadequacy of the lay lead¬ ers’ intermittent and amateurish organizational work; while in the Soviet plant the Party secretary confronts a body of full-time, professionally qualified personnel. There is an even more basic difference between the two situations. In the case of the Com¬ munist Party’s relationship to the collectivist firm, there is a wide difference between the institutional principles and operational goals of the two social systems, which must be bridged by the Party secretary; while in the Church-ACI case the difference is much

io6

The Requirement of Control

less acute, since ACI pursues, although in a subordinate and aux¬ iliary manner, the same goals as the Church, and is totally in¬ spired by the Church’s own principles. Leaving analogies aside, if we return to the ACI Assistant’s typical reactions to the difficulties inherent in his role, it appears that he becomes truly and fully a leader of the organization, be¬ comes indispensable to it, immersed in it, and identified with it. This mode of response implies some dangers, such as those re¬ ferred to by Msgr. Urbani, then general Assistant of ACI, in an article entitled “The Snares of the Apostolate”: As he seeks novel forms of apostolic action better adapted to the neces¬ sities of a world in continuous evolution, the priest exposes himself to a threefold snare.... He may give a more prominent place to “techni¬ cal progress” than to the Christian spirit; he may depend more on success than on sacrifice; he may use the skills of any politician in order to foster religion.12 A forceful reminder of the necessity to maintain the primacy of the priest’s own priestly commitments over those more proper to an organizational leader may be seen in the following speech by Pope John XXIII: Since Catholic Action is properly a form of spiritual and supernatural activity, the ecclesiastical Assistant is called upon primarily to sanctify his own soul and those of all around him.... Therefore the Assistant in ACI must be a most pious priest, deeply immersed in a continual and intimate conversation with the Lord. Otherwise he may well have an external shine, gaiety, appeal; he may momentarily get the sym¬ pathy of all those around him, but the foundation of God’s love will be missing.13 A Picture of the ACI Priest Although the primacy of his charismatic qualifications and duties is bound to affect his total makeup deeply, the ACI As¬ sistant who responds to his assignment’s insecurities by making a serious and increasing commitment to the organization tends to grow increasingly different from the typical parish priest. The Assistant’s orientation toward his constituency takes the place of the pastor’s territorial orientation. The basically author¬ itarian posture that is common to both is sustained, tempered, and qualified in the pastor primarily by “competence,” in the

The Ecclesiastical Assistants

107

Assistant by bonhomie.14 The Assistant senses time according to the linear history of his organization projected into the future, while a pastor’s sense of time is dominated by the cyclical pattern he leads his parish through, year by liturgical year. In the beginning, these differences in orientation are present only germinally; but their relationship to the Assistant’s commitment to ACI is of course “functional,” in the sense that they are both an effect and a cause of it. At first a minimal commitment produces a minimal difference in orientation, but this is likely to bring about a gradually greater commitment. The ultimate outcome of this process, familiar to anyone ac¬ quainted with ACI clerical personnel, is the development of a body of priests who markedly bear the traits of the branches they are attached to, and who are more at home with their lay and clerical colleagues in the same organization than with other clerics who are deeply identified with their own branches. That this phenomenon is recognized is indicated by the existence of the College of the Central ACI Assistants in Rome, where a number of these priests share a residence. It is also indicated by the fre¬ quency with which the national positions go to those Assistants who have had a long and successful experience in the same branch of ACI at the diocesan level. As I have said, as he increases his organizational commitment, the Assistant generally broadens his definition of his own task in the organization, although in terms of the statute, he is assigned to the organization essentially in his quality as a “divine” in charge of religious and spiritual tasks. In this quality he is en¬ dowed, in the eyes of the organization’s members and lay leaders, with an official charisma, which places him somehow beyond crit¬ icism and control. He is often naturally led to employ this posi¬ tion to widen the span of his actual responsibilities, to place himself in the position of a supervisor, even with regard to the “secular” activities that constitutionally belong to the lay lead¬ ers. This situation also develops because, at least at the diocesan level, the Assistants are often the only full-time or nearly full¬ time leaders, and are able to offer the organization continuous, single-minded care. There is one interesting pattern that can be seen in some of

io8

The Requirement of Control

the major dioceses: when two priests are Assistants in the same branch, they tend to take different approaches to their roles. To repeat a well-known distinction between the two aspects of nu¬ clear leadership, one of the Assistants seems more the “instru¬ mental” leader. He is more “organizationally indispensable,” more versed in secular culture, more successful in his contacts with groups of leaders or members. The other is more the “ex¬ pressive” leader; he is characterized by a more fervent and ex¬ clusive concern with the purely religious aspects of his office, by his lesser popularity among the members, by the greater amount of time and effort he puts into person-to-person ministerial work with the lay leaders, acting as their confessor and spiritual direc¬ tor, etc. The two Assistants work together as a close team. Their taking on partially different roles may be viewed as a response to the demands of two different segments of their “role set”— the sponsored membership and the sponsoring hierarchy respec¬ tively.16 When this arrangement is not possible, three basic patterns of adjustment are available for the individual Assistant. Two of them stress one side of the role dilemma and subordinate the other to it; the other—the most difficult to achieve and the most fruitful when achieved—consists of a balance of the two sides. This balanced pattern is embodied in the most successful ACI Assistants, for whom a full commitment to the organization and the assumption of its leadership responsibilities does not alter the sacerdotal mission, and does not affect the unique prestige at¬ tached to official charisma. Particularly in the youth branches these priests exert a profound educational influence on both members and leaders; when they leave, the organization long pre¬ serves the imprint of their unique, superior performances.

Chapter eight

The Strategic Structuring of the Organization

One critical aspect of Selznick’s model of the “institutionaliza¬ tion” of organizations consists in what he calls the “institutional embodiment of purpose”: the process by which an organization’s social structure becomes oriented not to generic demands of ef¬ ficiency but to the specific goal with which the organization iden¬ tifies itself and to which its strategy is addressed. It is the task of the organization’s leadership “not only to make policy but to build it into the organization’s social structure.” This means “shaping the ‘character’ of the organization, sensi¬ tizing it to ways of thinking and responding, so that increased reliability in the execution and elaboration of policy will be achieved according to its spirit as well as its letter.”1 In a chapter on this topic Selznick points out various aspects of the organization’s social structure that must be involved in this process.2 I have already discussed some of these aspects, but from another angle. For example, I talked about the lay leaders in terms of the inadequate configuration of their role, but they can also be discussed in terms of a deficiency in ACI’s institutional embodiment of purpose. In this chapter, I shall try to determine if and how the spon¬ sorship relation affects the institutional embodiment of purpose, by examining a macroscopic feature of ACI’s organizational struc¬ ture—the priority it assigns to the criteria of sex and age. The dis-

1 IO

The Requirement of Control

tinctions between the four basic branches are based on those cri¬ teria, and so is the further internal articulation of the youth branches. I shall focus on this last aspect, and ask what is its sig¬ nificance in view of ACI’s main strategic assignment—to be, in the words of the noted German theologian Hans Urs von Bal¬ thasar, “a bridge over the cleavage between the clergy as represen¬ tative of the Church and the secularized world outside of it.”3 I shall repeatedly use the term “strategic structuring” (or “restruc¬ turing”) in order to stress this viewpoint. ACI’s basic age-sex framework, with the attendant fourbranched structure, is taken for granted in the following discus¬ sion for several reasons. First, a separation of children and ado¬ lescents from adults is common to most large-scale organizations, and is usually dictated by the structure of the society at large. Second, sex differentiation often spontaneously accompanies the formation of youth age-groups. Third, as far as Catholic Action is concerned, sex differentiation is clearly required by the cul¬ ture of the sponsoring institution. Finally, the basic age-sex set¬ up has an undeniable function in the educational tasks and in¬ tegrative needs of the organization, and it does not by itself preclude the adoption of the principle of specialization. In CA language, the “specialization” of an organization means that its basis for membership is first age and sex, then occupation. Thus, wherever the principle of specialization is applied, CA is made up primarily of organizations differentiated according to the basic social milieus in the country; yet even in France, Aus¬ tralia, and Belgium, where the national CA organizations have pushed the principle of specialization the farthest, they have done so only within the basic, four-branched age-sex framework. I contend that milieu organization represents a greater degree of institutional embodiment of purpose than strict age organiza¬ tion, where the four “natural” branches are even internally dif¬ ferentiated purely on the basis of age, and the milieu principle receives little or no recognition. Strict age organization, however, is used by ACI in spite of efforts in the other direction (made especially by GIAC), and in spite of the concession made to the milieu principle in the setting up of FUCI, the Movimento Laureati, and the Movimento Maestri in 1946. This policy of

The Strategic Structuring of the Organization

Ill

organization expresses the thoroughgoing implementation of the logic of the sponsorship relation in the case of ACI. I assume that milieu structure would be more functional than strict age structure for a national CA organization because it would give CA a greater chance to come to terms with the fun¬ damental role played by occupational differentiation in the modern world, and because it would more effectively bring the Church’s ethos to bear on the life situation of the CA member and those who share his most significant experiences. It should be remarked that to some extent the problems of oc¬ cupational differentiation and effective ethos affect the religious institution at large. Some developments in the history of Protes¬ tant Christianity suggest a movement toward a grand strategy by which not only church-sponsored organizations but even differ¬ ent religions or sects cover the religious needs of different social strata.4 Could the Catholic Church move in the same direction, especially in view of the “mass heresy” among the urban prole¬ tarian classes in Western Europe? This question is suggested by the religious denominationalism in the United States, and in England at the time of the Industrial Revolution. However, denominationalism owed its transitory success in England and its more permanent success in the United States to the concurrence of several conditions unmatched in the situation of the Catholic Church in Western Europe. At the time the different Protestant denominations won a hold on them, the social strata disaffected from the more established churches had not been preempted by a political mass movement that could satisfy their religious needs or supply a secularized equivalent for religion. But today the allegiance that the continental labor masses have given to different variations of Marxism makes it extremely unlikely that such an operation could be successful if attempted by the Catholic Church.5 There are also factors in the inner constitution of the Church that make it impossible for it to sponsor or even allow a “recov¬ ery plan” structually comparable to that by which the Protestant denominations preserved or gained the allegiance of the Ameri¬ can lower strata. These include such structural factors as the rigidity of the Church’s hierarchical setup and the preeminence

j 12

The Requirement of Control

of the territorial principle (in spite of possible concessions to ethnic but not social differentiation in a given territory); and such cultural factors as the universalism of the Church’s culture, its stress on the integrative aspects of society, and its inability to face class conflict with equanimity.* On the ideological level, various transvaluational phenomena accompanied the develop¬ ment of American denominations and helped them gain a hold on some of the lower social classes. But the Catholic Church s culture could not tolerate, much less engender, any comparable phenomena in the attempt to reach the alienated social groups. This being the case, it could be suggested that the Church’s lay movements make up a functional equivalent for denominationalism within Protestantism. This is actually what happens, espe¬ cially if one defines lay movements to include not only exclusively or chiefly religious organizations, but also those I referred to in Chapter 1 as “Catholic movement proper” and “Catholic parties.” The employment of CA organizations to fill the religious needs of different social strata depends largely on the extent to which the milieu principle is accepted and CA is accordingly specialized. However, this depends in turn on the way, and the extent to which, the logic of the sponsorship relation makes itself felt in the internal structuring of a national CA organization. The Sponsorship Relation and the Milieu Principle In ACI the implementation of the main structural and cultural components of the sponsorship relation—the requirement of con¬ trol and the requirement of faithfulness—decidedly inhibits the application of the milieu principle. The requirement of con¬ trol makes it necessary that the organizational setup of the spon¬ sored organization be patterned after the authority structure of the sponsoring institution, so that the Church’s lower-level units control the activities of ACI. The milieu organization is viewed in Italy as a threat to the pastors’ control over the lower-level * Often the Church’s willingness to take sides with the privileged social strata is not to be imputed to a deep feeling of solidarity with them or hostility toward the underprivileged; it expresses, rather, the Church’s tendency to view conflict itself in purely negative terms. Indeed, in a conflict situation, any attempt to deny the existence or the legitimacy of the conflict, no matter how motivated, tends to work as a support of the powers that be.

The Strategic Structuring of the Organization

113

units of ACI—the parish associations of the various branches. As the French sociologist Emile Pin, S.J., has said, the CA organiza¬ tions, when organized along specialized lines, tend to disregard the parish framework and set up units whose constituencies do not coincide with the territory of any single parish.6 Furthermore, as Ritter remarked in his history of the German Volksverein, the pastoral approach” typical of the traditional territorial units of the Church fits closely and smoothly only with an organiza¬ tional setup based on the four “natural” branches—boys’, girls’, men s, and women’s.7 My study attests to the danger of tension be¬ tween pastors and clergymen attached to the sponsored organiza¬ tions when they are organized along milieu lines, or at any rate when they tend to disregard the parish framework. There is also the risk of a serious displacement of the authority lines of the sponsoring institution, a risk that in Italy the Church has sought to control by hindering the application of the milieu principle in ACI and by insisting that the parish is the basic lower-level unit. (It should be borne in mind that in Italy most parishes, especially in the cities, tend to be socially rather heterogeneous, given the relatively low degree of social differentiation of ecological areas.) The requirement of faithfulness also hinders the development of milieu groups, because the culture of the Church, as I shall point out in Chapter 10, does not contain principles sufficiently articulate to meet the demands of man in his identity as worker (Berufmensch), which would come to the foreground in that type of setup. The fund of doctrinal knowledge made available to most Italian priests through their seminary education pays very little attention to the worth, the significance, or the prob¬ lems of the properly temporal dimension of the layman’s life, including such “earthly realities” as work, the economy, politics, and science. In these conditions, a milieu-based CA organization’s need to develop an appropriate body of ethical and doctrinal principles would represent a distinct threat from the standpoint of the spon¬ sorship relation. Nothing has taught this better than the story of the worker-priests in France. Their personal crises often came when they discovered the articulate body of ethical and theoreti¬ cal aids to the understanding and the “treatment” of the work-

ii4

The Requirement of Control

er’s life situation supplied by the Marxian tradition—and dis¬ covered at the same time that no comparably appropriate body of principles was available to them as priests.8 More generally, many of the ideological problems that a milieu organization might face would lead it to enter grounds that are, from the standpoint of the sponsoring institution, hostile or at least nearly uncharted. Thus such an organization might be drawn to borrowing at least some of its orientations from the forces that best interpret the social and ethical situation of the various milieus and thus have made an imprint on their con¬ sciousness. But such borrowing directly contradicts the require¬ ment of faithfulness. A further and related difficulty in basing lay-apostolate struc¬ ture on milieu lies in certain predictable developments. Single “specialized” CA organizations, if relatively independent of one another, might easily evolve divergent educational, ideological, and political positions. Eisenstadt has emphasized that youth or¬ ganizations with different social bases tend to develop different ideological orientations; and Hollingshead, in his study of youth in a New England town, has stressed that the conflicts among the various youth organizations of the same Methodist parish emerged from their different social bases.9 In sum, the development of CA organizations oriented to dif¬ ferent milieus, even within the age-sex framework, would pre¬ sent various dangers from the standpoint of the sponsorship relation. The same conclusions are drawn from the following dis¬ cussion of GIAC’s attempt to achieve a “strategic restructuring” of the organization. In GIAC the first plans to match the organizational structure with the variety of the members’ social milieus go back to the Fascist period, when Gedda was GIAC’s Central President. As he himself reminisced in 1957: The 1931-41 decade in GIAC’s history was marked by the emergence of specializations.... Naturally the first problem we had to confront was that of breaking down our membership by age,... thus origi¬ nating what we called “vertical specialization” because it followed the growth in height of our Aspiranti, Juniores, and Seniores. At this point, however, we heard what JOC [Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne—

The Strategic Structuring of the Organization

115

the Young Christian Worker movement] was doing in France and Belgium, and we told ourselves: “We have not done enough. We must also consider the milieu in which a youth finds himself.” Thus were born the so-called “horizontal specializations”—for workers, stu¬ dents, white-collar employees. ... A few years later the workers’ spe¬ cialization was again divided up into industrial and farm workers.10 However, as Fogarty remarks, GIAC did not develop this kind of organization to the extent that it was developed in other parts of Western Europe during those prewar and war years he studies more closely: Among the countries covered by this book, the one where the Catholic youth organizations remained most markedly impervious to the trend toward specialization was Italy. The GIAC did indeed on various oc¬ casions show a tendency to specialize-But... in the face of Fascist attacks it proved necessary to drop any questions of specialization ... its branches remained on an interclass basis.11 Later, when he compares a classic book of the JOC movement, Van der Meersch’s Fishers of Men, with Gedda’s short autobiog¬ raphy, written upon leaving GIAC in 1946 to become Central President of the Unione Uomini, Fogarty remarks: “Gedda’s book is shot through with a general, rather vague spirit of inter¬ class good will ... very different from the style of the Young Christian Workers.”12 Indeed, the development of milieu-based specializations was not only hampered by Fascist organizations’ suspiciousness. As Fogarty suggests, the implicit internal solidarist ideology viewed the possibility of such a development very uneasily. Gedda later reflected thus on the position to be given to the milieu principle in GIAC: When I hear those who maintain that it is necessary for Catholic Action to be specialized on a social category basis in order to better educate its members, I cannot help smiling.... The highest degree of education consists in the union of the social classes, and this can only be achieved if we bring together, into the same setting of extrafamilial life, youths who come from different social strata. ... GIAC’s greatest resource is its parish associations, where the poor and the rich, students and workers, the educated and the uneducated live side by side. Here one can breathe fully the spirit of Christian mutual love.13

n6

The Requirement of Control

But a price must be paid for this. Fogarty, in his comparison between Van der Meersch’s and Gedda’s books, remarks that the latter “shows much less concern for concrete, detailed social prob¬ lems or for the type of youth organizations needed to deal with them.”14 As Carlo Carretto, Gedda’s successor as Central Presi¬ dent of GIAC, was to remark in 1950, “the unity of Catholic youth realized by our parish associations presents a danger: we do not evaluate adequately the problems of the various sections of society, and we lose effectiveness vis-à-vis the problems con¬ fronting the social classes.”15 Thus he posed the problem of the established structural for¬ mula’s effect on the organization’s pursuit of its substantive goal; the “revisionist” implication of this view was clearly in the direc¬ tion of “strategic restructuring.” In fact, at the time Carretto spoke those words, the diocesan and national CIAC leaders were tending to reconsider the accepted structural formula, and to stress the milieu principle, at least to the extent that it was com¬ patible with the age framework. This tendency found expression in the setting up of milieu-oriented staff organs, in a series of specialized publications, and in the training of specialized lead¬ ers; but the priority of the age principle was never challenged. Throughout the Carretto Presidency, CIAC sought to achieve a balance between that principle and the “revisionist” tendency— a difficult balance indeed, as Carretto himself was to suggest: GIAC has embodied the formula “specialization within the united framework.” Two contrasting requirements are at work here, but each of them can be given priority in a separate set of activities. We are aware that a balance between unity and specialization is hard to achieve; but in the very attempt to find it, GIAC is doing something new and constructive.16 To go beyond these positions—where the awareness of difficul¬ ties was coupled with the persistent hope of “eating the cake and having it too”—required a certain willingness to take risks by modifying the precarious balance between the two principles. This willingness was present in Mario Rossi, who succeeded Carretto, and in most of Rossi’s colleagues. In Parts 3 and 4, I shall look more closely at the vicissitudes of Rossi’s short term of office, since his dismissal is one of the most interesting episodes

The Strategic Structuring of the Organization

\ 17

in ACI’s recent history. Here I am concerned only with one aspect of the policy of the Rossi Presidency—the attempt to restructure the organization through an emphasis on the “horizontal speciali¬ zations’’ (or “movements” as they were called), at the expense of the more traditional criterion of age. The target of this organizational policy was implicitly or ex¬ plicitly the transformation of GIAC into a confederation of four distinct and largely autonomous organizations, each addressing its efforts to the youth of a specific milieu, and each internally subdivided by age only for educational purposes. This meant, of course, a thoroughgoing innovation in GIAC’s traditional setup. This policy was a justifiable “strategic restructuring” of GIAC (to use my own term), because it aimed to increase its competence in dealing with the apostolic problems of the environment, and to deemphasize concern with purely educational problems—such as that of helping the boy through the so-called puberty crisis. It was expected that through this operation GIAC would be¬ come more “competent” because it would better perceive, under¬ stand, and cope with the ethical and religious problems of young Italian men insofar as they were posed and shaped by their specific social framework. Rossi himself justified his line of action thus: What is needed today, more than at any time before, is the presence of morally authentic and personally committed Christians in those difficult fields where human existence is acted out. What will happen to the rural world if the Christians do not act as a ferment in it and do not work as Christians for its promotion? What of the intellectual world if it does not meet the open dimensions of a Christian culture? If we want to cooperate not as masses but as persons, each of us must mature in his own distinct vocation. ... Today the intellectual world, the rural world, and the world of labor are in upheaval and are cry¬ ing out for a religious interpretation of their specific callings. It will be someone else’s task to supply the political, labor, and welfare di¬ mensions. But GIAC must take up in these worlds a role of religious interpretation: it must base the collaboration of the various unique classes and callings on the full development of the calling of each group, through a religious interpretation that fully confronts the world, does not avoid and evade it.17 The potential divisiveness of such a line was somehow con¬ trolled within GIAC at the time of the Rossi Presidency by the leftist orientation common to all the personnel engaged in push-

n8

The Requirement of Control

ing forth the line itself—-the leaders of the students’ groups as well as of the workers’. But viewed from outside GIAC, particu¬ larly by the ACI Presidenza Generale under the leadership of the markedly rightist President Gedda, and by a watchful and easily worried hierarchy, the line unmistakably bore the seeds of po¬ tential divisions within ACI, or within the Italian Catholic world at large. There was a threatening ring, for instance, in the following statement by Silvio Costantini, the leader of the GIAC workers’ movement during the Rossi Presidency. Before a convention of di¬ ocesan GIAC presidents, Costantini stated the main lines of the policy to be followed by his movement, emphasizing the relevance of its “Christian reevaluation of manual work.” In opposing the capitalistic conception of work, and in starting from a “religious interpretation of human action,” the GIAC workers’ movement can be called revolutionary in this field. Instead of having a solely quantitative value, we assert that work has a qualitative value, be¬ cause it originates with the human person.... Thus we cannot adjust ourselves to the capitalist conception. We can temporarily accept the existence of economic structures of a capitalistic character, but... we oppose capitalism at its root.... GIAC must adhere to the soul of the labor movement, .. . which is not Marxist, but profoundly Christian. ... As Christians we do not accept the Marxist class struggle. But to say “let us abolish the class struggle,” is not the same as to say “let us abolish the struggle, period.” We cannot abstain from a dedicated Christian struggle against privilege and exploitation.18 To the threat to the requirement of faithfulness implied in this position was added a threat to the requirement of control, a threat that lurked in the organizational implications of the stress on “category movements.” The leaders of the Rossi Presidency insisted that they did not intend to detach the local organization of ACI from its natural constituency, the parish. Yet the stress on “category” lines of organization, on category-oriented leader¬ ship, etc., did tend to pose serious problems for those parish as¬ sociations that did not have enough workers, or enough students, to make up a self-sufficient parish unit, or could not provide ade¬ quate leadership.19 The milieus that GIAC militants based their formation on were their schools, plants, and offices; their loyalty to their parishes was left in the background. Thus, category orga-

The Strategic Structuring of the Organization

1 ig

nization carried the potential danger that later GIAC would de¬ clare the parish-based organizational structure to be dated, or superseded. In the minds of the Italian hierarchy and the Holy See, these dangers far outranked the advantages of strategically restructur¬ ing GIAC according to the milieu principle. The interviews of responsible past and present GIAC leaders indicate that their organizational line played a critical role in the crisis of the Rossi Presidency in the spring of 1954.20 Functional Liabilities of the Strict Age Setup and the Parish Base For all their merits as structures for the implementation of educational and integrative tasks, age groups present distinct lia¬ bilities when it comes to making their own members effectively active in the wider context of their own existence, particularly after childhood and early adolescence. Eisenstadt, who makes this point, argues that the very bases of membership—age and sex— imply an emphasis on such orientations as loyalty rather than competence, diffuse attachments rather than specific preferences, ascription rather than achievement, emotion rather than detach¬ ment and matter-of-factness, and so forth. He suggests that by the same token such groups find it difficult to spell out for their members rules of behavior specifically geared to the demands of their occupational roles, and to provide them with values relevant to the central spheres of contemporary social life. As a result, Eisenstadt notes, most age groups tend to become introverted: “The center of [their] interests and activities is [in] the internal affairs of the group or organization, and not outside its boun¬ daries.”21 I am now suggesting that these inherent limitations of age groups might be at least partly overcome if the internal structure, the ideology, the style of operation, and the pattern of member¬ ship identification were purposefully focused on the occupational roles the members hold or are preparing themselves for, and not primarily on the fact of their age. This is what is done in French Catholic Action. There Pius XII’s distinction between the two tasks of the lay apostolate, “to preserve and to conquer,” is struc-

120

The Requirement of Control

turally embodied in the distinction between “general” and “spe¬ cialized” CA; the former is organized on a territorial basis, the latter on a milieu basis.22 Rossi and his colleagues had this in mind when they were trying to shift the emphasis from age to category divisions in GIAC. From the standpoint of the “goal competence” of CA, the de¬ ficiencies of the strict age setup are compounded by those that can be traced to the parish base. This type of territorial unit seems to have a generally defensive and integrative orientation in the face of the challenges posed by the dominant institutions of contem¬ porary society. This is mainly because there is a marked lack of fit between the territorial frame of reference and the modern orientations resulting from occupational structure, the demands of economic institutions, and social mobility. Pin says that parish-based clergy tend to have a neighborhood frame of reference, rather than a sociological one. The latter, how¬ ever, is required if the Church is to get a grip on the dominant currents of contemporary life and actively confront the present estrangement of those currents from itself. Pin writes: The parishes .. . often seem like cities within the city. ... All the problems that are faced in the town without fitting neatly into the parish’s own residential frame of reference run the risk of totally escaping the parish itself. In particular, the parish’s neighborhood frame of reference cuts off the working-class parishioners from their chief problems—those that arise in the world of work, in their rela¬ tions with the managers of their plants.23 This isolation of the parish from the more relevant institu¬ tional contexts of modern society is also emphasized by the lead¬ ing German Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, S.J.24 Likewise, a number of Protestant sources confirm this judgment as regards other denominations. The Calvinist Mueller, for instance, sum¬ marizes this problem as “the recognition that it is not possible for the Church to conduct its dialogue with the estranged men and realms of today’s world with the territorial parishes as a base.”25 A second reason for the limitations of the parish base is that the parish’s religious life itself, and moreover the activities of the parish-based lay organizations, are dominated by what Pin calls the “religious approach” of the middle class.26 I cannot go into

The Strategic Structuring of the Organization

121

the reasons for this phenomenon, the existence of which is con¬ firmed by Catholic sources from the United States, France, and Germany, as well as by Protestant sources.27 It is clear, at any rate, that this approach further limits the parish’s capacity for develop¬ ing an “appropriate” religious action toward the lower social strata whose alienation constitutes a powerful challenge to the Church in Western Europe. Milieu Organization as an Alternative The more convincing claims that organizing CA along mi¬ lieu lines can overcome some of the limits inherent in the parish base, and those most fervently echoed by the Rossi Presi¬ dency, were raised from within French Catholicism: The proper goal of specialized CA is evangelizing the different social milieus by taking into account their mentality and their particular demands.... Specialized CA acts on the sociological plane, reckons with the fact that the milieus to which the people belong leave a more or less deep imprint upon their lives. It devotes itself to evoking and shaping militants within those milieus. The persons and their human commitments are viewed in terms of their mentality and their needs. In this way specialized CA makes them grow in faith and charity and infuses the Christian spirit into human structures and institutions.28 A major instance of this development can be seen in the French and the Belgian JOC. Sympathetic accounts of their achievements have recently been given in English by Fogarty and in German by the Catholic priest Benz.29 JOC has undoubtedly shown a re¬ markable capacity for understanding the problems, adopting the language, and getting the ear of the working class, and its mili¬ tants have become the most vital connecting link between the Church and the workers’ world in the countries where JOC oper¬ ates. Achievements of the same kind, although not of the same magnitude, are credited to the action of the other specialized movements of CA, in France as well as in other countries. From the standpoint of the sponsoring institution, one ma¬ jor problem is keeping these movements within some sort of united framework. In France, for instance, ACJF, the equivalent of the Italian GIAC, was charged with the task of providing a permanent coordination among the specialized movements; but

122

The Requirement of Control

it failed to do so, because of the centrifugal tendencies created within each movement by the very commitment to the values and problems of its milieu that made for its success. Thus in 1956 André Vial resigned from the presidency of ACJF saying: “I can no longer go on cheating the militants by talking to them about an ACJF that in fact no longer exists. I cannot represent to the hierarchy movements that claim to be united within ACJF when they are not.”30 It is significant that the ACI press presented this as proof that two years before, the organizational line of the Rossi Presidency in GIAC had been headed in a very dangerous direction. Never¬ theless, to this day pressures toward a greater stress on milieu specializations continue to make themselves felt inside GIAC. There is clear evidence from the SSRC interviews that this en¬ genders serious internal problems in

the organization, often

creating conflicts between the leaders of the more established age divisions and those of the category divisions, the latter clamor¬ ing for greater autonomy and freedom of action.31 However, given the nature of Italian CA, only the Church’s determina¬ tion to take the risks implied in the milieu principle could ac¬ tually allow GIAC, or other branches of ACI, to take steps amounting to a ‘‘strategic restructuring.” On the local level this seems to be taking place more and more in those dioceses where the bishop is willing to take such risks. I may suggest in passing that perhaps a restructuring along milieu lines, although designed primarily to make the CA orga¬ nizations more competent for pursuing the external goal of con¬ quest, could help them solve some internal problems as well— for example, the high membership losses between the lower and upper age divisions of the youth branches. One important fac¬ tor here may be the very structure of the organization, which tends to remind the member that he is growing up. Thus, defec¬ tion from the organization may seem like just another aspect of shedding juvenile social ties and affiliations. There are hints of this in recent discussions of adolescent religious crises by G. H. Pearson and G. W. Allport.32 I contend that a milieu organization of the age group could create a more visible tie between adolescent and adult roles, thus

The Strategic Structuring of the Organization

123

making age less prominent in the member’s perception of his own organizational affiliation. This would put that factor some¬ how under control, and make continued membership more na¬ tural, less self-conscious. The reader may challenge my earlier statements about the dan¬ gers of milieu organization, which caused the Rossi Presidency’s attempt at “strategic restructuring” to fall victim to the logic of the sponsorship relation. If such dangers were real, how could JOC have established itself in France and elsewhere? Does not the sponsorship relation exist between the Church and all na¬ tional CA organizations? Because my main analytical interest is in the impact of the sponsorship relation, I have discussed the phenomena here from that one standpoint. However, the failure of a milieu setup to establish itself in Italy after the French example may have a num¬ ber of other concurrent causes. For one, the Fascist regime (like the Franco regime in Spain later) had shown a consistent hostility to the early Italian efforts in that direction. For another, all but the most sensitive and alert Italian Catholic leaders (clerical and lay) tend to oppose uncritically any organizational or ideological novelty that comes from their French peers. At any rate, in view of the close ties of the sponsorship relation, a JOC type of development could only be viewed as a threat by the Holy See and ACI, because their relationship had been built on structures that did not exist in France or in Belgium. In France, for instance, the crisis of the parish at the time JOC was instituted was much more pronounced than in Italy; and indeed JOC arose in part as a response to that crisis, to fill a void in the parish frame¬ work. In Italy, at the time the JOC experience began to be dis¬ cussed there, ACI was firmly established in the pattern of the ecclesiastical organization down to the parish level. Thus, the displacement of the parish framework was not resisted by the guardians of the sponsorship relation in France, while it could not but meet a resistance from its guardians in Italy. Implicit in this argument is a further reminder that the spon¬ sorship relation is not an “operational code” made up of fixed do’s and don’ts, which the hierarchy rigidly follows in its dealings with all single national CA organizations. It is, instead, an analyt-

124

The Requirement of Control

ical construct which suggests, basically, that in each country the hierarchy is likely to influence the structure and culture of a sponsored organization so as to guarantee itself as much con¬ trol over it as possible, and to guarantee the organization’s maxi¬ mum commitment to the values and principles vested in the hierarchy.

PART 3

The Impact of the Requirement of Faithfulness on ACI’s Culture

Chapter nine

The Ideological Creed

My analysis in Part 2 has dealt mostly with the structural aspect of the sponsorship relation, in which the major operating prin¬ ciple was the requirement of control. I move now to an analysis of the cultural aspect of the sponsorship relation, to a discussion of ACI’s ideology, where the requirement of faithfulness is para¬ mount. This requirement arises from the sponsoring institution’s fear that the sponsored organization may accept tenets and values that come not from the sponsoring institution, but from the en¬ vironment where it operates. Of course, structural and cultural aspects interact and are reciprocally conditioning. The logic of the requirement of faithfulness makes itself felt in the structural realm; and the logic of the requirement of control extends to the cultural realm. It is only in analytical terms that the priority of one requirement can be isolated and used to deduce other aspects of the sponsorship relation. Integralism So compelling is the impact of the requirement of faithfulness on ACI that strictly speaking the organization cannot be said to have an ideology of its own. The perceptual schemes with which it confronts the world, and its blueprints for affecting it, are all derivative. Paradoxically, ACI’s only properly ideological tenet is that there is no need for it to have its own ideology. The Church,

128

The Requirement of Faithfulness

indeed, has all the truth; and this truth applies to all of reality.1 ACI itself is merely an instrument for bringing this truth to fru¬ ition in the world—a difficult assignment, since the world has gone mad and its madness makes it deny the truth, blind itself to it. But the world can be saved—this assertion expresses what I call ACI’s “non-catastrophic pessimism”; it must be saved—its “temporalistic bent”; and it will be saved, within time, if not within our time—its ‘‘temporalistic eschatologism.” These three asser¬ tions, together with the tenet that the saving truth applies to all aspects of human and social reality, are the core of “Integralism.” I consider Integralism to be ACI’s own ideology, although it does rest on the premise that there is no need for an ideology. Integralism is a particularly radical and highly militant interpre¬ tation of some ideological aspects of modern Catholicism. It em¬ phasizes the imperious assertion that religious charisma, as insti¬ tutionalized in the Church, can find employment in the world only by being put at the center of social life, in all its dimensions; it expresses a feeling that, as Clemenceau once put it, ‘‘the Church is nothing if she is not everything.” It scarcely needs to be remarked—since the evidence of this fact, within the Church and outside it became glaring during John XXIII’s pontificate—that Integralism is not the only ideo¬ logical current in today s Catholicism. In fact, judging from some developments at the Council, it does not appear to be even the dominant current in Church opinion today, although it has very likely maintained a kind of covert dominance within Italian Catholicism. At any rate it undoubtedly constituted the ideolog¬ ical framework of most Catholic movements, in Italy and else¬ where, during Pius XII’s pontificate, and probably still does to this day. Integralism, however, just because it is not an ideology proper, but rather a mentality (to use Geiger’s terminology),2 can consti¬ tute the common denominator of a number of alternative inter¬ pretations. Between the extremes of right-wing and left-wing Integralism, in the Catholic movements of our century positions range from the typically leftist Integralism of the French and Belgian JOC, to the left-of-center variety of the “Sillon” of Marc

The Ideological Creed

12g

Sangnier, all the way to the extreme rightist Catholic elements in the

Integrists” and in Maurras’s Action Fran^aise.3

Generally speaking, postwar ACI has held a right-of-center position. This followed Pius XII’s general orientations and Presi¬ dent Gedda’s personal inclinations. However, even inside ACI it has met serious opposition, especially from the leaders of GIAC and the “intellectual” branches (FUCI and the Movimento Lau¬ reati). ACI Ideology’s Style of Thought ACI makes itself the conscientious bearer of the good news: the Church knows the answer to all the world’s ills. Bollettino ufficiale dell’ACI phrased this announcement thus, a few months before the end of World War II: Our time is one in which civilization is undergoing a deep and ter¬ rifying crisis. Man has sought to do without Christ; and lo, everything crumbles in the horrendous din of battle.... We have touched the bottom of the deepest abyss after many an error; and from deep down in it one feels the need to soar back, to set out again on the road of real social progress. The Church teaches this road. She has spoken loudly and clearly through the pope. The task of taking up her teachings and spreading them to everybody falls now on the clergy and on Catholic Action.4 The most obvious result of ACI’s task as a prime apostolic in¬ strument is a commitment to the Church’s “social doctrine.” ACI must view the world, in its historical aspects, through the Church’s eyes. A synthesis of the content of the Church’s social doctrine is unnecessary at this point.5 I am interested, rather, in singling out some key features of its style of thought, which, by virtue of the requirement of faithfulness become features of ACI’s own ideology. For the purpose of my discussion, I have isolated three main “stylistic” traits of the Church’s social thought—corporativism, organicism, and normativism. I use “corporativism” to refer to the tendency of the Church’s teachings on social and political matters, and of its perception of the problems in those realms, to develop not from within the realms themselves, but rather from within the corporate consciousness of the Church. In so-

130

The Requirement of Faithfulness

ciological jargon, the Church’s social thought does not develop from the standpoint of the observer, but always from the stand¬ point of the Church as actor, and thus is necessarily “prejudged” by the actor’s overriding interest in protecting his own commit¬ ments and meeting his own needs. I use “organicism” to refer to the characteristic of the Church’s view of society that stresses society’s integrative needs and tends to view the conflicts of social life as purely negative. I use “normativism” to refer to the rejection of a mechanistic view of society, coupled with the assumption that there exists an all-embracing, stable, normative pattern of what the society ought to be like. The Church considers itself the keeper of this pattern, which ultimately addresses the individual consciences of men in their quality as social actors. Corporativist Aspects of ACI’s Ideology ACI’s ideology, as it can be constructed from a continuous flow of pronouncements by its lay and clerical leaders, from ACI’s semiofficial paper, Il Quotidiano, from the organizational press of all branches, from the hundreds of reports given at organizational meetings, and from the statements of ACI members, bears the deep imprint of its source, and reflects clearly the style of the Church’s thought on society and history. The pattern of corporativism—the tendency to construe the nature and assess the significance of social and historical events from the standpoint of the corporate needs of the Church is very clear in interpretations of modern history by ACI leaders. Luigi Gedda, while he was General President of ACI, summed up the course of events in the West over the last four hundred years as follows: Four centuries ago began that laceration of Europe from which we suffer to this day, and it was the Reformation that worked it.... Look at what has taken place as the years unfolded. Protestantism means religious liberalism. ... It did not take this religious liberalism long to become political liberalism, the liberalism of the French Rev¬ olution, which did not express the Christian concept of liberty, but that of a self-styled liberty, a liberty of doing everything and anything that is actually license.... After reaching power, liberalism kept saying laissez faire, laissez passer.” Then, you see, the social question

The Ideological Creed

Xgi

became more and more bitter, and the early romantic socialism of the last century was born as an instrument for common defense. . .. But this romantic socialism has matured ... it has become the advocacy of the dictatorship of a class; it has become a political system: Com¬ munism. As you see, there is a fatal logic to error. You see how tightly inter¬ woven are the transformations in thought and the transformations in social conditions. Over the centuries, today’s Communism has de¬ scended from the Protestant revolution.6 In this way the whole process of Western history over the past four centuries is viewed as merely a matter of stepping out of line with respect to the religious truth in the Church’s keeping. All that followed could obviously only be a rugged march into deeper and deeper error. Very much in the same spirit, Cardinal Siri, as the head of the Episcopal Commission, the top governing body of ACI, summed up the history of modern European thought as fol¬ lows: The subjectivism and determinism of Lutheran thought have been the fundamental operating principles of non-Catholic European cul¬ ture. There today’s relativism finds its roots, in the same way as biolog¬ ical determinism, also called racism, is the direct descendant of the theological determinism of the sixteenth century... . Rationalism, positivism, materialism, and existentialism are either offshoots of the same tree or reactions to it.7 What I find interesting in these statements is both their poverty of authentic interpretive historical thought and the fact that they can only have been thought out by assessing the events from out¬ side, from the standpoint of a corporate unit that is being in¬ creasingly cut off from the course of events, and fosters in its mem¬ bers a sense of exclusive and proud foreignness with respect to practically the whole of social and historical reality. This suggests an analogy with the socialist, and later the Com¬ munist, movement’s need to affirm its alienation from the world. These movements and the Church seem to share both this need and a contrasting one, the need to be operatively present in the world. These two parallel instances of conflicting needs exemplify the peculiar predicament of institutionalized charisma in a plu¬ ralistic society. This is confirmed, in its own fashion, by the fol¬ lowing (corporativist) statements from an ACI publication: “We

132

The Requirement of Faithfulness

feel that we have entered the final act of our tragic contemporary civilization, the act in which—as in the Greek tragedies—the ca¬ tharsis, that is the denouement, is to take place. Only two forces are now still alive and active on the stage of the world—Catholi¬ cism and Communism.”8 Organicism and Normativism The corporativist aspect of ACI’s ideology, as I have defined it, consists in its viewing social problems and historical events with the Church’s eyes, and essentially in terms of the Church’s own interests and needs. Naturally this makes ACI’s ideology share all other relevant style features of Catholic social thought at large, thus it is markedly “organicist” and “normativist.” Both these characteristics are reflected, for instance, in this section of an article called ‘‘The Christian and the Social Classes,” from Iniziativa: The Church intervenes in the social question in order to guard the natural law. Its aim is not to favor one class against the other, but to make Jesus’ doctrine reign in the relations between the classes. It supports the just aspirations of the workers as well as the authentic rights of the employers.... Today it is more necessary than ever to present the Church as the guardian of all, workers and employers alike.9 The idea of natural law and of the common good; the ideal of a stable and clear order between the classes (which thus turn out to be perceived actually as estates); the significance assumed, as an ultimate guarantee of social justice, by the patriarchal sover¬ eignity of the Church over the whole social body; the direct rele¬ vance of traditionally conceived “social morals” to the relations between the classes—all these are “organicist” and “normativist” themes which continuously come to the fore when AC I attempts to represent to itself modern social realities. A Precondition for the Functional Assessment of AC I Ideology As I have repeatedly stressed, I wish to arrive at an evaluation of the sponsored organization’s competence for performing the tasks assigned it by the sponsoring institution. If this kind of evaluation is extended to the ideology of ACI, I must adopt a con¬ ception of ideology that is not popular in current sociological

The Ideological Creed literature. Sociologists have mostly concerned themselves with ideology as a general category, as “distorted” or “existentially determined” thought, and have generally discussed its genesis— rather than its function; or, one may say, they have treated ide¬ ology as a dependent variable rather than as an independent variable.10 Those who have concerned themselves not with ide¬ ology as such, but with the ideologies of specific movements and organizations, have mostly done so in the framework of one of two interpretations of their functional significance. They have treated them either as “rationalizations,” or “derivations” (in Pareto’s sense of the term), or as sets of symbols, crystallizations of values serving mainly to identify the movement or organiza¬ tion in question. In other words, they have attributed to those ideologies purely manipulative or purely integrative functions, rather than directive functions.11 Among students of political sociology there has recently emerged, however, a different conception of ideology. As Bendix and Lipset have remarked,12 political sociology, more than other fields of sociology, is inclined to view social action as a relatively self-determined choice in the face of a set of alternatives, rather than as a wholly determined product of a certain situation or purely an adaptation to it. In this perspective it also becomes possible to consider ideology a vehicle of processes of definition of the situation, of choice, of “coming to grips” with reality. This conception seems particularly appropriate in the study of political parties,13 but some of the problems it poses can also be studied with reference to organizations of a different kind. Thus, the functional evaluation of ACI’s ideology can aim at discover¬ ing whether the ideology can constitute a viable vehicle for deal¬ ing with ACI’s environment. The Dysfunctions of the Requirement of Faithfulness ACI’s ideology appears to reflect both the displacement of reli¬ gious ethos in the face of contemporary social reality, and the particular “lack of fit” of a body of thought that originated in medieval culture.14 These two liabilities are, of course, inter¬ woven in reality so that only analytically can one distinguish between them. The compounded result is that it is impossible for ACI to come

134

The Requirement of Faithfulness

to grips with contemporary social reality in terms of its own ide¬ ology, and thus to be guided in its action by its own ideological principles. This summary judgment may be sustained by a num¬ ber of considerations. First, as Weber has convincingly shown, the whole institutional constellation of the modern industrial economy, which has be¬ come the central matrix of contemporary society, is “imperme¬ able” to all attempts at infusion by the religious ethos.15 A recent critical study of Catholic social doctrine by Haettich has decisively sustained this position on a plane more technical than Weber’s.16 Second, many moral demands of modern man, particularly to the extent that they transcend the realms of sexual and familial morality and arise from the problems posed by class conflict, the use of leisure, social mobility, and occupational conditions, can¬ not be met with a set of moral principles that are tradition-ori¬ ented (and derived from an authoritarian tradition at that), and which reflect essentially the moral needs and problems of a stable estate society. Third, Catholic social ethics are particularly ill-equipped to face the problems posed by the working man. This has been clearly brought out by, among others, Maier, who in a history of early Christian democracy thus traces the causes for the arising bourgeoisie’s alienation from the Church: A theory of life [Lebenslehre] oriented to the distinction between the two immutable poles of poor and rich, of lowly and lofty estate, could only find the bourgeois dynamic of gain, of mobility, of change, in¬ comprehensible. ... And on the other hand, the bourgeois found in the Church’s fund of moral formulas and types nothing to correspond with their specific life situation. There was no archetype of a bour¬ geois or even a wider lay sanctity [Heiligkeit]_Hence, the bour¬ geoisie detached itself from the Church.17 This movement repeated itself on a larger scale when the prole¬ tarian class began to question its own position in society and in the Church in the following centuries. The organicist bias of Catholic social thought implies a diffuse agreement on a harmonious hierarchy of moral values “con¬ trolled” from the top by the primacy of religion. This assumed harmonious hierarchy prevents the Church (and the sponsored

The Ideological Creed organization) from taking into account the poignant problems posed by the disordering of values within and between the vari¬ ous spheres of individual and social life. Moreover, Pareto’s dis¬ tinction between the good of the society and the good of its parts is also incomprehensible if one assumes that an all-inclusive bonum commune exists.18 The normativist approach to social reality (in the sense previ¬ ously defined) shrinks the capacity for considering unforeseen consequences of social and political action, and thus for realisti¬ cally assessing a situation, and lowers chances for a given course of action to have success. The ethical counterpart to that approach in the field of politics is of course an “ethic of intentions” (Gesinnungsethik).19 A young Italian Catholic historian, Piero Scoppola, has correctly criticized this in commenting on the limits of the political line put forth around the turn of the century by Father Murri’s “Christian democracy”: The basis of the misunderstanding... is the naive and well-mean¬ ing delusion that religious and social moral demands (which must always inspire the believer in each moment and phase of his ac¬ tion) can be transferred immediately to the plane of political action, without the mediation of historical judgment. As if those religious and moral motives could by themselves enact wondrous transforma¬ tions, without any need for a difficult and risky effort to coordinate them with historical reality, which must needs take into account the laws of development of this reality and the forces at work in it.... This is the danger: believing that the good, in the political field, can be identified and pursued easily and immediately on the basis of a simple moral judgment, rather than through a knowledge of the problems that each epoch poses, through a purposeful effort at un¬ derstanding the new ideas and the new currents of social life.20 My own negative functional assessment of an ideology issuing ultimately from the logic of the sponsorship relation, through the requirement of faithfulness, is shared by J. M. Cameron, a per¬ ceptive Catholic critic, writing in Blackfriars, the cultural maga¬ zine of the English Dominicans. In the face of the contemporary political situation in the world and in the different countries, says Cameron, it would be unfair, but not so unfair as all that, to say that the Cath¬ olics have very little to offer. Much moralizing goes on, it is true,

136

The Requirement of Faithfulness

rather in the style of the Moral Rearmament. ... There is much mull¬ ing over an ill-defined body of doctrine sometimes known as ‘the so¬ cial teaching of the Church,’ a mulling over which has no political consequence whatsoever, for the doctrines considered remain at a high level of generality, so that quite often opposite lines of policy seem equally compatible with them. ... What has first to be done is something simpler and humbler: to understand how the present sit¬ uation has come about; to understand our society; to free ourselves from the major deformations that have overcome Catholic social thinking.... We are emprisoned within a number of political myths, forms of ‘false consciousness,’ to use the Marxian-Hegelian termi¬ nology, that are demonstrably false but nevertheless deeply rooted and hard to shift.21 Alternatives to Impotence and Their Dangers My functional assessment of ACI ideology has thus led me back to the initial statement: its ideology does not allow ACI to come to grips with the reality it was designed to influence and redeem. However, in spite of being fundamentally irrelevant and doomed to impotence, this ideology clearly suggests a feeling that it is urgent and necessary to influence social reality and particu¬ larly the political process. It is this feeling that I call the “temporalistic bent” of Integralism. Luigi Gedda voiced it as follows: “The fundamental religious problem of our century lies in im¬ parting a Christian outlook on all aspects of modern life, from intellectual to economic life, from the problems of the classes to those of leisure, from family life to civic life.”22 Since both the character of the ideology and the objective constraints within which the organization operates do not allow that bent to express itself in a realistic and effective manner, it must seek expression in a number of derivative and often contradictory ways. One such expression of the temporalistic bent may be seen in ACI’s activity as a pressure group, to which I shall refer again later. ACI’s pressure policy, in turn, presents two aspects, an overt aspect, which consists in efforts to influence the policies of the Catholic party and in the clamoring for legislation intended to protect “public morality,” and a covert aspect, whereby ACI seeks to place its men in sottogoverno posts, to pass judgment on the composition of the Catholic party’s ballot, and to exert an informal control on the activity of local governments, unions, and other bodies manned by Catholics.

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137

Another expression of that bent (as well as a reaction to ACI’s impotence in dealing with social affairs) consists in the implicitly or explicitly political coloration occasionally taken on by the properly religious and apostolic activity of the organization. Finally, a further reaction to ACI’s impotence consists in the unavoidably inconclusive and self-defeating attempts at a direct and massive intervention of ACI in the political sphere; certain aspects and phases of the activities of the Civic Committees, which I shall discuss later, are an expression of this tendency. All these reactions to ACI’s impotence pose a serious threat to the organization’s sense of identity, to its internal cohesion, to its institutional integrity. I have already mentioned, for instance, the danger that an increasing number of ACI leaders may be found who do not sincerely share the organization’s basic re¬ ligious and apostolic commitments, and may try to employ the merits gained through the organization as trump cards in a purely self-seeking game. Burckhardt’s warning to religion holds also for Catholic Action as a religious organization: “Every contact with the secular reacts strangely upon religion. An inward de¬ cay is inevitably associated with the rise of its secular power, if only because quite other men come to the fore than at the time of the ecclesia pressa [persecution of the Church].”23

Chapter ten

The Youth Branches and Everyday Values

I have described a relationship between the Church and ACI (the sponsorship relation) which shapes the structure of ACI and the content of its ideology—with considerable dysfunctional conse¬ quences, it appears. Ultimately, however, the contact between the Church’s ethos and the realities of the outside world, which ACI is supposed to bring about, must be realized in the conduct of the individual members, acting out their multiple social roles. This fact raises a serious question. How, and to what extent, is the sponsorship relation to affect the conduct of ACI members? The structures serving the requirement of control cannot reach be¬ yond ACI's lowest-level organizational units; and the logic of the requirement of faithfulness finds itself challenged by the variety and complexity of the everyday existence of the individual mem¬ bers. ACI’s Small-Plan Ideology ACI confronts this problem in two main ways. In the first place, the Church tries to instill in ACI members a deep devotion to it¬ self, and thus attempts to shape their general attitude toward the problems of their conduct. In the second place, the Church ex¬ pects the educational activities of all branches, but particularly the youth branches, to suggest specific responses to those prob¬ lems, and to equip their members with values to orient their con¬ duct.

The Youth Branches and Everyday Values

139

Let us briefly examine the former strategy first. It finds expres¬ sion in a distinctive level of ACI ideology that pertains to the everday lives of the members—what might be called ACI’s “smallplan” ideology. The “grand plan” is expressed in those parts of ACI’s ideology discussed in Chapter 9. The principles of the small plan, as well as those of the grand plan, are essentially derivative, and they share the grand plan’s Integralist orientation. Thus, it is assumed that a complete and perfected body of truth is vested in the Church, and that this truth has a direct and saving relevance to the whole of reality. The member is urged to view all aspects of his existence from the Church’s standpoint and to strive to apply its teachings. The small-plan ideology, therefore, has no actual substantive content, being mostly an articulation of the premise that the Church holds the total response. It too aims to shape first and above all the member’s attitude toward the Church itself, rather than to¬ ward discrete, concrete problems in his own life; and it really amounts to a mentality.1 This ACI mentality, in its normative formulation, can be seen in a few key terms in the ACI vocabulary: “presence,” “bear¬ ing witness,” “spiritual self-cultivation,” “organization,” and “obedience.” Presence. Since the world has become estranged from the Church and is organized outside of it or against it, the lay¬ man’s key duty is to ensure through his own person the “pres¬ ence” of the Church in that world. As one General Assistant of ACI once put it: Presence is the layman’s first duty. The bishop is expected to teach and to lead, the priest to administer the means of sanctification and to diffuse the evangelic message as far as he can reach. It is up to the layman to make Christ’s presence felt in all fields of life. His presence must not be hampered by a feeling of embarrassment; it must be a courageous and sensitive presence, grounded on the layman’s personal prestige, and responsive to all human expectations.2 Bearing witness. “Presence is not enough.. .. Witness must be borne to the truth.... The layman must, before anything else, seek his own spiritual improvement... so as to be seen as a living example of Christ’s message.”3 Spiritual self-cultivation (vita interiore). The witness-bearing

J40

The Requirement of Faithfulness

presence of the layman in the world must be grounded on his commitment to moral and spiritual self-cultivation, which of course is to be continuously guided by the Church’s officials. The layman, therefore, ought to go to Mass frequently, go to Confes¬ sion and Communion frequently, pray a great deal, meditate on edifying truths, examine his own conscience every evening, and if possible do all this under the close guidance of a trusted and respected priest—his “spiritual director.” As one of those heavy ACI metaphors puts it, l’apostolato si fa con le ginocchia—the apostolate originates on one’s knees: “Apostolic work requires, as an indispensable condition for being apostolic, the diligent employment of all means of spiritual self-cultivation,... a life of prayer and of intimate union with God. Otherwise it will en¬ tirely fail in its objectives of defense and conquest.”4 Organization. There is as much insistence on the collective, or¬ ganized dimension of the lay apostolate as on its properly spiri¬ tual (and necessarily individual) dimension. Pius XII once said, “Catholic Action, by seizing upon and adopting the genius for organization that is peculiar to our own time, takes shape and asserts itself as a tightly and expertly organized association.”5 And on 3- later occasion he also said:

Today three million members

renew their membership in Catholic Action. If all the members of this formidable organization were solidly, infrangibly united, would there be anything it could not accomplish?.. . Who could break through this shield of the Church? Who could withstand its impact? 6 In addition, Luigi Gedda, the most important lay leader of ACI in the postwar era, frequently stressed organiza¬ tional requirements: Our society is besieged by technicism.... In the economic sphere, for instance, the problems are of such magnitude that a single man is but a grain of dust that carries no weight and does not matter. In politics, too, numbers mean strength. Therefore Catholics ought to see clearly that today their faith is to be defended through organiza-

Ohedience. I have already pointed out that the lay leaders’ relationship to the hierarchy is essentially one of obedience. The organization as a whole is continuously exhorted to behave with equal obedience toward the Church. Some of those interviewed

The Youth Branches and Everyday Values

141

for the SSRC project have also emphasized the central role of obedience in the ACI mentality.8 Other terms recurrent in ACI language that carry the same significance are “faithfulness,” “de¬ ployability,” and “availability.” Why the Small Plan? The very existence of these two levels of ACI mentality (or ide¬ ology) poses a problem. Why should there be two? Perhaps it is merely because the organization as a whole has both “emergent” tasks and operative principles that do not apply to its individual members. This is a plausible interpretation. However, I offer two alternative ones, which I find more convincing. The first is that the two levels of ideology correspond to an unresolved duality in the general conception of ACI’s goal. This duality is itself a consequence (and a dysfunctional one) of the sponsorship rela¬ tion, and as such it will be discussed later. The second interpretation is that the existence of the small plan is the organization’s tentative response to the inadequacies, failures, and dangers inherent in the grand plan. The call for action at the individual level, and its humbleness of tone, seems to develop from ACI’s feeling of impotence as it seeks to solve the world’s problems by teaching the lessons of the Church. Further¬ more, the small plan owes its existence to an anxiety over the markedly temporalist overtones of ACI’s preeminent concern with and devotion to the Church’s social and political message; it responds to a fear that ACI’s spiritual charge may run down and draw the organization into an aggressive and activistic search for power.9 There is also a feeling that any serious effort to clarify the implications of a number of grand-plan principles by apply¬ ing them to concrete situations would disclose a great variety of possible interpretations, each supported by distinct segments of the organization, thus endangering its unity. In more opportu¬ nistic terms, it is felt that in the Italian political situation the Christian Democratic Party, with its virtual monopoly on the po¬ litical representation of the Catholic forces guaranteed by the Holy See, simply leaves no space in public life for ACI to realize its grand-plan aspirations. I maintain, therefore, that the exis¬ tence of two levels of ACI ideology both expresses a fundamental

i42

The Requirement of Faithfulness

duality in ACI’s goal, and represents an adaptive response to the grand plan’s built-in limitations. Naturally, in the context of current ACI ideological talk, the two levels are viewed as two perfectly harmonious expressions of the same design, and often even the existence of two distinct levels is denied. The assumption that the grand plan is naturally carried forth and implemented by the individual member’s com¬ mitment to it is obvious in the following, for instance: The Church, with a wide and secure gesture, invites the members of CA to insert and disperse themselves in social life. We are Christian seed that has become the seed of civil works, to be made sensitive to and to be shaped by the Christian spirt. We are the seed of Christian civilization, at work through our efforts to gain individual perfection. . .. CA brings together in a man the Christian and the citizen, makes him capable of joining the earthly and the heavenly city, of spreading the ferment of the Gospel in human society, in order to guide it to justice and peace.10 Or as L’Osservatore Romano put it in an article entitled “Toward Understanding Catholic Action”: For us, one is not a Christian only when he goes to Church to partici¬ pate in a religious function. One is a Christian—if he is truly one—in every moment of his life, even outside the Church, even in the family, even in the plant and in his activity as an entrepreneur, a businessman, or a banker, even when he puts his electoral ballot in the box, even—unlikely as it may sound—when he is a member of parliament.11 The Three Main Alternatives Open to ACI Educational Policy As I have already noted, the principles of ACI small-plan ide¬ ology have a methodological rather than a substantive content. They aim to shape a general attitude in the member, they point out to him some channels of inspiration for his day-to-day con¬ duct. They do not, however, specify any responses to the concrete pioblems that are bound to confront him in the various spheres of his existence. Those principles ultimately boil down to a com¬ mandment of faithfulness to the hierarchy. Yet it is hard to see how this crystallization of the sponsorship relation can be of much guidance to the individual member, caught in the web of multiple group affiliations, enmeshed in social processes with

The Youth Branches aitd Everyday Values

143

normative and factual structures that are impenetrable to the ethos of the Church,12 often made insecure by the magnitude and tempo of change all around him and by the variety and com¬ plexity of ethical problems that change engenders. I have suggested in Chapter 9 that the explicit ideological prin¬ ciples supplied by the Church are not sufficiently univocal and sufficiently sensitive to reality to constitute an adequate source of “tradition direction.” Furthermore, according to the Church, the AC I member should not seek moral guidance from the men who surround him in most social situations, since too often this would mean expecting light from the children of darkness, and would contravene the requirement of faithfulness. The only so¬ lution to this predicament compatible with the logic of the spon¬ sorship relation is for ACI to supply the member with a “value kit” that might effectively assist him in his everyday life. The edu¬ cational activity of the youth branches, in particular, is oriented to this solution, as suggested by a passage from an SSRC inter¬ view with a national GIAC leader: The Church wants Christians to participate as Christians in all aspects of social life ... in the life of their families, their parishes, their communes, the State, their trade unions.... One of GIAC’s goals is to teach its members to serve society as Christians.... GIAC seeks to articulate the fundamental values and principles that will guide its members in their existence.13 Naturally, the youth branches must pursue this goal within the framework of the sponsorship relation; they cannot put together the members’ “value kit” at their own discretion. And they have to answer the critical question whether, and to what extent, that kit should contain values taken from the social contexts the mem¬ bers move within. In the abstract there are two extreme solutions to this problem, which differ in the way they embody the sponsor¬ ship relation, and particularly in the way they interpret the re¬ quirement of faithfulness. On one hand, the requirement of faithfulness may be seen as the only channel of values. That is, values are to be derived ex¬ clusively from the culture of the sponsoring institution, and superimposed on situations where the ACI members are active, thus preventing the normative structures of those situations

i44

The Requirement of Faithfulness

from being perceived and accepted as values by the ACI mem¬ bers. On the other hand, the requirement of faithfulness may act only as a standard for determining from time to time which prin¬ ciples of the situations may be perceived and accepted as values by the members of ACI. In other words, the value kit may be made up prevalently (or in fact exclusively) either of values derived from the sponsoring institution (through the sponsored organiza¬ tion), or of values derived from the outside world after their con¬ formity to the requirement of faithfulness has been ascertained. Everything said about ACI so far suggests that the former solu¬ tion is more consistent with the nature of the sponsored organiza¬ tion, while the latter appears to threaten the logic of the spon¬ sorship relation. However, a compromise is possible, whereby the kit comprises both values derived from the Church and values derived from the world, with the former occupying a position of preeminence and control. In the rest of this chapter I shall give examples of each of these three solutions, taken mostly from the expei iences of the youth branches. But first I shall sketch each of the solutions and suggest a preliminary functional evaluation. The first solution emphasizes the peculiarity of the position of ACI members because it seeks to superimpose the Church’s tra¬ ditional values on their life situations. This solution has the advantage of being clear and “safe” but to the extent that it con¬ cretely affects the members’ conduct it makes it difficult for them to appreciate and evaluate their environment, and thus difficult for them to effectively transmit the Church’s ethos to the context of their existence. The second (compromise) solution seeks to give some recogni¬ tion to the value demands and orientations that the members absorb from their environment, within a framework of values essentially derived from the Church. The value kit thus composed cannot be sufficiently integrated and coherent, and makes for various difficulties. The third solution is the most open toward the world, since it assumes that the member ought to seek his central values in his own environment. This creates a platform of values that the members can share with the environment; but there are a num¬ ber of negative consequences from the standpoint of the spon¬ soring institution.

The Youth Branches and Everyday Values

145

First Pattern: Value Superimposition The educational policy of GF, the girls’ branch of ACI, repre¬ sents the clearest example of value superimposition. It starts by assuming, as its most general and absolute principle, consistency with a rigid set of values. [GF’s] method is grounded on the demand that the girls give their best and their most.... The main things required of each girl are a maximum consistency of her behavior with the principles she has learned and accepted, then a generous commitment to being an apostle among her companions. Thus she acquires the strong and lively sense of responsibility on which a true Christian personality must be based.14 The values in question, then, are derived exclusively from the culture of the sponsoring institution. In the area of sexual morality, for instance, GF is led to stress and promote an ideal of girlhood that is in patent contrast with the one current in the world. Not only is complete premarital sexual purity continuously emphasized, but according to a very knowledgeable informant, the GF girl is also constantly told that she must not lead others to sin against purity, not even unwill¬ ingly—for instance by the way she dresses.15 Hence there is an almost obsessive concern with the problem of modesty in one’s dress, one’s looks, one’s “walk,” and so on. As the informant suggested, when successfully internalized, these norms tend to make the GF girl look and act much unlike her non-GF contem¬ porary. Furthermore, GF has made it its specialty to continuously pose the so-called problema dello stato, or question of vocation. This means that even young girls are constantly advised to ask them¬ selves, as their most pressing moral and spiritual problem, whether they intend to aspire to the state in life of a married woman, of a nun, or of a single woman. I quote from LaPalombara’s report of his interview with a GF leader: I asked the respondent to what extent the organization was basically a recruiting ground for nunneries. She said it would be unfair to call the organization such a recruiting ground. However, she does not deny that one of the purposes of the organization is to compel or to encourage the members to choose their status [scelta di stato]. That

146

The Requirement of Faithfulness

is, the girls are asked to confront the question: shall I marry or not? Or shall I become a nun or not? Or shall I be an old maid or not? She says that GF simply lays out the advantages and disadvantages of all these alternatives.16 As LaPalombara comments, there is something terrifying about this procedure, which can only destroy the spontaneity with which the girls will face the concrete possibility of getting mar¬ ried.17 One may also remark that this way of posing the problem of marriage means rejecting the socially more accepted con¬ ception, according to which one does not choose an institution, but rather a person, and in fact a person perceived as unique. Spontaneity in the face of a concrete, existentially authentic choice is also troubled by the insistence with which the girls are invited to consider themselves, and particularly their feminine attributes, as potential instruments for the damnation of men. Austerity On these grounds, the pattern of value superimposition devel¬ ops its logic fully in making austerity the dominant trait of the educational ideology of GF. This is also, somewhat paradoxically, the outcome of GF’s effort to counteract and in a way to over¬ come its own concern with the problem of sexual purity. As if perceiving that chastity should not constitute the only value, nor even the overwhelmingly dominant value, in GF’s orientation, the organization seems to have tried to create a wider and more balanced value kit. Apparently, however, it has done so by stressing other values for which there is little place in the ideal image of the young girl that is accepted by the culture of the world—a sense of responsibility, earnestness, and so on. The traits of sentimental freshness, of spontaneity, of tenderness, of sensi¬ tivity, are wittingly or unwittingly underplayed. This is the way a GF leader comments on a letter by a fifteenyear-old member, who raises the problem of her freedom and the limits it meets in family life: At fifteen a girl does not have a correct concept of freedom. She sees freedom as the ability to do whatever she pleases, to act as she wants, to satisfy all her impulses, beyond all commandments and prohibitions, to quench her thirst to see everything, know everything, live and en-

The Youth Branches and Everyday Values

147

j°y- Thus, when a bond or a prohibition—given by woman’s proper condition, by duty, by the demands of others—puts limits to these flights, the girl feels inferior, unhappy, and pessimistic. We must give the adolescent girls the true sense of freedom, a truly Christian sense. We must make them understand that they are not free when they yield to their whims, when they stubbornly maintain their own viewpoints, when they can go out whenever they please, when they have the keys to the house in their purses.... To master oneself, to keep one’s passions at bay, to make the will prevail over all-too-human sensitivity, this is indeed a continuous expression of true, authentic freedom. ... Let us help the adolescents understand that they are most free when they make sacrifices for others’ sakes, forgetting themselves and their own problems, when they bow to duty and sacrifice their amusements, when they help around the house and give up their friends’ company.18 This suggests that GF aims at creating a type of girl who is radi¬ cally different from the other girls her age, and that it rejects entirely the values current in the society rather than trying to correct and improve on them. Politics as Love and Self-Denial The inner limits of this approach to the problem of values in everyday conduct are fairly evident in the following quote from a GF magazine. The article in question, written in view of the political elections of May 1958, recommends (to use an under¬ statement) a vote for the Christian Democratic Party (“a cross over another cross”) in these terms: Politics is a crossing of the ways on which man’s journey unfolds. ... If we look at it in the proper way, politics is love of God expressing itself as love of men according to the social perspective,. .. love, noth¬ ing else... . One may not refuse one’s interest. We must obey the commandment of love. For this reason you will go and vote. You will make the sign of a cross over another cross. Prepare yourself through your prayers for this fundamental duty.... The sign of the cross upon another cross will measure the extent to which Christianity has grown in your soul, over and beyond your preference, over and beyond your sym¬ pathies for individual persons, over and beyond your personal in¬ terests. That sign of the cross upon another cross may be the end of your dialogue with men—how fatiguing it has been to conduct this dialogue in the environment of your work all these weeks!—and the beginning of a dialogue with God.19

148

The Requirement of Faithfulness

It seems that this way of sizing up the problem of one’s vote— something one does only “because love thus commands,” “over and beyond one’s personal interests,” and so on—confuses the concrete significance of the act and implies an utter contempt for the value of politics. The words I have emphasized, in particular, betray the inner trend of the spirituality here preached, a spiri¬ tuality that views one’s daily contact with other people as merely a painful trial from which the dialogue with God constitutes an escape devoutly to be wished. This also demonstrates the functional liabilities of the pattern of value superimposition. The Church’s attempt to establish a contact with the world through her committed faithful can only flounder as long as the organizational instrument of that attempt is forced, by the limits of the Church’s own culture, to preach to the layman escape from the realities and risks of the outside as the proper way of saving himself. Although the Church intends these laymen to be connecting links between itself and the world, it “forms” them in such a way that they are substantially foreign to the world. Exorcism The pattern of value superimposition is not the monopoly of GF. It is also reflected, for instance, in a GIAC publication (put out in 1958, after the Rossi crisis), which instructs member stu¬ dents to guard their minds and those of their schoolmates against the errors explicit or implicit in Italian scholastic culture: Today’s Italian school is basically the child of the principles that led to the French Revolution and the principles that successive trends of thought and politics produced over the last century or the last de¬ cades. These are the principles of rationalism, of the Enlightenment, of encyclopedism, of idealism, and finally of nationalism. These prin¬ ciples in turn have created certain systems of thought and life— immanentism, laicism, individualism. They have brought about the absolutization and therefore the wrong evaluation (and finally, un¬ avoidably, the negation) of human, earthly values. Hence were born the worship of science (scientism), of philosophy (philosophism), of artistic activity (aestheticism), of facts (positivism, pragmatism), or of matter (materialism), all taken as absolute values. There is also a tendency to make all of reality coincide with the development of his¬ tory (historicism), and as a practical consequence, [sic] personal or national individualism (the latter is nationalism), the absolutization

The Youth Branches and Everyday Values

149

either of the State (totalitarianism or statalism), or of race (racism), or of social class (classism).20 This remarkable attempt at exhaustiveness (the list goes on to mention existentialism, by the way), does not do away with an¬ other functional liability of the pattern of value superimposition reflected in this quote. Implicit in it is an attitude I call “exorcistic”: the assumption that knowing a catalogue of errors will help the GIAC student—exactly as an exorcistic formula would —to spot, neutralize, and defeat the minutest expressions of those errors in the teaching he receives at school. Apart from the obvious nai'veté of this assumption, it can only foster in the ACI militant an attitude of suspicion, and make him incapable of appreciating the contents of his learning in their complexity and in their real significance. Again, a basic foreign¬ ness to the values and problems of the context of his action will be the (ultimately self-defeating) outcome of his value commit¬ ments. Second Pattern: Value Juxtaposition Among the ACI branches, GIAC has made the most serious efforts toward developing an educational philosophy open to a recognition of the value potentialities of the outside world. As I shall show in the last part of this chapter, at at least one point in the organization’s recent history, this attempt was carried far enough to become, in my own terms, “value mediation.” At that point it failed, as it had to; and since that failure, the pattern of value juxtaposition has become again the goal toward which GIAC’s education is oriented. This is reflected, for instance, in the following “Note on the Training of Those Aspiring to the Apostolate,” addressed to the ecclesiastical Assistants of the GIAC Aspiranti (ages ten through fourteen): It should be repeated and made clear in the first place ... that not every form of religious activism is real training in the apostolate.... In the second place you should be reminded that to form within the boy the apostle of tomorrow does not mean that he must grow up as a moralist either.... There is indeed a danger that for some boys the appeal to the apostolate is tantamount to dividing the world into good people and bad ones, after which the former must “conquer”

150

The Requirement of Faithfulness

the latter. The result of this misunderstanding of the nature of the apostolate is a sort of spiritual aristocracy.. . . Let us avoid giving our boys such bogus merchandise under the label of the apostolate, and remind ourselves that only when the boy .. . understands and prac¬ tices charity toward his neighbor in the complete sense of the word is he really being trained in the apostolate.... The boy should be made to feel a lively understanding and a real sympathy toward his neighbor inasmuch as he is part of mankind. This may be achieved by communicating to the boy ... the basic realistic optimism inherent in the Christian view of man.21 An established assumption of the educational philosophy im¬ plicit in this statement is that GIAC education must appeal to “the boy in his entirety,” must utilize the stimuli inherent in his environment, must emphasize the positive values of adolescent culture. There is also an insistence on the importance of “an authentically youthful style,” whose components are supposed to be “modernity, spontaneity, and generosity.” Father Giuseppe Nebiolo, for many years national Assistant to the Juniores move¬ ment, wrote for instance in 1948: Our movement has its unmistakable style of life.... The Juniores style, from the standpoint of its content, involves all the problems the adolescent lives through: the struggle to preserve his purity, the springtime of love, the élan of friendship and feelings of fellowship, apostolic generosity, religious fervor, love of nature, pursuit of cul¬ ture, sports, and the arts. From the standpoint of its form, the Juniores style comprises the ways in which all those contents are sought: spontaneity, freshness, improvisation, strength, dynamism, humor, merriness, song, poetry, and folklore.22 The Problem of Love Both the liabilities and the assets of this emphasis can be seen if we look closely at the way GIAC, over quite a long period, has confronted the difficult educational problem posed by the most common and typical manifestations of the awareness of sex in adolescence. Perhaps because those phenomena often threaten to change entirely a youth’s moral outlook, this is a complex and difficult problem for all youth organizations. (An example is found in the earnestness and austerity with which the same phe¬ nomena are viewed in Soviet Russia, where they are discussed

The Youth Branches and Everyday Values

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in terms often reminiscent of the Catholic positions.) In the tra¬ ditional Catholic culture, at any rate, that problem is viewed as quite the most important one in the education of youth, and it is coped with, basically, in a “repressive” manner. It is against the background of this tradition that one must view GIAC’s efforts to evaluate adolescent sexuality in a somewhat different perspective and to go beyond a merely inhibitory ap¬ proach. As one aspect of this effort, GIAC has stressed, in the as¬ sessment of some manifestations of sexual awareness and interest in the post-pubertal phase, their affective-sentimental significance as against the purely carnal one. For example, a GIAC publication addressed to local Aspiranti leaders, contained this editorial com¬ ment on a letter from a reader: Let us now answer Vittorio, who writes from Turin: “One of the members of my pre-Ju section [fourteen-year-olds] is acting like a rebel. He’s just made a habit of going to the movies with some girls in his class at school. I have tried many times, using good manners, to make him understand that this must stop, but nothing doing. What am I to do?” Did you ever ask yourself why your pre-Ju acts like a rebel? I think he’s trying to cope with a need for affection.... Quite conceivably a good reason for this may be that his family does not satisfy that need. This is another reason why you ought to be close to him, to be patient and understanding, as well as intelligently firm.23 Another aspect of this not wholly traditional evaluation of such phenomena is the increasing awareness that the only correct and decisive way of justifying the request of total sexual purity from the adolescents, is to pose the problem squarely in theological terms. Centro di giovinezza, a kind of Dr. Spock book for Dele¬ gates and Assistants in charge of Juniores, warns the reader that it shall not waste much time with the traditional old recipes for keeping oneself pure, which range from the precise descriptions of the damages wrought by vice to the pre¬ scription of non-stimulating diets.... Unless we misinterpret the sit¬ uation, we’d say that our boys are practically deaf to this kind of argument.... For Catholic youth the problem of purity is above all a theological problem.... Therefore, if we do not succeed in raising the level of the theological convictions of our friends so that with the help of divine grace they’ll be able to overcome all the stimuli

*5*

The Requirement of Faithfulness

from their own bodies and from their environment, we shall have to resign ourselves to seeing around us young people who no longer know how to resist evil.24 Finally, the importance placed on sexual purity has been justi¬ fied in terms of a positive evaluation of the phenomenon of sexual love. The latter is viewed, in theological terms, as a source of legitimate pleasure and as a dignified form of human expression, provided that it unfolds within the sacrament of marriage. Father Nebiolo writes that this approach is “a good tactic” in the educa¬ tion of Juniores to purity. When his educators in GIAC have confronted him with the ‘‘ideal of the divine beauty of love ... in all its greatness,” the young member will draw the following con¬ clusions by himself: My great ideal of love tells me that I am to collaborate with God in the creation of life. ... Thus I want to make my body strong, healthy, well developed.... Thus I shall avoid all sins against love, as well as the nervous torment of an immature attachment, because they would disturb the harmony and integrity of my forces.... My great ideal of love tells me that I will have to preserve all my spiritual rich¬ ness for the companion destined to me.. .. Thus I shall avoid all strain on my purity so as to be able to tell her one day that I preserved my body from the facile seductions of evil.... My great ideal of love tells me that it can reach the height of its greatness only in the sacra¬ ment of marriage.25 In these terms the commandment of purity is viewed as safeguard¬ ing the capacity for loving wholly and fully. The Limits of Value Juxtaposition The efficacy of these attempts to view the problems of sexual love in a new light is limited by their existing within the frame¬ work of an inexorable moral rigorism, whose basic operational norm is still a purely negative one—“abstain.” In the case of ACI (and Catholic Action in general), committed as it is to an Integralistic understanding of the Church’s precepts, that command does not embrace only what is viewed a sin per se (masturbation, fornication); it extends to all normal manifestations of sexual awareness, even if they are not sinful either because they are purely instinctive or because they are, or can be, controlled and directed in a non-sinful manner. As we have seen, Father Nebiolo

The Youth Branches and Everyday Values

153

expects that the young GIAC member will not only abstain from all sms against love” but also reject “the nervous torment of an immature attachment.” The only honest and earnest way a young man should react to the sentimental attraction he feels for a girl, he suggests, consists in fighting such a feeling: I will wait to reveal my love toward a fellow creature until the mo¬ ment when this revelation can reach its natural destination in front o the altar; ... I intend not to let my attention linger on a young woman before that moment has come, ... and if by chance my atten¬ tion has already fastened itself on such a being, I will seek to divert it and to place it entirely on the ideal companion I want for myself. Should it be that I have already allowed myself to confess my feelings, with the help of grace and the counsel of my spiritual director, I will energetically tear myself away, because the goal of the altar is too far.... And if my heart should be tormented either by the pain of separation or by the desire for possession, I will throw myself into apostolic activity.26 I must wain the reader that although Father Nebiolo was re¬ ferring to teenagers, the substance of his argument can be found repeated with reference to the Seniores (ages twenty through twenty-nine). The text of a 1957 publication aimed at these mem¬ bers, for instance, insists that the “sense of paternity” ought to be the central value in their morality; but the member is warned that he should not “waste his spiritual richness by expressing his sense of paternity in superficial and inconclusive feminine ex¬ periences” [.sic].27 Although this view of the members’ sentimental and sexual problems is inspired by a positive evaluation and reflects a con¬ structive attitude, it can only be seen by the average member as just a new argument for the traditional ruthless inhibition. This is also the outcome of the occasional attempts made in GIAC pub¬ lications to “transvaluate,” to put in a bad light things they want the members to give up but which the youth culture at large ap¬ preciates positively. Witness the fun poked at high-school crushes by some young turks of the Rossi Presidency: “that short, cross¬ eyed girl with bad breath”; or the way Father Nebiolo depicts the attractions of social dancing: “spending hours crushed in a crowd with a girl, to the sound of that stupid music, in a hot room stink¬ ing with sweat.” (The prohibition against attending dances has

1-q

The Requirement of Faithfulness

always been one of the clearest expressions of GIAC s “pedagogy of isolation.”) The Risks of Value Juxtaposition A second major limitation of the efforts made to reappraise positively the problems of sex and love consists in the potential dangers of those efforts. If you make no bones about sex being evil, girls being tools of the devil, and love his subtlest ruse, at least the GIAC members will know what they are in for. and the ‘‘pedagogy7 of isolation” will appear to them either as an absolute necessity or as an intolerable limit; in the latter case they will simply leave GIAC. But the attempt to join that pedagogy with a deliberate insistence on the basic goodness, the ultimate worthi¬ ness, of love and sex can easily engender confusion. A letter from a member discussed in GIAC’s weekly, Gioventù, in 1952, offers a nice example of this phenomenon. It should be mentioned that in 1952 the theme of GIAC’s ‘‘annual campaign” (that is, the topic with which most of the associational meetings were to deal) was ‘‘Toward Your Own Family,” and thus the members were being continuously lectured on the greatness of the sacrament of marriage, etc. A reader from Piedmont complains that in spite of all the things being said this year to make a young man confident that he will find a girl worthy of becoming his wife, it does not seem likely that this will happen because ACI boys are kept too far from ACI girls; thus it is difficult for them to learn what kind of woman will do for them and what kind will not do; he says that joint meetings of the two parish associations ought to be held, in order to give them chances of becom¬ ing acquainted. Now, as a matter of principle we would have no ob¬ jections to this, but there are some difficuldes; GIAC has always looked on mixed events with great caution.... And then, are such joint meedngs really necessary? In order to make our own choice all of us have available a number of settings,... each of which allows occasional contacts with girls.... But above all,.. . the choice must be prepared over a long period of time and with great padence, avoid¬ ing attempts and experiments which, even when they are kept stricdy within the bounds of propriety, are still damaging to our spiritual balance.28 But what best illustrates this danger is the story of Family, Little Church, a book written by Carlo Carretto (GIAC National

The Youth Branches and Everyday Values

155

President from 1947 to 1952), where it was argued that through the sacrament of marriage, pleasure was sanctified and each fam¬ ily became a little church.” Theologically speaking the book was irreprehensible, but its descriptions of the joys of Christian love, of legitimate paternity, and of sanctified intercourse appeared much too ardent to many shocked pastors, ACI Assistants, and leaders. The GIAC members for whom the book had been writ¬ ten lapped it up; but not for long, since the book was soon with¬ drawn from circulation.29 The Failure of Value Juxtaposition I have suggested that the GIAC line favoring a more confident, manly, and positive appreciation of sexual love is limited both by the pressure of a rigid tradition of merely negative precepts re¬ flecting a narrow and essentially puritanical view of the problem, and by the potential dangers involved in taking the line too seri¬ ously, so to speak. The second limit, it seems to me, merely echoes a more funda¬ mental predicament. As a self-standing human value, sexual love was ignored in the traditional medieval context of the Church’s view of the human world. It came into its own as a value outside that context.30 It is another of those values that the modern world has discovered in the course of its fresh meditation over nature and man and its reappraisal of them. Thus, love is a part of mod¬ ern culture, or from the Church’s standpoint, of the outside. Un¬ avoidably, however, it also affects and orients to some extent the attitudes of the Church’s faithful. To ignore it or to deny it would negate the Church’s hopes of establishing or maintaining some guidance over the daily life of its faithful. A CA youth organiza¬ tion seems to be the appropriate vehicle for recognizing this value to some extent. Yet if it goes seriously about this job, the organiza¬ tion endangers other established values that are the Church’s very own, for instance those embodied in the demand for sexual purity and in the prohibition of sexual contacts before and outside mar¬ riage. It may not directly undermine them, because indeed the CA youth organization shares those values, but it is the self-con¬ tained logic of that other value that implies the danger. Thus the organization must accept some inconsistencies in its moral

i^6

The Requirement of Faithfulness

message, and must let an overriding concern with prudence (which in this context largely means prudery) overshadow its plan for acknowledging some values of the “outside.” By doing this, however, the organization limits its chances of proposing an ethos acceptable to a large section of contemporary youth.* Third Pattern: Value Mediation In Chapter 8 I noted that the Rossi Presidency’s attempt at a “strategic restructuring” of GIAC based on the milieu principle went against the requirement of control, and thus failed. At the same time the Rossi Presidency’s stress on the necessity for “un¬ derstanding” and “reevaluating” the environment of the GIAC members’ action, for locating and sharing the original values of that environment, posed a direct threat to the requirement of faithfulness. The response to this twofold threat was—and could only be, in the context of the sponsorship relation—the hier¬ archy’s decision to dismiss the Rossi Presidency, no matter what the decision “cost” the organization. The Ideal of the Christian Revolution In GIAC’s ideology, the temporalistic bent implicit in the Integralistic perspective has traditionally been given a markedly ag¬ gressive and leftist twist by the belief in a “Christian revolution.” The contrast between the Church’s social message and the tenets of capitalism and nineteenth-century liberalism (and thus the vested interest of the bourgeoisie) were stressed. Rossi and his fellow-leaders inherited this emphasis from their predecessors. However their first departure from the rigid Integralist approach, with its simplistic tendency to mistake norma¬ tive prescriptions for operative solutions, lay in their awareness that the idea of a Christian revolution required an effort at in* I have discussed the pattern of value juxtaposition mainly with reference to the problem of sex and love in the adolescent’s life. Basically similar conclusions could be drawn, for instance, from the way political and social problems are generally discussed in GIAC and in other branches of ACI. In particular, the emphasis placed on such concepts as “social justice” tends to engender a critical position toward the existent social order; but the full acceptance of the political unity of Catholics in support of the Christian Democrats ultimately takes the sting out of such a posi¬ tion, or makes it pragmatically inconclusive.

The Youth Branches and Everyday Values terpretation and elaboration on the part of the Christians, and specifically on the part of the laymen. They sensed the novelty, the complexity, the difficulty, and the riskiness of this task. Mario Rossi himself, while he was GIAC Central President, made this point as follows: We do not need to go and borrow other people’s revolutions, because we possess the true revolution, the spiritual one.... Revolutions with¬ out eternal dimensions hold no interest for us.... Do not think, how¬ ever, that we believe the Christian revolution to be an established formula; we do not believe in formulas nor in recipes that are sup¬ posed to cure all ills.... We are not... naive. Certain tragic forms of infantilism from the past and certain types of naiveté in the present do not appeal to us.31 There was a second departure from the established Integralist perspective in GIAC’s ideology during the Rossi Presidency; an optimistic view of history appeared, contradicting the current emphasis on the “degenerational” aspects of the course of West¬ ern history since the Reformation. In an article titled “An In¬ vitation to History,” Rossi said that by reading historical works as a boy, during the Resistance period, I understood that I was inserted into an order, that I was living in a dynamic, that I should have been aware I was participating in a development. I understood that there was not only a design, a dy¬ namic, which concerned me individually,... but that there is a design that develops through the generations, that a whole commu¬ nity follows a pilgrimage.... In those years I understood that God was not only the God of my personal conscience,... but that God was present to the whole of history, that He works through history, build¬ ing history.... This is why meditating on history is not only a means for us to acquire an indispensable culture, but may be a stimulus for us to operate better; history then becomes an essential pedagogy of man.32 The Discovery of Values in the World Both the novel emphasis on the complexity and riskiness of the Christian revolution and the more optimistic evaluation of history are peculiarities of the Rossi line at the level of the grand plan, not yet at the level of “the problem of values in in¬ dividual life.” However, they constitute two prerequisites for

158

The Requirement of Faithfulness

the development of a partially new line on the personal level as well. Rossi alludes to this connection in another article, where we see the meeting of his grand-plan and his small-plan line: Today the world and Christianity are burdened with enormous prob¬ lems. In the most diverse fields there can be seen a need for revision, renewal, for the discovery of new values or the rediscovery of for¬ gotten values.... Many of our friends, although on the surface they appear up-to-date, never confront the vital and deep significance of this march toward new horizons, do not engage in a search for inter¬ pretations, do not look ahead, do not try to master new viewpoints. They are reluctant to undertake the labor of interpreting a reality that subverts our armchair theories.33 Another major ideologist of the Rossi Presidency—one of its ecclesiastical leaders, Father Arturo Paoli—was to give the clear¬ est formulation of what I call the pattern of value mediation. This consists in the call for the member to seek and recognize the “value principles,” of his action as a Catholic layman and as a Catholic Action member, in the context of his individual every¬ day life: “The layman’s calling resides in the world: he is called to work in this framework.... He must never lose sight of the fact that the things of the world exist in their own right, have a nature and requirements of their own. Only in this way does he orient all things toward God.”34 La non-religion, c’est de la vie serieuse. One could take this modification of Durkheim’s saying (la religion, c’est de la vie seri¬ euse) as a synthesis of the “value mediation” line developed by the Rossi Presidency. It contrasts clearly with the ACI general line, whose main limit lies in its inability to take the things of the world seriously. This limit is overcome, however, in Rossi’s declaration of interest in the things of the world: “We are not just anxious [about them], we are interested. We find everything ex¬ tremely interesting: the world, theology, history, science, work, art.... We are in love with life.” The significance of this declaration of interest for the personal life-plan of the GIAC member was developed at length in a series of articles by Father Paoli on the course of the layman’s sanctifica¬ tion (here called “spiritualization”). I quote from one of them, in which “the temporal” is used to mean the realm of the things of the world:

The Youth Branches and Everyday Values

159

What is the significance of the temporal? What is the significance of one s engagement in the world?... The layman who wants to be spiritual but does not want to face these questions can only drag along in a continuous state of uneasiness,... hence his attitude of only conditional loyalty toward the temporal, which is viewed as a stage that one passes through in his impermanent state as a man.... But this means that one does not know how to interpret the temporal, and tries to build his spirituality hiding from the temporal, trying to keep it out of his purview as much as possible.... [Yet] the person who wants to be spiritual is continuously confronted with the vast realm of the temporal: culture, politics, sports, money, all pose problems for the man who plans to be a spiritual man, and demand from him willy-nilly a continuous revision of his relationship with the tempo¬ ral. ... I believe that a feeling of risk in the face of the temporal, and a certain kind of timidity in making one’s choices in the reality of this world, is by itself a clear symptom that one is spiritually on the right track.35 Father Bartoletti, another clergyman who played a significant role as a theological spokesman for the Rossi Presidency, made the same point as follows: What we call the temporal is a set of immense values, values of the universe, values of the body, values of the spirit because they are meant to serve the spirit. The world does not come from Satan, the temporal does not come from the devil; the enormous reality of the temporal comes from God, it is God’s own work.... We do not hold a dualistic position that denies as a matter of principle the intrinsic value of the temporal reality.... Therefore the Christian must love reality with a positive, non-platonic love; it is his world.... It is God’s world.36 The Threats of Value Mediation Most of the quoted passages may sound rather abstruse and vacuous to the reader, and by the same token rather harmless. Yet in the context of the Italian Catholic subculture and of ACI in particular, there is no doubt that they sounded significant and powerful; they had a novel and promising ring to the ears of the more aware and open-minded sections of the GIAC membership —and a threatening ring to the ears of those who were primarily concerned with ensuring the total “availability,” the utter faith¬ fulness of the organization. As I have said, the incapacity for taking seriously the realities of politics, of secular culture, of the economy, and so on, which characterizes the Integralist mentality.

160

The Requirement of Faithfulness

was directly attacked, and thereby the hard core of the established ACI positions was challenged. A further challenge lay in the fact that the Rossi Presidency’s argument implied a new model of the proper spirituality of the layman as a layman, and as a CA mem¬ ber. The figure of the CA member, it was argued, could no longer be built up by subtraction, starting from that of the priest or the monk; on the contrary, the figure of the lay apostle had to be designed by addition, starting with the more general idea of lay spirituality. As Father Paoli put it, the traditional lines of think¬ ing current in the Catholic doctrine regarding the layman are essentially the lines of the monastic spirituality—the asceticism of disengagement and not of engagement. And we are trying to force this formula upon the layman-In this way we reduce his spiri¬ tuality to a set of spiritual practices that merely repeat and vulgar¬ ize the program of the convents.... So what we get is a spirituality of escape, the notion that the world is a limit to the development of spirituality, not the very vehicle of that development.37 This criticism had a disruptive effect on the current state of Catholic Action, and indeed on Catholic culture in general; neither, indeed, possessed the ideological instruments for coping with the task at hand. Both the theology of worldly realities and the ethics of the working man are sadly underdeveloped sec¬ tors of the Church’s present ideological complex. Allowing a branch of Catholic Action to undertake the risky task of discovery and search for new principles at this level would have endangered the prime requisites of faithfulness and control. Exhorting CA members to view their everyday life not only as the context for applying value judgments taught by the Church, but also as a source of self-standing values that demand loyalty, would threaten their dependency on the Church. Nevertheless, the action taken to remove that threat sapped the internal vitality of GIAC. The sterility of enforced overcau¬ tiousness and conformity resulted in a loss of elemental vigor, which it has not yet recovered. It was with uneasiness as well as a definite sense of unfinished business that after reviewing the Rossi crisis and its significance one of the present GIAC leaders told the SSRC interviewer:

The Youth Branches and Everyday Values

161

The Catholic Action units have yet to come to grips with the realities of an industrial society.... In this setting GIAC has to try to teach its members the kind of spiritual self-sufficiency that will permit them to deal realistically and effectively with the problems that confront them individually in their everyday lives.88 To sum up: the pattern of value superimposition, by deriving all its principles from the culture of the Church, can but repeat the sponsoring institution’s failure to cope with the realities of the historical environment. The pattern of value juxtaposition tends not only to reveal inconsistencies but also to produce strains and frictions; thus it fails to equip the Catholic Action member with a consistent “value kit” that would permit him to effectively sense and deal with the problems and values of the environment. The pattern of value mediation represents a step in the direction of taking seriously the reality of the environment; however, owing to the nature of the organization’s relationship to the sponsoring institution, value mediation engenders serious and multiple threats.

Chapter eleven

The Ambiguity of ACI’s Goal

As we have seen, the sponsorship relation affects certain aspects of ACI’s structural and cultural physiognomy by leaving them in¬ adequately defined, or by defining them in a manner that implies gaps, tensions and contradictions. And as I have sought to show with reference to Selznick’s model, the organization is thus pre¬ vented from fully achieving “competence”—the ability to act effectively toward its goal. I shall complete this kind of analysis by pointing out that the very definition of the organization’s goal suffers from such uncertainties and contradictions.* This, of course, can be considered both a cause and an effect of the analo¬ gous weaknesses in those aspects of the organization I have con¬ sidered so far. The Importance of the Definition of an Organization’s Goal While most students of organizations (especially those of the “rational” persuasion, to use Gouldner’s term)1 insist on the nec¬ essity of clearly allocating powers of decision and laying out * For the purpose of this discussion I have assumed that normally one distinctive goal (or set of goals) can be identified for any organization at any given time. (My sense of “goal” corresponds by and large with what Selznick calls “mission and role” of an organization; see Leadership in Administration, Chapter 3.) For other purposes, such an assumption may appear entirely inadequate, and possibly mis¬ leading; in this sense, see Burns, “Ambiguity and Identity,” unpublished manu¬ script, Edinburgh University, 1965.

The Ambiguity of ACTs Goal neatly the lines of communication within an organization’s struc¬ ture, a few organizational sociologists, and Selznick among them, have stressed that what must above all be clear (although not nec¬ essarily explicit) is an understanding of what the organization is all about. “Above all,” however, need not mean “before all”; in¬ deed it is taken for granted that at first an organization will not possess such a clear understanding of its goal, or more often will possess only a formalistic, generic definition of it, one that will not supply the organization with decisive criteria for orienting its action. In fact, one critical aspect of the institutionalization of an organization that Selznick discusses is exactly the process by which this inadequate early definition of the organization’s goal is super¬ seded by one evolving with the organization’s own history.2 When this development is successfully accomplished, it be¬ comes possible for both the observer and the individual actors to seize and comprehend the organization’s raison d’etre by reflect¬ ing on its history, and by projecting into the future the critical decisions it has already arrived at. Among its members, and particularly among its leaders, there emerges a diffuse agree¬ ment on the ultimate objectives of the organization. This shared understanding then becomes a bench mark for evaluating the or¬ ganization’s successes and failures, a key criterion for orienting its action in the face of the threats and promises of a changing situa¬ tion. Thus that understanding becomes important not only from the standpoint of the internal, integrative requirements of the organization’s life, but also from the standpoint (the standpoint I take here) of its ability to pursue and realize certain values out¬ side itself, in the context where it operates. Some prerequisites must be met if this is to happen, if the orga¬ nization is to be able to draw from its own history an image of its goal sufficiently clear, meaningful, and shared to become a guide¬ line for its further operation. I will point out two such prerequi¬ sites, which are closely connected. In the first place, the critical commitments visible in the course of the organization’s history must be in the nature of choices made by the organization, not in the nature of merely adaptive reactions to the overwhelming im¬ pact of external forces. This does not mean, of course, that such choices will have been made in a wholly arbitrary way, as if in a

164

The Requirement of Faithfulness

vacuum, or in the condition of “freedom of indifference.” As Selznick writes, they will generally have been made as “new ways of dealing with a changing environment.” But each commitment must at any rate represent a way in which the organization de¬ termines itself, places new constraints upon itself; it must not be a matter of the organization’s passively undergoing developments forced upon it from the outside. Secondly, these successive commitments must fit into a coherent overall pattern, and they must plausibly fit along some continuous line of action that can be meaningfully construed in restrospect. If, instead, the history of the organization appears incoherent and ambiguous, or perhaps seems like an oscillation between two in¬ compatible poles, the organization will be unable to derive from it effective criteria for locating its own identity and gaining a sense of direction. Clearly, in the case of an organization bound to another by heavy dependency ties, these prerequisites will not be easily met. This is shown for instance by the history of the Western Commu¬ nist parties during the Stalin period, when they were entirely dominated by the Comintern and through this by the Russian Bolshevik Party. Some of them were thrown into serious disarray by the Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement on the eve of World War II, and were compelled to painfully reestablish a sense of identity and purpose by defining themselves as exclusive tools of Soviet foreign policy. By the same token, however, they were making it more difficult for themselves to seek or maintain an active posi¬ tion in the context of national politics, to preserve the allegiance of many of their members, and to orient themselves coherently and intelligently in the face of successive international events on which Moscow’s position might not have already been spelled out. The sponsorship relation affects ACI in an analogous manner. To employ Selznick’s terms again, an organization whose history shows such elements of discontinuity and ambiguity cannot easily become institutionalized in its environment. The Impact of the Sponsorship Relation It is evident that the sponsorship relation undermines the two prerequisites I have indicated. The structural arrangements im-

The Ambiguity of ACI’s Goal

^

plementing the requirement of control unmistakably put the hierarchy in the driver’s seat. Being unaccountable to the spon¬ sored organization for the decisions taken regarding it, the spon¬ soring institution is in a position to force decisions upon its de¬ pendent. Moreover, if the sponsored organization is only one of the instrumentalities available to the sponsor (as happens in the Church-ACI case), the role it plays in the general framework of the sponsor s ends is determined not only by decisions imposed directly upon itself, but also by decisions regarding other instru¬ mentalities. Finally, since the sponsoring institution pursues a variety of proximate goals, the sponsored organization can be made to serve successively or even simultaneously more than one of those goals, some of which may be in conflict with others. One may then expect the organization’s history to show such dis¬ continuities and ambiguities that no “clear, meaningful, and shared” definition of its goal can be derived from it. Yet I have argued that only a definition so characterized would effectively supply the organization with a criterion for evaluating the alter¬ natives open to it, and a standard for judging its own achieve¬ ments and failures. While this need not be true of every national Catholic Action organization to the extent that it is true of ACI, what I have just said is broadly applicable to Catholic Action also outside Italy, as Gramsci suggested in one of his prison notebooks: The weakness of every national CA organization lies in the fact that its action is continuously limited and interfered with by the demands of the international and national policy of the Holy See. To the ex¬ tent that each national CA organization grows and becomes more massive, it tends to take shape as a real political party, whose direc¬ tions arise from the internal demands of the organization itself. But this development can never become organic because of the Holy See’s intervention.3 Gramsci’s term “organic” implies the question of whether a pat¬ terned “institutional purpose” emerges from the accretion of suc¬ cessive commitments. His judgment (apart from the controversial assertion of each national CA organization’s inherent tendency to become a party) is sustained by the experiences of many national

i66

The Requirement of Faithfulness

CA organizations, as well as Catholic movements of other types. In some cases, actually, it is not necessarily the Holy See whose intervention blocks the process or at any rate interferes with it, but rather the bishops of a given country, acting singly or col¬ lectively. The Holy See directly intervened, for instance, to over¬ ride Windthorst’s consistent policy toward the Reich government by bargaining to give Bismarck the Catholic Zentrum’s votes on the Septennate Law of 1887 in exchange for the burying of the Kulturkampf. However, as Ritter remarks, it was with the Ger¬ man episcopate that the Volksverein ran into trouble after the end of World War I, when its policy on the question of Prussia’s electoral reform did not favor the episcopate’s policy on the status of the Catholic schools.4 As far as Italy is concerned, the main critical points in ACI’s history regularly correspond to decisions taken by the Holy See; the formation of the Opera dei Congressi was both the first and the last major policy decision spontaneously made inside the Ital¬ ian Catholic movement. While it can be said of the German Volksverein that its social policy derived from two great inspira¬ tions, Leo XIII’s social encyclical and Wilhelm II’s social policy, the corresponding movement in Italy was inspired only by the encyclical.5 So was the development of Murri’s Christian-demo¬ cratic movement, which later saw its own purposes imperiously limited from outside by Leo XIII’s encyclical Graves de com¬ muni* At the beginning of the twentieth century, an autonomous development in the Italian Catholic movement that had much in common with a contemporaneous development in the German Zentrum was abruptly ended by Pius X’s beheading of the Opera dei Congressi. All previous and successive historical turning points of ACI witnessed, with monotonous regularity, compara¬ ble interference by the Holy See. These interferences were often sources of serious halts in ACI’s development. ACI had barely adjusted itself to the concurrent existence of a “nonconfessional” Catholic party instituted accord¬ ing to Benedict XV’s policy, when Pius XI’s policy led to the PPI crisis. Later, the same policy established ACI as the single major Catholic lay organization in Italy, with no less than public law status in the Concordat but with merely “educational” tasks as-

The Ambiguity of ACI’s Goal

^

signed to it. In the second postwar period, the decisions that whipped ACI into public activity once more, and gave it new statutes, were another major turning point emanating solely from the Holy See’s policy. Since ACI has historically constituted only one element, albeit a prime one, in the Italian plan of the Holy See, its role was from time to time determined by the functions performed by other components of the plan. Consequently, ACI’s history does not reveal a consistent pattern of assignments in the Church’s general plan, but evinces instead a basic ambiguity in the organization’s goal. The Insufficiency of the Constitutional Definition ACI is covered by a very authoritative and continuously reaf¬ firmed constitutional definition of its own nature as “the orga¬ nized collaboration of the laymen with the apostolate of the Church’s hierarchy.” This definition reveals ACI’s nature as a sponsored organization, but does not clearly answer the question “sponsored for what?” Probably no ecclesiastical or lay ACI leader would be so daring as to assert the inadequacy of that con¬ stitutional formulation. This inadequacy is recognized, however, by a French clergyman, Father Bourdet, in an article that piti¬ lessly enumerates the gaps and weaknesses in the self-image of Catholic Action. He asserts: “a sense of unease is evoked by the very first norm. One might say that the very definition of Catholic Action gets away with a kind of confused clarity.”7 The inadequacy does not lie simply in the fact that it is not clear what is meant by “apostolate” or “collaboration” (Pius XI, incidentally, preferred to speak of “participation in,” instead of “collaboration with” the hierarchy’s apostolate). There are also remarkable difficulties at this level if one poses the question of the obligatory or optional nature of the layman’s apostolic commit¬ ment, and the question of what is meant by the term “mandate,” which is often employed to define the relationship between the hierarchy and its lay collaborators, or finally the question whether the mandate should be addressed to the laymen singly or as a group. Apart from these theological and juridical difficulties in the definition of CA, the sociologically crucial ones arise from the historical development of single, national organizations—such as

i68

The Requirement of Faithfulness

ACI—which seems to afford no reasonably clear, meaningful, and shared definition of a goal. A basic ambiguity in ACI’s history lies in the fact that it de¬ veloped in an oscillation between two poles, each of which can be seen as an answer to the same query: does ACI exist in view of the Church’s external or its internal system?8 That is, is ACI meant to help the hierarchy lead souls to God’s grace, spiritually assist the faithful, and spread the Lord’s message? Or is it meant to support the Church in its effort to hold its ground in society before the State and other major secular forces, to influence and if possible to use them? That these two different systems of reference can be applied to the Church is often recognized by Catholic writers. According to Civardi, for instance, throughout its history the Catholic Church has lived a twofold life, one internal, the other external. The first is directly religious and spiritual; it blossoms and ripens within the individual conscience and it finds expression in acts of cult. The second — a natural projection of the first — develops in the society at large through a constant civilizing activity. Thanks to this social life of hers, carried on through twenty centuries, the Catholic Church en¬ gendered, nourished, and protected the civilization that is rightfully called Christian.9 However, no matter how intrinsically connected these two aspects may appear to be in the perspective of the history of the Church as a whole, from the standpoint of a contemporary mass organization, and in the face of the phenomenon of seculariza¬ tion, they constitute two utterly disparate systems of reference, imposing widely different sets of constraints on the organization’s identity, style of activity, and strategy of action. Historical Interruptions and Permanent Ambiguities Let us turn to the appeal issued by the Venice Congress of 1874, which can be considered the first great official act of Italian Cath¬ olic Action: Whereas the liberal governments have proclaimed the separation of the State from the Church, thus depriving the Church of all the sus¬ tenance it drew from the agreement of the two powers; and since as

The Ambiguity of ACI’s Goal

!6g

a consequence an unfettered revolution threatens the Church, limit¬ ing her freedom and her public action; and with the Church in these straits it falls to the Catholics to make up for the governments’ failure to defend the Church; ... the Congress resolves that Catholics must engage in action in the manner that would give the Church maximum strength and efficacy, and that such strength can be achieved only as a result of the concerted action of all Catholics, united in associa¬ tions.10 On the basis of this vibrant call to organized action, it seems legitimate to conclude, with the Communist historian Candeloro, that “from its beginning Catholic Action was considered a new kind of ‘secular arm’ at the disposal of ecclesiastical authorities.”11 Civardi, the semiofficial historian of ACI, said it in a similar way: Catholic Action ... both in Italy and in other countries, arose in the first place as a weapon in the defense of our religious heritage and the sacred and inviolable rights of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In fact the Catholic laity became a militia in the defense of the Church, and as such it was in a way a substitute for the secular arm that Catholic states used to constitute.12 (Italics in the text.) However, as Gramsci has remarked, early Catholic action was quite different from CA, and particularly ACI as recognized and sponsored during Pius XI’s pontificate.13 Pius XI stressed the apostolic goals of the organization, and justified its necessity in the following terms: “Unfortunately, the clergy today is not suf¬ ficient to meet the needs of our time; in various places, it is numerically weak; in others, entire social groups have put them¬ selves out of its reach.. .. Thus it becomes necessary that every¬ body become an apostle, that the layman take up their part in the sacred struggle.”14 Two different conceptions of ACI, in fact, developed in his¬ torical succession: the one that prevailed from Pius IX to Leo XIII; and the one that prevailed from Benedict XV to Pius XII, with Pius X’s pontificate intervening as a transition period. Wit¬ ness, for instance, the following remark in an important article in L’Osservatore Romano published in 1946: During its beneficial life course there have been two conceptions of CA, each having some distinct consequences for its structural setup: on the one hand, CA as a great league of Catholic citizens for the de¬ fense of religious freedoms and rights and therefore of the rights and

170

The Requirement of Faithfulness

freedoms of the Church; on the other hand, CA as the action of the faithful... in collaboration with the apostolate of the hierarchy. The first conception is that of its origins; the second that of the last twenty-five years; each corresponds to different political conditions.15 According to my view of the necessary conditions for the develop¬ ment of a definition of the organization’s goal, even a clear-cut succession of two different conceptions may create imbalances and difficulties in the organization’s view of its mission and role. This is all the more true if one considers that in each instance only the hierarchy could interpret the “different political condi¬ tions” and set up the “corresponding” organizational assignments and structures. One must also add that the Church, in keeping with the developments in its general political line, may introduce remarkable discontinuities even within either of these two con¬ ceptions: for instance, Pius IX and Leo XIII both saw CA pri¬ marily as a “secular arm,” yet assigned it widely different tasks. But above all, what makes those imbalances and difficulties critical is the fact that the two conceptions do not simply follow one another, but to some extent remain permanently operative, and act as two poles between which the organization continuously oscillates or may oscillate. In 1957, Pius XII recognized precisely this when he told the Second World Congress of the Lay Aposto¬ late in Rome: One of the reasons for this appeal to the laity is undoubtedly the pres¬ ent scarcity of clergy; ... but apart from the insufficient number of priests, the relations between the Church and the world demand the intervention of lay apostles. The consecration of the world is, above all, the work of laymen, that is of men who participate intimately in social and economic life, and are present in the government and in the legislative bodies. This passage, then, suggests that the two conceptions of CA coexist in the present. A French Dominican friar, in an article published in 1953, suggested that in fact what takes place is an oscillation between these two conceptions, with some attendant negative consequences: At times it looks as if Catholic Action were promoted to the role of the major reserve force behind the clergy.... At other times its role is whittled down to that of a tool of the hierarchy, or, as has been said, of its far-reaching hand. Neither conception is adequate; and

The Ambiguity of ACI’s Goal

171

the oscillation between the two, the uncertainty about them, shows that Catholic Action still needs to find its own proper role.16 This basic ambiguity is also revealed, as we shall see, in various aspects of ACI’s policy after the war, as well as in various aspects of its organizational physiognomy. An Italian critic has pointed this out in the last chapter of a book on Luigi Gedda: Catholic Action is, in essence, a religious-apostolic movement (or at any rate, this is the pretext for its existence and the flag waved in order to attract recruits). In reality, however, it behaves like a typical instrument of the Holy See’s political intervention. Thus, according to the opportunities afforded by changing situations, it leads at times a restricted life, but at other times it is threateningly brandished.17 The Dysfunctional Aspects of Ambiguity The fact that ACI’s history evinces no clear, meaningful, and shared definition of its goal, which could orient its activity, af¬ fects the organization in various ways. I have already suggested that the existence of two levels of ideology (or mentality) may reflect a parallel duality in ACI’s previous experience. “ACI as an auxiliary to the clergy” does not correspond perfectly with “small-plan ideology,” nor does “ACI as a secular arm” corre¬ spond perfectly with “grand-plan ideology,” since at each ideolog¬ ical level both conceptions of ACI’s goal are reflected. Yet each level undoubtedly stresses one conception, and there is a broad symmetry between these two dualities. The contrast between the two conceptions is possibly a factor in ACI’s recurrent (although generally discreet) internal argu¬ ments over the main strategy of recruitment. One of the concep¬ tions underlies each horn of the quality-quantity dilemma with which the recruitment policy of ACI (and many other mass or¬ ganizations) must cope. This dilemma presented itself sharply at the end of the war, when the return to a democratic regime re¬ moved restrictions on organizing freely, and made it possible for ACI to seek adherents in a wider spectrum of the population. On the other hand, a strong Catholic party was also emerging, committed to the defense of the “rights and freedoms” of the Church; this would have allowed ACI to maintain a strictly spiri¬ tual, apostolic definition of its own mission, and consequently a restrictive recruitment policy. The issue was much discussed;

172

The Requirement of Faithfulness

the solution that prevailed emphasized the new opportunities for expansion and activity in public life, and favored a policy of massive recruitment. The defeated alternative stressed instead the definition of ACI’s goals adopted under the Fascist regime, and proposed a selective policy emphasizing quality rather than numbers.18 That question was often raised again in the following years, al¬ though never as explicitly as in 1945-47. At the summit of the organization, as could be expected, the existence of a true dilem¬ ma was never acknowledged; it was insisted that both quantity and quality have their merits and that both should be sought at the same time. Pius XII once recommended: “The problem is in the first place one of numbers; the members of the ACI associa¬ tions are still too few. ... In the second place there is a problem of quality. It would be wrong to be satisfied with mediocrity.. . . One must demand everything, or at any rate very much.”19 In the same vein, an article in the Presidenza Generale’s Iniziativa concludes its recommendations for recruitment policies by sug¬ gesting that “we must seek to have more and more members, but also require that they be more and more active.”20 Yet the lower levels in the organization were acutely aware of the issue these pious directives sought to dodge. At these levels the dilemma is recognized to be real, and leaders are aware that you cannot eat the cake and have it too. An Italian critic of ACI, Falconi, has culled from the Catholic press a documentation, showing that the issue was felt in a particularly acute way toward the end of Pius XII’s pontificate, when the Holy See directed the clergy to set up units of the four basic ACI branches in all Italian parishes. Falconi notes: A GIAC Assistant writes: “The recruitment campaign is a tragic business. How can you put it across to your superiors that if you have lost in numbers this may mean that you’ve gained in quality?” A lay¬ man speaks up: “We have placed too much trust in a recruitment policy that is wrong because it leads ACI to accept people who are not spiritually mature for it; numbers are beginning to damage qual¬ ity.”21 n That the unease over the official recruitment policy reflected the two different understandings of ACI’s goal is suggested also

The Ambiguity of ACI’s Goal

173

by my recollection of some bitter remarks I heard from a Na¬ tional Assistant of GIAC in 1953: At the last national convention of diocesan presidents we debated a number of important problems concerning the spiritual and cultural training of the members, the general line of the movement’s apostolic action, and so on. At the end of the convention we took the partici¬ pants to pay their homage to Rome’s Cardinal Vicar. We went up to him and tried to tell him what we had been discussing, what plans we had formulated. It was clear that he had no use for all that; all he seemed concerned with, all he kept saying was “they are many, your young men, aren’t they? ... They are many...This man is possessed by his physical fear of the Communists, and all he cares to know is that he can count on many young Catholics to do their best to defend him. In their spiritual and cultural problems he has no interest. This leader saw the preoccupation with membership expan¬ sion as a threat to his own view of ACI as a body of committed, responsible, and qualified laymen, who respond to the Church’s appeal by accepting specifically religious, apostolic responsibil¬ ities. He felt that a numbers-minded recruitment policy implied a different definition of ACI: ACI as a maneuverable mass at the Church’s disposal for political operations, useful for putting pres¬ sure on the government and on public opinion. A further dysfunctional consequence of this duality of defini¬ tion may be seen in the organizational dissensions it leads to, since some sectors of the organization (and particularly some of the branches) tend to identify mainly with one definition, and others with the other. Concretely, GIAC, FUCI, and the Movimento Laureati stress the religious and apostolic conception of what they are all about, rather than the political conception. This will become apparent from what I say in Chapter 13 on these branches’ opposition to the “Gedda line.” Basically, then, the ambiguity in the definition of ACI’s goal, engendered both by the inadequacy of the statute and by the con¬ tradictions apparent in the organization’s history, affects ACI negatively, both directly, by depriving it of an important criterion for orienting its action, and indirectly, by letting internal dis¬ agreements and contrasts persist because of contrasting views of the reasons for the organization’s existence.

PART 4

Aspects of ACI’s Policy After the War

i945-i958

Chapter twelve

Organizational Expansion

Having shown how the sponsorship relation affects various aspects of the organizational physiognomy of ACI, I can now give more attention to certain postwar developments that so far I have only referred to in passing. However, mine will not be a sustained historical treatment, but simply an attempt to give the reader a more integrated, concrete image of an organization that until now has been dealt with mostly in analytical terms. My review of the main lines of action pursued by ACI in the postwar period will deal primarily with the organization as a whole, rather than with the branches of ACI. Basically, I shall discuss the policies of the Presidenza Generale, which developed more or less directly and explicitly under the supervision and with the agreement of the Holy See. Furthermore, I will focus on the plans initiated at the center of the organization, as distinguished from their realization—or lack of it—at the local level. In this and the next chapter, I deal with the two fundamental organizational policies pursued by the Presidenza Generale. In Chapters 14 and 15 I focus on its substantive policies—although this distinction between two types of policy is of course somewhat artificial, and a number of connections between the two could be mentioned. In the last chapter of this part, finally, I present and discuss some criticisms of the main “line” emerging from those policies. In this part, as in the rest of the book, I have not con¬ sidered ACI’s developments after Pius XII’s death.

178

ACl’s Policy After the War

Aspects of Organizational Expansion There are two main aspects of ACI’s organizational expansion in the early postwar period. The first, which might be called in¬ ternal, has to do exclusively with ACI itself, in all its branches, and is expressed by an increase in the number of members and local units. It is true that a trend in this direction was already clearly visible in the last years of Fascism, particularly in the youth branches; but—over the opposition of a minority, as I pointed out in Chapter 11—that trend was purposefully intensi¬ fied after the end of the war. This is all the more significant if one considers that at the same time within the Catholic world there was an outburst of organizational activity (primarily on the po¬ litical and labor fronts), which might conceivably have affected the vitality of ACI, as indeed had happened in 1919-22. But, in fact, ACI was able to expand further, and one of the important reasons for its growth was its organizational drive in areas where it had previously sunk only shallow roots, mainly in central and southern Italy. This strategy—speeding up the appeal to a po¬ tential following that had previously been inadequately tapped —is also expressed in the 1946 statute’s granting full status as national associations (branches, in current ACI parlance) to the Movimento Laureati and Movimento Maestri. I am more interested in what could be called the external aspect of this policy of organizational expansion; that is in ACI’s pro¬ motion of a number of other organizations meant to serve certain areas of life where ACI as a religious organization dependent on the hierarchy felt it should not operate in its own name. Further¬ more ACI sought in various ways, and with varying success, to establish itself as a sort of holding company with respect to vari¬ ous other organizations, in whose emergence it had not been in¬ volved. It hoped thus to check the early symptoms of confusion engendered by the sudden multiplication of associations that I have mentioned. ACI articulates its claim to a controlling position in the orga¬ nizational life of the Italian Catholic world by classifying nearly all organizations operating exclusively or primarily within that world as either “dependent” on ACI, “coordinated” with it, or

Organizational Expansion

l^g

finally “adhering” to it. This classification is mentioned, for in¬ stance, in a speech by Msgr. Urbani, then General Assistant to ACI, where the significance of the organization’s external expan¬ sion is spelled out: A series of Catholic agencies [opere cattoliche'], some of them de¬ pendent on, others coordinated with, others adhering to Catholic Action, open to ACI members a field for apostolic activity and at the same time make available to the faithful an appropriate setting for the study of their problems, the defense of their rights, and the ef¬ fective articulation of their ideals.... We cannot list them, because these agencies evolve all the time; what matters is that they have a beneficial influence on public opinion and on the public authorities. ... Alongside these agencies, in agreement with them over supreme goals, there are the great welfare, labor, and political organizations that have a Christian inspiration.1 In this chapter I shall deal briefly with some of those groups Msgr. Urbani calls “Catholic agencies.” The Fronts I will begin with those defined as dependent on ACI, but which in fact generally depend on one specific branch, and only through the branch on ACI. They can usefully be considered “front orga¬ nizations,” given their similarity to the organizations called fronts by political scientists in the study of political parties (particularly those of socialist and fascist inspiration). A political movement—or, as ACI demonstrates, a religious or¬ ganization—can establish fronts with one or more of these main goals in view: integration, proselytism, and pressure and infiltra¬ tion. Integration. By establishing organizations that are formally autonomous but which in fact depend on it, ACI may intend to create a setting wherein its members can attend to various social activities in an ideologically homogeneous context. This will rein¬ force their sense of belonging to the movement and minimize the chances of their coming into contact with people with different beliefs.2 Proselytism. Such organizations may attract the allegiance of people who are yet unwilling to seek membership in the parent

i8o

A Cl’s Policy After the War

movement, but who thus are brought within the reach of its propaganda and within its sphere of influence. Pressure and infiltration. Such organizations may exert a more or less covert influence on various decision centers in the society, which are not accessible to ACI itself, but which might be accessi¬ ble to agencies not directly connected with it.3 Bearing in mind this distinction, we can locate, among the organizations said to be dependent on ACI, some that perform mostly integrative functions. They cater primarily to certain of the members’ needs that it is felt the ACI branches should not at¬ tend to directly. I have in mind, for instance, CSI (Italian Sport Center), CTG (Youth Tourism Center), and FARI (Italian Fed¬ eration for Recreational Activities). The first two were set up by GIAC, the third by GF, and although their names do not make this clear, they are active exclusively either among boys and young men (CSI and CTG) or among girls and young women (FARI) as required by the “pedagogy of isolation” adopted by the two parent organizations in their concern over their mem¬ bers’ sexual purity. Basically, these organizations exist in order to allow the members of GIAC and GF to practice sports, go on trips, and amuse themselves “in the Christian spirit and in a Christian setting,” so that their desire to go cycling or swim¬ ming, to play chess or volleyball as their peers do will not lead them astray. Of course these organizations also put their rooms, equipment, and leadership at the disposal of youths who, al¬ though not ACI members, also intend to divert themselves in a “morally healthy, clean environment”; they are all associations that do not require previous membership in the respective ACI branches. However, their local units are set up in the parishes, and at the next higher level, in the dioceses; often they share the premises of the parish or diocesan unit of GIAC or GF; and the members and leaders of these branches constitute the core of their membership and leadership. In other words, thanks also to statutory devices that I do not examine here, these fronts are closely controlled by the youth branches of ACI. A second group of front organizations may be said to perform mainly the function of proselytism. They widen the scope of ACI’s influence by creating an organizational tie between ACI

Organizational Expansion

181

and a body of sympathizers. The most important organizations in this group are the so-called Professional Unions, sponsored by the Movimento Laureati. These are in fact not unions in the English sense of the term, but voluntary professional associations that do not deal with employer-employee relations, but seek their membership among professional people who are interested in “viewing their professional problems in a Christian light.” There are ten such associations; the most important of them organize secondary school teachers, doctors, lawyers and judges, and col¬ lege teachers. It is an established principle in these organizations (spelled out for instance in the statute of the Lawyers’ and Judges’ Union), that membership in them neither presupposes nor implies mem¬ bership in ACI. The president of the largest of them said: Membership in Catholic Action is much more demanding than mem¬ bership in a Professional Union.... It requires quite a different per¬ sonality structure. ... The Union deals with problems that affect the member as a professional, not as a would-be apostle, although the members tend to see their professional problems in a Christian per¬ spective.4 He added that only about to per cent of his Union’s members were also ACI members; the others were not—both for the rea¬ sons mentioned and because ACI does not have a democratic structure, as the Union does, with election of the leaders by the rank and file. Furthermore, he suggested, the policy pur¬ sued by the Union within its own sphere of problems did not reflect the rightist orientation of the ACI Presidenza Generale under Gedda. In order to become a member of a Union, an applicant must “accept” (or “profess,” according to an alternative wording) “Catholic doctrine and morals.”5 The second article in the statute of UCIIM (Italian Catholic Union of Secondary School Teach¬ ers) thus articulates the goals of the organization: (1) To promote and realize the moral and professional training of the members in view of their educational calling. (2) To promote and realize, in the education of youth, principles consistent with Christian thought and morals, through the action of the individual members and the representatives of the profession.

ACI’s Policy After the War

182

(3) To encourage the participation of teachers in other profes¬ sional organizations and to prepare them to participate in the activity of labor organizations according to Christian social principles. This suggests that alongside the function of proselytism the Professional Unions are meant to perform a pressure function, by presenting to appropriate bodies (secular labor unions, the leg¬ islature, etc.) the Catholic professionals’ preferences for certain solutions of the profession’s problems. I have not been able to ascertain how and to what extent the Movimento Laureati makes sure that the elected leaders of the Unions, and their policies, do not contrast with its own preferences and positions. It is clear at any rate that the relationship between the Movimento and the Unions is very close. The central offices of various Unions share the premises of the Movimento’s national headquarters, and their leaders have a consultative vote in the Movimento’s Central Council. In turn, the Movimento’s Presidenza Centrale can, ac¬ cording to its bylaws, “participate in the meetings of the Unions’ organs, and call meetings of their presidents in order to deliberate on questions affecting all professions and to reach agreement on the execution of policies decided on by the Unions’ own coun¬ cils.” Significantly the Unions’ statutes make no mention of the powers vested in the Movimento Laureati, but they mention the existence of a

Committee of the Professional Unions, responsi¬

ble for promoting and coordinating the common action of the Unions at the national level,” where, along with the Unions’ presidents, the members of the Movimento’s Presidenza Centrale are empowered to sit.6 Coordinated Organizations The dependence of the organizations discussed so far on ACI branches is more or less clearly recognizable by the structural features of the organizations. The relationship of coordination, which some other organizations are supposed to maintain with ACI, is not a structurally visible fact as much as a historical legacy. Since ACI, or a single branch of it, was wholly or partly responsi¬ ble for the emergence of each of these organizations, today ACI claims some measure of recognition and gratitude for its efforts.

Organizational Expansion

183

In fact the coordinated organizations now live their life pretty much on their own terms, and their coordination with ACI is effected, if at all, through the shared relationship of dependence on the Holy See and the hierarchy, rather than sustained by a feel¬ ing of indebtedness toward ACI. Of the four organizations ACI defines as “coordinated” with itself, the most important is undoubtedly ACLI (Christian As¬ sociations of Italian Workers); another that deserves mention is ASCI, a boy-scout type of organization. ASCI has much in com¬ mon with similar groups in other countries, but gives a percepti¬ ble Roman Catholic twist to some aspects of standard boy-scout ideology and style. Thus Baden-Powell’s decalogue has been in¬ tegrated and amended here and there: where it says, for instance, that a boy scout loves animals, animals are immediately defined as “God’s creatures”; the ASCI oath urges the members to defend not only God and country but the Church as well; a fully pledged boy scout is requested to have a certain knowledge of the Catholic catechism and Catholic liturgy, and so forth.7 Also, all ASCI units have an ecclesiastical Assistant, whom they sometimes share with the local GIAC unit. In general, however, the two organiza¬ tions are not on the best of terms, since GIAC sees in the ASCI a possible rival in organizing Italy’s youth. This was the case, at any rate, in the immediate postwar period when ASCI was enjoying a short-lived boom. ACLI organizes over a million workers. In some regions, nota¬ bly in Lombardy, its local units are the hub of networks of wel¬ fare, cooperative, and recreational organizations. At each election numerous Christian Democratic deputies and senators owe their election to ACLI, and they constitute a relatively homogeneous faction within the Christian Democratic parliamentary group. For this and other reasons, ACLI deserves much greater attention than it is possible to give it here. There is no doubt that ACI played a critical role in the forma¬ tion of ACLI. As early as 1944, ACI’s supreme national organ was asked by the Holy See to create an organization that would gather the Catholic working masses and give them leadership.

184

A Cl’s Policy After the War

Bollettino ufficiale dell’ACI said, shortly after the Allied libera¬ tion of Rome: The new civic and political conditions that are now being realized in Italy imply new responsibilities and open new roads for the Catho¬ lic apostolate in the social field. Apostolic action must keep up with the demands of this evolving reality. One major aspect of it is the unity issuing from the recent agreement among the major currents in the labor movement. This must greatly interest Catholics, their organizations, and particularly ACI. ... This new situation in the labor field has for some time been advocated by the ACI organs ... and particularly the Catholic Institute for Social Action with the participation of representatives from various Christian-inspired forces and organizations. It was agreed: first, that the existence of a nondenominational and apolitical labor organization requires that Catholic workers partici¬ pate in it... ; and second, that the religious, moral, and professional education of the workers, and their preparation for social and laborunion life, must be intensified outside any political party, through specialized groups that can bring together all the currents that recog¬ nize in the doctrine of the Catholic Church the basis of the social or¬ der and the just rights of the workers. For these reasons, the Christian Associations of Italian Workers have been created, with the twofold purpose of educating Catholic workers to an open and active profession of their faith, and of en¬ suring that their participation in the nondenominational labor orga¬ nization truly benefits the common good. These Associations: (1) are not labor unions, since their essential task is the defense and the affirmation of faith, and the practical reali¬ zation of Catholic moral principles in the field of labor; (2) are inde¬ pendent of all political parties; (3) arise under the auspices of ACI, but are autonomous: they have their own statutes and develop their activity under the responsibility of their own directive organs. Since the primary reason for their existence is the Christian social formation of the workers,... these associations will enjoy the special assistance of priests.8 r The creation of ACLI and. the goals assigned to it were in keep¬ ing with a principle set down many years before by the Holy See, according to which Catholic workers might become members and leaders of secular labor unions, alongside workers of different faiths, provided there also existed an explicitly religious organiza¬ tion responsible for educating the Catholic workers to the exer¬ cise of their just rights as employees and union members.9

Organizational Expansion In all such situations, and thus in the Italian postwar situation, an organization of this kind would also constitute in fact a faction of Catholic workers and their leaders, which might use its weight to gain some control over the policies and ideology of the nondenominational and apolitical labor movement. Furthermore, if need be, the same organization could be used as a basis for the formation of a splinter religious labor movement whenever the policy of participation in the general movement should appear too risky or too costly to those ultimately responsible for the spiritual and moral welfare of the Catholic masses—the Holy See and the hierarchy. That ACLI could actually be employed in the former fashion became clear in September 1946, when it undertook to define itself as “the expression of the Christian current in the labor field.

However, in 1948, when the nondenominational labor

movement was broken up, the relevant role played by ACLI did not lead it to develop into a full-fledged Catholic labor move¬ ment.10 The solution adopted, certainly with the full consent of the Vatican, was “a new free labor movement, open to all workers, tied to no specific current or ideology,”11 and thus officially both religiously and politically neutral. This solution resulted in protracted arguments within ACLI, but it allowed ACLI to expand vigorously without taking the risks it would have had to take if it had become a religious labor movement. One aspect of this expansion was the development of a complex, if confused, ideology, whereby ACLI gave itself vari¬ ous definitions, among them “the social movement of Christian workers,” “a Christian workers’ movement that leads the whole working class,” and “a class organization, not in the Marxist sense of the term ‘class,’ but meaning by it a social group.”12 This last expression, in the context of Italian political lan¬ guage, can be taken as one of the symptoms of ACLI’s leftist inter¬ pretation of Integralism. This interpretation makes its coordina¬ tion with ACI more difficult; so difficult that from the middle 1950’s the task of keeping a watch over ACLI’s line was practically given up by ACI, and taken over by the hierarchy itself. One in¬ stance of the exercise of this control may be mentioned here be¬ cause it illustrates the dysfunctional effects the sponsorship rela-

186

A Cl’s Policy After the W ar

tion may have on organizations less visibly dependent on the hier¬ archy than ACI is. In May i960, Cardinal Siri, in his capacity as chairman of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, wrote to the National Assistant of ACLI expressing the Italian bishops’ concern over the danger that “the unavoidable continuous contacts [of ACLI] with mi¬ lieus inspired by classist doctrines and by heterodox ideologies may lead the organization to share their language and thus to borrow from them attitudes and orientations.” Let us consider briefly the significance of this statement in the framework of my previous analysis of ACI, and particularly with reference to GIAC’s ideological line. ACLI is basically an orga¬ nizational instrument sponsored by the Church in order to main¬ tain contact with an important sector of society that is potentially or actually alienated from it—the working class. The efforts this instrument dutifully makes to understand and interpret the de¬ mands of that sector of society unavoidably lead it to borrow at first some terminology, then some “attitudes and orientations” from the forces that have more solidly established themselves among the workers, having been the first to organize them and to seek their advancement. This alarms the sponsoring institution, which views this phenomenon as a threat to the requirement of faithfulness. The response to the threat is a strengthening of the structures of control. The letter goes on: The bishops demand that ACLI draft and submit for ecclesiastical approval a set of regulations that would assign a greater role to the ecclesiastical Assistants, thus clearly reassuring the hierarchy that a movement promoted by the Church will not be diverted from its doctrine and from the obedience owed to it_The bishops recom¬ mend that the Assistants should closely watch the ACLI press and be constantly present at meetings, in order to educate, orient, and, if need be, correct.13 The fact that the letter was released to the national press shows that, in policing the requirements of control and faithful¬ ness, the Church was quite willing to risk the demoralizing effect that such a cutting reprimand was likely to have on ACLI’s lead¬ ers and members. (I know from interviews with ACLI leaders that they were proud of being “democratically elected” rather

Organizational Expansion than appointed by the Holy See. Also, in at least one important official publication describing ACLI’s “principles, activities, and structures” for the benefit of interested outsiders, no mention is made of the Assistants’ role.)14 I have said that in the course of its development ACLI has practically outgrown any control by ACI. Another reason why the role originally played by ACI in setting up ACLI in 1944-45 can be said to have had a poor payoff lies in the progressive widen¬ ing of ACLI’s definition of its own sphere of action, which has made it a bothersome competitor for ACI as well as for other organizations. ACLI declares that its basic lines of action are edu¬ cating its members, assisting them through a series of social ser¬ vices, and finally promoting public policies that will benefit the workers. These last two lines of activity cause frequent jurisdic¬ tional conflicts with the Free Union Movement (CISL) and oc¬ casional ones with the Christian Democratic Party, whereas the education of its members—the term formazione itself is taken from ACI jargon—often leads to contrasts with Catholic Action, and particularly with GIAC. In fact a leader from the Central Workers’ Office of GIAC, when asked in his interview to define the relationship between his own sphere of action and that of the ACLI, was unable to sug¬ gest a clear demarcation line, and tried to dodge the question.15 He, as well as other GIAC leaders, viewed with concern the fact that ACLI occasionally takes away leaders trained by GIAC. An¬ other GIAC leader spoke of this phenomenon as “a real struggle, which sooner or later will have to be resolved by the hierarchy.”16 The root of these contrasts is, as well as in the scarcity of per¬ sonnel qualified for membership, in the Integralist ideology com¬ mon to both organizations, which leads each to claim a total re¬ sponsibility with respect to the same potential membership (in this case, those young workers who belong to the Catholic world). Its own Integralist culture impels each group to organize, educate, and engage its following in action in all dimensions of existence, in the pursuit of all its interests. This, of course, can only en¬ gender conflicts. Catholic Integralism does not only threaten the development of pluralism in the civil society, it also constitutes a check on its

188

ACI’s Policy After the War

development within the Catholic world itself, because every or¬ ganization created within the Catholic world tends to place itself at the center of it—of course without challenging the supremacy of the Church—and tends to define all other organizations as its own tributaries. This tendency is expressed in ACI’s classifica¬ tion of all Catholic organizations as “dependent on,” “coordiated with,” or “adhering to” itself; single branches of ACI do the same with respect to their specific spheres of action. In the early and middle 1950’s a so-called Movement for a Better World appeared to consider itself the new leader of organized Catholicism in Italy. And as far as ACLI is concerned, in the words of an official publication, ACLI claims for itself, by its very nature, the role of a “central power¬ house for orientation and initiative”. .. in the Catholic world, so as to lead it to confront ever more concretely, according to the Church’s teachings, the problems of social regeneration and the democratic de¬ velopment of the country.17 However, as I have remarked, this jockeying for position among Catholic organizations as each attempts to gain dominance is kept well in line by the undisputed sovereignty of the Holy See. In fact, this sovereignty is even strengthened by that phenome¬ non, since the Holy See can curb one organization’s claims simply by encouraging those of another, and dampen the activity of any one of them without leaving “uncovered” the sector of society within which it operates. Organizations “Adhering to” ACI The most important among the groups adhering to ACI are probably UCID (Christian Union of Industrialists and Man¬ agers), ACEC (Associations of Catholic Movie House Owners), and the so-called “Coldiretti” (Confederation of Small Peasants). The latter in fact has rather tenuous ties with ACI, although it probably owes ACI a good part of its local leadership. UCID is, on the employers’ side, the counterpart of ACLI, with which in fact it often engages in bitter arguments. Unlike ACLI, however, UCID’s local units and central organs do not have ecclesiastical Assistants, but merely Consultants attached to them; furthermore UCID finds nothing wrong with Catholic employers’ belonging to a nondenominational employers’ organization, nor can UCID

Organizational Expansion

i8g

be said to represent, within the Italian industrial employers’ con¬ federation (Confindustria), anything like a Christian current. ACEC was set up in 1945, through the initiative of the Catholic Film Center (CCC), one of the staff units of the ACI Presidenza Generale, in order to organize the managers of the thousands of parish movie houses. In 1950 it joined the National Association of Show Business Employers (AGIS), and thanks to the size and the discipline of its membership (largely made up of clergymen) it was soon able to condition to a large extent that association’s national policy.18 Summary Remarks The significance of the external organizational expansion of ACI since the war has been correctly located by the Marxist his¬ torian Candeloro: The Church .. . has sought above all to strengthen Catholic Action, to make it into an organization that would be capable, both directly and through other dependent organizations, to stimulate and control the political, labor, and economic activities of the Italian Catholics; to organize their activity of propaganda and penetration in all social milieus, and the watch they keep on the press, the theatre, the film, the radio, and sports... . Beginning in 1944, ACI began to extend its activity to various spheres from which it had been barred during Fascism, both directly and through a series of dependent, coordi¬ nated, and adherent organizations. It thus seeks to penetrate into all fields and to reach, through a variety of methods, the various strata of the population.19 One can, however, point out some major unintended conse¬ quences of this operation. (1) The relationship which some of these organizations have established with their followings occa¬ sionally leads them to take positions and pursue policies at log¬ gerheads with ACI’s own. (2) Their Integralist ideological matrix leads some of these groups to define their own tasks in such wide terms as to set them in competition with others. In this situation the hierarchy remains arbiter of the respective jurisdictions. (3) Some of these organizations have developed to the point that they can supply their own leadership, with the result that they need not borrow it from ACI.20 (4) An effective coordination of all these organizations is increasingly necessary, but also increasingly difficult to realize.

Chapter thirteen

Organizational Centralization

In this chapter I shall discuss an organizational policy pursued by ACI after the war. Its essence lay in a tendency to concentrate powers of decision in the coordinating organs rather than the branch organs, and to a lesser extent in the national organs rather than the local ones. Its basic purpose was to transform ACI from a federation of largely autonomous branches into a single tight organization, where the branches would merely cater to specific sections of a membership directly identified with ACI as a whole. It has been suggested that this policy was just a precondition of the previously mentioned policy of expansion, and that ACI began to centralize only in order to expand. I do not agree with this interpretation. Expansion and centralization seem to me to be two distinct policies, not merely two analytically distinguish¬ able aspects of one policy. ACI engaged in organizational expan¬ sion even before the end of the war; it did so because it was di¬ rectly requested to by the Holy See. The expansion was to a large extent carried out by the individual branches autonomously, each remaining directly responsible to the hierarchy for its own growth. The policy of organizational centralization, on the other hand, was not adopted until a few years after the end of the war; it does not appear to have been initially requested by the Holy See; finally, it clearly had its locus in the Presidenza Generale of

Organizational Centralization

igi

ACI and its protagonists in Luigi Gedda and a small group of minor leaders closely identified with him. A Digression on Gedda’s Role in Italian Politics Luigi Gedda is the only national leader in the recent history of ACI who has both left a deep personal imprint on the organi¬ zation and made his mark as a figure of some significance in na¬ tional politics.1 True enough, only very few people outside Italy may have heard of him; yet it is a fact that particularly in the early 1950’s some sectors of Italian public opinion judged him (some hopefully, some invidiously) the only Catholic layman with the makings of “an Italian Salazar.’’ I feel that this view never had much merit, and that apart from the wider question of the feasibility of a Salazar-type operation at any time in postwar Italian political history, it amounted to a misunderstanding of the type of leader Gedda is. An ideologically homogeneous organization is very likely the only context within which his leadership qualities could make themselves felt; and only in his capacity as leader of such an organization did he play a relevant role in postwar Italian politics (to the extent that he did at all). It is true that his activity after the war testifies to his strong attraction for politics, true that the “temporalistic bent” is par¬ ticularly marked in his own deep-rooted Integralism, and true that the clearly authoritarian cast of his thought reveals an aspira¬ tion to generalized, political power. But whatever the leanings and the propensities of his personality, the record of his efforts in the political field shows only one successful undertaking, although that was admittedly a major one: his leadership of the Civic Committees in 1948. ACI set these up as ad hoc electoral organi¬ zations, and they clearly played a decisive role in rallying the anti-Communist vote around the Christian Democrats and thus barring the way of the “popular front.” After that, Gedda’s po¬ litical plans regularly failed to make an impact: for example, the 1950 crusade for the “great return” of Communist supporters to the Church, the “S-plan” intended to steer Italian workers away from the Communist-controlled CGIL (General Confedera¬ tion of Italian Labor) and toward the Free Labor Movement, the

192

ACI’s Policy After the War

so-called Sturzo Operation of the spring of 1952, whereby the Christian Democrats were to join forces with the monarchists and the neo-fascists in the 1952 Roman municipal elections, and a number of other less-documented attempts to establish an antiCommunist united front. The shining exception, the 1948 Civic Committees operation, cannot counterbalance this succession of later failures. In fact, it should be pointed out that even on that occasion Gedda acted exclusively as an organizational leader, not as a politician; he did his job, important as it was, without his face or even his name ever becoming known to the electorate. He effectively managed a complex and efficient organizational apparatus that delivered innumerable votes to the Christian Democrats all over the coun¬ try; but the responsibility for the strategic choice that led to the establishment of that apparatus was not his. Furthermore, the 1948 operation was mainly a defensive one; all later offensive strategies attempted by Gedda through the Civic Committees were to produce nothing but failure. One may say, then, that Gedda’s unquestionable attraction for politics was never effectively translated into properly political ac¬ tion. This is not so much because he was overwhelmingly inter¬ ested in organizational problems as because this concern was not accompanied by an adequate perception and understanding of the problems and requirements of the political situation, as well as because Gedda’s instruments for political action were not them¬ selves political instruments. The first reason for his inadequacy as a political leader is rooted in the previously discussed limita¬ tions of ACI ideology, and is reflected in his manichean antiCommunism and his exclusive stress on authority and order as political values. The second reason has often been pointed out by his adversaries within the Italian Catholic movement, who have charged him with corrupting ACI, a religious-apostolic or¬ ganization, by committing it to political operations.* In sum, to my mind the political policy of the Presidenza Ge¬ nerale reflects the “inability to take worldly things seriously” that * Mario Rossi, in one of the last meetings of diocesan GIAC leaders he called as GIAC National President, spoke perceptively (and with a covert reference to Gedda) of a “tendency to employ para-instruments instead of instruments,” to act in the political or labor field through organizations that did not take the form characteristic of organizations acting in those fields.

Organizational Centralization

igg

I see as a general limit of ACI culture, deriving from the spon¬ sorship relation. In spite of its sincerity and earnestness, Gedda’s personal commitment to serve the Church in the political arena, not being guided by a sustained interest in political problems and a serious attachment to political values, could only lead to errors and failures in practice. Of course there were some extenuating circumstances. In the first place the specifically political talents that I claim Gedda lacked are not particularly plentiful in Italian public life at large —and were much less so in the early postwar era, after twenty years of Fascism. In the second place, the historical situation with¬ in which Gedda attempted his political operations was charged with tensions that went beyond the purely political realm, in¬ volved a host of different aspects of social life, and thus made po¬ litical dissension into a drastic, all-embracing contest. Such a situation is not conducive to a view of politics that respects the autonomy of the different dimensions of civil society. But I will close this digression and consider Gedda, more appropriately, in his capacity as an organizational leader. Gedda’s Career Luigi Gedda became ACI’s Vice-President in charge of orga¬ nization in 1949, at the age of forty-seven. He had previously been diocesan and regional leader of GIAC, then National Presi¬ dent of GIAC (1934-46), then National President of the Unione Uomini (1946-49). He had proved himself a first-class national leader in GIAC, which under his leadership had expanded its membership, perfected its organization, and elaborated its lan¬ guage and its educational methodology.2 In his last few years as GIAC President, Gedda played a critical role in the launching of new units—the Italian Sports Center, the Italian Association of Catholic Doctors (Gedda himself is a physician), and the Cath¬ olic Film Center. Later, these organizations were to support his rise to the presidency of ACI, as well as his attempts to curb the autonomy of the branches.3 Possibly with this end in view, Gedda always sought to remain the top leader of organizations in whose creation he had been involved, or else to appoint as his successors people devoted to him. It was as National President of the Unione Uomini that Gedda

!94

ACI’s Policy After the War

engaged in a far more important operation than those he had un¬ dertaken previously—organizing and directing the Civic Com¬ mittees. The decisive role the Committees had played in the vic¬ tory of the Christian Democrats in the 1948 elections gained for Gedda the personal gratitude and trust of Pius XII, with whom he was able to establish possibly the closest understanding ever achieved by a layman (outside the pope’s immediate entourage).4 Thanks to this unique position, in the ACI General Assembly convened in Siena in the summer of 1948 he held his ground against a number of local and branch leaders who requested that the Civic Committees be disbanded in order to make it clear that ACI’s intervention in political matters had been strictly an ex¬ ceptional affair. Gedda won the day on the opposite contention— that the Committees were to continue to operate and to be strengthened. The following year, when he was appointed Vice-President of ACI, he made the most of the organizational responsibilities expressly assigned him in his new role. He quickly became the most visible man in the organization, and established himself as a sort of official interpreter of Pius XII’s thought for ACI con¬ sumption. Throughout his Vice-Presidency, pictures of him and accounts of his indefatigable activity appeared in the Presidenza’s magazine. Iniziativa, much more often than stories about the President, Veronese. Any petty news item concerning Gedda re¬ ceived greater attention in the ACI press than items concerning all other lay or ecclesiastical leaders.5 However, while he was Vice-President Gedda did not reveal the direction and dimensions of his plan for the organizational centralization of ACI. He often stressed the importance of the coordinating organs’ statutory responsibilities, but did not clarify his own understanding of the term “coordinate.” At the begin¬ ning of 1950, for instance, he was still describing the ACI organi¬ zational layout as resulting from “the continuous and convergent activity of the four basic mass organizations.”6 Later on, as Gen¬ eral President, he was to propose a markedly different conception of the relationship between the branches and ACI as a whole, whereby the ACI organization emerged as logically prior to the branches, and the coordinating organs were entitled to an ef¬ fective leadership role on account of that priority.7 (I think in

Organizational Centralization

195

fact that the very term “branches” was substituted for the statute’s “national associations” during Gedda’s Presidency just because it suggests his own view of that relationship.) When he was appointed General President of ACI in 1952, Gedda felt free for the first time to carry out his own policies, particularly the organizational centralization of ACI. He pre¬ sented it as a rigorous application of Pius XII’s directives, espe¬ cially as contained in the speech of February 1952 in which the pope had called Catholics to action, and had spoken of “a whole world to be remade from the ground up.” While insistently re¬ ferring to this appeal, Gedda began to push his centralizing plan, intending it to become the keystone of ACI’s further organiza¬ tional development. The Gedda Organizational Line As one of Gedda’s most trusted colleagues explained in the course of an interview, the plan in question was justified for a number of reasons.8 Under Fascism, the ACI organizations had been compelled to carry on their activity in as private a form as possible, and had devoted most of their efforts to the education of their members and to the elaboration of an ideology, a lan¬ guage, and a style of their own. More than ten years of this humble, silent work had given the Church a great organizational resource—the parish associations of the various branches. How¬ ever, a kind of distance, a mutual isolation, had grown up be¬ tween the branches, so that each branch concentrated exclusively on its internal educational tasks, to the neglect of the institutional mission common to all branches—apostolic activity in the out¬ side world. Since they were no longer forced to carry on “in the catacombs,” the branches should have come out into the open and deployed all their resources. However, the traditions of selfsufficiency, inadequate coordination, and exclusive emphasis on educational work, traditions that were cultivated by the branches, made it mandatory that ACI establish a novel, much tighter order in its ranks. To do so it merely needed to avail itself of the coordinating organs established by the 1946 statute at all levels of the organization. Thus, the Central Committees should have become the centers of initiative, planning joint action and supervising its execution; the key position within them should

ig6

A Cl’s Policy After the War

have been that of the General President; other ACI organs, such as the Secretariats, should have taken care of coordinating the activity each branch conducted in similar spheres (press, public morality, and so forth). This is the substance of the Gedda line, as it was presented in an interview. Printed sources confirm this intepretation; for in¬ stance, a short anonymous article given considerable emphasis in a 1954 issue of Iniziativa said: The fact that membership has been increasing, and that each older age section of the organization can depend on a regular supply of members from the younger sections, has inspired among us a feeling of self-sufficiency that threatens to degenerate into a kind of isola¬ tionism: thus the very justification of our existence as an organiza¬ tion—the spirit of apostolate—is somehow undermined. In other words, while we are happy to acknowledge that ACI is a splendid army, we must realistically remark that its capacity for actual apos¬ tolic work ... has not been adequately exploited so far.9 The remedy for this situation was described in Gedda’s radio mes¬ sage to ACI members broadcast on New Year’s Day, 1956: May God grant that Catholic Action will view 1956 as the year of unity. . . . The unity of Italian Catholic Action, already achieved in the statute, in the programs, and in intention, must now be concretely realized at the base of the organization, with the establishment of Presidenzas and Central Committees at the parish level. The fisher¬ man’s net is ineffectual if the mesh is not held together by strong knots. In our net, these knots are the coordinating and propelling local organs.10 In putting forth his organizational line, Gedda always insisted on the necessity of centralization at the parish level: The Parish Central Committee is the government of Catholic Action in the parish-Every branch has its own internal government but this is not sufficient if Catholic Action is to have an adequate radius of action. ... The Parish Central Committee cannot be viewed as just a representative organ, a formal point of reference, which is merely to be kept informed of current plans and to sanction them. It must be a true government, with a true executive power . .. and a true decisional power.. .. The parish associations of the branches must lend loving obedience to the decisions of the Central Commit¬ tee.11

Organizational Centralization True enough, the responsibility of the Central Committees with respect to the parish associations of the branches is defined by the statute as coordination. However, it goes without saying that no coordinating is possible if the individ¬ ual associations’ plans for future activity are not known ahead of time. But the knowledge of these plans is not the only meaning of the term ‘coordination’; this term also implies that care should be taken to pre¬ vent the various plans from interfering with one another, as they might if they were carried out without the requisite amount of order. All this demands that the parish president be truly a leader, able to overcome difficulties,... to suggest workable solutions, and to get around obstacles or clear them out of the way.12 This last phrase points to an important characteristic of the policy of organizational centralization—the tendency to vest the (widely interpreted) powers of coordination assigned the ACI organs, at all levels, in the Presidenzas (and particularly in the physical person of the president) rather than in the Committees, whose members included the branches’ leaders. This principle was im¬ plemented most fully at the national level. One of the men in¬ terviewed declared that under Gedda the General Committee was an organ of no account, which met rarely and then only for the time needed to rubber-stamp decisions already made by the Presidenza.13 The same pattern was expected to be realized at the periphery of the organization, judging from an article in Inizia¬ tiva, which defined the Parish Central Committee as a true and proper “government of Catholic Action in the parish,” and continued: This government has a president, ... whom the statute defines as the President of Catholic Action in the parish; therefore he holds a position of outstanding authority; over and beyond the single mem¬ bers and the branch associations, he represents Catholic Action in the parish. ... He is the head of the coordinating organization, its brain and heart; his action is not confined to the Central Committee, but must extend down to the last member, albeit respecting the hier¬ archical lines... . He must be kept fully informed of the activities of the various branch organs.14 The Gedda Presidency presented each successive request that greater powers be given the coordinating organs as the unavoid-

198

A Cl’s Policy After the War

able consequences of a policy which admitted of no controversy —as was implicit in the frequent references to the pontiff’s will. Thus every opposition was made to look like either an inad¬ missible breach in the consensus over the goals of action, or at best the expression of a petty, narrow-minded attachment to the traditional autonomy of the branches. That autonomy was being encroached on more and more directly, for instance, through the demand that even the “formation” of the members (which had always been viewed as an exclusive responsibility of the branches) should be supervised to some extent by the coordinating organs: To be perfect, the members’ training must be characterized by the unity of the organization. It is right that the members should be thoroughly formed by the branches according to the educational wis¬ dom that they have acquired through decades of activity; but this training must also take place under the sign of unity; otherwise, what will ensure that the membership of the youth branches will flow into the adult branches? ... How will the militants learn to sense the problems of the Church as a whole?15 The Opposition to Gedda within ACI: The GIAC Case As can be inferred from what I have said so far, Gedda’s cen¬ tralizing policy was to meet with remarkable opposition on the part of the branches. Unfortunately, however, I am unable to adequately document either the extent and manner of this op¬ position, or its results. Among other reasons, this is because the SSRC project was focused on the coordinating organs of ACI, which were pushing for centralization, and not on the branches, which resisted it; above all, it is because the particular climate of ACI in these years, with its compulsive emphasis on unanimity (ultimately originating from Pius XII’s authoritarianism), drove the opposition to the Gedda line underground, making it all the more difficult to document. Most of the data accessible to me, in fact, do not relate directly to the disagreements about Gedda’s attack on the autonomy of the branches and his view of the co¬ ordinating organs as the critical centers of decision. In my data the branches appear to defend their autonomy simply by em¬ phasizing the values of their own tradition, which they assert to be dear to their membership. At most they put forth some veiled criticisms of the principles that they feel (although they do not

Organizational Centralization

igg

say so) to be at the heart of the policy of the Presidenza Generale or perhaps of another branch.* They hardly ever confront the policy of organizational centralization in its own terms, as a threat to their autonomy; at most, they express doubts over what I have called the “substantive” aspects of Gedda’s line. (In a later chapter I shall discuss the burden of these doubts and veiled criticisms.) This tendency for organizational and substantive con¬ trasts to become confounded will be apparent from the follow¬ ing discussion of two salient episodes of the anti-Gedda feeling. The ACI branch that I have given most attention to so far is GIAC, especially with reference to the Rossi Presidency (195254); thus the reader is already aware of some reasons why GIAC, at least up to 1954, was the locus of the greatest resistance to Gedda. In fact, that resistance did not begin (nor possibly did it end) with the Rossi Presidency. In the last years of his mandate. Carlo Carretto, Gedda’s successor and Rossi’s predecessor as GIAC President, initiated programs that frustrated some aspects of the Gedda line. Carretto had come to Rome with Gedda’s retinue of close col¬ laborators in 1934; when Gedda had been appointed National President of GIAC, Carretto had become Vice-President. Accord¬ ing to my sources it was Gedda, upon his appointment as Presi¬ dent of the Unione Uomini, who had Carretto appointed as his own successor in GIAC. Although at that point (1946) the two men occupied formally equal positions in different branches, Carretto’s appointment seemed to signify that Gedda had left behind a trusted lieutenant to man GIAC for him (as he was to do later by having Agostino Maltarello appointed President of the Unione Uomini, or Ugo Sciascia appointed Director General of the Civic Committees, when he had to leave those posts himself). In fact some of the noteworthy programs of the early Carretto * One of the greatest obstacles to centralization lay in the branches’ reluctance to collaborate with one another. However, while this made it difficult for the Presi¬ denza Generale to coordinate them all, it also made it difficult for them to present a united front and develop a common line of opposition to the centralizing drive. According to a former GF leader, for instance, the fact that in 1954 GF in no way showed the solidarity it felt with the Rossi Presidency when the latter was being dismissed was partly due to a tradition of reciprocal isolation; the national leader¬ ship of GF was not entirely aware either of the significance of the Rossi line or of the significance of the crisis. See SSRC interview no. 41, p. 6.

200

ACI’s Policy After the War

Presidency—such as the GIAC convention in Bologna in 1947 and the bigger one in Rome in 1948-—can be seen as typical ex¬ pressions of the “epiphany of ACI” promoted by Gedda. In the following years, however, the relationship of mutual confidence, and the similarity of views between the two men, dis¬ integrated. Probably this resulted from a disagreement over po¬ litical matters. While Gedda was beginning to be spoken of as “the Italian Salazar,” and the symptoms of his right-wing political orientation were becoming clearer, Carretto repeatedly declared that GIAC stood for “the democratic method and social justice.” This may sound like a rather innocuous assertion; but its polemic significance is made clear by an article in GIAC’s publication, Gioventù, where the same phrase was quoted from a motion passed by the GIAC Central Council (held in Leghorn in Sep¬ tember 1951), and where it is thus commented on: “We commit ourselves to these positions in order to dispel the concern of the great majority of our members over ACI’s position on social prob¬ lems, a concern that has been heightened by a number of recent press stories.”16 In fact, although the position taken probably did reflect the feelings of the “great majority” of GIAC members (nearly 50 per cent of whom were young workers), the GIAC membership did not unanimously favor the democratic method and social justice. This is apparent, for instance, in a number of letters to Gioventù from its readers, who often advanced the notion that one could be a member both of GIAC and of the neo-fascist movement (in the early 1950’s the movement was gathering some support among Italian youth). Gioventù continuously attacked this idea. It is likely that one main reason behind those attacks was a concern for the political unity of Italian Catholics around the Christian Democratic Party—but the arguments against the MSI (a neofascist group) did reveal the leadership’s serious commitment to the democratic method and social justice.17 This was also the significance of the frequent criticisms of current government pol¬ icies, as well as of the cautiously expressed preference for the Dossetti left-wing faction within the Christian Democratic Party.18 These, and Gioventù's other such comments on sociopolitical matters in the later years of the Carretto Presidency, were clearly

Organizational Centralization

201

opposed to the position taken at the same time by the Presidenza Generale and particularly by Gedda himself. The contrast be¬ came dramatically clear when, with the so-called Sturzo opera¬ tion, Gedda attempted to bring about an alliance of the Christian Democrats and the right-wing parties before the municipal elec¬ tions in Rome in 1952. The GIAC leadership not only manifested its opposition to the Presidenza Generale, but declared it pub¬ licly, although without any explicit reference to the operation itself. In those days Carretto emphasized GIAC’s commitments and its anti-fascist inspiration in a Gioventù lead article criticiz¬ ing authoritarian anti-Communist policies. If we, as free men, intend to deny the Communists the use of force, we must be consistent and deny it to ourselves. The mistake of right-wing extremists, to whom the spirit of Christ is alien, is that they try to solve problems through forceful means and call all governments that do not follow those same methods weak governments. Whether Carretto was aware of it or not, the following passages in the same article were to be seen as an indictment of some traits of Gedda’s personality: There is a type of person who simply cannot have democratic feel¬ ings, simply cannot have the spirit of a man who respects another man. Such people are overbearing, are fascists in their own souls, are paternalists, are true scourges of humanity. They work as if every¬ thing depended on them; they think that God has put them directly in charge of saving the world, and that everything hangs on them, the pivots of salvation. At bottom they are violent people, although they may not use their fists and they may not have the guts to shoot. . . . In associations they quickly become masters, they liquidate those who think differently, they build up a system where they are indis¬ pensable. Nothing can be done without them; woe on whoever lifts a finger without them. ... There truly is a type of semi-Catholic fascist or fascist Catholic— the opportunist, the man who expects for all problems, even religious problems, the intervention of the State. He feels thoroughly at ease in the shade of bayonets, with the army and the police defending the Church, and the respect of religion assured by authority. People like this are incurable; they never understand the value of liberty... . They are not aware that dictatorship is a true political disease of our times. ... Surely we are not Communists ... but we are not fascists either, and we have learned our lesson. ... Above all we

202

ACI’s Policy After the War

do not believe in superior people; we are afraid of them. .. . We need normal people—plain men who sleep like other men, eat like other men, make mistakes like other men.19 The price Carretto paid for having taken this position was the Presidency of GIAC, from which he had to resign a few months after the “Sturzo operation.” The Rossi Presidency Although sometime later Gedda was to interpret Carretto’s dismissal as due exclusively to a violation of organizational disci¬ pline, clearly that episode pointed to a major dissent on matters of principle. Carretto had stood up for a kind of political “left¬ ism,” originating from a sort of generic and sentimental populism as well as from the feeling that in political authoritarianism there was something offensive to a Christian conscience. His was a leftwing interpretation of Integralism, opposing the right-wing in¬ terpretation embodied in Gedda. This element of dissent be¬ tween GIAC’s position and the Presidenza Generale’s was com¬ pounded by other more serious elements during Mario Rossi’s short term of office as GIAC President. I happened to be at GIAC central headquarters in Rome when the news came that Carretto was resigning and that a young doc¬ tor, Mario Rossi, previously GIAC President in the diocese of Rovigo, near Venice, had been appointed to succeed him. There was not doubt that Carretto was resigning as a consequence of his conflict with Gedda, and the suspicion was abroad that his successor—who was wholly a newcomer to the national level of the organization, and practically unknown to many of the present leaders—was likely to play ball with Gedda in order to escape the treatment that had befallen Carretto. Later information on the new President was, however, reassuring: Rossi was not a “Geddan,” and he would not recant on the positions taken by his pre¬ decessor. Nobody, however anticipated that the course of opposi¬ tion taken by Carretto was to be pursued by Rossi with such decision as to make his appointment seem like the greatest blun¬ der in Gedda’s career. Rossi kept some of Carretto’s colleagues at their posts, but brought a number of new leaders with him, and the new leader-

Organizational Centralization

203

ship preserved and indeed emphasized the points of political dis¬ sent between GIAC and the Presidenza Generale. Carretto’s “leftism” was radicalized and given a new twist by the theme of the Christian Revolution—basically an elaboration, along Integralist lines, of the “personal and communitarian revolution” preached by the French left-wing Catholic philosopher and au¬ thor Emmanuel Mounier, the editor of Esprit. The following quote from a deservedly obscure document—a mimeographed series of “Outlines of Talks on the Crisis of the Organization of Contemporary Society,” which I drafted and which were circulated by the diocesan GIAC center I was attached to in 1953—can give a feeling for the kind of arguments then ad¬ vanced within GIAC. The world is divided into two blocs, and the conscience of a young Catholic who tries to understand the history of his own time will not allow him to share fully the positions and the intentions of either bloc. Indeed one bloc defends, together with principles of individual freedom that are basic to man’s dignity, a social system based on the privilege of the few, which engenders and exploits social injustice, limits the freedom of the masses of people, and keeps them away from an active participation in public life. The other bloc rightly de¬ nounces the evils of the capitalist system, but it threatens the freedom of individuals and of nations and aims at imposing a dictatorial, totalitarian political system. Thus the crisis of contemporary society is particularly dramatic for the young Catholic, because his con¬ science and his desire to fight for freedom, peace, and justice, oblige him to find his own way, invent his own system, build up his own world alone. He must reject the appeals of both blocs, and risk being treated as bourgeois by the Communists and as Communist by the bourgeois.... A simple reflection on two facts of the situation—first, a world divided in two blocs, second, in this country the working class in the opposition*—will urge upon us the necessity of a radically new solution that may overcome this critical state of affairs. And this su¬ perior solution can be but one: the Christian Revolution. Here the Integralist component is clear in the notion of the young Catholic who makes his own revolution and builds up his own system; the leftist understanding of that component—and therefore the element of dissent with the political orientation * Since the working class was represented mainly by the Communist Party, it was thought of as being in the opposition.

204

ACI’s Policy After the War

of the Gedda Presidency—is evident in the willingness to be “treated as a Communist by the bourgeois.” However, there is something more, and a further element of dissent: the implicit rejection of the authentic Integralist position according to which Catholicism is one of the two blocs, and the Church exerts or ought to exert a hegemony over the Western world; there is also the acknowledgment that Catholics as such are cut off from the current world contest, and occupy a minority position; finally there is a stress on the necessity of “inventing” a new system, thus a rejection of the Integralist assumption that nothing needs to be invented and that solving problems is only a matter of “applying the principles” of the Church’s social doctrine. As we have already seen, a second element of dissent between CIAC and the Presidenza Generale (and the hierarchy) lay in some of GIAC’s positions on what I have called the problem of everyday values—positions that even more clearly implied an abandonment of the Integralist perspective. It was not by chance that immediately prior to his dismissal Rossi was privately in¬ dicted for his positions by the Holy Office, the highest Church organ responsible for the protection of orthodoxy, or that the official press release on the case spoke of “dangerous tendencies in matters of doctrine,” and of “doctrinal deviations” that had become obvious in the action of the GIAC Presidenza Centrale. While a “deviationism” with respect to matters of faith and morals was certainly out of the question, some amount of “devia¬ tion” from the ideological heritage of ACI could certainly be detected. A third aspect of the progressive divergence between the Rossi Presidency and the general line represented by Gedda was the attempt at a strategic restructuring of the organization” discussed in Chapter 8. These were, then, the three main reasons why the Rossi Presi¬ dency represented, particularly in its second year, a major resis¬ tance to Gedda’s centralizing plan. In fact during that period “Geddism” became, for the national leaders of GIAC and for the local leaders closest to them, the epitome of all that was wrong with Italian Catholicism. Father Arturo Paoli, a GIAC National Assistant, probably had Gedda in mind when he criticized in Gioventù

that lay activist who is not in politics, but demands to

Organizational Centralization

205

control political forces from outside; who is not a worker, but wants to lead the workers in his own way, and wants them to obey him like puppets.”20 Mario Rossi’s target was equally clear when he wrote in the last article he published as Central President of CIAC: We are against those anti-Communist appeals that aim at a unity without shared values, at a discipline not grounded on understand¬ ing, at a kind of blind militarism... . We feel that some charges raised against us reveal a total lack of understanding of the dimensions of the current crisis, and a narrow-mindedness induced by an obsession with politics.21 The reader may feel that this is a rather covert way of expressing oneself, and that the reference to Gedda, if there at all, is in a kind of code. However, in a context such as ACI, where the liberty of internal discussion is not institutionalized, and where mutual criticism is seldom seen as legitimate, the members be¬ come particularly apt at decoding. At any rate, the GIAC leaders were much more explicit in their private criticisms, which occa¬ sionally were so formulated as to include the pontiff himself. Naturally some of these criticisms sooner or later became known to their targets, as is clear from the following quote. Iniziativa re¬ printed, from an ACI publication from the Diocese of Pisa, an article by the Assistant to the ACI Committee of that diocese, who said: In these times of universal apostasy, we must all be with the Pope, down to the innermost fibers of our hearts. The specific feature of our faith must be a frank profession of unconditional obedience to the Pope. You must be very careful, because the very air we breathe is poisoned, and you can tell the true Catholics from what they say about the Pope. Does one find something to criticize? Does he have reserva¬ tions? Are certain difficulties mentioned? Does one, under whatever pretext, disapprove of any of His actions? Does one presume to give Him lessons on political matters? Does one blame what the Pope does on those around Him? These are rebellious people who are speaking, or at least Catholics who are neither fish nor fowl, neither God’s nor the devil’s own people. The article closed with a phrase by the Irish Catholic leader Dan¬ iel O’Connell, proclaiming his ‘‘perfect, entire, and universal

206

ACI’s Policy After the War

submission to the Church,” and added: ‘‘This is the way a Cath¬ olic feels—and all the more a Catholic Action member, who knows he must be the hierarchy’s collaborator, not its prompt¬ er.”* The “violations” listed are unmistakably the errors of the more reckless of Rossi’s colleagues. An even more venomous descrip¬ tion of the positions they took regarding the programs of the Presidenza Generale is to be found in another article in Inizia¬ tiva, dealing with the opposition to the policy of the Missionary Base (to be discussed in Chapter 15), which attempted to engage ACI as a whole in a “universal and organic” apostolic under¬ taking. Among the temptations besieging those engaged in apostolic work, there is the attempt to limit its universality, to destroy its organic quality, to smuggle in under various labels an individualism of Prot¬ estant derivation. Yielding to these temptations causes the mind and the heart to lose a true feeling for the Church; people are led to raise problems instead of engaging in action; each problem is treated with hair-splitting subtlety and blown away by a whirlwind of words; and nothing ever gets done. It is easy to criticize the organization of Catholic Action, to mock all organizational achievements, to aban¬ don oneself to gratuitous criticisms: “nothing goes well,” “we Cath¬ olics are not up to par on this or that problem.” These people, who feel themselves to be gifted with far-reaching ideas and extra-subtle judgment, are in fact extremely short-sighted.22 I cannot recount here the sequence of events that led to the “Rossi crisis.” Any history of it would show, I feel, that one basic weakness in the “Rossians’ ” attempt to reorient the ideology and the structure of GIAC in a direction opposite to that sought by Gedda for ACI as a whole lay in a consequence of the sponsor¬ ship relation. This weakness is the impossibility of any legitimate appeal to the rank and file, the lack of any ground for the exercise of leadership other than appointment from above. From a posi¬ tion of leadership thus structured, to attempt to push forth against the clear will of superior authority, innovating plans in them* Reprinted in Iniziativa, March 1954, p. 5. The very last words in the quote (“a Catholic Action member ... must be the hierarchy’s collaborator, not its prompt¬ er,” collaboratore della Gerarchia e non suggeritore) are a very apt expression of what I call the requirement of faithfulness.

Organizational Centralization

207

selves fairly vague and risky, was a manifestation of juvenile ir¬ responsibility. This latter trait, in fact, clearly showed in the “style” of Rossi’s colleagues. One of them recalled during his interview a joke di¬ rectly at the expense of the main target of their “conspiracy”: I remember a meeting of the GIAC Presidenza Centrale that Gedda attended. At that time there were a lot of rumors about certain po¬ litical dealings he was having with Lauro [a big Neapolitan ship¬ owner, then the head of the Italian Monarchist Party]. Well, Gedda was standing at the head of the table, holding forth in that inspired manner of his, and meanwhile one of us made two little boats with his notepaper, and wrote “fleet” on one and “Lauro” on the other; we silently passed them along from hand to hand on both sides of the table. At a certain point two who were seated facing one another, half way up the table, exchanged the paper boats, which thus crossed each other in the middle, well within Gedda’s field of vision. He started, but said nothing.23 Behind this playful attitude lay an inability to understand that Gedda was in dead earnest, and that sooner or later he would settle accounts. One of the national leaders of GIAC told me not long before the crisis of the Rossi Presidency: With Gedda in ACI we have reached the point now where Italians stood with Mussolini in 1938. Nobody pays any serious attention to what he says, and we don’t feel the need to oppose him seriously; whatever he says is immediately made into a joke. No sooner does he come up with one of his ideas than we make fun of it. A further, perhaps more important, reason behind the irresponsi¬ ble attitude of some of Gedda’s most committed opponents was that many of the national leaders under Rossi were not very at¬ tached to their positions. Quite a few of them—and all of the most reckless—had only recently come to Rome from their dio¬ ceses; a number of them clearly had promising professional fu¬ tures before them (they now occupy good positions in Italian political or academic life), and they had not invested enough of themselves in their offices as national GIAC leaders to play their role in earnest and to fight for maintaining it. Finally, and most important, in some of them the criticism of the “Geddan” posi¬ tion had slowly developed into a criticism of ACI itself, or even

2o8

A Cl’s Policy After the War

of the ideas of Catholic Action, or of the lay apostolate in gen¬ eral.24 Correspondingly the interests of some of these leaders had been slowly moving away from apostolic work toward intellectual or political concerns; thus, on the one hand they had an increas¬ ing detachment from the organization they were leaders of—and it is significant that a few of them left GIAC sometime before the Rossi crisis—and on the other hand, as long as they remained leaders, they exposed the organization to the charge of being more interested in political or intellectual problems than in ACI’s apostolic tasks.25 The Dimensions and the Significance of the “Rossi Crisis” It is not easy to determine what impact the Rossi crisis—the forced resignation of Rossi himself and nearly all his colleagues, which had a sizable echo in the national press—had on GIAC as a whole or on ACI in general. The members of the Presidenza Generale I interviewed in 1957-58 tended to minimize the di¬ mensions and the significance of that episode.26 And indeed my own personal recollections confirm that the dismissal of the Rossi Presidency did not seriously shake up GIAC, much less ACI.27 The bishops kept the situation under control in the dioceses; the local leaders who resigned to express their solidarity with the na¬ tional leaders were very few. The energy with which the hier¬ archy had intervened, and the gravity of the charges the hierarchy had raised (without explaining them or justifying them), per¬ suaded the leaders of the other branches—interested as they were in resisting the centralizing drive of the Presidenza Generale— that they should take no stand. In sum, from the viewpoint of its strictly organizational repercussions, it seems correct to interpret the whole episode as merely a “romantic sedition,” originating from the lack of experience and maturity of a small group of hot¬ heads, which flared up and burnt itself out exclusively at the top of the organization, without the bulk of its members and leaders even realizing what was going on.28 To dismiss the matter in this way, however, seems inadequate if one looks beyond the purely organizational dimensions of the crisis, to some more remote repercussions. A number of my

Organizational Centralization

209

sources suggest that after 1954, at least until the time of the SSRC research, GIAC was no longer its old self, and had clearly lost vital¬ ity.29 This is likely to have been the case, considering that a body of brilliant and able leaders had been disposed of, and that for some time at least the quality of their successors was markedly inferior. Their successors were forced, furthermore, to set aside many problems that were seriously and widely felt in the organi¬ zation—such as the place and role of the category specializations, or the so-called Senior crisis (the members’ sharp loss of “spiritual temperature” at the end of the adolescent period, as they enter the labor market or start thinking about marriage)—just because the Rossi group had tried to solve them in the framework of its “anti-bourgeois polemics,” thus making it risky to raise them again. In fact, in the last years of the Gedda Presidency, some of these themes from the “Rossi period” were slowly and cautiously being taken up again by the GIAC Presidenza Centrale. LaPalombara, in giving me his impressions of a series of interviews with GIAC leaders in 1958, mentioned the odd feeling that “Rossi’s ghost was walking up and down the premises.” The problem of “specializa¬ tions” was being obsessively raised in the interviews; and one of the main ideological sources of the Rossians, Maritain’s Humanisme Integral, was still providing inspiration for one of the mem¬ bers of the GIAC Presidenza, although it was locked in his drawer and hidden between the covers of a French dictionary. The Opposition from the Movimento Laureati After 1954, the year of the Rossi crisis in GIAC, the opposition to the Gedda line from within ACI came mainly from the two intellectual branches, FUCI and the Movimento Laureati. For both, autonomy and detachment from the rest of ACI had long been a tradition, and this was reinforced, at least at first, when the Gedda line began to unfold. I shall devote my attention only to the Movimento Laureati. As the American historian Webster has written: The Laureati (Graduates), as organized by Righetti and sanctioned by Pius XI, benefitted from the 1929 Concordat guarantees of Cath-

210

A Cl’s Policy After the War

olic Action, but yet enjoyed independence from the mass organiza¬ tion thereof. Righetti was free to enroll Catholic university graduates who were not Catholic Action members at all, who would be repelled by the dull and conventional atmosphere of the regular Catholic Action organizations.30 Webster also remarks that the Movimento had taken shape as a separate and autonomous Catholic Action organization thanks to the courageous fight its founder, Iginio Righetti, and its first ecclesiastical Assistant, Msgr. Bernareggi, carried on against the adult branches of ACI (the adult branches asserted that members of FUCI, after they graduated, should join the traditional agesex organizations). The success of that fight was complete only with the 1946 statute, which gave the Movimento the same formal status as a “national Catholic Action association” that the agesex branches enjoyed. To this day, at any rate, the Movimento occasionally emphasizes the very special position it holds within the ACI framework. In a phrase from official publication, where the reasons for its existence are articulated, one may detect a slightly apologetic tone: “Many declare a priori their lack of confidence in the possi¬ bility of free, constructive activity within Catholic Action. But that this pessimism is unjustified is shown by the whole story of the Movimento.”31 It is also significant that the Movimento Lau¬ reati, through a clause in its bylaws, grants what could be called quasi-member status to graduates who intend to belong to a local association of the Movimento, participate in its activity, and sub¬ scribe to the organizational press, but who do not intend to be¬ come members of ACI. These people may be given a “permanent invitation,” which does not imply ACI membership. Further¬ more, the Movimento declares its pride in the looseness and sim¬ plicity of its organizational structure.32 Together with these aspects of its organizational setup, which are rooted in its own history, the Movimento’s sense of a distinc¬ tive position within ACI is kept alive by its peculiar, and some¬ what critical, interpretation of the common Integralist ideology. The “inability to take worldly things seriously,” which I have sug¬ gested as the basic limitation of Integralism, is more or less rec¬ ognized as such in the following speech to one of the Movimento

Organizational Centralization

2X1

Laureati’s national conventions by Giovanni Battista Scaglia, a Christian-Democratic deputy and cabinet member, and previ¬ ously a national leader of the Movimento. In dealing with the role of Catholics “in the cultural field’’—scholarship, higher edu¬ cation, and the arts—he asserted: Everything we Catholics say about the phenomena of intellectual cul¬ ture reflects the assumption that we ai~e interested in cultural matters as powerful instruments for attack and defense, and that Catholics are to be active in the cultural field basically in order to defend and assert Catholic principles. This is, in fact, a noble intent. . . but it can be wholly frustrated (or indeed achieve results opposite to those sought) if it leads the Catholic scholar to become a parasite; it can be frustrated if the Catholic scholar, instead of working side by side with other researchers to make a positive, disinterested contribution to knowledge, merely sits back and guards those areas of learning where science on one side and the Catholic faith and doctrine on the other can have some reciprocal bearing, in order to protect the latter from incurring any damage. If one is to gain authority in the world of science one must pay his entrance fee, acquire his citizenship by positively contributing to scholarship.... In other words, science and culture can well become instruments—settings perhaps—for the defense of our principles; but only if they are served honestly, postively.33 In the report of the Movimento’s Central Assistant, Msgr. Guano, to another national convention, a view of the Movimento as some¬ thing other than a mere instrument at the hierarchy’s disposal is timidly hinted at: The position of the Movimento Laureati is a delicate one. On the one hand,... we have engaged ourselves in a stricter and more obvious discipline; we have accepted the honor and the burden (and it may occasionally be rather a heavy burden) of being more directly at the disposal of the hierarchy, which means we must pay the price of rec¬ ognizing certain boundaries to our action. On the other hand, since we are a graduates’ movement, our specific contribution must be that of stimulating new understanding, new initiatives; of bringing to the fore novel experiences and demands, no matter how disconcerting; we must be frank with the hierarchy, devoted and respectful—but frank.84 A national Movimento leader who was interviewed was even more explicit in assigning his organization the role of “translat-

212

ACI’s Policy After the War

ing” the Christian message into terms that would meet the de¬ mands and standards of the modern intellectual.35 If the image of the Movimento as the interpreter of the Church’s position for the benefit of the world is joined to its image as the interpreter of the trends and demands of the world for the benefit of the Church, the Movimento appears responsible for nothing less than a “mediation” between the Church and the world. As I have sug¬ gested in Parts 2 and 3, no ACI organization can be allowed such a position in reality; as a result, even a mere attempt by the Movimento—however timid and self-conscious—to view its own mission in this way puts it in a distinctive position with respect to the rest of ACI. By the same token, it becomes a major source of annoyance and frustration for those who attempt to carry out a centralizing design in a thoroughly and unselfconsciously Integralist perspective. Thus, I was told in 1957-58 that the Movimento was making use of its remarkable prestige within ACI to oppose the Gedda line.36 More modestly, a national leader of FUCI told us that both FUCI and the Movimento Laureati had actually ceased any active opposition in 1954, when faced with Gedda’s overwhelm¬ ing power, and were now content to carry out a passive opposition and to defend their own autonomy from any encroachment by the Presidenza Generale. “Gedda does not put his nose in here. ... It is true that we can no longer quote Maritain, but here we practice Maritain,” he said. When the Presidenza Generale called its “coordination” or “Civic Committee” meetings, the leaders of the two intellectual branches had to attend, but were only physi¬ cally present. According to the FUCI leader, this kind of opposi¬ tion was at any rate sufficient to make Gedda “detest” both branches. “Fie certainly intends to dissolve them, and bring all ACI members within the four big branches,” I was told.37 I have suggested that one basic weakness in the Rossi Presi¬ dency’s sedition, a consequence of the sponsorship relation, was the impossibility of an appeal to a democratic principle of le¬ gitimation from below. A further consequence of that relation (mentioned in Chapter 8)—the obscurity and uncertainty of the definition of ACI’s institutional goal—weakened FUCI’s and the Movimento Laureati’s resistance to the Gedda line. The argu-

Organizational Ceritralization

213

ment Gedda employed to justify his call for centralization—the necessity of overcoming the exclusive preoccupation with “in¬ ternal” work, which began during Fascism—concealed a misun¬ derstanding. It is not true that ACI’s activity during that period was wholly centripetal. It did not, in fact, limit itself to training its members; it also took shape as a person-to-person apostolate, in collaboration with the priests. ACI was, in other words, conduct¬ ing an external activity, although most of it concerned the Church’s internal system. Only because the history of the orga¬ nization does not reveal a single, unanimous, consistent set of goals that could be employed as a standard for designing and as¬ sessing present policy were the leaders of FUCI and the Movi¬ mento Laureati unable to seize upon the misunderstanding im¬ plicit in Gedda’s argument. Instead, they could only oppose Gedda’s insistence on the necessity of external action with their predilection for internal, educational work.# They did not point out that there was a conceivable worthy alternative both to the kind of activistic, “politicized” action Gedda encouraged and to an exclusive concern with members’ training—the personal, everyday apostolic engagement of the members. Results of the Centralizing Policy For the same reasons that I could devote only a short digres¬ sion to the Gedda line’s critics, I am unable to commit myself to judging whether the centralizing policy was a success or a failure. There is no doubt that the Presidenza Generale meant business, and initiated a series of programs to show it; or that the branches’ leaders felt seriously threatened by those programs. At the same time, Gedda never quite had his way—witness the in¬ sistence with which Iniziativa had to reiterate, issue after issue, * See, for instance, the President’s report to the Eighteenth Congress of the Movi¬ mento Laureati, now in Movimento Laureati di Azione Cattolica, ed., L’anima religiosa del mondo d’oggi (Roma: Studium, n.d.), p. 25: “There is no doubt that over the last ten years CA has shown itself to be a lively and generous force at the Church’s service. However, the growing and heavy commitments imposed upon us by circumstance have made the training of members in depth more difficult.” It may be remarked that this appraisal contradicts the one continuously voiced by Gedda, according to which too much activity of an educational character was going on in ACI, and its efforts to serve the Church were correspondingly suf¬ fering.

214

ACI’s Policy After the War

the need for a serious reorganization of ACI. It is possible to point to a number of things the centralizing policy achieved: for in¬ stance, toward the end of the Gedda Presidency all ACI members received annual ACI membership cards, though previously the cards signified membership in the various branches; the single branches were no longer free to choose the major theme for their “annual campaign,” there was a common theme for all the branches, and the Presidenza Generale sent all parishes a volume of speech outlines, revolving around that theme, to be used by the parish associations of all branches. On the other hand, it is also possible to point to single centralizing proposals of the Gedda Presidency that never overcame the resistance of the branches, for instance the proposal for an ACI periodical. This would have been issued to each ACI member by the Presidenza Generale, and would have contained both a general section and a section prepared by the member’s branch in collaboration with the ACI general press office. The branches, each of which would have had to give up its own publication, successfully opposed this partic¬ ular proposal, as well as others that encroached in an equally obvi¬ ous manner on their autonomy.38 At any rate, if I am to make an educated guess as to the global results of the centralizing policy, I can repeat what I said previ¬ ously: at the end of the Gedda Presidency the life of ACI still took place mainly through and within the branches; and the lat¬ ter were still markedly different from one another in their style, in their language, and in the kind of ideal models they held up to the members and leaders. I emphasize “still” because, true as this might have been in 1958, the existence of a trend toward a greater coordination, an increasing homogeneity of style, lan¬ guage, and models, was also apparent. It is even more difficult to pass judgment on the success achieved by another aspect of the centralizing policy: the attempt to con¬ centrate the powers of decision at the national level, rather than the diocesan and parish levels of the organizaton. As I have re¬ peatedly stressed, practically all my data came from national sources, and at the national level I found it difficult to get reliable information on that problem. Indeed, the nature of ACI makes the problem of national versus local organs rather more delicate

Organizational Centralization

215

than the problem of coordinating versus branch organs within each level. Unlike the latter problem, the former cannot be con¬ ceived as predominantly an issue internal to ACI, since it directly involves the question of ACI’s relationship with the Church’s own organization, and a strict centralizing solution would imply a challenge to the principle that locally ACI depends primarily on the bishops. In fact, we have seen in Chapter 5 that the local ACI leaders are first responsible not to the higher level leaders within the organization, but to their respective bishops. If this principle is, as I have suggested, a direct consequence of the spon¬ sorship relation, then any attempt to create a more direct depen¬ dence of the local on the national ACI organs is a risky business. In fact, I know of only one openly discussed program of the Gedda Presidency that can be interpreted (as one national leader of FUCI suggested) as an attempt in this direction.89 In 1954 the Presidenza Generale, which up to that time had been directly in contact only with diocesan organs, undertook the so-called Gath¬ ering (Aggregazione) of the Parish Committees. The Committees were invited to let the Presidenza Generale know the names of their members and to subscribe to Iniziativa-, if they did so they also became entitled to receive other publications as well as the assistance of the coordinating organs in their activities. It was suggested to me that by going directly to the parish organs the Presidenza Generale intended to get around the difficulties that would have been caused by an attempt to establish a closer con¬ trol on the diocesan organs. Some evidence for this interpretation can be inferred from an article in Iniziativa in 1956 that said: “If the number of ‘aggregated’ Parish Committees grows this year, it will be a clear sign that ACI feels the need to strengthen its cen¬ tralized structure.”40 Again, it is not clear to what extent the Gathering of the Parish Committees was a success. According to my data, the number of “gathered” Committees increased from 2,644 in 1954 to 5,166 in 1957; yet the FUCI leader who suggested the above interpretation of this operation (that it was a means of circumventing the diocesan organs) asserted that it had been “a failure.”

Chapter fourteen

Political Action

In the last two chapters I have considered policies pertaining to the organization of ACI forces, rather than their deployment in action. Now I turn to the latter theme; in this chapter and the next I shall discuss separately two main lines of the Presidenza Generale’s policy for action, which affected ACI as a whole. The first of these concerns the involvement of the organization in the political sphere, during the formation and the early years of the Republic of Italy; since a recent American work has extensively discussed this topic (together with others relating to Italian pres¬ sure politics), I shall merely mention the most important of ACI’s political activities.1 The Epiphany of ACI” At the end of Part 3 I suggested that there is a duality in ACI’s relationship with the Church: Catholic Action is at certain times and in certain aspects of its activity employed as an instrument of the Church’s internal system, and at other times and in other aspects as an instrument of its external system. There is a corre¬ sponding duality in the relationship between ACI and Italian society: on one hand ACI operates as an auxiliary force of the clergy, supporting its specifically religious, evangelizing activity;

Political Action

217

on the other it acts as a “secular arm” of the Holy See and the hierarchy, protecting their political interests, and ensuring them a measure of control over public life and the Italian state. The postwar activities to be mentioned in this chapter will reflect ACI’s role as the clergy’s secular arm. Luigi Gedda—who must be considered one of the major proponents and architects of this line of action, although it was started before his appoint¬ ment as General President—referred occasionally to it as the epiphany of Catholic Action.” The term is of obvious ecclesi¬ astical derivation, and means “manifestation to the world.” What Gedda understood by it is made clear in an article he wrote in where he said that beginning with the end of the war “the epiphany of Catholic Action has been taking place. Previously, nobody paid attention to CA, but it is now universally considered a determining force in the life of the nation.”2 The essence of this line lies in the effort to make ACI count in the country’s life: to make it count, it is important to note, as an organization of militant Catholics, with its own specific organi¬ zational structure, with its peculiar relationship of dependence on the hierarchy. As an ecclesiastical Assistant in 1957, Msgr. Civardi wrote that Catholic Action, “although it must not engage in politics in the narrow sense of the term, must find its own place and be active within the country’s political situation.”3 In the period under consideration, this line of action took five main forms. The first was ACI’s attempt to set itself up as the great “organizational center” of the whole Italian Catholic move¬ ment, through the previously discussed policy of organizational expansion and through the claim that all other Catholic organi¬ zations were either “dependent on,” “coordinated with, ” or “ad¬ hering to” ACI itself. This attempt was impeded by the growth of pluralistic inclinations within the Italian Catholic world as well as by the increasing tendency for organized Catholicism to gravitate toward the Christian Democratic party, accepting its hegemony while trying to influence it. Since this party, on the strength of its continued near-monopoly of power, tended in turn (starting in the middle 1950’s) to evade the control of ACI, by the end of Pius XII’s pontificate ACI found itself rather isolated.

21g

ACI’s Policy After the War

The second way ACI tried to make its presence felt was by its organizational strength, as a buttress to its claim to a distinctive place in public life. This is made clear, for instance, in the fol¬ lowing comment from Azione Missionaria (published by the Presidenza Generale) on two huge national rallies held by GF and GIAC in Rome in the late summer of 1948: The fact that the Italian government has taken official cognizance of our rallies and that so many members of the Cabinet have participated in our proceedings leads us to remark that Catholic Action has now officially became a part of national life, on account both of the large masses it has mobilized and of the polemical response evoked by the rallies, and finally on account of the organizational weight it has been shown to possess. From now on, when evaluating both local and na¬ tional public opinion, in all sectors and categories, it will be impossi¬ ble not to reckon with what Catholic Action does and says. ... The general interest evoked by the two rallies shows that organized Cath¬ olics have a title to a more ample, open, and effective participation in the life of the nation.4 This reliance on mass demonstrations was particularly in evi¬ dence in the immediate postwar period and in the first half of the 1950’s. After this time, a more limited impact was sought, but always with the same purpose in mind, as is shown by the follow¬ ing directives of the Presidenza Generale from 1957-58, which concern some organizational tasks of the Parish Committees: “What matters..., and what must by all means be achieved, is that our manifestations, whether they be few or many, of modest or grandiose proportions, achieve the maximum resonance within the parish, and truly attract the attention of public opinion.’’5 The third form of self-assertion is found in the Presidenza Generale’s attempts to influence the strategy of the Christian Democratic Party. The most important example of this kind of activity (although one which failed) is the Sturzo operation I have already referred to. These attempts primarily took place through the editorial comments of the unofficial daily paper of the Presidenza, Il Quotidiano. The fourth form was the activity of the Civic Committees in electoral campaigns. In fact the Committees—which as we have seen were merely instruments of ACI, closely controlled by the Presidenza Generale—tried, especially in the early 1950’s, to be-

Political Action

219

come more than mere electoral agencies, but always failed to do so. Finally, an important aspect of ACI’s political activity, espe¬ cially at the local level, has been its action as a pressure group, the influence it has tried to exert on public authorities in order to obtain decisions beneficial or acceptable to the Holy See, to the bishops and the clergy, and to its own leaders and members.

Chapter fifteen

“The Conquest of the Far Ones” and the “Missionary Base”

As I have suggested, the “epiphany of Catholic Action’’ was re¬ lated mainly to one pole of ACI’s ambiguous institutional iden¬ tity—its position as a latter-day secular arm of the hierarchy. As if to counteract the serious difficulties that an exclusive commit¬ ment of this kind might have engendered for the organization, Gedda’s Presidenza Generale put forth with equal insistence— although, so far as I can judge, with little success—another policy line, which emphasized the other pole in ACI’s identity: its nature as an organizational instrumentality of the Church’s in¬ ternal system, a lay organization humbly offering its support to the clergy’s spiritual mission. This line was generally called “the conquest of [or “missionary action toward’’] the far ones,” where “far ones” (i lontani) meant those who had turned away from re¬ ligious practice and the guidance of the Church, and were now to be brought back into the fold. That the latter line was meant to complement the previous one is clearly suggested, for instance, in a passage from an article by Gedda published in May 1953: The most pressing and onerous reality that confronted Italian Cath¬ olics at the fall of the Fascist regime was their political responsibility. ... Unavoidably,... the militant Catholics in the role of Italian citi¬ zens became overwhelmingly interested in the problems posed by the political situation, as against those more properly pertaining to the religious apostolate.... Italian Catholics quickly accomplished a

The Conquest of the Far Ones

221

great deal on the political front, the union front, and the welfare and economic front, as well as with a series of specialized organizations [ACLI, the Civic Committees, etc.]; and they dealt with the use of leisure time, sports and recreational activities, and so on. Yet all these accomplishments, necessary and praiseworthy as they are, appear, if you look at them from inside Catholic Action, as so many circum¬ stances that forced the organization to forgo its own progress. If you think about it, you will have to agree that basic Catholic Action, the CA of the seven branches ..., has, in these last ten years, merely main¬ tained the position it held at the fall of Fascism.1 Gedda was to suggest elsewhere that the intense activity under¬ taken in the political sphere had interfered with ACI’s apostolic commitments. The reasons were first that many of its best men had thrown themselves into social, political, and civic activity, and second that much of the branches’ organizational activity was directed exclusively toward the spiritual needs of their mem¬ bers, as against the needs of the “far ones.” As I mentioned in Chapter 13, this latter limit was imputed to the branches’ retaining, especially at the local level, habits of thought and traditions of activity deriving from the Fascist period, when “organizational life had to develop entirely on the premises of the associations and be directed exclusively to the members’ training.”2 So the organization’s apostolic action evolved wholly within its own framework, or at most aimed at the section of the parish population that, although not associated with ACI, felt somehow linked to the parish community. ACI thus failed to reach the majority of parishioners who, particularly in the cities, had lost all sense of belonging to a parish commu¬ nity, barely preserved a sense of religious identification, and were unwilling to become involved in any of the religious activities organized by this or that parish association of the ACI branches. The policy to be discussed in this chapter consists of an effort made from the center of the organization to get ACI to become a “missionary force,” reaching outside the actual boundaries of the parish community toward the disaffected masses, in order to bring them back into touch with that community. Gedda syn¬ thesized the main lines of this policy in a speech to the General Assembly in 1954: “At present ACI is not constantly engaged in the missionary conquest of the far ones, but at most participates occasionally in this effort. The decisive step we are about to take

222

ACI’s Policy After the War

consists in generalizing and putting on a continuous basis what has so far been done occasionally and unsystematically.”3 As usual, Gedda mentioned a speech by Pius XII as the origin of this policy, and constantly referred back to it in pressing for its carrying out. In the speech in question (made in February 1952), Pius XII had pointed to the Catholics’ insufficient dyna¬ mism as one of the major causes of the “general situation” of moral depression and social upheaval that characterized the world. What was needed in order for this situation to be over¬ come, he had said, was “an appropriate organizational frame¬ work; a wise deployment of forces; a tempo of activity adequate to the pressing need for defense, for conquest, for positive recon¬ struction.” In its official commentary on this speech, the Presidenza Gen¬ erale pointed out that it gave ACI the burden of revising its own methods of action, since “ACI’s organizational network is a valuable instrument, as eighty years of history show, but today it is not dynamic enough. It does not permit conquest beyond a certain point, and does not adequately favor either penetrating the various social milieus or approaching single individuals.”4 Thus, ACI’s organizational energies were to be devoted primarily to the “spiritual reclamation” of individuals and settings that escaped the reach of its traditional action. From this formulation it may seem that the core of this policy line was a specific strategic target that ACI’s activity had to be¬ come oriented toward. This was only partly the case, however. The theme of the far ones and the necessity of their conquest was generally developed in a superficial manner; the reasons for their becoming disaffected were inadequately discussed, the con¬ ditions for their “reclamation” were not spelled out, nor was the problem of a strategy of conquest fully confronted anywhere. Only the purely organizational and tactical aspects of the line were articulated at length, with particular insistence on the necessity for a new “organizational formula” that would over¬ come the movement’s traditionalist and static tendencies and confer a new “dynamism” upon it. There are three related reasons why the innumerable pro¬ nouncements of the Presidenza Generale on this subject suddenly shifted from the naming of a most generic strategic objective

The Conquest of the Far Ones

22g

( the conquest of the far ones,” or some such phrase) to a minute pragmatic description of down-to-earth procedures (the ‘‘Mis¬ sionary Base,

or the ‘‘methodology of missionary action”). The

first and most general reason is found in the instrumental nature of ACI itself, which Pius XII tended to emphasize. In the 1952 speech, for instance, he expressly denied that the general social regeneration he urged Catholics to aim at necessitated revising established judgments and perspectives. He stressed instead, as we have seen, the organizational framework, the employment of forces, and the tempo of activity. A second reason may be found within ACI’s cadres, in the lack of a true and proper political leadership, which might have developed a serious and original strategic thought. Finally, if the talk about the far ones, instead of articulating a diagnosis of the situation and a thoughtful consideration of remedies, tended to develop exclusively at the organizational level, this may well reflect not so much an inability to do other¬ wise as a positive preference for this kind of analysis; in other words, it may indicate that to Gedda’s mind strictly organiza¬ tional considerations came first and foremost. This is suggested by the similarity between the policy line with which he is more closely and directly associated—organizational centralization—* and the policy of conquest of the far ones. These two policies were generally argued together in his and his colleagues’ speeches and articles; and one gets the impression that the conquest of the far ones was basically a component of and a prop for the policy of centralization. I treat them separately in spite of this impression because Gedda himself always maintained the opposite: orga¬ nizational centralization was required for effective missionary action, not the reverse. For all my doubts of the validity of this view, it has seemed fair not to prejudge the question and to keep the two policies distinct. In fact the “conquest” line led only in¬ directly to the centralization theme; directly it led to a distinct (if closely related) organizational formula—the Missionary Base. What is the Missionary Base? Organizationally speaking, it is the formula that brings about the unity of action of GA members who belong to the same residential, recreational, cultural, or work setting.

224

ACI’s Policy After the War

From the disciplinary point of view, the Missionary Base is a form of apostolate in the milieu, which depends on the authority of the pastor and is sustained by the missionary spirit of Catholic Action within the parish. From the point of view of its program, the Missionary Base intends to undertake all appropriate activities in order to approach as many souls as possible and to diffuse the evangelic spirit in all settings where present-day life is lived, so as to bring individuals and society back to Christ.6 This last point merely echoes the Integralist ideology that is ACI’s own; therefore, the identifying characteristics of the for¬ mula ought to be seen in the other two points, which obviously have a primarily organizational reference, and in the repetition of the word ambiente (which I have translated alternatively as “milieu” or “setting”). Particularly by using the expression “apostolate in the milieu” the Presidenza sought a connection with the traditional GIAC conception of apostolic action toward the various “social categories.”6 However, there is a basic dif¬ ference, and in fact one of organizational nature: in GIAC’s tra¬ ditional view, the “apostolate in the milieu” was not an organi¬ zational but an individual activity, which, to the extent that it developed collectively within a specific setting (a school, for in¬ stance), was purely a GIAC matter. Here, instead, an organiza¬ tional plan was of the essence, and it had to be carried out by a unit dependent on the Parish Central Committee. Agostino Maltarello (who was to succeed Gedda as General President), in a 1953 article titled “A Clear Notion of the Missionary Base,” in¬ sisted that a member’s apostolic action must not be “exclusively personal and isolated”; on the contrary, “since he belongs to a Missionary Base that puts him in touch with other CA members, each member will have to act in concert with him. .. . The ac¬ tivities of the Missionary Base are the responsibility of central organs, the Committees, not the single branches. The task of the branches is instead to perfect their members’ formation. ... There is, in other words, a division of tasks.”7 I ought to mention that the Presidenza Generale, aware that a notion of the Missionary Base as primarily a new organizational development alarmed the branches, occasionally sought to dispel that notion. In the article just quoted, for instance, Maltarello

The Conquest of the Far Ones insisted that

22^

the Missionary Base is not... a new organizational

structure, to be added to those of ACI, complex as they already are.... It is a method of action.” Possibly in order to avoid the former interpretation, from 1955 on, the term ‘‘missionary ac¬ tion

was used in preference to “Missionary Base.” The same in¬

tention of dispelling the branches’ concern can be found in the following passage: The Missionary Base is not, nor can it be, an organ for the formation of the members; this is the branches’ responsibility.... Neither is it, nor can it be, an organizational structure.... The Missionary Base does not have a location, membership cards, members’ lapel buttons of its own. . . . Finally, it is not an organ for political propaganda. .. . Its activity absolutely must remain within the sphere of the religious and moral apostolate.8 What then was the Missionary Base? The text I am quoting defined it as “a centralized method for reconquering the far ones.” Let us see how the Presidenza Generale’s publications spelled out the reasons for and the features of such a method: ACI’s traditional network is based on dioceses and parishes.... The parish framework poses an organizational limit to the conquest of new members.. .. Most members merely concern themselves with bringing to Catholic Action those parishioners who still attend the parish activities.. .. But what of those who never go there? What of those who have moved away from the parish? Who takes it upon him¬ self to reach these souls? Whose concern is it to operate upon the set¬ tings where the families live, where men and women work or amuse themselves? ... We must go out to meet these disaffected brothers and reclaim the social milieus for Christianity.... Our goal is to fashion a method that fully develops grass-roots apostolic work [apostolato capillare].... The road leading to it is called the “Missionary Base.”9 Each Base was made up of all militants involved in a particular setting who intended to do apostolic work within it, no matter what branch of ACI they belonged to: The world is not subdivided by sex, age, and category, but in it men and women, workers and professionals, young and aged are thrown to¬ gether. ... The CA young man and girl, whose spiritual and apostolic formation has been carried out by separate parish associations, do in fact belong to a family (whose components are not separated accord¬ ing to their sex, age, or occupation), and are active in various non¬ family settings (such as schools, factories, neighborhoods, movie thea-

226

ACI’s Policy After the War

ters) where people are never separated according to sex, age, and oc¬ cupation. It is in these settings that their Christian life and their apostolate must be brought to bear on others. ... Therefore, the edu¬ cational function performed by the parish sections must be completed and made effective in the natural, complex, and central settings of the family and the places where people study or work.10 It was stressed that the Base must not become an organizational unit distinct from the parish where it operated and where the ACI members lived; the development of a plan of apostolic action relating to a specific setting (a housing block, a factory) was to be carried out within the parish unit of Catholic Action. Thus, over the parish territory there were a number of distinctive settings within which, under the guidance of the Parish Commit¬ tee, the members of the various branches carried out their apos¬ tolic work. “The key concept guiding the militants in missionary activity... must be the concept of a face-to-face, man-to-man, soul-to-soul apostolate.”11 This “key concept” is articulated in a series of narrow operational rules, which, taken as a whole, make up the “Missionary Base methodology.” Gedda writes: We say “Missionary Base methodology” and not “methodology of the Missionary Base” because this method of activity applies to the in¬ dividual militant, not to collective action. . . . The Missionary Base, as a collective unit, never contacts anybody, does not organize any public activity, is never on the scene. Contact with souls is sought by the individual militant, although his action has been previously de¬ liberated on by a Base meeting.12 In fact one of the two critical characteristics of the method (the other being its “gradual approach”) is its discretion: A necessary condition for the success of apostolic action is that public opinion in the area in question not be previously aroused against it, that every contact be established with all necessary caution, and that only individual people be seen acting.. .. There must be no visible trace of the organizational origin of the activity; which is another reason why the Base should hold its meetings not in the area itself but in the parish ACI quarters.... If the meetings were held in private homes, this might start people gossiping, and deprive the Base activity of that discretion which is a condition for its success.13 Achieving maximum contact with the far ones is the apostle’s first task. In order for him to make maximum contact, those

The Conquest of the Far Ones

227

“watertight screens that separate one man from another’’ must previously be broken through. Gedda developed this point in a speech to the first national course for Missionary Base militants: There are infinite ways of achieving this.... Let us begin by greeting our neighbor when we meet him, by stopping to exchange a few words, maybe just about the good weather or the bad weather, by tak¬ ing the initiative to have the landlord replace a bulb that went out on the stairs a couple of weeks ago, which so far nobody bothered to get fixed,... by collecting signatures on a petition to City Hall to get a hole in the pavement filled ... or a public phone booth set up. Once the militant has thus established a “bridgehead” that con¬ nects him to the far ones, before starting apostolic action proper he ought to look around for allies, for people who can support his attempt to get this or that “far one” to think about religion: If we seek far enough in a discreet reconnoitering action, chances are that we shall turn up some people who are related to or acquainted with the family we are interested in, and who can be of great help to us; often even families who are not churchgoers are proud of an aunt who’s a nun or a cousin who’s a canon in the Cathedral. In other cases the ally can be the unforgettable, much-admired figure of a late acquaintance “whose memory still moves one and leads him to think good thoughts.” And in still other instances, there happens to souls what happens after a shipwreck: on the dark and stormy surface of the sea only relics of the sunken ship can be de¬ tected. ... Often a soul’s wreckage leaves such relics on the surface.... At times they are the relics of natural morality: some people worship honesty ..., others are compulsively attached to truth ..., others have preserved intact the concept of honor.... Or they may be reli¬ gious relics: devotional practices that point back to beliefs now for¬ gotten, superstitious ideas or observances with a religious background. ... In other cases it will be feelings we are confronted with: ... respect for womanhood, love for one’s children, the cult of the dead.... But the main ally remains remorse, which is engendered when one moves from indifference to awareness. Once these “allies” have been located, the missionary must employ them to awaken in the far one a specifically religious concern: How to do this will depend on the subjects and the circumstances. We may, however, point to one possible way of awakening such a concern:

228

ACI’s Policy After the War

by good example. If the militant is seen to lead a serene life, to care for others, to be ready to understand others and to feel for them, the far one will silently wonder what is the secret of this man ... ? And the answer will come easily once he realizes that these gifts come naturally to the militant from living at peace with God. Gedda went on to say that a concern with religious things could also be awakened through the far one’s natural curiosity, the arts, even the movies. Often, before the far one could meet God, he would have to overcome some objection to Catholic belief or to the Church, which was deeply rooted in his emotional makeup. This objection might have rested on some event of his personal history, or on the memory of some historical event; it “may have been taken from nineteenth-century anticlerically minded history, which took pleasure in presenting the Church as the enemy of freedom, of science, and so many other things.” These strictly personal difficulties would have to be cleared away, and in order to do this, the militant “must listen, listen for a long time and with great patience, not letting the conversation de¬ generate into a squabble ... ; all the pseudo-historical arguments, no longer worthy of serious consideration, will have to be dis¬ posed of.” At this point the militant might reestablish a contact between the Catholic religion and the far one by suggesting books to read, etc. Finally, when his soul became ready to encounter the truth again, the militant must withdraw into the background and let a priest take over. To carry his mission to completion he would at this point intensify the prayers and the acts of self-denial in which he had been engaged throughout his apostolic work.14 I have quoted my sources at length (possibly boring those readers who did not decide to be amused) because this allowed me to summarize pretty much all that can be learned about the “Missionary Base” from ACI literature. As I have said previously, a very generic goal was located, and then a lengthy, petty opera¬ tional prescription followed, without the mediation of a serious analysis of the conditions under which that goal could be reached. Other deficiencies were connected with this basic weakness of the argument, and some of them were meaningfully related to the sponsorship relation.

The Conquest of the Far Ones

229

l"or example, some of the sources I have quoted make it fairly c leai that the parish-based structure of ACI placed serious limita¬ tions on its viability as an apostolic agency; but, as if under the pressure of the requirement of control, they then refused to draw the obvious conclusion, to make an attempt at "'strategic restruc¬ turing

(to use the central term of Chapter 8), by stressing the

occupational-category framework over the parish framework. The constraints placed on the unfolding of the argument are obvious in the following text (and particularly in the passages I have italicized): By Missionary Base we mean all those militants who belong to one and the same setting and work within it to achieve an apostolic end. . .. Catholic Action is the motor of the apostolic undertaking. Catholic Action, on the other hand, is based on the parish framework and for this reason the Missionary Base will depend, as Catholic Ac¬ tion does, on the pastor s authority. There is to be no argument over this point, on which we must be very clear and which we must stress all the time. .. . Although we must observe ... that the parish appears at times inadequate in the face of the developments and needs of con¬ temporary life, and although for this very reason ACI is now launch¬ ing a plan for a face-to-face apostolate through the Missionary Base, Canon Law and the logic of organization compel us to keep this wider activity within the parish framework, so as to strengthen it.15 Other obscurities and contradictions in the idea of the Mis¬ sionary Base can best be understood as resulting from the pres¬ sure of the requirement of faithfulness, which has the effect of concealing the actual dimensions and the true causes of the prob¬ lems that need to be solved. The key problem confronting the Church, that of reaching and influencing the settings where to¬ day’s man acts out his existence, is duly located. But it seems as if the problem, operationally speaking, had purely an “ecological” dimension; as if the Church literally had only to annex new areas of territory, to seize a few enemy strongholds, a housing block here, a factory there, a plant there, here again a bar where the menfolk of the area gather to pass time. Yet this is a drastically in¬ adequate way of visualizing the problem. It is true, for example, that a public school may be viewed as an enclave, a self-contained piece of foreign ground inside the parish territory; but this does not happen only or mainly because it is attended by teachers and

2^o

ACI’s Policy After the War

students who live outside the boundaries of the parish, and thus escape the reach of its ordinary pastoral action. That school rep¬ resents an enclave to the extent that it is committed to values and oriented toward principles foreign or hostile to the Church’s cul¬ ture. Again some texts issuing from the Presidenza Generale seem to suggest that new apostolic devices are needed to reach the work¬ ers because too often they commute to work, or at any rate their place of work does not coincide with their place of residence, and thus with their parish. But clearly this is not the critical point. Given a worker who is strongly class-conscious, and who derives from his feeling of belonging to a class a purely worldly definition of his own interests and values, it will make no great difference, from the Church’s standpoint, whether his place of work is in the territory of the parish he formally belongs to. These and similar weaknesses in the arguments presented for it explain in part why the “missionary line” was never seriously and concretely acted upon by ACI, in spite of Pius XII’s repeated explicit approval of it, and in spite of the Presidenza Generale’s continuous urgings. The main reason seems to have been the re¬ sistance of the branches, which saw in the whole line mainly a pre¬ text for giving greater and greater decisional powers on their day-to-day activity to the central ACI organs, particularly the Presidenza Generale. Whatever specific contribution this and other reasons may have made to its failure, there seems to be no doubt that the line itself was a failure.16

Chapter sixteen

The Main Criticisms of the Gedda Line: A Review

In this chapter I shall rapidly review some of the major criticisms of Gedda voiced within ACI, or within the Italian Catholic world at large, and shall group them around three main charges. These charges overlap, however, and they all converge on the same fun¬ damental criticism: that the Gedda line imposed on ACI certain objectives and methods which distracted it from the pursuit of its proper goal. The first charge is that of “organizativism” (a term which sounds as awkward in Italian as it does in English). The burden of it is that Gedda was willing to sacrifice to his overriding preoccupation with ACI’s organizational unity and efficiency other important aims arising from ACI’s nature as an apostolic organization. I feel that various aspects of Gedda’s activity during his long career as an ACI leader support this charge. The two great successes of that career—the revamping of GIAC while he was Central President immediately before the war, and the setting up of the Civic Com¬ mittees in 1948—were basically organizational achievements. As General President of ACI, Gedda followed a policy that revolved around organizational themes; basically it was a matter of trans¬ ferring powers of decision from branch to coordinating organs. Indeed, I have suggested that even the “substantive” theme of missionary action can be interpreted as largely a supporting de¬ vice for that organizational objective.

232

ACI’s Policy After the War

This image of Gedda as chiefly an organizational leader seems to coincide with his own view of the qualities that made him a leader. For instance, here is the anonymous article with which Iniziativa greeted Gedda’s appointment as General President (an article that certainly had his approval): Today Gedda ... is supported by the trust of Italian Catholics. They recognize in him a man who has been brought up in their ranks, who expresses their demands, who can understand the needs both of the masses and of the elite; they recognize the founder of the Juniores and Seniores movements in GIAC, of GIOC, of CSI, of the Center for Per¬ forming Arts, of the International Secretariat of Catholic Doctors; they see in him the man who possesses the experience and the skill needed to bring about the coordination of the action of Italian Cath¬ olics, and to overcome decade-old difficulties and inadequacies.1 A rigorous content analysis of Gedda’s writings and speeches would probably show that the organizativism he is charged with is rooted in his psychological makeup. I cannot undertake such an analysis at this point; but I will suggest that an expression such as “apostolic mechanism,” applied to the Missionary Base, can be seen as a revealing slip of the tongue.2 Equally revealing is the unmistakably military ring of many expressions Gedda employed to describe the “technique” for making apostolic contacts, or the ideal layout of the Catholic forces. Such aspects of his way of rea¬ soning crop up in even cruder form in the writings and speeches of some of his closest collaborators.3 For example, here is a pas¬ sage from a lecture by one of them, on the necessity of setting up coordinating organs in all parishes: Even where associations of all four branches are in existence, CA may lead a passable, but anemic, meagre life, making no positive contribu¬ tion to the parish’s apostolic activity. Why is this so? Evidently there is lacking an organ in charge of developing and guiding apostolic action.4 I have emphasized “evidently” because this term, which con¬ ceals the highly inferential character of the argument, shows to what extent the organizational way of thinking limits the capacity for evaluating concrete situations. An entirely different diagnosis was possible, as is shown, for instance, by a passage from a speech by Carlo Carretto made at the last national convention of dioc¬ esan GIAC presidents held while he was Central President:

The Main Criticisms of the Gedda Line

233

The Catholics have accomplished a lot, yet today their organizational machinery runs in circles, and we are all aware of it. Why? Because it is no longer a question of formulas, of organizational techniques. Only one decision matters: the decision to start afresh on the spiritual plane. .. . One does not conquer with strategic timetables, but by willingly sharing Christ’s sacrifice.5 At the same convention, Father Arturo Paoli put forth the same line of analysis: “Among the dangers to be avoided, there is in the first place apostolic technicism, that is, an organizational know¬ how which advances at a different rate from the formation of con¬ sciences, faster than it, . . . so that technique grinds on devoid of spirit.”6 Of course the organizativism of the Gedda Presidency did not amount to a conscious devaluation of the spiritual aspects of Catholic Action, but rather to a tendency to take them for granted, to assume that they would naturally be promoted to the extent that the organizational aspects were promoted. For in¬ stance, in the following passage from a speech, Gedda moves from the latter to the former aspects without a moment of hesitation, without a flicker of self-consciousness: “The three million mem¬ bers of ACI are a wonderful reality, all the more so if we reflect that each member means a card, each card a yearly due, each due a paper; and each card, each due, each paper, means above all a mature soul.”7 I also find some merit in the second main charge against Gedda, which can be synthesized as “activism.” While the first charge re¬ ferred to the main concern of his line, the second touches the style of his action; but naturally the two charges overlap. This latter one seems supported in the first place by Gedda’s passion for great mass demonstrations, which immediately after the war in¬ fected most of ACI, leading to a sequence of large branch rallies, such as those held in Rome by GF and then by GIAC in Septem¬ ber 1948. A few years later, Rossi, then Central President of GIAC, quoted with approval a criticism he had heard from the leaders of a similar French organization; “You Italians, when you manage to organize a big rally on a public square, believe you’ve given your witness to the truth.” If this passion for mass demonstrations is the more macroscopic aspect of Gedda’s activism, some of his critics (who perhaps were

234

ACI’s Policy After the War

not themselves entirely free of that aspect) attacked rather its microscopic aspect, a kind of petty and short-sighted tacticism and pragmatism. Some of the passages that I have quoted on the Mis¬ sionary Base offer evidence for this charge. Here is another passage from a Gedda lecture, where he suggests that a militant, in order to awaken some interest in religion in the “far one,” may avail himself, among other things, of his curiosity: Thanks to this [curiosity], a clever and smart militant may spot op¬ portunities to bring up one belief of the Catholic faith or one aspect of Catholic doctrine. Supposing, for example, that he sees in the col¬ lection of a stamp collector a series of Vatican City stamps, with pic¬ tures of religious or historical characters, he may take this opportunity to veer the conversation toward a religious topic.8 Again, this feature is found in cruder form in some of Gedda’s closest collaborators. One of them expressed himself as follows while lecturing on “The technique for approaching the far ones face to face”: It may fall to the GF member, for instance, to become friends with the girl in the family to be approached, by showing interest... in her em¬ broidery or in her new dress. Or perchance the member of GIAC will be able to get in touch with the gentleman from the third-story apart¬ ment, thanks to their attachment to the same soccer team. ... Or an Aspirante will gain the friendship of the chartered accountant’s son by raving over his stamp collection.... Or the member of UDACI will break the ice by begging the lady from the mezzanine apartment to share with her the recipe of a meat sauce whose fragrance had seeped into all the apartments in the house yesterday.9 Naturally, these delicate pictures of apostles in action were meant only as examples, and referred to an earlier and minor phase of apostolic action. Yet some critics of Gedda felt the same petty pragmatism in all expressions of his thought; not only in his tactical arguments, but also in his strategic ones. In 1954, a mem¬ ber of Rossi’s GIAC Presidenza Centrale, in the course of an antiGedda tirade among friends, expressed this criticism more or less as follows: Gedda is simply unable to think about things having some serious religious or cultural significance. He calls a meeting and says: one must make the Missionary Base. They ask him: why must one? How

The Main Criticisms of the Gedda Line

235

come all of a sudden it’s become indispensable? Then he looks like somebody who’s hit on the greatest problem of our time, and says: because of television. Think about television: it gets into all homes and cuts across all the sex-age barriers of our organizations; therefore in order to face up to television we must have coordinated action; therefore we must have the Missionary Base.... What on earth does TV have to do with it? A fat lot I care about TV; we have more im¬ portant problems to think about. The third basic charge against Gedda has been called “politicism”: some of the policy lines that he wanted ACI to pursue were dictated basically by a hankering for political influence, and thus they contrasted with ACI’s religious nature. The main battles in which he engaged ACI, according to this criticism, were political battles, and he always was excessively concerned with the “temporalistic” conditions for the Church’s welfare. I find this charge less convincing than the others, although a number of arguments can be advanced to support it. Falconi has observed that in Gedda’s autobiographical booklet, Addio Gio¬ ventù, properly religious feelings and concerns are nowhere ex¬ pressed. I have suggested myself, in Chapter 13, that “political politics” were obviously attractive to Gedda. In a March 1954 editorial in Studium, the magazine of the Movimento Laureati, one can find an earnest (although not overt) criticism of the Presi¬ denza Generale for having “politicized” the objectives of ACI’s ac¬ tion, albeit with the purpose of defending the Church; this article asserts that “our greatest weakness lies in the equivocations en¬ gendered by the increasing identification of political struggle and religious struggle, which damages both politics and religion.”10 A similar preoccupation was expressed by a GIAC leader inter¬ viewed for the SSRC project, who felt “not at all convinced that the political activity conducted by ACI in the postwar period will in the long run serve the organization’s interests.”11 At the na¬ tional congress of the Movimento Laureati in 1957, an ecclesiasti¬ cal Assistant stressed “the serious danger that Catholic Action will find itself overcommitted to temporal concerns, be they political or economic, and thus will let its religious sap dry up.”12 I must remark, however, that most criticisms of Gedda’s politicism, from inside ACI or the Catholic world, expressed a dis¬ sent over the direction of his political preoccupations rather than

236

A Cl’s Policy After the War

a feeling that such preoccupations, however directed, would damage ACI’s religious commitments. Very few of the ACI leaders approached for the SSRC project, in fact, expressed doubts about the legitimacy and usefulness of the Civic Committees’ remaining in existence, or about the legitimacy of the cornerstone of Vatican policy toward postwar Italian politics: the proclaimed “moral duty” of Catholics to vote for the Catholic party.13 What was heard was, rather, a criticism of the general right-wing orien¬ tation of ACI’s political action, of Gedda’s continuous efforts to make the Catholic party seek alliances with the parties on its right. In other words, the charge of politicism, in the terms it was posed in, seems to me to express the contrast between a right- and a left-wing understanding of the “temporalistic bent” of a shared Integralist ideology. No doubt there was some politicism in Gedda’s position; but a fair criticism of it should have become a critique of Integralism, while it generally failed to do so. Further¬ more, I remind the reader again that in the face of the serious threat to the Church’s welfare posed by the forces of the left im¬ mediately after the war, ACI could not possibly avoid some “po¬ liticization.” At any rate, the criticisms I have mentioned, which on the whole I found well grounded, should not hide the extent to which the Gedda line merely expressed with a vengeance an orientation that went beyond his own personality and the contingent charac¬ teristics of his policy. Organizativism, activism, and politicism are merely surface expressions of deeper contradictions within the organization Gedda found himself leading. To criticize those ex¬ pressions merely in order to condemn him will not do. It must be borne in mind, in the first place, that the instrumen¬ talism at the root of all those flaws in the Gedda line was a key feature of Pius XII’s general policy.* Take, for instance, a pas¬ sage from a booklet on the Missionary Base published by the Presidenza Generale: This is a time for doing.... The Truth is established, because it is written in the Gospel, and day by day the Representative of Christ * Nevertheless, Pius XII was a somewhat more complex figure than my references to his positions might suggest. In at least a few of his pronouncements, particularly

The Main Criticisms of the Gedda Line

237

illustrates it and applies it in his crystal-clear, unceasing teaching. The medicine our society needs is ready, it merely waits to be put to work on the sores of our century, on the whole body of human exis¬ tence: its culture, its politics, its problems of work and leisure, its wel¬ fare activities, its family life, everything.... What is necessary is for the Catholics to awaken and begin to move.14 I think this passage gives the key to all the organizativism, ac¬ tivism, and politicism that Gedda’s policy can be legitimately charged with. Once it has been denied that Catholics need make an effort to understand and evaluate the world’s problems, their task can only be visualized in terms open to charges of organiza¬ tivism, activism, and politicism. The passage just quoted, how¬ ever, merely paraphrases one from a previously quoted speech of the pontiff, made February 10, 1952: “This is no time for dis¬ cussion, for seeking new principles, for allocating new tasks and goals. All of these things are already known and ascertained,. . . and now we await only one thing: concrete realization.” In the second place—as I have already suggested—it is possible to regard those things in the Gedda line that deserve criticism as deriving from ACI’s nature as a sponsored organization, from the requirements of faithfulness and control. I have maintained in Parts 2 and 3 that those requirements negatively affect the orga¬ nization’s competence, causing it to operate in an inadequate manner, and, particularly when new historical circumstances lead to a redefinition of its relationship to the environment, to act in a contradictory and self-defeating way. The tendency to make ACI pursue goals other than its own, with which his critics charge Gedda, expresses in fact the basic ambiguity of ACI’s goal. It may be maintained that the “organizativistic and instrumental” style of the Gedda Presidency contrasted with the goal of the members’ humbly witnessing the truth of the Catholic religion through the texture of their everyday life;16 but it is less likely that it contrasted with the goal of making ACI operate as the “secular arm” of the Holy See in postwar Italy. After all, it is significant that those features of the Gedda line those of the middle 1950’s (for instance a speech to the World Congress of His¬ torians), he hints at some of the positions later to be taken—much less self-con¬ sciously—by John XXIII.

238

ACI’s Policy After the War

that his critics attacked recall strongly those of the policy of the great early leader of the Italian Catholic movement, Pagannzzi. Such similarities over fifty years of history may perhaps point to a basic continuity in the nature of the movement itself. Thus, my brief survey of the postwar policy of the Presidenza Generale leads back to the previous analysis of ACI as sponsored organiza¬ tion, to which I return in the concluding chapter.

END OF PART 4

Conclusion

In the World but not Of the World?

I have suggested in Chapter 4 that the institutional structure of the modern West poses a dilemma for the Church: either the Church complies with the principles of secularism and pluralism, or it becomes progressively and fatally isolated. I have construed the “appeal to the layman”—and particularly Catholic Action, the major organizational expression of that appeal—as one of the chief instrumentalities by which the Church seeks to escape that dilemma, to assert its presence and vitality in the modern world without giving up its claim to uniqueness or its claim to possess the universal truth. However, the Church can cope with the strains produced by the recourse to this instrumentality only through what I have called the sponsorship relation—a set of complex and exacting dependency ties between the laymen’s or¬ ganization and the Church. Those dependency ties critically limit, in turn, the sponsored organization’s chances to pursue the goal assigned it in the Church’s master plan: to establish a contact between itself and the world. In a metaphorical sense, the dilemma in this way takes its own “revenge.” The logic of the sponsorship relation makes CA un¬ able to seek and maintain the active and responsible contact with the world that might really bring the Church’s ethos to bear on its social environment, and on the everyday existence of its faith¬ ful. Thus, even the appeal to the layman, in the massive organi-

240

Conclusion

zational expression given it by Catholic Action, cannot overcome the institutional isolation of the Church in the modern world. But the revenge of the dilemma goes even further. Indeed, CA tends to establish itself as an additional screen between the Church and the world. Constitutionally unable to act as a con¬ necting link between the two because of the sponsorship rela¬ tion, incapable of performing a mediating role that would allow it to interpret the world to the Church and the Church to the world. Catholic Action girds the Church with an outer layer of committed faithful who cannot take the world seriously; this condition only carries the process of estrangement between the world and the Church one step further. Significantly, in most Catholic communities the lay groups that are most effective in two-way mediation—generally the intellec¬ tuals—tend to be marginal to Catholic Action. Even more sig¬ nificantly, it is actually easier in some situations to find a deep understanding of and participation in the problems of the mod¬ ern world among the Catholic clergy (or at the very summit of the hierarchy, as happened with John XXIII) than among Cath¬ olic Action laymen. The latter usually limit themselves to taking their cues from the clergy—at times enthusiastically, at times reluctantly, but almost always in a passive manner. The Mechanisms Involved Some of the sociological mechanisms that bring this about have been discussed in the previous chapters. For instance, the inse¬ curity and inferiority feelings toward the clergy that are built into the roles of the lay CA leaders typically produce overcon¬ formity.1 A sense of rigid and totally uncritical devotion to the spirit and the letter of The Truth held by the Church constitutes the most secure behavioral guarantee for the requirements of faithfulness and control; at the same time, however, it negatively affects the CA leader’s (or member’s) ability to face the world on its own terms, if only in order to “convert” it more effectively. Many further structural and ideological features within ACI point in the same direction. I have described the functional lia¬ bilities of those features primarily from the standpoint of the Church and ACI, by looking at the way the Church shapes the

Conclusion

241

organization and influences its way of looking at the world. The extent to which this damages ACI’s “competence” can perhaps be gauged if for a moment we do something new—imagine not how the outside looks to ACI, but how ACI looks to the outside. The outside groups—the far ones, the forces to be redeemed, etc. —can obviously only look with suspicion on an organization that acts as a pressure group at one point, as a religious organization at another point, is uncertain about its own goals, and unclear about its chain of command. Such an organization engenders at best an uneasiness over its activity, at worst a militant and self-righteous opposition, and thus contributes to the Church’s isolation instead of remedying it. In other words, the sponsorship relation nega¬ tively affects the chances both for the Church to understand the world through CA and for the world to understand the Church through CA. The Clericalization of the Layman The same point has been touched on recently by leading Cath¬ olic clergymen in various countries, in a flush of critical evalua¬ tions of the historical significance and theological foundations of CA. The burden of some of these evaluations is that one unfor¬ tunate effect of CA is a sort of “clericalization of the layman.” One of the most penetrating judgments is offered by an English¬ man, Michael de la Bedoyere, who, in his discussion of CA and related organizations, hits upon the critical difficulty: As leaders and active workers in such societies, Catholics share the strangeness of the Church in the eyes of the world, and, as things are, tend to create the class of what I would call the “clericalist laymen.” ... [They are] inclined to conceive of the work of the lay apostolate as a kind of pale reflection of the priestly apostolate, and this view is often shared by the priests. ... In fact, there can come into existence something like a race apart of semi-clericalized laity whose virtues and talents, great as they may be, are usually the ones least suited to im¬ press the outside world. In the matter of piety ... the taste for retreats, extra devotions, presbyteries, and convents is not in itself and by itself a test of the quality of spiritual virility and toughness that makes the most effective witness to truth in the contemporary world.2 This phenomenon is traced back to the layman’s historical separa¬ tion from the priestly order in the Church (emphasized since the

242

Conclusion

Counter-Reformation) and to his attendant sense of inferiority toward the clergy. As a result, among laymen motivated by reli¬ gious feelings and by apostolic commitments, there emerges “the lay clerical race,’’ which “wants to imitate [the clergy] and wants somehow to get as close to it as possible. Since it cannot possibly achieve this, it seems to be condemned to live in a great limbo of its own where both priestly apostolic effectiveness and lay apos¬ tolic effectiveness are impossible.”8 Other Catholic critics who essentially echo this judgment stress the historical and theological causes behind Catholic Action’s failure to promote a more active, responsible, and effective par¬ ticipation of the layman in the apostolate of the Church.4 They emphasize for instance that no adequate “theology of the laity” exists in the present body of Catholic thought.5 Whatever the merits of these explanations (and this study does not pretend to judge them), my sociological discussion of ACI, and particularly of the role played by the sponsorship relation in shaping ACI’s structure, culture, and policy, points substantially to the same judgment. A Protestant critic, Walther von Loewenich, has sharply criti¬ cized the noted Catholic historian Lortz’s evaluation of CA. While Lortz sees the organized appeal to the laity as a real break¬ through, as the final “coming of age” of the Catholic laity, Loewe¬ nich counters that in fact “Catholic Action is not a lay move¬ ment, but the mobilization of the laity under the direction of the Church” (italics mine). As such, CA has not at all brought about “the end of the age-old clerical domination of the Church. ... Catholic Action has indeed enabled the Church to tighten its hold on the laity even more than ever.”6 The following extensive quote from Pius XII’s speech to the Roman pastors and Lenten preachers on February 28, 1954, lends Loewenich’s bitter criticism obvious support: We are thankful to God that callings to sanctity and to the apostolate are becoming more and more frequent among the laity. It is not dif¬ ficult today to find very generous souls . .. who are willing to help the priest take care of his charges. Thus it will be necessary to discover these souls, in order to avail ourselves of them after they have been solidly formed by us. In view of this it will be necessary to know who

Conclusion

243

they are, what they can do, how they can be effectively employed. ... Once we have discovered and acquainted ourselves with them, we shall have to form them.... Naturally we should not overlook their “human” formation, especially since an accomplished development of one’s natural gifts ... makes apostolic action more effective. You should give particular care to the “intellectual” training of your col¬ laborators, especially so they acquire clear ideas through a profound knowledge of religion. You are aware how important it is, in order for them to better defend the Church, that they be able to speak in public. ... However their spiritual formation should be sought above all.... Then you shall have to employ them.... Be demanding in pointing out their tasks and be exacting in pushing them toward their execu¬ tion. It is clear that they will not have the power to give orders, but neither must they be made into sheer executors. Let them have enough room to develop a spirit of fervent and well-inspired activity: in this way they will also be happier, more active, and more eager to col¬ laborate with you. These authoritative instructions not only constitute to my knowledge the best approximation of an “operational code of the sponsorship relation,” they also unwittingly point out why the whole operation bears within itself the seeds of its failure. If the Church conceives of its appeal to the laymen in such pitilessly instrumental terms, what wonder, then, that the laymen’s orga¬ nizations tend to behave like “ghettos,” or worse, like screens be¬ tween the Church and the world? Pius XII himself, in a speech on December 7, 1947, to the Unione Uomini, deplored these ten¬ dencies, and urged those in his audience not to segregate them¬ selves, but to spread themselves among the others. Yet the will to have the laymen at one’s beck and call, the intention to guaran¬ tee their total “availability,” frustrates the hope of making them into a new bridgehead, a new point of contact between the Church and the world. The same contradiction is revealed in Gedda’s speech of No¬ vember 1952 to the General Assembly of ACI, at the point where he proudly asserted: The ecclesiastical organization, whose roots go back to the twelve Apostles, and which is made up of dioceses and parishes, can today avail itself of a second, subsidiary organization dependent on the Curia. This organization is made up according to the rules and de¬ mands of the organizations of our time, and comprises the lay people,

244

Conclusion

who were supposed to be merely the targets of apostolic work, but who shall instead be the missionaries and apostles of the contemporary world.7 The burden of my sociological analysis of ACI is that this is a contradictory position, that an organization created as a sub¬ sidiary force cannot be expected to perform successfully a task that the main force is itself unable to perform. If the modern world has become estranged from the traditional ecclesiastical organization, it is hard to see how this estrangement can be over¬ come by Catholic Action, conceived and structured as a wholly subservient extension of that traditional organization. Why CA, Then? At this point, one might object: if CA, as a sponsored organiza¬ tion, is bound to fail, if it is unable to perform the tasks in view of which it was sponsored, why should the Church bother to sponsor it in the first place? There are three answers to this question. First, as is apparent in the last quote from Pius XII’s speech, one reason lies in the sheer organized mass power of the sponsored organization. Much of the explanation behind CA’s failure as a connecting link between the Church and the world is to be found in variables (for instance, leadership insecurity) that emphasize CA’s deployability. As Loewenich stresses, CA constitutes first and foremost the Church’s “mobilization” of the laity. As a sheer accumulation of mass power grounded on the controlling motiva¬ tions of fidelity to the hierarchy and a will to serve the Church, the CA organizations constitute a most precious, perhaps an unrenounceable, element in the Church’s strategy. Precisely because they are inwardly not committed to any specific and agreed-upon goal, the CA organizations have a quality of unlimited potential that proportionately increases their value to the Church’s plan. One may recall, again, the critical role ACI played between 1943 and 1945 in supplying the Christian Democratic Party with members, activists, leadership personnel, and other organiza¬ tional resources, or the role it played through the Civic Commit¬ tees in delivering the Catholic and moderate vote to the same party. It is very doubtful that either operation can be considered a real success in fulfilling ACI’s apostolic mission. Yet in both

Conclusion

245

cases ACI served the Church splendidly and helped it to maintain and formidably increase its political hold on the Italian scene. The second main answer to the query, “why CA?” lies in CA’s relatively high fitness for integrative tasks, for defense rather than conquest, for guarding the moral and spiritual safety of the laity rather than for actually deploying them in apostolic action. The ACI parish organizations, in particular, are settings where the Catholic laymen are at ease, feel at home, and strengthen in one another a sense of belonging to the parish community and to the Church. I have not emphasized this previously because (as I stressed in Chapter 4) my main concern was to determine if and how ACI managed to establish a certain relationship with the outside world. If, as I tried to show, ACI represents a failure from this standpoint, this does not mean that it has not attained remarkable successes in its internal dimension. Here again is an ambivalence in several critical variables, which, though making ACI unfit to pursue external goals, may positively contribute to making ACI a well-integrated organiza¬ tion. In this perspective, the “great limbo’’ of La Bedoyere looks instead like a happy reserve of the more faithful Catholics; their strong identification with the Church and distaste for the world’s appeals is sustained by the very commitment to “apostolate” that otherwise remains sterile and ineffectual. The idea of a lay apostolate, therefore, becomes a means for fostering the layman’s attachment to the Church. If the Mormon Church gives “apostolic” assignments to faltering members pre¬ cisely to strengthen them in their faith, a somewhat similar strategy seems to be followed by the Catholic Church. Witness the implication of the following statement by a noted French Jesuit, Father Daniélou, who is appraising the significance of the “specialized” CA movements: “In the Parisian suburbs I realized that a sixteen-year-old girl cannot possibly save her faith and her Christian life as she enters the milieu of a factory as it now exists everywhere, unless she is a militant.8 Finally, CA constitutes an appropriate structure for solving one of the Church’s recurrent problems—the problem (empha¬ sized by Max Weber) of controlling religious virtuosity among those faithful who are not charismatically qualified.9 Once the

246

Conclusion

framework of the sponsored organization exists, the Church not only faces that phenomenon unworriedly, but, through the orga¬ nization itself, can afford to seek actively an increasing “democ¬ ratization of grace” (to employ Weber’s expression). It can then face the multiplication of “callings to religious virtuosity” among the charismatically unqualified as no longer a potential threat, but indeed as a very promising and fruitful development. Of course this is only possible when the sponsorship relation places and keeps the lay organizations under the control of the sponsoring institution. I will finally suggest a methodological answer to the problem I have posed, the problem of why CA should exist if it is incompe¬ tent. The reader has been repeatedly warned that my analytical concern with the sponsorship relation would lead me to empha¬ size its effects, and particularly its negative effects. Thus the image of ACI I have given is a consciously unbalanced one, resulting as it does from systematic stress on the incompetence engendered by the sponsorship relation. I must point out once more the limi¬ tations of this approach. An organization’s competence is not purely an attribute of it, in the sense that no concrete organiza¬ tion is purely and simply competent, or purely and simply in¬ competent. Competence is, rather, a variable, admitting of de¬ grees ranging from a minimum to a maximum but probably nowhere attaining either extreme. The sponsorship relation negatively affects ACI’s competence, seriously limiting it; but it does not by the same token wholly exclude it. ACI is, in other words, a relatively incompetent, not an absolutely incompetent, organization. It has shown in the past and it shows in the present a measure, however limited, of ability to establish some contact with the historical environment of its own action; it does possess some apostolic effectiveness. Herein lies, probably, another rea¬ son why the Church appears unwilling to dispense with it. In the World but not Of the World? In Social Relations in the Urban Parish, an American Cath¬ olic sociologist, Father Fichter, gives a typology of parishioners, and thus characterizes the motivational makeup of the “nuclear parishioners” (from whose ranks come most of the members and all the leaders of the lay Catholic organizations): “The religious

Conclusion

247

institution is pivotal for him, and in this regard he tends to ‘go against’ the culture in which he lives. If a clear-cut distinction could be made between the secular and the sacred institutions of our culture, it may be said that this Catholic is marginal to the former and nuclear to the latter.”10 The remarkable point in this passage is that Fichter shifts —inadvertently, so far as one can detect from the context— from a description of the place the secular institutions have in the nuclear parishioner’s motivational system to a description of the place the nuclear parishioner has in the secular institutions themselves! He thus says in effect that a person who cannot take the world seriously cannot be taken seriously by the world; or, what amounts to the same thing, that it is impossible to be in but not of the world. Through this sort of slip of the pen, Fichter offers us a key to the ‘‘revenge of the dilemma,” to all the dysfunctional ef¬ fects of the sponsorship relation on the ‘‘goal competence” of the sponsored organization. The religious ethos cannot have a real impact on the contemporary world unless its evaluation of the world’s problems starts somehow from within the world, and takes the world’s actual, historically given problems to heart. But those vessels of religious ethos, the churches, may be unable to undertake such an evaluation without threatening their own sense of distinctiveness, superiority, and value integrity. This appears to be the case in a special manner with the Catholic Church.11 The import of Fichter’s slip, then, is that in the fact of the process of secularization, Christ’s commandment that his faith¬ ful be “in the world but not of the world” projects an impos¬ sible assignment.12 The critical condition for a real, effective presence in the world appears to be a capacity for the Church to share the world’s own concerns. At least in terms of such a “secular-minded” analysis as sociological analysis tends to be, such capacity for sharing seems impossible to achieve unless the Church is willing to take serious risks for its own sense of identity. Thus, from a sociological standpoint, the Church’s particular pattern of response to its predicament, as embodied in the spon¬ sored organizations, appears to constitute in fact no effective re¬ sponse at all.

Notes

.

Notes ACI publications, especially Iniziativa, are inconsistent in the amount and type of publication data they include; they are cited here as fully as possible. Complete titles, authors' names, and publication data for works cited in short form in the Notes can be found in the Bibliography, pp. 271-74.

Introduction 1. For a review of the organizational developments in various countries, see Falconi, La Chiesa. 2. For a perceptive discussion of the ways in which the Catholic Church became a “closed” Church, see Heer, Die dritte Kraft, particularly the sec¬ tions “Trient und ihre Folgen” and “Die beide feindliche Brueder in Weltkatholizimus: Integralismus und offene Katholizitaet”; and contrast his treat¬ ment of the medieval Church in The Medieval World (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1962). 3. On this subject, see LaPalombara, Interest Groups in Italian Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964). 4. My occasional references to this process mostly refer to its treatment by Weber, particularly in the posthumously published parts of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, because a cursory survey of recent literature on the sociology of religion has not turned up any treatment comparable in depth of understand¬ ing and incisiveness of expression. (They have not yet been translated into English; I have used the recent Italian translation edited by Rossi—Econo¬ mia e Società.) For some recent discussions of secularization, see Matthes, “Bemerkungen zur Saekularisierungthese in der neueren Religionssoziologie,” in Goldschmidt and Matthes, Probleme der Religionssoziologie (Koeln & Opladen: Westdeutscher, 1962); Birnbaum, “Saekularisation,” pp. 68ff; Desroche, “Religion et développement. Le Thème de leurs rapports reciproques et ses variations,” Archives de sociologie des religions, voi. 6 (JulyDec. 1961), pp. 3ff. Acquaviva, in L’eclissi del sacro, presents ample empirical documentation of the phenomenon. A valuable critical discussion of the secularization thesis is offered in Luckmann, Religion in der modernen Gesellschaft. Luck-

252

Notes to Pages 3-4

mann argues that what has been taking place is a crisis of "Kirchlichkeit,” not necessarily of “Religiositaet.” As he incisively puts it, “Der Prozess der Saekularisation hat entweder die sozial Topographie oder den inneren Gehalt der Kirchlichkeit entscheidend veraendert” (“The process of secu¬ larization has decisively changed either the position of the churches among social institutions or the inner content of the churches diemselves”); but religion may survive in other institutional forms. Luckmann also satisfac¬ torily treats the difficult problem of the influence of recent religious de¬ velopments in the United States on the “secularization thesis.” Lately, Mar¬ tin has advanced a proposal “Toward Eliminating the Concept of Seculari¬ zation,” in Gould, ed., Penguin Survey of the Social Sciences, 1963 (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1965), pp. i68ff. Chapter one 1. In the posthumously published part of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. 2. See die opening pages of Ranke, Roemischen Paepste. 3. As Newman once wrote, not only to the extent that it controls the State, but by its very nature, Christianity constitutes, as well as “a philosophy” and “a religious rite,” “a political power.” See the Preface to Via Media, quoted by Rommen in The State in Catholic Thought (London: Herder, 1945), p.482. 4. Weber, Economia e società, voi. 2, p. 521. 5. For a more recent statement of a similar view, see the opening chapter of Tolies, Meeting House and Counting House, especially p. 10. 6. For literature references, see note 4 to my Introduction. 7. See Meinecke, Machiavellianism. 8. On the “immanentist” implications of natural-law thought, see Orestano. Introduzione allo studio storico del diritto romano, second ed. (Torino: Giappichelli, 1963), pp. 200-201. 9. Weber, Economia e società, voi. 1, p. 502; see also his Sociology of Reli¬ gion, pp. 216-17. 10. This hypothesis, that the institutionalization of democracy weakens the Church’s bargaining power with the State, seems confirmed by Brenan’s remark that when serious political crises threaten the secular foundations of the political order, the Church reveals a new, unexpected vitality. See the Preface to Spanish Labyrinth. 11. Since pracdcally all of this book concerns exclusively the Catholic Church, I should mention that many diagnoses by Protestant scholars and religious leaders confirm the picture that has been all too quickly sketched here, and they do so from the standpoint of their respective churches. See, for instance, Gogarten, Verhaengnis und Hoffnung der Neuzeit: Die Saeku¬ larisation as theologisches Problem (Stuttgart: Vorwerk, 1963); Wendland, Die Kirche in der modernen Gesellschaft (Hamburg: Im Furche-Verlag, 1956); Banning, “Entkirchlichung-Entchristlichung” in Der Auftrag der Kirche in der modernen Welt (Zurich: Zwingli, i960), pp. 1578:; Hough,

Notes to Pages 5-10

253

The World and the Church (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1955). I quote from this last work, p. 136. “The illusion of a Christian Church at home in Christendom and in con¬ temporary culture has been shattered. The Christian Church must recognize that it is a minority movement which is not entirely at home in human cul¬ ture and which at the same time has no other place than human culture in which to work and to live out its faith. ... The Church must... recognize that its inner life and external existence are condemned to death by the dominant social forces of our time and that it has a Christian task in that very world which rejects it.... The Church speaks a foreign language to a disinterested world.” 12. Weber, Economia e società, voi. 2, p. 501; here, as well as in other parts of the volume (which is full of repetitions, since Weber never was able to edit a final draft) are mentioned some of the sociologically relevant rea¬ sons for this peculiarity of the Church. 13. Dansette, Destin du catholicisme, pp. 11-12. 14. This connection between the breakup of the religious unity of the West and the breakthrough of secularization is also recognized by Protestant students. See Gogarten, pp. 137!? {op. cit., note 11); and Oppen, “Die Saekularisierung.” 15. On the significance of the Council of Trent, see Loewenich, Modern Catholicism, passim; and Heer, Die dritte Kraft. 16. Salvatorelli, Chiesa e stato, pp. 4-5. 17. Cardinal Suhard, quoted by Dansette, Destin du catholicisme, p. 76. 18. On this theory, see a study by a Protestant scholar (who was previously a Jesuit): Albornoz, Roman Catholicism and Religious Freedom (Geneva, N.Y.: World Council of Churches, 1957). This well-documented study shows the growth among theologians of a current of opinion opposed to the one that employed the “thesis-hypothesis” distinction; this new current of opin¬ ion was clearly a minority affair under Pius XII, but it has been largely vindicated by the Second Vatican Council. 19. On the diplomacy of the Holy See, see Graham, Vatican Diplomacy: A Study of Church and State on the International Plane (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959). 20. See Jemolo, Chiesa e stato, p. 439. 21. Ibid., p. 684. 22. Gramsci, Note sul Machiavelli, p. 239. 23. Weber, Economia e società, voi. 2, p. 522. 24. On the “stereotyping” tendency of religious charisma, see the first page of Weber, Sociology of Religion. 25. On Maurras, see E. Weber, Action Frangaise (Stanford: Stanford Uni¬ versity Press, 1962). 26. The phenomenon of a religious force appearing to the eyes of a rising class “guilty by association” is the object of one of the generalizations in Malewski, “Der empirische Gehalt der Theorie des historischen Material-

254

Notes to Pages 11-20

ismus,” Koelner Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, voi. 11, no. 2, pp. *8iff. 27. On Ultramontanism, see Aubert, Le pontificai de Pie IX, passim. 28. Perhaps the most useful work in English on Catholic movements and parties is Fogarty, Christian Democracy. 29. On the concept of subculture, see Almond, “Comparative Political Systems,” in Macridis and Brown, eds., Comparative Politics: Notes and Readings (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey, 1961), pp. 438-54, especially pp. 45iff. 30. On the Catholic parties, see Fogarty, Christian Democracy, and Maier, Revolution und Kirche. Chapter two 1. Aubert, Le pontificai de Pie IX, p. 83. 2. Candeloro, Il movimento cattolico, p. 118. 3. Ibid. 4. The best work in Italian on the Opera is Gambasin, Il movimento sociale nell’Opera dei Congressi (1874-1904) (Roma: Edizioni dell’Univer¬ sità Gregoriana, 1958). 5. Civardi, Compendio di storia dell'A CI, p. 73. 6. Jemolo, Chiesa e stato, p. 351. 7. Scoppola, Dal neoguelpsmo, p. 73. On Paganuzzi, see De Rosa, Storia politica dell’ACI, voi. 1, pp. 153-54; and Gambasin (op. cit., note 4). 8. The left-right continuum is of course studied in all the previously men¬ tioned books on the Italian Catholic movement. Unfortunately there are no systematic discussions of it in the perspective of political sociology, such as the discussion of French Catholicism in Rémond, “Droite et gauche dans le catholicisme fran^ais contemporain,” Revue frangaise de science politique, voi. 8 (1958), pp. 3-4. 9. The depth of the emerging conflict appears from an article by a leader of the intransigente "old guard,” Giuseppe Sacchetti, quoted by De Rosa, Storia politica dell’ACI, p. 253. In his article Sacchetti addressed himself to the “Christian democrats” led by Murri, in the following words: “We are divided among ourselves, first, in our judgment on the Italian revolution. This is not simply a matter of shades of interpretation, but involves the prin¬ ciples of justice and right. Second, we are divided over the concept of freedom and how we should employ it in public life. Third, we are divided over the basic notion of what Catholic action is all about: some see it as essentially a religious and social activity, others as a social and political activity.” xo. On the Patto Gentiioni, see Candeloro, Il movimento cattolico, pp. 352-68. 11. The basic work on the Volksverein is Ritter, Volksverein. 12. See Magri, L’Azione cattolica in Italia, voi. 1 (Milan: La Fiaccola, n.d.), pp. 298-300. 13. On the PPI, see De Rosa, Storia del partito popolare (Bari: Laterza,

Notes to Pages 20-46

255

14. Civardi, Compendio di storia dell’ACI, p. 167. 15. Candeloro, Il movimento cattolico, p. 391. 16. The novelty of Pius XI’s understanding of Catholic Action was acutely perceived by Gramsci, who wrote in one of his “prison notebooks”: “Catholic Action as it emerged after 1848 was very different from present day CA as reorganized by Pius XI.” From Note sul Machiavelli, p. 225. 17. Jacini, Storia del PPI, pp. 115-16. 18. Civardi, Compendio di storia dell’ACI, p. 189. 19. Ibid., p. 181. 20. Candeloro, Il movimento cattolico, pp. 488-89. 21. Civardi, Compendio di storia dell’ACI, pp. 223-24. 22. Ibid.) see also Gedda, Addio Gioventù, passim. 23. This development is discussed in Webster, The Cross and the Fasces. 24. Falconi, La Chiesa, p. 361 25. See Webster, The Cross and the Fasces. 26. See interviews no. 25, p. 2; and no. 58, p. 2. 27. Civardi, Compendio di storia dell’ACI, pp. 200-202. Chapter three 1. Iniziativa, voi. 8, no. 10 (Oct. 1955), p. 10. 2. See SSRC interview no. 70, p. 3. 3. See Movimento Seniores (Roma: GIAC, 1957), passim. 4. See SSRC interview no. 72, p. 4. 5. Iniziativa, voi. 8, no. 9 (Sept. 1955), p. 2. 6. See SSRC interview no. 15, pp. 2-3. 7. Source of statistics: Falconi, La Chiesa, pp. 399-408. 8. Candeloro, Il movimento cattolico, pp. 224-279. See SSRC interview no. 25, p. 6. 10. "L’Action catholique en Italie,” (Rome, n.d.), p. 3. This is a promo¬ tional leaflet prepared for the Second World Congress of the Lay Apostolate, held in Rome, in 1957. 11. Quoted by Civardi, Compendio di storia dell’ACI, p. 191. 12. Ibid. 13. Iniziativa, March 1953, p. 8. 14. On the possibility of a tie of this kind arising out of membership in an ideological group, see Shils, “Primordial, Personal, Sacred, and Civil Ties,” p. 4. Chapter four 1. On the Weberian theory of the institutionalization of charisma, see Bendix, Max Weber, especially pp. 310-20. For another perspective on the problems of Amtscharisma, see O’Dea, “Five Dilemmas in the Institutional¬ ization of Religion,” in Schneider, Religion, Culture, and Society, pp. 58088.

256

Notes to Pages 46-59

2. See for instance a passage from a speech by Pius XII to the Catholics of Rome on February 10, 1952: “It is the whole world that needs to be remade from the ground up, to be transformed from wild into human, from human into divine.... Millions of men are clamoring for a change in course, and one looks at Christ’s own Church as the only helmsman capable of accom¬ plishing such a great enterprise while respecting human freedom.” 3. The first, as I shall argue, is the standpoint of by far the greatest part of contemporary sociological work on organizations; but a concern with the second has been growing lately. Two recent surveys of this field of study are Mayntz, Soziologie der Organisation (Reinbeck: Rowohlt, 1963); and Blau and Scott, Formal Organizations (San Francisco: Chandler, 1962). Many of the more important writings in the field, or excerpts from them, are col¬ lected in two readers: Etzioni, Complex Organizations; and Merton et al.. Reader in Bureaucracy (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1952). A comprehensive assessment of the major lines of research is Gouldner’s “Organizational Analysis,” in Merton et al., Sociology Today (N.Y.: Basic Books, 1959), pp. 400-28. 4. This point is developed with reference to political sociology and socio¬ logical theory, in Poggi, “A Main Theme of Contemporary Sociological Analysis: Its Achievements and Limitations,” British Journal of Sociology, voi. 16, no. 4, pp. 283-94. 5. See, for instance, my discussion of the obscurities and gaps in ACI’s constitution, in Chapter 5. 6. For a statement of some major generalizations relating to this set of problems, see Selznick, “An Approach to a Theory of Bureaucracy," Ameri¬ can Sociological Review, voi. 8, no. 1, pp. 47-54. 7. The concept of the Communist Party as a charismatic institution is not merely a polemical gambit of hostile Western sociologists. The same concept, with reference to the phenomenon of “Stalinism,” has been brilliantly de¬ veloped by a bona fide Eastern European Marxist, the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, in Der Mensch ohne Alternative (Muenchen: Piper, i960), pp. 7ff. 8. This way of conceptualizing the process of secularization reflects the hypothesis that there is a connection (both historical and analytical) be¬ tween the breakthrough of that process and the end of religious unity in the West; see note 14 to Chapter 1. Tocqueville was at the same time recognizing and raising the problems of that connection when he wrote in his first im¬ pressions of the United States: “Taken all together they seem a religious people.... How is it the diversity of sects does not engender indifference, if not on the surface at least within? There’s what remains to be discovered.” Quoted in Pierson, Tocqueville in America, abridged edition (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959), p. 44. 9. See note 15 to Chapter 1. 10. On this particular feature, see Congar, Theologie du laicat. n. A major example of this progressive advancement of our understand-

Notes to Page 60

257

ing of a total historical phenomenon through the development of contrast¬ ing analytical constructs may be seen in the multiple explanations offered for the evolution of German social democracy between the end of the nine¬ teenth century and the beginning of World War I. The most important sociological interpretation, first suggested by Weber and then worked out by Michels, stresses the bureaucratization of political personnel, and the transformation of the SPD’s leadership into a Bonzentum primarily inter¬ ested in maintaining its own oligarchical control over the party. Not as a scholar but as a political opponent, Lenin proposed an alternative interpre¬ tation, something between a charge hurled at German social democracy for having consciously “gone over to the enemy,” and a critique of errors and weaknesses in the party’s ideological line. Recently a German historian, Matthias, in “Kautsky und der Kautskyanismus,” in Fetscher, ed., Marxismusstudien. Zweite Folge (Tiibingen: Mohr, 1957), pp. 151-97, has de¬ veloped and documented this second explanation. He has interpreted “Kautskyanism” as the product of a complex historical situation, through which a basically “Lassallian” party had acquired a superficially “Marxist” consciousness of itself. A few years before, an American sociologist, Rose Laub Coser, in An Analysis of the Early German Socialist Movement (unpub¬ lished M.A. thesis, Columbia University, 1951), had advanced a third in¬ terpretation stressing the changes in the composition of the social-democratic electorate. For a later discussion, see Roth, The Social Democrats in Im¬ perial Germany (Totowa, N.J.: Bedminster, 1963). None of these interpreta¬ tions rules the others out, except to the extent that it necessarily denies their exhaustive, exclusive character; each of them is to be at the same time utilized and discounted in a synthetic viewpoint. However, the analytical constructs employed by each interpretation (the “iron law of oligarchy”; the merely “integrative” function of “Kautskyanism”; the pressures originat¬ ing from the social base of the party’s electoral growth) owe much of their interpretive significance to the highly selective manner in which each was originally employed to make sense of a certain aspect of concrete reality. Similarly, if the poor may sit with the eminent, the concept from which my analysis of ACI develops and to which it returns time and again—the sponsorship relation—is but an attempt to make sense of a reality that un¬ doubtedly admits (and requires) alternative and contrasting interpretations. My job as I view it is to indicate a certain category of reasons why for cer¬ tain purposes ACI appears to be an unhealthy, incompetent organization. Nevertheless, there are other reasons why ACI is unhealthy, and other pur¬ poses for which it is neither unhealthy nor incompetent. 12. See Deutsch, The Nerves of Government (N.Y.: Free Press, 1963), p. 96; “Learning capacity can be tested by two independent sets of operations: first, by outside tests of a system’s overall performance in a given situation, much as the learning capacity of rats is tested in a maze and that of armies is tested in battle; and second, by analysis of its inner structure.” 13. Selznick, Leadership in Administration.

258

Notes to Pages 65-76

Chapter five 1. See Civardi, Compendio di storia dell’ACI, Chapter 1. 2. The flexibility of such accommodations is apparent from an episode recounted by Truman in Catholic Action. The top ecclesiastical body gov¬ erning the Australian Catholic Action movement had, up to a certain time, a lay member, Mr. Santamaria; when he resigned, no successor was appointed. 3. However the ACI arrangements have been imitated by CA in Spain, for instance. On other types of structures see Falconi, La Chiesa. 4. Garrone, UAction catholique, p. 41. 5. Pius XII’s statement is quoted by Msgr. Urbani in a lecture now printed in Azione missionaria (Roma: Presidenza Generale ACI, n.d.), p. 60. Cardi¬ nal Montini’s speech was made at the Second World Congress of the Lay Apostolate, in Rome in 1957. It appears in Coscienza, voi. 11, p. 21. 6. Parsons, “Suggestions for a Sociological Approach to the Theory of Organizations,” now in Etzioni, Complex Organizations, p. 36. 7. See Merton, Social Theory, pp. 368-84. 8. See the speech by Pius XII quoted in the lecture by Msgr. Urbani re¬ ferred to in note 5, in which he said: “It would be a mistake to suppose that within the dioceses ... the lay apostolate has a structure parallel to that of the hierarchical apostolate, and that this prevents the bishop from making the activity of the lay apostolate in the parish depend on the authority of the pastors. He may do so, and in fact as a rule all such activities, to the extent that they take place in the parishes, are under the authority of the pastors.” 9. See SSRC interview no. 15; and Iniziativa, voi. 9, no. 5, p. 10. 10. GIAC and FUCI, for instance, are often in conflict over the question of those GIAC members who go to the university and therefore qualify for membership in FUCI, but might elect to remain in GIAC. FUCI claims that they constitute its “natural audience,” and GIAC protests that its local units cannot afford to lose their best-qualified potential leaders. This con¬ trast is often discussed at the local levels; at the national level it was men¬ tioned by a number of ACI leaders interviewed for the SSRC project. See interviews no. 70, 73, and 75. 11. I summarize and paraphrase Selznick, Leadership in Administration, pp. 62-64. 12. Azione missionaria, p. 67 (op. cit., note 6). 13. Bortignon, Aspetti e compiti dell’Azione Cattolica (Padova, n.d.), p. xo. 14. For some suggestive observations about the relationship between Selznick’s theory of “leadership” and Parsons’s theory of the "four system prob¬ lems,” see Landsberger, “Parsons’s Theory of Organizations,” in Black, Theories of Talcott Parsons, particularly p. 230. 15. Bourdet, “Action catholique et repartition des pouvoirs dans l’eglise,” Masses Ouvrières, voi. 9 (April 1956), p. 7. 16. See Merton, Social Theory, Chapter x, particularly pp. 23-25. 17. Arendt, Origins, pp. 364!! and 392s.

Notes to Pages 80-95

259

Chapter six 1. Fichter, Urban Parish, pp. 29E See also Carrier, Psychosociologie de Vappartenance religieuse, p. 172. 2. See SSRC interview no. 41, pp. 9-10. Of course this is a partial view of the reasons for these leaders’ long tenure; a high degree of “organizational indispensability” is likely to be another such reason. 3. Iniziativa, voi. 10, no. 5, p. 5. 4. See Merton, Social Theory, Chapters 9-10. 5. The distinction between these two dimensions of the social situation of elites in a given setting is discussed by Kornhauser, Politics of Mass So¬ ciety, Chapter 2. 6. One of the best discussions of this “theorem” is still Simmel, “Super¬ ordination and Subordination; 1, Introduction,” now in Wolff, ed., The So¬ ciology of Georg Simmel (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1950), pp. i8iff. The dis¬ tinction between the legitimacy and the effectiveness of a political system is discussed by Lipset in Political Man, pp. 77ft. 7. See an article by Father Bucciarelli, “La funzione dell’assistente nella sezione aspiranti,” in Assistenti di Gioventù, voi. 4, especially p. 7. 8. Contradictions of this kind are rife in various aspects of social life, and while they can never be eliminated, they can be kept under control in vari¬ ous ways. See the discussion of Simon’s criticism of “administrative proverbs” by Bendix, Work and Authority in Industry (N.Y.: Wiley, 1956), Chapter 4. 9. For this characterization of the relationship between a member’s stand¬ ing and a group’s own norms, see The Human Group, by Homans, whose discussion is largely based on Whyte’s Streetcorner Society. 10. This tendency is discussed in Eisenstadt, From Generation to Gen¬ eration. 11. Eisenstadt also suggests that age groups tend to view people from older age groups with scarce sympathy. 12. The effectiveness of a “sacramental life” is to be understood, sociologi¬ cally speaking, in terms of W. I. Thomas’s theorem, “If men define situa¬ tions as real, they are real in their consequences.” 13. On this subject, see, in the final chapter, my discussion of some per¬ ceptive remarks by La Bedoyere, in The Layman. 14. See O’Dea, “Five Dilemmas in the Institutionalization of Religion,” now in Schneider, Religion, Culture, and Society, pp. 580®. 15. See Falconi, Gedda, Chapter 7. 16. All this information comes from SSRC interview no. 41. 17. This expression has been used by a member of the ACI Presidenza Generale; see SSRC interview no. 16, p. 3. 18. “Atti quattrogiomi nazionale presidenti diocesani GIAC 1953,” Tec¬ nica di apostolato, voi. 1 (1953). P- 9°19. Iniziativa, voi. 4, no. 2, p. 1. 20. Selznick, Leadership in Administration, p. 14. 21. In a letter to me, Professor Juan Linz of Columbia University has

26o

Notes to Pages p5-106

pointed out that this unprotected condition of the leaders has a further dysfunctional consequence. It allows them to escape criticism voiced by co¬ leaders or members, even when it may be justified by their personal lack of commitment, simply by pointing to the overriding power enjoyed by the bishop, the parish priest, the ecclesiastical Assistant, etc. 22. Fichter, Urban Parish, p. 34. 23. On the distinction between these two types of “ethics,” and their bear¬ ing on the moral structure of political leadership, see “Politics as a Voca¬ tion,” in Gerth and Mills, ed., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. 77ff. 24. See Selznick, Leadership in Administration, pp. 74ff, and p. 79, note 14. 25. Fichter, Urban Parish, p. 38. 26. See La Bedoyere, The Layman, as well as my discussion in Chapter 17. Chapter seven 1. This position has been taken by two leaders—a layman and a priest— interviewed for the SSRC project; see interview no. 60, pp. 3-4, and no. 24, pp. 9-10. 2. Hertzler, Social Institutions, p. 181. This point had already been made by Simmel. 3. Fichter, Urban Parish, p. 232. 4. Ritter, Volksverein. The expression “social chaplain” is used on p. 488; the contrasts with the diocesan clergy are discussed at various points. 5. See an article by Mario Puccinelli, “Studiano l’Azione Cattolica come in una facoltà universitaria,” in Iniziativa, voi. 10, no. 6, p. 2, which dis¬ cusses a program initiated by the Presidenza Generale to make up for this deficiency in the priests’ seminary training. There are no indications that the program had much success. 6. LaPalombara appended some comments on rapport to his report on a series of interviews with GIAC national leaders. Therein he remarked on the extent to which lay and clerical leaders spoke the same language, ex¬ pressed the same preoccupations, and shared the same perspectives. See SSRC interview no. 60, pp. 4-5. 7. On this concept, see Heintz, Einfuehrung in die soziologische Theorie (Stuttgart: Enke, 1962), Chapter xi. 8. For example, see Wray, “Marginal Men of Industry: The Foremen,” American Journal of Sociology, voi. 54, no. 3 (1948-49), pp. 298-301. 9. See Granick, The Industrial Firm in the USSR; and Berliner, Factory and Manager in the USSR (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1957-) 10. See Granick, The Industrial Firm in the USSR, pp. 224-26. 11. Ibid., p. 206. 12. L’Assistente ecclesiastico, voi. 24, no. 3, p. 129.

Notes to Pages 106-19

26l

13. L’Osservatore Romano, July 8, 1959, p. 1. 14. See the recommendations addressed to the ecclesiastical Assistants of Aspiranti sections of GIAC by a well-known Catholic educator, Father Silvio Riva, reprinted from his book L’azione pastorale del sacerdote dei ragazzi, in Assistenti Gioventù, voi. 4, p. 16: “The priests who devote them¬ selves to the education of boys must recognize the necessity of a revision of traditional methods, and undertake seriously and generously a search for more effective methods.. .. The priest ought to dismiss a certain kind of presumption.. . . He must study, and must seek ways of bringing forth from his pastoral mission a more mature fruit.” (Emphasis in the text.) 15. See Merton, Social Theory, pp. 368-84. Chapter eight 1. Selznick, Leadership in Administration, p. 63. 2. Ibid., Chapter 4. 3. Der Laie, p. 75. 4. Some discussions of this phenomenon are now assembled in Schneider, Religion, Culture, and Society, Part 5. 5. It is worth noting that in some countries in Western Europe where the Church became disestablished after the Reformation, to this day the Church is remarkably able to interpret the religious needs of the lower strata. See Linz, “Religion and Politics,” in Lipset and Linz, The Social Bases of Po¬ litical Diversity (mimeographed manuscript, Palo Alto: Center for Advanced Behavioral Studies, 1956). 6. Pin, Pratique religieuse, pp. 253!!. 7. Ritter, Volksverein, p. 437. 8. On the worker-priest movement, see Dansette, Destin du catholicisme, Chapters 5 and 6, and Appendix 2. In 1965 the French episcopate decided to undertake again, in modified form, the “experiment” of the worker-priests. 9. Eisenstadt, From Generation to Generation, pp. g4ff; Hollingshead, Elmtown’s Youth, pp. 254EE. 10. Atti dell’undicesimo congresso lavoratori della GIAC (Roma: AVE, !957)< PP- 19-20xi. Fogarty, Christian Democracy, p. 275. 12. Ibid. 13. Gedda, Addio Gioventù, pp. 21-22. 14. Christian Democracy, p. 275. 15. Carretto, “Unità e specializzazione,” Iniziativa, voi. 3, no. 10, p. 8. 16. Ibid. 17. Rossi, La terra dei vivi, p. 113. 18. “Atti quattrogiorni nazionale presidenti diocesani GIAC 1953,” Tec¬ nica di Apostolato, voi. 1 (1953), pp. 44-45. 19. See SSRC interview no. 75, pp. 4-5. 20. See SSRC interviews no. 72, p. 5; no. 24; p. 4; and no. 68, pp. 1-2.

262

Notes to Pages 119-31

21. Eisenstadt, From Generation to Generation, pp. 36, 50, 187. 22. See, for example, Vautier, Initiation, pp. 93®; and Garrone, L'Action catholique, p. 46. 23. Pin, Pratique religieuse, p. 251. 24. See “Friedliche Erwaegungen ueber das Pfarreiprinzip,” in Kirchgaesser, ed., Pfarrgemeinde, Pfarrgottesdienst (Freiburg: Fischer, 1948). See also “Betrieb und Pfarrei,” Stimmen der Zeit, voi. 153, no. 6, pp. 401 ff. 25. Mueller, “Das Gespraech,” pp. 213®. 26. See Pin, "Social Classes and Their Religious Approaches,” in Schnei¬ der, Religion, Culture, and Society, pp. 41 iff. 27. For information on the United States, see Fichter, Urban Parish; on France, see Pin, Pratique religieuse; on Germany, see Benz, Missionarische Seelsorge. My Protestant sources include Freytag, Die Kirchgemeinde, Chapter 3. 28. From a statement issued by the Assembly of French Cardinals, quoted in Bazelaire, Les laics, p. 58. 29. Fogarty, Christian Democracy; Benz, Missionarische Seelsorge. With reference to the French JOC, see also Bosworth, Catholicism and Crisis, pp. 40iff. 30. On this episode, see Dansette, Destin du catholicisme, pp. 4oiff. 31. See interviews no. 75, p. 5; and no. 68, p. 2. 32. See references to these authors, as well as further considerations, in Carrier, Psychosociologie, pp. 22iff. Chapter nine 1. On this "twofold totality” of the Church’s claim, see Gramsci’s remark in Note sul Machiavelli, p. 229. 2. This distinction was first proposed in Geiger, Die soziale Schichtung des deutschen Volkes (Stuttgart: Enke, 1932) pp. 77ff. It has been echoed lately in Matthias, "Kautsky und der Kautskyanismus,” in Fetscher, ed., Marxismusstudien. Zweite Folge (Tubingen: Mohr, 1957), pp. i5iff, as well as in Linz, “An Authoritarian Regime: Spain,” in Allardt and Littunen, eds., Cleavages, Ideologies, and Party Systems, Transactions of the Westermark Society, voi. 10 (Helsinki: The Academic Bookstore, 1964), pp. 2giff. 3. See Darbon, Le Conflit; and E. Weber, Action Frangaise (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962). 4. Bollettino Ufficiale dell 'A CI, voi. 20, no. 11-12, pp. 5-6. 5. Two recent short summaries are in Truman, Catholic Action, Chapter 2; and Bosworth, Catholicism and Crisis, pp. 3ogff. 6. “Atti quattrogiorni nazionale presidenti diocesani GIAC 1953,” Tec¬ nica di apostolato, voi. 1 (1953), pp. 80-81. 7. Movimento Laureati di A.C.,” in L’anima religiosa del mondo d’oggi (Roma: Studium, 1957), p. 16.

Notes to Pages 132-3J

263

8. Quoted in Iniziativa, voi. 4, no. 1, p. 2. 9. Iniziativa, voi. 9, no. 10, p. 2. 10. Two recent reviews of this line of research are Birnbaum, “The So¬ ciological Study of Ideology (1940-1960): A Trend Report and Bibliogra¬ phy,” Current Sociology, voi. 9, no. 2 (i960), pp. 91-172; and Lenk, “Problemgeschichtliche Einleitung,” in Lenk, ed.. Ideologie, pp. igff. 11. The manipulative conception is prevalent in Rostow, The Dynamics of Soviet Society (N.Y.: Norton, 1953); for a criticism of this position, see the Preface to Marcuse, Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1958). Note: this preface is not reproduced in the paper¬ back edition put out by Vintage Books (New York, 1961). The integrative concept is adopted in the study of “Kautskyanism” by Matthias (op. cit., note 2). 12. Bendix and Lipset, "Political Sociology,” pp. 7gff. 13. See Poggi, “Lo studio dell’ideologia nella sociologia dei partiti poli¬ tici,” Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, voi. 2, no. 2, pp. 205ff. 14. Among the many Protestant sources which suggest that the Catholic Church is not alone in suffering from a loss of the significance of its ethos for the modern world, see Hough, The World and the Church; and Kraemer, Theology of the Laity. On p. 37, the latter quotes a passage from Signs of Renewal, a pamphlet issued by the World Council of Churches: “Do not most of the Church members live a schizophrenic life having two different sets of ethics, one for private Sunday life and the other for their behavior in the everyday world?” 15. See Weber, The Sociology of Religion, pp. 216-17; also Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (N.Y.: Macmillan, 1931), pp. 247ff. 16. Haettich, Wirtschaftsordnung. 17. Maier, Revolution und Kirche, pp.73-74. 18. See Pareto, Trattato di sociologia generale (Milano: Comunità, 1964), paragraphs 2, ii2ff. See also Parsons, Structure of Social Action, pp. 241®. On the “organicist” bias of Catholic social thought (and occasionally on its bearing on the question of the contemporary relevance of that thought), see Troeltsch’s chapter “Medieval Catholicism,” particularly pp. 27gf (op. cit., note 15). 19. The distinction between Gesinnungsethik and Verantwortungsethik is developed in Weber’s famous lecture on “Politics as a Vocation,” now in Gerth and Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York, Oxford, 1947). 20. Scoppola, Dal neoguelfismo, pp. 83-94. 21. Cameron, “Catholicism and Political Mythology,” Blackfriars, June i960, pp. 230®. 22. Quoted by Falconi on p. 174 of Gedda. 23. Burckhardt, Force and Freedom, p. 234.

Notes to Pages 139-58

264

Chapter ten 1. See note 2 to Chapter 9. 2. Castellano, “I laici nella chiesa,” Iniziativa, voi. 10, no. 17, p. 3. 3. Ibid. 4. “L’apostolato non è una tecnica,” Iniziativa, voi. 9, no. 1, p. 2. 5. From an address to the Italian episcopate, January 1950, reprinted in Cinque documenti pontifici sull’apostolato dei laici (Roma: Presidenza Generale ACI, n.d.), p. 22. 6. Pius XII, speaking to a GF rally on December 8, 1954. Reprinted in Tempo di missione (Roma: Presidenza Generale ACI, n.d.), p. 196. 7. Quoted by Falconi, in Gedda, p. 190. 8. See SSRC interviews no. 113, p. 2; no. 2, p. 2; no. 31, p. 8; no. 33, pp. 3-4; and no. 45, p. 4. 9. See SSRC interviews no. 70, p. 7; and no. 68, p. 11. 10. Carrara, “L’Azione Cattolica nella chiesa,” Iniziativa, voi. 5, no. 1-2, P- 511. Quoted in Iniziativa, Oct. 1954, p. 14. 12. I take die distinction between the normative and the factual com¬ ponents of the social order from Lockwood, “Remarks on ‘The Social Sys¬ tem,’ ” pp. 134-46. 13. See SSRC interview no. 72, p. 5. 14. 15. 16. 17.

“Il metodo giovanissime,” Iniziativa, voi. 5, no. 9, p. 9. See SSRC interview no. 41, p. 4. See SSRC interview no. 76, p. 8. See SSRC interview no. 76, p. 9.

18. A colloquio. Grandi e piccole, voi. 10, no. 6, p. 4. 19. Squilli lavoratrici, voi. 27, no. 17, p. 1. 20. GIAC Movimento Studenti, Il libro del militante studente (Roma: CIAC, 1958), p. 9. For a critique of this kind of orientation by a noted Jesuit theologian, the late Gustav Weigel, see “American Catholic Intellectualism.” 21. Assistenti di Gioventù voi. 4, p. 27. 22. Nebiolo, Centro di giovinezza, p. 30. 23. Ragazzi Aspiranti, Apr. 1858, p.19. 24. Nebiolo, Centro di giovinezza, pp. 145-46. 25. Ibid., pp. 156-57. 26. Ibid. 27. Movimento Seniores (Roma: GIAC, 1957), p. 12. 28. Gioventù, voi. 19, no. 15, p. 2. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

On this episode, see Falconi, Gedda, pp. 203ft. See Lewis, Allegory of Love, Chapter 1. Rossi, La terra dei vivi, p. 98. Ibid., p. 139. Ibid., p. 120.

34. Gioventù, voi. 30, no. 9, p. 2.

Notes to Pages 159-80

265

35. Ibid. 36. “Atti della quattrogiorni presidenti diocesani GIAC 1953” Tecnica di apostolato, voi. 1 (1953), pp. 25f. 37. Gioventù, voi. 30, no. 9, p. 3. 38. SSRC interview no. 72, p. 7. Chapter eleven 1. See Gouldner, “Organizational Analysis,” in Merton et al., Sociology Today (N.Y.: Basic Books, 1959), pp. 40off. 2. See Leadership in Administration, Chapter 3. 3. Gramsci, Note sul Machiavelli, p. 245. 4. See Ritter, Volksverein, Chapter 16. 5. Ibid., p. 153!!. 6. On this encyclical, see Maier, Revolution und Kirche, Part 4, Chapter 3. 7. Bourdet, “L’Action catholique,” p. 8. The author goes as far as sug¬ gesting (p. 10) that “even to fall back on papal texts will not clear up these obscurities.” 8. This is a familiar distinction in sociological literature; see its discus¬ sion in Homans, The Human Group, passim. 9. Civardi, Compendio di storia dell ’ACI, p. 52. 10. Candeloro, Il movimento cattolico, p. 152. 11. Ibid., p. 153. 12. Civardi, Compendio di storia dell ’ACI, p. 240, note 2. 13. See note 16 to Chapter 2. 14. Quoted by Dansette, Destin du catholicisme, p. 85. 15. Quoted by Falconi, La Chiesa, p. 373. 16. Borne, “De l’eminente dignité des laics dans l’Eglise,” La vie intellectuelle, voi. 24, p. 12. 17. Falconi, Gedda, p. 290. 18. See Falconi, La Chiesa, pp. 376ff. 19. From a speech by Pius XII made Jan. 11, 1953, reprinted in Azione missionaria, (Roma: Presidenza Generale ACI, n.d.), pp. 166-67. 20. Iniziativa, voi. 10, no. 9, p. 2. 21. Falconi, Gedda, p. 284. Chapter twelve 1. Azione missionaria (Roma: Presidenza Generale ACI, n.d.), pp. 68-69. 2. See, for instance, the description of the array of front organizations developed by the Austrian Socialist Party in “Red Vienna” between the wars, in Gulick, Austria from Hapsburg to Hitler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945). 3. On the “pressure” and “infiltration” significance of Communist front organizations, see Selznick, The Organizational Weapon (N.Y.: McGrawHill, 1953), Chapter 3.

266

Notes to Pages 181-95

4. See SSRC interview no. 12, pp. 1-2. 5. Thus, for instance, reads the second article of the Statute of the Italian Union of Lawyers and Judges. 6. Movimento Laureati di Azione Cattolica, ed., Appunti organizzativi (Roma, Studium, n.d.), 40-41. 7. See Glorioso, “La legge del lupetto,” Il Mondo, voi. 5, no. 50, pp. 3-4. 8. See Bollettino ufficiale dell’ACI, voi. 20, no. 4-10, p. 20-21. g. On Pius X’s resolution of this matter (Singulari quadam), see De Rosa, Storia politica dell’ACI, voi. 2, pp. 134, 260 n. 10. On the chain of events leading to the breakup of the labor movement, see LaPalombara, The Italian Labor Movement: Prospects and Problems (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1957). Gorresio’s pamphlet, I bracci secolari (Modena: Guanda, n.d.) focuses on the role of ACLI to a rather exaggerated extent. 11. Words taken from the final motion of the extraordinary ACLI con¬ gress of November 1948. 12. On the development of the movement’s self-definition, see the booklet ACLI: Principi, attività, struttura (Roma: ACLI, n.d.). 13. La Stampa, May 15, i960, p. 5. 14. See the booklet mentioned in note 12. 15. See SSRC interview no. 34, p. 8. 16. See SSRC interview no. 25, p. 2. 17. See p. 35 of the booklet mentioned in note 12. 18. See LaPalombara and Poggi, “I gruppi di pressione e la burocrazia Italiana,” Rassegna Italiana di sociologia, voi. 1, no. 4, pp. 53-54. 19. Candeloro, Il movimento cattolico, pp. 487, 533. 20. See a declaration issued by the Episcopal Delegate for ACI in the Diocese of Milan, reprinted in Iniziativa, voi. 9, no. 20, p. 11; and SSRC interview no. 71, p. 4. Chapter thirteen 1. I devote only a short digression to Gedda himself because for my pur¬ poses his significance is wholly in the policies to be discussed in this and the next three chapters. For further information on Gedda, Italian readers may consult Falconi, Gedda, which contains a hostile appraisal, or Gedda’s own autobiographical sketch, Addio Gioventù. 2. See Falconi, Gedda, p. 53. 3. See SSRC interview no. 42, p. 13. 4. Ibid. 5. Iniziativa, voi. 4, no. 6, p. 5, for instance, displays with great flourish the pope’s reply to the good wishes he received from Gedda on his name day. 6. Iniziativa, voi. 3, no. 1, p. 2. 7. See for instance some posters showing the organizational structure of ACI, reproduced in Iniziativa, Sept. 1953, pp. 8-9.

Notes to Pages 195-211

267

8. See SSRC interview no. 15. 9. Iniziativa, July 1954, pp. 1-2. 10. Iniziativa, voi. 9, no. i, p. 2. 11. Iniziativa, \ol. 9, no. 5, p. 10. 12. Ibid,., p. 6. 13. 14. 15. 16.

See SSRC interview no. 42, p. 2; also no. 39, p. 7. Iniziativa, voi. 9, no. 5, p. 10. Iniziativa, voi. 10, no. 13, p. 10. Gioventù, voi. 28, no. 35-36, p. 8.

17. See, for example, “Lettera a un giovane tradito due volte,” Gioventù, voi. 29, no. 31-32, p. 1. 18. For examples of criticism of government policies, see Gioventù, voi. 26, no. 22, pp. 1-3. For an example of expressed preference for the Dossetti faction, see Gioventù, voi. 27, no. 47, p. 2. 19. Gioventù, voi. 29, no. 12, p. 1. 20. Gioventù, voi. 30, no. 12 (special edition for non-manual workers), p. 4. 21. Gioventù, voi. 30, no. 6 (special edition for non-manual workers), P- 322. Iniziativa, October 1953, p. 2. Most of this selection unmistakably ex¬ presses the Presidenza Generale’s response to the criticism issuing from the GIAC Presidenza Centrale. 23. See SSRC interview no. 6. (I quote from my recollection of the inter¬ view, since this part of it is not in the report.) 24. See SSRC interview no. 51, p. 7. 25. See for instance the article “Compito primario,” in Iniziativa, Nov. 1953- PP- 1-2. 26. See interviews no. 60, p. 9, and no. 14, p. 7. 27. See also interview no. 76, p. 11. 28. The opinion of a close collaborator of Gedda’s—see SSRC interview no. 14, p. 7. 29. SSRC interviews no. 75, p. 3, and no. 42, p. 4. 30. Webster, The Cross and the Fasces, p. 140. 31. Movimento Laureati di Azione Cattolica, ed., Appunti organizzativi (Roma: Studium, n.d.), p. 7. 32. Ibid., p. 8: “The Movimento Laureati has sought from the beginning to keep its organizational apparatus to the barest minimum, to preserve its simple structure.... The Movimento’s structure is so exclusively oriented to serve specific functions that it is impossible to discuss it except within the context of the Movimento’s activities.” 33. Movimento Laureati di Azione Cattolica, Posizione e funzione degli intellettuali nella formazione della cultura, oggi (Roma: Studium, n.d.), pp. 20-21. 34. Movimento Laureati di Azione Cattolica, L’anima religiosa del mondo d’oggi (Roma: Studium, n.d.), p. 13.

Notes to Pages 212-32

268

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

See SSRC interview no. 39, p. 13. See SSRC interview no. 6, p. 1. See SSRC interview no. 42, pp. 3-4, 13. See SSRC interview no. n, p. 3. See SSRC interview no. 42, p. 5. Iniziativa, voi. 10, no. 9, p. 14.

Chapter fourteen 1. For further information on ACI’s role in politics, see LaPalombara, Interest Groups in Italian Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964). 2. Azione missionaria (Roma: Presidenza Generale ACI, n.d.), pp. ìoff. 3. Iniziativa, voi. 10, no. 14, p. 4. 4. Iniziativa, Nov. 1948, pp. 3-4. 5. Iniziativa, voi. 10, no. 11-12, p. 4. Chapter fifteen 1. Reprinted in Azione missionaria (Roma: Presidenza Generale ACI, n.d.), pp. 11-12. 2. Gedda, “Sviluppo storico dell’ACI,’’ in Annuario dell’ACI (Roma: Presidenza Generale ACI, 1954), p. 7. 3. Iniziativa, May 1954, pp. 5-6. 4. Iniziativa, voi. 9, no. 21, p. 8. 5. La base missionaria (Roma: Presidenza Generale ACI, n.d.), pp. 26-27. 6. See for example Gedda’s speech in “Atti quattrogiorni nazionale presi¬ denti diocesani GIAC,” Tecnica di apostolato, voi. 1 (1953), p. 83. 7. Iniziativa, Feb. 1953, p. 4. 8. Azione missionaria, pp. 97-98 (op. cit., note 1). 9. La base missionaria, pp. 13-14 (op. cit., note 5). 10. Iniziativa, Nov. 1952, p. 6. 11. La base missionaria, p. 33. 12. Azione missionaria, pp. 112-13. 13. La base missionaria, pp. 50, 29. 14. See Gedda’s lecture “Metodologia di base missionaria,” reprinted in Azione missionaria, pp. 111-25. 15. La base missionaria, pp. 27—28. 16. See SSRC interview no. 42, pp. 2-3. Chapter sixteen 1. Iniziativa, voi. 5. no. 1-2, pp. 3-4. 2. See Iniziativa, Apr. 1953, p. 1. 3. See for instance an article by Fallani, “La punta di diamante,” Inizia¬ tiva, Jul.-Aug. 1953, p. 1.

Notes to Pages 232-47

26q

4. The text of this lecture is reprinted in Azione missionaria (Roma: Presidenza Generale ACI, n.d.), pp. i33ff. (Italics mine.) 5. Quoted in Falconi, Gedda, p. 189. 6. Ibid., p. 186. 7. “Atti della quattrogiorni nazionale presidenti diocesani GIAC 1953,” Tecnica di apostolato, voi. 1 (1953), p. 82. 8- This lecture was referred to in note 15 to Chapter 15; the passage men¬ tioned is on pp. 120-21. 9. Ibid., p. 152. 10- Quoted in Falconi, Gedda, pp. 287-89, from the editorial in the March J954 issue of Studium, the journal of the Movimento Laureati. 11. See SSRC interview no. 12, p. 2. 12. Movimento Laureati di Azione Cattolica, L’anima religosa del mondo d’oggi (Roma: Studium, n.d.), p. 240. 13. For one of the few negative comments on these facts, see SSRC inter¬ view no. 39, p. 9. 14. La base missionaria (Roma: Presidenza Generale ACI, n.d.), p. 6. 15. The expression “organizativistic and instrumental’’ was used by a national leader of the Movimento Laureati in his interview; see SSRC inter¬ view no. 39, p. 3. Conclusion 1. On the relationships between institutional structures and models of in¬ dividual behavior, see Merton, Social Theory, pp. 184!!. Some aspects of this position are criticized by Tom Burns in an unpublished manuscript, “Ambi¬ guity and Identity,” Edinburgh University, 1965. 2. La Bedoyere, The Layman, chapter titled “On Catholic Action” (em¬ phasis in the original). 3. Ibid. 4. See Balthasar, Der Laie, chapter titled “Grenzen der Katholischen Aktion”; K. Rahner, “Ueber das Laienapostolat,” in Schriften zur Theologie (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1955), voi. 2, pp. 339-73; Baumgarten, “Formes diverses de l’apostolat des laics,” Christus, Jan. 1957, pp. 32ff. Some aspects of this evaluation had already been suggested by Michel, Die kirkliche Sendung der laie (Berlin: Schneider, 1934), lately reprinted as Das christliche Weltamt (Frankfurt: Knecht, 1962). 5. See Congar, Jalons. 6. Loewenich, Modern Catholicism, pp. 115-16. 7. Iniziativa, Dec. 1952, p. 5. 8. Quoted by Dansette, Destin du catholicisme, p. 62 (italics mine). 9. See, for instance, M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans, by Parsons (N.Y.: Scribner, 1958), pp. 253-54. 10. Fichter, Social Relations in the Urban Parish (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), p. 29.

2^0

Notes to Page 24J

11. See discussions by two distinguished Catholic scholars, the Jesuit Fathers G. Weigel (“The Present Embarrassment of the Church”) and W. Ong (“The Religious-Secular Dialogue”), in Cogley, ed., Religion in Ameri¬ ca (New York: Meridian, 1958). Spike, In But Not Of The World, is an in¬ dication of the extent to which a similar problem is felt in the Protestant camp; see also Matthes, Die Emigration. Daniel Bell, in his essay "The Back¬ ground and Development of Marxian Socialism in America,” in Egbert and Persons, Socialism in American Life (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952), has suggested that the “in but not of the world” dilemma also confronts those political forces that take shape as institutional charisma. 12. It should be remembered, of course, that an awareness of the intrinsic difficulty of its own commandments, and of the extent to which they induce a tension between the world and the ethical design, is implicit in all prop¬ erly prophetic messages. (See Bendix, Max Weber, p. 154.) I am suggesting, however, that the confrontation with a secularized, "disenchanted” world, such as the contemporary West, compounds the tension, and generates dif¬ ficulties of an entirely new order of magnitude. This is also where the di¬ lemma I have been discussing differs from those discussed by O’Dea in “Five Dilemmas in the Institutionalization of Religion,” reprinted in Schneider, Religion, Culture, and Society, pp. 580®.

Bibliography

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1948. Bazelaire, D. Les Laics aussi sont l’eglise. Paris: Fayard, 1958. Bendix, R. Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, i960. —— and S. M. Lipset. “Political Sociology: An Essay and a Bibliography,” Current Sociology, Voi. 6, no. 2 (1957). Benz, H. Missionarische Seelsorge. Freiburg: Fischer, i960. Birnbaum, N. “Saekularisation. Zue Soziologie der Religion in der heutigen Gesellschaft des Western,” Monatsschrift fuer Pastoraltheologie, voi. 48, no- 3 (1959)Black, M., ed. The Social Theories of Talcott Parsons. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961. Bosworth, W. Catholicism and Crisis in Modern France. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962. Bourdet, P. “L’Action catholique et la répartition des pouvoirs dans l’église,” Masses Ouvrières, no. 96 (1955). Brenan, G. The Spanish Labyrinth. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univer¬ sity Press, 1957. Burckhardt, J. Force and Freedom. N.Y.: Pantheon, 1943. Cameron, J. M. “Catholicism and Political Mythology,” Blackfriars, June i960.

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Index

ACEC (Associazione Cattolica Esercenti Cinematografici), 188-89 ACI: defined, 39, 167; conflicts in, see Internal tensions ACJF (Association Catholique de la Jeunesse Fran^aise), 121-22 ACLI (Associazioni Cristiane Lavoratori Italiani), 183-87, 221 Acquaderni, Giovanni, 15 Action Frammise, 129 Activism, of Gedda, 233-35, 236f Adolescence, problems of, 35, 117, 123, 146-47, 150-56 Age-sex organizational structure, 31, 33-35. 103> 109-11, 113, 119-21 Agencies (opere cattoliche), 179 Aggregazione, see Gathering AGIS (Associazione Generale Italiano Spettacolo), 189 Allport, G. W., 122 Annual campaigns, 42,44, 154, 214 Apostasy, 205. See also Conquest of the far ones Appeal of the Church to the layman, nf, 23,50, 239, 243 Appointment principle, 68f, 83^ 88-89, 206-7 Aquinas, see Thomism Arendt, Hannah, 76 ASCI (Associazione Scautistica Cattolica Italiana), 183 Aspiranti, 31,33, 34“35. 85, 151 Assistants, see Ecclesiastical Assistants Aubert, Roger, 14 Australian CA, 111,258 «2 Authority structure of ACI, 11, 51, 65-

77> 95. 98-99. 164-65. 197-98. 229. 241 See also Jurisdictional problems Availability, 79, 81-82, 85,90,141,159, 243. See also Obedience Balthasar, H. U. von, 110 Barelli, Armida (“the elder sister”), 91 Barnard, Chester, 97 Bartoletti, Enrico, 159 “Bearing witness,” 139 Belgian CA, 111,121,123, 128 Bellarmine, St. Robert, 45 Bendix, Reinhard, 133 Benedict XV, igf, 22, 166, 169 Beniamine, 34, 36 Bernareggi, Msgr., 210 Bismarck, Otto von, 28, 166 Bolshevism, 22, 164. See also Commu¬ nism; Marxism Bortignon, Msgr. Girolamo, 74 Bourdet, H., 167 Bourgeoisie, 10, 17, 134, 156, 203-4, 209. See also Working class Boy Scouts, 183 Branches of ACI, see Centralization; Na tional associations and names of par ticular branches Burckhardt, Jacob, 137 Burns, Tom, 16211 Cameron, J. M., 135 Candeloro, Giorgio, 14, 20,169,189 Canon Code 7, 11f Canon Law, nf, 57, i02f, 229 Carretto, Carlo, 116, 154-55, 199-203, 232-33

276 Catholic Action: in generai, xiii-xiv, 12-23 passim, 51, 55C ii3f, 123, 152, 162-73 passim; as the “secular arm” of the hierarchy, 65-66, 169!!, 216-17, 237 “Catholic Children,” 25 Catholic movements, 9, 12-13, 17, 20, 49, 65, 102,112, 166 Catholic political parties, 12-13, 20, 26, 42, 112, 136, 166, 178, 236. See also Christian Democratic Party; Political activity of ACI; PPI Catholic subculture, 12-13, 159 CCC (Centro Cattolico Cinemato¬ grafico), 189, 193 Celibacy, 101 Central Committees of ACI, 23, 195-97, 224 Centralization of ACI, 31-32, 190-215, 223,230 CGIL (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro), 191 Charisma, 3, 5, 45-46, 52f, 55f, 87, 92, io4ff, io7f, 128, 131, 245-46, 253 «24, 255 n 1, 256 rvj, 270 Charyn, Marlene, viii Chastity, see Sexual morality Christian democratic movement, 18, 135, 166, 254 ng Christian Democratic Party, 27f, 42, 141, 147, 15611, 171, 183, igif, 194, 200-201, 217f, 236. 244 Christian revolution, 156-57, 203 Church: and conflict, 112, 118; defined, 45; internal resources of, 48-49; mas¬ ter plan of, 8, 21, 51; self-image of, 46-47, 50. See also Charisma Church and State, 3-10, 14, 48, 168-69, 201, 204, 252 113 & nS. See also Fascism; Political activity of ACI Church councils, see Councils CISL (Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori), 187, 191 Civardi, Luigi, 20, 25, i68f, 217 Civic Committees, 137, 191-94, igg, 212, 218-19, 221, 231, 236, 244 Civil rights, 9 Clemenceau, Georges, 128 Clericalization of the layman, 241-42 Cliques, 89-90 “Coldiretti,” 188 College of the Central ACI Assistants, 107 Communism, Communist Parties, 52-53, 105, i3if, 164, 173, 191, 201, 203-4, 257 117. See also Marxism Competence: of priests, 106; of ACI, see Organizational competence Concordat of 1929, 22, 24, 166, 209-10 Concordat policy, 8 Confindustria, 189

Index Conflict: Church and, 112, 118, 172-73; in ACI, see Internal tensions; Juris¬ dictional problems Congress of the Lay Apostolate, 2d World, 67n, 170 Conquest of the far ones, 220-30, 234, 241 Co-optation, 88, 90 Coordinated organizations, 182-83 Coordinating organs of ACI, 23, 3of, 71-72, 194-98 Corporativism, 129-32 Coser, Rose Laub, 257 Costantini, Silvio, 118 Councils: Trent, 5-6, 57; Vatican I, 1 if; Vatican II, 56,128, 253 n 18 CSI (Centro Sportivo Italiano), 180, 193, 232 CTG (Centro Turistico Giovanile), 180 Culture: of ACI, 77, 124, 127-73; of the Church, 57, 112, 160, 211,230 Dancing, 41-42,153-54 Daniélou, Jean, 245 Dansette, Adrien, 5 Democracy, constitutional, 4, 13, 21-22 De Rosa, Luigi, 14 Deutsch, Karl, 257 Discipline, 6, 11, 25f, 49, 51, 66, 202, 205. See also Availability Durkheim, Emile, 158 Ecclesiastical Assistants, 25,42E 53, 56, 68, 70, 74f, 79, 81, 84-86, 93, 98-108 Economics, 4, 134 Education of ACI members, see Formazione-, Youth branches Eisenstadt, S. N„ 114 Elite, non-protection of, 94-97, 259 1121 Encyclicals, 7-8, 89, 166 “Epiphany of ACI,” 200, 216-17, 220 Ethiopia, 27 Existentialism, 131, 149 Exorcism, 148-49 Expansion, see Organizational expansion Falconi, Carlo, 90, 171-72 Family life: in ACI, 39, 89; morality of, 57, 136, 142, 146-47, 151, 154-55 Fani, Mario, 15 FARI (Federazione Attività Ricreative Italiane), 180 Fascism, Fascist regime, 21-28, ii4f, 123, 178, 189, ig2f, 195, 201, 213, 220-21 Fichter, Joseph, S.J., 80-81,95, 97, 102, 246-47 Films, 42, 151, 188-89, 228. See also ACEC; CCC Fogarty, Michael, ii5f, 121 Formazione (training of members), 25,

Index 40-41, 43, i48f, 187, 198, 21312, 224f, 243

Free Labor Movement, 191 Freemasonry, 94 French CA, 75-76, 83, 111, 121, 128, 233. See also JOC French Revolution, 6-7, 10, 130-31, 148 French worker-priests, 113, 261 n8 Front organizations, 52-53, 179-82 FUCI (Federazione Universitaria Catto¬ lica Italiana), 19, 23, 26, 29, 32, 37, 103, 110, 129, 173, 209-13, 215, 258 nio Gathering of the Parish Committees, 215 Gedda, Luigi, 29, 31, 33, 44, 60, 72, 94, 118, 171, 181, 191-98, 217, 266 n 1; criticized, ii5f, 198-208, 212L 23137; personal characteristics, 96, 201-2, 223; quoted, 114-15, 130-31, 136, 140, 220-21,221-22, 227, 243 Geiger, Theodor, 128 General Assembly of ACI (Siena, 1948), 194 Gentiioni agreement, 18 Geographic distribution of member¬ ship, 36-39 Germany, 102, 121, 166, 257. See also Volksverein GF (Gioventù Femminile di Azione Cat¬ tolica), 20, 23, 25, 30, 34, 38, 8if, 14547, 180, 199U, 218, 233 GIAC (Gioventù Italiana di Azione Cat¬ tolica), 24b 30, 32, 35, 38, 75, 82L 103, 114-19, 129, 143, 148-61 passim, 17273, 180, 183, 186-87, 193> 199-209 Pas~ sim, 218, 224, 231, 233, 235, 258 nio GIOC (Gioventù Italiana Operaia Cat¬ tolica), 232 Goal of ACI, organizational, 23, 55, 73L 95-96, 106, i4off, 162-73, 2i2f, 241 Goldbricking, 68n Gouldner, Alvin, 162 Grace, 67, 91, 104, 151, 153, 168, 246 Gramsci, Antonio, 9, 23, 165, 169 Grand-plan ideology, 139, 141-42,

!57-58. J71

Granick, David, 105 Gregory XVI, 7 Guano, Msgr. Enrico, 211 Haettich, Manfred, 134 Hertzler, J. O., 101 History: of ACI, 14-29, 65, 107, 163-64, 166-73, 238; of the Church, 5-7, 49, 57, 65, 130-32, 167, 241-42, 243; of the world as viewed by ACI, 47, 129, 131, 135, 148, 157,203,228, 247 Hollingshead, August, 114 Holy Office, 204 Ideology: in general, 132-33; of ACI, 9.

277 23, 32. 55> 9°> 112> 114. 127-42, 156, 160,171,192,195, 204 Industrial revolution, 111 Industrial sociology, 104-5 Infallibility, 11 Infiltration, i7gf Iniziativa, see under Publications Insecurity: of lay leaders, 59, 79, 86-87, 94-96, 240, 244; of Ecclesiastical Assis¬ tants, 104-6, 108 Institutional embodiment of purpose, 73. 75- 109-24 Institutional purpose of CA, 21, 23,55, 73> 165-66. See also Purpose Institutionalization, 60, 73, 87,94, 109 Integralism, 127-29, i3q, 152, 156-57, 159- i85-89' 19D 202ff, 210, 212, 224, 236 Integration, 179 “Integrists,” 129 Intellectuals and the Church, 49, 117, 129, 180-81, 211-12, 240, 243. See also Philosophy; Movimento Laureati Internal tensions and conflicts of ACI, 17b 56, 72, 74b 78-97 passim, 129, 141, 160, 171-73, 198-214 passim, 224, 23038 passim, 240, 258 nio Intransigente, 16, 254 ng Jargon of ACI, 32,43, 103, 139, 187, 214 Jemolo, Arturo Carlo, 9, 14, 17 JOC (Jeunesse Ouvrière Chretiénne), 75, 114-15, 121, 123. See also French CA John XXIII, xiii-xiv, 7,47,106, 128, 237n, 240 Juniores, 31,33ft, 38b i5of Jurisdictional problems, 69-73, 75—76, 103-4, 112-13, 119-20, 122, 183, 18689, 197-98, 214-15, 241, 258 n8 Kolakowski, Leszek, 256 wj Komsomol, 34 Kornhauser, William, vii Kulturkampf, 166 La Bedoyere, Michael de, 241, 245 Labor organizations, 12, 18, 2of, 111, 117-18, 183-89, 191, 220-21. See also Working class LaPalombara, Joseph, vii, 28, 146, 209 Lay apostolate, 12, 39-40, 51, 66, 6yn, 74, 79, 119, 140, 149-50, 160, 167, 169b 241-46, 258 n8. See also Missionary Base Lay leaders of ACI, 30, 39, 43, 54, 65-66, 67b 72, 78-97; recruitment and career, 70, 78-79, 83b 87-90; characteristics of role, 59, 69, 74, 77-97, 109, 240, 244; types, 80-81, 95-97, 223. See also Availability

Index

278 Lay religious movements, 15,49, 65, 90, 242. See also Catholic movements Leadership of ACI, 65, 68, 73L 75, 78108, 187. See also Ecclesiastical Assis¬ tants; Lay leaders Left-wing factions: in CA, 18, 156, 185, 200-204, 236; in the Church, 128-29 Leisure time, 42f, 68, 134, 136 Lenin, V. I., 257 Leo XIII, i6ff, 166, i6gf Liberalism^, 130-31, 156 Linz, Juan, vii, 259 «21 Lipset, S. M., vii, 133 Loewenich, Walther von, 242, 244 Lortz, Joseph, 242 Lutheranism, influence of, 131, 157 Maier, Hans, 134 Maltarello, Agostino, 199, 224-25 “Marginality,” 104-5 Maritain, Jacques, 209, 212 Marriage, 34, 83, 86, 145-46, 152-55, 209. See also Family life; Sexual morality Marxism, 111,114, 118, 136, 185-86, 189, 257

Master plan of the Church, 8, 21, 51 Maurras, Charles, 10, 129 Membership of ACI, 30, 32, 34, 39, 103, 122; recruitment policy, 35b 39!!, 41, 171-73, 178; size and composition, 33!, 36b 39; meaning of, 39-41. See also Organizational structure; Typology Merton, Robert K., 68 Methodology, 58, 87-88, 246 Milieu organizational structure, 24, 31, 38, 110-24, 222, 224-26 Missionary Base or Missionary action, 206, 220-30, 231, 234-35, 236 Molotov, V. M., 164 Mormon Church, 245 Mounier, Emmanuel, 203 Movement for a Better World, 188 Movies, see ACEC; CCC; Films Movimento Laureati, 26, 29b 32, 37, 110, 129, 173, 178, 181-82, 209-13, 235, 267 1132 Movimento Maestri, 29b 37, no, 178 MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano), 200 Mueller, E., 120 Murri, Romolo, i8f, 135, 166, 254 ng Mussolini, Benito, 22, 27, 207. See also Fascism Mystical body of Christ, 45-46 National associations, 71,178, 195, 210 Natural law, 4, 132, 252 n8 Nazism, 27, 76 Nebiolo, Giuseppe, 150®, i5gf Neo-fascism, 192, 200 Newman, John Henry Cardinal, 252 Non-catastrophic pessimism, 128

Normativism, 129-32, 135 "Nuclear parishioner,” 80, 246 Obedience, 82, 86f, 140-41, 186, 196. See also Availability; Discipline Occupation, see Milieu; Marriage; Re¬ ligious vocations; Working class O’Connell, Daniel, 205 Office for Draftees, 35 Opera dei Congressi, 15-18, 166 Opera della Regalità di Nostro Signore, 90-91

Organicism, 129-32, 134 Organizational centralization, see Centralization Organizational competence, xv, 51, 5gff, 72f# 94f> H7> H9f> 122, 132, 162, 237, 239, 241,243,246-47,257 Organizational expansion, 33, 177-89, 221 Organizational goal of ACI, see Goal Organizational sociology, xiv, 32-33, 5061, 66-67, 82, 99- 121, 163, 253 n 12 Organizational structure, 25, 30-32, 4244, 68, 71, 75, 229; age-sex, 31, 33-35, 109- 24 passim; milieu, 24, 31, 38, 110- 24 passim, 224ff. See also Au¬ thority structure; Strategic structur¬ ing Organizativism, 231-33, 236! Paganuzzi, Battista, 17, 238 Paoli, Arturo, 158, 160, 204, 233 Papacy, 11,39, 205 Pareto, Vilfredo, 133,135 Parish organizational system, see Strategic structuring Parsons, Talcott, 66, 99, 258 7114 Patto Gentiioni, 18 Paul VI, 66, 6771 Pearson, G. H„ 122 “Pedagogy of isolation,” 154, 180 Pericoli, Paolo, 19 Philosophy, 42, 130-31, 14&-49; of life, 80. See also Thomism Pin, Emile, 113, 120 Pius IX, 7L 14b i6gf Pius X, i8f, 166, 169, 266 Pius XI, 2if, 24, 27, 41, i66f, 169, 209, 255 tu6 Pius XII, xiii-xiv, 29, 47, 56, 65b 128, 169, 194, 223, 230, 237; quoted, 50b 119, 140, 170, 172, 222, 237, 242-43, 256 7i2, 258 tj8; policies of, 26, 10271, 195. 198.236 Pluralism, 46-47,54, 131,187-88, 217, 239

Political activity of ACI, 24, 42, 60, 94, 136-37. Hi. 147. 165. 171. 183-84, i9i-93> 201, 205, 213, 216-19, 220-21,

Index 235-36, 244-45. See a^so PPI; Chris¬ tian Democratic Party Political sociology, 83, 133 Politicism, 235-36, 237 Popes, see Papacy and names of particular popes Popularity: of leaders, 83-85, 259 nn; of priests, 106-7 PPI (Partito Popolare Italiano), 20-22, 27, 166 “Presence,” 139 Presidenza: defined, 3m, 43n; function of, 71,196-97 Pressure, 60, i7gf, 182, 218-19, 241. See also Front organizations; Political ac¬ tivity of ACI Pride, 86, 91 Priests, in ACI, 56, 100-108. See also Ec¬ clesiastical Assistants; Religious voca¬ tions; Charisma; Spiritual directors Professional Unions, 180-82 Proselytism, 179-82 Protestantism, 5, 13, 111-12, 114, i2of, 130-31, 157, 206, 252 mi, 253 «14, 263 7114 Protection of elite, 94-96 Publications of ACI, 31, 72, 92, 116, 130, 2i4f; Gioventù, 200-201, 232; Inizia¬ tiva,31, 194, 205f, 213-14, 215 Purity, see Sexual morality Purpose of CA, 65, 110, 167; history of, 24-25; institutional embodiment of, 73. 75. 109-24. See also Institutional purpose; Goal of ACI Qualifications for leadership, 80-82, 97 Rahner, Karl, 120 Rami, 30, 69 Recreation, 180. See also Dancing; Films Recruitment, see under Membership of ACI; Lay leaders Reference group theory, 82, 86 Reformation, see Protestantism Religious orders, 49, 90 Religious vocations, 82-83, 97, 145-46. See also Marriage Requirement of control, 54, 61, 66, 69, 70, 75, 98, 112, 118, 160, 165, 229, 237, 240. See also Sponsorship relation Requirement of faithfulness, 54, 61, 98, 112, n4f, 113-36. 143*. !56. l6°’ l86> 206n, 227, 229, 237, 240. See also Spon¬ sorship relation Resistance movement, 27,157 Restoration, policy of, 13, 57 Rewards for membership, leadership, 91-94. See a^s0 Sacraments Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement, 164 Righetti, Iginio, 209-10

279 Right-wing faction in CA, 18, 118, 129, 181, 200-203, 236- See also Gedda Rossi, Mario, 75, 116-19, 121-22, 153, 156-60, 19211,199, 202-9, 212, 233-34 Sacchetti, Giuseppe, 254 ng Sacraments, 5, 41,45, 78-79, 81, 85-86, 87, 140, 259 m2 “Safety first,” 78-79, 97,144 Salvatorelli, Luigi, 7 Sanctification of the layman, 158-60 Sangnier, Marc, 128-29 Sargolini, Msgr. Guido, 93-94 Scaglia, G. B., 211 Schools, 17, 148-49, 229-30 Sciascia, Ugo, 199 Secularization, xiv, 3-11, 46-47, 54f, 137, 168, 239, 244, 247, 251-52, 253 n 14, 256 n8, 270 Selznick, Philip, xv, 6of, 73!!, g4f, 109, 162-64 Seminaries, 82E 102-4, 113 Seniores, 31, 34f, 38,153-54 Sexual morality, 41, 57, 117, 134, 145-47, 150-56 Siri, Giuseppe Cardinal, 131, 186 Small-plan ideology, 139, 141-42, 158, 171 Social classes, see Marxism; Milieu; Working class Social doctrine of the Church, 8-9,42, 55-56, 129,132, 134,136, 204 Social memory of the Church, 27,48 Socialism, 17 f, 130 Società della Gioventù, i5f, 19, 23 Società Operaia, 90 Sociology, xiv, i2of, 132-33, 167-68, 247. See also Industrial sociology; Organi¬ zational sociology; Political sociology Sottogoverno, 93-94, 136 Southern Italy, 16, 36f, 178 Soviet Union, 150-51,164 Spadolini, Giovanni, 14 Spain, 27, 123 Specialization, see Milieu Spiritual directors, 41, 81, 99, 108, 140, 153 Spiritual self-cultivation, 139-40 S-plan, 191 Sponsorship relation, xv, 11, 15, 45-59 passim, 6771, 80, 83^ 104, 123-24, 126, 160, 167, 185, 193, 237, 239, 246, 257; defined, 50-51, 239, 243; dysfunctional effects of, 75, 95, 141, 164, 206, 212, 228-29, 241; logic of, 78f, 87E 100, 11 if, 123, 143, 239; provisions of, 98; and milieu principle, 112-19; and youth branches, 138-41. See also Or¬ ganizational competence SSRC (Social Science Research Council),

vii, 143, i98

28o Statute of ACI, 26, 28-31,67-77 passim, 86, 88, 98-99, 107, 167, 195, 210 Strategic structuring (restructuring) of ACI, 73M, 75, 109-24, 156, 204, 229. See also Organizational structure Strategies of independence, 68-69 Structure of ACI, see Organizational structure Students, see FUCI; GIAC Sturzo, Luigi (Sturzo Operation), 22, 192, 201 f, 218 Subculture, 12-13, 159 Teachers, see Movimento Maestri; UCIIM Television, 235 Temporalistic bent of ACI, 128, 136-37, 140, 156, 191, 236 Temporalistic eschatologism of ACI, 128 Theoretical base line, 59-60 “Thesis and hypothesis” theory, 8, 253 ni8 Third orders, 65. See also Lay religious movements Thomas, W. I., 259 n 12 Thomism, 49 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 256 n8 Totalitarianism, 9, 76, 149, 201,203 Trent, Council of, see under Councils Troeltsch, Ernst, 87 Typology: of Catholic parishioners, 8081, 246-47; of lay leaders, 95-96, 24647; of ACI members, 40-42; of priests, 107-8 UCID (Unione Cattolica Imprenditori Dirigenti), 188-89 UCIIM (Unione Cattolica Italiana Insegnanti Medi), 181 UDACI (Unione Donne di Azione Cat¬ tolica Italiana), 19, 23, 25, 30!!, 37, 234 Ultramontanism, 11 Unione Economico-Sociale, 18, 20

Index Unione Elettorale Cattolica, 18, 20 Unione Popolare, 19, 22 Unione Uomini, 23, 30L 37, 193, 199, 243 United States, 121, 252, 256 n8 University graduates, see Movimento Laureati University students, see FUCI Urbani, Msgr. Giovanni, 74, 106, 179 Value juxtaposition, 149-56, 161 “Value kit” of youth branches, 143-44, 146, 161 Value mediation, 159-61 Value superimposition, 145-49, 161 Van der Meersch, M., 115f Vatican Council, see under Councils Venice Congress (1874), 15,168-69 Veronese, Vittorino, 194 Vial, André, 122 Vocations (problema dello stato), 14546. See also Marriage; Religious voca¬ tions Volksverein, 19, 102, 113, 166 Weber, Max, 3-4, 10, 87,97, 101, 134, 245-46,251,253 m2 Webster, Richard, 14a, 209-10 Wilhelm II, 166 Windthorst, 166 Women’s organizations, igf, 81,90-91, 145_47- $ee a^so GF; UDACI Worker-priests, 113, 261 n8 Working class, 10, 17, 39, 111, 113-14, 118, 121, 132, 134, 160, 183-87, 200201, 203, 230, 245 Youth branches; educational philoso¬ phy of, 138, 142-61 passim, 204, 261 7114; leadership of, 85, 90, 95, 108. See also Aspiranti; GF; GIAC Youth, organization of, 25, 30-31, 115, 119, 122-23,183. See also Adolescence

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