7 Vatican Policy Between the Two World Wars

The various social and political ideologies and systems which the Vatican fought throughout the last and at the beginning of the twentieth century began to seem almost mild when the century began to seem almost mild when the Church found itself confronted by the most dangerous of all its modern enemies―Socialism.

The nineteenth century had been dominated by Liberalism and had advocated Secularism and the freedom of society and the State from entanglement with the Church. The twentieth became the century in which Liberalism was quickly supplanted by an ideology which in the past, although existent, had never been a real threat to those religious, social, and economic institutions on which society rested. This ideology, propagating a social, economic, and political revolution, had been again and again condemned by the Church from its very beginning; but these condemnations had rarely gone farther than the theoretical, religious, and social fields. For Socialism in its various forms, although it had begun to crystallize into several economic, social, and even political movements, especially during the last decades of the nineteenth century, had yet remained a weak and merely theoretical enemy. Its potential danger did not seriously threaten the solid and stable structure of society.

During the closing quarter of the last century the Catholic Church, besides condemning a priori any claim or theory of Socialism, dictated that anything to do with it was anathema to any good Catholic. Purely theoretical condemnation passed to practical rejection as soon as the Socialists began to organize workers’ movements whose aims were an open challenge to the established form of economic and social order.

The Church, as already hinted, through Pope Leo XIII, having come into the open with an utter rejection of the basic doctrines of Socialism, tried to counter-offer workers’ movements of its own. This attitude, however, changed radically with the advent and the end of the First World War. Although these efforts in the practical field at that time were considered sufficient to counterbalance the progress of Socialism, it soon became evident that they were not enough to be a serious check to similar Socialist movements. Yet the Vatican was confident enough not to be seriously concerned about it. For it relied, not so much on Catholic organizations dealing with the problems of Labor as such, but on religious and political movements which were fighting its battle at the very source of power―namely, inside the Governments.

In addition to various powerful Catholic Parties, the Church had an influential Catholic Press and great allies, represented by those strata of society whose interests required that the social-economic status quo should be maintained as intact the landlords or the new promoters of vast industrial concerns. They regarded the Catholic Church as their natural ally, while the Church, in turn, regarded them as the best defense against any serious menace from the new Socialist ideology.

With the outbreak of the First World War, however, this state of affairs was profoundly modified. Millions of men were suddenly uprooted from their comparatively peaceful surroundings in which they had lived and were put into trenches or into factories. Life, as they knew it, became more and more disrupted by the ravages of a war which, even before it ended, had begun to alter values of a religious, social, and political nature. The Socialist ideology, which, until then, had affected but a comparatively narrow stratum of the most discontented manual workers and bands of intellectuals, began to be absorbed by vast numbers of dissatisfied men and women.

In 1917 Russia, having brought about a Socialist revolution, installed a Bolshevist Government. In the next year the First World War ended, followed by dislocation, mass unemployment, bewilderment, and disillusionment. Thereupon the Socialist doctrines spread far and wide and were looked upon by many as the programme upon which a better social and economic order could be built in the post-war world. Strikes paralyzed industries, whole towns, and entire nations; factories were occupied and committees of workers were elected to run them; lands were seized; officers were insulted and patriotism was derided; authorities in local councils or governments were overridden. The theoretical plans for the setting up of a Socialist society, as envisaged by Socialism, were put into operation, and the Red wave swept over practically the whole of Europe, becoming more or less violent according to local conditions and resistance.

Where did the Catholic Church stand? The Catholic Church had become one of the main targets of the Reds. This for two reasons: first, because of its past and current attacks on the Socialist ideology as such and on all Socialists; secondly, because of its intimate association with the natural enemies of a Socialist society―the landed classes, the great industrialists, and all those other strata advocating Conservatism.

In view of this, the Socialists proclaimed that they would expropriate the Church and forbid it to teach in schools, that the clergy would no longer be paid by the State, and that anti-religious propaganda would render the new Socialist society, if not atheist, as least non-religious. Pointing at Soviet Russia as their model, they followed their words with acts of violence. Soon it became apparent-even to the blindest cardinals at the Vatican―that what in the past had been considered the greatest danger―namely, secularization sponsored by Liberalism―was in reality but a mild opponent when compared to the secularization contemplated by the Socialists.

Meanwhile, all other elements which felt themselves threatened had organized themselves and had begun to counter-attack through social, political, and patriotic movements of all kinds. Militarist groups were set up, violence was quickly replied to by violence, and the opposite camps in various European countries began to resort to murder and to be the burning of hostile newspapers and buildings. Soon, owing to their better organization and to the confusion in the camps of their opponents, and the fact that large sections of the population had become tired of the interminable strikes and struggles, the anti-Socialist movements began to check, and in various cases completely to stop, the Socialist advance.

At the Vatican any such anti-Socialist movement was welcomed, looked upon with great sympathy, and, whenever possible, supported. But struggle over the kind of policy that should be adopted towards the Red menace divided the Government of the Church and became increasingly sharp.

This internal conflict in the Vatican revolved on the problem of whether actively to back the violent measures of the new anti-Socialist movements. These measures promised not only to destroy the Socialists, but to restore order and to check any individual or movement that might endanger society. The alternative was to fight the Red menace as the Church fought Liberalism, and Secularism before the war―namely, by legal means and, in the social-political arena, by creating workers’ and peasants’ organizations and political parties.

The former group contended that the only means by which the enemies of the Church― namely, the Socialists―could be fought effectively was by the employment of drastic measures. Anathemas, or religious or social organizations, even powerful Catholic political parties, were no longer sufficient when confronted by the violent propaganda and methods of the Red opponents. The Catholic Church could not enter into the field inciting to plunder and violence. When it had done so, through some Catholic Party whose members had on several occasions sabotaged strikes organized by Socialists, the only result had been to render even more bitter the Church’s enemy. There remained only one way open to the Catholic Church: a new policy of all-out support of and close alliance with any successful political movement that could guarantee the destruction of Socialism, the maintenance of the status quo, and above all, respect and a privileged position for the Church.

This was more than ever urgent, maintained the sponsors of such a theory, owing to the colossal losses which the Church was incurring daily. These losses were no longer a question of individuals leaving the Catholic Church, but had become apostasy in mass. And although some of these losses could be traced to the poisoned principles of Liberalism and Secular Education, the most responsible force was Socialism. Wherever there was concentrated industrialization coupled with urbanism, the Church invariably lost its members while its Red adversary gained them. These losses were of a double nature, for an individual did not confine himself to rejecting the Catholic Church only on religious grounds, but also on social and political grounds. Catholics who no longer paid heed to the Catholic Church almost always joined political movements hostile to the Catholic Church. After the war, the movements which benefited most were Socialism and Communism. It soon became evident, therefore, that those who voted Socialist were almost certainly dead losses to the Church, and a Pope (Pius XI) later summoned up the position when he declared that “No Catholic can be a Socialist” (Quadragesimo Anno, 1931).

In Italy, a Catholic country, immediately after the war (1919), from a total of 3, 500,000 votes the Socialist polled 1, 840, 593; and in 1926 the Liberals and Socialist polled 2, 494, 685. In Austria, in 1927, the Socialists got 820,000 votes, while in Vienna alone they increased their gains over the previous election by 120,000. In Czechoslovakia, up to 1930, the Catholic Church lost 1, 900,000 members, while in Germany the Socialists and Communists in 1932 polled 13, 232, 292 votes. These losses caused the Vatican to support any State proclaiming its intention to de-institutionalize a country and to convert it into an agricultural Power―hence the support of Petain―for agricultural communities had proved to be intensely Conservative and faithful to the Church.

During the first few restless and menacing years following the First World War, the Vatican could not make up its mind which policy to adopt. It encouraged both, without giving really full support to either. In Italy, for instance, it gave permission to Italian Catholics to form a strong Catholic Party with a progressive social outlook, which on many occasions responded with violence to the methods of its opponents. The decision remained with Benedict XV, a man with Liberal leanings.

When Benedict XV died and a new Pope sat on the throne, the policy of the Vatican was drastically changed. The Vatican adopted, although at first with due precautions, the policy of alliance with strong anti-Bolshevist political movements.

Pius XI, a man of autocratic disposition and an uncompromising nature, who had no love for democracy, was elected Pope in 1922. This was a fateful year, not only in the history of the Catholic Church, but also in the history of Europe, and, indeed, the whole world, for during it the first Right-wing Totalitarians took control of a modern nation (that is, the Italian Fascists―October 28, 1922). From that year onwards the policy of the Vatican became more and more clearly defined. Its alliance with the Powers of reaction became more and more open. Through Europe, from Spain to Austria, from Italy to Poland, dictatorships seized power by legal or semi- legal means, very often openly supported by the Vatican. Discarding the old methods, the Vatican went so far as to order the dissolution of one great Catholic party after another in order to assist first Fascism and then Nazism to strengthen their stranglehold on their respective States.

The Pope, not content with that, proclaimed on more than one occasion that the first Fascist dictator (Mussolini) was “a man sent by Divine Providence. ” Having warned the faithful throughout the world that “no good Catholic can be a Socialist, ” he wrote an encyclical by which he recommended to Catholic countries the adoption of the Fascist Corporate State (Quadragesimo Anno, 1931).

When the Fascist States began their external aggressions the Vatican helped them― indirectly and, in more than one case, even directly. Catholics in the countries concerned were required to support them, or diplomatic means were employed, as in the case of the Abyssinian War (1935-6), or in the case of the rape of Austria (1938) and Czechoslovakia (1939).

What did the Vatican get in return for its help? It got what had induced it to make an alliance with these ruthless political movements—namely, the total annihilation of all those enemies it had so often condemned during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries― not only Socialism and Communism, but also Liberalism, democracy and Secularism.

Trade unions and social, cultural, and political organizations sponsored by Communist, Socialist, democratic, or Liberal parties were stamped out; and political parties were vetoed. The Press, films, theatre, and all other cultural institutions were controlled by the one party. The people were deprived of free election―a caricature of elections being maintained in which electors had to say “yes” or “no” to a whole list of candidates selected by the party.

The whole spirit and machinery of the dictatorships ran parallel with the spirit and machinery of the Catholic Church. There was only one party, for all others were pernicious; there was only one leader, who could do no wrong and who had to give account to no one but himself. His people owed him blind obedience, without discussing his orders; they had to think what he told them to think; they had to listen to radio programmes, read papers and books which he selected for them. Fines and imprisonment were the penalties for transgression, and no one was allowed even to whisper against the sagacity of either the regime or its leader. A State police was always on the alert to arrest and send offenders to concentration camps.

The Catholic Church was given a great margin of security and often of privilege; the Catholic religion was proclaimed the religion of the State; religious education was introduced in schools; religious marriage ceremonies were rendered compulsory, and divorce forbidden; all books against religion were suppressed; the sacredness of the family was upheld; a campaign to induce couples to rear as many children as possible was initiated; the clergy was paid by the State; authorities appeared at public religious ceremonies; and The Church, at one stroke, had not only destroyed all its old and new enemies, but had recovered a privileged position in society which it could hardly have expected to obtain under the former state of affairs.

Not everything went well, however, between the Catholic Church and its political partners. Often bitter controversies arose, especially with Nazism, and there were even forms of mild persecution, about which the Pope had to write encyclicals (Non Abbiamo Bisogno, 1931, against Italian Fascism; and Mit Brennender Sorge, 1937, against Nazism). It is noteworthy, however, that such quarrels were due almost invariably to the fact that both Church and State claimed to have the sole right to deal with some specific problem; for instance, the control and education of youth―or breaches of the Concordat. In the case of Nazism, complaint arose when religion as such was deliberately and brazenly attacked.

Apart from these recurrent troubles the Vatican never once dared to condemn Fascism, Nazism, or similar movements as it had once condemned, for instance, Liberalism in the nineteenth century, or Socialism in the twentieth century. Why should it? That not everything was perfect in the new alliance was human, and, although often the Church did not get as much as it wanted, yet it obtained far more than it could ever have dreamed of had the old state of affairs been allowed to continue.

It was thus that, once the Vatican had started to pursue its new policy, it never deviated from it. On the contrary, it followed it with a steadfastness which in the long span of over twenty years contributed to the consolidation of Fascist Totalitarianism over the whole Continent.

The encouragement which the various dictatorships received from the Catholic Church was not confined to the domestic field, but worked also in the field of international politics. For the Catholic Church, having to fight the same enemies, had to adopt the same policy in almost all European countries, to safeguard its interests. Therefore alliance was made with those forces which had been so helpful to it in the States where a Fascist dictatorship had been set up.

Naturally, although the Church tried to reach the two main goals―destruction of its enemies and safeguard of its interests―the circumstances, events, times, and men being not all alike, different tactics had to be adopted in each country. In one country the Catholic Party was allowed to co-operate with the Socialist (as in Germany); in another an open Catholic dictatorship machine-gunned them (as in Austria); in a third the Catholic Party, moved by racial and religious motives, was employed to weaken the central Government and thus hasten its destruction (as in Czechoslovakia); in a fourth devout Catholics became agents of an external Fascist aggressor (as with Seyss-Inquart in Austria, and Mgr. Tiso in Czechoslovakia); and in a fifth an open revolt by a Catholic general, backed by the Church and the Vatican, was the policy adopted (as with General Franco in Spain).

In addition to wanting to make a whole continent safe for religion in general and for the Catholic Church in particular, through this alliance with Fascism, the Vatican had another very important goal in view: the checking and eventual destruction of that beacon of world Atheism and Bolshevism―namely, Soviet Russia.

From the very beginning of the Russian Revolution (1917), which paradoxically enough the Vatican had welcomed, the Vatican’s policy in the international sphere had one main goal: to consolidate all forces and countries into a solid block inimical to the U. S. S. R.

One of the principle reasons for the Vatican’s support of Hitler, besides the destruction of Bolshevism in Germany, was to create a strong and hostile Power which would act like a Chinese wall to keep Russian Bolshevism from infecting the West. This power one day might even destroy Soviet Russia altogether. This policy the Vatican pursued relentlessly until the very end of the Second World War, not only as far as Fascist Powers were concerned, but also in dealing with Great Britain and the United States of America, as we shall have occasion to see later.

Had the Vatican not existed, or had it remained entirely neutral, or had it been hostile to the rise and progress of Fascism, perhaps the great cataclysm whose climax was the outbreak of the Second World War would have come just the same. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the help, direct and indirect, which the Vatican was able to give at certain critical moments to the Fascist States greatly helped to hasten the process which led to the crystallization of Europe into a Fascist Continent, and to the outbreak of the Second World War. It is true that it was not the policy which the Vatican, when confronted with the growth of a redoubtable and hostile ideology (Socialism), decided to be the most apt for conditions in the twentieth century, that led the world where it went. Colossal forces completely alien to religion in general and to Catholicism in particular were mainly responsible. Nevertheless, the alliance which the Vatican struck with those non-religious forces, and the help it gave them under critical circumstances, helped to a very great extent to tip the balance and thus drive mankind along the path of disaster. However, it is not our task to indict or to acquit the Vatican for its share of responsibility in the world tragedy. Facts will speak more strongly than anything else. Once the part that the Vatican has played in the domestic and international fields before and between the two world wars has been examined, it will be up to the reader to draw his own conclusions. From now on, therefore, our task will be to draw a picture of the role which the Catholic Church and the Vatican played in the social and political life of each major country, and thus give a panoramic view of the Vatican’s activities all over the world during the first half of this our twentieth century.

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