GIUSEPPE DONATI (*)

ABSTRACT: At a moment in which the Italian Communist Party hopes to reap, with the "historical compromise", the fruits of the voting by which in 1947 it supported the constitutional acknowledgement of the Concordat ratified in 1929 between the Catholic Church and the Fascist State (art. 7 of the Italian Constitution), the Radical monthly "La Prova radicale" publishes three texts by Gramsci (1), Donati (2) and Salvemini (3) on the Concordat, to prove how short-sighted that decision was.

Giuseppe Donati, a rigorous anti-fascist of the political Movement of Italian Catholics, after having underlined the difference between religion and religiousness states, with an apparent paradox, that anti-clericalism is the necessary attitude for the achievement of true religiousness, "because only if one feels in a religious way the duty toward the city and society can one truly rid the former and the latter from clericalism".

(LA PROVA RADICALE, n.10-11-12 August-October 1973)

To pay my tribute as well to the event of the day, I went through that encyclical "Ubi arcano" of the 23rd of December 1922, in which Pope Pius XI established the programme of his pontificate.

I wanted to see to which doctrine the clerical-fascist agreements of the 11th of February could be referred to; and I think it wasn't a waste of time.

Two notes of the encyclical especially impressed me: 1) the bitter conviction the newly elected Pope infused in it, at all times, that the lethal problems affecting society depended solely on the fact of having forsaken the laws of the Church; 2) the emphasis on the doctrine according to which every power comes from God and must be obeyed, whatever its actual origin, its agent - regardless of it being worthy or unworthy - and its practical enforcement in the law. On this point Pius XI guarantees, with all the authority coming from his supreme office, that Christ acknowledged the power exerted on himself by Pontius Pilate as being legitimate, and even invited his followers to respect the canonical competence of the scribes and pharisees!

This is not the place to discuss either the philosophy or the historical exegesis on which the papal doctrine claims to rest on, apart from its own, intrinsic and peculiar authority. I will simply say that the Lateran Pacts and the Concordat especially, are the literal application of this doctrine. Italian society has been submitted to canonical law; Italian Catholics are therefore expected to remain submitted to the Fascist authority. All the more because the latter certainly isn't unworthy of being compared to that of Pilate; and its intellectual and moral prestige are a match to that of the scribes and the pharisees. Pius XI is therefore perfectly logical and coherent.

I wish to tell Donati and Ferrari that the fact that this commemoration might be disagreeable for the Catholic but anti-fascist commentators of the Concordat is something I deeply regret, for the esteem I have of the culture and the personality of these two eminent men; but truth has its incontestable rights.

The distinctions made by the Catholics between religion and politics, to be true in theory and in practise as they claim it to be, first of all should not be based on a historical and psychological misunderstanding: the misunderstanding between religion and religiousness. Religiousness is basically an individual and interior fact, which can very well involve the separation from religion itself as well as from politics. Religion, on the other hand, is fundamentally a social and exterior fact which, far from being distinguishable from politics, is inseparable from it. In other words between religiousness and religion there is the same difference that separates mysticism from canonical law. Roman Catholicism is a religion in which canonical law has priority over mysticism, just as it is assumed that the effective authority is contained not so much in inspiration, revelation and tradition, but rather in the ruling and imperial will of the Pope, that is, of the person of the Pope and of the influences of his cou

rt. This was firstly the effect of the internal evolution of the ecclesiastical dogma and only then of the criticism which, destroying the metaphysical and historical system of Catholicism, left no other solution but that of social and moral pragmatism, in which an ever less demanding apologetics in terms of facts and arguments took shelter, and finally the principle of authority in which Roman Catholicism has its effective essence and its final consistence.

I am aware of the fact that the history of the last century of Italian Catholicism (but not just the Italian one) is connected to this distinction: on the one hand those who, in the name of religiousness (or of conscience) wanted to make it valid: on the other hand the hierarchy, armed with all the possible arguments and theological anathemas, to question this right in the name of religion and authority; but I am also aware of the fact that this history is the history of the defeat of the former, under the name of liberal Catholics, Christian democrats and populars. On the other hand, each of these resumptions represents an ideal regression as regards the former: from the Catholic freedom of Gioberti (4) to the political autonomism of Murri (5), and from this to unorthodoxism of Sturzo (6). Those who within Catholicism spoke about political independence in the name of religiousness were departing from the assertion of a principle to arrive to a compromise; but not even this they managed to obtain, because ju

st like the efforts of the liberal Catholics clashed against the obstacle of the "Sillabo", in the same way those of the Christian Democrats were wiped away by the condemnations of Pius XI, and today those of the popular Catholics are completely disavowed by the Lateran Pacts.

It was a well known thing that Pius XI had no sympathy towards the populars. It is in fact most probable that if Mussolini hadn't rid him of them, the Pope himself would have gotten rid of them by means of some important ecclesiastic provision, of the type of the Action Francaise. The prelude to this operation can be read in the encyclical I mentioned above, and precisely that passage in which the newly elected Pope deplored "seeing the elite of the Christians and even the priests infecting themselves with the sorrow diseases of error" as regards the doctrine "on civil authority and the duty to obey it, on the right to property, on the rights and duties of the workers, on the mutual relations between States, on the relations between owners and workers" and so on. Democratic and popular Catholics were thus mistaken for nationalist Catholics; but the conclusion was equally categoric for those too: "this fact - the Pope concluded - reveals a sort of moral, juridical and social modernism, which we condemn in the

same formal way with which we condemn dogmatic modernism".

The web of Penelope, distinguished lawyer Ferrari, was never used never served a comparison more appropriately than in your case. From what I read in "Libertà", you seem to be advocating the doctrine of Leon XIII against the present denials. Is this not deceiving oneself? Leon XIII wrote not only the "Rerum Novarum" (1891) (which therefore it is not worth reading if one wants to avoid being badly deceived, but also wrote, ten years later, the "Graves de communi", which is almost a disavowal of the former; and which, in any case, condemns political democracy and subdues the very legality of social democracy, considering Christian democracy (not political therefore, and only partly social) something that looks like democracy which Mussolini established in the so-called Work Charter. Finally, Leon XIII himself (whom people continue to think of as having achieved the rara avis of the enlightened and tolerant Pope), on his 25th year of papacy and in the sight of death condemned all doctrines of historical and phi

losophical criticism, condemned laity, popular sovereignty, the spirit of "revolt" of the lower classes, socialism, freedom of press and even scientific agnosticism.

Of course, the conclusion of all this could be only one: a return of society under the laws of the Church, "guardian of true freedom", which "imposes the respect of the governments and the obedience due to them". (Encyclical of the 19th of March 1903).

As we saw, Pius XI had a similar opinion; whereas the preface of the clerical-fascist Concordat could very well have been taken from the testament of this almost centenarian pope, whose political clairvoyance however appears to many Catholics democrats the greater (an involuntary irony!) as "time goes by".

Someone might think that this criticism is the prelude to old-style (why not say usual-style?) anticlerical conclusions. But it is not so, and I therefore remind the readers of the theoretical promises of the article.

The problem of religious freedom, the way it has been posed in Italy by the Lateran Pacts, not only concerns relations of a political nature: it also involves the very basis of the religious fact, in terms of a rational need for religiousness and in terms of a social need for religion. In other words, if it is true that the overcoming of fascism involves a renewal of the Italian people's civil conscience, it would be wise for political movements aiming at a radical reform of Italian society to take due heed of the religious problem, because it is formulated (I will use an expression which I believe more significant even if perhaps paradoxical) in terms of a religious anti-clericalism, because only if one feels religiously the duty toward the city and society can one truly rid the former and the latter from clericalism. This, as the struggles I mentioned before and the whole ecclesiastical history prove, has but one terrible enemy: religiousness, which is an attitude of the spirit to internalize the moral and

social symbols and myths of religion, to give a thrust toward progress, renewal and liberation.

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* Published in "Il Pungolo", Paris, n.7, 15 March 1929, under the pseudonym of Alessandro de Severo. "LPR took it from "Quesitalia" 84-86, 1965, entirely devoted to the relations between Church and State.

Translator's notes

(1) Antonio Gramsci: thinker and politician (1891-1937), one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party.

(2) Giuseppe Donati: politician (1889-1931), antifascist.

(3) Gaetano Salvemini: historian and politician (1873-1957), antifascist.

(4) Vincenzo Gioberti: philosopher and politician (1801-1852).

(5) Romolo Murri: priest and politician (1870-1944), advocate of the political and social engagement of Catholics, excommunicated in 1909.

(6) Luigi Sturzo: priest and politician (1871-1959), founder of the Partito Popolare (1919).