Uniformity Undone: Aspects of Catholic Culture in Postwar Italy

Abstract

Discussion of Catholic culture in postwar Italy raises a host of preliminary questions. Is there a specific Catholic culture in Italy? If so, how has it changed in the postwar period, given that cultures are not static and immobile but conditioned by economic, social and political changes? Is it an élite culture, a mass culture or a popular culture? What is the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the production and diffusion of Catholic culture? And many more of a similar kind. The first question was posed by Ruggiero Orfei (1977) when he asked whether there was a single Catholic culture, only to conclude that Catholicism was characterised by a plurality of cultural traditions. He observed, however, that the question was not rhetorical in the sense that the Roman Catholic Church’s reaction to the challenge of the French Revolution had forced it into a last-ditch defence of its traditional positions, and that this had resulted in the development of ‘a certain type of Catholic culture closely tied to the magisterium of the Roman hierarchy, which translated itself into forms of apologetic literature directed against illuminism, positivism, idealism, liberalism and socialism. Always against something’ (Orfei, 1977, p. 141).