“This is our great objective, our great ideal.
We are heading towards a Catholic civilization
that can rise from the ruins of the modern world,
just as out of the ruins of the Roman world
Medieval civilization was born”
The origins of Catholic Action date, in the broad terms, to the tumultuous years between the French Revolution and the Restoration, when, faced with the increasing number of attacks on the Church and on Christian civilization, the necessity to organize the Catholic laity became ever more urgent. The former Jesuit Nikolaus Albert von Diesbach1 and his Italian disciple Pio Brunone Lanteri2 were responsible for the founding of Amicizia Cristiana and then of Amicizia Cattolica which anticipated the great apostolate of the Catholic laity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.3
Under the pontificate of Pius IX, various lay associations were established to hinder the process of the de-christianization of society: the Piusverein in Switzerland, the Katholischenverein in Germany, the Asociación de Laicos in Spain, the Union Catholique in Belgium, the Ligue Catholique pour la Défense de l’Eglise in France, the Catholic Union in England, the Opera dei Congressi in Italy. The great promoter of Catholic Action was, however, St Pius X4 who, in his encyclical Il fermo proposito5 and in his Apostolic Letter Notre Charge Apostolique,6 clearly indicated its principles and objectives, condemning political and social modernism, represented in France by the “Sillon” of Marc Sangnier7 and in Italy by the “Christian Democrats” of Romolo Murri.8
After the short pontificate of Benedict XV, on 6 February 1922, Cardinal Achille Ratti, former Prefect of the Vatican Library and only recently archbishop of Milan, was elected Pope, with the name of Pius XI. It was Pius XI who gave Catholic Action its legal physiognomy and its public status in the Church.
From his very first encyclical, Ubi Arcano Dei, Pius XI had wanted to encourage the “holy battle” of “that group of movements, organizations, and works which come under the name of Catholic Action”.9 In his encyclical Quas Primas10 of 11 December 1925, Pius XI had developed the scriptural, liturgical and theological foundation of the social Sovereignty of Jesus Christ, stating that “it would be a grave error to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs”11 because, as Leo XIII12 had already stated, “the whole human race is under the authority of Jesus Christ”. The Pope also denounced “the plague which now infects society” in “secularism with its errors and impious activities”.13
His view of history was similar to that of his predecessors:
“This evil spirit has not come into being in one day; it has long lurked beneath the surface. The empire of Christ over all nations was rejected. The right which the Church has from Christ Himself, to teach mankind, to make laws, to govern peoples in all that pertains to their eternal salvation, that right was denied. Then gradually the religion of Christ came to be likened to false religions and to be placed ignominiously on the same level with them. It was then put under the power of the State and tolerated more or less at the whim of princes and rulers. Some men went further, and wished to set up in the place of God’s religion a natural religion consisting in some instinctive affection of the heart. There were even some nations who thought they could dispense with God, and that their religion should consist in impiety and the neglect of God”.14
Pius XI entrusted Catholics with the task of rechristianizing society, by extending and increasing the Kingdom of Christ and to this end he introduced the liturgical feast of Christ the King, to be celebrated every year on the last Sunday of the month of October:
“Nations will be reminded by the annual celebration of this feast that not only private individuals but also rulers and princes are bound to give public honour and obedience to Christ.”15
Notes:
1. On Father Nikolaus Albert Joseph von Diesbach (1732-98) and on the Amicizie, Candido Bona I.M.C., Le “Amicizie”, società segrete e rinascita religiosa (1770-1830), Turin, Deputazione Subalpina di Storia Patria, 1962; R. de Mattei, Idealità e dottrine delle “Amicizie”, Rome, Biblioteca Romana, 1980.
2. On Pio Brunone Lanteri (1759-1830), declared Venerable in 1967, as well as the works mentioned in the previous note, Cf. R. de Mattei, Introduzione a Direttorio e altri scritti of Venerable P. B. Lanteri, Siena, Cantagalli, 1975; Paolo Calliari O.M.V., Servire la Chiesa. Il venerabile Pio Brunone Lanteri (1759-1830), Caltanisetta, Lanteriana-Krinon, 1989. Mgr Francesco Olgiati, indicated Pio Brunone Lanteri as being “one of the most eloquent symbols of the apostolate in general and of Catholic Action in particular”. Preface to Icilio Felici, Una bandiera mai ripiegata. Pio Brunone Lanteri, fondatore dei Padri Oblati di Maria Vergine, precursore dell’Azione Cattolica, (Pinerolo, Tip. Alzani, 1950), p. 6. Prof. Fernando Furquim de Almeida dedicated an important series of articles in Catolicismo to the Amicizie of Diesbach and Lanteri.
3. For a description of the lay apostolate in the last century, Silvio Tramontin, Un secolo di storia della Chiesa. Da Leone XIII al Concilio Vaticano II, (Rome, Studium, 1980), vol. II, pp. 1-54.
4. Pius XII thus defined him in the Address for his beatification on 3 June 1951, in DR, vol. XIII, p. 134.
5. St Pius X, Encyclical Il fermo proposito of 11 June 1905.
6. St Pius X, Letter Notre Charge Apostolique, of 25 August 1910, in IP, vol. VI, La pace interna delle nazioni, pp. 268-98 and Lepanto, nos. 96-7, March-April 1990.
7. On the “Sillon” of Marc Sangnier (1873-1950), Cf. the works of the Abbé Emmanuel Barbier, Les démocrates chrétiens et le modernisme, (Paris, Lethielleux, 1908), pp. 358-92; , Le devoir politique des catholiques, Paris, Jouve, 1909.
8. On Romolo Murri (1870-1944), Maurilio Guasco, Romolo Murri. Tra la ‘Cultura Sociale’ e il ‘Domani d’Italia’ (1898-1906), Rome, Studium, 1988; Benedetto Marcucci, Romolo Murri. La scelta radicale, Venice, Marsilio, 1994.
9. “Tell your faithful children of the laity — the Pope wrote — that when, united with their pastors and their bishops, they participate in the works of the apostolate, both individual and social, the final end of which is to make Jesus Christ better known and better loved, then they are more than ever ‘a chosen generation, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people’ of whom St Peter spoke in such laudatory terms”. Pius XI, Encyclical Ubi arcano, of 23 December 1922, in IP, Il laicato, (1958), vol. IV, p. 274. Among Pius XI’s numerous texts regarding Catholic Action, we recall the letter to Cardinal Bertram, archbishop of Breslaw (1928), that to the Primate of Spain (1929), that to the archbishop of Malines (1929), that to the Mexican episcopate (1937). Of the bibliography see the two documented degree theses by Walter Scheier, Laientum und Hierarchie, ihre theologischen Beziehungen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Lehramtes unter Pius XI. und Pius XII., Pontificium Atheneum Internationale Angelicum, Freiburg im Breisgau 1964; Jean-Guy Dubuc, Les relations entre hiérarchie et laïcat dans l’apostolat chez Pie XI et Pie XII, Rome, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1967.
10. Pius XI, Encyclical Quas Primas of 11 December 1925, in IP, VI, La pace interna delle nazioni, pp. 330-51.
11. Ibid, p. 339.
12. Leo XIII, Encyclical Annum Sacrum of 25 May 1899, in IP, vol. I, Le fonti della vita spirituale, p. 191.
13. Pius XI, Encyclical Quas Primas, 343.
14. Ibid, pp. 343-4.
15. Ibid, p. 349.