The Progressive Nature of Political Christianity

John writes:

March 16, 2012 marked thirty-four years since the kidnapping of Aldo Moro by the Marxist-Leninist Red Brigades. Moro would eventually die at the hands of his captors. I have been thinking quite a bit about Moro's legacy as a Christian Democratic politician, and it is very interesting to note just how progressive Moro was. Of course, by "progressive" I do not mean center-left in the American sense of the word, but instead I am referring to the kind of Social Christian politics popular in many countries at the end of the Second World War, usually comprising a mixture of cultural conservatism and economic social democracy.

Moro's Social Christian beliefs are apparent in a speech given at the Supercinema of Rome on March 24, 1963. Moro powerfully described the progressive nature of political Christianity, saying:

"Bound as we are to traditions, for what they have that [is] essential and (...) human, we do not want to be men of the past, but of the future. Tomorrow does not belong to conservatives or to tyrants; it belongs to attentive and serious innovators, without rhetoric. And that tomorrow in civil society belongs, also for this, largely to the revolutionary and redeeming force of Christianity. Let us therefore leave the dead to bury the dead. We are different, we want to be different from the tired supporters of a world that is passing."

Moro's "world that is passing" was the world of Liberal Italy, the world that failed to stand up to Fascism, the world that sacrificed many thousands of young men in pointless wars of aggression, and the world that failed to bring social justice to workers and peasants. Moro's conservatives were mostly the failed politicians of that same Liberal Italy along with their ideological and political allies. Moro's words should not be construed to support a total abandonment of traditionalism, but simply the recognition that some traditions are essential to human life, while other aspects of the past may be shed if they do not comport with Christian values.

In the economic realm, Aldo Moro's conception of progress included a major role for the State in controlling the economy for the benefit of human beings first and foremost. As Carlo Masala writes:

"Under Moro, who was secretary-general of the DC from March 1959 to January 1964 and minister president of three governments between 1963 and 1968, yet another sphere [of the economy] was brought under the direct control of the state with the nationalization of the energy sector. Moro's leitmotif was that 'the market must be directed by political decisions.'" (Masala 2004: 94).

The nationalization of key industries and the regulation of the market were deemed by Moro and other left-wing Christian Democrats to be important steps in evening out the inequalities produced by capitalism and furthering the process of integrating the working-class into a Christian society, thus striking a major blow against atheistic Marxism. Stressing the importance of human needs over the dictates of the market, Moro and his allies adopted the motto of "first the person, and then the market." Let us pray that today's politicians come around to adopting a similar philosophy.

WORKS CITED

Carlo Masala. "Born for Government: the Democrazia Cristiana in Italy," vol 2. of Christian Democracy in Europe Since 1945, edited by Michael Gehler and Wolfram Kaiser. (London: Routledge, 2004).