The socialists wrongly assume the right of property to be of mere human invention . . . and, preaching up the community of goods, declare that ... all may with impunity seize upon the possessions and usurp the rights of the wealthy. More wise and profitably, the Church recognizes the existence of inequality amongst men.
—Leo XIII, Dec. 28, 1878
No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true socialist.
—Pius XI, May 15, 1931
From socialism's earliest beginnings down through the years to the present, the Roman Catholic Church has branded the Marxist doctrine of socialism with its disapproval. That disapproval became such a political reflex that Catholic parties often seemed to be identified with opposition to social progress itself. The effort to correct this impression, plus the urgent menace of Communism, gave birth, in post-World War II in Europe, to the surprisingly successful Christian Democratic movements in Italy, Western Germany, Belgium and France.
The Flowering. In all these parties, there was a planned detachment from church direction, a deliberate effort to accept collaboration with progressive, socialist and even specifically anticlerical parties. During the first ten postwar years, Christian Democracy had a great flowering. Today, only in Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's West Germany, where they are the party of the center, are the Christian Democrats still riding high.
In Italy the Christian Democrats still dominate, but with no clear majority; the party suffers from immobility because it includes too many political shadings from left to right, unified only by Catholicism. The West German party, in a nation that is less than 50% Roman Catholic, has shrewdly salted its basically Catholic leadership with Protestants. In France the Catholic M.R.P. Party, with its "good Europeans" Georges Bidault and Robert Schuman, is a declining force because the supersensitive issue of state aid to Catholic schools has split it from its Socialist allies.
Accustomed to moving surely in countries where Catholicism's dominance is unchallenged, but more cautiously elsewhere, the church has lately been heard with increasing force on the old subject of the church and socialism. In recent weeks, Catholic functionaries have come to the aid of the party in three countries:
West Germany. The Bishop of Mün-ster, Dr. Michael Keller, last month told Catholic workers that as Catholics they should consider themselves prohibited from voting Socialist. "It is a question of conscience, not one of political judgment," he said. Though Adenauer's Christian Democratic leaders privately welcomed the effect the bishop's pronouncement would have on rural and women voters, they were careful not to endorse the bishop's views publicly: they do not want to alienate Protestant voters in the fall's national elections.