Christian Democracy: ” “thing of the past?” “

“Your private life also needs to be in keeping with the principles you maintain in public life”: Alcide De Gasperi’s admonishment to the parliamentary group of Christian Democrats in Italy’s constituent Assembly after the war epitomizes the sense of the inspiration that ought to inspire and sustain Christian involvement in politics: “a witness based on fidelity to the gospel values translated into public and private life”. Convinced of this is Jean-Dominique Durand, professor of contemporary history at the University of Lyons and cultural attaché at the French Embassy to the Holy See. Durand is the author of a book that reconstructs the history of the political movement of Christian inspiration in Europe. “History of Christian Democracy in Europe. From the French Revolution to Post-Communism” is the title of the book, recently presented at the Istituto Luigi Sturzo in Rome. What are the challenges for Christian Democracy in Europe? The crisis of the welfare State; the role of the human person in society and the affirmation of the civilization of life; poverty and unemployment; immigration: these, according to Durand, are some of the problems that Christian Democracy is called to come to grips with today, together with “a European construction that is revealed as ever more complicated, the problems raised by genetic discoveries and the risks of the manipulation of the human species”. On this terrain, says the historian, “a crucial strategic problem for the future of the Christian Democratic parties is posed: the question of their recomposition. The problem – he explains – is to know whether this will be possible without forgetting the origins of Christian democracy and without emasculating the heritage received from it”. Looking back to the origins. It was during the French Revolution that the formula “Christian democracy” was born. It was used to “express the determination of a part of the clergy in 1789 to oppose the aristocratic Church of the ancien régime with a Church closer to the people”. It was Pope Leo XIII in 1891 – notes Durand – who furnished “Catholics with a Charter of the Christian social order in the form of his encyclical Rerum novarum, and in 1901 with his Graves de communi“ aimed at restoring “Christian democracy to the tasks of the christianization of society”. The meeting of Christian democrats with the tradition of liberal Catholicism in the 20th century marks the transition from the “movement, as sum of activities and organizations placed under the control of the ecclesiastical hierarchy”, to a genuine political “party, rooted in the Christian tradition, but autonomous and non-confessional”. A “Christian Democratic” Europe? In numerical terms, reports Durand, “the democratic parties of the European Union represent over 31 million electors”, yet “on the map of Europe the presence of Christian democracy is strongly opposed and unstable. Germany, Holland and Luxembourg remain countries for the election of Christian Democrat parties, but in Italy the Christian Democrat party was swept away by the Mani pulite cyclone, and it is threatened in Belgium”. It is practically unknown in Great Britain and in the Scandinavian countries, and insignificant in Ireland and France. A frequent accusation against the Christian Democrats – says Durand – is that “of being identified with the parties of big business and of having lost sight of the Christian principles of political action”. So a serious problem of “definition and identity” remains open. But that must not make us forget “the firm opposition shown in the past to fascism and nazism, the clear-sightedness shown towards the Soviet Union”, and, in our own time, “the rejection of any electoral deal in France with the Front national or the CDU’s capacity in Germany to reduce the extreme right to a mere electoral expression or the resolute opposition to the Vlaams Blok in Belgium”. In response to the “return en force of the social doctrine of the Church ( Laborem exercens, Sollicitudo rei socialis, Centesimus annus)”, and the tireless commitment of the Pope to “the themes of democracy and human rights”, the Christian in politics today may, in Durand’s view, constitute the “leaven in the dough of the various political bodies” recently hoped for by the president of the European Commission Romano Prodi. Giovanna Pasqualin Traversa