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'Clerical fascism' is an ideological construct that combines the political and economic doctrines of fascism with theology or religious tradition. The term has been used to describe organisations and movements that combine religious elements with fascism, support by religious organisations for fascism, or fascist regimes in which clergy play a leading role. For Catholic clerical fascism, the term ''Catholic integralism'' is sometimes used, although Catholic integralism may have points of disagreement with fascism.
The term clerical fascism (''clerico-fascismo'') emerged in the 1920s in Italy to refer specifically to the faction of the Catholic party PPI (Partito Popolare Italiano) who chose to support Mussolini and his régime. It was coined by Don Luigi Sturzo, an Italian priest and Christian Democrat leader who took the opposite option and was exiled by Mussolini in 1924.^[1]
More recently, the term has been used by scholars, such as Hugh Trevor-Roper, who seek to create a typology of fascism, distinguishing between clerical fascism and more radical types of fascism such as Nazism.^[2]

Contents

Examples of clerical fascism

References

See also

Further reading

Vatican policy

Examples of clerical fascism

Examples of dictatorships and electoral political movements involving certain elements of clerical fascism include the Croatian Ustashe movement as well as those of António Salazar in Portugal, Maurice Duplessis of Quebec^[3], Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria, Jozef Tiso in Slovakia, Getúlio Vargas in Brazil, the Iron Guard movement in Romania, the Rexists in Belgium, and the government of Vichy France. The government of General Franco in Spain had ''Nacionalcatolicismo'' as part of its ideology. It has been described by some as clerical fascist, especially after the decline in influence of the more secular Falange beginning after the mid-1940s. Scholars who accept the term clerical fascism nonetheless debate which examples in this list should be dubbed clerical fascist, with the Ustashe being the most widely included. In the above cited examples, the degree of official Catholic support and clerical influence over lawmaking varies.
Some scholars, such as Walter Laqueur, consider certain contemporary movements to be forms of clerical fascism, including Christian Identity and possibly Christian Reconstructionism in the United States; militant forms of politicized Islamic fundamentalism; and militant Hindu nationalism in India (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh / Bharatiya Janata Party), despite the lack of specific fascist policies associated with them, and despite the lack of any Roman Catholic influence, support or connection.

References

1. Reflections on Fascism and Religion
2. H.R. Trevor-Roper, 'The Phenomenon of Fascism', in S. Woolf (ed.), Fascism in Europe (London: Methuen, 1981), especially p.26. Cited in Roger Eatwell, Reflections on Fascism and Religion
3. The Padlock Law, Clerical Fascism in Quebec

See also

★ Fascism and the Roman Catholic Church

★ Positive Christianity

★ Rexism

★ Neofascism and religion

★ Latin Conservatism

★ Alois Hudal

★ Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi

Further reading

★ Randolph L. Braham and Scott Miller, ''The Nazis Last Victims: The Holocaust in Hungary'' (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, [1998] 2002). ISBN 0-8143-2737-0

★ Leon Volovici, ''Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism: The Case of Romanian Intellectuals in the 1930s'' (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1991). ISBN 0-08-041024-3

★ Nicholas M. Nagy–Talavera, ''The Green Shirts and the Others: A History of Fascism in Hungary and Romania'' (Iaşi and Oxford: The Center for Romanian Studies, 2001). ISBN 973-9432-11-5

★ Charles Bloomberg and Saul Dubow, eds., ''Christian–Nationalism and the Rise of the Afrikaner Broederbond in South Africa, 1918–48'' (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). ISBN 0-253-31235-3

★ Walid Phares, ''Lebanese Christian Nationalism: The Rise and Fall of an Ethnic Resistance'' (Boulder, Colo.: L. Rienner, 1995). ISBN 1-55587-535-1

★ Ainslie T. Embree, ‘The Function of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: To Define the Hindu Nation’, in ''Accounting for Fundamentalisms, The Fundamentalism Project'' 4, ed. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 617–652. ISBN 0-226-50885-4

★ Partha Banerjee, ''In the Belly of the Beast: The Hindu Supremacist RSS and BJP of India'' (Delhi: Ajanta, 1998). ISBN 81-202-0504-2

★ Walter K. Andersen. ‘Bharatiya Janata Party: Searching for the Hindu Nationalist Face’, ''In The New Politics of the Right: Neo–Populist Parties and Movements in Established Democracies'', ed. Hans–Georg Betz and Stefan Immerfall (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), pp. 219–232. ISBN 0-312-21134-1 or ISBN 0-312-21338-7

★ Mark Juergensmeyer. ''The New Cold War?: Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State''. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). (ISBN 0-520-08651-1)

★ Chip Berlet [1]

★ Laqueur, Walter. 1966. ''Fascism: Past, Present, Future,'' New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-19-511793-X

Vatican policy

★ Anthony Rhodes, ''The Vatican in the Age of Dictators 1922–1945'' (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1973). ISBN 0-03-007736-2

★ Michael Phayer, ''The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965'' (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000) ISBN 0-253-33725-9

★ Livia Rothkirchen, ‘Vatican Policy and the ‘Jewish Problem’ in Independent Slovakia (1939–1945)’ in Michael R. Marrus (ed.),''The Nazi Holocaust'' 3, section 8, Bystanders to the Holocaust (Wesport: Meckler, 1989), pp. 1306–1332. ISBN 0-88736-255-9 or ISBN 0-88736-256-7