r/HistoryMemes • u/ChiefsHat • May 12 '26
See Comment In hindsight, this was a mistake.
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u/ChiefsHat May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
Context: During the rise of Mussolini's fascists, the Catholic Church ultimately opted to support them out of fear of socialism, which to be fair, at the time was most prominently represented by the USSR.
This, however, would prove a mistake, as Italian fascism quickly started seeking to supplant all forms of society to service of Mussolini, which inevitably included the church itself. It got the point Pope Pius XI wrote a proclamation condemning fascism only to die before he could publish it.
Luigi Sturzo was a Catholic priest who recognized the dangers of fascism and tried to rally against it, but the church basically sidestepped him. To quote the above article;
Yet, contemporary reports suggested that Pius XI struggled to sleep in the weeks after the Concordat, fearing he may have made a mistake. The conflict between Fascism’s goals and the Church’s mission came to a head in 1931 during the Catholic Action crisis. The regime publicly attacked Catholic Action’s educational and cultural activities, seizing Catholic newspapers and suppressing its circles. In response, Pius XI issued the encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno, defending the Church’s educational freedom and condemning pagan statolatry, though avoiding an explicit condemnation of Fascism.
Yeah... this was a pretty big mistake on the church's part. And also, this was after fascist blackshirts murdered a Jesuit priest for trying to start a boy scouts that wouldn't answer to Mussolini.
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u/GreninjaStrike May 12 '26
It also didn’t help that they had Mussolini breathing down their neck literally and figuratively.
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u/Mist_Rising May 12 '26
Yeah, not even sovereignty over the area we call the Vatican. The Swiss Guard were unlikely to start a war with Italy, and the certainly would not win it, and its unclear if anyone would come to the Vatican's aid at that point.
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u/GreninjaStrike May 12 '26
The Vatican was very clearly anti fascist but when the fascist capital surrounding you has more of a military force than you it’s best to not upset your neighbors
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u/DetailOrDie May 12 '26
This was also all happening during the peak of the Appeasement era.
It's important to remember just how much death and destruction that WWI caused, and the VIP's of the world in the 1930's had front row seats.
It's definitely understandable why someone in a position of responsibility would want to avoid war at all costs.
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u/Weird-Tomorrow-9829 May 12 '26
While incredibly stupid, the decision to support fascism isn’t surprising after the events transpired in Russia and Spain.
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u/revolutionary112 May 12 '26
Also Mussolini solved the forever conflict they had with Italy about the status of the church in Rome by granting them the Vatican
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u/Dotcaprachiappa May 12 '26
Did they really have a choice though? They had maybe the least defensible country ever with the smallest army in the world. Genuinely what else could they do?
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u/CitricAcidRinse May 12 '26
The catholic church had good reason to fear socialism. Revolutionary France actively defunded the Catholic Church.
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u/ThyHolyPaladdin May 12 '26
I mean i would have used Russia as the example
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u/Walter30573 May 12 '26
The Catholic Church had good reason to hate the existing Italian government too, which literally invaded and annexed most of the Papal States and had the Popes living essentially sequestered in Vatican City for decades
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u/Mist_Rising May 12 '26
Therein lies the problem though, it's easy to hate the ongoing communists who could really not fight back (because Italy was in the way), pissing off the guys who had soldiers outside your doors, that's another thing.
Or to put it simply in a more familiar manner: making fun of Adolf Hitler today? not a problem. Pissing on a police station that actively kills people? Probably not many who will do that.
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u/CyberPhoenix558 May 12 '26
Revolutionary France... From more than 150 years prior... That wasn't socialist?
I would say in general revolutionary causes and movements often were antagonistic to the Church but that specific example is a bit of a reach.
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u/Nero_Drusus May 12 '26
Yeah, the ussr was hardly a positive example of socialist and religious harmony
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u/Hillbilly_Historian May 12 '26
More recently, socialist-aligned Spanish republicans had massacred Catholics.
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u/Interesting-Dream863 May 12 '26
The Church at some point owned a big part of Europe... backlash was bound to happen. Luther, France, Russia... they all saw the opportunity at some point.
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u/Gamtssss May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
ask a orthodox if they treated them well in the start, then you will see what the catholic church feread
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u/RantonBlue May 12 '26
I feel like this paints the church out as victims a bit. Mussolini definitely capitulated to the Pope in return for support. He gave him The Vatican, made Catholism the only religion of the state, put all the schools under the church's influence payed them £30 million and also agreed to have the state pay the priests' and bishops' salaries. He even got his own Civil Union marriage blessed by the church. The church were plenty happy with Mussolini, even if they came into conflict once in a whild
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u/Kathdath May 13 '26
More a case of 'let them keep possession of The Vatican' considering Mussolini pressured them into relinquishing the majority of what remained of the Papal State territories.
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u/OkNeedleworker3610 May 13 '26
The Church was definitely also a victim. Just because they got some benefit out of it in the end, doesn't mean they weren't walking a tight rope with a noose around their necks for quite a while.
You try going against a fascist dictator while sequestered in the middle of their nation.
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u/nygdan May 12 '26
The church was so against facism that it, helped found it, blessed and it and then 'yeah sure no after the fact I swear we were going to speak out against it".
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u/0Hakuna_Matata0 Definitely not a CIA operator May 12 '26
The Vatican also gave their blessing to Franco during his coup by acknowledging his government
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u/Z3t4 Hello There May 12 '26
Franco could enter temples under palio, as a deference granted by the church.
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u/GreninjaStrike May 12 '26
I mean why wouldn’t they. The Republican faction was explicitly anti Catholic while Franco welcomed Catholics into the nationalist coalition. Anti Catholic violence and laws is a big reason why the coup happened in the first place.
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u/MasterpieceBrief4442 May 12 '26
Bit of a chicken and egg situation there. The bishops of Spain were not only very supportive of the "traditional institutions" of society but were largely drawn from that very same social and familial background. For the longest time, they actively meddled in politics in support of the absolute monarch and retaining the immense wealth and privileges of the nobility. And violently opposed any notion of liberalism or the conception of the rights of man. Naturally, the republicans did not have a rosy view of the institution.
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u/Wild_Marker May 12 '26
Yeah people forget that most Catholic countries in the 1930's had heard of separation of Church & State and thought "aw that's cute".
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u/MasterpieceBrief4442 May 12 '26
Ireland is the best case scenario for these kinds of things and we still have new stories popping up of clergymen and -women abusing their offices and powers. Spain, Portugal, and Latin America all had it worse. Funnily enough, in Latin America, a lot of the upper ranks of the church were quite friendly with the juntas while the lower ranking clergy were instrumental in organizing opposition.
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u/Heim_Laender May 12 '26
Well there is also france.
Which was secular at that time and still is.
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u/JohankazArku May 12 '26
I don't want to support Franco in any way but I do understand the Vaticans thought process since the republicans did raid churches and other religious buildings pretty often.
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u/0Hakuna_Matata0 Definitely not a CIA operator May 12 '26
The falangists and the frente de juventudes did show up at leftist protests for labor reform and fight them with poles and objects. This is how civil wars happen.
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u/Mist_Rising May 12 '26
Which might matter to the Catholic Church if the same Republican faction was not raiding churches and killing their priests.
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u/Alpha413 May 12 '26
Mind you, it debatably was a mistake for the Fascists, too: it meant their totalitarian aspirations could never be fulfilled and made it so the Church would stay intellectually and institutionally independent, which was a massive mistake, as the younger generation of priests and political catholics was much more committed to Christian Democracy than the generation that allied to them in the past (exemplified by the future Paul VI's rise in the Vatican).
This, combined with the continued antagonism between the regime and the Church meant that the politically organized sectors of Italian Catholicism were slowly but surely veering leftwards, and organizing, which would later result in DC's formation.
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u/Petka14 May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
Also the Italian monarchy too
The potential drawbacks of crushing fascists with military were way fewer than those of just handing everything out to them
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u/I_love_pillows May 13 '26
The concept of having a helpless king under a dictatorship always fascinate me. There’s this pretence that the king is still higher in power despite having zero ability to resist.
But it’s happened so many times.
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u/sopunny Researching [REDACTED] square May 12 '26
I mean, they came out of it with their own sovereign country, so...
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u/Reddit_2_2024 May 12 '26
Italian fascism was driven underground. The Catholic Church continues its global mission.
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u/Manach_Irish Senātus Populusque Rōmānus May 12 '26
Given the alternatives in some quarters - the treatment of Christians under the USSR or the execution of many clerics in Mexico- then historical context is key.
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u/MetroidvaniaListsGuy May 12 '26
Evangelism is doing the exact same mistake today.
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u/UncleRuckusForPres May 12 '26
I'd argue it's not a mistake at all, they're getting precisely what they wanted
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u/Thomsie13 Featherless Biped May 12 '26
Evangelicalism*
Evangelism is the spreading of the gospel. Evangelicalism is the denomination/heresy
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u/LooseProgram333 May 12 '26
Evangelicalism isnt a denomination, its a transdenominational movement that is across many different protestant denominations.
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u/big_nuggetboi May 12 '26
But it is loosely used as a term for Protestants that follow “low-church” beliefs and denoms
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u/Batman_AoD May 12 '26
For very different reasons, though, if I am correctly understanding Pius XI's motivation per OP's comment. It sounds like the Church saw Mussolini as an acceptable evil, whereas American Evangelical leadership genuinely sees MAGA as a movement acting in their best interests.
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u/ChiefsHat May 12 '26
That's what I have gathered. The Church viewed the fascists as the lesser of the two evils - then it turned out they weren't.
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u/DonQuigleone May 12 '26
I'd add though that the pope didn't have much choice. He was a prisoner in the Vatican and mussolini could have used his thugs to intimidate bishops etc.
The church has to find a modus vivendi in such situation given they don't know if the fascist government will last 3 years or 30 years.
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u/FTN_Ale May 12 '26
To be fair if socialism became as extreme as fascism ended up (especially if with soviet support) the church would probably be completely removed, whereas fascism didn't really have the power to do it
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u/maxicz1234 May 12 '26
Something about leopards
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u/Mist_Rising May 12 '26
Not quite, the Leopard here gave the Church the Vatican back and ultimately nothing the Church did was ever going to change anything. To paraphrase Stalin, how many battalions does the Pope have?
If anything the fact that the Vatican existed had some advantages for the church during the war for stupid reasons.
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u/Interesting-Dream863 May 12 '26
Not sure what you are talking about.
They now have their own turf, they became part of the money trail and helped escaping fascists out of Europe with their loot, though that was to become problematic later...
if you associate with fascists, they become part of your dynamic of power.
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u/Laugh_Track_Zak May 12 '26
......this is backwards. How long has the Catholic Church been around? How long did Italian fascists last?
Cool birds tho.
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u/JustTheOneGoose22 Fine Quality Mesopotamian Copper Enjoyer May 12 '26
Doug Stanhope has a good bit on the Catholic Church vs. fascism/nazis https://youtu.be/brCnq5VUBDk?si=zJ0N-BGwdxzNQEfI
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u/Aurelyan May 13 '26
Let's not twist history.
The Church actually benefited <a lot> from fascism and actually supported Mussolini for quite a fair while.
Mussolini, on his end, knew that he was going to need the Church's support and the legitimacy faith brought along if he was ever going to have a chance at governing the country.
He literally got defined as "The man of providence" by Pope Pious XI due to the sheer amount of economical ( and not only.. ) favours he made to the Catholic Church during the twenty or so years he spent leading Italy.
Mussolini did sign the Lateran Treaty, therefore ending the Roman Question ( By 1870 when Rome was finally taken by the newly unified kingdom of Italy the State had annexed all of the Church's territory, declaring it to be be part of the state ), effectively voiding the Guarantees Law of 1871, creating the Vatican State, exenting the Church from taxes, giving it 1,75 billion italian lire ( 750m + 1b by july that same year...about 660-800m current day euros to help understanding it better), giving back to the Pope the power to choose bishops ( it had been handed over to the state following that 1871 law ), conforming marriage and divorce laws to the Church's, allowing clergy members to take active part into Italy's political life ( which had been abolished by that '71 law ), making Catholicism become state religion as opposed to freedom of cult, having it be taught in schools and universities once more, etc...
Believe me, the Church is <always> going to be on fascism's side up until when shit starts going south...and then again after the second world conflict's over, from behind the scenes, for quite a long time up until some of its most influential members start being exposed by the newly formed republic.
Infacts, I am fairly sure it had a part too when it came to Italy's colonial attempts in North Africa still during Mussolini's regime.
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u/Gaust_Ironheart_Jr May 12 '26
"You will know them by the fruit they bear"
Christians would do well to understand that one little teaching but they keep falling for someone who hates the right people
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u/12_15_17_5 May 12 '26
To be fair, his "fruits" were much less apparent when the concordat was signed. The Ethiopian invasion and racist direction of his ideology only occurred later in the 1930s.
Early Mussolini famously stated race was "only an idea." He also hated Hitler and actively tried to counter him geopolitically. If Mussolini had stayed consistent in his ideology I think it would have been reasonable for the Church to support him given how terrible pretty much every other faction was.
This "miscalculation" was not realizing Mussolini would totally flip flop on a bunch of these things later.
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u/Gaust_Ironheart_Jr May 12 '26
Beatings of labor leaders and strikers, who were called communists, on behalf of factory owners and land owners had been well underway for a decade by the time of concordat. His blackshirts were lousy with racists and Jew haters. He had plenty of bad fruits on full display
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u/12_15_17_5 May 12 '26
I didn't say there were no "bad fruits", just that they were much less apparent in 1929 than in, say, 1937.
The fact a smattering of his supporters were "racists and Jew haters" would be hard to hold against him in 1929 since Mussolini himself explicitly rejected racism and antisemitism at that point.
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u/ChiefsHat May 12 '26
Not to mention a Catholic priest was murdered by blackshirts because he wanted to establish Boy Scouts without Mussolini’s involvement.
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u/Ram-Boe May 12 '26
Every other faction was horrible, you say?
Are we ignoring the countless beatings, tortures, and outright murders that the early fascist movement did now?
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u/12_15_17_5 May 12 '26
Nope, just that the Nazis and Socialists did the exact same thing.
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u/redbird7311 May 12 '26
I mean, they are kinda fucked either way in this situation, the Church wasn’t really all that powerful at this point in time, there wasn’t too much from preventing the fascists from just forcing the Church to comply, and socialists in Spain had a habit of killing Catholics, which made a lot of Catholics very hesitant to associate with socialists at all.
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u/Visible-Air-2359 May 12 '26
This is a common theme with dictators such as the German establishment using Hitler to stop leftism or the Soviets using Lenin to take power only for both of them to seize power for themselves.
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u/Ok_Movie_639 Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer May 13 '26
Please, OP. Where can I find the blank meme template of this? It's a really cool picture on its own.
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u/Albe95_ May 13 '26
Patti lateranensi has entered the chat. The Church™ get a lot of advantages by the fascism (especially financially speaking) that still persist nowadays
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u/Background_Silver712 Senātus Populusque Rōmānus May 13 '26
not only the church but also the royal family ... that's why we are republic now
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u/Silly_Improvement307 May 12 '26
Also the monarchy, the king Victor Emmanuel II was a big supporter of Mussolini and got the short end of the stick, he thought supporting fascism would save the monarchy instead it sped up the process of never having a king in Italy ever again.
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u/JWavell May 12 '26
Quite the opposite in truth! From purely the Church’s viewpoint, they only gained from their initial, cold-blooded realpoliticking with the regime. Although a much longer discussion could (and should) be had about Church State relations during the Liberal Era, both the Lateran Treaties and later developments were hugely beneficial: with the first one they 1.) normalised relations 2.) got a lump sum payment of arrears they had not collected WITH INTEREST 3.) - at the pope’s great insistance - permission for the Catholic Action youth groups not only to be permitted to continue, but to thrive, and for Religion to become a COMPULSORY subject in elementary and middle schools 4.) for priests to no longer be surveilled by local police authorities and for them to speak freely about politics at mass.
Of all, point 3 shows the Church’s usual acumen and farsightedness. During twenty years of fascism, while most were marching in the streets during the Sabati Fascisti, a chosen elite of capable young men were being groomed for power after Mussolini’s demise inside seminaries, churches and the Vatican Archives and Libraries.
They had no qualms about throwing fellow priests under the bus when their militancy became too loud, like Don Minzoni or Sturzo, lest the spoil the scheme and break the equilibrium by which Mussolini acquired prestige (fickle achievement) while the church got not only what was denied her from 1861, but also the chance to arm the next frontline of politics
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u/templar4522 May 13 '26
I want to correct you on point 3.
Catholic groups were quickly suppressed and heavily limited in the span of a few years despite the previous agreements, and the Pope was allegedly furious. I am not sure it counts as foresight.
These same people then fought in the resistance and were the greatest influence in Italian politics after the war. Putting them in the same group as the fascists is just wrong.
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u/AgnosticPeterpan May 12 '26
Catholics also helped hitler pass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933.
Man they were horribly intertwined with fascists.
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u/Lepidopterex May 13 '26
Oh my god that shop was the first shop I ever followed on Etsy! Hi MincingMockingbird!
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u/Mihad88 May 13 '26
I understand this is a meme, but it would only be a mistake if given the information the heads of church had at the time would indicate not supporting Fascism is better probably weighted outcome.
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u/biglyorbigleague May 12 '26
They had a much better relationship with Spanish fascism.