Katolicyzm polityczny i jego wrogowie
Political Catholicism and its Enemies

Summary/Abstract: This paper tries to describe synthetically the history of political Catholicism, in a period when the Roman Church had to grapple with the secular powers, leading to the final suppression of the Papal territorial State. It seems that the most significant reasons for this erosion and collapse of the popes’ political power can be found in the mediaeval disputes between the papacy and empire, and in the defeat of the Ghibelline standpoint. The subsequent modern crises of political Catholicism – connected with the appearance of Protestantism – coincide with the Jesuit reaction, which tries at least to retain a grain of the indirect political power of the popes. The epoch of absolutism, especially in the form of the French Gallicanism, resulted in the next diminution of the political importance of papal Rome; after the French revolution the Roman Church finally lost the possibility of defending its State, which then fell under the pressure of radical ideas and the military violence.

• Details
• Contents