Abstract
From the Catholic Tory right to Plaid Cymru, therefore, there were Catholics who interpreted fascism as part of a wider reaction against liberal culture. There were also, however, distinctively Catholic anti-fascist voices in Britain. The Italian exile Don Luigi Sturzo, for example, eventually found a niche among a number of liberal Catholics. Periodicals such as Blackfriars, Sower and the Catholic Worker, presented an alternative to the positive views of Mussolini and Franco in the rest of the Catholic press. Questions can be asked too, about the extent to which the profascism of many Catholic writers permeated through Catholic society at large. For the most part, however, expressions of overt and unambiguous Catholic anti-fascism were often either isolated or absorbed into mainstream secular discourse.
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Notes
John Eppstein (1935) The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne), pp. 375–6.
E.I. Watkin (1939) The Catholic Centre (London: Sheed and Ward). p. 107.
Quoted in Giovanna Farrell-Vinay (2004) ‘The London Exile of Don Luigi Sturzo (1924–1940)’, Heythrop Journal, XLV, pp. 158–177 at p. 165.
This point is made in Farrell-Vinay (2004), p. 164 and in J. Keating (1996a) ‘Discrediting the “Catholic State”: British Catholics and the Fall of France’, in F. Tallett and N. Atkin (eds.), Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789 (London: Rio Grande), p. 28.
Luigi Sturzo (1926) Italy and Fascismo, tr. Barbara Barclay Carter, preface by Gilbert Murray (London: Faber and Gwyer).
M. Farrell-Vinay (2004), p. 163. Luigi Sturzo (1929) The International Community and the Right of War (London: Allen and Unwin), pp. 5–9.
Joan Keating (1996b) ‘Looking to Europe: Roman Catholic and Christian Democracy in 1930s Britain’, European History Quarterly, 26, pp. 57–79 at p. 64.
V.M. Crawford (ed.), Italy To-day, Documents Published by the Friends of Italian Freedom, ‘I. The “Corporative State” in Fascist Italy’, January 1929, p. 2.
V.M. Crawford (1933) Catholic Social Doctrine 1891–1931 (The Catholic Social Year Book), preface.
T. Buchanan (1997) Britain and the Spanish Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 181.
National Council of Labour (1936) The Truth about Spain (London: pamphlet).
Pamphlet prepared by A. Ramos Oliveira (1936) Catholics and the Civil War in Spain (London: National Council of Labour), p. 2.
John McGovern MP (1937), Why Bishops Back Franco: report of a visit of investigation to Spain (London: Independent Labour Party), p. 2.
G. Bowd (2011) ‘Scotland for Franco: Charles Saroléa v. the Red Duchess’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 31, 195–219.
S. Ball (1990) ‘The Politics of Appeasement: the Fall of the Duchess of Atholl and the Kinross and West Perth By-election, December 1938’, The Scottish Historical Review, 69, 49–83, p. 57.
Harry Gannes and Thodore Repard (1936) Spain in Revolt: a history of the Civil War in Spain in 1936 and a study of its social, political and economic causes (London, Victor Gollancz), p. 226.
Arthur Koestler (1937), Spanish Testament (London, Victor Gollancz), p. 100.
Prince Hubertus Friedrich of Loewenstein (1937) A Catholic in Republican Spain (London, Victor Gollancz), p. 8.
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© 2013 Tom Villis
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Villis, T. (2013). Catholic Anti-Fascism. In: British Catholics and Fascism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137274199_9
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