The Church and the Resurgence of Nationalism, Part II

In the first part of this essay, I gave a brief overview of the influence of nationalism from the French Revolution till today. In the second part, I want to discuss how the Church responded to nationalism and nationalist movements in the modern era, from the French Revolution to the 20th century. 

The Nation-State Versus the Church

The French Revolution pitted nation against the Church almost immediately. This was inevitable, given that the Church saw society as hierarchical and formed part of the ancien régime with the monarchy. In fact, there was initially much enthusiasm for the Revolution, even among French bishops. But this dissipated quickly as the National Assembly began seizing Church property in the name of the nation in 1789 and ordering the closing of vowed religious orders in 1790. 

Kings had seized property and closed monasteries before, and they always played a role in Church affairs, especially in France. Conflicts between temporal rulers and the Church were not new. That a revolutionary change in the relationship between Church and State had taken place became clear with the creation of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in June 1790. 

The National Assembly logically saw in the French Church a national institution, and it made sense to that assembly that the nation should control the Church. The Civil Constitution redrew episcopal boundaries and made the clergy salaried officials of the state. But perhaps the most obvious way it reflected modern nationalism was its provision for the election of parish priests by the same regulations as those for electing local administrative officials. Non-Catholics such as Protestants, Jews, and atheists could elect clergy to the Catholic Church, whose head was still very much in Rome. This reflected one of the key tenets of modern nationalism: that all members of the nation are equal. 

In November 1790, the National Assembly issued an oath to all French clergy, which made them swear to uphold the Civil Constitution. This oath more than anything else split the Revolution, with slightly less than half the clergy refusing to swear the oath. The geographic distribution of places where clergy refused the oath was predictive of future voting patterns in France (those who took it were more “left,” those who did not more “right”) until the 1960s in France, according to historian Timothy Tackett. Pope Pius VI waited as long as he could, trying to find some way to compromise with the new regime. But in 1791, he issued two briefs condemning the new constitution as contrary to the Faith.

This experience of nationalist revolution led popes to support monarchs, including Napoleon, who were willing to safeguard their institutional interests. The concordat signed with Napoleon in 1801 recognized Catholicism as the religion of the majority of people in France and guaranteed the Church basic liberties; but the Church was subject to state supervision and required to renounce any compensation for the loss of her property.  This experience of nationalist revolution led popes to support monarchs, including Napoleon.Tweet This

After Napoleon’s defeat, the Vatican threw in her lot with the restored monarchies of Europe, even when it went against nationalist uprisings favored by Catholics. Gregory XVI favored the Russian czar over a Polish uprising in 1834, citing the old doctrine of “due submission to princes” and citing St. Paul and St. Augustine in support of such. 

This is not the whole story, however. At a local level, the Church could encourage nationalism without much fear of censure from Rome. The most obvious case in point is that of Ireland. The Church in Ireland supported Daniel O’Connell and his campaign for emancipation, and she supported nationalist movements so long as they were not violent or revolutionary—though this meant sometimes the hierarchy sided with the government over popular movements, as in 1848. 

The Church in Latin America by and large supported landowners and forces of conservatism over nationalist revolutions, though she occasionally threw in her lot with dictators who could be classified as nationalist, such as Gabriel García Moreno of Ecuador. Meanwhile, in the United States, Catholics such as Orestes Brownson promoted a kind of Catholic “American Exceptionalism” akin to nationalism, which has become a feature of American Catholicism since the 19th century.

Often, nationalist feeling led to dangerous splits within the Church. We have already seen what happened during the French Revolution. In the 1830s, a movement which advocated the separation of the Church from the State—in order to free her from State interference—grew up in the form of Catholic Liberalism, led by the Abbé de Lamennais and Montalembert. Ultramontane and royalist Catholics, such as Louis Veuillot, violently opposed this movement. 

The revolutions of 1848 spawned the Risorgimento (1849-1870) in Italy, which not only led to the seizure of Church property and closure of religious orders but also attracted the support of many priests. In Germany, a movement led by German theologians such as Ignaz von Döllinger sought to promote the idea of a “national” Church for Germany. 

The most contentious battles between the Church and new nationalistic states in the late 19th century took place over three issues: marriage, education, and religious liberty. The reason for this is not hard to fathom. The new nation-states sought legal equality for all citizens in these areas regardless of religious confession, and this meant violating what the Church saw as the rights of the true Faith. This is what the Kulturkampf was about. And it is why the Church refused to recognize the new Italian kingdom and, until signing the 1929 concordat with Mussolini’s Fascist government, forbade Catholics to vote in Italian elections, since the government had invaded those rights so directly. 

The Church fought states all over Europe on these issues but found out what Wimmer said about nation-states: they are simply militarily and financially vastly more powerful than the dynastic polities they replaced. Popes starting with Leo XIII tried a different tact, encouraging French Catholics to take part in politics and “rally” (ralliément) to the Third Republic and attempting to educate modern society via encyclicals. This was still not enough to head off an eventual Law of Separation, which the French government passed in 1905, making the Third Republic an officially “secular” one. 

The Turn Toward Liberal Democracy

The two World Wars accelerated the shift in policy begun by Leo XIII, however. World War I destroyed the last of the European monarchies that might have been sympathetic to the Church’s position, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The rise of nationalist feeling during the interwar period meant the Church had to deal with regimes much more nationalist than had existed previously. Despite this, the Church finally made peace with the Italian state with the Lateran Treaty (1929) and, more controversially, with the Nazi regime in Germany with the Reichskonkordat (1933).

Nonetheless, the interwar period also saw the papacy condemn two nationalist movements of the 1930s. In 1926, Pius XI issued a condemnation of Action Française, a royalist-nationalist organization run by Charles Maurras, an agnostic, but most of whose followers were Catholic. Maurras tried to reconcile his movement with the papacy, but by the time Pus XII lifted the ban on Catholics participating in Action Française in 1939, most Catholics had already abandoned it. The other movement Pius XI condemned was Nazism, through Mit Brennender Sorge (1937). Though it does not mention Nazism by name, it clearly condemns the exaltation of race or nation over that of the Catholic Faith in very strong terms which are clearly aimed at Hitler’s regime.

Following World War II, as we have seen, the Cold War covered over nationalist conflicts; and the Church, consistently opposed to the spread of communism, quickly threw in her lot with the liberal democracies against the Soviet Union and its allies after the war. The United States liberated Italy, and the Vatican worked with the United States to keep Italian communists from winning the 1948 Italian elections. Catholic statesman like Konrad Adenauer in Germany, Alcide de Gasperi in Italy, and Robert Schuman and Charles de Gaulle in France helped create the European Union, whose primary purpose was to overcome the enmities that had caused such destruction.

With the Second Vatican Council, the Church effectively threw in her lot with the culture of liberal democracy. Whatever its theological merits, Dignitatis Humanae, the council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, made clear to the Western powers that the Church was no longer going to assert claims to rights and privileges over other religions but, instead, accept legal equality with them. Needless to say, this momentous shift could be seen as a concession to nationalism. 

But it also coincided with Western liberalism’s full-throated embrace of globalism during the Cold War. And churchmen like Paul VI no doubt saw in Western liberal democracy, with its commitment to religious freedom, a better partner than third-world dictators or communist regimes that persecuted the Church. The fact that Western powers appeared to be abandoning nationalist passions probably made it easier for the Church in things like religious liberty. 

However, the Church has never denied the virtue of patriotism. And in one instance since the 1960s, she has thrown her weight behind what is surely a “nationalist” movement. I am speaking of John Paul II’s support for the Polish Solidarity movement in the late 1970s and ’80s. John Paul II’s support proved important for Solidarity, which eventually helped bring down the communist government in that country. Of course, that situation was a unique one, with the pope being Polish himself and his goal being to undermine communism rather than promote nationalism. But it does show the Church has supported such movements since her turn toward liberal democracy in the 1960s.

Since then, however, the Church has pursued a mostly internationalist line, being a major supporter of international institutions, above all the United Nations. This embrace of liberal internationalism reached its zenith in the pontificate of Francis (2013-2025), who showed himself openly hostile to nationalist leaders such as Viktor Orbán of Hungary and, of course, Donald Trump. He did appear less antagonistic toward Vladimir Putin, attempting to broker peace in the conflict with Ukraine. But this likely had more to do with the fact the conflict was a proxy war with the United States, which Francis despised, rather than any sympathy for Putin’s nationalist outlook.

Historically, then, the Church had good reasons to be hostile to nationalist governments, even while she has, at other times, supported nationalist movements when she considered this to be in her interest. The Church’s recent turn toward a liberal, globalist vision has much do with this history, as she presumably sees in the postwar, liberal order a better partner—and less of a threat—than potentially hostile nationalist regimes. In the third installment of this essay, we will examine the teaching of the popes since the French Revolution concerning nationalism and how they have addressed it.