Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident Due to planned maintenance there will be periods of time where the website may be unavailable. We apologise for any inconvenience.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
The relationship between Fascism and the literary intelligentsia badly needs investigating.
George OrwellPower is of its nature evil, whoever wields it.
Jacob BurckhardtChrist’s Kingdom was a counter kingdom.
John Henry NewmanIt has often been remarked that in the 1920s and 1930s some British Catholics sympathized with Fascism; but the collocation of ‘Catholic’ and ‘Fascism’ is alarming, the more so when it is realized that the Catholics in question were the writers, the intellectuals: civilized, educated, sophisticated and otherwise likable and mostly well- intentioned people, who expressed varying measures of attraction to what we now know to be the politics of megalomania, elitism, frustration, prejudice, deceit and brutality. How could cultured Catholics be even partially attracted to Fascism: what did they see to admire in it, and what were the conditions which permitted and provoked them to find good in it?
The present subject of ‘Catholic pro-Fascism’ is a minefield, with some of the mines laid by rightist Catholics, who, believing it to be damaging to the Catholic Church, do not wish the subject to be discussed by other than apologeticists. One such mine is to say that the word ‘Fascist’ cannot be used, either because it is a mere term of abuse, or because its meaning is so variable as to be worthless, or because it is generally confused with Nazism; so to speak the words ‘Catholic’ and ‘Fascist’ in the same breath is to risk unjustifiably tainting the memory of good people. But the memory of such people can be clarified only by considering exactly what they were saying, and why.
1 Belloc, Danton A Study (James Nisbet, 1899) pp.1, 14Google Scholar.
2 Speaight, Hilaire Belloc (Hollis& Carter, 1957) p.128Google Scholar; cf. ib. pp.52, 131.
3 The Tablet 22 July 1939. pp.100–103.
4 Wilson, A. N. Hilaire Belloc (Penguin, 1986) pp.359Google Scholar, 361, 364.
5 Speaight Hilaire Belloc pp.434–5.
6 Tablet 15 July 1939, pp.71, 72.
7 Speaight Hilaire Belloc p.464.
8 Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 2nd. ed. (Sheed & Ward, 1944) pp.491–3Google Scholar.
9 Chesterton, G. K. The Resurrection of Rome (Hodder & Stoughton, 1930) pp.224–5Google Scholar.
10 Ib. 250–2, 263, 276.
11 Chesterton, G. K. A vowals and Denials (Methuen, 1934)p.150Google Scholar.
12 G.K. s Weekly 29 Aug. 1935, pp.400–401, 5 Sept. 1935, pp.416–417.
13 GK's Weekly 25 July 1935, p.320.
14 Chesterton, G. K. Autobiography (Hutchinson, 1936) pp.269Google Scholar, 294.
15 Chesterton, G. K. The Well and the Shallows (Sheed & Ward, 1935) pp.62–4Google Scholar.
16 See Preston, Paul A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War (Fontana, 1996) pp.22,45–6, ch. 2Google Scholar.
17 Hastings, A History of English Christianity 1920–1990 (SCM Press, 1991) p.280Google Scholar.
18 Hastings, The Shaping of Prophecy (Chapman, 1995) p.78Google Scholar, Preston, Paul Franco A Biography (Harper Collins, 1993) p.272Google Scholar.
19 Holmes, J. Derek The Papacy in the Modern World 1914–1978 (Burns & Oates, 1981) p.60Google Scholar.
20 Murray, John ‘The Lesson of Spain’The Month vol. CLXVIII No. 869 (Nov. 1936) p.443Google Scholar.
21 Tablet 22 Jan. 1938, p.100.
22 Norman, Edward Roman Catholicism in England (Oxford University Press, 1983)p. 119Google Scholar.
23 Tablet 11 Feb. 1939, p.164.
24 Speaight, Robert The Life of Eric Gill (Methuen, 1966) pp.238Google Scholar, 273, 274.
25 Sherry, Norman The Life of Graham Greene Volume One: 1904–1939 (Jonathan Cape, 1989) p.612Google Scholar.
26 Knox, Nazi and Nazarene (Macmillan, 1940) p.7Google Scholar.
27 Sturzo, ‘The Crisis of Democracy’Dublin Review vol.196 Nos. 392 & 393 (Jan.‐June 1935) pp.22Google Scholar, 27–8, 32.
28 Michael de La Bedoyere made the point: Christian Crisis (Benziger Brothers, 1940) p.82Google Scholar.
29 Bedoyère, De La ‘Rome and Reaction’Dublin Review vol. 200 Nos. 400 & 401 (Apr. 1937) pp.244–5,252Google Scholar; and see Beales, A.C.F. The Catholic Church and International Order (Penguin Books, 1941)Google Scholar ch. III.
30 Wall, ‘Tradition and Social Justice’ Dublin Review vol. 200 Nos. 400 & 401 (Apr. 1937) pp.254–64Google Scholar.
31 Catholic Herald 8 July 1938, p.4.
32 Dawson, Religion and the Modern State (Sheed & Ward, 1935) pp.52–4Google Scholar, 58–9, 135–6.
33 Op. cit. pp.x, 7,9,10, 34,74,75,77.
34 Ib. pp.134, ch. 8,95–6.
