The disputes between the Church and the Fascist Regime in the period 1929–32 were not caused by anything so trivial as differences in interpreting the meaning of the Lateran Pacts, unless, that is, one considers that the conflict over Catholic Action was generated by a difference of opinion over the meaning of Article 43 – and no one, on either side, seems to have suggested this at the time. Any real, practical problems of interpreting and executing the Pacts were resolved by the Joint Implementation Commission, the most obvious example being the thorny question of implementing the clauses of the Concordat relating to matrimony.

The conflicts in this period were about much more serious, substantial and intractable matters, more about each side's interpretation of the overall import and implications of the Conciliazione for the future balance of power between them. Mussolini, for his part, regarded the Lateran Pacts as not only having resolved the ‘Roman Question’ and having reconciled the Church and the Italian State, but by implication he believed that in both a legal and political sense, the Church had been subordinated or even subjected to the State. This much is confirmed by his remarks about the Church being ‘neither free nor sovereign in the Fascist State’.

Having manoeuvred the Church into publicly supporting the ‘Plebiscite’ of 1929, he believed that it was now irrevocably committed to his Regime – as he explained to his brother Arnaldo during the crisis of 1931, ‘We intended that the Church should become a pillar of the Regime.’