Concilium 193 The Church and Christian Democracy

by Gregory Baum, John A. Coleman (Editor)

John Paul's visit to the synagogue / Gregory Baum -- The Church and Christian democracy / Gregory Baum, John Coleman -- The origins of Christian democratic parties in Germany, Italy and France after 1943-45 / Karl-Egon Lönne -- Political organisation of Christians in Latin America / Pablo Richard -- The Church and Christian democracy / Franz Horner -- The Vatican of Pius XII and the Catholic party / Andrea Riccardi -- Reflections from Germany / Walter Dirks -- The case of Italy / Daniele Menozzi -- The case of France / René Rémond -- Case study, Chile / Michael Fleet -- International Christian democracy (Opus Dei) / Peter Hertel -- Christian democracy and the liberating option for the oppressed in Latin American Catholicism / Otto Maduro.

144 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 1987

About the author

Gerhard Albert Baum (1923–2017), better known as Gregory Baum, was a German-born Canadian priest and theologian in the Roman Catholic Church. He became known in North America and Europe in the 1960s for his work on ecumenism, interfaith dialogue, and the relationship between the Catholic Church and Jews. In the later 1960s, he went to the New School for Social Theory in New York and became a sociologist, which led to his work on creating a dialogue between classical sociology (Marx, Tocqueville, Durkheim, Toennies, Weber, etc.) and Christian theology.

In the 1970s, he welcomed the insights of the Theology of Liberation that came from Latin America and other societies. He also became interested in the work of Karl Mannheim and developed a program of ideology critique that he hoped would eliminate the ideological elements in religion, especially those elements that preached contempt for others and allowed Christians to remain unmoved by the suffering of the victims of social injustice and structural violence.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Baum continued his study into ideology critique by integrating the work of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. He connected the Frankfurt School's concept of "the end of innocent critique" with the Catholic Church's "preferential option for the poor". Both concepts extended his interest in ideology critique. Since Baum has always been interested in social ethics, he also studied the work of Karl Polanyi, with whom he sympathized greatly.