Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Clerical Fascism

Encyclopedia : C : CL : CLE : Clerical Fascism


Clerical fascism is an ideological construct that combines the political and economic doctrines of fascism with theology or religious tradition. The term has been used to describe organisations and movements that combine religious elements with fascism, support by religious organisations for fascism, or fascist regimes in which clergy play a leading role. For Catholic clerical fascism, the term Catholic integralism is sometimes used, though Catholic integralism may have points of disagreement with fascism.

Examples of clerical fascism

Examples of dictatorships or political movements involving elements of clerical fascism include those of António Salazar in Portugal, Maurice Duplessis of Quebec, Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria, Jozef Tiso in Slovakia, Ante Pavelić and the Ustashe in Croatia, the Iron Guard movement in Romania, the Rexists in Belgium and the government of Vichy France. The regime of Francisco Franco Bahamonde in Spain had nacionalcatolicismo as part of its ideology and was widely supported by the Opus Dei and its founder. It has been described by some as clerical fascist, especially after the decline in influence of the Falange beginning in the mid-1940s. With the exception of the Croatian Ustashe movement, scholars debate which other examples in this list should be dubbed, without reservation, clerical fascist.

Some scholars consider certain contemporary movements to be forms of clerical fascism, including Christian Identity and possibly Christian Reconstructionism in the United States; militant forms of politicized Islamic fundamentalism; and militant Hindu nationalism in India (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh / Bharatiya Janata Party).

See also

Further reading

Vatican policy

 


From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: