Much has been written about the modernization of the Catholic Church—especially the crucial years from 1870 to 1970. These histories have been written from a number of perspectives, each with different definitions of modernity. James Chappel, assistant professor of history at Duke University, gives us a new interpretation which succeeds in revising some of these accepted narratives. He does this by focusing on the Catholics of France, Germany, and Austria, which are historically conservative Catholic populations that also experienced rapid social change during the 20th century.

Chappel begins by describing the dominant modernization narrative, whereby the Church begrudgingly accepted modernizing changes. In this view, while the Church had long upheld the separation of church and state, it also adhered to the old medieval idea that society and government policy should be guided by Catholic teaching. This was most evident in the Church’s jealous control over codes of morals and ethics, and its endorsement of the concept of the confessional state, which held that populations in any given country should always be majority Catholic.

This narrative also argues that modern institutions and ideas—especially democracy, capitalism, and individual rights—slowly eroded Catholic influence. Religion became a private affair. Most importantly, modernity was victorious because it was superior. Modernity guaranteed people the freedoms they needed and the desires they wanted.

This narrative is false, as Chappel convincingly shows. The Catholic hierarchy and laity had long engaged modernity and had done so on Catholic terms. As such, Catholics created Catholic-modern ideas and institutions. “Catholics engaged in the birth of individualism, consumer culture, mass media, scientific rationality, nationalism, and many other phenomena,” Chappel writes. They voted, formed political parties, rode railways, and fought in mechanized wars “without sensing any contradiction between their actions and their faith.”

The dominant modernization narrative underemphasizes, in Chappel’s view, the importance of the Church’s intense struggle with modernity during the 1930s, which would have lasting, and often negative effects. To Chappel, the most serious Catholic offense in this decade was embracing the modern secular state, in particular its fascist incarnation.

Chappel incorrectly conflates Nazism and fascism—they are technically distinct ideologies. But his general point about the nationalist right and Catholic responses to it is valid. Many Catholics believed there was little choice between communism and secular liberalism on one side and fascism on the other. The antagonism toward Catholics by the liberal French state and the failures of the Weimar regime in Germany quickly narrowed the field to communism or fascism.

Catholics supported fascism because communism was already universally loathed and feared for its rampant atheism and murderous history. In contrast, fascism was as yet unknown. More importantly, it espoused policies that seemed compatible with Catholic social teaching, especially pro-family and pro-natalist policies. The fascists also allowed some freedom of religion. It seemed like the lesser evil.

Many Catholics were mollified, believing fascism to be a “conservative” ideology compatible with the Catholic faith. This, Chappel asserts, was false. Catholics had made a contract with the devil. The fascists were thoroughly modern and used the state to promote their own social revolution. They militarized the economy, spied on the populace, outlawed freedom of the press, and restricted freedom of association—especially of freely organized labor unions, which were replaced by state-run organizations. All of this contradicted Catholic social teaching.

And, of course, the fascist agenda was anti-Semitic. Chappel notes many Catholics rejected this aspect of fascism. But many did not, and he asserts Catholic anti-Semitism throughout the book. Chappel even goes so far as to say that fascist anti-Semitism was the reason many Catholics supported fascist governments. In many cases, he may be right.

However, Chappel fails to adequately define Catholic anti-Semitism or to give evidence of its manifestations. More importantly, he should have made the crucial distinction between anti-Judaism, which is theological, and anti-Semitism, which is ethnic or racial. Most Catholics were antagonistic towards Jews for religious reasons, because Jews had rejected Jesus Christ as savior. Fascists, in contrast, persecuted Jews because of their ethnicity.

Catholic Modern does contain other interesting, original analysis of the competing intellectual movements that developed within the Church since the 1920s. Catholics that supported the fascists are “paternal” Catholics, in Chappel’s view. They saw themselves as upholders of the medieval tradition, which had defended the Church against modernity for decades. As such, they held sway over the Church and church teaching—especially regarding doctrines on sexuality and the family—up until the fateful 1930s. This is when Chappel delineates the emergence of another group, the “fraternal” Catholics. Their emphasis was on social problems like poverty elimination, the organization of labor movements, and human rights protections.

One would assume these groups could be defined as conservative and liberal respectively. But Chappel shows keenly and clearly that this is not the case. Both sides were both traditional and modern, yet in different ways. The paternal Catholics, who saw themselves as bearers of Catholic tradition, also became the most active supporters of and collaborators with the modern fascist state. While the fraternal Catholics, seemingly more liberal and modern, actually espoused a minimal state with significant Church detachment from political affairs. Chappel notes that the fraternal stance was actually much closer to the traditional church-state relations of the Middle Ages.

Leading fraternal Catholics also saw socialism as something necessary. The most famous of these was Jacques Maritain, who understood why people were so attracted to certain Marxist ideas and programs. Modernization created atomization and alienation, while communism promised to alleviate these problems, and to recreate human community. But fraternal Catholics were also quick to note that this community could not be created by a secular, and violent, revolutionary movement. It must be filled by an even more radical idea, that of Christian love and community.

Paternal Catholics dominated the Church again after 1945, despite the strong anti-fascist stance of fraternal Catholics during the Depression and war years. The paternals were key in founding Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which is still the country’s dominant political party today. The CDU enacted key paternal reforms, in particular those that supported the nuclear family. Paternal Catholics also embraced consumer capitalism for the first time because it benefitted the new “consuming” family. Chappel notes it was the paternal Catholics who formed close relations with both the modern state and modern capitalism.

Fraternal Catholics finally began to impact the Church in the 1960s. They focused on new labor and human rights concerns and, in particular, the challenges of the sexual revolution. They led the opposition to Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae vitae, which rejected birth control, and the general paternal Catholic defense of sexual morality. Chappel is subtly supportive of this position, as he issues no explanation as to why the fraternal Catholics embraced sexual modernity in such a brazen fashion. This is odd, given his stark critiques of paternal Catholic dalliances with anti-Semitism, fascism, and consumer capitalism.

Here the author belies a certain naivety or even willful ignorance of the sexual revolution and its aftermath. Most ironic is that the sexual revolution is not simply the abandonment of traditional Christian sexual morals. It is another modern revolution—perhaps the most far-reaching—in which the marketplace, rather than the Church, determines sexual behavior. In fact, sex is probably the most important feature of modern consumerism. This fraternal pact with the devil should have been clearly stated by Chappel—but it was not.

Despite this omission, and Chappel’s subtle bias towards fraternal Catholics, he accurately describes how the Church modernized in the crucial years of the early 20th century. He also discusses the key debates during this time and delves into the various personalities involved therein. Most importantly, he persuasively outlines his concept of a paternal/fraternal division to effectively show how the Church was (and still is) divided along these lines. Both sides embraced aspects of modernity and both made some terrible choices in their quest to modernize. Yet both also held on to key traditional Catholic beliefs and institutions which allowed the Church to modernize.

The book’s most important lesson is that each side has been most successful when it focused on its traditional strength. For paternal Catholics, this means a continued defense of traditional Catholic sexual morals in the face of an ever more aggressive sexual revolution. For fraternals, it means a deeper involvement in social affairs, especially as the demand for social programs and socialism grows.

In my view, it is not socialism, but state socialism, that is the true problem. A better socialism would be one centered on the Catholic Church, its schools, hospitals, monasteries, convents and that center of radicalism—the family. Such a development may be unlikely, but it would be truly revolutionary and truly Christian.

[Catholic Modern: The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church by James Chappel; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; 352 pp., $35.00]