Christian democracy
[nb 2][11] During the nineteenth century, its principal concerns were to reconcile Catholicism with democracy,[6][7] to answer the "social question" surrounding capitalism and the working class,[12][13] and to resolve the tensions between church and state.[14][15] In the twentieth century, Christian democrats led postwar Western and Southern Europe in building modern welfare states and constructing the European Union.[16] Furthermore; in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, Christian democracy has gained support in Eastern Europe among former communist states suffering from corruption and stagnation.[37][10] Christian democrats are open to change (for example, in the structure of society) and not necessarily supportive of the social status quo, and have an emphasis on human rights and individual initiative.[49] Thus, in terms of impact, he is in no way akin to what John Locke is for liberalism, Edmund Burke for conservatism, or Karl Marx for socialism.[56] Aquinas also affirmed the natural reality of family and household, based on the lifelong commitment of husband and wife, perfected with children, a unit that has priority over other communities.Rowan Williams contrasts personalism, which he describes as a relation between humans and God, to modern-day capitalism, which is focused only on endless economic growth, which is harmful to the natural environment.[110] This latter solidarity focused on occupational associations advancing collective interests, codetermination,[110] and a "third house of parliament" that would advise on economic matters.[114] Around this time, corporatism became increasingly prominent among young Catholics frustrated with parliamentary politics[115] and, in many instances, would inspire authoritarian and fascist regimes movements in Austria, France, Spain, Portugal,[114] and Germany.[119] The basis of the social market economy is ordoliberalism,[120] or German neoliberalism,[121] an idea related to thinkers such as Walter Eucken, Franz Böhm, Ludwig Erhard, Wilhelm Röpke and Alfred Müller-Armack.The promotion of the Christian democratic concepts of sphere sovereignty and subsidiarity led to the creation of corporatist welfare states throughout the world that continue to exist to this day.[135] The papal encyclical Graves de communi re prohibited Christian democracy to be a political ideology, and so Sturzo used the term popularism instead.Both parties returned to a traditional Christian teaching of "social pluralism" or "subsidiarity", which stressed the dependence and participation of the individual in family, church, school, business, and other associations.In Europe, generally, the liberal states desired to wrestle control over the Catholic education system; however, in Germany and Italy, this was a direct attack against the church.[164] During this time, the Catholic parties took an inter-class nature, such that they comprised trade unionists, landlords, industrialists, peasants, and artisans,[165] which academics have linked to the notion of popularism.[175] Rerum novarum would provide Catholic labor movements with an intellectual platform and would coincide with the rise of Christian trade unions across Europe.[179] In Graves de communi re, the pope would protest against using Christian democracy as a political label, preferring it to describe a social movement.[223] After World War II, "both Protestant and Catholic political activists helped to restore democracy to war-torn Europe and extend it overseas".[42][43] Despite this initial power, cracks started to appear; Christian democracy in France declined substantially, as Popular Republican Movement and its successors quickly fell apart.These Lutherans looked to Christian theologians such as Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer to path a way that obeyed worldly authority but also challenged the Nazi regime.At the beginning of the European project, three significant men were Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman, and Alcide De Gasperi, all Christian democrats.The most notable is Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (usually known by the Turkish acronym AKP, for Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi), which is Islamic and has moved towards the tradition.[267] In the 1980s, due to international trends such as the Washington consensus, Christian democrats accepted neoliberal policies in their nations, leading to future electoral losses.Perhaps the most significant is Movimiento Cristiano de Liberación (MCL), led by Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá, who was killed in a tragic automobile accident in the summer of 2012 and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.During World War II many politicians of the Labour Party organised a resistance movement known as The Union [pl], which was later integrated with Home Army in 1942.[283] Since 2005, the Polish political scene has been dominated by two major parties, liberal conservative Civic Platform and right-wing Law and Justice, both with significant Christian democratic factions.[284] With the Civic Platform shifting over time to social-liberal positions and Law and Justice towards right-wing populism, the agrarian Polish People's Party became a significant Christian-oriented voice.[294] The largest party of the other group was the Russian Christian Democratic Movement, which attempted to unify democracy with orthodoxy on the basis of statism and patriotism (73–74).[299] Many of those parties pushed for a re-traditionalization of society, pro-family policies, a Bismarckian welfare state, and identity politics based on Christianity while maintaining a pro-European integration attitude.They encouraged Catholics to work within the Labour Party and push policies for families, a living wage, social partnership in industry, and property diffusion.