ABSTRACT
Introduction The Catholic Church today plays a quite different role in the Italian political system compared to the past. For roughly half a century, from shortly after the Second World War, the church was represented politically by the Christian Democratic Party (DC). This phase was characterised by delegation and ‘collateralism’, which is to say close collaboration, with the DC. In the early 1990s, however, with the demise of the First Republic and the collapse of the DC, the Catholic Church revised its strategy for political representation and began to establish a new public presence. Once the Catholic Church moved beyond its long-standing policy of collateralism, it became an ‘extra-parliamentary’ actor. Through the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) and its president, Cardinal Ruini, the Catholic Church has followed a strategy of neutrality from political parties and from political alliances, playing a role in the political scene directly as a lobby without any intermediaries. In other words, its political representation has moved ‘from the party to the pulpit’. Over the last few years the political scene in Italy has been complicated by increasing importance in public debate of various ethical issues. In particular, biopolitics – whereby ethical questions of life enter into the political decisionmaking processes – has become an important topic in political debate in Italy. Various issues, including stem cell research, medically assisted fertilisation, abortion, the RU486 pill, ‘biological’ or ‘living’ wills, euthanasia and cloning, together with other social issues including, first and foremost, ‘the family’, have become legislative issues for politicians – and Catholic MPs in particular. Ethical bipolarism and political bipolarism have become interlinked in public debate. The confrontation between political and religious actors has become very heated. Over the last few years, the Catholic Church has played a direct and resolute role, taking a public stand, trying to influence political decisions. It has acted in the socio-political scene as a political entrepreneur, mobilising resources and taking advantage of the context and the (open) windows of opportunity in the political structure.
