EUROPE'S CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATS

Looking out over devastated Europe at war's end in 1945 the journalists of the world--plain reporters and exalted pundits--considered the future and, to a man, came to the same conclusion: Europe would go left and socialist. The right, dishonored by the Petains and Papens, and by its devotion to 19 century capitalism, was doomed. The center, caught between the stridencies of right & left, and forced to choose, would have to go left. Communists and Socialists had made a name in the undergrounds and concentration camps. And in the end, Socialism, the wave of the future, would triumph, as it had in Scandinavia long before, and in Britain only recently.

The experts were wrong. Instead, postwar Europe's dominant force turned out to be Christian Democracy. Today, Christian Democrats govern or share heavily in the governing of every war-torn country of Western Europe; most of their Premiers and all of their foreign ministers (except The Netherlands') are Christian Democrats. All are disciples of European unity, all share an overall philosophy, all--perhaps by political accident--are Roman Catholics. When Italy's De Gasperi, West Germany's Adenauer and France's Bidault sit down to negotiate a treaty or discuss the future, they draw from a common religious inspiration that sees Europe reunited as it was before Europe burst asunder in post-Reformation strife. They share, too, the paradox of having come to power frankly religious men, in a Europe heavily influenced since the Age of Enlightenment by secularistic and often anti-religious political doctrine. In such a scene, the Christian Democrats have learned not to accent their sectarian differences, but to stress what they have in common.

What is their credo? Fundamentally, it is the common heritage of Western civilization, a Judeo-Christian heritage with which men of all faiths may agree. Their basic philosophical faith may be generally stated as a belief in 1) the fatherhood of God, 2) the brotherhood of man, 3) the essential dignity of man, and 4) the right of the individual to hold and administer private property, subject to his responsibilities to his fellowmen. Christian Democracy began as a Christian Socialism and gradually moved towards center and right. Originally, its intention was to escape the bleak godlessness of both left and right, while avoiding the charge of church domination, particularly domination by the Vatican. Trying to oppose materialism, while meeting it on its own good ground of material welfare for all, involves difficulties. "The Christian is a citizen of two worlds," says Catholic Philosopher Heinrich Rommen, "the City of God and the City of Man. He is destined for the former, but he must live and work for his salvation in the latter." From a deep and common tap root, the Christian Democrats of Europe branch out in a variety of directions.

In France, the party's name is Mouvement Republicain Populaire. In theory, it stands only a few steps away from mild Socialism, but in practice it sits mostly in the center. It began in the heroism of the French underground. For more than a year between the fall of France and Hitler's attack on Russia, the French Resistance was organized and dominated by courageous young veterans like Georges Bidault, now French Foreign Minister; Pierre-Henri Teitgen (now M.R.P. president). "The prominence of so many individual devout Catholics in the Resistance," reported one student of France, "saved the church in France." For some time, the M.R.P. was the largest party in France. Now worn and watered down after eight debilitating years in the cockpit of French party politics, it now attracts about 12% of the French electorate. Best known for its support of family allowances, which arrested the decline in France's birth rate, the M.R.P. is parted from its ideological neighbors by an anxious controversy over church schools.

In West Germany, Christian Democracy is the party of conservative Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, but is still flavored by the Christian Socialism of the Catholic Labor movement. Mitbestimmungsrecht, for example, the radical program under which many German workers share in the management of industry, was energetically pushed by Catholic labor. Where France's M.R.P. works in a nominally (97%) Catholic community, Catholic Adenauer's party works in the shadow of historic Catholic-Protestant cleavage in Germany. But it numbers thousands of Protestants in its coalition (they total about 30%), and it has elected Protestant Hermann Ehlers as its vice chairman. Many German Protestants complain, nevertheless, that if Adenauer "were more of a German and less of a Rhineland Catholic," he would slow down his drive for a united Europe and pay more attention to uniting West Germany with the Protestant (and now Communist-ruled) East Germany. Adenauer's Christian Democratic Union comes before the voters this year. High personal prestige and West Germany's remarkable prosperity are in his favor.

Diverse as are their political environments and their religious faiths, Western Europe's Christian Democrats are loosely organized into a kind of clearinghouse for Christian parties representing 20 million voters: Last fall it set up a committee to try to define Christian Democracy, but it has still to agree on a definition. Yet Christian Democracy, like so many idealistic abstractions, demonstrably exists. Its faith is demonstrated by the high character of its leaders, whose performance shows that what eludes definition need not pass understanding. Christian Democracy may well take its credo from Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

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