Suchergebnisse

The future government of Italy portends a challenge of enormous magnitude for the Catholic Church. Subject as it has been to periodic attacks for reactionism, the Church has been hard pressed to throw off the stigma of its association with Franco in Spain and its willingness to deal with Mussolini's Fascist régime. In the light of these accusations, coupled with rather widespread doubt whether church orthodoxy is compatible with political democracy, it seems altogether appropriate to examine the political theories of one of the leading exponents of liberal Catholicism—Don Luigi Sturzo.A little over twenty years ago, foreign correspondents, eagerly seeking a label for the "mystery man of Italian politics," referred to him as a clerical socialist. If the term "clerical socialism" is synonymous with Christian socialism, such a characterization might be a proper one for this Sicilian priest. Certainly Sturzo was a champion of the Christian socialist movement which urged the correction of economic injustices but decried the materialism of the Marxists. He approved of the Guild of St. Mathew's sympathy for the unionism and socialism of the nineties and the Roman Catholic Social Guild. The latter found its incentive in the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum and the "scholastic traditions in restraint of usury and economic injustice." Both of these organizations were associated with Christian socialism. But, although Christian socialism and clerical socialism have occasionally been placed in the same category, the latter is too ambiguous a term to permit a precise classification.

All judicial officers in the state of Minnesota, including the chief justice and six associate justices of the supreme court and fifty judges in the district courts, are required to be nominated and elected without partisan designation. Judicial nominations and elections were made nonpartisan by the election law of 1912. During a quarter of a century, the nonpartisan ballot has given Minnesota the services of an exceptionally well qualified bench, and sentiment is practically unanimous in favor of continuing this method of selecting judges.Once elevated to the bench, a Minnesota judge has a good chance of continuing in that capacity as long as he wishes to serve. Supreme court justices have been regularly reelected; so that their tenure has been, for all practical purposes, the same as that of federal judges. Three of the present members of the supreme court have been elected once, two have been elected twice, one three times, and one four times. With one exception, the supreme court justices since 1912 have retired from office by resignation or death.Of the eighty-four district court judges who have served since 1912, only four have been defeated at the polls when seeking reelection. At the present time, thirty-six of the state's fifty district court judges have been elected two or more times, and twenty-three have been elected three or more times.