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The spectrum of the concept ‘Catholicism’ is broad, stretching from a vague understanding to concretely identifiable phenomena. In the widest sense, Catholicism describes the Catholic Church together with all of the manifestations of Catholic Christianity, without spatial or temporal limitation. In the narrowest sense, it is provided with an attribute (for instance, in the expression, ‘political Catholicism’), and denotes functional or ideological segments of a given ‘milieu Catholicism.’ Along …

[German Version] is a closer specification of milieus that are not defined on the basis of social (e.g. ¶ Bourgeoisie) and/or political-ideological (e.g. social democratic labor milieu) criteria, but constituted or academically conceived (i.e. analyzed from this perspective) irrespective of class positioning and on the basis of confessional (e.g. Catholicism) or inner-confessional (e.g. Old Catholics) preferences. Such communities of socialization and commun…

[German Version] In the narrow sense, Kulturkampf (“culture struggle”) denotes the conflict between Prussia and the Catholic Church between 1871 and 1887; in the broader sense, it denotes the conflicts between church and state (I, 4) in other German and European states during the 19th century. In an extended sense, it often denotes any conflict between church and state, tradition and modernity. This extended usage has led to a kind of semantic inflation: in the face of National Socialism (I), Catholics feared a “second Kulturkampf,” thus using this term to interpret their situa…