The Politics of Ideology: The Papal Struggle with Liberalism

Social actors are drawn to ideological formulations that justify a defense or expansion of their own autonomy and power. Changes in distributions of power can close some avenues of ideological autonomy and open others; thus actors will have varying degrees of control over different issues within a given ideology. In response to the rise of liberal states in 19th-century Europe, the papacy was forced to avoid sociopolitical issues if it was to avoid persistent church-state conflict. Gradually reformulating Catholic ideology within the limited structural autonomy they had, popes subordinated sociopolitical issues to more purely religious and moral issues while constructing a new ideological opposition to liberalism.