Abstract
Focusing on the three decades from 1945 to 1975, this article views the role of Catholicism vis-à-vis the world of workers as a frequently shifting but often surprisingly virtuous relationship. Rather than functioning as a brake on the development of the workers’ movement in the period of the postwar boom, the Catholic portions of the international labor movement often played a crucial, and on occasion even pioneering, role in pushing the labor movement in the direction of greater self-confidence and more radical demands. In the second half of the 1940s, but then particularly during the red decade (1965–75), the Catholic lifeworld played an often singularly powerful role as prime mover of innovative solutions to the multiple crises of the day.
