Abstract

This article analyses Luisa Mangoni's research work on twentieth-century Catholic culture, and in particular on Don Giuseppe De Luca and the journal "Il Frontespizio", underlining how it decisively contributed both to the debate on Italian Catholicism's relationship with modernity and to that on the existence of a Fascist culture (and Catholicism's role in it). On both issues, Mangoni's interpretations suggest original and complex results, avoiding dichotomy and clear-cut alternatives between adhesion and refusal. Above all, they highlight Catholic participation in the idea of "interventionism of culture" that was one of the decisive marks of modernity: like Gramsci, Bottai, or Gentile, De Luca and Agostino Gemelli were also convinced that the destiny of politics was decided at the table of culture.