In the current edition of The Boston Review, Princeton historian Jan-Werner Mller, author of the forthcoming "Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe," has a meaty and wide-ranging essay that addresses the contested question of the compatibility of Islam and democracy by comparing it to similar questions that were often raised about Catholicism and democracy. That parallel is being noted with growing frequency, understandably. But Mller's essay reads like a magisterial unpacking of Catholicism's accommodation to, and eventual embrace of, democracy. It's also relevant to many of the issues Pope Benedict is facing (or not) in his trip to Spain and his effort to re-evangelize Europe.(Interestingly, he ranges from Aquinas to Maritain to JFK with nary a nod to John Courtney Murray.)Mller writes:

There is little evidence, then, that the Vatican consistently steered the development of Christian Democracy, or that the ultimate accommodation of Christian Democratic parties to democratic politics was driven by the Vaticans decisions. These parties developed in ways that were not intended by the Vatican, their leaderships could not be controlled from above, and their programs often veered more to the left than the Church desired, especially under Pius XII. Christian Democracy, particularly after 1945, was the creation of political entrepreneurs such as Don Sturzo and savvy strategists such as West Germanys first postwar Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. To the extent that churchmen were directly involved, they were members of the lower clergy or of what in Italy was often called the proletariato di chiesa (proletariat of the church) .The Vatican would eventually endorse democracy unequivocally, but only after decades of Christian Democratic practice and only after renouncing its transparent sympathies for authoritarian Catholic leaders such as Antnio Salazar in Portugal and Francisco Franco in Spain.

His penultimate paragraph seems especially relevant for us today, and for us as Catholics:

The story of Christian Democracy yields a further conclusion: as Kalyvas, the political scientist, in particular has stressed, the political mobilization of believers does not necessarily result in a one-to-one translation of private religious identities into public political identities. Entering the Democratic arena always involves a certain reconstruction of religious identities, largely due to pressures to adapt to an inherently pluralist arena, where there is a premium on compromise and coalition building in order to secure power. Selectiveness and creative re-appropriation of religious precepts and traditions are almost always possible, as with Maritain;s interpretation of Thomism as a foundation for universal human rights. Thus blanket condemnations of Islam as incompatible with Democracy overlook the fact that religious doctrines do not strictly determine politics.

H/T to The Dish.