Toniolo nelle reti transnazionali del cattolicesimo sociale: spunti di discussione

Starting from the discussion of Jan De Maeyer and Hendrik Moeys’s paper, this brief essay aims to underscore some issues about Toniolo’s international networks. His intellectual framework was international from the very beginning, but real European contacts emerged later. Toniolo’s image abroad as a social organizer of Italian catholic movement was stronger than the scholarly one. Also the Italian special condition after "non expedit" mattered: his mediation about a Christian democracy non-political concept was widely misunderstood, with a partial exception in France. More original was the last Toniolo’s plea for working on a Christian international law, during the First World War.