Il mondo cattolico e le professioni

The expansion of professions in the contemporary age can be seen from various disciplinary perspectives. As regard professions in Italy in the 20th century, especially after the ww2 Catholic policy makers and scholars assigned a strong importance not only to the vocational education of workers, but also to a broader cultural modernization in relation to the economic development, particularly in the most backwarded areas of the Mezzogiorno (par. 2 and 3). At the origins of this emphasis, we can recognize a specific "culture of the profession" on which some circles of Italian Catholicism had insisted since the interwar period: a culture centered on technical preparation, but also on professional morality and social conscience as ingredients of every profession. Furthermore, the Catholics were inspired by a tradition of thought that assigns a deeper, religious value to ‘profession’ (such as the response to a vocation, or the fulfillment of the single person). In the second half of the 20th century, this had growing implications in associated life, because of the development of new types of lay associations, the "secular institutes" and the several professional organizations recognized by the Catholic Church.