Since the Italian General Elections of April 28-29, the buzz of speculation has been increasing noticeably. For they seem to have provided infinite diagnostic opportunities, as though to confirm Gaetano Salvemini's description of those scholars who incline “neither on the one hand to partiality nor on the other to impartiality.“

Thus, the losses of the Christian Democracy Party (CD) to the Liberal Right are explained as a rejection of the “opening to the left.” “On the other hand,” CD losses to the Socialist and Communist Left are attributed to the slowness with which the “opening” was being put into effect. From yet another side, the losses have been attributed to the melting away of old barriers against the Communist classenemy. Proponents of this view point with alarm to the encyclicals of the late Pope John, Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris.