The question of Islam’s compatibility with democracy attracts much controversy today. Yet we often forget the serious conflicts that pitted Catholicism against modern democracy throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. Many Church representatives as well as liberal and democratic critics did not believe the two to be compatible, as a matter of principle. In his lecture, Müller explores different Catholic thinkers’ intellectual and political strategies for reconciling Catholicism with democracy. He also asks what general lessons might be learned from these attempts.