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Reaction, Ultramontanism, and Papalism
After the fall of Napoleon, the Catholic Church allied itself strongly with the reactionary regimes that emerged in France, Spain, and Austria. Louis XVIII and Charles X between 1818 and 1826 established Catholicism as the official religion of the French state, placed all elementary education under the control of the Church (ordinance of April 2, 1824), and subsidized the Church in its effort to establish a parallel system of secondary education to rival the state schools set up under Napoleon. Under the second republic, the Falloux Law of March 15, 1850, named after the then minister of education, extended Church control by allowing parish priests supervision over all local state school teachers.
During the rule of Napoleon III (1848–1870), the religious subsidy was greatly increased, allowed religious order to grow and suppressed antireligious tendencies in the state-run secondary schools. The result of all of this state support by repressive regimes in France was mixed. On the one hand, the total number of priests rose from 36,000 in 1814 to 46,969 in 1853 and 56,295 in 1869. The increasing numbers allowed bishops to establish 1,600 new parishes. At the same time, the numbers of nuns and friars also increased, especially the nuns. Between 1851 and 1861 the number of nuns increased from 34,208 to 89,243, while the number of male religious increased from 3,000 to 17,656, thus enabling the Church to staff an increasing number of schools. Between 1850 and 1875, the number of children educated by teachers of orders rose from 953,000 to 2,168,000, while the number of students in lay schools rose only from 2,309,000 to 2,649,000.
But the success of the Church during the rule of Napoleon III generated a significant amount of ill feeling especially among democrats opposed to his authoritarian rule with its secret police and prisons for political prisoners. The League for Public Education, founded in 1866 to oppose clerical control over public education, was just one sign of growing anticlericalism. Increasingly, the well-educated and enlightened members of the middle class became more and more alienated from a church that they saw as the prisoner of its own lust for power and tied to dogma and a false belief in supernaturalism. The growing anticlericalism in France and Italy was fed by the negative attitudes of the papacy to anything that smacked of modernism. Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors in 1864 condemned such contemporary ideas as freedom of conscience, liberal democracy, Socialism, etc. It was this same Pope who insisted that the First Vatican Council of 1869–70 declare papal infallibility when speaking ex cathedra as a dogma over the strong objections of many German bishops and theologians.
Increasingly, the liberal democracies of the nineteenth century found themselves fighting against a reactionary, authoritarian church closely associated with conservatism in politics. The worst fears of the liberals were confirmed when much of the French hierarchy lined itself up in support of the army, which had imprisoned a Jewish officer Captain Dreyfus on a charge of treason. Dreyfus was innocent. Forged evidence by a Hungarian Catholic officer in French service had convicted him. But the real spy was this officer, who had gambling debts and paid them off by selling French secrets to the Germans.
When the truth was revealed, a feeling of anticlerical revulsion arose in France. Under Emile Combes, a former seminarian who became prime minister in 1903, the government closed thousands of Catholic schools, expelled 20,000 priests and nuns, and moved to disestablish the Church which was embodied in the law of July 3, 1905.
The Creation of Vatican City
The Second War of Italian Liberation of 1859 brought about the end of the Papal States, and Rome was incorporated into a united Italy. Pope Pius XI favored settling the "Roman Question"–a dispute over land ownership and the papacy. Mussolini came to power in Italy in 1922, and in 1924, the Vatican provided support for Mussolini's government during the Matteotti crisis.
In 1929, agreements signed with Mussolini government creating the Vatican City state, establishing a concordat and providing financial compensation for lost papal territory thereby settling the "Roman Question."
The Missions in Asia
In 1919, the encyclical Maximum Ilud set forth the three fundamental principles of missionary activity. The first Japanese bishop was consecrated in 1927, and thirty-two new cardinals named, including the first Chinese cardinal, in 1946. The encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis condemned a series of modernist ideas in 1907.
In 1909, the Sodality of St. Pius V was founded to get information on clergy and laymen suspected of modernist sympathies, and a papal decree of 1910 imposed an anti-modernist oath on all clerics and seminarians. By 1921, the Sodality of St. Pius V was suppressed.
The Church and Reform in the First Half of the Century
A number of papal encyclicals addressed social issues at the beginning of the twentieth century. Pope Leo XIII promoted the idea of Christian democracy as favoring the needs of the working classes while embracing all groups as part of the same community in Graves de Communi Re (1901). Lacrimabili Statu deplored the mistreatment of the indigenous peoples of Latin America and called upon all bishops to protect them from further exploitation in 1912.
The Church and Mary
In 1950, the bull Munificentissimus Deus proclaims the dogma of the Bodily Assumption of Mary into Heaven, and Pope Pius XII proclaimed 1954 a Marian year, commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the promulgation of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
The German Concordat, WWII, the Holocaust and the Post-War Period
Eugenio Pacelli (1876–1958), was born to a family of Vatican officials long associated with Church bureaucracy. His father Filippo studied Canon Law and became a lawyer practicing before the Vatican courts, while his grandfather had been one of the founders of the official Vatican newspaper. This careful bureaucratic mentality was to mark his career and his term as Pope. Pacelli had a brilliant career as a papal diplomat and was a pioneer of what might be called “concordat diplomacy,” the attempt by the Vatican to secure control over a nation’s Catholic Church in key areas like the appointment of bishops or education and especially to win permission to allow the Code of Canon Law of 1917 to govern relations between the Vatican and the national church.
In return for ceding control over its national Catholic Church to the Vatican, a national government would receive Vatican assurances of the political support or neutrality of local Catholic political leaders. Pacelli negotiated such a concordat with Serbia in 1914. His success in that negotiation led to his appointment to the influential post of nuncio (papal ambassador) to Imperial Germany in 1917, where he remained until 1930. During his sojourn in Germany, Pacelli attempted without success to negotiate a concordat with Germany.
In February 1930, Pacelli was called to Rome to assume the key post of Cardinal Secretary of State, the office that ran Vatican foreign policy. While in this position he maintained his contacts in Germany and continued his efforts to negotiate a concordat with the government of the Catholic chancellor Bruening without success. Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor on January 30, 1933, and the victory of the Nazi Party in the election of March 5 presented Pacelli with another opportunity. Hitler wanted dictatorial power, while Pacelli wanted state support for Catholic education, protection for Catholic organizations, and greater control over the German Church by the Vatican. The greatest obstacle to Hitler’s revolution was the Catholic Center Party which had almost 14% of the vote in the March elections. Pacelli’s greatest obstacle to the Vatican exerting greater control over the German church was the lack of a favorable concordat. Hitler and the Church seemed to have a common interest.
Soon after the March election, he began making overtures to the Vatican regarding the possibility of a concordat in return for the support of the Catholic Center Party for the Enabling Act which would allow Hitler to make laws without the consent of parliament. Pacelli, who never really liked independent political activity by lay Catholics anyway, was in favor of this as long as the concordat protected the Church and its organizations.
On March 23, 1933 the Enabling Act was passed with the support of the Center Party, paving the way for the Nazi Party to destroy German political life and create a totalitarian dictatorship. On the following day, Hitler formed a working group to negotiate a new concordat with the Vatican. The concordat was concluded on July 20, 1933. Pacelli was triumphant. The new concordat made the 1917 Code of Canon Law into the basis for Church-state relations in Germany, giving the pope vastly greater powers over the German Church.
Furthermore, Hitler promised to underwrite the cost of education for Catholic students in every type of institution. Catholic parents could even petition for state support to construct new Catholic schools where there were none. Catholic youth groups and other organizations were also protected if they remained pastoral in activity and stayed out of politics. Pacelli accepted this and forced the Center Party to disband in 1935.
But it was to be Hitler who had the advantage. Instead of observing the provisions of the concordat, all forms of Catholic groups were formally banned regardless of purpose. During the “Night of the Long Knives” on June 30, 1934, many lay Catholic leaders, (especially those who had spoken out against Nazi excesses) were murdered including the head of Catholic Action. To all of this Pacelli, who was well informed about everything, said not a word. The German bishops also failed to protest and even issued statements supporting the Nazis. There is little doubt that the rise of Adolf Hitler to absolute power in Germany was aided by the concordat itself and by Pacelli’s meek acceptance of Nazi violations of that agreement. As Hitler himself acknowledged gratefully, “The fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the acknowledgment of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church” (July 22, 1933, speech to the Nazi Party).
This extreme reluctance to speak out was to characterize Pius XII during the Holocaust. The Vatican was very well informed about the fate of the Jews and the concentration camps, and both individual bishops in some countries and papal nuncios in others did a great deal to save as many as possible. This was especially notable in Holland, France, and Hungary. At the same time, the bishops of Germany and Poland did little or nothing.
It is estimated that actions by the Church contributed directly or indirectly to saving 850,000 Jews more than were saved by the allies during the war. It is extremely doubtful that the nuncios would have operated without at least tacit support from the Pope. On the other hand, the Vatican under Pacelli never openly condemned anti-Semitism or the Nazi policies toward the Jews. Would this have done any good? Perhaps not, but such a condemnation would have placed the Church on the moral high ground and might well have given the Nazis pause. We will never know.
After the war, Pacelli took a very strong stand against Communism and sternly repressed and silenced theologians who took liberal positions. His encyclical Humani generis published on September 2, 1950, condemned “dangerous” intellectual tendencies such as questioning the literal truth of Holy Scripture. He also silenced the distinguished French Jesuit theologian and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Some of the theologians who suffered under Pius were later rehabilitated and served with distinction during Vatican II.
Vatican II
Pope John XXIII (1953 to 1963) favored extensive reform and the modernization of the Church. The Second Vatican Council, called in 1962 and lasting until 1965, emphasized the Church as the whole people of God and asserted the collegial relationship of Pope and bishops. John XXIII was selected “man of the year” by Time magazine in 1962.
John XXIII (1958–63) convened Vatican II in October 1962, which lasted until 1965. It was to prove the greatest reform council in history apart from the Council of Trent and was designed to bring the epoch of post-Tridentine Catholicism to a close. There were 2,544 voting members, including 956 from America making it far more representative than The Council of Trent.
The council tried to modernize the Catholic Church in critical ways by making it come to terms with such issues as freedom of conscience, relations with other Christian faiths, relations with Jews, the liturgy, and, above all, the issue of “collegiality.” For the first time, the Church officially accepted the idea of individual freedom of conscience and the essential neutrality of the state in not favoring one religion over another. Reform of liturgy embodied the principle that the Christian people should not passively attend the worship service but participate and understand. The council therefore recommended that national episcopal conferences undertake the work of reforming the liturgy to introduce the vernacular into the Mass, liturgical books, prayers, etc. The Decree on Ecumenism opened the door to understanding with the Protestant movement, which had been shut firmly at Trent. The Church accepted that in the churches separated from the Roman Catholic Church “the written word of God and other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit are still operative.” The “Declaration on the Jews” stated clearly that the guilt for the passion and death of Jesus must be laid neither on the Jews of today nor “on all Jews living at that time.” The movement toward “collegiality” involved enhancing the role of bishop’s assemblies in the governance of the Church. This was to be accomplished by creating the synod of bishops as the institutionalized voice of the bishops of the world.
The death of John XXIII before the end of the council brought Paul VI to the throne. Pope Paul VI finished the council and issued a series of encyclicals to implement its decisions, beginning in 1963 with Pacem in Terris, which asserted man’s right to worship according to his conscience and actively participate in democratic institutions. Nostra Aetate (1965) condemned all forms of anti-Semitism, and Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (1967) reaffirmed mandatory priestly celibacy.
Paul had been Pacelli’s former undersecretary and was considerably more conservative than John XXIII. Under Paul VI, the movement of reform began to wane. The Roman Curia was given control over the synods, which were to be called by the Pope. The Pope or his representative presided over the synod and also set the agenda. Debates and discussions were held in a haphazard manner, and the Pope could even choose not to publish its proceedings. Above all, the synod was not granted any independent teaching power. In effect, the synods remained subject to papal authority in every important way. These tendencies to deprive the synods of any real independence increased during the pontificate of John Paul II. Paul also disappointed many in the Catholic world by re-affirming traditional teachings banning contraception.
Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II (1978–2005) is perhaps best remembered for his role in helping to destroy Communism in Europe. In 1979, he made the first of three papal visits that helped to undermine Communism.
Unlike his predecessor who retained a certain respect for the opinions of theologians, John Paul II employed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to investigate and punish those with whom he has disagreed. The Swiss Theologian Hans Küng, who had questioned papal infallibility, was denied the right to teach Catholic theology, and the American Charles Curran was dismissed from The Catholic University of America because of his views on abortion. The Congregation for Catholic Education has refused its permission to promote to full professor Michael Buckley and David Hollenbach even though they are widely respected and Buckley was elected president of the Catholic Theological Society of America. A variety of punishments are authorized if a theologian is found to have made errors. In 1985, for example Father Leopoldo Boff was ordered to observe a year of silence. Other theologians have been dismissed from their institutions. The result is that theologians who are priests or religious have tended to move away from considering controversial issues, leaving most of the creative theological writing to be done by lay theologians teaching at regular academic institutions.
His incessant demands for conformity did not make John Paul II very popular among theologians and intellectuals. On the other hand, he remains a popular figure among the laity not least because of his extensive travels. But this is an example of liking the messenger and not the message. There is a vast and growing disconnect between the beliefs and actions of the Catholic laity and the teachings of the official Church.
The years from 1985 to 2002 marked the height of the worldwide clergy sexual abuse crisis. John Paul’s failure to recognize its importance and to act decisively to contain the problem marks his greatest failure as pontiff.
John Paul II was a prolific writer during his twenty–seven years as Pope. His Apostolic constitution of 1989, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, required theologians seeking a teaching position at a Catholic college or university to receive a license from the local bishop. In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae of 1995, priests in the archdiocese repeated Church opposition to abortion, contraception, euthanasia, and capital punishment. The Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis (1996) gave the Roman Curia the power to make urgent decisions during the interregnum. The encyclical Fides et Ratio (1998) established an essential connection between the achievements of human reason and its basis in the mysteries of the Christian faith. And in 2000, the document Dominus Jesus issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith re-asserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic faith while accepting that elements of sanctification and truth exist in other religious traditions.
A Changing Church
By the end of the reign of John Paul II in 2005, the Catholic Church had changed considerably and was facing many new challenges and new opportunities. In North America, the Church has added 18.7 million Catholics since 1965, but it represents only 7.1 percent of the world’s Catholics down from 8.6 percent in 1970. Presently North America contains about eighty million Catholics. The Church in North America remains deeply divided over Vatican teachings, especially in the area of sexual and reproductive practices. A study involving more than 35,000 Americans carried out by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and published in February 2008, revealed that while 31 percent of Americans were raised Catholic only 24 percent still identify themselves as Catholic.
Africa on the other hand, with 147 million Catholics, now accounts for some 11.8 percent of the world’s Catholics up sharply from the 6.8 percent that it accounted for in 1970. Nevertheless, the African Church has very serious problems and is facing a growing threat from Evangelical and Pentecostal movements.
More importantly, however, is the fact that the churches of Western Europe are almost empty of worshipers, and the Church has lost a great deal of its credibility because of sexual abuse scandals in Ireland, Austria, Holland, and Germany. Europe, with 277 million Catholics, accounted for 38.4 percent of the world’s Catholics in 1970 but only 24.7 percent in 2005. The number of priests is also in free fall in many countries. Figures on vocations published in the 2008 Irish Catholic Directory reveal that the country lost 160 priests in 2007 but had only nine new ordinations. Such drastic declines in vocations have left some in Western Europe’s hierarchy questioning the continued ban on serious discussion of a married priesthood. Shortly after his election as chairman of the German Roman Catholic Bishop’s Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch declared that not only was he opposed to “a prohibition on thinking” about the issue of clerical celibacy but that celibacy was “not theologically necessary.”
The situation in Latin America would seem to be more optimistic. Latin America today has the largest number of Catholics at 483 million and accounts for 43.2 percent of world Catholics, up sharply from the 37.8 percent of 1970. Even here, however, the Church is facing growing competition from Evangelicals and Pentecostalism.
The election of John Paul’s closest collaborator, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI on April 19, 2005, practically assured that the Church would continue to be governed from the right. Cardinal Ratzinger had served for many years as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and hence the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer. His reign so far has seen a stress on traditionalism and the need for Europe to return to its Christian roots and resist the forces of relativism and secularization. It remains to be seen whether this approach will solidify support for the Church or further erode its base in the developed world.
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