The Vatican as a World Power/Chapter 13
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We have now brought the history of the Papacy to times contempo- rary with ourselves. Regardless of how we may personally feel toward this institution, it is hardly possible to escape reading the history with- out drawing the conclusion which Friedrich Schiller phrased thus: "From ,such traits one can form an impression of the spirit which governed the Roman Court, and sense the unshakeable firmness of the principles which every Pope saw himself compelled to sponsor at what- ever personal cost to himself. One sees Emperors and Kings, en- lightened statesmen and unbending soldiers, make a holocaust of rights, prove disloyal to their principles, and bow to necessity, when circumstances demand it. But that seldom or never happened to a Pope. Even when he was wandering about in misery, when he had in all Italy no foot of land and no soul willing to accord him affection, when he lived from the alms of strangers, he nevertheless maintained a steadfast guard over the rights of his See and o the Church. Though every other political entity has at certain times suffered and now suffers through the fault of the personal qualities of those entrusted with its administration, the Church has hardly ever suffered thus by reason of its Popes. However unlike these Popes may have been in temperament, outlook and ability, their policy remains the same always in so far as steadfastness, uniformity and unchangeable- ness are concerned. Their temperaments, their abilities, their out- looks seem never to have flowed over into their office. One might put it this way: their personalities were merged in their dignity, their passions were quenched under the weight of the three-fold crown. Though every time a Pope dies the chain of succession is broken and must be linked together again at every new election, and though no secular throne has ever so frequently changed its incumbent, or been so stormily assailed and abandoned, yet this remains the only throne on earth which seems never to have changed its occupant. For only the Popes die: the spirit which informs them is immortal."
The Papacy is therefore a sovereignty of a unique kind which by its very nature is something different from the secular leadership and ad- ministration of human associations. It rests on an historical event
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without a parallel in history ; and from this event, which human reason finds the most inexplicable moment in all history, it derives its reason for being a reason not implicit in itself. The historian meets the demands of his limited office when he makes visible what can be his- torically seen of this institution, when he reveals what it did in history and what was done to it in that history. But it is of such a character that it brings home to him more than any other theme could how little one is able to understand history from a mere conscientious study of its materials. One may derive an explanation of the power of the Papacy from the natural vitality of the Church if, like Macaulay, one is convinced that this Church would still exist unimpaired if some traveller coming from New Zealand were to stand in a great wilderness upon a crumbled arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's. And like the same Macaulay, one might view the constitu- tion of ecclesiastical Rome, with the Papacy at its head, as the true masterpiece of human wisdom as the most perfect of the inventions which have been devised to deceive and govern men. Neither of these explanations, nor both of them together, penetrate to the zone of mystery which the historian, concerned only with bringing to light what can be perceived of the past, is not of course called upon to enter, but from which the Papacy itself traces its origin. It has a view of its existence which transcends history and, indeed, the natural order. It lives not in reliance upon its skill and wisdom, but in the conscious- ness of its timeless ancestry. It has continued to exist, though every device of government might fail miserably. Yes, it has even out- lasted Popes who themselves did not share that faith in their throne which glowed in the hearts of the nations or perhaps not even there. Therefore it is impossible to make a case for or against the Papacy <m a basis of historical fact. The student is not called upon to add up moral light and darkness, but only to manifest both honestly in so fat as he is able. But the believing soul, for which the essence of an event is not contained in its mere historical occurrence, looks beyond sdl the faults and misdeeds of the Popes to that source from which its faith as well as theirs derives light and strength. At bottom the most violent attacks on the Papacy have had their origin even as the Papacy itself is rooted in religious fact not in affairs of state or political gambling for power, but in motives of a religious or philosophi-
THE cal nature. Princes of the Church, goverments and whole countries could declare open warfare on the Pope and the Curia without transcending the limits of what might be called a family quarrel. But a satirical phrase, or a verse of the Bible on the lips of a preacher, could reveal like a flash of metaphysical lightning the gulf that yawned between Christ and his viceroy on earth — a flash like that which occurred in the night, when the servant of the High Priest heard Peter deny Him thrice.
Despite his weakness, there were given to him the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and with them fullness of authority to make divinely binding decisions for the Church of the New Testament. The struggle between the See of Peter and its antagonists is a struggle over those Keys. When there is strife over something else, it is not a war to the death but only a conflict of far less gravity. What is to be believed concerning the natural and the supernatural, toward what goal the individual soul and mankind are finally to be directed, how the goods of the visible and invisible universe should be used, what truth is a norm of all truths, what law is a norm of all laws, and what court holds final jurisdiction over what we are and do to reach decisions contingent upon these questions, to ward off and to grant, to bind and to loose, to close and to open, are powers conveyed with those Keys, with which one single human being is entrusted by another human being, who himself spoke and acted by reason of God's om- nipotence. From this first recipient of the Keys there has descended in mystical succession a dynasty upon which there rests the promise that it is to endure until the return of the Son of Man in glory, hut also the certainty that it will be pushed hard in the combat that must go on forever against the dynasty of its foes.
These contrasted heritages were from the beginning set forth in words of prophecy, among them this: "My Kingdom is not of this world." The phrase has been hurled at the Papacy a thousand times, most frequently by those who have misunderstood its meaning. If one reads the saying correctly it means "My Kingdom is not of a world like this one" (which condemns Me through Pikte). The master was referring not to the place in which the Kingdom was to be situated, but of its derivation and character. Its place is so truly in this world of space, time and human circumstance that because of them He who QUO VADIS?
used these words entered more deeply and fully into that rime and space and circumstance, and wrestled with them, wrestled more earnestly with all their forces, than ever mere man had done. This world and none other for what other could it be? is the material of which His rule is to be builded, and the flour that awaits the yeast of His glad tidings. His Kingdom is a witness for the truth, a witness in the world; and yet because it is not of the same substance as this world, it is constantly repudiated. Therefore this "Kingdom not of a world like this" is made to seem of another world of a world beyond, since "this world here" does not permit it to exist on this side of the Beyond.
Even when rightly understood, Christ's saying has often been a word of reproach and judgment directed at the Papacy; and when used correctly, it has revealed the fullness of the sin and tragedy of those who in high office have failed to realize its import. For the command to transform the world of time and space into the Kingdom of God is not fulfilled by merely proclaiming a kingdom which is to be builded somewhere else in the future. Moreover, when one op- poses the "Kingdom not of this world" to the "kingdom of this world here," one runs the great risk that by entering the wo;ld which is to be conquered, one may instead be conquered by it. The tremendous, permanent revolution which Christianity ceaselessly stages in its con- flict with the world has its institutional centre in a Papacy which is the most conservative of all governments. Though often in its history it has seemed to give testimony against its own nature, this nature is nevertheless always the most terrifying witness against whatever is ignominious in its history. When Simon Peter acted in accordance with his merely human self and spoke and acted on the impulse of flesh and blood, he could say and do things which his Master found deplorable, even Satanic. Yet something else too, emanated from him; and of this his Lord said, "Not flesh and blood have revealed it to thee, but My Father in Heaven/' Thus also in the history of the Papal monarchy the denial, the treason and the many weaknesses of Peter have been scandalous, sinful, and deserving of condemnation; but they have been revealed with two-fold clarity in the sharp light of a splendour in which all shadows are etched more darkly. Even so, Peter s throne speaks what flesh and blood do not reveal,
Thcte is no philosophy of the history of the Papacy, and there can
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be none, any more than there can be a logic of the Christian story of salvation. Nevertheless every student of the Papacy must carefully consider its own inner definition of itself and its consciousness of its divine origin. If he fails to do so, his story and verdict will not do justice to the theme and will apply the norms of secular statesmanship to what is the government of a superstate. Unfortunately the long school of the past has in neither respect always and everywhere in- structed the present.
The totalitarian theories of the state, which in European countries have been derived from naturalistic thought or deduced from Hegel, are fundamentally in conflict with the Catholic Church. This fact no merely external code of good manners can gloss over. What is most obvious about these states is a program either expressly godless, or hostile to Christianity, or anti-Christian under a Christian name a program according to which the government and the promotion of the national welfare are carried out. Wholly in the spirit of earlier pagan definitions of the state, or it may be in the spirit of a philosophy which regards the people as the highest absolute value, there rises a naked naturalism which is always in open or secret antagonism to the Roman Catholic Church as the theoretical and practical obstacle to a totalitarian control by the State of totalitarian man, including his re- ligious life. One system may lay the emphasis more on humanitarian and popular desires, and another may place it more on the will to power; here the State may assume the pose of a Redeemer, and there it may act as a disciplinarian of bodies and souls. But common to both is a dictatorial system inside which freedom has no place, a con- cept of the world which does not transcend the world, and a definition of society and subservience, of nature and "eternity," of the meaning of the state and the meaning of life, which ignores Christianity as a supernatural revelation and as a society having totally alien definitions of all these things. Or the state may usurp the Catholic religious terminology, give to each sacred word a content derived from the natural order alone, and so seek to depopulate Christendom without expressly declaring war, or indeed even while professing tolerance. If such a state parallels the organic structure of the Catholic Church in a certain sense, its appeal to the masses will not be impaired; and still less of an obstacle is a concurrence in the basic mystical feeling that
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there is a divine unity, that life is more worth living if one has faith in a lofty objective which transcends the individual, and that confidence can be placed in a leadership to which the fullness of power has been given.
Viewed purely as a form of control, a state professing totalitarian claims may develop the fullness of state power; and the consciously sought out analogy with the Church may seem, when superficially regarded, to insure permanence and solidity also. Enthusiasm derived from pure secularism frees itself, when it assumes a form of conduct like that of the Church, of that odium which a mere profanation or a crude, blasphemous attack on sacred things always arouses. Without that odium, secularization of religion can be brought about all the more readily, by merely rendering the profane sacred. The noiseless metamorphosis of faith into a tolerated, yes, even simulated, Christian- ity for the sake of mass-appeal reaches the same end as does destruc- tion of Christianity by force, though the method may be more hu- mane. That there are eyes which see all this, which know how to tell the difference between a face and a mask, is proved by the fact that the Holy See adopted the course it did against the nationalism in Catholic dress of 1'Action Fran^aise.
The thousand-year-old primacy of Christianity among the baptized peoples has given way to the political primacy of national being during a long process which, despite certain interruptions, is a logical develop- ment. Since an Empire comprising all the people is possible only if there exists a real, spiritual Empire, universally recognized as existing above the level of the secular, the loss of that spiritual Empire has also necessarily meant the decline of the secular Empire, The dead body of Christendom has since undergone a kind of chemical decom- position. An aggregate of nations seeking hope in a kind of desperate autonomy clings to an illusion of a community of peoples which in a League of Nations uses the illusionistic language of spirits conjured up from a bygone Christian age, though as a matter of fact the real cementing agents are only such blessings of civilization as technical advancement, world trade and transportation. The idea of the com- munity of peoples, as something more than a conventional assumption resorted to in the hope of rescuing civilization, is wholly alive only in die Catholic Church whose sacraments and teachings are valid for all
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men, and whose Popes speak in the name of the Shepherd of human- ity. It is one side of the alternative with which Europe has long since been confronted. "There are only two ways between which we have to choose the road to Rome and the road to atheism" wrote Cardinal Newman. The same discovery had previously been made in the opposite camp. "There is," said Fichte, "no third possibility: one must either cast oneself into the lap of the Roman Church which alone can save, or one must become a determined Freethinker."
The Papal office is today the same as it always was and its antagonists have hardly changed their masks, let alone their thoughts. But they have refined their methods. In the shadow of St. Peter's an example of a totalitarian state suddenly loomed up. The external similarity of Fascism with the organizatorial style of the Catholic Church, and even more certainly the usurpation of the religious energies of the soul for the purposes of the state and the race, would, if both sides drew the final conclusions from their principles, lead to an antagonism so sharp and deep that compared with it the struggles between Popes and Emperors of the Middle Ages would seem like mere episodes of a quarrel between Christians. Meanwhile however, the outer trend of events veils the reality of contrasted principles. The Lateran Treaties of 1929, which brought the Papacy a solution of the Roman question in accordance with the modest requests of Leo XIII in 1894, freed the Vatican from a situation that was physically disadvantageous, and at the same time gave the Fascist government of Italy a new free- dom of action against this wholly surrounded little state. It can main- tain before the world that this was a deed of generosity, even of friendli- ness; but at the same time it can treat the activities of the Vatican sovereign within the limits of Italy as an expression of or an interference by an "outside" alien political power. The two souls of Eternal Rome have been divorced and live on as oppositcs under the roof of a Con- cordat.
The political antagonists of the Papacy all carry the banners of an intcllectualist opposition. Though the words inscribed on those banners may be different, there is a unanimous agreement in so far as opposition to Rome is concerned. It is not necessary to list them all the historical animosity of the other Christian confessions, the resentment of the ultra-nationalists, the fervour of those who put
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their faith in the elemental and the animalistic, enthusiasm for progress, freedom, self-determination. But it may be well to speak of one foe which accuses Rome of denying the world. Its name is Nihilism, and good Europeans do not believe that it exists. "Why should one simply wish to destroy everything?" That is a superficial, ignorant, or maybe also a cowardly and evasive answer. There does exist a Nihilism, the goal of which is nothingness. It is rare, is the faith of diseased, worn out and sometimes daemonic men. It has a corollary, though it may sound paradoxical to say that "nothing" can be the cause of something else. It arises from the nihilistic feeling that at bottom nothing exists excepting the veil which hides that nothingness. There is no eternal Being, no dependable fundament of existence, no substance, nothing to which the name we shall refuse to mention here could be applied. This Nihilism does not appear to be destructive. Indeed, it is ceaselessly active, constantly busy, scrupulously diligent even, restless on every Sabbath day, because it does not believe as Rome believes, or as Luther, as Calvin, and all who have yearned to stand in the light of the Eternal Throne, have believed; and it musters up a brilliant display of energy, intelligence, beauty, success, material comfort, in order to do battle with that terrible nothingness upon which there can be no point of rest even for thought or feeling. Thus humanity becomes creative by reason of terror. It is a mothering beast bringing forth its young an evil, miserable brood prema- turely while it flees.
But Rome believes. For Rome the world has a foundation. It adheres to permanence amidst change, and summons change to find its meaning in permanence and to draw sustenance from it. It stands for the Eternal Something which is always true to and in conformity with itself. Therefore it is rigid, is a sign of contradiction and a scandal in a world of change and motion. It moves others through the calm with which it endures, just as rock in a stream is a source of movement in that it throws back the foaming flood. The most legiti- mistic, the most rigid, of all thrones is at the same time a principle of movement in permanence. It is also the goal of a battle waged by all the revolts of the flesh, the mind and the heart. Rome answers the flesh by sanctioning the material in the Sacrament; it answers the mind wrestling, restlessly, with the Infinite, with its dogma as a
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sign of confident reliance upon an objective truth; and k answers wavering moral feeling with a law which frees the single natural action from the peril of chaos imminent in it, and gives it its own significance in the order of the Whole, which it itself has not seen. Though on the surface it may appear to be otherwise, these are the three ways in which a conciliating, hope-bringing view of life can reach eminence sub specie teternitatis. Nevertheless Rome's dictatorship is also con- tingent upon the resistance of the anti-Roman world, even as form is contingent upon matter. In this relationship only can that law be fulfilled which is garbed in images and parables on many a page of the New Testament.
We have said Rome, and as we did so the part stood for the whole that whole for the sake of which alone the Papacy exists. Its justification, its task and the value of what it does throughout time must be measured by the being and meaning of that whole. To it as to the whole it crowns no other sign has been given under which It could be saved, save only that which stands above the dome of its greatest cathedral.
We began with Peter and we shall close with him. The entire history of the Papacy, of its weakness and its greatness, of its hours of denial and its hours of heroic love, repeat the life of him who in spite of human nature was called Kepha and was Kepha. There exists a legend concerning his death which not only conforms perfectly with the Bible story but also incorporates inexhaustible truth about the Papacy as it is and as it should be.
Peter fled from Rome when the persecution of Nero broke out. Fellow Christians had advised him to do so in order that his life might be spared for his sake and for their own. But as he went down the Appian Way, the Lord came toward him. Peter then asked Him, as he had once asked Him in Jerusalem before the Passion: "Master, whither goest Thou?" And the Lord answered, "To Rome in order to let Myself be crucified again." Then He vanished, but Peter understood, retraced his steps and suffered death on the cross.
Today there stands on that Appian Way the little Church of Domine Quo Vadis. How little a building it is compared with magnificent St. Peter's! The question which its name phrases, the Master Himself answered for His disciple by urging him to follow
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His way and His example. The grave on Vatican Hill stands for the power of the union of changeable human nature with the sover- eignty of the unchanging One. It is meet that there should stand always above this memorial of His sacrificial death a worldly throne as the image of that other unworldly throne.
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