The Vatican's foreign policy.

• Author: Kurth, James

THE MOST ANCIENT and enduring of European institutions is the Roman Catholic Church. For much of the past two millennia, it was a central presence that shaped and defined European life. For the past half-millennium or what we know as the modern age, it has been a target of all the great movements of European history--the Renaissance, the Reformation, the French Revolution, the industrial revolution, communism, and fascism. Through it all, the Catholic Church has endured, and at times even prevailed.

Now on the eve of the third millennium, Europe is entering into yet another era in its long history, brought about by the collapse of the Soviet empire and communism in Eastern Europe, by the disintegration of Yugoslavia, by the integration of the European Community, and, above all, by the reunion of the two half-Europes--Western and Eastern--for the first time in a half-century. In doing so, Europe once again is having great consequences for the rest of the world.

Recognizing these changes and the potential that they bring for even more changes in the future, Pope John Paul II in 1991 promulgated a new papal encyclical, Centesimus Annus (the title of the English-language edition is On the Hundredth Anniversary) which presented a distinctive Catholic conception of a just social order for the new Europe and the new world, and he has continued since to advance this conception on many occasions. Thus, the ancient Church addresses the new era, the premodern institution addresses the post-modern age. But the Catholic Church not only addresses the new era; it will again help to shape and define it too.

As the center of a transnational institution which will help shape the new, the Papacy will have significant consequences both for Europe and for the United States. But there will be different perceptions of these consequences on the two sides of the Atlantic. Europeans, who have been dealing with the Papacy for centuries, will more readily understand this new chapter in an old history. Americans, in contrast, have had almost no dealings with the Papacy in the course of their national history, and accordingly some misunderstandings are sure to arise.

A Legacy of Opposites

THE UNITED STATES is the most powerful actor in international affairs. The Roman Catholic Church is the oldest. They are the two most pervasive organizations in the world today. They are sure to connect, and on occasion to conflict.

It has always been exceptionally difficult for Americans to comprehend the nature of the Papacy. Both the Protestant origins and the contemporary liberalism of the United States have given rise to perspectives that are very different from those of the Catholic Church, and from the Papacy that is its head. But beyond these familiar differences grounded in theology and ideology are differences grounded in international roles.

The Papacy's role in international affairs is shaped by three essential features:

(1) As the Vatican, it is a small state, indeed the smallest state in the world. (2) As the Holy See, it is the representative of a universal (i.e., catholic) church in a world of nation-states, of one faith composed of many nations. (3) As the Pontiff (Pontifex Maximus, or the Master Bridge-Builder), it is the bridge, the mediator, between the secular world and the spiritual one.

Each of these three essential features of the Papacy makes it extremely difficult for Americans to understand, for the United States is in a large measure the opposite in each of these aspects: (1) The United States is a superpower, indeed it is the most powerful state in the world. (2) The United States is one nation composed of many faiths. (3) The United States is an unusually secular society, with strict separation of church and state and with virtually no official recognition of the claims of the spiritual world.

Despite these differences in perspective, the United States and the Papacy clearly have had common interests in international politics, and there have been many points of convergence between their policies. The convergence was most pronounced in the 1980s, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the Papacy of John Paul II. The central axis of agreement, of course, lay in their common opposition to Marxism and especially to Soviet power.

During the first half-century after the Russian Revolution of 1917, the United States and the Catholic Church shared a common resistance to the expansion of Soviet power, but the emphasis and the timing varied. At some times--during the 1930s, the Second World War, and the late 1950s-- the Catholic Church was more opposed to the Soviet Union than was the United States. At other times--for example, the 1960s--the United States was more opposed to the Soviets than was the Church.

During the last two decades, however, there was increasing convergence between the perspectives of the two. The 1970s were the period of greatest accommodation with Marxism on the part of both the United States (the policy of detente) and the Catholic Church (the rise of liberation theology). Conversely, the 1980s were the period of greatest resistance to Marxism on the part of both, with the most anti-Soviet president and the most anti-Soviet pope at least since the late 1940s.

With the decline of Marxism and the end of Soviet power, it is natural enough to think that we now live in an era defined by the almost-universal acceptance of American liberal ideals, including liberal capitalism, an era defined by the "end of history." But the disappearance of the Marxist and Soviet threat has also meant the disappearance of the central axis of convergence between the United States and the Catholic Church. We are likely to see a growing awareness of fundamental differences between the liberal and the Catholic ideals and between U.S. and papal foreign policies. This would represent not only the return of history; it would be something of a return of antiquity as well.

Transfigurations and Resurrections

FOR MUCH OF the past half-millennium, the history of Europe and especially Central Europe was defined by the grand alliance between the Catholic Church and the Habsburg monarchy. Together, these two great transnational institutions shaped the society, the culture, and the lifestyle of Central Europe into distinctive forms, sometimes summed up in the idea of Mitteleuropa. This half-millennium, which corresponds to the modern era, is often seen as the story of the rise of secular national states, whose prototypes were France and England, to be followed in the nineteenth century by Germany and Italy. Seen from the other side of the coin, however, it is the story of the decline of the two great transnational institutions, the Catholic Church and the Habsburg monarchy.

For the Habsburg monarchy, it was a decline that culminated in its destruction in 1918. For the Church, however, it has been a decline that has been punctuated by a long series of reforms and revivals, of transfigurations and resurrections, so that it remains a vital transnational institution even today.(1)

During much of this time, the Papacy had its own territorial domain, a small but still significant realm known as the Papal States. These stretched across central Italy and included the area around Rome and also Umbria, Emilia-Romagna, and the Marches (about 16,000 square miles in all).

The military protector of this realm was, of course, not the famous Swiss Guards but the Habsburg army. When this army was defeated, as in Napoleon's conquest of Italy and 1797 and Napoleon III's support of Italian unification in 1859, the Pope's territories were threatened with extinction. But for a decade from 1860 to 1870, Napoleon III himself became the military protector of the last remaining Papal State around Rome (in order to gain political support from French Catholics). When he in turn was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the new Italian state annexed the Papal State, putting a decisive and complete end to the Pope's territorial domain. At the time, a great Church Council was being held in the Vatican (it would be known as Vatican I; Vatican II would be held in 1962-1965). It was this Council that declared the dogma of papal infallibility. Thus the moment of the total extinction of the Pope's temporal power coincided with that of the most extreme expansion of his spiritual claims.

Pope Pius IX retreated into the Vatican, never to leave it again (thus becoming known as "the prisoner of the Vatican"). The estrangement between the Roman Catholic Church and the secular (and usually liberal) Italian state was to last for almost sixty years. It was brought to an end in 1929 with a treaty and a concordat known as the Lateran Agreements. Concluded between Mussolini and Pope Pius XI, they established the Vatican State (all one-sixth square mile of it) as an independent state recognized by Italy and by international law.

Despite the Agreements, it was not long before the Catholic Church and the fascist regime were in dispute over a range of issues, especially over education in Catholic schools. But Italy was no longer the secular power that seemed to pose the greatest threat to the Church. That was now the power that had arisen out of the Russian Revolution.

Revolution and Holocaust

THE GREAT DIVIDE between the Catholic Church and the Russian state goes back almost a thousand years, to the Great Schism between the two halves of Christendom, Western and Eastern, Latin and Greek, Roman and Orthodox. Ever since, there have never been many Roman Catholics among the Russian people themselves. But the Russian Empire of the Czars, that "prison of nations," ruled tens of millions of Catholics in Poland and Lithuania. When that empire collapsed with the Russian Revolution and with the peace settlements after the First World War, Poland and Lithuania became independent. Thus, the new Soviet state contained almost no Catholics at all. It was clear, however, that any...