Italy at 150 The victory of the Risorgimento seemed a defeat for the papacy. In fact, it led to a rebirth of papal power and, ultimately, the defeat of Communism.
Rome — Italy celebrates the sesquicentennial of its birth as a unified nation today. On March 17, 1861, while Americans were preoccupied with some serious business of their own, the first Italian Parliament met in Turin and declared Rome the capital of unified Italy. That legislative act was given effect nine years later, when Italian troops took advantage of the Franco-Prussian War to enter the rump of the old Papal States.
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As the Italians closed in on the city of Peter and Paul, the student body of the Pontifical North American College, the U.S. seminary in Rome, volunteered to a man to take up arms in defense of the pope. Pius IX gently thanked them and wrote back, in his own hand, that he hoped they would be victorious in fighting, not for his territory, but for the truth of Christian faith. Pio Nono ordered his own troops to fire one volley, “for honor’s sake” — to emphasize that Italy was acquiring Rome by force and not consent. And so, after a brief exchange of mis-aimed shots that prefigured Italy’s martial success in the decades to come, the papal forces retired and the Risorgimento, a secularist as well as nationalist affair, had what it wanted: the Eternal City, and the chance to try to reclaim the glory that was Rome in the days of empire. Fifty-nine years later, in the 1929 Lateran Treaty, the papacy regained a smidgeon of sovereign territory: today’s Vatican City and some extraterritorial properties like the papal summer villa at Castel Gandolfo.
For a long time, Catholics of a certain cast of mind bitterly resented all this. Their attitude was neatly captured by Guy Crouchback, the protagonist of Evelyn Waugh’s World War II trilogy, Sword of Honor. At the beginning of the third volume, Unconditional Surrender, Guy chats with his wise and aged father during the Allied campaign in Italy:
News of the King’s flight came on the day the brigade landed at Salerno. It brought Guy some momentary exhilaration.
“That looks like the end of the Piedmontese usurpation,” he said to his father. “What a mistake the Lateran Treaty was. It seemed masterly at the time — how long? Fifteen years ago? What are 15 years in the history of Rome? How much better it would have been if the Popes had sat it out and then emerged, saying, ‘What was all that? Risorgimento? Garibaldi? Cavour? The House of Savoy? Mussolini? Just some hooligans from out of town causing a disturbance. Come to think of it, wasn’t there a poor boy whom they called King of Rome?’ That’s what the Pope ought to be saying today.”
Mr. Crouchback regarded his son sadly. “My dear boy,” he said, “you’re really talking the most terrible nonsense, you know. That isn’t what the Church is like. It isn’t what she’s for.”
The fictional Gervase Crouchback was a man ahead of his time in 1943, when he set Guy straight about the “Piedmontese usurpation,” the Lateran Treaty, and the rest of it. But his view has been thoroughly vindicated in the decades since World War II, and on this sesquicentennial in Rome it would take a particular kind of obtuseness, combined with over-the-top romanticism, to think that the loss of the Papal States was anything other than a tremendous blessing for the Catholic Church. Garibaldi, Cavour, and the House of Savoy turned out to be unwitting midwives of a new papacy, one that deployed moral authority to great political effect in world affairs — far more effect, in fact, than either the Kingdom of Italy or the Repubblica Italiana has managed since 1861.
I can't say I don't agree with Mr Weigel. But other than people like him, Bishops, and Catholic scholars very people listen to what the Vatican has to say. Pope JPII was a charismatic leader who knew how to work the media. But, for all of the strum and drang of his pontificate, there is little to see in the world stage. In Europe, people who call themselves Catholic are little different from the agnostics. Ditto for here in the US.
Catholic-Lite or Christianity-Lite has failed our societies these last 50 years. I don't blame this on the Vatican. But by immersing itself in every little problem of the world, the Church has lost its mission. Even worse, many of its clerics have been infected by secularism. And I'm not just talking about the priest-scandals. Look at how far the Jesuits have fallen.
Yes, it was the Italian secularists did the Church a favor in 1861. But that trend actually began with the Thirty Years War, and it continues today. And if demographic trends do not stop, Rome might find itself in the same position Constantinople found itself in 1412.
While an interesting article, I think Mr. Weigel omits a few things.
Leo XIII was far from happy with the situation known as the "Roman Question." While he certainly engaged the "modern world" with fresh insights on social matters, to his dying death he (along with Pius IX) portrayed himself as an exiled leader, stripped of his believed rightful authority.
There's also the fact that for Pius IX, this was far more than just a show. His closest aide was murdered in front of him, and he had to escape the Vatican dressed as a plain-clothed priest.
The Lateran treaty may have been inevitable, and some good came of it. Yet to say that JPII was free to do what he did because of the anti-Catholicism of the Italian regime (this wasn't just secularist) really doesn't have a scintilla of historical evidence.
The Popes forced the Jewish population to live in ghettos and kidnaped and forcibly baptized Jewish children. The Papal States have much to answer for.
Great line - "And so, after a brief exchange of mis-aimed shots that prefigured Italy’s martial success in the decades to come, ..." Reminds me of the old joke - how many gears do Italian tanks have? Four, three of them in reverse.
What Italy did was certainly a usurpation, but no more so against the Pope than any of Italy's other former Kings and Princes.
The difference is that strictly speaking, and although the Popes occasionally had the idea of uniting the Italian nation under themselves [Julius II], the Papal States always existed to give the Church resources and military capacity to back up their ostensible role as leaders of Christendom, a role that was both spiritual and temporal [as the kind of moral and legal forerunner to the role of the UN in the international system, especially in the absence of a strong Emperor with universal jurisdiction]. In modern conditions, the latter had become untenable for many reasons, and the former could be better pursued without territorial holdings and pocket sized armies.
I think it is difficult for all but the most die-hard ultramonanists to disagree with Mr. Weigel's thesis that the dispossession of papal states by Italy ended up being a long-term blessing for the Church, freeing it to shore up its true source of power and legitimacy, its spiritual authority. Yet a few important distinctions get elided or overlooked entirely along the way in such a short essay, as I suspect Mr. Weigel himself would concede.
In the first place, it too easily admits the inevitable argument that "Church and state are best separated." (See Mr. Chantrill's post below). This is still not Church teaching, and for good reason - even if prudence dictates that the Church is generally best off minimizing its direct role in secular governance. "Separation," whether of the French laicite model or the more moderate American version has not been an unmixed blessing for the Church and its mission (nor indeed other Christian denominations), after all. The Papacy acquired the Papal States in the first place during the "Dark Ages" for good reasons, and it took time to fully realize that the independence that possession of parts of central Italy granted the Popes had become mostly illusory in the face of the increasingly industrialized organization and firepower of modern nation states - and therefore not worth the distraction of resources and energy (often not very competently employed) it entailed.
In the second place, neither Pius XI nor his "Prisoner in the Vatican" successors (Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV or Pius XI) were quite as gracious as represented in surrendering temporal power, or living with its loss. And perhaps not without valid reason, as Kevin Tierney notes: The Piedmontese invasion was brutal, and its subsequent operation over the following seven decades was tendentiously anti-clerical. Further, the experience of the eastern patriarchates under secular control (both Orthodox and Ottoman) had been considerably less than happy, and the same had been true of the Papacy itself when it fell under Byzantine, French, imperial and Napoleonic control at various points. In short, the choices before Pius IX were not so clear-cut as they might seem now.
And regardless of their feelings about the Papacy, most Italians came to agree at least with Guy Crouchback's celebration of the unsightly final departure of the House of Savoy from the Italian political scene. It is one royal family that no one has missed.
All that notwithstanding, thanks to George Weigel for a timely essay on a topic most have overlooked.
I think it is difficult for all but the most die-hard ultramonanists to disagree with Mr. Weigel's thesis that the dispossession of papal states by Italy ended up being a long-term blessing for the Church, freeing it to shore up its true source of power and legitimacy, its spiritual authority. Yet a few important distinctions get elided or overlooked entirely along the way in such a short essay, as I suspect Mr. Weigel himself would concede.
In the first place, it too easily admits the inevitable argument that "Church and state are best separated." (See Mr. Chantrill's post below). This is still not Church teaching, and for good reason - even if prudence dictates that the Church is generally best off minimizing its direct role in secular governance. "Separation," whether of the French laicite model or the more moderate American version has not been an unmixed blessing for the Church and its mission (nor indeed other Christian denominations), after all. The Papacy acquired the Papal States in the first place during the "Dark Ages" for good reasons, and it took time to fully realize that the independence that possession of parts of central Italy granted the Popes had become mostly illusory in the face of the increasingly industrialized organization and firepower of modern nation states - and therefore not worth the distraction of resources and energy (often not very competently employed) it entailed.
In the second place, neither Pius XI nor his "Prisoner in the Vatican" successors (Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV or Pius XI) were quite as gracious as represented in surrendering temporal power, or living with its loss. And perhaps not without valid reason, as Kevin Tierney notes: The Piedmontese invasion was brutal, and its subsequent operation over the following seven decades was tendentiously anti-clerical. Further, the experience of the eastern patriarchates under secular control (both Orthodox and Ottoman) had been considerably less than happy, and the same had been true of the Papacy itself when it fell under Byzantine, French, imperial and Napoleonic control at various points. In short, the choices before Pius IX were not so clear-cut as they might seem now.
And regardless of their feelings about the Papacy, most Italians came to agree at least with Guy Crouchback's celebration of the unsightly final departure of the House of Savoy from the Italian political scene. It is one royal family that no one has missed.
All that notwithstanding, thanks to George Weigel for a timely essay on a topic most have overlooked.
Mr. Weigel is an interesting socio-political commentator on current events, he uses a broad vocabulary, and writes often with knowledge about obscure historical events; however, he seems - reiteration of that word, seemes - to lack a theological sense in his "musings". No sin goes unpunished, and more than that, it was an unjust - not simply against catholic morality - act by which "the Italians" (whoever "they" were at that time) took the Papal States. Did this seizure "help" the Papacy? That question involves much more than Mr. Weigel treats in his brief article, but as usual, he SEEMS to make a complicated subject incredibly simple: I suggest he is rather simple-minded and simplistic in his reasoning. One piece of evidence not examined or mentioned: the Papacy lost any control of most Churches. Now, the Church "takes care of" the Churches, and that according to the whims of the Italian government.
I await George Weigel's petition to the Bishop of Rome for Giuseppe Garibaldi to be declared a "Servant of God". I also hope that, assuming that Weigel, Garibalidi, Pope Pius IX, and I will be in heaven, one day, hearing the panel discussion on the merits of the loss of the Papal States. And for my part, I can also hope that the Italian Republic could return the Papal States to the Pope and undo the crime of 9/20/1870.
This article is wrong on so many fronts that I hardly know where to begin. I haven't much time and will therefore muse on only a couple points.
First, I must ask how it was that the Popes could respond to the geo-political challenges confronting the Church during the previous thousand years of the Papal States. I'm surprised that the Popes didn't give away all of their land during the reformation in order to "have time" to begin the counter reformation.
Second, I'm surprised that Mr. Weigel is encouraging anyone, especially Catholics, to read the encyclicals of Leo XIII. Mr. Weigel is notorious for bashing the Social Kingship of Christ, of which Pope Leo was an ardent defender.
Thirdly, I have no idea how Mr. Weigel can claim John Paul II to have brought the Leonine papacy to its apogee. Leo XIII and JP II had very different conceptions of the proper form of society - one need only read Immortale Dei. Pope Leo XIII, of course, would have desired the demise of Communism as JP II did, but he would have brought a much different prescription for the corporate ills of society.
This article is wrong on so many fronts that I hardly know where to begin. I haven't much time and will therefore muse on only a couple points.
First, I must ask how it was that the Popes could respond to the geo-political challenges confronting the Church during the previous thousand years of the Papal States. I'm surprised that the Popes didn't give away all of their land during the reformation in order to "have time" to begin the counter reformation.
Second, I'm surprised that Mr. Weigel is encouraging anyone, especially Catholics, to read the encyclicals of Leo XIII. Mr. Weigel is notorious for bashing the Social Kingship of Christ, of which Pope Leo was an ardent defender.
Thirdly, I have no idea how Mr. Weigel can claim John Paul II to have brought the Leonine papacy to its apogee. Leo XIII and JP II had very different conceptions of the proper form of society - one need only read Immortale Dei. Pope Leo XIII, of course, would have desired the demise of Communism as JP II did, but he would have brought a much different prescription for the corporate ills of society.
