Brave Priests
The Catholic Church in the Modern World: A Survey. from the French Revolution to the Present. By E. E. Y. Hales. (Eyre and Spottis- woode, 30s.)
THERE are few more interesting topics for the historian and sociologist than the Roman Catholic Church. Although, like all human insti- tutions, it sometimes backs the wrong horse, its ability to adjust and endure is extraordinary and admirable. Mr. Hales's history of the modern Church explains this success only in part, because he is too much preoccupied with apologetics and edification. Ranke explained it well enough once, but this new book insists that Ranke failed by not appreciating the divine influence at N.vork in - history. Now we are taken to the other extreme, - and the Church becomes an institution outside history and not to be judged by ordinary stan- dards of criticism. Each event and person seems
• to be measured up against either a transcendental Yardstick or at least an ultramontane one. The author, indeed, strives too anxiously to show that the Church was triumphant even despite appear- ances or that if she failed it was always for the right reasons and not so great a failure as you Might think. The story becomes monotonous and the final effect on an inquiring mind may easily be the opposite of that intended.
For instance, a basic preconception is that the Papacy's motives were always admitable, but those of its enemies almost 'always unworthy. Church leaders are monotonously described as humble, impartial, brilliant, and heroic; whereas their enemies are merciless, sinister, hypocritical, deceitful, selfish, secretive or proud. One would never guess from this account that Churchmen had ever been, accuser of pride or deceit. Per- secution is mentioned, but only of the Church, never by her; discrimination against Catholics in England is called offensive, but there is not a hint, for example, of Pius IX's cruel treatment of the 'Jews in the Roman ghetto; 'statesmen are chided for not taking advice on political mitters from the Pope ('the most natural arbitrator' of Europe), but we must turn to other Catholic writers to learn that the leading statesmen of Europe once officially condemned papal govern- rnent as .primitive and detestable. This is an over- simplified black-and-White world Where 'amidst the persecution, the profligacy, and the prating of pompous official platitudes, the Faith still lay silent in the breasts of brave priests.' Nor need one object to uplift of this kind except stylistically, so long at least as hagiography does not pose as history and bring the Faith itself into disreptite.
• For many historical judgments. sprinkled • through this book are, to say the least, dubious. The revolutionary war of 1793 apparently allowed 'even' Protestant England to 'pose' as a Christian country. The most remarkable thing in Napoleon's whole life seems to be that he wrote a letter just after Friedland advocating re, ligious, education for girls. Pius IX was apparently as ardently Italian as any of his subjects, and was scrupulously neutral over the question of papal infallibility in .1870. For the last twenty years of Bismarck's government the Church is said to have been the only force in Germany which resisted him. The Versailles settlement failed because the pope was excluded from the peace conference. And so on. In each case the author is imparting an ecclesiastical message rather than examining the historical process for its own sake, and hence he inadvertently conveys the false impression that good religion must be bad history.
When he conies to justifying Catholic backing of Mussolini and Hitler, Mr. Hales reproduces an unnecessary amount of Fascist propaganda, and so fails to elucidate his paradox that the Church supported Fascism in practice at the same time as it opposed Fascist teaching. He informs us, erroneously, that the Catholics were the most powerful Italian party in 1922, and, even more erroneously, that the Syndicalists and Communists came liext---f or the whole argument is going to be the need to create a Fascist bul- wark against Communism. He does not add, however, that these Catholics joined Mussolini's Cabinet and voted him authoritarian powers (though he does agree that the German Catholic Party backed Hitler in 1933). Nor is any mention made of the argument that the Church, by em- ploying a self-confessed atheist and murderer in order to combat Communist atheism, unwittingly assisted that process by which the fifteen Italian Communist deputies of 1922 became the land- slide of 1948. On the contrary, Church support for Fascism was 'only natural.' Evidently it was also the danger of Communism which would have made it `uSeless as well as wrong' for the papacy to have sided against Hitler in 1939-45, and perhaps that is why it is the Allies' war aims and not Hitler's which are referred to here as un- Christian. After the war, it is again the Pope who saves Europe, though as a consolation prize to the Am[micans it is allowed that 'there were,
however, other powerful influences which helped to save freedom in the West.' Quo(' erat demon-
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