Editorials: No! No! Pio Nono
more inward-looking American super power. All of this ill will and suspicion is unfortunate, and it is probably unnecessary since there is no evidence that the land-based system will work and a...
...It further erodes the credibility of the papacy...
...Of course, the boost-phase alternative has its own limitations...
...Who better demonstrates this reality than John Paul II, the pope about to beatify Pius...
...They argue that his fierce condemnations of virtually every idea then under discussion in European political and intellectual life and his commitment to preserving the temporal power of the papacy in the face of Italian national aspirations were courageous and appropriate responses to the anticlerical, antireligious liberalism of the time--and that, in any case, these policies do not detract from his personal holiness...
...International protests followed...
...Much has been made of Pius XI's and Pins XII's cooperation with fascism during the 1920s and '30s...
...It is gaining supporters across the political spectrum, including former defense advisors from both the Reagan and Clinton administrations...
...Furthermore, it is also worth remembering that the harshest outbreaks of anticlericalism came after, not before, Pius's denunciations...
...Perhaps more than any other, this event, in which theological claims trumped parental rights, rallied the world against the continued temporal power of the pope...
...The Vatican doesn't say, pretending that the procedure for designating saints takes place free of external pressures and orders...
...Vice President A1 Gore supports limited NMD, as does President Bill Clinton, because both want to rein in the far larger system that many Republicans favor...
...It is as though the pope's personal good deeds counted, but his institutional stewardship was not germane...
...The copy of one of its billboard ads called for a "few good men...
...If we are to proceed, there can only be multilateral discussions and agreements that step-by-step allow everyone to defend themselves against nuclear attack without increasing the risk of nuclear war...
...Richard Perle, one of his advisors, sees the boost-phase system as a first step toward a far more extensive sea- and space-based system than is now being proposed...
...The splendid absurdity of the coming event can be grasped when we recognize that John XXIII and John Paul II would both have been condemned for their ideas and their words had they expressed them when Pius IX was in power...
...Bologna, where the Mortara family lived, was part of the Papal States and governed by church law, which required that a baptized Jewish child be raised under Christian auspices...
...Texas Governor George W. Bush supports a boost-phase missile defense system...
...These objections focus on the seizure in 1858 of six-year-old Edgardo Mortara, a Jewish child said to have been secretly baptized by a servant girl...
...Historically, it is untrue that Pius IX had no alternative but all-out warfare with the rising forces of religious tolerance, liberal constitutionalism, and national unification...
...They dug into their pocketbooks and sponsored the sister billboard below...
...Whether and how to pursue missile defense is probably the most pressing national security issue of the presidential campaign...
...Pursuit of the boost-phase alternative would require specific amendment of the ABM Treaty...
...We certainly hope so...
...Another sported the invitation: "If you're waiting for a sign from God, this is it...
...Experts claim that this has two technical advantages: it is much easier to hit an ICBM in boost phase, and the missile is destroyed before it is capable of setting off decoys--one test the land-based system has consistently failed...
...Russian President Vladimir Putin recently proposed a joint boost-phase program with the United States that would protect Europe as well...
...This is likely to trouble the diplomatic waters as thoroughly as the proposed land-based one...
...That could happen...
...The pope of Vatican II cannot be promoted without matching him with the pope of Vatican I. The idea that Vatican II and all it represents is not just a development of Vatican I and all it represents, but, in important respects, a corrective is unpalatable in present-day Rome...
...The reaction of our allies and former cold-war foes alike make any unilateral action on the part of the United States In keeping with Commonweal's usual schedule, only one issue is published each month during July and August...
...The Mortara scandal should not be misunderstood as a kind of preview of the debate about Pius XII and the Holocaust...
...Signs o f the times [] Last year, the Archdiocese of Chicago ran a multimedia campaign to promote vocations to the priesthood...
...The system has only two minutes to shoot down an ICBM after launching, and a sea-based system could not target missiles fired far inland and across land...
...That defense is historically and morally flawed...
...In this case, Pius took young Edgardo under his Commonweal 6 August 11, 2000wing, paying for his education...
...The "Syllabus of Errors," it is worth remembering, was aimed at least as much at liberalminded Catholics as secularizing liberals...
...The current presidential campaign is one place to air these questions, but more serious venues, where these intricate moral and political issues can be examined, are also needed...
...Consider the priesthood...
...So why a Blessed Pio Nono now...
...The truth is that harsh consequences followed for individuals, for the church itself, and for humanity, especially in continental Europe...
...It was consistent with the whole tenor of Pius IX's papacy: doctrinaire positions, fearfully and stubbornly hewed to, trumped even common-sense intuitions and family feeling...
...The beatification of Pius IX, scheduled for September 3, would be problematic in itself...
...The alliances the papacy maintained with conservative and reactionary forces hindered the emergence of liberal democratic governments in much of Europe...
...Still, there is an obvious explanation...
...Defenders of Pio Nono (the Italian by which he was known and which gave birth to obvious puns) insist that he was a kindly and charming man, which is perfectly true, as long as one adds he could also be a brutal and irascible leader...
...Loyal Catholics repeatedly proposed thoughtful and realistic alternatives to the war of church and modernity in Pius's day, and for their pains they lived under a shadow of suspicion...
...Thus far, the most vocal opposition to Pius IX's beatification and potential canonization comes from the Jewish community, especially in Italy...
...Pius IX's failure to understand the democratic movement of his time was certainly a tragedy...
...It also reminds us that the Mortara case was not an anomaly...
...The Vatican clearly wants to make a point, linking one pope to the other, tying the teachings of the first Vatican council in 1870 to the second one in 1962...
...The next issue will be dated September 8. highly risky because it will unravel a web of arms-control agreements, practices, and expectations that work...
...The effort to exalt that error can only be regarded as farce...
...Many faithful Catholics were condemned...
...And should he be yoked, in memory and honor, with Pope John XXIII who called the Second Vatican Council, in part, to heal the wounds that Pius spent much of his pontificate inflicting on the church and European society...
...It is another shadow on the legacy of John Paul II...
...As a consequence, the Navy acknowledges that it could not assume the entire missile-defense role...
...But like too many of its actions, this one will backfire...
...Instead, it casts doubt on the integrity of the process by which Pius IX's cause for beatification has been handled, since Vatican sources have apparently indicated that the whole incident was never really addressed in their inquiry...
...Clergy and laity alike were disheartened by the papacy's refusal to respond for decades to industrialism and the needs of a new working class, to democracy and a bettereducated citizenry, and to the marginalizafion of the church...
...We are poised to overthrow the logic of nuclear deterrence without knowing what, if anything, will replace it...
...Commonweal 7 August 11, 2000...
...Even his defenders admit that this warfare was costly...
...Members of the Women's Ordination Conference discerned a different sign of the times...
...Is this a man whose life and character should be celebrated and held up for imitation...
...But is this author of the notorious "Syllabus of Errors" (1864), diehard defender of the papacy's temporal rule, unyielding foe of freedom of conscience, speech, thought, and religion, of Protestantism, ecumenism, and the separation of church and state, a figure to be singled out for public veneration by the Catholic church...
...It is destructive of the very idea of sainthood...
...In contrast to the land-based system, which would track and shoot down an ICBM on reentry from space, a boostphase defense would shoot down a missile just after it is launched...
...David I. Kertzer tells the full story in The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, Knopf, 1997...
...Too little has been made of the responsibility of leaders like Pius IX and their reactionary allies for the incubation of antiliberal and antidemocratic attitudes that made it impossible for European Catholics to forge alliances with secular moderates, liberals, and democratic socialists that might have stemmed the tide of fascism and totalitarianism that eventually drowned the twentieth century in bloodshed...
...Morally, Pius's defenders separate the public from the private person in a way that the thrust of recent Catholic teaching has tried to counter...
...All of this ill will and suspicion is unfortunate, and it is probably unnecessary since there is no evidence that the land-based system will work and a good deal to suggest that it will not...
...The Catholic bishops' conference should consider an encore of the hearings and discussions that led to its 1983 letter on war and peace...
...But to what end...
...Enter the alternative of a boost-phase system...
...Today the pope's temporal power is seen for what it was, an unwieldy burden, hampering the autonomy and spiritual power of the papacy...
...But these perceptions did not await the twentieth century...
...History, it is said, plays out first as tragedy and then as farce...
...The easy symmetry of beatifying these two popes on the same day may appeal to a mentality habitually working to tidy up and correct history, but there are limits to what the Vatican can do with this kind of manipulation...
...PIO NONO Is Pope Pius IX, who occupied the throne of Peter from 1846 to 1878, with God...
...To join it with that of John XXIII only engenders cynicism...
...Pio Nono's cause for beatification has been lingering for decades, held back by reasonable doubts and objections (Kenneth Woodward devotes a chapter in Making Saints, Simon and Schuster, 1996, to these failed efforts...
Vol. 127 • August 2000 • No. 14
