Demystifying an Ancient Autocracy
KWITNY, JONATHAN
Demystifying an Ancient Autocracy Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church by Thomas J. Reese Harvard. 317 pp. $24.95. Reviewed by Jonathan Kwitny Author,...
...Yet scrutiny of the Vatican, like most major organizations, reveals more routine than surprise...
...I ran into Reese frequently at the Vatican between 1993and 1995, while preparing a biography of Pope John Paul II due out next summer...
...These ecclesiastical provinces answer to the Pope, who believes his spiritual grip on his followers is risked each time some of the unholy means occasionally employed to keep the human enterprise going come to light...
...But it tries, with considerable success, to involve itself palpably in their daily lives...
...We are provided no names, of course...
...It employs over 10,000 priests, nuns, lay teachers, nurses, social workers, janitors and lawyers, and supervises many volunteers...
...Given the tight-lipped mentality of his Church, too, it is impossible for Inside the Vatican to be totally revealing, yet it is far more so than any prior study on the subject...
...On such matters Reese is diligently nonpartisan...
...Most churchmen at the Vatican, including the Pope, cannot separate the two concepts...
...There is no indication, however, of the powerful indictment Raw hands down, or that its well-reasoned calculations contradict some official figures Reese cites...
...As he was with me, Father Reese is proper and, above all, kind...
...have clashed with the Byzantine style of Italians in the Church's governing curia...
...Anyone interested in Catholic administration above the local level will find it a valuable resource...
...Several European journalists with dubious standards have attempted exposes of the Vatican administration...
...By contrast, Reese plows what is fairly virgin turf for a responsible author, and he does so with unprecedented care...
...For Americans accustomed to civics texts all that may seem prosaic...
...That the Holy See lacks a central office for responding to inquiries about its operations is not an oversight...
...This, of course, creates nightmares for scholars and journalists...
...But in the Church, mystery is still the stock in trade...
...The pontiff himself reports to no earthly authority...
...Like any good political science professor, Reese does not shy away from offering recommendations...
...Reese's reputation had preceded him, though, and he was granted exceptional access to almost everyone he pursued...
...But much has been written concerning that aspect of Catholicism, beginning with the gospels...
...Tellingly, he never challenges Archbishop Paul Marcinkus' pleas that he did nothing wrong when he ran the Vatican bank, the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR...
...I sensed that some cardinals, especially the non-Americans, did not quite comprehend what Reese was doing...
...In his book those interviewed remain anonymous, but he was very generous about sharing his findings with me and I can say that his sources are impeccable...
...In an endnote one finds Charles Raw's book The Money Changers, a tireless unraveling of the huge frauds at the IOR under Marcinkus...
...We were both in search of authoritative information in a place where the policy is not to provide any...
...it clarifies the decidedly nonsinister way bishops in the provinces relate to the papacy...
...As that might suggest, though, his book is more Fodor than Gunther: indispensable for people who are going there, but probably of less interest for those who aren't...
...For instance, the Synod of Bishops advising the Pope would be more productive if it had a permanent staff to do preparatory work in the manner of secular legislatures...
...It also lobbies governments local, national, democratic or dictatorial and owns a fortune in real estate...
...Nevertheless...
...and it shows how Church policy is set, personnel is chosen and agencies are run...
...The Church holds on to its members through their faith in a spiritual world that cannot be seen or touched...
...From this internationally recognized independent state within Italy the Pope dispatches and receives ambassadors, and presides over government departments ("congregations") headed by cardinals who function like cabinet ministers...
...Reviewed by Jonathan Kwitny Author, 'Acceptable Risks," and a forthcoming biography of Pope John Paul 11 A billion people around the globe pay verbal allegiance to a 2,000-year-old autocracy whose commands they often ignore and whose workings they do not understand...
...What really happened at the IOR is something the Pope clearly feels should be covered up, in the sincere belief that it is better to inflict financial suffering on a few people than to risk more widespread spiritual suffering by tarnishing the Church's image...
...But the book's title should not mislead anyone into expecting an exciting expose...
...The faith is actually defined by its "mysteries"the five joyful mysteries, the five sorrowful mysteries, etc...
...He makes clear that John Paul II's attempt to put Cassidy in charge of Vatican administration failed for this reason, while the Pope had better luck placing Szoka at the head of finances, an area where the Italians admit they need help...
...The autocracy is the Catholic Church, the world's biggest organization, and while its proclaimed mission is to spread "the truth," it is no more eager than most institutions of its kind to reveal how it really functions...
...Curiously, he tends to neglect a central component of Vatican life: prayer...
...As it happens, these are the areas where the Church's one billion members feel perfectly free to reject a leadership that claims to speak in the name of God...
...In another incident, a Vatican employee who had earlier stolen valuable jewel-and-gold crosses apparently not only evaded prosecution, he wasn't even fired, simply demoted...
...When it does not reflect ill on anyone, Reese comes up with some interesting nuggets...
...Reese is a semi-insider unafraid to acknowledge—as the official Vatican line won't that personality can bear upon performance, and that God's bishops can make consequential mistakes...
...A typical archdiocese administers hundreds of churches and schools, a number of universities and hospitals, dozens of foster-care agencies and other charities, various publishing and broadcast concerns, as well as gathering places for people of all ages...
...For example, four ancient Greek vases worth millions of dollars were stolen in 1994 from a Vatican storage area not accessible to the public...
...It is lucid and dispassionate...
...autocracies tend to regard factual accuracy as threatening, not helpful...
...For years, Father Thomas J. Reese has applied the ultimately pragmatic principles of political science to the ultimately spiritual institution that is the Church...
...In the course of describing accurately how the bank was supposed to run, Reese merely refers vaguely to a "scandal" and says it has been written about elsewhere...
...Its most notable generation of news, aside from the personality of John Paul II, comes from the divisions that rend the Catholic faith, mostly over issues of sex, gender and ritual...
...Indeed, what is most striking about Inside the Vatican is the way he writes calmly and factually of the Church as an institution, without any zealous claims about divine intent...
...He unabashedly allows that the no-nonsense English-speaking cardinals like Edward Cassidy of Australia and Edmund Szoka of the U.S...
...The author of Archbishop, a 1989 book about American archdioceses, he has now produced a similar but more ambitious volume on the Vatican, the 0.17-square mile compound in Rome that is the Pope's seat of power...
Vol. 79 • December 1996 • No. 9
