The strength of the unarmed pope

A review of Gérard Pelletier’s book on the theology and the politics of the Holy See towards the French Revolution. The papacy came out of the furore at the end of the eighteenth century humiliated, hurt, but substantially reinvigorated. Those years were to be influential for the great themes of 20th century Catholicism such as relations with authoritarian regimes and revolutions, freedom of worship and the role of the episcopate

by Andrea Riccardi

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The opening of Vatican Council I on 7 December 1869. On 8 December 1864 Pius IX promulgated the Syllabus, a list of eighty philosophical and ethico-political errors

I share the conclusion of Gérard Pelletier, whom I permit myself to quote in closing: «Dying, abandoned by the powers that still tried, like Charles IV, to take advantage of the situation, Pius VI pointed out the enemy and opened a new space for freedom of which contemporaries were almost unaware, except of course, for a man such as Consalvi, who understood that by then there had to be negotiation with everybody and that the situation had to cleverly manipulated so as to set one country against another or, again, such as Chiaramonti who, as soon as elected, refused to go to Vienna under the personal protection of the emperor. Why submit to those who did not defend his predecessor? A free space for papal primacy, founded and defined theologically, gradually accepted by the believers who crowded Vienna in 1782, Valence in 1799, Paris in 1804. They had not read Joseph-Valentin Eybel, nor Tamburini, nor Auctorem fidei, even less Cappellari. But they were looking for blessing from an authority, in whom they set their faith».
There it is the long history of the Church that is measured by the absolutism of States and politics (whose oath imposed on the clergy is only the first step): but there is also this rootedness, with its rules and identity processes, of Catholicism in contemporary history, with a free space that has an alternative consistence to civil society. Events different from those in the Anglican world (with which Pius VI re-opened contact) or from those in the Orthodox world (from which, in the person of the Tsarina, Pope Braschi asked support in his struggle against the Revolution). It is no accident that the Revolution burst out precisely in Paris, in that Catholic France, eldest daughter of the Church, in which had been forged the Gallican and royal weapons of the struggle against Rome, but which was in the meantime close to the heart of Catholic Rome. From the French furore at the end of the eighteenth century the papacy emerged humiliated, hurt, stricken, but substantially reinvigorated: it came out stronger than ever. Pelletier has thus given us a very important book that should be read not just by those who are getting down to the study of the French Revolution, but also by those who want to analyze the Christianity of the 19th and 20th centuries.