The Catholic Neoconservative Misreading of John Paul II's Centesimus Annus Revisited

ABSTRACT

In the twilight of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century, Catholic theologians and journalists who identified as members of the neoconservative political movement crafted a narrative of John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus Annus as a representing a sea-change in Catholic social teaching. In this neoconservative reading, the Catholic Church embraced a specifically American style of late twentieth century laissez-faire capitalism. However, an examination of Centesimus Annus reveals that the text is consonant with the teaching of twentieth century popes. What is more, recent publications enable us to get a clearer view of how neoconservatives were able to craft their narrative of the encyclical.     

A Unique Project of Mission: Forty Years on,a Personal Memoire

Fifty years ago, Call to the North was conceived against the background of sectarian terrorism. This was a unique occasion when all the traditional Christian churches of the North of England were engaged in unitedly presenting the Christian faith to the general population. The exercise was led by the Anglican Archbishop of York together with the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool and Dr John Marsh representing the Free Churches.

The objectives of the exercise, the methods employed, the problems encountered and its eventual outcome in 1973 are outlined, together with an account of the Roman Catholic Archbishop’s strategy of seeking Pope Paul VI’s support to help his traditional dioceses come to terms with the new Vatican thinking of Pope John XXIII and Vatican II.

The account concludes with a reflection on the historic outcome of this unique exercise.     

Re-thinking Solidarity as a Principle of Catholic Social Teaching: Going Beyond Gaudium et spes and the Social Encyclicals of John Paul II

Abstract

The tradition of official Catholic Social Teaching, which emerged within the context of the European social question, has since expanded to incorporate developmental issues of the Two-Thirds World. This is shown in the social encyclicals of Pope John XXIII, but more significantly in the Vatican II Pastoral Constitution, Gaudium et spes, and the social documents of Popes Paul VI and John Paul II. In these writings, the principle of solidarity is a significant feature—both for discussions of the European social question, and in engaging with the problems of poverty and underdevelopment in the Two-Thirds World. This paper accepts that the principle of solidarity occupies a central position in Catholic social thought. It argues, however, that the ever-increasing poverty, exploitation and despair in the Two-Thirds World challenges our ethical and theological conceptualizations of solidarity. This paper intends to examine the use of the solidarity principle both in Gaudium et spes and in the social encyclicals of John Paul II. It will also raise the question whether their formulations and insights are adequate in confronting the ever-expanding challenges of international poverty and underdevelopment.     

The politics of the ‘Church’ in the Italy of Pope Wojtyła

Abstract

This article analyzes the development of different political tendencies with the Italian Church during the pontificate of John Paul II. Two different strategies enabled the episcopal conference to maintain stability for a long period, in which time Cardinal Ruini played a key role, first as secretary and then president of the bishops. In his years the conference of bishops accepted that the political unity of the Catholic world was over, but it still tried to retain a strong political influence even though the mediation of the Christian Democratic Party was no longer available. With the end of Wojty?a's pontificate, however, this period came to a close and the different tendencies that make up the rich and complex world of the Italian Catholic Church have become more visible.     

Church and state in the Italian crisis

Abstract

This essay explores the ways in which the positions and policies of the church have changed during the three principal phases of relations between the Catholic Church and the State since the founding of the Italian Republic. The first came after the Second World War when the church embarked on its democratic novitiate; the second was dominated by reformist project of Cardinal Montini; the leading role in the final phase during the papacy of John Paul II and the broader crisis of which the church was also part was played by Cardinal Ruini.     

Interrogating Neoconservative Religion

Abstract

Richard John Neuhaus had a stronger basis than most neoconservatives for claiming a theological kinship with Reinhold Niebuhr, but Niebuhr was not a neoconservative or a culture warrior, and Niebuhr did not claim a moral consensus for his concept of “biblical religion.”     

The disillusionment of Robert Dell: the intellectual journey of a Catholic socialist

ABSTRACT

This article considers attempts in the late nineteenth century to bring about a confluence of Catholicism and Socialism in Britain by examining the writing and correspondence of one man, the art critic and Fabian socialist Robert Dell. Beginning with Dell’s involvement as a young man in London-based radical politics, the article examines his efforts to bring his socialist politics and Catholic faith together. Dell attempted this through stressing a narrative of Catholic collectivism, under the aegis of a benevolent Church, contrasted with a post-Reformation Protestant individualism leading to the inequities of capitalism. The appeal of Catholicism in a Victorian Britain undergoing a collective crisis of faith is addressed. The second part of the article documents the failure of these attempts and Dell’s disillusionment with the Catholic hierarchy that by 1908 had led to a complete break on Dell’s part with the Catholic establishment. The catalyst for this break was the brutal treatment of Catholic Modernists such as George Tyrrell, Maude Petre and St George Mivart by the Vatican and the English Catholic leadership. Dell’s final rejection of organised Catholicism is charted through pamphlets, newspaper articles and personal correspondence. Ultimately, the article considers how Dell’s early political and theological career reflects on the relative positions of Catholicism and socialism at the turn of the twentieth century, and more broadly the dynamics of personal belief and political allegiances.     

War is its Own Justification: What Americans Think about War

Abstract

The authors deal with the morality of war in American culture. They argue that a war ethics that was characteristic of the Cold War has given way to a warrior ethics as it has developed in post-Vietnam America, in print media, popular sentiment, and film. According to this warrior ethics, the citizenry's support for soldiers, regardless of the justice of war, is understood to create social solidarity. Wars are easily justified because, at bottom, war is understood to be its own justification. It unites a country. This popular conception of war both props up more high-minded, political rationales for war and undermines traditional just war ethics. The article uses the war in Iraq as a case study. It analyzes the Bush administration's defense of the war alongside similar accounts of the just war theory given by Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and George Weigel.

"As a moral problem, war is ultimately a problem of policy, and therefore a problem of social morality." John Courtney Murray     

Rehabilitating Machiavelli: Kaspar Schoppe with and against Rome

This paper presents the unusual story of the efforts of the political agent and pamphleteer Kaspar Schoppe to rehabilitate Machiavelli. Unlike the few earlier attempts by Machiavelli's Florentine descendants, Schoppe's campaign was motivated by complex factors, which were in a great part related to his vision of Catholic renewal. Through the story of Schoppe's campaign for Machiavelli (which at a certain moment became related to Galileo's similar fight for Copernicanism), this paper offers not only a novel interpretation of this fascinating figure of the Counter-Reformation but also insight into the problems of science and political philosophy in the Catholic world.     

Some Karamanlidika Inscriptions from the Monastery of the Zoodokhos Pigi,Balıklı, Istanbul

Abstract

‘Few scholars so equipped are disposed to abandon Homer and Sophocles, Thucydides and Plato, for George of Pisidia, Paul the Silentiary, Procopius of Caesarea and Michael Psellus.’ So Romilly Jenkins explained the late development of Byzantine studies. One might add that fewer still are prepared to forsake George of Pisidia, Paul the Silentiary, Procopius of Caesarea and Michael Psellus for Kaisarios Dapontes, Sergios Makraios, Nikodimos Agioreitis and Athanasios Komninos Ypsilantis. Not so Sir Steven Runciman who, in addition to his manifold contributions to the development of Byzantine studies stretching over a period of almost fifty years, has also found the time to make important forays into the as yet largely uncharted seas of what Nicolae Iorga termed Byzance après Byzance. The ethnic complexity of the Ottoman Empire in its prime is strikingly illuminated in Sir Steven's The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence. One of the lesser known features of this great agglomeration of races and cultures was the confusion of alphabets employed by the minorities of the Empire.     

Liudprand of Cremona's papa monstrum: the image of Pope John XII in the Historia Ottonis

In the Historia Ottonis Liudprand of Cremona demonstrates his skills as a writer, depicting Pope John XII as the ultimate monster. This article explores how this feat was accomplished, investigating both the accusations levelled against the pope, and the ways the story was constructed to lead up to his death.     

Translating the Vatican: Paul Cullen,power and language in nineteenth-century Ireland

This paper examines how one of the most influential figures in nineteenth-century Ireland, Cardinal Paul Cullen, used language and translation to further his career and his vision for the Catholic Church in this period. It shows how Cullen's language skills served him throughout his life in his role as an agent and liaison, a linking figure between different worlds. The paper demonstrates how Cullen's linguistic abilities and translations gave an early jump-start to his career and subsequently expanded his sphere of influence from the confines of the Vatican to the vast expanses of the Catholic English-speaking world. Through language, Cullen positioned himself as a vital conduit for Irish–Vatican relations and came to be the dominant force in Irish Catholicism for almost thirty years, connecting Ireland to Rome and translating his ambitions and those of the Vatican into reality in Ireland. The paper will demonstrate how language was a forceful tool for change and an instrument of power when wielded by Cullen.     

‘Heritage talks. Heritage calls’: some instances of the canonisation policy of John Paul II in Italy

During his long pontificate, John Paul II pursued a wide and carefully articulated policy of canonisations whose aim was to underwrite his magisterium by presenting hagiographical models that would convey well-defined pastoral teaching and contain both ecclesiastical and ecclesiological messages for the faithful. The high number of Italians declared blessed and/or made saints analysed in the present article is proof of the special interest the Pope showed in Italy and specifically in the sanctity of the country. The high concentration of beatifications and canonisations of hagiographical figures from Italy can be explained only in part by the canonical system, which regulates the process of canonisation and which makes it easier to open and support a cause, above all from a financial point of view, if the pressure group behind the candidate for sainthood is located near the Vatican. More precisely, what emerges is both the attempt to create a specific public image of Italy as a nation which has been a historic stronghold of Catholicism and is still capable of reacting to secularisation, and the objective of laying down more effective guidelines and robust directives for civil society. In other words, by proposing Italian hagiographical models, John Paul II was striving to mould Italy's national identity in a Christian form, conferring on the country the role of model for other European states.     

Catholic resistance theory: William Barclay versus Jean Boucher

ABSTRACT

This article examines William Barclay's response to Jean Boucher's De Justa Abdicatione Henrici Tertii (1589) in view of the complexities of Catholic political thought in this post-Tridentine period. It argues that Barclay's famous category of ‘monarchomach’ is problematic for its avoidance of the issue of confessional difference, and that on questions of the relationship between the respublica and the ecclesia Barclay struggled to find an adequate response to Boucher in his De Regno et Regali Potestate (1600). His De Potestate Papae (1609) is treated as the intellectual extension of his battle with Boucher, and more broadly his confrontation with the position of the Catholic League and Jesuits on indirect papal power. By considering Barclay's works in the context of French Gallicanism and the Catholic League in the French Wars of Religion, this discussion aims to reposition Barclay in relation to other Catholic political theorists and thereby re-evaluate the category of Catholic resistance theory.     

Rebel with a cause? From traitor prince to exemplary martyr: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's representation of San Hermenegildo

El mártir del sacramento, San Hermenegildo is an auto sacramental or Eucharistic play, written in the 1680s by the Mexican nun and literary superstar, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. The play centres on the story of a (purportedly Catholic) Visigothic prince who died in Seville in 586 by order of his Arian father, Leovigild. Contempary sources vary in their portrayal of Hermenegild, with most painting him as a traitor who rebelled against his father for political gain. Gregory the Great, however, championed Hermenegild as an exemplary martyr who died in defence of the Faith. One thousand years on, Spain saw a revival of its Visigothic ‘Golden Age’, and Hermenegild was among those to be venerated; he was canonised in 1585 and his memory was brought to life in various artistic forms; in poetry, paintings and even on the stage. This paper will examine the part that Sor Juana's auto played within this tradition, exploring the purpose of the play and the various historical and biblical sources used to create it.     

Visual Persuasion in George W. Bush's Presidency: Cowboy Imagery in Public Discourse

Discussion of George W. Bush's rhetoric typically focuses on his spoken address, yet his use of cowboy visuals also qualifies as public communication. By visually identifying himself as a cowboy Bush associated his presidency with the story of the mythic cowboy, a powerful concept in American culture. While visual images are typically not considered a substantive and rational form of political communication, Bush's cowboy persona, emphasized visually, prompted widespread debate about his leadership style and approach to national problems, particularly terrorism. While many did not agree with his policies, the simplicity of the visual message and the foundational nature of the cowboy story provided a narrative that prompted a national debate on substantive issues of the day. Language is still considered the critical element of political debate, but as Bush's experience demonstrates, rhetoric includes visual communication as well.