John Allen had an interesting piece today regarding how the Holy See’s relationship with Europe is likely to change in coming years. There are a lot of interesting things in the piece, but I’ll call attention to and comment on a few.
First, the growing secularization of Europe (resulting in an unwillingness to take into account or adhere to Catholic values) will result in the Holy See taking a less pragmatic and more principled stand in its dealings with the European Union. That’s a good thing, because if you don’t stand up for your principles, problems result. A singificant part of the problems we find ourselves in today are due to an excessive pragmatism in the past. If bishops had started excommunicating pro-abort Catholic politicians back when Catholic identity mattered to the politicians in a substantive way, there’d be a lot fewer pro-abort Catholic politicians than there are now.
It also seems to me that there’s a sequence in which pragmatism and principle are likely to alternate as an entity’s fortunes wane. If an entity (like the Church) is in the ascendancy in a culture–if it’s substantially running the show culturally–then it’s going to be very pragmatic in its approach because it’s trying to hold a culture together and that involves countless difficulties of a pragmatic nature. But if it’s lost that influence (as the Church in Europe has) then it’s going to be much more principled in its approach since it (a) no longer needs to run the whole culture and (b) needs to shore up its own identity contra the culture. If the culture begins to actively persecute it, however, a shift back to pragmatism occurs, only this time the pragmatism isn’t directed toward running a culture but toward survival. This is what we see in Christian communities in the Middle East, where Christians have to be extraordinarily diplomatic and careful in order to prevent Muslim reprisals. Ultimately, though, if persecution goes far enough, a return to principle will occur–or not. There is a point, known as martyrdom, where you have to decide whether you will ultimately stick with your core principles or not, and you either do or don’t.
We have Christ’s assurance that the Church as a whole will survive, but it may fare very ill in Europe and we might actually get martyr popes one day, which leads to one of Allen’s points:
Vatican policy on Europe will be more uncompromising and less amenable to Realpolitk solutions which aim to make a separate peace with secularism. This will have consequences across the [board], but one area likely to be especially combustible is same-sex marriage and gay rights. A more identity-driven Catholicism may run up against the growing legal protection of homosexuality in Europe to produce legal action against the church under hate speech and anti-discrimination laws. One under-40 Catholic priest I know, in this case a Canadian though he might easily be European, tells me that among priests of his generation, it’s taken for granted that some may go to jail for defending Catholic teaching on sexuality. It’s reminiscent of the way Catholic priests in Eastern Europe used to realistically accept that some of them might end up in Soviet gulags.
Allen also makes the point that the Holy See’s relations with Europe are likely to shift from supporting particular short-term policy outcomes to articulating matters of fundamental principle that will (hopefully) bear fruit in the longer term.
To my mind this is also a good thing. Bishops around the world, out of a commendable desire to help their flocks, have been tempted to engage the Church in supporting particular political projects that stray too far from matters of principle and too far into matters of application. It’s one thing to say "No homosexual marriage!" It’s another thing to say "This farm bill has it’s subsidies misallocated!" The first is far more within the Church’s brief than is the second.
As is illustrated by one of Allen’s final points, which–although he doesn’t say it this way–shows that Catholics have different perspectives on these matters, and the globalization of the Catholic Church is going to make these differences felt in Europe:
Not only does a multipolar Vatican diplomacy leave Europe a bit out in the cold, it also promises sharper conflicts with Europe, and this time not just on gay rights. Catholic leaders from the global south are often bitterly critical of Europe and the United States on matters of economic justice and militarism; for example, many southern bishops talk about the World Bank and the IMF the way American bishops do Planned Parenthood, that is, as the church’s central bête noir. Perceptions of unfair trading practices in Europe, especially its massive agricultural subsidies, are a matter of deep southern Catholic resentment. Under the impress of multipolar diplomacy, we might anticipate a future in which the flashpoints of church/state relations in Europe could be expressed as "sex, secularism, and subsidies."
