Read All the Pope's Men Online
Authors: Jr. John L. Allen
7
THE VATICAN AND THE WAR IN IRAQ
Although President George Bush declared from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, that major combat operations were finished in Iraq, the war of words between Washington and the Holy See over the moral legitimacy of the conflict did not let up. For example, a lead editorial in the May 17, 2003, issue of the Jesuit-edited journal
Civiltà Cattolica
, reviewed by the Secretariat of State prior to publication, asserted that “the United States has put international law in crisis." The editorial said the U.S.-declared war on terrorism had generated strong anti-American sentiment in Europe. Especially repugnant, it said, had been the decision to hold six hundred Taliban, including five teenagers between thirteen and sixteen, and five men over eighty, at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba without recognizing them as prisoners of war. In another explosive charge, the editorial said the rebuilding of Iraq is “chancy" because “the Western countries that should make it happen seem more interested in exploiting Iraqi oil than in the reconstruction of the country."
The editorial bluntly said the U.S.-led war had been unjustified. Noting that Iraq’s army was weak and that weapons of mass destruction had not been found, the editorial said these facts “have clearly shown that there were not sufficient reasons for moving against Iraq, because the country did not constitute a true threat for the United States and its allies." The editorial said the most urgent task now is to “reestablish international legality, wounded by the ‘unilateralism’ of the United States." It called for the United Nations, not the United States, to direct the postwar work in Iraq. “It’s a matter of relaunching the spirit of the United Nations charter, based on cooperation, rather than on competition among enemy states and on domination of an imperialistic sort by the hegemonic superpower."
Many Americans, especially American Catholics, have been surprised to hear this sort of rhetoric from the Vatican, which can call to mind the harsh anti-American broadsides of the secular European left. Indeed, key officials in the Bush administration were initially taken off guard by the depth of Vatican opposition to the war when public discussion first began in earnest in late 2002. Many on the Bush team had expected support, at least implicitly, from John Paul II, given what they perceived as his blessing for the American-led strikes in Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Moreover, the Bush team had become accustomed to thinking it enjoyed an unusually warm relationship with the Holy See, born of common interests on issues such as cloning, abortion, and the role of religion in public life. Condoleezza Rice was not being disingenuous when she told the Italian weekly Panorama in the fall of 2002 that she “didn’t understand" the Vatican’s argument against the war. That incomprehension was widely shared among American personnel, both in Washington and in Rome.
The surprise reflects the fact that the political psychology of many Americans, including Bush administration officials, took shape in the Reagan years. During the Cold War there was a clear intersection of interests between the United States and the Holy See in support of anti-Soviet resistance in Eastern Europe, above all Solidarity in Poland. Some American Catholic thinkers, most eminently the so-called Whig Thomists George Weigel and Michael Novak, saw this “holy alliance" as a harbinger of a broader global partnership between America and the Catholic Church, based on shared values (pro-life, pro-family) and on shared political objectives (human rights, economic freedom, and democracy). The project, on this theory, was delayed by eight years of Clinton liberalism, but the election of Bush put things back on track. And indeed, there was a Catholic honeymoon in the early days of the Bush administration, as the president’s elimination of public funding for abortion, his restrictive decision on stem cell research, and his two visits to the Pope during his first year in office all played to positive Vatican reviews.
From the perspective of many conservative Catholic Americans, the rift over the Iraq war was thus a temporary disruption of a natural alliance; the needle would eventually swing back into place. In fact, however, a careful reading of recent history suggests another hypothesis—that Cold War politics made temporary bedfellows out of the Vatican and the United States, and what is reemerging now is the caution and reluctance that have always characterized Vatican attitudes about America. In other words, perhaps it is the alliance that was the aberration and the rift that is the natural state of affairs. From this point of view, the clash of cultures most exacerbated by the Iraq war may not be between Christianity and Islam, but between the Holy See and the United States.
Both the Iraq war and the sex abuse crisis suggested to Vatican observers that the ghost of John Calvin is alive and well in American culture. These reservations are well documented, from Pope Leo XIII’s 1899 apostolic letter
Testem Benevolentiae
, condemning the supposed heresy of “Americanism," to Pius XII’s opposition to Italy’s entrance into NATO based on fears that the alliance was a Trojan horse for Protestant domination of Catholic Europe. Key Vatican officials, especially Europeans from traditional Catholic cultures, have long worried about aspects of American society—its exaggerated individualism, its hyperconsumer spirit, its relegation of religion to the private sphere, its Calvinist ethos. A fortiori, they worry about a world in which America is in an unfettered position to impose this set of cultural values on everyone else.
The Calvinist concepts of the total depravity of the damned, the unconditional election of God’s favored, and the manifestation of election through earthly success, all seem to them to play a powerful role in shaping American cultural psychology. The Iraq episode confirmed Vatican officials in these convictions. When Vatican officials hear Bush talk about the evil of terrorism and the American mission to destroy that evil, they sometimes perceive a worrying kind of dualism. The language can suggest a sense of election, combined with the perversity of America’s enemies, that appears to justify unrelenting conflict. After Cardinal Pio Laghi returned to Rome from his last-minute appeal to Bush just before the Iraq war began, he told John Paul II that he sensed “something Calvinistic" in the president’s iron determination to battle the forces of international terrorism.
In the aftermath of the war I once found myself in the Vatican and struck up a conversation with an official eager to hear an American perspective on the war. He told me he sees a “clash of civilizations" between the United States and the Holy See, between a worldview that is essentially Calvinistic and one that is shaped by Catholicism. “We have a concept of sin and evil too," he said, “but we also believe in grace and redemption." Vatican officials, it should be noted, are not the only ones to detect a strong Calvinist influence in American culture. Cardinal Francis George of Chicago made a similar statement during the Synod of Bishops for the Americas in November 1997. George said that U.S. citizens “are culturally Calvinist, even those who profess the Catholic faith." American society, he said, “is the civil counterpart of a faith based on private interpretation of Scripture and private experience of God." He contrasted this kind of society with one based on the Catholic Church’s teaching of community and a vision of life greater than the individual.
This does not mean relations between the United States and the Vatican are destined for crisis. The Vatican is realistic enough to understand that if it wishes to exert influence on world affairs it needs to work with the Americans, and the Bush team continues to desire the moral legitimacy it believes Vatican support can lend its policies. What seems increasingly clear, however, is that this is not destined to be the special relationship enjoyed by America and Britain, allies linked by a common history, language, and worldview. This is a dialogue between two institutions with common interests, but also divergent cultures that will from time to time flare up into sharp policy differences.
No one should be shocked, in other words, the next time
Civiltà
Cattolica
takes America to task.
THE VATICAN RESPONSE TO THE WAR IN IRAQ: A CHRONOLOGY
In the classic style of Vatican diplomacy, the Pope avoids committing himself to specific positions in political debates, since he is supposed to be
super partes
, that is, above the parties. He will state general principles, leaving it to his aides and to the global media to fill in the blanks in terms of the practical implications of his words. On his various trips to Poland prior to the collapse of the Communist system, John Paul would avoid direct conflicts with the regime, but would carefully employ the word
solidarity
at key moments in his addresses, leaving no doubt as to his sympathy for the opposition movement. Similarly, during the public discussion of the Iraq conflict, John Paul would cite the suffering of the Iraqi people and implore peace, leaving it to other Vatican voices to comment in more direct terms on the proposed, and then actual, American-led “preventive war."
Vatican officials began speaking out against a possible war in early August 2002, while the Pope himself did not begin to mention Iraq by name until January 2003. The Pope never did directly condemn the war, and some commentators have taken this as evidence that his opposition was less absolute than media reports suggested. In fact, however, John Paul was clear as to where he stood. His closest and most authoritative aides told reporters at critical moments that the Pope was convinced the war was a mistake, and that he was aware of and approved the aggressive vocabulary with which they were stating the case against it. At no time did John Paul offer any public utterance that distanced him from the antiwar declarations of Vatican personnel. The only possible reading of the record is that John Paul II was strongly opposed to the Iraq war.
This does not mean that in opposing the war the Pope intended to bind the consciences of Catholics. The distinction was laid out by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in an interview with
30 Giorni
, an Italian Catholic publication: “The Pope," Ratzinger said, “has not proposed the [antiwar] position as the doctrine of the Church, but as the appeal of a conscience illuminated by the faith. . . . This is a position of Christian realism which, without dogmatism, considers the facts of the situation while focusing on the dignity of the human person as a value worthy of great respect."
August 6, 2002
Jesuit Fr. Pasquale Borgomeo, the general director of Vatican Radio, asserted in a live broadcast that instead of trying to get inspectors into Iraq to see if the country has weapons of mass destruction, the United States seems determined to launch a war. The Bush administration seems to have decided to ignore the opportunity for inspection and continues to focus on “the military option," he said. “Experience should have taught us something about the recurrence of certain wars, including those considered won, which are undertaken to resolve one crisis but are destined to create others, sometimes even more serious. To many, including not a few Americans, this policy appears to be wavering—its tactical aspects uncertain—and, even more, lacking the strategy one would expect of a superpower called to exercise global leadership," he said. “The United States is trying to combat terrorism, but it deals with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—even after September 11—as if it has no relation to the growing tide of resentment against the United States and the West on the part of large segments of the planet’s Arab and Muslim populations," Borgomeo said.
September 1–3, 2002
The Community of Sant’Egidio sponsored its annual interreligious gathering, this year held in Palermo. Several Vatican officials used the occasion to address the possible war in Iraq. They included Cardinals Roger Etchegaray (French), Ignatius Moussa I Daoud (Syrian), and Walter Kasper (German), along with Archbishop Diarmuid Martin (Irish).
Etchegaray, former president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace who now functions as an informal papal diplomatic troubleshooter, had long been critical of United Nations sanctions against Iraq. At Palermo, he said he was “happy to see growing opposition" in the international community to a war in Iraq. “The threat coming from Washington is something that is simply unthinkable. There is no war, least of all today and least of all in the Middle East, that can resolve something," Etchegaray said. Kasper, meanwhile, said there are neither “the motives nor the proof"to justify a war. Both men spoke in response to questions from reporters. Kasper’s comments were taken as an indication of shifting winds in the Holy See, since he had been publicly sympathetic to the U.S.-led strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan following September 11, 2001.
The criticism from Martin and Daoud was more indirect, coming in the context of prepared remarks on other topics. Commenting on the response of the United States to the attacks of September 11, Daoud said: “Every part of the earth suspected of complicity in terrorism has fallen under threat. Iraq now finds itself on the waiting list. Where will this campaign finish? Will it succeed in stabilizing an order of peace, preventing war with war, violence with violence, demanding the arms of the enemy through the use of arms?" Daoud’s conclusion seemed negative. “In the end, the arms remain in the hands of a part of the world, and their presence expresses in itself an explosive situation."
Martin, who at the time was the Pope’s representative to the United Nations in Geneva, argued that a successful “war against terrorism" has to be focused on development and social justice. He made no direct reference to Iraq. “The great weapon of the war will have to be that of trust and respect towards other people. The war against terrorism will not be won with some ‘quick fix’ that resolves tensions for the moment, disregarding a sustainable future for all," said Martin, who subsequently was named the coadjustor bishop of Dublin.
September 3, 2002
Borgomeo devoted his weekly commentary to the buildup to war in Iraq. “A year after September 11, we feel like disappointed friends of the United States—but still friends. We believe in the cultural and moral potential of this great country more than in its technological and military might," he said. “What is most worrisome is that the United States continues to consider military action as the most effective means to combat terrorism and an attack on Iraq as a priority. Beyond Arab and Muslim countries, isn’t there enough resentment in the world against the United States and the West? We in the West all considered ourselves Americans [after September 11]," Borgomeo said. “Afterward, that resource of solidarity crumbled away."
September 10, 2002
Then-Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, a Frenchman who was at the time the secretary for Relations with States, in effect the Pope’s foreign minister, gave an interview on the possible war in Iraq to the Italian Catholic daily L’Avvenire. Tauran insisted that any action against Iraq “should happen within the framework of the United Nations." He added that consideration must be given to the consequences for the civilian population of Iraq, as well as the repercussions for the countries of the region and for world stability. Tauran’s bottom line seemed negative. “One can legitimately ask if the type of operation that is being considered is an adequate means for bringing true peace to maturity," he said.
September 15, 2002
Cardinal Camillo Ruini, president of the Italian bishops’ conference, criticized the idea of a preventive war in Iraq. “That vast net of international solidarity that rapidly took shape after September 11 now seems marked by growing tears, especially in its primary and traditional strong point, which is the close rapport between the United States of America and Western Europe," Ruini said. “Differences with an economic origin, or on matters of international law, add up to a very dangerous divergence as to the way to guarantee security and combat terrorism. In this regard, and with special attention to the attitude to be held on Iraq, without doubt the most rigorous vigilance is necessary in order to prevent the risk of new and greater tragedies, whose development would be quite difficult to control. But this does not mean that the path of a preventive war can be undertaken, which would have unacceptable human costs and extremely grave destabilizing effects on the entire Middle East region, and probably on all international relations. The weapon of dissuasion, exercised in the ambit of the United Nations with the strongest determination and with the sincere and engaged commitment of all countries capable of exercising a concrete influence, can represent, also in this difficult situation, an alternative able to guarantee security and peace. For its part, the Iraqi government obviously will have to give proof of realism and a willingness to find and respect agreements."
Like Kasper, Ruini’s antiwar comments marked a turnaround in Vatican opinion. He was among the European Catholic leaders most sympathetic to the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of September 11. On October 24, 2001, at a press conference during the Synod of Bishops, Ruini answered questions about the morality of the American incursion in Afghanistan by referring to the “necessity of the fight against terrorism."
September 21, 2002 L’Avvenire published the text of an address given by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, at a conference in Trieste in which he criticized the idea of a war in Iraq. Asked if such a war could be justified, Ratzinger said: “In this situation, certainly not. There is the United Nations. It is the authority that should make the decisive choice. It’s necessary that the choice be made by the community of peoples, not a single power. The fact that the United Nations is seeking a way to avoid the war seems to me to demonstrate with sufficient proof that the damages which would result [from the war] are greater than the values it would seek to save." Ratzinger criticized the new doctrine of preventive war. “The concept of preventive war does not appear in the
Cate
chism," Ratzinger said. “One cannot simply say that the Catechism does not legitimate war, but it’s true that the
Catechism
has developed a doctrine such that, on the one hand, there may be values and populations to defend in certain circumstances, but on the other, it proposes a very precise doctrine on the limits of these possibilities."
September 24, 2002
In an interview with the
National Catholic
Reporter,
then-Archbishop Stephen Hamao, president of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples, and now a cardinal, said, “I’m very worried by what the U.S. is doing. I hope they don’t attack. We don’t need to excite more violence and hate." Hamao, who as archbishop of Yokohama, Japan, took part in protests at a U.S. naval base, said that U.S. policy makers need to do a better job of understanding how their choices look from other global vantage points. “A war between the United States and Iraq could not help but seem to many of the world’s people a war between white Westerners and Arabs," Hamao said. “It would complicate relationships everywhere. It must be avoided." Asked about the suffering of the Kurds at the hands of Saddam Hussein’s government, Hamao responded: “I feel very much for the Kurds. As a Japanese, I live with the memory of the atomic bomb," Hamao said. “We too have experienced the terrible reality of weapons of mass destruction, in our case at the hands of the United States. A war will not solve the problem of these weapons. Negotiations through the United Nations must be pursued. If all else fails, then leave it up to the United Nations to intervene, not just a single country."
October 1, 2002
Then Archbishop Renato Martino, an Italian who heads the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and now a cardinal, criticized the idea of a war in Iraq in an interview with Italy’s Famiglia Cristiana magazine. He said the idea of a preemptive U.S. strike against Iraq, carried out as part of the war on terrorism, was based on a hypothetical right of a single country to decide when and where to intervene across the globe. “It presumes that it is up to the United States to decide between peace and war. In short, it is pure unilateralism," he said.
Borgomeo said on Vatican Radio that the doctrine of preventive attack would represent a “harsh blow to international law, which the West has recognized since 1945. International law certainly can be reformulated, but not in a unilateral manner. The doctrine of preventive attack not only represents a real wound to international law, and not only another setback for the credibility of the United Nations, but also, if put into action, a dangerous precedent for future imitators." He also questioned the political wisdom of a U.S. attack on Iraq, saying it went against Bush’s post–September 11 efforts to garner a global consensus against terrorism. The plan to attack Iraq has instead caused deep divisions, even among U.S. allies. One certain effect of such an attack would be a “deepening of the gulf between the Islamic and Western world" and an increase in the anti-American resentment that fuels terrorism, he said.
November 2, 2002
A rare exception to the quasi-pacifist Vatican line came in a November 2 editorial in the semiofficial journal
Civiltà
Cattolica.
It suggested that an American attack on Iraq, even without authorization from the United Nations, could be justified if there were an imminent danger of aggression from Hussein. Still, the journal insisted that a preventive war in the absence of a specific threat would be immoral. “The ‘preventive war’ does not serve peace, but places humanity in a state of permanent war, in addition to the very grave fact that the theory of ‘preventive war’ lies beyond the most ethically secure rules and those most universally accepted by international law," it read.
November 14, 2002
The Pope addressed the Italian parliament. While he did not mention Iraq, he spoke about the need for peaceful solutions to conflicts. “The new century just begun brings with it a growing need for concord, solidarity, and peace between the nations: for this is the inescapable requirement of an increasingly interdependent world, held together by a global network of exchanges and communications, in which nonetheless deplorable inequalities continue to exist," he said. “Tragically our hopes for peace are brutally contradicted by the flaring up of chronic conflicts, beginning with the one which has caused so much bloodshed in the Holy Land. There is also international terrorism, which has taken on a new and fearful dimension, involving in a completely distorted way the great religions. . . . Italy and the other nations historically rooted in the Christian faith are in a sense inherently prepared to open up for humanity new pathways of peace, not by ignoring the danger of present threats, yet not allowing themselves to be imprisoned by a ‘logic’ of conflict incapable of offering real solutions."