THE PAPACY AND WORLD-PEACE Current Criticisms Against The Vatican

The Long-Term Plan Of Pius XI
By The Editor
HIS year has seen the publication of two popular books on Pius X1 written by Catholic writers, yet addressed to the man-in-the-street rather than to the "devout " reader. The first, The Pope in Politics by William Teeling, appeared some months ago. The second has just arrived. It is Pope Pius XI and World Peace by Lord Clonmore. The most obvious difference between the two is that the second carries a " Foreword" by the Archbishop of Westminster (written on the eve of his being given the Red Hat by His Holiness) in the course of which the first is roundly condemned as a " strange medley of inaccuracy and nonsense."
(i) PREJUDICES Let it be said straightaway that Mr. Teeling's book, however popular, was a poor one. " D.D.A.," reviewing it in the Dublin Review, wrote: " And lest this should be taken merely as the splenetic review of an opponent, it may be added that the present reviewer has considerable sympathy with the general line of what he conceives that Mr. Teeling was trying to say, and approached the book with st5me prejudice in its favour."
The prejudice to which we refer is not very easily defined. It sometimes, as in Mr. Teeling's book, takes the form of suggesting that the Pope is prejudiced against the democratic powers; sometimes it is more concretely stated that the Pope ,passively supported Italy in a war of conquest and aggression, the success of which has considerably lowered the moral standards of nations; or, more vaguely, it is felt that the Pope has been content to encourage personal religious life ad private morality within the Catholic fold while neglecting to do all that he might have done in preventing or at least denouncing the contemporary public regression towards Machiavellian politics, wholesale militarisation, persecution, lying propaganda, in a phrase. the appeal to force and cunning instead of to charity and wisdom.
ABYSSINIAN WAR To those who feel this way Lord Clonmore's book may hc recommended, but ,only up to a point. The author at least shows the complexity and diversity of the problems with which the present Holy Father has been faced, and he treats faithfully with each separate question, Fascism, Communism. Social Reform (here it is well to be on one's guard against attributing 10 the Pope some of the financial reforms of which the author approves). Nazis, France, Britain, Spain and the Americas. A certain jovial boisterousness of mind and style may 'make the work more readable for some, but in so very serious a task one regrets rt.
Lord Clonrnore, nevertheless, scarcely meets the points of the really serious critic. Thus, the answer suggested to the question why the Pope did not interfere in the Abyssinian war, though excellent as far as it goes, -does not go far enough. It was, the author says, in virtue of Article 24 of the Lateran Treaty, according to which the Holy See declares that it " will remain outside all temporal competitions between the
States . . . at least until the contending parties both appeal to its mission of peace. . ." Thai article was meant to safeguard the neutrality of the temporal power, whereas the critic's contention is that the Pope, in virtue of his spiritual and moral power, should have denounced with all the severity possible whomsoever was responsible for a cold-blooded war of conquest. And, as it happens, Article 24 expressly allows for such intervention since it reserves the Papacy's " right of making its moral and spiritual power felt."
THE TASK
The answer to this and other difficulties surely must go much deeper.
No one who knows Pius XI personally or is acquainted with the Vatican would ever seriously suggest that fear, or legalism, or wounded personal feelings, or national prejudice, or any lack of realisation of the evils of our times would prevent the Pope from doing anything that he thought necessary and wise for the spiritual and moral good, not only of his own flock but of the whole world. Indeed every paragraph of every encyclical or allocution of his reign proves the contrary. The most valuable defence of Pius XI would consist in a study of all his writings and speeches, gathering together the various aspects of his teaching and bringing out the principles that run through them.
When the essential lines of Pius XI's mind have been discovered, it will be found that the apparent difficulties easily answer
themselves. Anybody on occasion can work himself up to righteous indignation over what he considers infamous conduct and very many people can enjoy a burning enthusiasm for their pet reforms, but very few indeed can think out a constructive and permanent plan which at one and the same time seeks the very highest ends possible and is based upon a complete awareness and understanding of the nature of the causes and effects that operate within the object that is to be bettered.
Now in virtue of his office, in Arnie indeed of that religious and moral eminence to which it is at the moment so convenient for people to appeal, the Pope cannot afford --to put it in plain language—to utter one word or take one step that is not conceived within precisely such a context or framework, a framework that, in many respects, is as wide and loog as the whole world, indeed as the whole universe in so far as knowledge of it is open to man.
CHURCH'S FUNCTION
The Papacy's high ideals and its awareness of truth come from the enormous experience, the unique tradition, the overwhelming sense of responsibility and the Divine mission of the Holy See. But probably no Pope has been faced with quite so difficult a situation as Pius XI; certainly none has been more open to misrepresentation. Whereas his modern predecessors have had to defend the truths and values that spring from the Christian ideal against a more or less unified and avowed anti-Christian secularism, Pius XI has found him the centre of a cyclonic storm of conflicting faiths and ideals which not only threaten through their conflict to destroy Europe but which
are used deliberately to distract attention while calculated Godlessness advances.
His predecessor, one might almost say, risked the outline of the League after his Christian entreaties to put an end to the war had remained unheeded (Lord Clonmore's account on this point is excellent), but we now know only too well to what sort of use men, living in a context that has nothing to do with the context Benedict XI envisaged, have put the high ideal of a League of Nations. It is becoming clearer every day that reforms and plans for raising the standard of public moral life must depend for their success, first of all, on the religious and moral soundness of individual people, secondly, on the existence of an enlightened and good context or framework within which they can be put into operation, and, thirdly, on their harmonising with other reforms and plans.
In an age such as ours is it surprising that the Pope of Rome holds firm to the religious and moral teaching of the Church as the only sufficient idealism for the world, that he sees in the sanctification of its members the only sufficient hope for the training of the individual to carry out this Christian plan, that only in the social life of the Church and its members, the mystical Body of Christ. can he find the context within which our civilisation may yet be saved?
(v)
ENCYCLICALS' MEANING It is suggested that the Pope can see no further than the Church. He will remain silent in the face of injustice or treatybreaking, but the moment the Church itself is threatened he will protest. This, it is said, explains his tolerance of Fascism and his bitter condenmation of Nazism and Communism. That, we think, is a caricature of the truth, but there is this much truth in it: his chief duty is to protect the vital interests of the Church, not because it is his Church, but because he believes, as do all Catholics, that in the members, the context and the mission of the Church there lies the real hope of humanity. This does not mean that the good in others is neglected, still less despised, nor that the Pope does not feel, as much as any self-constituted moral reformer, the many examples of a reversion to barbarism, but rather that little ultimate good can come from his adding_his voice to the chorus of complaints when what is required is a change of perception, a change of heart and a change of direction from the bottom upwards.
It is a long-term outlook, and it may be that only our children's children will see its wisdom. It is a plan requiring infinite patience, for before any Pope can regener ate the outer world through the members of the Church, he must regenerate that Church itself. And this is the meaning of Catholic Action and the great Encyclicals on the Priesthood, Social Questions, Chastity, the Missions, etc.
All this constructive activity is not merely directed to the good of the Church, but of the whole world through a regenerated Christianity more worthy of its name. This is the work of the Papacy for world-peace.
And if it be objected that long before the Pope's plan can be effected the peace of the world will have ended, the answer is that in that case nothing the Pope could have done would have saved it.