POPE JOHN'S UN1 VERSAL LOVE

Reviewed by LORD LONGFORD
POPE JOHN AND REVOLUTION, by E. E. Y. Hales (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 30s.).
THE POPE AND THE WORLD, by Anton Henze (Sidgwick and Jackson, 45s.). MR. E. H. Y. HAS'
absorbing book Pope John and his Revolution should be read by every serious Catholic who is not already an expert on the Papacy. Possibly by the experts also, but for them cannot speak. His main thesis is fairly simple — though a short review can hardly do justice to its refinements..
He considers that Pope John inaugurated a revolution, but that it is too early to say whether his revolution will succeed or fail. If the revolution fails, as fail it could, the failure would be in part Pope John's failure because it would mean Thai he had failed to give a sufficient lead to the progressive
elements in the Church,
This hypothetical judgment' seems remarkably unfair in view of Pope John's advanced age when he became Pope and his relatively short tenure of office.
Be that as it may, Mr. Hales eonEludes: If the revolution moves forward, as we may all still hope it will, then the unique importance in Papal history of Roncalli's short Pontificate is not likely to be disputed by historians. With that second judgment it is surely difficult to disagree.
Mr. Hates divides his book into what Pope John taught and what he did, but he clearly implies that the two were inseparable and that his message can be studied in either medium. He recalls the Archbishop of Paris, critic of Pius IX, who wrote to that Pope after he had issued his Syllabus 100 years ago and told him: "You have distinguished and condemned the principal errors of our epoch. Turn your eyes now towards what she may hold that is honourable and good and sustain her in her generous efforts."
Mr. Hales suggests most tellingly that that is exactly what Pope John did. He turned his eyes to what was good and sustained his epoch in his generous efforts. One could hardly to explain why the heart of ihe find a phrase better calculated whole world went out to him as to no other Pope in history.
One can almost wholly agree with Mr. Hales' analysis of the main elements in Pope John's new emphasis. An enthusiastic acceptance of the Welfare State and the United Nations. A positive support for religious liberty concerned not only for Catholics, or even for other Christians. but for the whole human race and for every individual member of it as a child of God.
Above all a spirit of optimism about everything, including even the characters of Communists and the character of Communism. All this we recognise and understand more clearly when set in historical perspective.
Criticism. if it must be made, takes the form of asking whether Mr. Hales has been quite fair to Pope John's predecessors. No one is better qualified than he to point out the world of difference between the social pronouncements of Pius IX and John XXIII. He can fairly argue that the successors of Pius IX maintain a tradition of reproach. He is hard to resist when he refers to the pessimism of Pius XII being raised to the sublime atmosphere of great tragedy.
But if the teaching of the
Church had been quite as gloomy as this, and, to put it bluntly, quite so reactionary, it would have been harder than perhaps Mr. Hales realises for British Socialists, to take only one example, to have swallowed it contentedly in the years which led up to Pope John.
Mr. Hales knows intimately the Italian implications of Pius Mrs policies. It is just possible that his expertness there has slightly clouded his world perspective. 1 would not myself have felt what Mr. Hales surely implies — that Pius XII, for example, was taking sides between Right and Left in democratic countries. He always seemed to me deliberately or instinctively to observe' a remarkable neutrality.
I. myself, would have drawn the distinction differently between the influence of Pius XII
and John XXIII in relation to politics. In the case of the former. the note was one of warning in regard to all the tendencies Right, Left or Centre; in the case of the tatter., one of blessing—almost, it might seem, uncritical blessing.
This is not to imply that Pope John XXIII was as uncritical as might appear.As Mr. Hales says: He wanted to draw attention to .something else. to the oilier side of the coin. In each
case the personal inspiration case the personal inspiration It was the special virtue of John XXIII that his social message coincided broadly with the political movement of the age and therefore commended
him and the Church to millions
who would have been dead to a
purely religious exhortation. But when all these abstractions have been sorted out, it was his universal love (as Cardinal Heenan has said more than once) which made him the universal Father.
The Pope and the World is a beautifully illustrated history of the Ecumenical Councils from Nicaea in Bithvnia through Ephesus and Chalcedon to the Vatican 1869 and 1962. It can be read appropriately as a companion to Mr. Hales' book. We pass from social and political calculations to aesthetic history.
Neither book excludes or diminishes the other, but if one rises a little tortured and anxious from Mr. Hales. one recovers serenity as one pores happily over the pictures and the accompanying text Of Mr. Anton Henn.