Deus vult: The geopolitics of the catholic church

Geopolitics

Volumn 15, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 39-61

  Agnew, John ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CATHOLICISM; CHURCH ROLE; CULTURAL TRADITION; GEOPOLITICS; SOVEREIGNTY; STATE ROLE;

EUROPE;

EID: 77951050304     PISSN: 14650045     EISSN: 15573028     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/14650040903420388     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. Deus Vult or "God wills it" was the chant of the First Crusade in 1095. I use it here to represent both the renewed militancy of the Catholic Church under Pope Benedict XVI and the tight historic association often assumed between the geopolitical desires of the papacy as the central institution of the Church and God's will. The paper began life as a presentation at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in San Francisco, April 2007.
2. J. L. Stanley and C. Stanley (eds.), From Georges Sorel: Essays in Socialism and Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press 1976) p. 73.
3. Remark in a radio broadcast (quoted in Natalie Zemon Davis, 'The Quest of Michel de Certeau', New York Review of Books, 15 May 2008, p. 58).
4. Carlo Galli, Spazi politici. L'età moderna e l'età globale (Bologna: Il Mulino 2001) p. 23.
5. As James Carroll argues in his Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews - A History (New York: Houghton Mifflin 2001), notwithstanding the fact that Jesus was himself a Jew, Christian anti-Semitism has its roots in the Christian message that the Jews had not only rejected Jesus but were directly responsible for his death. Of course, one can also argue compellingly that, according to the Christian Gospels, Jesus's death was preordained and thus the identity of whoever killed him is entirely beside the point. Constantine is important, according to Carroll, in that following on from him the urge to homogenise the Empire (and later Europe) following the collapse of Roman paganism and the rise of Christianity could not include equality for Jews, a Chosen People now on the losing side of history. From this perspective, portraying Jews as Christ killers is perhaps one of the original sins of Christianity.
6. The Anglican theologian Andrew Shanks makes a strong case that any church should, however, refrain from all types of manipulation in the pursuit of an "honest" rather than a "correct" faith merely concerned with its own perpetuation or fidelity to "tradition." To do otherwise is essentially to abandon the core purpose on which the church was founded (Andrew Shanks, Faith in Honesty: The Essential Nature of Theology (Aldershot: Ashgate 2006)).
7. Anthony Kenny, 'Follies of Roman Catholicism: How the Catholic Church failed to Save Itself from the Reformation', Times Literary Supplement, 4 March 2009.
8. This is a review of Nicolas of Cusa, Writings on Church and Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2008).
9. and Desiderius Erasmus, In Praise of Folly and Pope Julius Barred from Heaven (London: Oneworld Classics 2008).
10. John Agnew, Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 2005).
11. For a brilliant discussion of the analytic uses of Gramsci's writings in relation to contemporary global geopolitics see Adam David Morton, Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Economy (London: Pluto Press 2007).
12. My understanding of Gramsci's political theory and its relevance to the matter at hand owes much to Nadia Urbinati, 'From the Periphery of Modernity: Antonio Gramsci's Theory of Subordination and Hegemony', Political Theory 26 (1998) pp. 370-391.
13. I am not suggesting that the Church was the sole source of interest on Gramsci's part in Italian civil society; far from it. But he concerned himself with the Church because it was one of the very institutions that mandated a different kind of popular politics in Italy from what had transpired, for example, in Russia.
14. Perhaps the best comprehensive survey of Pentecostalism as the most dynamic geopolitical face of contemporary Christianity is found in D. E. Miller and T. Yamamori, Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement (Berkeley: University of California Press 2007).
15. Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1990) p. 197.
16. Pope Gregory XVI, 15 Aug. 1832: Mirari Vos - 'On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism.' "Indifferentism" is the belief, in the Pope's words, "that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained."
17. See, for example, the special issue of Geopolitics 11/2 (2006) on "Religion and Geopolitics."
18. See Peter J. Katzenstein and Timothy A. Byrnes, 'Transnational Religion in an Expanding Europe', Perspectives on Politics 4/4 (2006) pp. 679-694.
19. Inter alia, they note that most of the founding fathers of what has become the EU were Christian Democratic and anti-Fascist politicians with a deep personal loyalty to the Catholic Church.
20. Thomas Lynch, 'Confessions of the Self: Foucault and Augustine', Telos 146 (2009) pp. 124-139.
21. Alexandre F. de Sà, 'The Event of Order in Carl Schmitt's Thought and the Weight of Circumstances', Telos 147 (2009) p. 18.
22. Schmitt's argument about the Church as the model for the state dates from 1917. Many of his writings on the Church are collected and translated into English in Carl Schmitt, Roman Catholicism and Political Form (Westport CT: Greenwood Press 1996).
23. Raphael Gross, Carl Schmitt and the Jews: The "Jewish Question," the Holocaust, and German Legal Theory (Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press 2007) p. 96.
24. For an interesting confrontation of Schmitt's political theology with rational justification (which pace some Schmitt aficionados is hardly the same as their hated liberalism) see Victoria Kahn, 'Political Theology and Reason of State in Samson Agonistes', South Atlantic Quarterly 95 (1996) pp. 1065-1097.
25. Schmitt's mythologising of "the state of exception" is taken as being akin to that of Sorel on the general strike by Denis Trierweiler, 'Georges Sorel et Carl Schmitt: d'une theorie politique du mythe à l'autre', in Yves Charles Zarka (ed.), Carl Schmitt ou le mythe du politique (Paris: PUF 2009)
26. and Hobbes is defended against Schmitt by Yves Charles Zarka, 'Le mythe contre la raison: Carl Schmitt ou la triple trahison de Hobbes', in Yves Charle Zarka (ed.), Carl Schmitt ou le mythe du politique (Paris: PUF 2009).
27. Agostino Giovagnoli, Storia e globalizzazione (Rome/Bari: Laterza 2003).
28. Indeed, the recurring reference to St. Augustine and other avatars of Catholic Christianity in a self-defined radical work such as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 2000) favourable to the onset of globalisation and the revolt of the "multitude" (suitably biblical language) it augurs makes the point, if somewhat uncomfortably for more secular leftists.
29. Oliver O'Donovan, 'Christianity and Territorial Right', in Allen Buchanan and Margaret Moore (eds.), States, Nations, and Borders: The Ethics of Making Boundaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003) p. 131.
30. Anthony Pagden, 'The Christian Tradition', in Allen Buchanan and Margaret Moore (eds.), States, Nations, and Borders: The Ethics of Making Boundaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003) p. 105.
31. The US established full diplomatic relations with the Vatican only in January 1984. Massimo Franco (in Parallel Empires: The Vatican and the United States - Two Centuries of Alliance and Conflict (New York: Doubleday 2009)) suggests that this had much to do with the revived anti-Communism of the period under the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the papacy of John Paul II. The increasingly potent popular front between the Church and American Protestant fundamentalists in the US "culture wars" (largely in terms of the so-called Right-to-Life movement) beginning in the late 1970s may also have had something to do with it.
32. A case in point in 2009 has been the dispute over how much to criticise the private life of Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, with the papacy being much more reticent than the Italian Bishops in both criticising Berlusconi and in responding to his provocations, such as the counterattack by his "family" newspaper, Il Giornale, against the editor of the newspaper of the Italian Bishops, L'Avvenire, Dino Boffo (see, e.g., Gian Guido Vecchi, 'Il travaglio e le tensioni della Chiesa', Corriere della Sera, 6 Sep. 2009).
33. 'God's Ambassadors', Economist, 19 July 2007, pp. 58-60.
34. That this position has deepened down the years into a major critique of neo-liberal capitalism is shown by the first encyclical issued by Benedict XVI in July 2009, entitled Caritas in veritate, in which Catholic social doctrine is contrasted favourably with the excesses and sinfulness of contemporary world capitalism (see, e.g., C. Dougherty, 'Catholicism as an Antidote to Turbo-Capitalism', New York Times, 12 July 2009).
35. Michel Foucher, Fragments d'Europe. Atlas de l'Europe médiane et orientale (Paris: Fayard 1993) p. 60, in a map of the trips made in Europe by Pope John Paul II between 1979 and 1991 shows how much the Pope concentrated his energies before 1986 behind "the Iron Curtain" but specifically in the traditionally Catholic parts of Central Europe. Benedict XVI has had a much less successful start to his pontificate as far as diplomatic travel is concerned (Economist, 'A Chapter of Accidents', 16 May 2009). The conventional wisdom is that he lacks the star power and ability to connect with ordinary people of his predecessor.
36. Eric Fassin, 'The Geopolitics of Vatican Theology', Public Culture 52 (2007) pp. 233-237.
37. John W. O'Malley, 'Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?', Theological Studies 67/1 (2006) pp. 3-33.
38. This article is reprinted in a valuable collection surveying the significance of Vatican II for the recent history and geopolitics of the Church (David G. Schultenover (ed.), Vatican II: Did Anything Happen (New York: Continuum 2008)).
39. and is a brief prospectus for the magisterial account by O'Malley in What Happened at Vatican II? (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2008) which places this Vatican Council in the history of previous Church councils and outlines its consequences for the contemporary Church.
40. Jane Kramer, 'The Pope and Islam', The New Yorker, 2 April 2007.
41. For example, R. Dennehy, 'Liberal Democracy as a Culture of Death: Why John Paul II Was Right', Telos 134 (2006) pp. 31-44.
42. P. Steinfels, 'Roman Catholics' War Over Abortion', New York Times, 9 May 2009, p. A15.
43. G. D'Avanzo, 'Zagrebelsky: Se il potere nichilista si allea con la Chiesa del dogma. Parla l'ex presidente della Consulta 'Dialogo sull'etica è impossibile con lo scontro tra dogmi', La Repubblica, 11 Feb. 2009.
44. Corriere della Sera, 'La Ue replica al Papa sui preservativi: 'Sono essenziali nella lotta all'Aids', 9 March 2009.
45. S. Pogatchnik, 'Catholic Church Shamed by Irish Abuse Report', Associated Press, 20 May 2009.
46. J. Banville, 'A Century of Looking the Other Way', New York Times, 23 May 2009, A17.
47. For example, for two very different perspectives, M. S. Winters, 'The Crowded Catholic Cafeteria. Pope Benedict XVI Tries to Heal the Schism with Catholics who Deny the Second Vatican Council', Slate, 30 Jan. 2009.
48. G. Dinmore, 'God's Mauled Rottweiler', Financial Times, Feb. 7/8 2009.
49. This statement draws explicitly from a document written by Benedict when, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2000. That document, Dominus Iesus, riled Protestant and many other denominations at the time because it said they did not have the "means of salvation." In "clarifications" issued along with the 2007 statement, Benedict's reason for issuing it was said to be that many theological interpretations of the Second Vatican Council had been "erroneous or ambiguous" thus prompting confusion and doubt about the one true Church. This language about clarifying the "ambiguity" of the Second Vatican Council was used in many news reports about the papal statement on 11 July 2007.
50. For a fascinating look inside recently dominant "Vatican thinking" on this score, see the fascinating article by the Catholic theologian Vito Mancuso, 'Cosa vuol dire la salvezza al di fuori della Chiesa', La Repubblica, 28 April 2009, pp. 1, 43.
51. Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth (New York: Doubleday 2007).
52. Andrew Shanks, Faith in Honesty (note 6) p. 2.
53. George Neumayr, 'L'Osservatore Romano and the Illuminati', The American Spectator, 8 May 2009.
54. On the editor and the travails he faces, see John Hooper, 'Behind the Scenes at the Pope's Newspaper', Guardian, 20 July 2009.
55. J. Ratzinger and M. Pera, Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam (New York: Basic Books 2006).
56. Maurizio Ferraris, Babbo Natale, Gesù Adulto. In cosa crede chi crede? (Milan: Bompiani 2006).
57. Problems arise, therefore, when a Pope dies and a new one has to be selected. As the metaphorical incarnation of the Church, the new Pope then becomes the literal embodiment of the Church. This paradox is explored fascinatingly in Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani, The Pope's Body (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2000).
58. Arguably, when transferred to temporal kingship it is the historical root of most Western notions of state sovereignty as we know them today (most generally, see John Agnew, Globalization and Sovereignty (Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield 2009) Chapter 2.
59. and more particularly, see Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press 1981)).
60. See, for example, John W. O'Malley, What Happened at Vatican II? (note 26).
61. and, most importantly, Ian Linden, Global Catholicism: Diversity and Change since Vatican II (New York: Columbia University Press 2009).
62. For some of the flavour of scholarly discussion about the idea of Europe, see, e.g., Anthony Pagden (ed.), The Idea of Europe: From Antiquity to the European Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002).
63. Confusion over what is meant precisely by "Europe" is one of the political strengths of the term itself. People can invest their own meaning in it. The Christendom motif is certainly powerful in the discourse over European unification going back to the founders of what has become the European Union in the 1940s and 1950s. For those with somewhat longer memories, however, such thinking can also be redolent of the Catholic authoritarianism that afflicted numerous European countries, from Spain and Ireland to Poland by way of Austria, in the 1920s and 1930s (Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century (London: Penguin 1998) pp. 26-31).
64. A peculiar feature of the career of Pope Benedict is that he was once a severe critic of papal highhandedness and closely associated himself with the reformers at Vatican II. But he seems to have worried that the Church had compromised itself too much with secular society and as a university-based theologian, following the student sit-ins of 1968, he began to argue for increased "unity" and against ecumenism. Yet he has also shunned the cult of personality of his predecessor and has so far avoided witch hunts against putative enemies. Rupert Shortt ('Resurgent Rome', Times Literary Supplement, 8 April 2009) sees Benedict as a "caretaker Pope who put off the day of reckoning for the papacy as currently constituted."
65. Giles Fraser, Christianity with Attitude (Norwich: Canterbury Press 2007) p. 138.
66. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction (New York: Vintage 1980) pp. 33-34.
67. Fabrizio Mastrofini, Geopolitica della Chiesa cattolica (Rome: Laterza 2006)
68. Ian Linden (note 38).
69. Rupert Shortt (note 41).
70. In Martin Walker, 'The World's New Numbers', The Wilson Quarterly 33 (Spring 2009) p. 29.
71. The struggle for primacy among states and empires as a fundamental feature of the modern geopolitical imagination is raised in John Agnew, Geopolitics: Re-Visioning World Politics, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge 2003) Chapter 5.
72. Francesco Traniello, Religione cattolica e Stato nazionale. Dal Risorgimento al secondo dopoguerra (Bologna: Il Mulino 2007).
73. Berlusconi's very public controversial private life has only slowly raised the ire of the Catholic hierarchy. Largely blind and deaf to his many conflicts of interest as a businessman-politician, it has only been with publicity about his sexual peccadilloes in the summer of 2009 that the Church has finally begun to distance itself from him and his political allies (e.g., John Follain, 'Sex Tapes Force Sober Summer on Berlusconi', London Sunday Times, 26 July 2009).
74. The right-wing Northern League, allied with Berlusconi in the current Italian government, has taken to attacking the Church over its defence of immigrants' rights and Church leaders, although not the Pope, have fired back (Alberto Custadero, 'Sicurezza, la Lega attacca la Chiesa. La Cei: 'Non basta l'ordine pubblico'', La Repubblica, 4 July 2009, p. 6).
75. The issues and personalities of the period 2006-2008 in Italian politics are brilliantly captured in the editorials of Giovanni Sartori, Il Sultanato (Rome/Bari: Laterza 2009). Notwithstanding all of the controversy, opinion surveys in September 2009 suggest that Berlusconi has kept the support of the vast majority of those practicing Catholics who had voiced support for him before the scandals broke: around 50% (Renato Mannheimer, 'Caso Boffo, il premier 'resiste': popolarità al 50% tra I credenti', Corriere della Sera, 6 Sep. 2009).
76. The Italian Church hierarchy was never very comfortable with the Christian Democrats as a "Catholic party", not least because its plurality of the vote meant it had to find coalition partners in government and the party was factionalised and autonomous of anything other than subtle clerical influence. It was the "challenge from the Communist Party," to quote Mark Donovan (in an article with the overstated title 'The Italian State: No Longer Catholic, No Longer Christian', West European Politics 26 (2003) p. 95) that led the Church to support the party.
77. Ilvo Diamanti and Luigi Ceccarini, 'Catholics and Politics After the Christian Democrats: The Influential Minority', Journal of Modern Italian Studies 12/1 (2007) pp. 37-59.
78. Franco Garelli, 'The Public Relevance of the Church and Catholicism in Italy', Journal of Modern Italian Studies 12/1 (2007) pp. 8-36.
79. It cannot have gone without notice in the Vatican that in 2008 the government of historically "Catholic" Chile declared 31 October a public holiday in honour of the "evangelical and Protestant churches." This marks the date in 1517 when Martin Luther pinned his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, thus unintentionally starting the Protestant Reformation. Hitherto, only Slovenia and some German lander took this as a holiday ('Hola, Luther', Economist, 8 Nov. 2008, p. 52).
80. Ian Linden (note 38).
81. Neil Ormerod, 'Theology, History and Globalization'. Gregorianum 88/1 (2007) p. 47.
82. Carlo Galli, Spazi politici (note 4) p. 164.
83. On Leviathan (Hobbes) versus Lilliput (Swift) as involving spatially distinctive strategies of power, see the remarkably insightful discussion in Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis (note 10) pp. 207-208
84. where he notes, inter alia, that it can be "more adaptive to be disarticulated, and so ready to react to local problems by local changes" and "when antinuclear demonstrators march with candles through the streets of Leipzig, when prisoners of conscience bring General Pinochet's torturers into public scorn, when women's organizations speak for their fellow women in fundamentalist states, they question the nightmare side of the Modern inheritance. We have seen power and force run up against their limits. In the third phase of Modernity, the name of the game will be influence, not force; and, in playing on that field, the Lilliputians hold certain advantages" (emphasis in original).