Week 73

 

We concluded last week overview of the Italian early 1830s – in between the last stages of reaction, the formation of a liberal Catholic movement, the beginnings of the transformation of the national movement from an affair of conspirators into a proper political program, and the literary and cultural reflections of such an evolution – with an evaluation of the attitude of the new Pontiff, Gregory XVI, towards the new national and liberal movements.

As the encyclical Mirari Vos clearly illustrates, the Pope was inclined to interpret and reduce the liberal movement (with its even more subsidiary corollary of national ideas) to an expression of dangerous ideas of religious reformation – and therefore to seek analogies for the contemporary events and their remedies in the legacy of the Counter Reformation. In fairness, this point of view is not only understandable (the non-distinction between religious and political sphere was sort of his whole point) but inspired by the tendencies of many contemporaries to approach openly the subject of a general “reformation” of the Church, and even to frame such reformation within the “social” context of the time. A tendency, furthermore, which had come to involve even figures who may have appeared only a few years earlier true champions of the Papal cause. It's not a mystery that the Mirari Vos was aimed largely at a rejection of the ideas promoted by F. de Lamennais, first in his Les Progres de la revolution et de la guerre contre l'Eglise (1828) and then in his periodical, L'avenir, founded in 1830 with Montalembert and Lacordaire – and opened, despite the hopes of the Pope for a lasting submission, the breach between the French theologian and the Holy See, sanctioned two years later with the publication of the Paroles d'un croyant and the new Papal condemnation with the encyclical Singulari nos.

Understandably, the experience of Lamennais and the general attitude of the Holy See towards the problems of the century did little to encourage the Italian religious reformers, even those who remained in contact with the French group of Montalembert, to expose their ideas openly – a choice this one, on which weighted an evaluation of the probably limited interest of the public (the general public was more than likely to equate a religious periodical with a reactionary periodical) and of the further difficulties created by the strict censorship existing within the Italian States (especially within the Papal States free circulation might have been completely impossible). In addition, the general disillusionment with the state of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and therefore lack of confidence in a positive reception, likely advised those aspiring to promote or favor a revision, if not a reform, of the Church and Papal States, to keep their ideas to themselves or discuss them only with trusted confidants (the example of father Gioacchino Ventura, denounced to the Papal Court by his patron of old, the Prince of Canosa, as a follower of Lamennais and forced therefore to keep quiet for over a decade was well known). For this reason the most influential works of the time – still arguably far less influential than the parallel initiatives of the liberal (and democratic) Catholic movements in France and the neighboring regions – were circulated privately and published only after the turn of 1846. Among these, a special place was occupied by Antonio Rosmini's Of the five wounds of the Holy Church - written in 1832-33 but published only in 1846, when “the invisible Head of the Church had placed on the Chair of St. Peter a Pontiff who appeared destined to […] inspire the Church's motion on a new path, as magnificent and glorious as it was unforeseeable”, (and immediately punished with the inclusion into the index of prohibited books).

One should definitely be careful to avoid any parallel between the religious reformers of the first half of the XIX Century – even those operating well within the context of liberal Catholicism – and our modern view of “progressive” ideas. As the example of Lamennais shows, certain aspects of the early Century reactionary thought were contiguous to those of Catholic liberalism and even to its most radical derivations, influenced as they were by the rejection of what was perceived as a persistent tendency towards regalism, which prompted them (once the governments resumed, after the shock of Napoleon's fall, their gradual evolution towards liberal forms) to return to an interpretation of the alliance of temporal and religious power as a form of ingerence and subordination that, in the interest of the Church herself, had to be escaped, reverted or subverted in favor of the religious power. This imprint was certainly present in Rosmini's thought – influenced as he had been, even on personal grounds, by the lasting echoes of Josephism in the Austrian administration, which had forced him to found his Istituto della Carità in Piedmont (after the persistent opposition of the “Austrian” Bishop of Trent) and actually with some support of Pope Gregory XVI.

What distinguished Rosmini from other anti-regalist polemists (and marked him as a more liberal Catholic, even if his Catholicism was greater than his liberalism) was his attempt to find a conciliation – on both a practical and philosophical ground – between certain new modern elaborations (Kant being the most apparent) and the consequent instances of social “progress” (to use a commonplace word), and the doctrine and organization of the Church, established in concordance and evolution, but without rejection, of the conclusions of the Council of Trent. These reforms therefore, rather than limit and devalue the presence of the Church and of religion within society, were aimed at strengthening it and making it more effective in resisting the subordination to the State. For this reason, even Rosmini's fierce criticism of the feudal institutions came from his appeal to an original idea of the Church, onto which the secular institutions, regulations and legal formulas had been applied almost as mere means of constriction. This approach was nonetheless – and besides obvious consideration of convenience (since the Church did not wish for a contrast with the Austrian Government, and had already more than a few other reasons of political tension) – in conflict with certain fundamental ideas already exposed by the Pontiff. Someone may say that it was too forward – but this is a recurring theme in the action of the Church in so far as the elaboration of “new” ideas: that of leaving the tree free in its growth, only to reduce then or cut certain branches which do not fit the most convenient shape of the plant, and thus to eventually reabsorb and elaborate part of those novelties.

As Rosmini explains in his preliminary remarks to the published edition of his “Five wounds”

Before I started, I had asked myself the question: “Is it fair for a man with no special authority, to compose a treaty on the ailments of the Holy Church? Or isn't there something of an excessive audacity in even entertaining such a thought, let alone writing about it, when the care of God's Church's is by any means rightfully entrusted to the Shepherds of the Church? And isn't to take notice of such ailments almost an act of disrespect towards those Shepherds, as if they weren't aware of them, or failed to remedy them?”

To which my answer was that, even for a laical, to ponder the ailments of the Church could not be a matter of reproach, provided that in doing so they are moved by genuine zeal for Her good and for the glory of God; and that […] if nothing good was to be found in such reflections […] or whatever non good was found in them, it was going to be rejected by the Shepherds of the Church; and that indeed I had no intention to speak as to sanction anything, but rather, that in exposing my thoughts, I meant to submit them to the Shepherds themselves, and above all to the Pontiff, whose venerable opinions will always be to me a safe and certain rule, to conform and correct any opinion of mine.