Eras of the Modern Church: The Devotional Papacy

 A staple of discourse in modern Catholicism surrounds the Second Vatican Council, and its rammifications for the Church as a whole.  While this is an interesting debate, there are other ways to understand the Church.  The Council can intersect with these, but I think its possible to talk about the crisis in the Church as an overall crisis of the Church encountering the age of Liberalism, of which Vatican II is one part of that discussion.

When I say the Age of Liberalism, I'm taking a wider view of history here.  I think the age of Liberalism describes an era in which, in the secular world, nations replaced dynasties (or dynasties were reduced and subjected to nations.)  This process began in the 1600s, and by the end of the 19th century one could credibly say that most of Europe were ruled by liberal (even if of a conservative bent) regimes, a big exception being Russia.   These nation states were governed by constitutions, some giving the King/executive a lot of power, others resting it primarily in parliament/legislatures.  They all seemed to agree that one place political power should not reside was within the Catholic Church.

This transformation would have posed a real problem to the power of the Church even under ideal circumstances.  Yet after 1789 and the French Revolution, it was most certainly not ideal circumstances.  The Jacobin terror gave way to a very centralized powerful French Empire that spawned across Europe, and even if he had no desire to destroy the Church, Napoleon had no interest in the Church retaining her preeminent role in politics she once had in European Society.

If this sounds like a time of a disaster for the Church, that's only partially true.  Contrary to popular belief, religious practice flourished within Europe during this time.  Yet as Christopher Clark pointed out in his new book Revolutionary Spring (a look at Europe during this age through the prism of 1848 revolutions), it was a revival of religious sentiment that hierarchies (in both Catholicism and Protestantism) had very little control over.  Having lost the ability to define the boundaries of religious expression with her diminution of political power, Christian expression began to express itself in new ways, and a lot of them pretty contrary to not just Catholic practice, but the very notion of a Christianity rooted in divine revelation.

It is within this context we introduce everyone's favorite boogeyman:  the Ultramontanists.  (Literally "over the mountain" As an example of a religious expression that had very little control by Church authorities, ultramontanism looked at the sad and pathetic state of episcopal power in the local Church, and sought refuge in a highly idyllic Roman papacy as the remedy.  These were orthodox Catholics, in a time of revival, trying to find some suitable vehicle to oppose the growing marginalization of the Church.  The Papacy was a convenient plot device for this end:  an ancient venerable institution with a ton of spiritual power and prestige, but very little practical ability to do anything.

At this point the papacy became a devotional tool:  holiness became identified by ones expression of the Pope.  The debate about Gallicianism and concilliarism (whether or not state sponsored councils were superior to the authority of the Pope) was mostly a devotional show:  liberals were interested in marginalizing/persecuting religion, but not controlling it.  (This would change in the 20th century with the rise of Bolshevism)

None of this is to say that the Pope's authority is false, papal infallibility is wrong, etc.  It is to say that, ultramontanism, whatever else it believed, was mostly a play:  it was easy to talk up the authority of the pope in an era where the pope could not realistically be expected to do anything in your backyard.  This ultramontane spirit permeated a lot of the discussion at the First Vatican Council (and afterwards, especially in the anti-clerical France of the Third Republic)

Over the years after the Council, this devotional papacy skyrocketed in appeal, as papal authority continued to be limited in the secular world, anti-clericalism became a thing in liberal regimes, and the Church had (to her credit) 2 popes who reigned a combined 60+ years in Pius IX and Leo XIII, genuinely impressive popes who did a pretty good job navigating the Church through a relatively impossible situation.  Yet for all the talk of ultramontanism and papal supremacy during this era, the Popes were very careful about the battles they chose.  Most of the authority of the papacy rested in its existence over nearly two millennia.  Yet there was always a worry that if push came to shove, the papacy, full of power, might be limited in how it responds.

One might think that, with this description, I have a very hostile view of ultramontanism and of the Popes who benefitted greatly from it.  That isn't the case at all.  As mentioned before, ultramontanists were, by and large, orthodox Catholics trying to navigate an incredibly tough era.  They fought against the complete subjection of the Church to the State, and were a useful reminder to Catholics to not become too caught up in the spirit or ideologies of the age.  We can say all these things while still understanding their position was fundamentally one of weakness, and its defensive nature meant it was never going to really be able to effectively define how it was supposed to operate in the real world, as operating in the real world was never a serious possibility. 

Yet what is undeniable is that the devotional understanding of the papacy owes a lot to ultramontanism.  What happens when there is a decisive battle, where the pope's ultimate authority is tested?  What happens if he loses that battle?  The Devotional Papacy came crashing down in the 1960's, capped by the crisis which took a sledgehammer to it:  Humanae Vitae.  That's what we'll cover next.