Clergy sex abuse crisis and the Vatican’s global legitimacy

Monday, November 21st, 2022

Among the anti-communist propaganda that spread through Italy in the early years after World War II was the threat that the Cossacks would soon be watering their horses in the fountains of St Peter’s Square.

It was a time when some feared for the Church’s survival.

But back then, the Vatican enjoyed religious, moral, cultural and political legitimacy on the global and domestic political stage.

It was just a few years after the 1929 Lateran Treaty that Pius XI signed with the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.

That pact cemented, for the remaining years of the regime, the consensus of most Italians around Fascism – until the disaster of World War II opened the eyes of those who had been blind to the real nature of Mussolini’s authoritarian order.

For the papacy and the Vatican, the 1929 treaty had an effect that lasted much longer because it solved the “Roman question” and gave the papacy an institutional, legal, and diplomatic status that the Holy See still enjoys to this day.

This status protects the papacy symbolically, juridically, and politically in ways that we often take for granted.

It’s one of the reasons why the Bishop of Rome has a different global profile than the (Anglican) Archbishop of Canterbury or the (Orthodox) Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

No more deference

But in the last twenty years or so, the Vatican has become more and more identified with scandal, especially related to the clergy sex abuse crisis and grave financial irregularities.

This coincided with the loss of deference that secular authorities (press, police, justice system) once showed to Church authorities when the Catholic press was still under the control of the hierarchy.

It was a time when, despite the fact that Church and State related to each other differently in the various countries of the West, there was a certain convergence between the two. It’s enough to think about anti-Communism and the role of (traditional) marriage in society.

That relationship no longer exists. The end of the Cold War, secularisation and the emergence of a multi-cultural and multi-religious society have deprived the Church of the protection it needed when this new age of scandal came about.

It is true that the Church and nation-states are all suffering a crisis of legitimacy. And there is clearly a parallelism here. For the nation-states, it’s the pervasive influence that transnational and global corporations and networks have gained in this stage of worldwide capitalism.

Then there are the world powers that have become increasingly unafraid of interfering in new ways (thanks to new technologies) with the internal order of other states.

These factors have impacted negatively on the Church, too. But there is also a new kind of pressure from within — it’s from Catholics who, in different but similar ways, react against this new age of corruption as they await a reform (or a Reformation).

The difference is that the nation-states are reacting (case in point: the COVID pandemic) in ways that the Catholic Church is not able to replicate. The Church made consists of “believers without borders”, a reality that makes the very idea of ecclesiastical power and jurisdiction in a territorial way largely a fiction.

Moreover, the abuse crisis has made clear to many Catholics that when it is about the abuse crisis, there is no legal recourse other than the secular justice system.

Credibility in question

Jonathan Laurence, a political scientist at Boston College, recently published a book that argues that one of the ways the Catholic Church has tried to cope historically with defeat has been to institutionalise and professionalise its elites.

It happened after the Protestant Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries and after the impact of the liberal nation-state in the 19th century and in the age of mass migration.

But the impression one has today is that the Church is unable to follow that path.

On the contrary, it is on its way towards deinstitutionalisation, especially in the West.

This is one of the side effects of the emphasis on the necessary need to decentralise and relativize the role of the legal and institutional system in Catholicism.

Does this mean that the authority of the papacy will be over soon, in the sense of a disestablishment of the Vatican City State? No, but its legitimacy is in crisis. And this has and will continue to have consequences on its ability to operate.

It would be naïve to think that the pope’s generous humanitarian and peace-making efforts for war-torn countries and areas of tension will solve this crisis of legitimacy.

Part of the reason is that, in order to deal with dictators and authoritarian leaders in today’s world, the papacy needs a credibility that is stronger, not weaker, than that which Paul VI enjoyed when he addressed the United Nations in New York in 1965 and exclaimed: “No more war! War never again!”

The recent calls by Pope Francis and his Secretary of State (Cardinal Pietro Parolin) for a “new spirit of Helsinki” refer to a very different age when the Holy See had such prestige that it was invited to participate in the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in the Finish capital in 1975 and allowed to sign its final declaration.

The threat from inside

Multiple crises have emerged and have come to light during the current pontificate. Also, thanks to Francis’ lack of fear, they are putting in danger the legitimacy of the Vatican and its high moral sovereignty.

This might mean a Church that cannot resist the pressure, for example, to open its archives for investigations on high-profile cases of abuse. This could finally deprive some Church leaders of the illusion that this is a temporary crisis.

On the contrary, this is an epochal crisis that could seriously damage the Church’s global efforts for good.

Its work for peace and inter-religious dialogue risks not being taken seriously anymore – not to talk about the Church’s credibility in announcing the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is particularly true for this pontificate because Francis has chosen the risky but necessary path to dialogue and witness the Gospel with all world political leaders, no matter how inconsistent or embarrassing their record on democracy and human rights. It’s more important than ever that the papacy keeps a certain level of credibility, especially internally.

This is one of the reasons that makes the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, in our globalised world, a new global and ecumenical version of the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae — the issue on which the Church stands or falls.

The problem is no longer whether the Cossacks might invade the Vatican and water their horses in the fountains of St Peter’s Square.

And the contemptuous question that Joseph Stalin allegedly asked — “How many divisions has the pope?” — is no longer menacing. The Roman Church, after all, survived Communism.

No, the Church must now take a careful look at a more subtle yet no less insidious threat. And this time, it’s coming from inside.

Massimo Faggioli is a Church historian, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (Philadelphia) and a much-published author and commentator. He is a visiting professor in Europe and Australia.