Issue: 27 November 2004	PAGE 2 of 2 << previous

Under the circumstances, the famous article 80 of the Syllabus — which condemns as an error the proposition (with which, presumably, Cornwell would enthusiastically agree) that ‘the Roman Pontiff may and ought to reconcile himself to, and to agree with, progress, liberalism and modern civilisation’ — seems reasonable enough; it might be added that it is also entirely relevant to our own times: as the present Pope has often said, Christians today are called on to be ‘Signs of Contradiction’. Article 80, in fact, sums up succinctly the real point at issue between the Church and the modern world. Here is the basis, not only of Pio Nono’s kulturkampf with Bismarck and the Risorgimento, but of so many cultural battles down the years — of Chesterton’s struggle against eugenics or Lech Walesa’s against the Polish state, for example, or in our own time of Rocco Buttiglione’s rejection by the European parliament, or the American Catholic bishops’ disapproval of Senator Kerry.

Historically, the problem of the Catholic Church in the 19th century was to protect its own independence from the power of the state, not only in Italy but throughout Europe. The ultimate aim of ultra- montanism, with which Pio Nono is so closely (and mostly polemically) identified today, was to free the Church from national secular control by binding it more closely to a supranational papacy. In this, the movement was largely successful; it can also be argued that it left the Church in a more fit condition for its 20th-century resistance to totalitarianisms of both Left and Right. Pio Nono’s resistance to the Risorgimento was a useful preparatory exercise for John Paul’s more massive achievement in his epic confrontation with communism. Without a strong and supranational papacy could the Soviet bloc have been brought down as soon as it was? Discuss.