The Modern Inquisition: Seven Prominent Catholics and Thier Struggle with the Vatican - Couverture rigide

Collins, Paul

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 158567270X ISBN 13 : 9781585672707

Editeur : Overlook Books, 2002

Synopsis

The Inquisition ceased burning and torturing heretics in the 18th century; a milder punishment awaits the dissidents today, principally excommunication or banishment from official teaching positions. Paul Collins has discovered--through his own experience and extensive research--that the impact of the Vatican's investigations, through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, can be quite profound. Collins is the controversial Australian Catholic priest recently investigated by the Vatican for alleged heresy. He served the Church for 33 years and is generally esteemed for his dry wit and his ability to make his vocation accessible a trait many appreciated in an increasingly secular world. The Vatican, however, views Collins's less than reverential views as heretical and has been investigating him since 1997, when Collins' book Papal Power was singled out for supposed "doctrinal problems." The Modern Inquisition, compiled over the four years that the mysterious and secretive CDF deliberated on Collins' work, brings together the stories of others who have also been pursued, condemned, or vilified by the CDF. Here are seven fascinating accounts of how the modern Inquisition operates--what it is like to be accused by anonymous informers, investigated in secret, and tried at arms length with no recourse to appeal.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Paul Collins is a writer specializing in history, memoir, and unusual antiquarian literature. His nine books have been translated into eleven languages, and include Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books (2003) and The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars (2011). Collins lives in Oregon, where he is chair and professor of English at Portland State University.

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Copyright

Preface

This is a book about the inner workings of the Vatican, intellectual freedom, and passionate and deeply held convictions. It also contains the personal stories of seven Catholic sisters and priests who have experienced a unique inquisitorial process: examination of their opinions, writings and even their consciences by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). But this is not just about their personal stories. What happened to them typifies the tensions and contradictions within the contemporary Catholic Church and exposes the forces that have already alienated from the policies of the Vatican a sizeable majority of thinking Catholics in many parts of the world.

The seven protagonists in this book represent the kind of agenda embraced by most committed Catholics in the Western world, as well as many in Latin America, Asia and Africa. These Catholics are demanding a more decentralised, participative approach to the Church, with much of its decision-making authority being devolved to local communities and national conferences of bishops. The Vatican and the CDF are supported by a small but influential minority of Catholics who want to concentrate all power and authority in the papacy. One of the most potent weapons used to rein in their fellow Catholics is the secret reporting of bishops, priests, sisters and laity to Rome for supposed heresy, deviations or dissent from Catholic belief and practice.

The prominent English Catholic journalist, Clifford Longley, writing in the respected London weekly, the Tablet, has compared being turned into the Vatican for investigation by the CDF to what Judas did to Christ when he went to the chief priests to betray him. I certainly felt a sense of betrayal in late January 1998 when I discovered that I had been ‘delated’ (denounced) to Rome some time in 1997 for so-called ‘doctrinal problems’ with my book Papal Power. It was a rude reminder that the Inquisition’s Australian minions are still alive and well.

My personal experience of this process has prompted this book, which contains my own story and those of six other well-known Roman Catholic sisters and priests who have been similarly investigated. In November 1999 I visited Sri Lanka, Germany, the UK and the US to interview all the contributors and to get some understanding of their pastoral and theological approach as well as of the local context.

The first thing that struck me about the people featured in this book was how psychologically well adjusted they are. Articulate, calm and intelligent, all of them have a healthy sense of humour and can laugh at themselves, a key prerequisite in anyone called to a prophetic role. But at a deeper level you perceive in them an inner strength and determination, a passionate commitment to God, to their ministry and to the search for the truth and the inner meaning of Christian existence. You also find a deep love of the Catholic Church and a complete absence of paranoia or any feeling of persecution. Never once did any of them suggest that they had been badly done by, either by the Vatican or by their religious orders, despite a complete clarity about the injustice of the process imposed on them by the CDF and by others in the Church.

In fact, as their stories show, these men and women are among the genuine prophets of the Catholic Church at the present time. While what has happened to them is compelling as personal storytelling, it also points towards the agenda that will guide the Catholic Church into the future. This is because they articulate the issues that most concern the vast majority of faithful Catholics and give expression to their faith-experience.

For the first time in the 450-year history of the Roman Inquisition and its lineal descendant, the CDF, a group of Catholics who have recently undergone examination by the Vatican’s inquisitorial procedures talk openly about the experience and the effect the process had on their vocations and careers, and describe in detail how the CDF operates. The interviews clearly reveal a number of things about the CDF. First, it is obvious that ultimately the CDF does not play by any rules, even its own. By any modern standards of jurisprudence its processes are secretive, inquisitorial, often blatantly unfair to the accused and lack any application of the basic principles of human rights. Despite the Church’s good record in this area in the broader, secular world, the CDF completely ignores human rights and shows no respect for normally accepted due process in its interactions with the accused. It is willing to invade their inner conscience and demand that even the most intimate and deeply held conscientious views be revealed. Fundamentally, the CDF lives in a time warp: despite attempts to tart it up in modern dress, it is essentially a creature of the sixteenth century whose methods have survived to the present day. Sadly, the evidence also is that the CDF cannot always be trusted to tell the whole truth, or even always to act with integrity, at least from the perspective of modern notions of equity and justice.

Second, it is clear from all the cases reported here that the CDF is not interested in genuine dialogue or real reconciliation. Without the slightest equivocation or doubt, it identifies its own view completely with the ‘teaching of the Church’, totally oblivious to the fact that its narrow orthodoxy often constricts and sometimes distorts the genuine Catholic tradition. What is quite extraordinary is that at times CDF ‘consultors’ do not seem to have a sound knowledge of, or even recognise, the basic principles of Catholic theology and ethics. This arises from the narrowness and lack of breadth of their theological approaches and their attempts to constrict the creative possibilities inherent in the Catholic tradition. The CDF constantly demands total conformity to its own view. There is never any question that its view might itself be limited, partial, or even wrong. It is this total lack of theological self-awareness that is most frightening.

Third, the CDF is highly selective in its choice of targets, and the selection of the person to be investigated often arises out of conflicts, jealousies and ambitions in the Catholic community of the country where the dispute starts and in which the accused person lives. People are also pursued because they are seen as ‘symbolic’ of a movement which troubles the Vatican. For instance, the CDF was concerned by Latin American liberation theology in the 1980s, so Brazilian Franciscan friar Leonardo Boff was targeted. In the 1990s the Vatican trained its sights on Asian theology, and Sri Lankan Father Tissa Balasuriya became the quarry.

The CDF rarely gives up; it pursues people for years. In the process it largely ignores local bishops and leaders of religious orders, except to try to manipulate them to do its will. And, as the cases of Sister Jeannine Gramick and Father Robert Nugent show, even condemnation is not the end of the long process. The Vatican continues to try to muzzle them and to prevent them speaking about the process and its result, despite the fact that they live in a democracy where free speech is guaranteed.

With the exception of the prefect (at the time of writing, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger) and the secretary (at the time of writing, Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone), all officials of the CDF remain strictly anonymous. Consultors, judges, prosecutors and even the ‘defence counsel’, who are usually drawn from the same group of people, are unknown to the accused, who will probably never meet them. However, the diligent researcher can discover the names of the CDF staff and consultors in the Vatican yearbook, the Annuario Pontificio, but this gives no clue as to the officials involved with specific cases. Finally, the CDF is above all right of judicial appeal to the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican appeals court, specifically because the CDF’s acts are always approved by the pope and, as such, are beyond appeal.

Early in the evolution of this book I decided that it would be an ‘oral history’; that is, each of the interviewees would speak in their own voice. I have given a historical, biographical and theological context to their stories in order to make the book as accessible as possible. Where the contributor deals with a complex theological or ethical issue, I have intervened editorially to explain the background or to clarify the matter under discussion. The contributors’ stories are unique, each a compelling, moving document in its own right. However, these are not purely subjective, inward-looking accounts. In all cases there has been a conscious effort to maintain a sense of both the wider Church community and the broader cultural and secular context.

By speaking publicly, as it were, for the first time, we hope to raise to some extent the veil of Vatican secrecy. We hope, too, that our personal stories will throw some light on a dark and arcane process which only undermines the Church whose truths it purports to uphold. The whole business of examination by the inquisitorial CDF is cloaked in mystery for most people, including the vast majority of Catholics. We hope that our stories will give readers a sense of what it means to be accused by anonymous informers, investigated in secret and ‘tried’ at arms length, with no recourse to appeal. Our aim is to use these stories as a stimulus to reform not only the Vatican, but also the whole process by which the Catholic Church arrives at the articulation of its belief. It is based on Jesus’ premise that it is only ‘the truth [that] will make you free’ (John 8:32).

This book has been written precisely to break this kind of silence and to begin to reclaim the freedom that belongs to the sons and daughters of God. St Paul tells the Corinthians that freedom and God’s Spirit go together: ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom’ (II Cor 2:17). He further tells the Christians of Galatia: ‘Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit to a yoke of slavery’ (Gal 5:1). It is precisely this deep sense that freedom should characterise Christian and Catholic existence that motivates this book.

Books like this require generosity and support from many people. My thanks are due first to the six contributors. All of them are very busy people but they have given of their time, knowledge and expertise without stint. My agent, Mary Cunnane, has supported the book from the beginning and contributed much to it. Friendship is essential to the isolated editor and writer and many people have given me generous support. They know who they are.

Canberra, November 2000

CHAPTER 1

Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio

For several centuries now visitors have marvelled at the sheer size and baroque grandeur of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. But I doubt that many would even have noticed, unless they were really looking for it, a rather bland, dun-coloured, fortress-like building just to the left of the basilica and behind Bernini’s glorious colonnade enclosing the piazza of the great church. This plain building faces its own tiny piazza and is just across the road from a clerical outfitter called ‘Euroclero’, a kind of Kmart for priests who cannot afford clerical haute couture. The bland building is called the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio and is the modern-day home of the Inquisition. Nowadays, however, it has the less threatening but still rather grandiose title of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

The word ‘inquisition’ has always had sinister and threatening connotations in English. It is derived from the Latin legal term inquisitio, meaning a legal investigation or inquiry. As soon as the word ‘inquisition’ is mentioned, most people immediately presume that they know what it means. They are usually thinking of the Spanish or the medieval versions, with images of the burning of thousands of witches, Jews, Protestants and other religious dissenters. While there are clear and traceable connections with the medieval inquisitions, the CDF’s parent body, the Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, or Holy Office, was not founded until 1542, whereas the medieval inquisitions began in southern France in 1232. The sixteenth-century Roman Inquisition’s power was primarily limited to the Papal States, which then straddled Italy from east to west and from Ferrara and Bologna in the north to Terracina on the coast just south of Rome. To a lesser extent its authority was recognised by the inquisitions which operated in most of the other states of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Italy, among them Venice and Naples.

The Roman Inquisition was founded by Pope Paul III (1534– 49) in 1542 to counter Protestantism, which had started to penetrate into northern Italy in the late 1530s. At the same time, the Index of Forbidden Books was established. This was a list of ‘dangerous’ books that Catholics were not permitted to read, although for four hundred years the vast majority of Catholics had no idea nor any interest in the books listed in the Index. Pope Paul III hoped that by censoring heretical books and prosecuting those suspected of heresy, the Roman Inquisition would be a potent instrument in saving Italy from the Protestant Reformation.

By the mid-eighteenth century the Roman Inquisition had become less influential and was abolished when French Revolutionary forces occupied the Papal States and Rome in the 1790s and early 1800s. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the Inquisition was restored in papal territory, although its impact was minimal. It was the Index rather than the Inquisition that prevailed in the nineteenth century. In 1907 the term ‘Roman Inquisition’ was dropped, and in 1913 the body was renamed the ‘Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office’.

In December 1965, on the second-last day of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), it was again renamed as the ‘Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’. However, despite claims that the present prefect of the CDF, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, has opened up the Congregation and made it more modern and accountable, the evidence in this book indicates that the name changes were merely cosmetic. The secretive attitudes inherited from the baroque period and the early twentieth century have survived and still flourish in the attitudes and procedures of the CDF.

Today the CDF is a department within the Vatican bureaucracy, charged with protecting Catholic orthodoxy and examining and judging the theological, spiritual and religious writings and opinions expressed by all Catholics. According to Pope John Paul II’s 28 June 1988 apostolic constitution on the Roman Curia, Pastor Bonus: ‘The duty proper to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is to promote and safeguard the doctrine on faith and morals throughout the Catholic world: for this reason everything which in any way touches on such matters falls within its competence’ (Article 48). This means that its ambit is wide indeed and almost limitless, because everything pertaining to faith and belief has a doctrinal or ethical aspect. In the Regulations for Doctrinal Examination (29 June 1997) the net seems to be cast even wider: ‘In order that faith and morals not be harmed by errors however disseminated [my emphasis], it [the CDF] … has the duty of examining writings and opinions which appear contrary to correct faith or dangerous’ (Art. 1). The CDF is also assisted by and linked to two advisory bodies, the Pontifical Biblical Commission and the International Theological Commission, in that its cardinal prefect is also president of both these bodies.

Today’s CDF offices look like a baroque fortress, an appearance that is reinforced by thick bars protecting the high windows. Through the narrow entrance you can see a peristyle with a rather lifeless fountain. Perhaps the reason for this fortress-like architecture is that a previous building housing the Roman Inquisition was burned down by the Roman mob in 1559 upon the death of the intransigent and inquisitorial Pope Paul IV (1555–59). However, the late-Renaissance popes obviously valued the Inquisition’s work because in 1566 the building of St Peter’s Basilica was suspended by the then pope, Pius V, himself an ex-inquisitor, so that construction of the palazzo of the Holy Office could be quickly completed. The present building has been the home of the Inquisition for most of its history since then.

In order to make sense of where the CDF fits into the Vatican bureaucracy, you need to know something about how the central government of the Roman Catholic Church operates. Because the origins of the papacy extend far back in European history, the Church bureaucracy still largely reflects the governmental patterns of the past. The Vatican resembles an absolute monarchy much more than a modern democracy. The pope’s primary role is that of spiritual head of the Roman Catholic Church. But he is also the secular ruler of the Vatican City State, a tiny independent enclave of just over 40 hectares (108 acres) situated in the middle of the city of Rome. He is supported in his administration of the Church by a bureaucracy called the Roman Curia, which by contemporary bureaucratic standards is reasonably small and not particularly efficient. In February 2000 there were 2581 people employed in the Curia, comprising 1132 priests and members of religious orders and 1449 lay persons; of the total, 2171 were men and 410 were women. This number does not include those who work for the Vatican City State in jobs such as the maintenance of St Peter’s, Vatican security, the museums, Vatican Radio, and the many other jobs involved in running a tiny city state.

In its present form the Roman Curia dates from the early seventeenth century, although, as we shall see, it has been through several attempted reforms since then. Substantially it is divided into congregations, or departments, that are usually presided over by a cardinal prefect, assisted by an archbishop secretary, and supported by a staff that is mainly comprised of priests, with a small minority who are sisters or lay people, almost all of these in minor roles. Italians still make up a majority of the staff, but nowadays the composition of congregational personnel is usually reasonably international. Foreigners are often ‘more Roman than the Romans’, and the world in which they work remains essentially Italian in style and operation. (For a fascinating and accurate insight into how the whole system works, see Thomas Reese’s Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church (1996). John Cornwell’s book, A Thief in the Night (1989), which deals with the death of Pope John Paul I, also gives you a good sense of the ‘feel’ of the Vatican.)

While the CDF is the most important of the curial congregations, the central body and real power-house of the Vatican is the Secretariat of State. Its head is the cardinal secretary of state, who functions as a kind of papal prime minister. The present secretary of state is Cardinal Angelo Sodano, appointed in 1991, who spent a decade from 1978 as papal nuncio (ambassador) to Chile where he was friendly with the dictator Augusto Pinochet. The Secretariat of State is divided into two sections: one deals with the internal affairs of the Church, reduplicating much of the work of the curial congre­ga­­tions, the other conducts the Vatican’s foreign-relations activities. The Secretariat’s nearest equivalent in the British system is a kind of combined cabinet office and foreign office; there is nothing strictly equivalent to it in the US system. The Curia also has other bodies: tribunals, pontifical councils (these have largely come into existence since Vatican II), and offices dedicated to various specific tasks.

But back to the CDF. The names of its staff and general information about their respective positions are all set out in the Annuario Pontificio. In 1999 the CDF had a full-time staff of thirty-four. They are reported to complain often about being very overworked; apparently there is a lot of ‘heresy’ around! Examining the composition of the full-time CDF staff in 1999 reveals that a small majority are Italian. The next-largest group is Germans, followed by English, Spanish and other Europeans; there is only one non-European. Of the eight lay people listed, five are women. Four of these were either addetti tecnici (technical staff) or scrittori (secretaries/writers), with the significant exception of Dr Marie Hendrickx. She is a Belgian with a doctorate in theology and is one of sixteen staff members who work for CDF secretary, Archbishop Bertone. She is the first and only full-time lay woman on the CDF staff. Perhaps she is trying to humanise the place a little: it is reported that she hosts a daily tea-break for her colleagues.

The administrative head of the CDF is Italian Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, SDB. Born in 1934, he is a member of the Salesian order, the ‘SDB’ after his name referring to the Salesians of Don Bosco, a religious order founded in 1859 in Turin, Italy, and numerically one of the largest male religious orders in the Church. He was appointed Archbishop of Vercelli in north-central Italy in 1991, and was transferred to the CDF Secretariat in 1996. Bertone, like his predecessor as secretary, Archbishop Alberto Bovone, is not an expert theologian. He is essentially an administrator.

If Bertone runs the office, the real inquisitorial power lies with the prefect, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger. He chairs the Congregation (the English word ‘congregation’ comes from the Latin congregatio which means ‘committee’) of cardinals and bishops who run the CDF. Most of them are resident in Rome, but there are always some members of the Congregation from different parts of the world. In 1999, eleven of the CDF congregational cardinals were Rome-based and worked in the Vatican in other senior jobs; they all held down memberships of several congregations. Three cardinal members of the Congregation were from outside Rome: the cardinal-archbishops of Bordeaux, Vienna and Genoa. The other members of the Congregation comprised one eastern patriarch and five diocesan bishops. The bishops were from Dublin (Ireland), Melbourne (Australia), Granada (Spain), Goma (Zaire) and Rottenberg-Stuttgart (Germany). George Pell, Archbishop of Melbourne, who features in my own story, has been a member of the CDF since the early 1990s. He retired at the beginning of 2001.

While serious questions could be raised about the theological standing of virtually all the CDF’s staff and consultors, the prefect, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, is an established theologian with an international reputation. He chairs the meetings of the full Congregation and conveys the CDF’s recommendations to the pope. Born in Bavaria in April 1927, Ratzinger was one of the more radical young turks at Vatican II. After Vatican II, Ratzinger taught systematic theology at Münster, Tübingen and Regensburg universities, was a member of the International Theological Commission from 1969 to 1980, and was appointed Archbishop of Munich-Freising and cardinal in 1977 by Pope Paul VI. The white-haired, distinguished-looking Ratzinger has been the head of the CDF since 1982 and, in terms of influence on Pope John Paul II, he is the most powerful cardinal in the Curia. Despite suffering from heart problems, he is sometimes described as the ‘grand inquisitor’ or the panzerkardinal. He is actually a pious, elegant intellectual who is pessimistic about modern culture’s abandonment of absolute truth. While he is not an intimate friend of John Paul II, he is without doubt his closest collaborator.

Ratzinger has been accused by some of betraying Vatican II and of being a turncoat in order to gain ecclesiastical promotion. I do not agree with this assessment. In some ways his pessimism about modern culture is the real clue to the consistency of Ratzinger’s theological position. What has only been recognised over the last decade and a half is that there was a deep ‘fault-line’ running through the majority of progressive bishops and thinkers at Vatican II. On the one hand there were those whose emphasis was on a radical opening-up of the Church to modern culture. This is what the man who started Vatican II, Pope John XXIII (1958–63), called aggiornamento. Many of the strongest supporters of this emphasis were those who were very much aware of the Church’s past interactions with culture, of the many relativities of its teachings, and of the forms and shapes that the structure of the Church had taken in different periods. In other words, they were people whose approach was shaped by an historical awareness.

Generally, such people have a more optimistic approach to modernity and emphasise the role of the Church as part of contemporary culture. While they certainly want the Church to offer a prophetic critique of culture, nevertheless they want to do it from within. Probably most Western-educated Catholics would fit into this category, even if they have not articulated it for themselves. The foundation for this approach was laid by theologians such as the French Dominican, Yves Congar (1904–95), who emphasised the role of laity and the importance of ecumenism, and the Austrian Jesuit, Karl Rahner (1904–84), the greatest Catholic theologian of the twentieth century, whose emphasis on the universal self-communication of God through grace laid the foundations for a much more positive assessment of the world and culture.

In contrast, there are a minority of especially but not exclusively continental-European Catholics, such as Ratzinger and the Swiss theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–88), who are much more concerned about a return to the sources of the Catholic tradition, especially in the early Church and patristic period up to the fifth century. Ratzinger, for instance, is an expert on the great theologian, St Augustine (354–430). It is in the early Church that these theologians find the absolute basics of Christian faith. While the interest of this group lies in the past, most of its influential members are theologians rather than trained historians. They share a common pessimism about contemporary culture and tend to see the Church as standing over and against the world. They do not deny the kind of emphasis that Rahner gives to grace, but they do not highlight it. For this group the key issue is always seeking the Truth with a capital ‘T’. For them the Church, which already has the Truth, must stand over and against a world of post-modern philosophical, doctrinal and ethical relativities, of consumerist selfishness and sexual permissiveness. They are prepared to see the Church reduced to a much smaller community, so long as its remnant members maintain a coherent commitment to Truth. (There is a good treatment of Ratzinger’s theological approach in John L. Allen’s Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican’s Enforcer of the Faith (2000).)

Before describing how the CDF operates when dealing with an accused, we should first look briefly at the history of the Congregation to examine if much has really changed in its attitudes and modes of operation over the past 450 years.

When Pope Paul III established the Roman Inquisition in 1542, he was the first pope of the Reformation period to take the internal reform of both the hierarchy and the wider Church seriously. As Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, he was a typically worldly Renaissance prince who rose in the ranks of the Church because his beautiful sister, Giulia, was a mistress of Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503). He had a noblewoman-mistress himself and was father of several illegitimate children. However, he underwent a conversion and became the first great reforming pope of the Counter-Reformation period. But unlike many other reformed characters, he never became a fanatic or rigorist. A wonderful portrait of him by Titian shows him aged and stooped, but with extraordinarily intelligent and keen, worldly eyes, looking at something in the distance. He was also the pope who began the reforming Council of Trent.

The Roman Inquisition was established in response to both the penetration of Protestantism in northern Italy and the spectacular conversions to the reformed faith of a couple of prominent Italian clerics. The now abolished Index of Forbidden Books was also established during Paul III’s time and worked in tandem with the Inquisition for most of its history. However, it was not until the papacy of Paul IV (1555–59) that the Roman Inquisition really became pervasive in the Papal States particularly, and in Italy generally. Many subsequent popes had been members of the Inquisition as cardinals and, in the reform of the Roman Curia by Sixtus V (1585–90), the Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, or Holy Office, became the senior and most important congregation of the Curia.

Certainly, the Inquisition was very active in the latter part of the sixteenth century and the earlier part of the seventeenth century. However, the Roman and Italian inquisitions need to be clearly distinguished from the Spanish Inquisition, which was entirely independent and fundamentally an instrument of state policy. The Italian inquisitions also need to be placed within their specific historical context. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, religion was an integral part of the cultural fabric and as such was determined by state authority. A famous Latin adage summed up the situation: cuius regio eius religio. In other words, the ruler determined the religion of everyone who lived under his rule. While there were certainly notions of freedom of religion current at the time among both Catholic and Protestant thinkers, these were not recognised by state authority. Surprisingly, there have been very few major studies of the Roman Inquisition and presuppositions about the Spanish Inquisition are generally projected onto it, as well as the inaccurate myths of ‘hundreds of thousands of victims’.

Part of the problem has been the vandalising of the curial archives during the Napoleonic period, when most of them were taken from Rome to Paris. Some were returned after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 almost in their entirety (such as the archives of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide), but unfortunately about half of those of the Roman Inquisition were destroyed, a proportion dispersed (there is a sizeable set of Roman Inquisition material in Trinity College, Dublin), and what was returned to Rome has now become unavailable because it is part of a closed archive – that of the CDF. The American scholar John Tadeschi has devoted much of his life to the Roman Inquisition and much of the current material is drawn from his fascinating The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy (1991). Tadeschi points out that for the diligent researcher there is abundant information available on both the Roman Inquisition and the local Italian inquisitions, such as the Venetian or the Neapolitan.

Dominicans and Franciscans staffed the Inquisition, and tribunals were often held in their religious houses. Jesuit influence waxed and waned with different popes. Tadeschi notes that ‘in several respects the Holy Office was a pioneer of judicial reform’ and was often more justly administered than many of the contemporary court systems, including the British. The Roman Inquisition was particularly careful on questions concerning witchcraft and never gave way to the communal mania that saw many women judicially murdered in northern Europe, and in Salem and various other places of Puritan North America. In fact, the inquisitors were increasingly sceptical about witchcraft. Between 1560 and 1610, the major concern was ‘Lutheranism’ and heresy – that is, Protestantism – especially in northern Italy and the Papal States. The activities of the Roman Inquisition declined from the mid-seventeenth century onwards, and in the eighteenth century it did little. One sometimes has the impression that the eighteenth-century Inquisition is reflected reasonably accurately in the caricature of the Venetian grand inquisitor in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers.

In addition, the pattern of charges against the accused changes after the early seventeenth century, when the emphasis shifts from heresy to ‘illicit magic’ and superstition – what today we would call ‘popular religion’. The Roman Inquisition also issued dispensations from the fasts imposed on Catholics during Lent and Advent, and was very concerned with clerical immorality in the Papal States, especially solicitation in confession.

It is often seen as quite bloodthirsty, and the case of the ex-Dominican philosopher and cosmologist Giordano Bruno (1548– 1600) is regularly cited as an example of this. He was burned in Rome’s Campo dei Fiori in February 1600. The house-arrest of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) for the last ten years of his life is also well known. Less famous is the incarceration of the Spanish mystical theorist, Miguel de Molinos (c.1640–97). Although in 1685 he recanted the errors of which he was accused, he was sentenced to lifelong imprisonment on charges of immorality with the women and nuns he directed. His letters, upon which the charges of heresy were based, are still held by the CDF and have never been made publicly available. Despite these famous cases, Tadeschi points out that the sentence of ‘perpetual incarceration’ usually meant about three years, especially if the accused showed signs of contrition. Certainly, imprisonment by the Roman Inquisition was a much better fate than the stake, mutilation, the galleys or banishment. This is how Tadeschi sums it up (p.151):

A survey of the thousands of surviving sentences suggests that … milder forms of punishment prevailed. Most frequently encountered are public humiliation in the form of abjurations read on the cathedral steps on Sundays and feast days before throngs of churchgoers, and salutary penances, fines or services for the benefit of charitable establishments, and a seemingly endless cycle of prayers and devotions to be performed over many months or years … Only a small percentage of cases concluded with capital punishment.

According to Tadeschi no more than 160 people were burned in Rome between 1542 and 1761, slightly fewer than one per year.

In fact, confession, repentance and contrition were the real aim of the whole inquisitorial process and for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Roman Inquisition would be judged to be reasonably merciful. One thing, however, that has survived in the practice of the CDF is that names of prosecution witnesses before the Holy Office are suppressed. Heresy used to be considered a public, capital crime and the intention was to favour the prosecution in support of the interests of the faith. It was also felt that witnesses needed to be protected from possible revenge by the family and friends of the accused. Inquisitorial officials were bound by a strict vow of secrecy, partly to protect the reputation of the accused and partly to maintain the element of surprise in order to be able to apprehend heretical accomplices more easily.

Perhaps the most stultifying aspect of the whole inquisitorial process on Italian culture, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, resulted from the censorship of books. This happened elsewhere in Europe at that time, but the large number of books placed on the Index prevented the spread of new ideas into Italy. This was perhaps less true in the eighteenth century. For much of its history the Congregation of the Index was separate from the Roman Inquisition, but the two worked closely in tandem. However, the resulting stultification should not be exaggerated. Books were only condemned after they had been reported to Rome and usually only after they had been translated into Italian or Latin. As Owen Chadwick says: ‘No tribe of sharp-nosed secretaries sat down to comb the literature of Europe in fear or hope of finding matter to deplore’ (The Popes and European Revolution (1981), p. 325). From the beginning there was also a tendency to condemn the omnia opera (the complete works) of a suspect author. The Roman bureaucrats did not have time to sort through the often prolific writings of many seventeenth and eighteenth century authors.

In 1789 the French Revolution broke out and by 1799 Pius VI (1775–99) had died as a prisoner of the French Revolutionary forces in Valence. The Papal States were occupied. Many in Europe saw this as the end of the papacy. From the mid-1790s to 1815 the papal government and Curia went through a period of crisis and chaos. The Inquisition, as well as the papal civil government of central Italy, was swept away. The new, revolutionary ideas of liberty and equality were given free reign throughout Europe, even though they were hypocritically ignored by the upstart emperor, Napoleon I.

With the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815 and the restoration of the Papal States, the Roman Inquisition was revived, but while its physical reach was confined to that part of Italy governed by the papacy, its ambit gradually began to spread throughout Europe. As the condemnation of Félicité Robert de Lamennais (1782–1854) and those Catholics who argued that the Church had to embrace the liberal principles of the French Revolution and freedom of conscience showed, the Roman inquisitors were increasingly interested in what was going on in the wider Church rather than just the Papal States. Others condemned by the restored Inquisition were German and Austrian theologians who taught in state universities and who followed the theological ideas of Georg Hermes (1775–1831). Influenced by the great German philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, Hermes argued that theology must begin with a critical doubt that ultimately would become the source of genuine faith. Two of Hermes’ books were placed on the Index in 1835, but despite this Hermes’ former students continued to fill chairs of Catholic theology in the state-run universities of the Rhineland. The Inquisition interfered in German theological disputes without really making any effort to understand either the context or approach of this movement.

Another famous nineteenth-century victim of the Index was the priest Antonio Rosmini-Serbati (1797–1855). Two of his books were condemned by the Congregation of the Index in 1849 and an attempt was made to have his omnia opera placed on the Index. While this failed, long after his death forty propositions from his works were condemned by Pope Leo XIII in 1887.

The palazzo of the Holy Office was briefly occupied during the period of Giuseppe Mazzini’s Roman Republic, which followed the 1848 Revolution in Rome, when Pope Pius IX (1846–78) fled to Gaeta. However, the influence of the Inquisition throughout the nineteenth century was still largely exercised through the Index of Forbidden Books. Although they remained separate congregations, the Inquisition and the Index worked closely together, and often the same cardinals were members of both congregations.

But with the arrival of the twentieth century, the expansion of the Inquisition’s ambit to the universal Church, which had begun in the nineteenth century, was intensified. With the gradual loss of the Papal States to a unified Italy, culminating in the final occupation of Rome in 1870, the interests of the Inquisition were increasingly focused outward to the universal Church. In 1908, as part of Pius X’s (1903–14) reorganisation of the Curia, the name of the Roman Inquisition was changed to the ‘Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office’. In 1913 it was designated as ‘supreme’, because it was presided over by the pope, and from then on the pope was seen as its prefect, although it was in fact run by a cardinal secretary. For six years under Pius X the Holy Office vetted all episcopal appointments.

The intellectual crisis of the papacy of Pius X was the so-called heresy of ‘modernism’. This was the term used by the pope to describe the attempt by cultured and educated professional Catholics – mainly theologians, philosophers, and biblical and historical scholars – in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to reconcile Catholic theology with modern developments in science, literary and historical criticism, biblical studies, and philosophy. Pius X perceived in this movement a serious threat to the narrow orthodoxy that dominated Rome, and condemned it as a ‘synthesis of all heresies’ in both the decree Lamentabili and in the encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907). An ‘anti-modernist oath’ was imposed on all clergy. Many theologians, scripture scholars, philosophers and Church historians were quite mercilessly hounded as ‘modernists’ or even ‘quasi-modernists’ by a small integralist group led by Monsignor Umberto Benigni, who worked in the Secretariat of State. The Index was also used as a weapon against the modernists. At first the Holy Office apparently seemed to play only a minor role in the papacy’s overreaction to ‘modernism’, possibly because its cardinal prefect between 1908 and 1913 was Mariano Rampolla, the cardinal who represented the more moderate regime of Pius X’s predecessor, Leo XIII (1878–1903), and who came within an ace of being elected pope in 1903. However, this changed after the appointment of Cardinal Raphael Merry Del Val, who ran the Holy Office as secretary from 1914 to 1930. In 1917 the Congregation of the Index was abolished and the Holy Office also took complete control of the censorship of books.

In 1917 the Code of Canon Law was issued. Prior to this Church law was a complex and often confusing collection of many different types of legal enactments. At the beginning of the century the decision was made to remove the confusion and to draw up a manageable code. However, the process involved re-enforced the illusion that the Church was somehow a kind of monarchical state which was able to enact legislation governing its own subjects. Bishops, theologians and the community were excluded from the process of resolving what was ultimately true Catholic doctrine, and the entire process was handed over to the centralised bureaucracy of the Holy Office, whose aim was to search out and prosecute error with neither guidelines nor legal limitation.

Two particular canons of the new Code (cc. 1323 and 1324) increased centralisation and enhanced the power and influence of the Holy Office. Canon 1323 equated the solemn, infallible teaching authority of the Church with the ordinary day-to-day teaching authority of the pope. So there was a sense in which everything the pope said started to take on a ‘quasi-infallible’ status, and this was used by the Holy Office to enforce its often narrowly orthodox view on the whole Church. Canon 1324 conflated ‘heresy’ with ‘error’. In other words, new theological ideas, minority theological opinion or even mistaken doctrinal views took on the status of a formal denial of a defined doctrine of the Church. As such, they could be condemned by the Holy Office with commensurate harshness and serious canonical penalties.

Both canons enhanced the authority of the pope’s day-to-day teaching. As a result, from the 1920s onwards the Holy Office became a kind of interpretative mouthpiece for papal teaching. It constricted the participation of Catholics in ecumenical activities, constantly tried to apply the breaks to ecclesial renewal, censored books, and prevented, for example, the publication of most of the Jesuit thinker Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s output until after his death. It also constrained theologians and had them dismissed or suspended from their teaching posts, excluded millions of Catholics in several countries from the sacraments for politically cooperating with communists, and attempted to prevent all possibility of dissent within Catholicism. It was a bureaucracy completely above appeal or control, save that of the pope.

However, despite the best efforts of the Holy Office, the theological foundations of Vatican II were laid by a group of European theologians in the 1930s and 1940s. And, in a series of encyclicals in the areas of biblical studies, ecclesiology and liturgy, Pius XII (1939–1958) himself had encouraged renewal.

But by 1950 the pope seems to have turned his back on his forward-looking encyclicals of the 1940s. On 12 August 1950 he published the encyclical Humani Generis, which fundamentally targeted a movement that had emerged primarily in France and which was known as la théologie nouvelle. The emphasis in the ‘new theology’ movement was on the personal assimilation of the truths of faith, a consciousness and respect for the historical context in which faith is lived, and the importance of relating faith to contemporary philosophy and culture. The théologie nouvelle centred around the Dominican faculty of theology in Paris, La Saulchoir, a group of Jesuit scholars, and the theological revues Nouvelle Révue Théologique and Études. Although Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) was not specifically named, the encyclical also targeted his views about original sin, human origins and evolution, and the reconciliation of religion and science. Humani Generis sketched a dark, unreal scenario of the progressive collapse of ‘the very foundations of Christian culture’. The only solution it offered was a narrowing and tightening of theological speculation. Any form of dissent from the papal magisterium and the teaching of the Holy Office was identified with error and, as we have already seen, in the Code of Canon Law error had now been conflated with heresy. The task of theology was redefined as explaining ‘the sacred magisterium as the proximate and universal norm of truth in matters of faith and morals’, rather than the profound exploration of the meaning of the Church’s teaching and faith in relationship to contemporary culture. It was modernism revisited.

This was the situation in which the Church found itself as it approached Vatican II. While there was profound disquiet and deep distrust in the Curia after John XXIII (1958–63) called the Council, the Holy Office nevertheless set out to control the agenda. Between 1951 and 1959 the cardinal secretary of the Holy Office was the intransigent Giuseppe Pizzardo, who also doubled as the prefect of the Congregation for Seminaries and Universities which he controlled from 1939 to 1968. Joining him was the equally reactionary Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, promoted in 1953 from the role of assessor of the Holy Office, a job he had held since 1935, to that of pro-prefect. In 1959 he was appointed secretary of the Congregation by John XXIII.

It was inevitable that with preparation for Vatican II in the hands of prophets of doom like these that the documents presented to the bishops on arrival in Rome in October 1962 would totally reflect the reactionary line taken by the Curia. While it did not happen immediately and Vatican II took some time to find its feet, Ottaviani’s theological documents were one by one completely rejected and ordered to be rewritten by committees representing a much broader cross-section of opinion. There is a sense in which Ottaviani was deeply humiliated and with him the whole intransigent group in the Curia. Much of this came to a head during the second session of the Council on 8 November 1963.

There had already been a number of critical comments about the Curia from bishops such as the Melkite Patriarch of Antioch, Maximos IV Saigh. Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne (whose theological advisor was the then young Father Josef Ratzinger), in a debate about the possible establishment of a senate of bishops in Rome, attacked the Holy Office saying bluntly:

[Its] methods and behaviour do not conform at all to the modern era and are a cause of scandal to the world. No one should be condemned without having been heard, without knowing what he is accused of, and without having the opportunity to amend what he can be reasonably reproached with.

This was followed by long and loud applause. Furious, Ottaviani counterattacked by saying, ‘In attacking the Holy Office, one attacks the pope himself, because he is its prefect.’ It was the usual identification of the Curia with the pope, with the unspoken implication that the Curia shared in the pope’s infallibility. However, while the Curia lost the battle completely during Vatican II, it was they, as Ottaviani pointed out, who stayed on in Rome after the bishops finally went home in December 1965.

On the second-last day of the Council (7 December 1965), Paul VI (1963–1978) issued the apostolic letter Integrae Servandae, changing the name of the ‘Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office’ to the rather vapid ‘Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’. However, the title ‘Holy Office’ is still often used and no attempt has been made to change the name of the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio. Quoting the First Letter of John (4:18) that ‘love casts out fear’, the CDF was told that the safeguarding of faith was better achieved these days by promoting good doctrine, and that erring Catholics were to be brought back to the right path suaviter – sweetly or pleasantly. The CDF was to encourage, rather than repress theology and to sponsor the study of disputed questions. When it did judge errors it was to do so according to a set of legal norms. The problem was that no norms were set out in Integrae Servandae. On top of that, the changes were to be carried out under the direction of Ottaviani and his henchmen. It was ‘like asking the Mafia to reform the Mafia’, according to Monsignor Charles Moeller of the Catholic University of Leuven who was brought into the CDF for a brief period to try to reform the office.

As a kind of token gesture, the Index of Forbidden Books was swept away on 14 June 1966, as well as the excommunication attached to reading such books. Much of the rest of Ottaviani’s career until his retirement in January 1968 was taken up with clawing back the power that had been lost during Vatican II and in the period immediately afterwards. One of his key victories was persuading Paul VI to ignore the report of the advisory committee that the pope himself had set up to study the question of the morality of contraception. Ottaviani died in 1979.

In the apostolic constitution Regimini Ecclesiae Universae (15 August 1967), Paul VI decreed that the pope would no longer preside over the CDF and that it would be run by a cardinal prefect. It is significant that in this apostolic constitution it is clearly stated that an author is to be condemned only ‘after having [been] heard … and having given him an opportunity to defend himself’ (Art. 33).

Ottaviani was succeeded at the CDF early in 1968, the year in which the encyclical against contraception, Humanae Vitae, was issued, by the genial Serbo-Croat, Cardinal Franjo Seper. Seper’s whole ecclesiastical career had been spent in Zagreb as priest, secretary to the archbishop, rector of the seminary, and finally as coadjutor and then archbishop. Much of this time was spent under dictatorial regimes: the Ante Pavlic regime during World War II and the communist regime of Tito.

In 1968, however, Seper’s geniality was no match for the Roman bureaucrats of the CDF when an incident occurred which illustrated that the old attitudes still prevailed. He had only been in office for a couple of months when the brilliant polymath, Monsignor Ivan Illich, was summoned to Rome. Illich was an American citizen of mixed Spanish, German, Croat and Jewish origins, and a priest of New York archdiocese who worked in Cuernavaca in Mexico to prepare missionaries for Latin America. Two minor CDF monsignori, Sergio de Magistris and Giuseppe Casoria, attempted to interrogate him in the back rooms of the Palazzo. He confronted them with Integrae Servandae and demanded that all CDF proceedings should be a matter of the public record. He insisted on everything being written down and was sent a set of absurd questions which he simply refused to answer. Among other things, Illich was to be questioned about his ‘Marxist affiliations’ and his assumed relationships with Che Guevara, and with the radical Colombian priest, Camillo Torres and, of all people, Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York, who could hardly be construed as a ‘subversive’! Illich wrote to the pope and published the document, thereby implying that Seper was not in control of his own office. The CDF had made a fool of itself on the eve of Humanae Vitae. The two monsignori suffered a temporary setback in their careers but, as is the way of the Vatican when dealing with its own, the pair subsequently became archbishops; Casoria eventually became a cardinal.

After having been requested by Paul VI in Integrae Servandae in 1965 to issue a set of norms for doctrinal examination, the CDF finally produced a Nova agendi ratio in doctrinarum examine (a new plan of action in doctrinal examination) on 15 January 1971. This was to remain in operation until June 1997. However, despite the new nomenclature and papal requests for a reform of procedure, the CDF retained the approaches and attitudes of its predecessor, the Holy Office. This is vividly illustrated in the cases of Jacques Pohier and August Bernhard Hasler. The CDF was only too happy to ignore its own procedures when it suited it.

In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, the continuing case against Hans Küng seemed to get a new lease of life. At the same time, the German Dominican, Stephan Pfürtner, was judged and condemned without a hearing for his book Kirche und Sexualität (1972). The key ethical norm for interpersonal relationships that he proposed was ‘love allied to reason’, but while that may have been close to the view of his fellow Dominican, St Thomas Aquinas, it caused deep concern in the CDF. Throughout this same period, Bernard Häring, the greatest moral theologian of the twentieth century, who had enormous influence on the renewal of the Church after Vatican II, was constantly under pressure from the CDF. Häring, a man of complete integrity and holiness who died in 1998, had been a medic in the German army at Stalingrad and a POW in the Soviet Union. He later said that his treatment by the CDF was worse than that he had received from the Nazis.

Another who ran into problems at this time was the Swiss historian, August Bernhard Hasler, who had been employed for several years in Rome in the Secretariat for Christian Unity. Having resigned from the Curia, he wrote an article in 1972 attacking the Church’s failures in ecumenism, and in 1978 published a two-volume study in German of the First Vatican Council and Pius IX (available in English in a somewhat inadequate summary entitled How the Pope Became Infallible: Pius IX and the Politics of Persuasion (1981)). Among other things he suggested that Pius IX was mentally unstable, and that the First Vatican Council, which defined papal infallibility and primacy, was not free. This deeply upset curial reactionaries. Despite the fact that Hasler was a good priest in excellent standing, the bishop of his diocese, St Gallen, was ordered to laicize him. The bishop refused, and Hasler’s sudden death in 1980 at the age of forty-three solved the problem for both Rome and the bishop. Hans Küng had written the introduction to Hasler’s book and this was an important issue when his own dealings with the CDF came to a head.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Overlook Books
• Date d'édition: 2002
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 158567270X
• ISBN 13: 9781585672707
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 256
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible