The Modern Inquisition

by Collins, Paul

• ISBN13: 9781585672707
• ISBN10: 158567270X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-07-01
• Publisher: Overlook Pr

Summary

Although the Inquisition ceased torturing and burning heretics in the eighteenth century, its lineal descendent, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), is still at work today, investigating and punishing dissidents with excommunication, banishment from official teaching positions, and by other means. In this book - and for the first time in the 450-year history of the Roman Inquisition and its modern incarnation, the CDF - a group of Catholics who have recently undergone examination by the Vatican's inquisitorial procedures talk openly about the experience. Collins himself was recently investigated by the Vatican for alleged heresy; the examination began in 1997, when his book Papal Power was singled out for supposed doctrinal problems.

Author Biography

Paul Collins is a historian, broadcaster, and writer. In March 2001 he resigned from the active priestly ministry of the Catholic Church due to a dispute with the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith over his book Papal Power. He has a master's degree in theology (Th.M.) from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in history from the Australian National University. He was one of a thousand world religious leaders invited to attend the United Nations Millennium Peace Summit in New York City in August 2000. The author of several books on religion and ethics, he currently works as a freelance writer, speaker and broadcaster on environmental issues, social ethics, theology, history, and communication

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Palazzo del Sant'Uffizio	p. 1
How Accusations Become Trials	p. 32
Loyal Dissent and Freedom: Charles Curran	p. 46
Excommunication and Liberation: Tissa Balasuriya	p. 80
Ministry in a Minefield: Jeannine Gramick and Robert Nugent	p. 109
Woman at the Altar: Lavinia Byrne	p. 164
Protocol Number 399/57/i: Hans Kung	p. 190
Antipodean Heretic: Paul Collins	p. 208
Author's Note	p. 245
Glossary	p. 253
Bibliography	p. 258
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

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.

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Excerpted from THE MODERN INQUISITION by Paul Collins Copyright © 2002 by Paul Collins
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.