Tea at Trianon: Ultramontanism: A Means Not an End

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, March 17, 2023

Ultramontanism: A Means Not an End

From Charles Coulombe at Crisis:

As the Investiture controversy and the Guelph and Ghibelline struggle showed, while both the popes and the emperors (and kings) agreed in basic principles about their relationship, conflict often arose regarding the concrete application of these principles. Nevertheless, such opponents of papal politics as Dante could not be considered as other than faithful Catholics, regardless of their stances in these areas.
Indeed, if various popes chastised wayward monarchs such as England’s Henry II and the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, it took Emperor Otto I to end the century long pornocracy in Rome, and Emperor Sigismund to end the Great Schism. If popes had to approve the choice of Holy Roman Emperor, he (and the kings of France and Spain) had the right to veto any one candidate for the papacy they thought inappropriate for the job.
But as mentioned, this rocky but ultimately successful marriage began to unravel as a result of the Protestant Revolt, whereby the Catholic Church was forcibly separated from several Christian States, whose rulers created substitute ecclesiastical bodies to replace the Church on the one side and to act as departments of state on the other. The great power politics of the 16th and 17th centuries led to the seemingly undying enmity between the kings of France and the Habsburgs, during which the papacy would support first the former (hence Urban VIII’s backing the Swedes against Emperor Ferdinand II in the Thirty Years’ War, and the latter’s famous comment that he would “be the champion of the Church despite the Pope”) and then the latter (which resulted in the pope chanting the Te Deum when news of the Battle of the Boyne came in 1690).
In the 18th century, a more integrally Catholic policy prevailed at Rome, whereby the popes tried to reconcile Bourbons and Habsburgs and encouraged both to support Stuart restoration in the British Isles. Eventually, this would bear fruit in 1755, when the two dynasties did ally—an alliance sealed with the marriage of the future Louis XVI with Marie Antoinette. Unfortunately, it was two centuries too late to end the Protestant or the Muslim menace to Christendom.
The revolution of 1789 began the creation of the secular State we know today, in which religion of any kind exists purely at the whim of the temporal rulers of a given country—as exhibited during the Covid lockdown. But as nation after nation through the course of the 19th century found its Catholics pitted against their temporal rulers, a very different attitude toward the papacy arose among them. Before, if there was a conflict between a Catholic ruler and the pope, believing Catholics did not automatically presume the pope was right; moreover, in any such dispute, the temporal ruler would attempt to show that he was actually working harder for the good of the Church than his pontifical opponent. Bishops, priests, and laity would have to try to make sense of the situation on that basis.
But now, from Portugal to Poland and throughout the Americas, the 19th century saw papacy and national Churches together in conflict with liberal regimes who made no secret of their opposition to the Church as such—and to its Faith. Under such conditions, the pope went from being the religious head of the Church who might or might not be correct in the political arena, to being the beleaguered religious and political leader of the faithful across the globe. This was a role particularly suited to Blessed Pius IX, who not only had to offer moral support to his embattled children in foreign lands but was directly attacked by the forces of Liberalism in the persons of Cavour and Garibaldi.
In response, he called for volunteers from all over the Catholic world to defend him. These truly gallant and heroic young men—the Papal Zouaves—rallied to Pius’ banner. From across the planet, they came; often enough, they and/or their families were veterans of the Church’s struggles against the revolution in their own homelands. They saw their service in the Papal States as a continuation of those struggles and, indeed, as a latter-day Crusade.
From all of the political and military conflicts besetting the Church in this era arose ultramontanism. Capped by the definition of Papal Infallibility at Vatican I, followed almost immediately by the definitive (so far!) loss of the Papal States, this in turn gave the Holy Father a redoubled moral authority. The multiplication of Catholic Parties in various countries (forerunners of the now defanged and secularized Christian Democratic parties) under Leo XIII, as well as his timely and useful writings on the social issues, reinforced the high repute of the Vicar of Christ.
World War I and the ruin of Austria-Hungary—the last Catholic great power—ushered in the interwar Catholic Revival, when the lack of Catholic temporal power was seen in many quarters as an advantage, and when, if anything, Catholic politics became even more clerical. Certainly, the direct leadership of the clergy in the Catholic parties in the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Slovenia, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere was seen as a very good thing indeed (although the same tendency in the United States pitted Fr. Coughlin against Msgr. John Ryan).
World War II propelled the almost ghostly figure of Pius XII into interstellar heights in the general Catholic imagination—heights which he clambered even higher, if possible, as a result of his postwar advocacy of the persecuted Church in the newly Communist Captive Nations and patronage of De Gasperi, Schuman, and Adenauer (themselves all considered for beatification). This prestige was duly passed on to St. John XXIII.
Perhaps only someone of Pius XII’s sterling reputation could have put through the liturgical changes he oversaw (alterations in Holy Week, abolition of most octaves, etc.) with barely a note of dissent. So, too, with John XXIII’s tinkering with the calendar. Indeed, it was the view of the pope as virtually the Oracle at Delphi that initially allowed Paul VI to alter so much with relatively little adverse reaction—although for those who did so react, the full force of Roman power was brought to bear. (Read more.)