Whether one believes it is of divine or secular origin, the papacy’s impact on human history has been remarkable. Because its legacy has been so rich and varied, however, it is a challenge to write a full-length history. Most authors can’t master a single pontificate, let alone all 265. Many who make the effort fail.
The latest is John Julius Norwich, author of Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy. Norwich is a popular historian and television personality in Britain, but his forte is not Christianity, much less the papacy, and his limitations show. Even aside from the misleading title (no pope was ever an “absolute monarch” in the way that phrase suggests), Norwich’s book gets off to a poor start, and never recovers.
After ridiculing the omniscience of Christ (“would Jesus really have been thinking at this early stage of founding a church?”), Norwich assures us that “Luke was the first” Gospel written (most scholars affirm it was Mark); and then offers disingenuous statements about Peter’s presence and activities in Rome:
What Peter most certainly did not do was found the Roman Church. He seems to have been in the city for only a very short time before his martyrdom, and he could not possibly have been a diocesan bishop as we understand the term and as the pope is Bishop of Rome today.
Of course, Catholics believe that Christ, not Peter, found the Church; and even the most traditional Catholic wouldn’t claim that the Chair of St. Peter, at that time, was exercised as it is today. Recent scholarship has much to say about the origins and development of the Petrine ministry, but Norwich appears oblivious to it, and instead comes across as an entrenched skeptic, determined to expose the Church of Rome. (In a candid interview with Canada’s National Post, Norwich confessed: “I think it’s built on practically nothing.”)
As one reads on, it becomes clear that Absolute Monarchs has no real interest in the popes, other than to mock or marginalize them, and rob them of their saving grace: their faith. “As far as possible,” writes Norwich, in an introduction, “I have tried to steer well clear of theology.” Then why write a history of the papacy at all? As Cambridge’s Eamon Duffy wryly remarked, “A history of the popes with most of the religion left out is a matter of some wonder.”
Norwich tips his hand early on when he tells us that papal history is “all too often stultifyingly boring.” Yes, to the sensationalist, ordinary goodness and decency are dull: what excites them most is scandal and sin, especially when high-ranking prelates are involved. Attracted to vice, rather than virtue, Norwich has produced a tabloid history of the papacy.
To say this book is cynical would be an understatement. What one writer admiringly called “the pageant of the popes,” Norwich reduces to dumb luck and serial power grabs. While most popes strove to lead good lives, Absolute Monarchs is dominated by freaks and misfits, out to deceive and oppress. Norwich’s disdain for saintly popes is summed up in his judgment of Pius X: “He was too quiet, too humble, too holy, and his very holiness closed his mind to original thought.” Even on the rare occasion he praises a pope, Norwich does so more because of their secular achievements, than ability to inspire believers.
To make the papacy look as absurd as possible, he resorts to fantasy and conjecture. Norwich devotes an entire chapter to the female “Pope Joan,” even as he admits she was non-existent. Later, he recycles lurid claims that someone in the Vatican may have murdered John Paul I, recommending, with a straight face, that people read up on the supposed conspiracy, “then decide for themselves.” It’s as if he is taking cues from a Monty Python skit, or the poison-the-pope scene in The Godfather: Part III.
That Norwich disparages John Paul II (“a reactionary”) and Benedict XVI (“distinctly shaky”) is to be expected, as are his attacks on Catholic moral teachings. More surprising—if only because he champions it—is his assertion about Vatican II: “It contradicted Pius XII’s pronouncements on almost every main issue.” In fact, Vatican II relied heavily on Pius XII’ teachings, and cited them approvingly over 200 times—more than any modern pontiff. This is not just faulty history; it is striking ignorance.
But nothing equals Norwich’s treatment of Pope Paul II, which takes anti-papal propaganda to new heights. He writes:
The pope’s sexual proclivities aroused a good deal of speculation. He seems to have had two weaknesses—for good-looking young men and for melons—though the contemporary rumor that he enjoyed watching the former being tortured while he gorged himself on the later is surely unlikely. The stroke that killed him on July 26, 1471, at the age of only fifty-four is said to have been brought on by a surfeit of both.
This is scurrilous. As both Mandell Creighton and Ludwig von Pastor show, in their classic histories of the papacy, there is no evidence that Paul II was a bad man, much less that he was an immoral glutton. Claims that he was began with Paul’s secular-minded opponents, whom he opposed because of their exaltation of paganism over Christian teaching. One of them, Bartolomeo Platina, enacted revenge against Paul II by writing a malicious and largely fictitious biography of him, much like modern ideologues have tried to defame Pius XII. But just as the latter have been exposed, so too has Platina. Von Pastor, the first historian granted access to the Vatican’s secret archives, published almost 200 pages vindicating Paul II, while unearthing primary evidence revealing that Platina, in stark contrast, was a “violent and immoral man.”
Leave it to Norwich to confuse villainy with virtue.
To defend Paul II is not to make excuses for those popes guilty as charged. That the papacy has had certain unworthy occupants is no secret, least of all to Catholics. But it is exactly in analyzing the bad popes where Absolute Monarchs fails. Commenting on the state of the Church at the beginning of the Reformation, Norwich relates that reverence for the papacy “had been utterly lost in the hearts of men.” In the hearts of Protestant reformers, no doubt, but not the Catholic ones. The latter knew the force of Protestantism’s critique, and in fact agreed with it in part—but always maintained that the papal office, as such, apart from abuse, was essential to the Church, and that no true reform was possible without it. History has proven them correct.
As the centuries have passed, Catholics and Evangelicals have come much closer together. Mutual accusations have given way to ecumenical reconciliation, and one of the chief reasons why has been the papacy—ironically, the same institution which once so divided Christendom. Even with remaining disagreements, Evangelicals have expressed increasing respect and appreciation for the papal office. Hermann Pottmeyer, a leading Catholic theologian and ecumenicist, has written: “Whenever the Petrine ministry has been exercised according to Christ’s will and example, it has proved a blessing for the church, protecting its unity and defending its independence. This is confirmed by the experience of Christians who lack this office. They themselves regret that they have no one charged with preserving unity.”
Nowhere in Absolute Monarchs do we get any sense of this, or how the papacy made it possible. Norwich informs us that he is an “agnostic Protestant” who has “absolutely no ax to grind,” but the former should not have prevented him from writing a more credible book, and the latter is contradicted by almost every page of this one.
One doesn’t have to be a Catholic, or even religious, to write intelligently about the popes, but one does need to be careful about one’s facts, and respect the vision that faith brings. It is precisely these qualities which Norwich lacks.
William Doino Jr. is a contributor to Inside the Vatican magazine, among many other publications, and writes often about religion, history and politics. He contributed an extensive bibliography of works on Pius XII to The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII.
RESOURCES
The Oxford Dictionary of Popes by J.N.D. Kelly and Michael Walsh
A History of the Popes—with the Religion Left Out by Eamon Duffy, Times Literary Supplement, April 27, 2011
The Petrine Ministry in a Changing Church by Hermann J. Pottmeyer
The Primacy of the Successor of Peter in the Mystery of the Church, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Church Unity and the Papal Office: An Ecumenical Dialogue on John Paul II’s Encyclical Ut Unum Sint, edited by Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson
Comments:
Today I saw a most brazen (and sickening) movie preview of a "homosexual" "love story." Hollywood had no compunction about placing this prior to a fairly benign movie called "Mozart's Sister." The enemy is advancing, gathering his evil memes and no doubt Bert and Ernie will soon be married. God help our children! The younger the demographic slice one looks at the more of the garbage fills their heads. I was at a Lucrezia Borgia opera rehearsal in San Francisco last week and the teenage audience cheered when what had been close friendship in the original became unsubtle "same sex" attraction in the "cutting edge " version.
We are entering a dark age. We must pray and fast more. And thank God for the eternal anchor of the Catholic Church and the Magisterium. Without the papacy, our Faith would inevitably break over time into myriad competing sects (something St. Paul warned about from the start).
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Ranke updated in the light of modern research would be worth reading; Norwich's work, from dipping into it, is not
Have you considered the possibility that these citations were because the Council was a repudiation of Pius XII's policies and therefore wanted to cite him wherever possible to avoid precisely the charge of inconsistency?
If by "policies" you mean Pius XII's Magisterial teachings, yes, I have considered the charge, and rejected it as demonstrably untrue, like much else that is claimed about the Council. On November 8, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI gave an important address enttitled, "The Multifaceted and Fruitful Magisterium of Pius XII," commenting:
"It is well known that of the oral interventions and writings presented by the Second Vatican Council Fathers, over 1,000 references cite the Magisterium of Pius XII. Not all the documents of the Council have an array of Notes, but in those documents that do have them, the name of Pius XII recurs more than 200 times. This means that, with the exception of Sacred Scripture, this Pope is the most authoritative and frequently cited source.
"It is also well known that the special notes of these documents are not, generally, simple explicative references, but often constitute true and proper integral parts of Conciliar texts. They do not furnish only justifications to support what the text affirms, but offer an interpretive key."
For further documentation of Pius XII's positive influence on the Council, see, "Pope Pius XII and the Vatican Council," by Francis J. Weber in The American Benedictine Review (September 1970); as well as Father Michael O'Carroll's excellent biography of Pius XII.
"'The pope’s [Paul II's] sexual proclivities aroused a good deal of speculation. He seems to have had two weaknesses—for good-looking young men and for melons—though the contemporary rumor that he enjoyed watching the former being tortured while he gorged himself on the later is surely unlikely.'"
This is not scholarly writing. The point of this book is to make money by appealing to the public's appetite for the lurid and the vulgar. A book about history will not appeal to the secular public. A book about scandal in the Catholic Church will. This premise explains the popularity of "Hitler's Pope" and "The DaVinci Code". Norwich claims he doesn't have an ax to grind. He may not have an ideological ax to grind, however the contents of his book are determined by the principal that the more scandal in the book the better sales will be. This principal trumps a fair analysis of the historical record. This book was written for the people who buy supermarket tabloids.
"And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matt. 28:20). Christ said that shortly after Peter had denied Him three times and yet was told to feed his lambs and sheep. (John 21:15-18).
I mention Eamon Duffy in my review: he is the author of Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (Yale University Press, updated edition 2006), which is an outstanding history, even if its judgments are debatable.
Two overviews I have found valuable are: An Illustrated History of the Popes: Saint Peter to John Paul II by Michael Walsh (St. Martin's Press, 1980); and The Papacy, by Paul Johnson, Michael Walsh, et. al, a collection of essays by leading historians (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997).
Two recent histories which bring the story of the papacy and Church up to date are: A History of the Popes: From Peter to the Present by John W. O'Malley, S.J. (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010); and A New Short History of the Catholic Church (revised edition, 2011) by Norman Tanner.
Two great Church historians, Hubert Jedin and Owen Chadwick, have written brilliantly about the popes (and much else)--I would recommend almost anything they've written-- and for general cultural overviews of what the modern papacy has faced, no one surpasses Michael Burleigh (Earthly Powers, Sacred Causes), in my opinion.
The most authoritative modern reference work is the three-volume set, The Papacy: An Encyclopedia (Routledge, 2001), edited by Philippe Levillain, et. al. It should be available in academic libraries. I would also recommend Cardinal Walter Kasper's work on the Church and ecumenism; and the big volume, Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition, edited by Mathew Lamb and Matthew Levering (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Finally, to understand why the papacy has endured for 2,000 years -- in spite of every kind of obstacle, internal and external--Paul Simon's The Human Element in the Church of Christ (The Newman Press, 1954) is superb. Here, Simon describes how God works through imperfect vessels, often in extraordinary ways; and how men who become popes "are still human beings, however exalted their vocation may be. Thus they make human mistakes, sometimes very grave ones. But the Church, as this book explains, develops under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and is independent of human weakness. The work and success of the Church, in the final analysis, are the triumph of Christ."
In connection with von Ranke and the papacy, an interesting anecdote: back in 2003, I published an extensive interview with Sir Martin Gilbert (Inside the Vatican, August 2003), the famous historian and official biographer of Winston Churchill. In the course of mentioning Churhill's meeting with Pope Pius XII, in 1944, Sir Martin commented: "As I have recorded in the Churchill biography, Churchill had a phenomenal memory. One of the things that he had learned by heart--as a young man-- was one of Thomas Babington Macaulay's essays, on Ranke's History of the Popes. Then, as Churchill came out of the Vatican, he recited the whole essay, and said to the person he was reciting it to: 'The fact that the Roman Church in the course of two thousand years has outlived all other instituions means that there must be something in her faith that can survive so many centuries.'"
Please don't take the teenage contingent at an opera (I'd be stunned if it was a large contingent) as univerally representative. The sort of young people who populate the classical music world tend to be disproportionately liberal. In San Francisco, at that! Really, it ought to be taken with a large grain of salt.
One can hope. But if you bathe in mental manure (e.g., modern psychology texts, Oprah, Sponge Bob, commercials aired during pro football games, lyrics of pop music, etc.) long enough, your thinking is going to come out smelling funny. And studies show increasing acceptance of "gay marriage" and "gays" in the military as the age of those surveyed declines.
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What, particularly, does and "agnostic protestant" protest? His self-description is rather enlightening; he cannot make up his mind for, it appears, he hasn't one.
“he started with the Protestant dogma, cherished in the depths of his nature, that a priesthood was a corruption of the simplicity of the Gospel. First, then, he would protest against the sacrifice of the Mass; next he gave up baptismal regeneration, and the sacramental principle; then he asked himself whether dogmas were not a restraint on Christian liberty as well as sacraments; then came the question, what after all was the use of teachers of religion? Why should anyone stand between him and his Maker? After a time it struck him, that this obvious question had to be answered by the Apostles, as well as by the Anglican clergy; so he came to the conclusion that the true and only revelation of God to man is that which is written on the heart. This did for a time, and he remained a Deist. But then it occurred to him, that this inward moral law was there within the breast, whether there was a God or not, and that it was a roundabout way of enforcing that law, to say that it came from God, and simply unnecessary, considering it carried with it its own sacred and sovereign authority, as our feelings instinctively testified; and when he turned to look at the physical world around him, he really did not see what scientific proof there was there of the Being of God at all, and it seemed to him as if all things would go on quite as well as at present, without that hypothesis as with it; so he dropped it, and became a purus, putus Atheist.”
This is not speculation: both the personal histories of numerous 19th century thinkers and the progress of numerous Nonconformists sects follow a similar trajectory.
This approach, which channels Kitty Kelley and Paul Blanshard, will no doubt impress secular editors at mainstream newspapers and magazines who will seek out ignorant and biased reviewers to gush over Norwich's "scoops" and hype his book as an important work.
Norwich is simply preaching to his increasingly shrinking secular and religious progressive choir.