Implications of Another War

Those with roots in Europe may be more concerned about Ukraine than the Catholic press seems to be here. After all, we’re a lot further from the fighting and the sanctions.

For example, in London The Tablet seems to devote its whole print issue to the crisis. The summaries of two articles intrigue me: “Robert Brinkley, a former British ambassador to Kyiv, argues that the roots of the invasion lie in centuries of Russian disdain for Ukraine.  ‘I do not know how this will end,’ he writes, ‘but it is already clear that we are at a turning point in history.’ Mary Dejevsky explores a mystery that is a key part of the background to the tragedy: while in the 30 years since its independence, Ukraine has forged a cohesive and distinct national identity, Russia has failed to establish any national idea, or even to reinvent an old one.”

A turning point in history. I’m not ready for something that grand, though I fear it. I’ve tried to gift all of you Marc Fisher’s Thursday offering from the Washington Post: “In one week of war, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may have veered history in a new direction.” To keep my head from spinning, I am going to turn to Massimo Faggioli and spin your heads instead!

In La Croix International, he writes about “A ‘real war’ and ‘culture war’ dividends: The Catholic Church and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

You might wonder what Faggioli means by the “dividends of the culture war.” I’ll begin an explanation with a more obvious article. Just this week Kathryn Joyce processes insights from the Catholic press for the radicals who read Mother Jones: “Bannon, Milo, and Other Right-Wing Activists Are Hellbent on Transforming the Catholic Church, starting with the Pope.” We know that story. We were at the Bishops’ meeting last fall, in person or virtually. Joyce is writing about the other militants we saw outside.

In contrast, Faggioli makes a lot of allusions but does not use many names. I suppose I could call him up and ask, but I don’t generally do that. Here, you are going to get my guesses. And my guess is that he means an international cadre of those Joyce writes about. “In the context of the globalization of the American ‘culture wars,’ the ideologues of religious resentment see the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the continuation of Church politics by other means.” I really love “the ideologues of religious resentment” to describe those on the other side of church politics from me, and also, as it happens, from Pope Francis, the one name that Faggioli is not reluctant to specify. He’s the focus of their resentment.

I tend to see them as those whom liberal and progressive Catholics left behind. The political problem is that many American Bishops are in that group, and they “have always accused Pope Francis of being a populist and not a real Catholic.” I must quote here:

In his  teachings and gestures, the Argentine pope dwells rightfully on the faults and responsibilities of the West, for example on immigration, refugees, the environment.

He does this without ever adopting the ideology of illiberalism, but he is clearly trying to disentangle Catholicism from the Western liberal order, in favor of a post-capitalistic global perspective more aligned to the values of the Catholic social teaching.

That’s all well and good. I support that effort. Faggioli continues:

But it turns out that the threats against the values of the Catholic social doctrine — beginning with the dignity of all human persons — do not come only from Western capitalism and liberal modernity.

They also come from other systems that the Vatican has been cautious to overtly criticize, espoused by the emerging or returning global powers: Russia, as well as China and India.

Faggioli is critical of that caution, and recognizing it as a problem is one of the dividends of the Ukraine war. Francis deeply desires to build bridges to leaders of other religious, but “scholars of the Eastern Orthodox tradition have been warning the West for years about Putin’s manipulation of the [Russian Orthodox] Church at the service of a neo-imperial ideology.” I alluded to that last week; here I see a list of Francis’s strong responses to other conflicts and his delayed and tepid response to this one.

Faggioli goes much further in saying that another dividend of Putin’s action is separating the pro-Putin Catholic right in the US from “those ‘Cold War liberals’ who were a fundamental pillar of 20th Century US Catholicism.” I think he means my father and Cardinal Spellman, and maybe even bishops today who are tempted by the right but can’t forget that Russia once was the Soviet Union. “The assault against Capitol Hill in January 2021 did not burst the bubble of Trumpian Catholics, but their support for Putin’s war in Ukraine might just do that.”

Finally, Faggioli considers the effect of the Ukraine war on the Church’s teaching on peace: “how Catholics perceive the issue” might change. He recalls the 2016 Pax Christi conference at the Vatican that called for an end to the just war theory: no more war. “But that is now more difficult to accept, especially if you live in Eastern Europe and feel threatened by Putin’s Russia. At the same time, John XXIII’s argument for peace — found in his personal testament and last encyclical Pacem in Terris — is more relevant today than ever before.” Not too specific here, unfortunately.

I will leave you with this: “The war in Ukraine confirms a major intuition of Francis’ pontificate — that we are currently experiencing a ‘piecemeal’ World War III.” Pray that it not be so.