…is the title of John Allen’s newest book, linked over there on the right. In the introduction, Allen lays out his intentions:

At the very least, I hope this book will help English-speaking Catholics see that in many cases the values Rome is striving to protect are dear to them too, even if they differ on specific applications, and this shared set of values provides a basis for dialogue. If one wants to place a theological label on this, I suppose it would be communion I hope to serve communion in the Church by helping Catholics speaking the same language.

and:

Part of respect is taking others at their word about the logic for their decisions, and treating seriously the arguments they provide for particular actions and choices. Thus when I cover the Vatican, I do not start with the assumption that Church officials are guilty until proven innocent and that the Vatican’s motives for any given decision can be assumed to revolve around power and self-interest unless shown otherwise. To tell the truth, my experience is that most of the time Vatican officials are trying to make the best calls they can for the common good of the Church, based on the information available to them and the political and theological convictions they hold.

He follows this passage with a comment that many critics of Vatican ways are treated like rock stars by their audiences (he cites James Carroll and Eugene Kennedy by name) but then points out that those who labor in the Curia do so all but anonymously.

So that’s his inention – more specific than “how the Vatican works” and a bit more interesting. He begins with a “Vatican 101,” introducing terms and basic concepts, then moves on to elucidate five myths about the Vatican, which he’s done in the past few months in a couple of interviews.

Then he gets to “Vatican Psychology” in which he elucidates a “Top Ten Vatican Values,” which include authority, loyalty, bella figura (loosely translated, “looking good”), cosmpolitanism, objectivity, populism, and a few others.

He treats these values very even-handedly, explaining to his readers that “authority” as understood in this context is not just blatant, raw institutional authority, but an authority rooted in Christ’s mandate.

I think the element of this chapter that might irritate some the most is Allen’s insistence that Curial officials see themselves, not as elites, but as working for the common good of the entire church, keeping in mind the needs, not just of Americans and Europeans, but of Catholics worldwide, and protecting popular faith from the proposed innovations of elite intellectuals, and they are able to do this because of the value of cosmpolitanism – Curial officials come from all over the world and are in regular contact with people from all over the world.

…one could say that from a Roman point of view, the men and women of the Holy See regard themselves as the real “Voice of the Faithful” in the Catholic Church

“Vatican sociology” follows, in which Allen explains the layers of life in which Curial officials live, work and think – the environment of the Vatican itself, Rome, Italy and the European context. Here he has a bit of a problem, since in this latter section, he says that the experience of living and working in Rome tends to limit vision – since Rome is so priest-heavy, he says it’s hard for them to get worked up or to grasp the reality of the priest shortage in the West. This and his other examples contradict his claims in the previous chapter of the Vatican’s broad global vision, and he makes no attempt to reconcile these two apparently contradictory observations.

The “Vatican Theology” chapter contains nothing really new, and is basically a rundown of varying schools of thought on exactly how various church structures – Curial offices, the Synod of Bishops, and so on – fit into an theology of Church.

The last third of the book is taken up with two chapters, one on the sexual abuse crisis and one on the War in Iraq. Some of both are composed of chronological listings of events, which is useful to have, and, consistent with Allen’s intentions, there is a great deal of emphasis in explaining the Vatican’s positions and actions.

Allen’s book is not intended to be a critique – it’s intended to be an explanation. However I wondered sometimes as I read it how limiting his firmly-maintained focus on simply reporting from inside on the mindset of Vatican officials is in really understanding the whole picture. For example, that as Allen discusses questions of authority, loyalty and accountability, the light he shines only illumines so much. There is lots of discussion, including quotes from Curial officials themselves, about frustration with bishops not doing their jobs – bishops in the US, specifically – but then we’re brought back to these Vatican values of respect for authority and so on, and what it leaves us with is nothing but questions. There’s ample discussion of the theology of episcopal authority, but given the broader context of church history on these matters – which includes periods of time in which bishops were, indeed, publicly excoriated by their fellows and even deposed, regularly – the questions remain. Is this “accountability” we’re being told about an accountability to the Gospel or an accountability to a system?

And finally, since some of you will find this particularly interesting, I’ll share a quote from the Iraq chapter:

Though no Pope and no Vatican diplomat will ever come out and say so, the bottom line is that despite great respect for the American people and their democratic traditions, the Holy See simply does not think the United States is fit to run the world. As a country it is too rich, too narcissistic, too shortsighted and voluble, too young, to be entrusted with teh quasi-unfettered power that twentieth-century history entrusted to it….(goes on to say that there aren’t many, if any other countries that would fit the bill either)….Thus the Holy See’s diplomatic energy in coming years will have as a central aim the construction of a multilateral, multipolar world, which will necessarily imply a limitation on the power and influence of the United States. (378)

I realize this is just a sketch – but I did find the book very interesting and worth reading, even as it left some questions unanswered, perhaps purposely. I’d recommend it.