A chronic temptation of the historian is to play the \u201cMonday morning quarterback\u201d who assumes that he would have made a correct decision in a past crisis. But the players at the time could only postulate consequences. The appeasers who signed the Munich Agreement in 1938 do not enjoy a happy legacy, but then the thought of repeating the carnage of the Great War was unspeakable. In his first use of the term, back in 1911, Churchill described \u201cune politique d\u2019apaisement\u201d as a wise strategy.<\/p>\n
A magnanimous Churchill wept at the coffin of Neville Chamberlain and eulogized: \u201cThe only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions.\u201d But if blundering by innocence is forgivable, not learning from mistakes is unconscionable. That distinguishes innocence from naivet\u00e9. Experience has crafted the adage: \u201cFool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some future historian may impute a lack of probity to the Vatican agreement with Beijing in 2018, which conceded civil interference in the appointment of bishops. Though difficult to assess since the full text has not been published, this clearly contravenes the canonical stricture that \u201cIn the future, no rights and privileges of election, nomination, presentation, or designation of bishops are granted to civil authorities.\u201d (Code of Canon Law c. 377.5)<\/p>\n
After Pope Pius XI realized that the Reichskonkordat of 1933 had been abused by Nazi Germany, he issued the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge\u2014\u201cwith burning indignation.\u201d Damage had been done, just as the Yalta Agreement of 1945 put Poland on the chopping block, a betrayal never forgotten by a Polish pope (Centesimus Annus, n. 24). He denounced the fallacy of communism in Warsaw in 1979, and Reagan did the same in his Westminster speech in 1982. The New York Times displayed its propensity to be fooled more than twice, by editorializing that John Paul II \u201cdoes not threaten the political order of the nation or of Eastern Europe\u201d and that Reagan was \u201cbordering on delusional.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the Holy See invokes two thousand years of diplomatic experience, China beats that by more than twice, and has treated the 2018 agreement as tissue, tearing down churches and persecuting faithful Catholics, not to mention banishing over a million Uighur Muslims and Falun Gong cultists to concentration camps. The issue is not theology but control. The Vatican Secretary of State said that \u201can act of faith is needed\u201d for the agreement to work, but the heroic Cardinal Zen replied that a \u201cmiracle\u201d is needed, and miracles are rare in Rome and Beijing.<\/p>\n
Diplomacy is a delicate art, and there have been saints among Catholic emissaries, though few remember Eusebius of Murano, Conrad of Ascoli, Anastasius Apocrisarius, and Fulrad of Saint Denis. There remains the haunting specter of the only diplomat among the Twelve Apostles, \u201cwho by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place\u201d (Acts 1:25).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Fr. George William Rutler, 5.26.19<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A chronic temptation of the historian is to play the \u201cMonday morning quarterback\u201d who assumes that he would have made a correct decision in a past crisis. But the players at the time could only postulate consequences. The appeasers who signed the Munich Agreement in 1938 do not enjoy a happy legacy, but then the …<\/span> Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13916"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13919,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13916\/revisions\/13919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}