The Modern Papacy since 1789 (review)

The Modern Papacy since 1789. By Frank J. Coppa. [Longman History of the Papacy.] (London and New York: Longman. 1998. Pp. viii, 296. Paperback.)

Though the last in chronological order, this is the first volume to be published in the new series "Longman History of the Papacy," of which A. D. Wright is the general editor. The series is designed for "students and general readers" as well as specialists. In this volume Professor Coppa, of St. John's University, New York, in his own words, "focuses on the papal response to the modern world and its influence and impact on developments from the outbreak of the French Revolution to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and Russia" (p. 14). To cover more than 200 years of papal history in only 258 pages requires extraordinary selectivity and conciseness. For the most part Dr. Coppa has written an external history, emphasizing the Holy See's reactions to liberalism, socialism, and the effects of industrialization and its relations with foreign governments and with the forces of Italian nationalism and anticlericalism. He is attentive to the development of papal social teaching from Leo XIII on and to papal promotion of the foreign missions, but he pays scant attention to the religious congregations of men and women whose founding was approved or whose work was fostered by the popes; moreover, he hardly mentions canonizations--those uniquely papal acts--even when they had political overtones as in the case of Joan of Arc or were exceptionally numerous as in the reign of John Paul II. He gives Pius X no credit for promoting the beauty of divine worship, especially sacred music, for issuing decrees regarding Holy Communion that affected all the faithful, or for establishing the Pontifical Biblical Institute. Nor does he acknowledge Pius XI's decision to improve ecclesiastical studies in Rome and throughout the world by his apostolic constitution of 1931. Coppa makes few concessions to the peculiar interests of his American readers; he does not mention Pius IX's founding of the American College in Rome or his elevation of the first American to the College of Cardinals.

Known especially for his previous books and articles on Pius IX and on Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli and for the Encyclopedia of the Vatican and Papacy, which he edited, Professor Coppa has used some documents from the Secret Vatican Archives mainly for Pius IX's pontificate; for the rest he cites mostly published primary and secondary sources (in genuine footnotes). For later popes he often summarizes their principal pronouncements, but in one case, that of the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus on the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, he has garbled Pius XII's teaching by asserting that the pope "proclaimed that Mary's body was raised from the grave shortly after her death" (p. 214), when actually the pope studiously refrained from pronouncing on the question of Mary's death, which was disputed among theologians. Another misleading treatment concerns Pius XI's abortive and so-called "hidden encyclical," drafted by three Jesuits in 1938, to the shortcomings of which Dr. Coppa does not allude. In regard to the alleged "silence" of Pius XII he joins the critics of the pope; he is not content to write that Pius did not say or do what some at that time thought he should say or do or what some now think he should have said or done, but Coppa regularly insists that Pius "failed," implying a moral fault, to do such things--he "failed to raise his voice to condemn the aggression" of Germany against Poland (p. 188); he "failed to censure" Nazi anti-Semitism (p. 228) clearly and publicly during the Holocaust; or else Coppa suggests criticism by adducing the opinion of others whom he cites without giving a possibly different interpretation: "it was charged" (p. 191) and "many believed" (p. 196). He passes over the Holy See's strenuous efforts to save Rome from Allied bombing in...