The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII: The Roman Catholic Church and the Division of Europe, 1943-1950, and: Vatikanische Ostpolitik unter Johannes XXIII. und Paul VI. 1958-1978 (review)

Throughout the twentieth century, relations between the Vatican and the countries of eastern Europe have been chequered and difficult. After 1917, the Communist leaders of the newly established Soviet Union made no secret of their antipathy to all institutional religion as nothing more than the relics of superstition to be rooted out. When in 1945 the Soviet Empire engulfed the rest of eastern Europe, the same policy prevailed. How the Vatican and the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church responded to this ideological and institutional challenge is the subject of these two books. The first, by a New Brunswick historian, describes the middle years of the reign of Pius XII, while the second consists of papers given by a group of German scholars, first delivered at a 1998 conference, covering the twenty years of the reigns of John XXIII and Paul VI. None of these authors had the opportunity to consult the Vatican's own archives. But Kent had done extensive and diligent research into other documentary collections, while the German symposium called on the reminiscences of several participants of the protracted negotiations of the 1960's and 1970's, especially dealing with German and Polish affairs. These works thus complement the well-informed study by Hans-Jakob Stehle on the Vatican's eastern policies, first published in 1975, and later updated and translated.

Kent begins by rightly pointing out that the enormous literature about Pius XII concentrates almost exclusively on his first six years as Pope and on the events of the war, particularly his response, or lack of it, to the Holocaust. This intense debate has been marred by too many criticisms based on hindsight or wishful thinking, a desire to promote a reformed Papacy, or on unchecked moral self-righteousness. By contrast, Pius' later years, and particularly his policies toward the encroachment of the Communist empire, have been largely ignored (not least because of the lack of access to the archives). Yet Kent seeks to show that Pius' stance in the postwar years can also be criticized. He contends that Pius XII had a very conscious agenda for combating Communism, which, however, ran counter to the policies of the great powers and occasionally to the demands of good sense. By favoring the reintegration of Europe under Catholic auspices and resolutely refusing all co-operation with Communist regimes, Pius failed to give his east European bishops better support and assistance in coping with the impossible situations they faced after 1945.

Kent's lengthy and excellently researched survey of the position of the Catholic churches in war-torn Europe and the United States makes clear the complexity of the various national situations, and the rapid fluidity of the political circumstances of the immediate postwar years. But he then claims (p. 76) that the Vatican was caught in a blinkered and inflexible view of the world and its future, emerging from traditional European cultural values. Yet, in retrospect, Pius XII was surely right in deploring the Allies' wartime policy of unconditional surrender and their wishful thinking that concessions to Stalin, as at Yalta, would lead to a peace-loving and co-operative Soviet policy in the postwar years. Kent contends, instead, that the Vatican was at fault in pressing the American and British to stand firm against Soviet expansion, or in not realizing that Stalin's policy would be cautious and non-ideological in dealing with the churches, especially in Poland. Yet, by his own admission, the Soviet threat in 1945...