A History of the Popes in the Twentieth Century: The Struggle for Spiritual Clarity against Political Confusion (review)

This is a clear and generally balanced survey of the modern papacy from Benedict XV to Benedict XVI that provides few revelations but offers a good assessment of the twentieth-century papacy. Based on a wide array of secondary sources, it traces the role and impact of eight popes in a concise manner and might have been better published in paperback making it more accessible to its primary audience of students and general readers. Eight of the eleven chapters of the volume focus on the pontificates of Benedict XV (1914–22), Pius XI (1922–39), Pius XII (1939–58), John XXIII (1958–63), Paul VI (1963–78), John Paul I (1978), John Paul II (1978–2005), and concluding with Benedict XVI (2005–). Chapter 7 is devoted to “Vatican Council II (1962–65),”wherein Owen F. Cummings appears to concur with Eamon Duffy on its importance. Chapter 10 on the contrasting theologies of Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar, while interesting, disrupts the thematic structure of the volume.

Although titled A History of Popes in the Twentieth Century, Popes Leo XIII (1878–1903) and Pius X (1903–14) are not accorded separate chapters, while Benedict XVI, a pope of the twenty-first century, merits one. The exclusion of Leo is understandable in light of the fact that most of his pontificate was in the nineteenth century, and he receives some coverage in chapter 1, “The Papacy in the 18th and 19th Centuries.” The decision not to grant a separate chapter to the conservative Pius X, the only pope in the modern age hitherto proclaimed a saint, appears more problematic if not arbitrary. The author’s assessment of this pope and his critique of his “reign of doctrinal terror” and “modernist witch hunt” (p. 15) apparently played a part in Pius X’s exclusion. Theological rather than historical considerations may have influenced Cummings, who is a Deacon and Regents’ Professor of Theology at Mount Angel Seminary in Oregon, to depart from his customary objectivity in his assessment of Pius X. Battista Mondin, in his survey The Popes of the Modern Ages [sic]: From Pius IX to John Paul II (Vatican City, 2005) on the other hand, strikes an apologetic tone. Mondin, who is a priest, includes Pius X among the “magnificent ten” he examines in his volume (p. 7).

Since objectivity is a problem for many authors of works on the Church and papacy, Cummings’ a assessment of the most controversial pope of the twentieth century—Pius XII—was of especial concern. About this pope still swirl the accusations of “silence” during the Holocaust and “impartiality” during World War II. Furthermore, his sainthood continues to be ardently supported by some and bitterly opposed by others. Cummings, to his credit, does not lose his historical perspective by becoming embroiled in the Pius War. In chapter 4 on this pope, he avoids the pitfall of becoming a defender or denigrator of Pius XII—no small achievement. Although he questions aspects of his policy (p. 71), he does not impugn this pope’s “personal moral integrity” (p. 69). Unfortunately, albeit understandably, he accepts many of the generalizations that continue to dominate the secondary literature, including the belief that Pope Pius XI and his secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli (1930–39), saw eye to eye (p. 67).This assertion and other generalizations about Pius XI and Pacelli have been discredited by the opening of the Vatican Archives for the pontificate of Pius XI.