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| Coat of Arms of Pius XII |
I remember the death of Pius XII. It was a Wednesday night—a school night—and
we had just gone to bed, probably about 9:30.
For some reason I had gotten up after about a half hour and gone back
downstairs where my parents were watching television. I heard the news bulletin break through the
television show they were watching. In those days, it was black and white, of
course and I vaguely remember that the program may have been Bat Masterson, but I do remember clearly
how startling an idea it was that the Pope was dead. I didn’t know any other pope, of course. When one is young, one does not think of a pope dying. The Pope was an institution, not a human
being. Pius XII. There had been a Pius XI, but that was long
before me. As a kid still in grade
school, I had never given it much thought but presumed there had only been
Piuses. Twelve of them. A link through the centuries to Peter and
through Peter to Jesus, to God. I really
was pretty unsophisticated, I guess but for a generation who only knew John
Paul II, the shock was similar. Popes
just seemed to be the bridge between us in this world and God in the world
above. Of course, Pius XII was, or
seemed to be, no mere mortal—he transcended the world of the simply human—this
was a Pope who seemed to float above our everyday world, who represented the
Divine to our spiritual imaginations. When
it came to Popes, Pius had lulled us into a sort of monophysitism where his
humanity had been absorbed into a papal divinity.
This was no accident. Pius was a man who invented the papacy for
his age. He understood, at least at a
subliminal level, the idea that the “medium is the message” long before anyone
heard of Marshall McLuhan. And for those
of us of his generation, no Pope would ever measure up to Pius XII. He set the bar as to what a Pope should be.
Now I don’t want this to be taken as a
negative, and I am not trying to be funny or to ridicule, but in fact, Pius was
somewhat of an ecclesiastical Sheldon Cooper.
He was a brilliant man but a social misfit who was incapable of normal
human relationships. He was all
intellect and no conscious affect; a man of rigid protocols and compulsive
routine. He was born Eugenio Maria
Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli on March 2nd 1876 to a Princely family of
the “Black Nobility”—the Roman aristocracy that refused to recognize the Kingdom
of Italy and its claims on the former papal states. The Pacelli were steadfast
supporters of the Papacy and its lost claims to civil power, and family members
were among the most active employees of the Holy See. Eugenio was one of four children—two boys and
two girls and was educated as a day student in various private schools. At eighteen he enrolled in Rome’s most
ancient seminary, the Collegio Capranica.
The Capranica is not only the oldest seminary in Rome but perhaps the
most exclusive, admitting less than a dozen new students each year. At the same time it has turned out a
remarkable number of prelates for the Church.
There was no doubt that Pacelli was not
to be a simple parish priest but would go on for a career in the Church. His family connections and social position guaranteed
that, but still Eugenio could not handle life in the seminary. He had been a coddled child—not inherently delicate
but much cossetted by his parents, particularly an over-devoted mother. He had never been encouraged to form
friendships with other children at school.
He had no peers—others lacked the impeccable social standing of the
Pacelli. His inability to develop peer
relationships made life at the Capranica impossible, but no other collegio was suitable—and, in any event,
would have been no less disturbing to the introverted young seminarian. Yet it was unthinkable that he should
withdraw from priestly studies.
Permission was sought and easily obtained that he should live at home
while continuing his studies. This, of
course, only served to reinforce Eugenio’s isolation and retard his social
development.
Now when I say that his social skills
were arrested, I do not mean that he lacked the proper forms of etiquette. Nothing could be further from the truth. Like other families of the Black Nobility,
protocol was very air which they breathed.
The Pacelli, like other Black families, were rigid in maintaining their
public appearance in matters of dress, speech, conveyance, entertainment,
table-manners, and other aspects of social niceties. Frankly, they would have made Downton Abbey
look like the Beverly Hillbillies. The
honor of the disenfranchised papacy depended on the uncompromised social
propriety of its nobility. But again,
this very artificial living environment made Eugenio compulsive (at the least)
in all matters of public persona.
When it came time for ordination to the
priesthood, Eugenio was not ordained with the other candidates for the Diocese
of Rome, but was ordained by himself in a private ceremony in the personal
chapel of Archbishop Francesco de Paolo Casetta, Patriarch of Antioch and soon
to be Cardinal, on Easter Day 1899. As
ever, Eugenio was to stand alone—he had no peers. He had a brief assignment to his home parish,
the Chiesa Nuova, allowing him to continue to live at home, but after two years
was given a post in the Secretariat of State and given the assignment to be the
personal representative of Pope Leo XIII to deliver condolences to King Edward
VII of England on the death of Queen Victoria.
This is an interesting assignment.
Pacelli was 25 years old and a simple priest and yet was sent to a King
on the personal behalf of a Pope. Rome
and England had no official diplomatic ties of course—and English Law
prohibited any such official ties—yet diplomatic niceties required the
personal—if not official—condolences.
The messenger obviously had to be totally unofficial—thus not a
prelate—and yet a person of sufficient standing to represent a Pope and not be
a slight to the King. Pacelli was
perfect. While not a prelate, he was a
noble. And he could be counted on to
have the gravity and savvy to carry this off.
It also was a clear sign that he was going to be someone.
Pacelli’s rise was quick. He received the Roman Doctorate and became a
monsignor by 28. He stood in favor of
Pius X’s Sectretary of State—and, for all practical purposes,
vice-pope—Cardinal Merry del Val. He
accompanied Merry del Val to London for an International Eucharistic Congress
in 1908 and he was sent back to London to deliver the congratulations of the
Holy See to George V upon his coronation in 1911. On these trips he met several Englishmen,
including Winston Churchill, whose contacts would be invaluable during World
War II. By 1917 he was an Archbishop and
papal nuncio to Bavaria. As such he
handled all diplomatic ties of the Holy See for the German Empire as Berlin and
the Holy See did not have formal diplomatic ties. This was the final year and a half of World
War I, so it was a crucial post at a crucial time. His post as nuncio was formally moved to
Berlin and the Weimar Republic in 1920 and he continued in this post until
recalled to Rome in 1929. He was
prescient about Hitler and the evils of National Socialism, but he also had had
to deal with the threat of a Communist Revolution in Munich after the German
collapse of 1918. In 1929 he was created cardinal and named
papal secretary of State to Pius XI, a post in which he continued to serve
until h is election as Pope in March, 1939.
Pius was a skilled diplomat but, unlike his
successor as Pope, Giuseppe Roncalli (later John XXIII) he owed his success not
to personal charm but to his rigid rationality and aristocratic manners. Pacelli was not a man, he was a machine. Very atypical to the Italian personality, he
was highly structured and manically organized.
He was a stickler for detail and he never let down his guard regarding
the dignity of the offices he held whether it that of the priesthood, a papal
diplomat, or Cardinal Secretary of State.
Not the slightest jot or tittle of protocol was overlooked. Ever. He was always dressed impeccably and to his
rank. His manners were flawless. His residence, whether official or while in
transit, was perfectly in keeping with the demands of his station. The guard was never let down. There was no personal life nor any
personality—he was always exactly what he was expected to be whether in public
or in private.
During his time in Germany he built a
staff of very talented aids that were to remain around him for the remainder of
his life: Monsignor Ludwig Kaas, Father Robert Leiber SJ, and the Franciscan
Mother Pasqualina Lenhert. These were
talented and competent people, and like Pius, people who were totally devoted
to the institutional aspects of Catholicism and who tended to view the world
from a structuralist perspective. They
would have been totally unable to understand the personalist philosophy and
policies of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis would send them
totally around the bend. Pasqualina was
particularly interesting as she was cut of the same protective—and
isolating—nature has had been Pacelli’s mother.
Again, think of Sheldon Cooper.
Pius was elected Pope on his 63rd
birthday, March 2, 1939. There was
nothing of the Italian parish priest about him as there had been of his
predecessors Pius X or Pius XI.
(Benedict XV, Pope between the two Piuses, also lacked a personal
warmth, but was not the automaton that was Pacelli.) As Pope Pius maintained the austere personal
habits he had followed his entire life.
Moreover, no detail of papal ceremony or prerogative was overlooked or
abandoned. He took his meals in absolute
privacy as he had always done. He ran
his life by a schedule as rigid as the German railways. His housekeeper, the German nun Mother Pasqualina,
served as bouncer to the Papal apartment, determining who had access to the
Pope and when. No breach of lèse majesté was tolerated. Even senior Cardinals could not get past
her. Appearing in public, Pius always
had an ethereal look on his face. He
could not look another person in the eye or bear to be looked at in the
eye—this was all his inability to sustain human contact.
Allegedly Pius had once “vice”—and that
was a love for speed. When travelling
the road to the papal summer residence at Castle Gondalfo in the Alban Hills south of Rome, he would
order his chauffer to go faster and yet faster.
So it was Sheldon Cooper in Papal
drag. Sadly for many neo-trads this
“otherworldly” figure has become the papal ideal. John XXIII and John Paul I were huge
disappointments, for some even scandals. Paul VI and Benedict XVI came closer
to the ideal, but still fell considerably short. Francis seems to them to be no more than a
buffoon in what shambles of a papal vesture remain. This is what happens when we confuse
eccentric with holy, arrested development with the “spiritual.” Don’t get me wrong—I am not saying that Pius
was not a good man. He was an extremely
complex man and a rigid moral code was part of that complexity, too rigid in
fact. But we never saw the man—only the
persona that he created to keep the man hidden.
Pius may have been an extreme when it comes to this artificiality, but
he is not unique. For many priests the
persona or the mask of the perfect priest is the way that they keep from having
to deal with the man behind the mask, or the penis beneath the cassock. Strange for a religion whose central doctrine
is the incarnation? Good to have a Pope
like Francis where what you see is what you get.
