OSV STORY FOR DEC. 29

How the Vatican works (and how it doesn't)

Still another new book on the papacy and the Vatican finds that they work pretty well, but still need reforming

By Greg Burke

[Vatican City]

When British journalist John Cornwell published "A Thief in the Night: The Death of Pope John Paul I" in 1989, American priests and journalists in Rome scrambled to get copies as it arrived in the Eternal City. Those who couldn't find a copy found a way to photocopy one.

That is not going to be the case with Jesuit Father Thomas Reese's "Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church" (Harvard, $25). When Cornwell's book came out, all astute Vatican watchers were trying to identify one of the author's interviewees, a certain "Msgr. Sottovoce."

Sottovoce -- if not invented, at least compiled by Cornwell -- cut quite a figure. The author described him as going through two bottles of red wine over a sumptuous lunch as he described the Roman Curia. "The Vatican is a court, a palace of gossipy eunuchs," Sottovoce allegedly said. "The whole place floats on a sea of brilliant bitchery. To get on here you need a sponsor, you have to suck up to somebody."

Father Reese, a political scientist who has already written two books on the American bishops, takes a more subdued approach. There is no carping "Sottovoce." There are a lot of regular Joes, or at least the Vatican version of a regular Joe. And not everyone interested in the Church wants to hear from bitter, sniping monsignors.

No interest in Rome

Those who want just the facts (albeit many of them boring) should stick with Father Reese. The reader hears from an Italian American in the Curia, a council secretary, an official in the Curia, the superior of a religious order in Rome, an official in the Secretariat of State, an American monsignor and the like.

They are not up to the nastiness of Sottovoce. About as close as the reader will get will be from "an American monsignor" who claims the Italians in the Curia are filling jobs with their family, friends and countrymen, and making the Vatican their own little playground.

"People are making decisions about hiring who know nothing about the job!" the anonymous priest is quoted as saying. "It's a weakness of the Church."

A weakness of the book is this constant quoting of fence posts -- figures with no names, no real identification. Most lower-level Vatican officials insist when talking to reporters that what they say be not for attribution or off the record completely. A reader can handle one or two quotes from a "high-ranking Vatican official" in a news article, but hundreds of them in a long book becomes a bit tiresome.

Not even the people the book focuses on -- Vatican employees -- have shown much interest in Father Reese's work. "Nobody's talking about the book," said one low-ranking American monsignor. "I haven't even heard a word."

Another Vatocrat confessed that he had not read "Inside the Vatican," but had scanned the book to see if his name was mentioned. "Thank God it was not," he said.

Another official with years of experience did have the book on order, but his colleague said that after Tad Szulc's "Pope John Paul II: The Biography" (Scribner's, 1995) and Marco Politi and Carl Bernstein's "His Holiness" (Doubleday, 1996) he couldn't imagine putting Reese's book on his Christmas list.

"There have been so many of these big eggs laid lately that it's sort of hard to get through them all," he remarked.

To his credit, Father Reese has written a clear, precise and nonideological guide to how the Vatican works -- and doesn't. Chapters include such topics as the college of bishops, the synod of bishops, the Roman Curia and Vatican finances.

"Inside the Vatican" is probably a good title, because the book is largely inside baseball. It will be solid and useful for reporters, historians, Church-trivia buffs and others interested in the arcane workings of ancient institutions.

Church-history nerds will happily learn from Father Reese, for example, that not every bishop must attend a council for it to be considered ecumenical:

"Only a small portion of the episcopacy attended the early Eastern councils. At Ephesus (A.D. 431), there were only 153 bishops, while 20 years later at Chalcedon there were 600. In the West, not all the bishops attended, nor were they all invited. At the Council of Vienne (1311-12), only a limited number of bishops were invited after the king of France, Philip the Fair, had cleared their names."

The reader also gets a breakdown of the percentage of episcopal conferences responding to the lineamenta, or outlines, for the various synods of bishops: 75 percent in 1974; 67 percent in 1977; 50 percent in 1980; 43 percent in 1983; 54 percent in 1987. You get the idea. You also get a description of the three kinds of synods: ordinary, extraordinary and special.

Of course, most people couldn't care less about a synod of bishops, and certainly not about the difference between an ordinary and a special one. But for those who do, this is the book for them.

"I thought Reese did an extremely good job," said one reporter who has covered the Vatican for years. "Of course, the information is not for everybody. It reads sort of like a long, long, long dispatch from Catholic News Service. But it's accurate. And now you know where to go when you want to find out how many Italian cardinals were working in Rome in 1954."

Bias made clear

The author's progressive bent comes through on a few occasions as he takes the side of theologians who have come under Rome's scrutiny. He also calls for greater consultation with the local churches in making decisions that will affect the entire Catholic community.

It was surprising to see Father Reese attack a change in the papal-election rules -- one that allows, in the case of a stalemate, for someone to win with only a simple majority, rather than the traditional two-thirds plus one. Pope John Paul II made the change in his apostolic constitution Universi Dominici Gregis ("Of the Lord's Whole Flock"), which was published in February.

Conservatives have been the ones most worried by this new rule, thinking it potentially allows for Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan to take over the throne of St. Peter. But Father Reese is clearly in their camp on this one.

"The two-thirds majority requirement encouraged compromise and consensus, virtues that are needed to maintain the unity of such a large and complex Church," Father Reese writes. "That this change was made with no debate or explanation is regrettable."

It is in his conclusion that Father Reese makes his own biases most clear. There, he implicitly accepts the criticisms that Pope John Paul has "stopped" Church reforms, adding an undocumented claim that "those proposing more changes or raising questions have come under Vatican scrutiny."

Citing an "environment" that includes petition drives by people who want to change Church teaching, decline in vocations and "anticlericalism among women," Father Reese opines: "Raising the walls in fear against such signs of the times is one response. Taking the initiative through dialogue would be a response based on faith in the God of history, hope in power of the Spirit, and love of Christ's people." It is clear which option Father Reese believes the Pope has taken.

But for the most part, Father Reese keeps his opinions and politics out of "Inside the Vatican." That's good. One would like to see more personalities, and meet one or two people like Sottovoce. There are not a lot of faces, but "Inside the Vatican" is chock-full of facts. And in a book about the Holy See, that's an accomplishment.

Burke writes from Rome

Copyright Our Sunday Visitor, 1996; from the 12-29-96 edition

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