Vatican and Kremlin
Cominunism, Democracy and Catholic Power. By Paul Blanshard. (Cape. 18s.) Cominunism, Democracy and Catholic Power. By Paul Blanshard. (Cape. 18s.) MR. BLANSHARD, who is already known in this country for his attack on the political influence of the Catholic Church in the United States, has now devoted himself to a study of the Vatican as a world Power. He cannot be said to have made much of a job of it, partly; perhaps, because anything to do with the Roman Catholic Church provokes him to such indignation that he is hardly able to write sensibly about it ; partly because he lacks the historical perspectives required for an analysis of that remarkable institution ; but chiefly because his book rests on a fundamentally false argument. Mr. Blanshard has an overwhelming Sear that in the next war, which he takes for granted will be between the Soviet Union and the " demo- cracies," the United States may have the support of the Vatican, and his book is designed to show how very dangerous that would be. This is such a minor peril to pick out among the many infinitely worse perils which any future war would involve that one cannot help feeling doubtful of Mr. Blanshard's good sense ; one feels that he hardly cares whether there will be war or not, or whether the war will be won or lost, so long as he does not find himself on the same side as the Roman Catholic Chureh. He does not, of course, actually reject the assistance of the millions of Roman Catholics whom he readily admits to be as willing as any Protestant, atheist or democrat to lay down their lives for their country ; but he lives in mortal fear of being contaminated by the skirts of the Scarlet Woman to whom they owe their spiritual allegiance.
Mr. Blanshard, however, does not indicate' the precise political dangers involved in the alliance he so much fears ; his is a war of ideologies which only incidentally, and when convenient, stoops to facts. He is content to argue that since, obviously, we are engaged in a world conflict between dictatorship " and " democracy," and since the Vatican is a dictatorship, then clearly democracy can only-lose by having its support. And to demonstrate that the Vatican is a dictatorship he pursues a long argument by analogy ; the main body of his work is devoted to describing the resemblances, in organi- sation, outlook and technique, between the Vatican and democracy's arch-enemy, the Kremlin. In following out this comparison he pursues a kind of mad _logic which has a fascination of its own ; only it is the kind of logic which would convince us that since teddy bears and grizzly bears have many qualities in common, they are both equally dangerous to men, and indeed in some senses the teddy bear the more dangerous, because children are so very fond of them. It is of course essential to this kind of logic that, while every resemb- lance must be emphasised, all differences must be ignored. Thus the Vatican and the Kremlin are alike in that both claim infallibility, that neither allows the right of private judgement, that both believe in the virtues of censorship and claim a supranational allegiance from their followers in partibus, and that both reject the morals of bourgeois humanism and the values of bourgeois science ; the list becomes so long that from Mr. Blanshard's point of view it is not worth men- tioning that/he Kremlin has, and uses, overwhelming force to compel acceptance of its beliefs, while the Vatican has none. Indeed, he goes so far to persuade himself, not merely of the resemblance, but of the identity between the Vatican and the Kremlin that we are sur- prised not to be told that both the Red Army and the Swiss Guard are military formations organised on fundamentally similar lines.
There are, of course, grains of truth in the bushels of nonsense which Mr. Blanshard brings to market ; but the dangers of Vatican influence are neither of the kind nor of the magnitude which he describes, while as a factual account of the workings of either his - book is so distorted by his private obsession as to be worthless. For instance, it would be impossible to gather from it that in the event of war there is considerable doubt about what the attitude of the Vatican would be, that it is as likely to declare for neutrality as to commit itself to either of the belligerents, or that it is impossible to explain Vatican policy in, for instance, Italy, Spain, France or on Mr. Blanshard's home ground, the United States, on purely ideo- logical grounds, or without taking into account independent political and social forces with which the Vatican happens to find itself in alliance, temporary coalition, modified opposition or outright conflict. For this would be to admit that the Vatican is less an evil Power secretly corrupting democracy to its own ends than a victim of events over which it has little control and against which it strives unavailingly to protect itself. But once this omission is made, Mr. Blanshard could no longer make our, and his own, flesh creep with the iniquities of the Scarlet Woman he so much abhors. Iniquitous she may, or may not, be, but it is quite impossible to equate either her virtues or her vices with those of Moscow. So much indeed Mr. Blanshard seems unconsciously to admit when, at the end of his book, he announces that the proper and sufficient defence against the seductions of Rome is a little more free speech in the United States about her activities. To a European this seems a most ridiculous mouse to come out of such a mountain of indignation, GORONWY REES.
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