Why Does the Pope Want to Beatify a Habsburg?
Gerald Russello, in the WSJ (Nov. 15, 2004):
Mr. Russello is a fellow of the Chesterton Institute at Seton Hall University.]
The Habsburgs are back. Although the family has been out of power since 1918, the beatification of Charles I Habsburg of Austria (1887-1922), the last ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, has touched off an international controversy. Two years ago, Pope John Paul II began the process and credited Charles's "heroic virtue" and his efforts to bring an early end to World War I. John Paul further expressed his hope that Charles (who succeeded his great-uncle Francis Joseph I in 1916, and died in exile six years later at the age of 35) would "serve as an example, especially for those with political responsibilities in Europe today," as a statesman who emphasized the vocation of political leadership and devotion to peace.
Many people saw the decision as either wrong-headed or somewhat sinister. Some Catholics thought that beatifying the Emperor would cause trouble for the Catholic Church in strongly republican Austria, where the Habsburgs are engaged in a legal battle to recover property expropriated by the Nazis. Others have faulted the elderly Pope, out of step with the modern world, for indulging in nostalgia. Contemporary Europe couldn't be further from the Catholic state embodied by the Habsburg Dual Monarchy, where civil liberties were restricted and Catholicism professed as the only established faith. And others have argued that Charles was an inexperienced "buffoon" simply not worthy of the honor.
So why beatify the last representative of a social order that disappeared in 1918? Leaving aside any theological merits, at least two reasons for Charles's beatification at this time may have appealed to Rome. Both are intertwined with the battle John Paul has been waging over the definition and future of Europe. While favorable to democracy and certain forms of capitalism, he has long insisted that it was Christianity that gave "life to a civilization which over the centuries fostered the rise of an authentically democratic society," based in moral norms about the human person and society. The example of the Habsburg tradition forces Europeans to reconsider the impact of Christian belief on their institutions.
Indeed, Charles embodied, literally, the history of Christian Europe. Over seven centuries, the Habsburgs ruled vast areas of Central and Eastern Europe, Spain, and parts of Italy and the Netherlands. Since at least the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the Habsburgs were considered as, and announced themselves to be, the defenders of Christendom against the Muslim Turks abroad and as defenders of Catholicism within their own territories. Charles's descendants remain deeply involved in European affairs. Charles is therefore a provocative and deeply counter-cultural model of European unity than the secular version offered by institutions such as the European Union.
As if to underscore the difference between the Pope's vision of Europe and that of Brussels, in the very same month as Charles's beatification the member nations of the EU signed the Constitution for Europe, which contains no explicit mention of the continent's Christian heritage, despite heavy lobbying from the Vatican. Instead, the Constitution substitutes a vague reference to the "cultural, religious and humanist heritage of Europe," but more as a historical footnote than as a contemporary influence. (And in recent weeks, Rocco Buttiglione, Italy's candidate for the new European Commission and a devout Catholic, touched off an EU-wide political storm when he discussed his religious views openly in his confirmation hearings. He withdrew his candidacy late last month, citing a secular Inquisition against Christians.)
This rhetorical sleight of hand, however, is contrary to historical fact. As historians from Christopher Dawson to Samuel Huntington have noted, Christianity is the institutional framework for understanding "Europe" at all. Christianity, which began outside Europe, created a common culture out of a continent that is split geographically, ethnically and linguistically. This culture is recognizable despite its variations from Vienna to Madrid, from Stockholm to Palermo, from London to Zagreb.