The cardinal and the Communists

02/09/2000

Cardinal Casaroli, Secretary of State under John Paul II, was a celebrated diplomat. It was he who developed the Ostpolitik - the Church?s policy towards the East. But how did his work look to the Catholics on the receiving end? Our correspondent in Warsaw explains the reservations they felt. WHEN the memoirs of the late Cardinal Agostino Casaroli (1914?98) were launched in Rome this summer, luminaries from Romano Prodi to Mikhail Gorbachev queued up to praise his diplomatic achievements. The book, Il martiro della pazienza, recounts Casaroli?s experiences as architect of the Vatican?s Ostpolitik, which sought to win concessions from Eastern Europe?s Communist regimes. Yet the plaudits heaped on the former Vatican Secretary of State also have a ring of irony. Although no one doubts the personal qualities of Casaroli, who died two years ago, aged 83, his small steps diplomacy was deeply controversial. Casaroli?s forays were widely resented in Eastern Europe by Catholics who believed he had little grasp of local complexities. His first direct contact with Communist officials came as a Vatican under-secretary in April 1963, when Pope John XXIII sent him to a United Nations conference in Vienna. A month later, barely six months after the Cuban missile crisis, he travelled to Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Both visits marked what he believed was a historic turning-point, daring and unexpected, but decisive. The cardinal recalled many years later: When I gave an account of the two missions to Pope John a few days before his death, he said, ?It is not necessary to hurry or succumb to illusions; but we must continue, trusting in God?. In Czechoslovakia, Casaroli helped negotiate an amnesty for the imprisoned Archbishop Josef Beran of Prague. The 78- year-old prelate agreed to leave for Rome to assist chances of progress in Vatican- Czechoslovak relations ? on the understanding that he would be allowed back three weeks later. Beran never saw Prague again. But his release helped launch Casaroli on his trouble-shooting diplomatic career. In a lecture he gave in 1990, the cardinal insisted that he had foreseen the collapse of Communism from the time of his first East European visit. The system was condemned to failure, he added. The only question was when and how. Yet this was almost certainly a case of being wise after the event. By the time of Pope Paul VI?s accession in 1963, Communist rule seemed permanent and most Western governments had concluded that Europe?s division had to be accepted. The era of containment was giving way to an era of d?tente ? and a search for coexistence between hostile ideological blocs. Seen from the Vatican, some kind of accommodation was needed if the Church was to survive. Survival meant maintaining an episcopal structure, especially where Communist repression had been most intense. And although bishops could be appointed secretly ? as they had been under Pius XII ? it was much better to act openly through agreement. Besides that, some observers detected signs of evolution in the atheist ideology of these regimes. Communists in Western Europe had already decreed that the elimination of Christianity was not essential. If official atheism was not discarded altogether, it might at least be modified. It was a belief in that dual possibility ? permanence combined with evolution ? which did most to shape Casaroli?s approach to Eastern Europe. An agreement signed with Hungary in 1964 was the Vatican?s first formal deal with a Communist government since a famine relief accord with Moscow in 1922. The Church was allowed to appoint five new bishops, the first for 14 years, leaving all but one of Hungary?s 11 Catholic dioceses filled. In return, church leaders agreed to sign an oath of loyalty to the Communist State. Casaroli admitted that the champagne provided by the Hungarian Government and served in front of press photographers had tasted extremely sour. The appointees were of questionable calibre; and within two years five bishops had asked to retire. In 1965, a year after the agreement, long jail sentences were handed down on 30 Catholic priests. Several were later murdered. In 1971, Casaroli was instrumental in persuading Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty of Hungary to leave the American embassy in Budapest, where he had taken refuge during the 1956 uprising, and travel to Rome, with an unsolicited amnesty from the regime for his crimes. In his own memoirs, Mindszenty insisted that he was promised the right to retain his status as Hungarian primate. But in 1973 the Vatican asked him to give up his see in consideration of pastoral necessities. The cardinal issued a statement correcting suggestions that he had resigned voluntarily. When Mindszenty?s successor, Cardinal Laszlo Lekai, died in 1986, relations between Church and State in Hungary were at their closest ? and religious observance at its lowest. Most of the country?s dioceses were in the hands of sick old men. Half its 2,700 priests were past retirement age. Talks with the Husak regime in Czechoslovakia restarted in 1970. Two years before, Soviet tanks had dashed hopes of reform raised during the Prague Spring. But the repression was only just beginning. In 1972, when all but one of Czechoslovakia?s 13 Catholic sees were vacant, Casaroli announced that the appointment of four new bishops had been agreed. But they were all known collaborators. Even when he went in person to consecrate them a year later, that still left eight dioceses empty. During that visit, Casaroli informed the veteran Bishop Stefan Trochta of Litomerice that Paul VI had raised him to the rank of cardinal. In April 1974, Cardinal Trochta died after a police beating. But less than a year later, Casaroli was back. A similar breakthrough came in 1978, when Bishop Frantisek Tomasek, who had run the Prague archdiocese since Beran?s death, was named archbishop with the regime?s consent. This too was billed as a Communist concession. But Tomasek was seen as a weak old man, not one to take a stand on church rights. When he was allowed to receive his cardinal?s hat in Rome, the Czechoslovak embassy laid on a special reception. Why, many Catholics wondered, had there been no consultation? Why had the Vatican not extracted a higher price ? at least by publicly condemning acts of persecution? A mere quarter-century of Communist rule had reduced Czechoslovakia?s Catholic clergy by 60 per cent. Questions like these were frequently asked in Eastern Europe. And the answers Casaroli came up with were widely disputed. He shared the view of Western governments that too active a defence of rights and freedoms would ? as Paul VI put it in 1965 ? provoke a greater evil. It was a dubious argument: there was overwhelming evidence that Communists made concessions only under pressure in the face of righteous protests. He also believed that a distinction could be made between the Party, which was ideologically hostile to religion, and the State, which merely organised society. This was dubious too: in reality, Party and State were effectively one and the same under all Communist constitutions. In 1971, Casaroli had come back brimming with enthusiasm from his first visit to Moscow. The Vatican and the Soviet Union had put an end to monologue and opened a dialogue, he proclaimed. Both had a common interest in peace and had found a common field of action. STATEMENTS like this set alarm bells ringing in Eastern Europe. For how could one speak of dialogue ? a two-way process ? between a spiritual institution and a military superpower? Diplomacy might well produce short-term results when conditions were right. But it could also be seen as a sign of weakness ? even that the Church had lost its way and sacrificed principle to expediency. The urge to protest against Vatican betrayals was one motive for the appearance of Lithuania?s underground Chronicle of the Catholic Church in the early 1970s. Its editors studied the situation in other Soviet republics, and argued convincingly that the Church?s best hope lay not in accommodation but in resistance. Soviet promises of dialogue were an illusion, the chronicle warned; only shouting and recriminations would have any impact on Soviet actions. The Vatican?s solution ? to appoint appeasing bishops ? was a mistake. It would merely hasten the Church?s destruction from within. Arguments like this cut little ice with the Vatican diplomat. He travelled to Poland incognito in 1966 to sound out the possibilities of a visit by Pope Paul VI for that year?s millennium of Polish Christianity. When he returned officially in 1967, Poland?s Communist regime reacted with keen interest. In 1973, Poland?s foreign minister, Stefan Olszowski, spent an hour discussing peace and disarmament with Paul VI, then invited Casaroli to reopen talks. Publicly, the Polish bishops welcomed the move. But if it was to have full meaning, they made clear, it had to be accompanied by religious freedom. That precondition ? guaranteed church rights before any accord between the Vatican and the regime ? was hammered home repeatedly. When Casaroli visited Poland again in 1974, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski preached a long sermon in Warsaw cathedral in the diplomat?s presence to clarify local misgivings. When a fisherman sails on a calm sea, he can see to the bottom and spot every fish, Wyszynski said. But when the sea is disturbed, he sees nothing. To discern the issues and tasks facing nation, Church and State, to assess them properly and confront them, needs preparatory calm, balance and patience. A month later, the position was stated even more plainly by the full bishops? conference of Poland. The Polish Church supported talks between the Vatican and the regime, it pointed out. But there had to be conditions. The talks should be correct, frank and systematic, while no decisions should be taken without the participation of the Polish Church. The bishops appealed to the doctrine of collegiality promoted by the Second Vatican Council. Within that framework, they stated, direct responsibility for the Church in Poland is held by the bishops who make up the bishops? conference under the primate?s leadership. Undeterred, Casaroli went ahead and established permanent working contacts with the Government under a July protocol. The bishops were assured privately that no deals would be cut without consultation. But their concerns were not allowed to affect the continuation of talks. Casaroli?s supporters claimed that his diplomacy had cleared a path for the 1978 election of John Paul II. This was wishful thinking. As Cardinal Archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla had met Casaroli on several occasions. He acknowledged that the diplomat had accomplished important and difficult tasks. And in April 1979, he confirmed the Vatican?s need for diplomatic talent by appointing Casaroli Secretary of State. BUT the Vatican?s approach to Eastern Europe changed rapidly under the Polish Pope?s direction. The small steps diplomacy continued. But it was now run from a position of strength, in close conjunction with local bishops? conferences. The Pope stopped making concessions and gave up appointing collaborator-bishops. Equal weight was given to underground church groups as to official hierarchies. There was no more talk of going over people?s heads or negotiating on separate tracks. The Soviet and East European regimes responded in kind ? by stepping up their propaganda battle and taking steps to neutralise the Pope?s influence in the Communist world. But the new Vatican strategy was justified by events. The revolution launched by Solidarity in Poland created a momentum which had spill-over effects elsewhere. When Communism collapsed at the end of the decade, Pope John Paul?s role was universally acknowledged. Of course, Casaroli had contributed to the turn of events ? by opening previously locked doors, and by reassuring Eastern Catholics that they were not alone in their plight. But the small steps strategy was one-sided. The Vatican had to reward regimes which made a show of respecting the Church?s rights, while lacking any leverage of its own to ensure the deals and bargains were kept. Casaroli was a clever man, with a sophisticated grasp of geopolitics and the techniques of inter-state bargaining. If he had been a conventional foreign minister, he would have ranked among the Kissingers and Brandts. But for all his deftness and perseverance, there was no real evidence that the small steps diplomacy had produced convincing results. The task of translating peace into justice had proved impossible. ? Next week one of The Tablet?s correspondents in Rome, Desmond O?Grady, will present a different view of Cardinal Casaroli?s achievements.