THE THREAT OF A GLOBAL

AGENDA AND THE DANGERS OF

A PAN-
NATIONAL CHURCH
This is with reference to the article titled as above in the New Indian Express dated 21st October,
2000 in which the writer emphasises the need to debate the idea of establishing national
churches in the context of but irrespective of of Shri Sudarshan’s exhortations to the Christian
community in India to do so. To this end, the author has described the origin and growth in history
of denominational and national churches in Europe and Africa. While he is right for the most part
in tracing the course of the history of these national churches, I am not sure of the accuracy of his
definition of the term ‘concordat’ with respect to the Vatican particularly because he says, “Under
the concordats, the national churches became independent of the Vatican.” And to substantiate
his claim he cites the examples of France (in 1905), Italy (in 1894), and Spain (in 1978). It is quite
possible that the writer may have misunderstood the significance of the events concerning the
Vatican and these countries in 1905, 1894 and 1978.

A concordat is an agreement which is negotiated and concluded by the Vatican with other nation-
states to define the relationship of the Vatican and the catholic Hierarchy in that State with the
Government and also to define the status of the catholic religion and its institutions in that State.
Once the concordat is concluded, the Vatican sends its representative, usually of the rank of
cardinal or even archbishop, as the papal nuncio to head the Hierarchy in that State and also to
deal with the Government on issues relating to the interests of the catholic religion and its
adherents. When it is not possible to conclude a concordat, the nuncio strives to reach a
compromise which becomes a modus vivendi.

Before I come to the countries specified by the writer in his article as having established national
churches through the signing of concordats, (which is not the case), I think it is pertinent to
present in brief the reasons behind Shri Sudarshan’s call to establish national catholic churches
in India independent of the Vatican.

The task of the papal representative is to further the diplomatic and political interests of the
Vatican and above all the spiritual interests of the Catholic Church as a religious institution. His
mission therefore serves a dual purpose. The papal representative has at his disposal not only
the vast diplomatic machinery but also the religious machinery of the Vatican of both the country
to which he has been accredited as well as that outside it. He will have at his disposal the
Hierarchy of a given country – from cardinals, archbishops, and bishops down to the village priest
or the local parish priest. Moreover, the Catholic organizations of a social, cultural or political
character would obey his instructions. The result is that a nuncio can exercise formidable
pressure upon a government – pressure of a religious-political nature that is denied to any other
diplomat. And it is this danger, which Shri Sudarshan perceives so clearly, and which can
interfere with and even impede sovereign decisions taken by our government with regard to our
social, political and religious arrangements, which probably caused him to call upon the
Christians of our country to establish national churches.

The Catholic Church, more than any other denomination, does not confine itself merely to the
religious sphere. It has always held that with her and her alone is vested absolute power – both
royal/temporal and sacerdotal with all the accompanying wealth, pomp and privileges such power
implies. This has brought the Vatican directly in contact and conflict with monarchs and other
Heads of State of the Christian nations of Europe on several occasions. A good catholic owes
blind obedience to his Church and puts his Church’s interests before any social or political matter
concerning his country. Since this body comprises millions of Catholics living all over the world
who are bound implicitly to follow the dictates of the Vatican and obediently honour every word of
the pope, it is easy to see the long-range power that the catholic Church can exercise in the
affairs of these countries. The Catholic Church therefore cannot and will not avoid interfering in
the social and political affairs of these countries.

Thus it happens that in catholic countries where the affairs of the state are conducted according
to the principles of the catholic Church, the State is in harmony with the Church or the Vatican.
But when the Church is confronted by a hostile State or parliament (as has happened repeatedly
in the nations of Europe), then conflict becomes inevitable and the Church and State declare war
on each other. The State may pass such legislation as it may deem necessary, regardless of the
Church. The Church, whenever this has happened (and it happened in Italy, France and Spain
during the years of republicanism, as also in the fledgling State of Yugoslavia which came into
being after the dismantling of the Hapsburg empire), has ordered its clergy to preach against
such laws and advised Catholics to oppose them and the government that passed them. All
sections of the press owned by Catholics have always taken a stand against such governments
and the war declared by the Church against the State is so relentless that individual catholic
members of the government have even voted against the government on these issues. All
religious, social and political organizations formed by Catholics publicly and unitedly oppose such
policies and boycott such laws. The Church then instructs her Hierarchy to use all the institutional
power in its control to align with any force opposed to the hostile government, to bring it down and
bring in a government which would be in line and harmony with the Church and her policies (as it
happened in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Austria and Croatia in the years at the close of the
nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century and in the years between the First
and Second World War).

It was to neutralize the Church and stop her Hierarchy from interfering in social and political
affairs of a nation, that several countries of Europe, despite the fact that they have always been
nominally ‘catholic’ countries, had shorn the catholic Church of her power and the catholic religion
of its privileged position as the State religion and also confiscated her wealth and property. The
Enlightenment, which gave to Europe the philosophies and ideologies of socialism, liberalism,
republicanism, democracy, and communism, had severely eroded the moral authority and the
temporal and religious power of the Catholic Church beginning with the era of the French
Revolution and this erosion touched the nadir in the closing years of the nineteenth century and
lasted well into the middle of the twentieth century when the Church lost six-sevenths of her
adherents first to liberalism and then to socialism and communism.

I will now very briefly narrate the history of the relationship of the Catholic Church with the
countries that the writer has cited as examples of concordats, which supposedly established
national churches in these countries. My point is, a concordat does exactly the opposite of what is
claimed. A concordat between the Vatican and a country establishes whenever possible, the
supremacy of the catholic religion in that country and accords the Church and her Hierarchy high
status within that country. Implicitly, and more importantly, this means that the catholic Church of
the country which signs a concordat with the Vatican, shares umbilical ties with the Vatican.
There would be no point in the Vatican signing a concordat with a country if the Catholic Church
of that country were to sever its ties with the Vatican and establish a national Church. This has
never been known to happen and it is inconceivable that Italy, France and Spain, which have
always been ‘catholic nations’ would ever sign a concordat with the Vatican to establish national
churches, which would be independent of the Vatican. Let us start with France.

The Catholic Church in France had always exercised an enormous influence on the social and
political life of France. The Church had always supported the monarchy and the monarchs in turn
had conferred high honour and privileges on the Church. But all this came to an end with the
French Revolution. Church and State separated, the status of the clergy disappeared and Church
lands were declared to be national property. But the Church recovered from this setback to regain
some of her former privileges when she concluded a concordat with Napoleon Bonaparte, a
staunch critic of the Revolution and as much of a dictator as the pope or any other monarch. But
once again, after the fall of Bonaparte, the Church began to lose ground and never recovered its
position until the years between the first and second world wars. The Third Republic was
established in France in 1870 and this was the beginning of the protracted war that the Catholic
Church would wage against all popular movements inspired by the ideologies of republicanism,
socialism and communism. Indeed from then on, successive popes (popes Leo XIII, Pius XI and
Pius XII) wrote blistering encyclicals roundly condemning liberalism, socialism, republicanism and
communism. The Church proclaimed “a holy crusade against the godless Republic” and bitterly
opposed the ‘atheist government’ for seeking to deprive the Church of her inalienable rights. At
every hostile measure, the Church and the Vatican invoked the curse of God and called upon all
Catholics to do everything to destroy the Republic for daring to give free education to the people,
for insisting on civil marriage and for confining the teaching in State schools to State-classified
teachers. Things grew from bad to worse and finally in July 1904, diplomatic relations between
France and the Vatican were finally broken and the Act of Separation in 1905 brought the conflict
to a climax. The Act guaranteed freedom of conscience and the exercise of public worship but
religion was not to be recognized by, nor to receive financial support from the State. The Vatican
pronounced anathema on the Republic for denying supremacy to the catholic religion and for
putting all religions on an equal footing. It called upon all Catholics in France and the Hierarchy to
do everything in their power to destroy the Republic. The Church regained much of its lost ground
when the Republic surrendered to Germany and when a catholic dictator, General Petain
assumed control of France with the active support of the Vatican, Hitler and Mussolini – all of
whom had collaborated to destroy the Republic and to install a fascist dictatorship in France as in
Germany, Italy, Spain and Austria. These dictatorships through concordats signed with the
Vatican, granted the Vatican special privileges, restored the catholic religion and the Church to
their former status of supremacy because the Vatican pledged its considerable strength and
power to support these dictators, all of whom had one goal – to wipe out communism and to
establish catholic nation-states in all of Europe.* It is probably to this Act of Separation in France,
in 1905, that the writer is referring to. Far from being a concordat, which is an agreement or a
treaty, it was an estrangement of the Church from the State, and while the Church suffered a
terrible blow to its status, France still did not establish a national catholic church that year, as is
being claimed in the article. The catholic establishment as I have just illustrated, was firmly under
the control of the Vatican and the Vatican was doing everything in its power to destroy the
Republic. The same is true of Italy and Spain. Liberalism, republicanism and communism began
to spread fast in these countries and the Vatican supported and brought into government terrible
dictators like Dolfuss in Austria, Hitler in Germany, Gen. Miguel de Rivera and later Gen. Franco
in Spain and Mussolini in Italy. The Church suffered great erosion in numbers in all these
countries from about the last three decades in the nineteenth century until the First World War, a
period during which the Catholic Church was greatly debilitated in power and influence. But in the
years between the two world wars, Popes Pius XI and XII encouraged and even actively co-
operated with these dictators to violently overthrow popular governments in their respective
countries to assume power. As in France, so too in Italy and Spain, some governments denied
supremacy to the Catholic Church during this period. But in a few years, in post-world war
Europe, the Vatican had no problems shrugging off any sense of guilt or shame for having
colluded with fascist dictators and established concordats with democratic governments in
Europe which allowed the Church total control of the catholic establishment in these countries.
Fear of a total take-over of Europe by communism bound together the Vatican and these western
governments all of whom now had only one stated objective – to destroy communism (and the
Orthodox Church of the Soviet bloc, in the process). The Vatican lost its privileged position in
Spain after the death of Gen. Franco but the Vatican came to terms with the democratic
government in Spain as it had elsewhere in Europe. The State in Spain refused patronage to the
Catholic Church. Spain had a new constitution in 1978 and as per that constitution, far from
establishing a national Church, the government signed a concordat with the Vatican, an
agreement by which not only did the Spanish government come to some financial arrangements
with the Vatican, but by which the Vatican was also allowed to retain control of all catholic
educational institutions in Spain and the Church was allowed total freedom in administering her
affairs and institutions. Except for the national catholic Church in China and the catholic church in
England which comes under the jurisdiction of the Anglican Church, all other catholic churches, in
India as in the rest of Asia, Mexico and in Europe, are still under the direct control of the Vatican
and adopt the Vatican’s agenda as their own even if the agenda causes social, political and
religious friction and even turmoil in these countries. The Vatican’s agenda has never changed
nor has it metamorphosed into anything else. The Catholic Church has always declared that she
is missionary by her very nature and as such her task, indeed her religious mandate is to
evangelize, and plant the cross in every part of the world. The Vatican, indeed all Christian
denominations have set themselves the task of converting to Christianity, those professing non-
Abrahamic, non-aggressive religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Taoism, Confucianism and
other great faiths of South and South-east Asia. To this end she now speaks intensely of the right
to freedom of worship and conscience – a right that she opposed barely a 100 years ago. Then it
was because she did not want other religions to be given a standing equal to the catholic faith.
But today she wants the right to freedom of religion and worship because she wants the right to
plant the cross among people who worship other Gods. The Vatican insists on political pluralism
wherever Christians are in the minority, which gives her the right to exist along with other religions
to operate her agenda. But she denies religious pluralism and insists that in the end only the
Catholic faith ought to prevail because only the Vatican is the sole repository of the Ultimate
Religious Truth. And Christians in India and the establishment intellectuals and vote bank
politicians, while they are adamantly and deafeningly silent about what the pope said on our own
soil last November and want to pretend that the Vatican declaration ‘Dominus Jesus’ never
happened, yet are raucous in their protests against Shri Sudarshan’s call for establishing national
churches.