Transnational Catholicism in Postcommunist Europe by Timothy A. s> Byrnes (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS I9I agricultureremainedverylow). The stingin the tailwas the view that some 40 per cent of survey respondents felt that beauty, charm and elegance gave women an advantage over men, with over half seeing women's 'family obligations' as an obstacle to their success. However, structurallegacies, the absence of a feminist movement, the strong presence of the Church, and deeply ingrained cultural habits are more persuasive explanatory factors of women's manifolddisadvantagesthan men's personificationof theirfearsand transition-insecuritiesas a 'femalefigure'(p. 32). Department of Government FRANCES MILLARD University ofEssex Byrnes, Timothy A. Transnational Catholicism inPostcommunist Europe. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MA, and Oxford, 200I. xiii + I55 pp. Notes. Bibliographicalreferences.Index. $25.95 (paperback). THE Roman Catholic Church is the great survivor of public institutions in EastCentralEurope. The ancientkingdomsof Hungaryand Poland,together with most of their institutions,rest in their graves.The same fate has befallen the fascistand communistsystemsthatreplacedthemin the twentiethcentury. But the Church of Rome, though battered and bruised,lives on as a force to be reckonedwith in the politicsof the region. There has long been a strongtendency within secular,westernacademia to overlook the role of religion in modern politics. The communist persecutions of the church in East Central Europe created an illusion of clerical powerlessness apowerlessnessthatconformedto thewidespreadperception in the most economically advanced countries of Western Europe that the church is a politically redundant institution. While Christianitymay indeed be almost 'vanquished' in Britain - to use the words of the Catholic Archbishopof Westminster(TheTimes, 6 September 200 I, P. i) the borders of 'post-Christian'Europe do not -yet extend deep into the East. During the I97os, a smallband of Britishacademicspropheticallyperceived the church as a potentially dynamic force for political change throughoutthe Soviet empire. Sir John Lawrence, Leonard Shapiro, Peter Reddaway and Michael Bourdeauxjoined forces to found Keston College a pioneering research institute devoted exclusively to the study of the phenomenon of religionin the communistworld. Keston's uphill effortsto restore the religious factor in the calculations of westernpolicy-makerswere vindicated at the end of the I980s. The resurgent power of the church, as exemplified by the global politics of PopeJohn Paul II, the alliance between the Polish Catholic Church and the free trade union movement Solidarity, and the open resistance of Pastor Laszl6 T6kes to totalitarianismin Ceausescu's Romania, played a crucial role in the collapse of Soviet power and communist ideology in Eastern Europe. Yet no sooner did the Cold War end than the economic motor of European integration pushed religion -and Keston College into the academic backwaters this despite recent wars in the Balkansin which religioustraditiondefined, to a large extent, the belligerentparties. I92 SEER, 8i, I, 2003 Byrnes'sstudyrepresentsan effortto reversethe currenttrend.ItsAmerican author boasts of no background as a specialist in Eastern Europe. His reputation as an outstanding political scientist rests mainly on the study of contemporary political Catholicism in the United States. Byrnes confesses ignorance of the languagesand the cultural,social and political systemsof the lands on which he fixes his attention Poland, Croatia, Slovakia,Hungary and Transylvania.But he compensateswith an abilityto 'speakCatholic' and to 'understandthe lexicon of the institutionalrelationshipsthat exist between popes and bishops,bishopsand bishops, and bishops and the laity'(p. x). The centralpolitical issueaddressedby Byrnesis Europeanintegration.He ponders the question:can the Catholic Church function effectivelyas a force to fulfilPopeJohn Paul II's lofty geopolitical vision of an integrated Europe, with Christian civilization as its cornerstone, extending from the Atlantic to the Urals? In so doing, he examines the tension between the centripetal and centrifugalforceswithin the Catholic Church in EastCentralEurope. Byrnesproposesthatthe structuraland institutionalmake-upof the Church is the key to predictingitspoliticalbehaviour. Buthe does not probe deeply in thisdirection.The laws and stateinstitutionsgoverningchurch-staterelations scarcely feature at all. The author has approached his subject as a traveller. His field research appears to consist mainly of conversations with some influentialinsiders,suchasBishopTadeuszPieronek(Poland);BishopsRudolf Balai and Dominik T6th (Slovakia);Revd Laszl6 Lukacs(Hungary);Bishop J6zsef Tempfli, Revd Tertulian Langa, and Revd Arpad Czirjak (Transylvania ); and Archbishop Josip Bozanic, and Ambassador Marijan Sunjic (Croatia).What did such interviewsreveal? On the one hand, Byrnes sees the Holy See as a transnationalinstitution well suited to implement the Pope'svision. The Pope is, we are told, 'the first citizen of global civil...