In The Court of Three Popes

Dr Chalberg reviews a new memoir by Mary Ann Glendon, a  former US Ambassador to the Holy See and board member of the Vatican Bank.

From The Imaginative Conservative

By Chuck Chalberg, PhD

Mary Ann Glendon has written a very diplomatic account of her service in the courts of three popes. It seems that nothing that she encountered necessarily surprised her, but she felt like a “stranger in a strange land,” at a time in history that Bishop Fulton Sheen not all that long ago labeled the “end of Christendom.”

In The Courts of Three Popes by Mary Ann Glendon (219 pages, Random House, 2024)

A career academic, a veteran law professor, and a political appointee-turned-amateur diplomat, Mary Ann Glendon has written a very diplomatic account of her service in the courts of three popes. Along the way, she likely reveals less than she might have about the courts of the three popes, as well as less she might have about one of the three popes in particular.

The courts of the popes in question are, of course, those of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. The pope in particular is Francis, and the “less” is a guess that has nothing to do with anything approaching a possible papal scandal and much to do with Glendon’s thoughts on and assessment of his papacy.

When it comes to Pope Francis, Glendon was initially pleased that the assemblage of cardinals had chosen a relative outsider. Furthermore, she hoped he would be the “hands-on” administrator that neither of his two predecessors were.

Then early in his papacy Francis delivered a lecture on what he deemed to be various “diseases of the Curia.” Among them were the “disease of idolizing superiors” and the “disease of indifference to others.” But there was no mention of Glendon’s “elephants in the room”: financial misconduct and homosexuality in the priesthood.

Otherwise Glendon is content to let us know that, unlike his two predecessors who wrote and spoke with “great clarity,” Francis communicates “more elliptically; his messages are often ambiguous or hard to interpret; his personality is more multi-faceted; and he often seems to contradict himself.” Reading those words leads one to ask the writer of them to tell us what she really thinks.

To be sure, Glendon is nothing if not transparent about her own life. The same might be said of the Glendon treatment when it comes to dealing with her Church at ground level. But diplomacy reigns supreme when she reaches the upper reaches of what she labels the “last absolute monarchy” on the face of the earth.

Such a label seems to be neither a criticism nor a compliment, but simply a statement of fact as she sees it.  And she saw it not just as a “stranger in a strange land,” but at a time in history, she ruefully reminds us, that Bishop Fulton Sheen not all that long ago labeled the “end of Christendom.”

Not the end of Christianity, Glendon quickly adds, but rather the end of a long era when one could speak of something called “Christendom” in any meaningful sense. Or perhaps it could refer to a time when the Papacy was not the “last monarchy” on earth, as well as a time when the west and Christendom were essentially synonyms.

But Glendon is nothing if not also an optimist. In fact, as she sees things in general, this is also a time of great opportunity for evangelization. More than that, she contends that it is the Catholic laity who should bear “primary responsibility” for such evangelization.

In fact, if there is a primary reason for her writing this book it has been to offer a “reflection on the changing role of the laity.” Actually, her book is more than a reflection on this task. In its own way, this memoir is also an indirect, if nonetheless intentional charge to the laity to take a more active role in this evangelization.

Glendon, in effect, offers herself as example A of what can be done by an engaged and committed citizen. Raised in a small town in western Massachusetts, she lived an ordinary, middle-class life among Protestants who were “virtuosos of good works” and Catholics who were “virtuosos of faith.” Such facts of local life, she puckishly tells us, help explain why she felt “destined” to become first a student and eventually a professor of comparative law and government.

In between were undergraduate years at the University of Chicago, where it was oft-repeated that “Jewish professors taught Thomas Aquinas to Marxist students.” While never a Marxist of any sort, Glendon by her own admission “drifted toward cafeteria Catholicism” in the 1960s, as well as into a relationship with an unnamed “African-American lawyer” she met during her involvement in the civil rights movement. That relationship produced a child, but apparently not a marriage.

During those years—and for an unmentioned number of years beyond—Glendon thought of herself as a political Independent (the capital “I” is hers) because Republicans had long been anti-New Deal and Democrats were increasingly pro-abortion.

If there was a lodestar for Glendon during her years of “cafetholicism” (my term, not hers), it was her belief in the sanctity of human life. Her opposition to legalized abortion predated Roe v Wade, and intensified after it.

In short, she saw herself as a Susan B. Anthony feminist. Like Anthony, who was also a product of western Massachusetts, Glendon couldn’t abide a movement that “harbored animosity” to three crucially important societal M’s, as in men, marriage and motherhood, all the while stressing the right to an abortion that more often than not benefited some men in particular, namely “irresponsible men.”

While Glendon does not dwell on her own story in these pages, that story only strengthens her larger argument for an engaged and committed laity. Her early missteps and stumbles were followed by a successful marriage and an equally successful and satisfying professional career.

It may or may not be the case that the pinnacle of her professional life will prove to be her diplomatic service as Ambassador to the Holy See, a post to which she was appointed by George W. Bush, a Protestant who could “speak Catholic.” Who knows what might come next for Mary Ann Glendon, even as she slides into her middle eighties. But for the time being hers is a tale well worth telling—and reading.

This is not so because of this or that accomplishment—or this or that frustration. Rather it is because of the ordinariness of it all. There is never a sense that either Professor Glendon or Ambassador Glendon thinks of herself as the Mary Ann Glendon. For that matter, there is never a sense that Glendon suspects that any of the three popes in her professional life as amateur diplomat thought of themselves in such a fashion.

Of course, Ambassador Glendon encountered occasions of what amounted to palace intrigue within the Vatican. Of course, some of that intrigue could be defined as left versus right or Italian prelates versus everyone else or just plain turf battles within an inevitably embattled bureaucracy. And of course the priestly sexual abuse scandal weighed heavily over roughly the last third of the pontificate of Saint John Paul and the entirety of that of Benedict XVI.

Glendon also devotes a brief, but full chapter to the Vatican Bank or what she characterizes as the “Bank that is not a bank.” Originally established in the late nineteenth century by Pope Leo XIII as a kind of welfare agency, it became in effect a bank in 1942. Corruption gradually followed. Glendon details that corruption, as well as her role in equally gradual reform.

It seems that nothing that she encountered necessarily surprised her. And yet nothing launched her into excuse-making mode. To be sure, there are moments when she does seem saddened, but the overall tone is one of resilience and determination—and all with a friendly smile rather than a stiff upper lip.

A strong back bone helps as well. Early on, she noted that ethnic Catholics adopted one of two “survival strategies” when dealing with Protestant America. Either they would be turtles who retreated to their spiritual lives or chameleons who adapted to their surroundings. As a pro-life feminist, she was both fated and determined to be neither. But by her own admission she did tend to shrug off manifestations of anti-Catholic bias.

That ended during her tenure at the Boston College Law School. Overnight, all crucifixes were removed suddenly from classrooms. Seeing the “situation anew,” she joined a challenge to this decision and the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. But the crucifixes did not return.

Fast forward to the decision of the University of Notre Dame to award her its Laetare Medal and grant an honorary degree to President Barack Obama, despite the request of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops not to “honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles.”

In response to objections from alumni and students, the university sought to pacify all by letting it be known that remarks from Glendon would “balance” the program. Suddenly, a “difficult situation” had become an “impossible one.” Glendon withdrew, while the other half of this balancing act, here described as a “likeable young man,” who had once been her student at Harvard Law, did not.

There are no similar stories of developing—or developed—backbone when serving as a “stranger in a strange land.” Then again, none were needed. This was her Church, or a church that is “always in need of renewal.” And Mary Ann Glendon was, and remains, on hand to lend her hand.

This memoir will remain on hand as well. Its epilogue is simply titled “The Hour of the Laity.” Here all “reflection” is dropped. And here she closes her open-ended case for an engaged laity by borrowing from Saint John Henry Newman, who when asked what he thought of the laity responded: “We’d look pretty foolish without them.”

Apparently not satisfied with mild humor, Glendon turns to Bishop Sheen speaking to the Knights of Columbus in 1972: “Who is going to save the Church? Not our bishops. Not our priests and religious! It’s up to you, the lay people! You have the mind, the eyes, the ears to save the Church!”

If the body of this book is sometimes a reflection on the need to respond to Bishop Sheen and sometimes a testimony to her own efforts, the epilogue offers a heartfelt “amen” to the words—and call—of the good bishop.