Wednesday September 15, 2010
How to Influence the Vatican: A Pro-Life Insider’s Perspective
By Hilary White
ROME, September 15, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Pro-life advocates and others looking for change in the Catholic Church have always come to Rome to meet and speak with Vatican officials. But few understand the differences between political lobbying in a democratic tradition, and how the Vatican works.
Joseph Meaney, Director of International Coordination for Human Life International (HLI) is temporarily heading the Rome office in the absence of Monsignore Ignacio Barreiro, the current director of the office. He told LSN that very often, people can create problems for themselves by not understanding the fundamental differences between the way this ancient institution runs and the modern democratic methods.
Meaney founded HLI’s Rome office in September 1998, and ran it for its first four years. Since then, Meaney has spoken and gathered information in 67 countries on all continents.
He said that pro-life advocacy in Rome aims at a different set of goals than similar work done in national governments. Success in dealing with the Vatican requires patience and an understanding of the nature and procedures of the institution. Results can often be unspectacular – heads rarely roll – and change can best be looked for in terms of larger demographic shifts; “generational change.”
Do not look for “radical” results, he said. “In the Church, generational change is usually the way things change,” through larger shifts in demographics.
Many pro-life advocates coming to Rome, especially those from North America with its strong democratic tradition, believe that meeting with Curial officials is the equivalent to lobbying congressmen or MPs. But in Rome, Meaney said, pounding on desks is almost sure to backfire.
The secret to understanding the Vatican, he said, is understanding it as a “deeply Italian” and hierarchical institution. And in Italian culture, “the personal contact” is the key. In its structure, the Vatican is wholly different from any democratic state. The language of the work is Italian, and often higher level officials will speak only Italian. But more significantly, “the style of governance and of work is very Italian.”
It is not democratic, he said. The Vatican runs strictly on hierarchical principles, with the pope directly appointing men to the various offices in the Roman Curia, who often hold these offices for life.
Meaney said that the focus of “lobbying” at the Vatican, is not forcing change, therefore, but bringing needed information to the right people. Despite what many Catholic and pro-life people think, it is not enough just to call up the appropriate Vatican office and get an appointment to speak to the Cardinal Prefect. The key, he said, is developing personal relationships and maintaining them, sometimes for years or even decades. This is, he said, just the way of doing business of any kind in Italy.
For Italians, “it’s very, very helpful to have a personal connection,” he said. “Personal relationships are very important.”
Another aspect of Italian life that North Americans might not be used to, is the longevity of jobs. “Once you get a job, you’re pretty much guaranteed to keep it forever. You may not get promoted, but you won’t get fired either,” Meaney said. “I’ve known officials in congregations who’ve stayed there 20, 30 years.”
“An individual will stay in his position until he retires, which for a cardinal or an archbishop will be age 75. The institutions tend to be run by older individuals. So it’s not like you have to make new friends every year. Generally, those whom you know, you will know for years.”
Meaney pointed out that many of the things North Americans take for granted, like 9 to 5 office hours (a typical Vatican work day starts at 8:30 and ends at 1:30 in the afternoon) are products of later historical developments. The Vatican has its historical roots right down to Roman Imperial times, to the 4th century AD when the Emperor Constantine legalised the Catholic Church, allowing it to establish a universal governing structure.
“So from that time on, the Holy See has been functioning as an independent political entity and the nuncios and legates of the Holy Father have been going out to the world. So there’s an important institutional legacy that is still respected within the structure.”
Something that can be alien to the North American, egalitarian mindset is the amount of deference Vatican officials pay to clergy, especially to bishops. But to the Vatican, the egalitarianism that developed in the 18th century and became a centrepiece of modern democracies, is a Johnny-come-lately philosophical fad.
“So if you write in with your local bishop’s endorsement, you will receive much more attention from Vatican officials,” Meaney said. “Rome does not like it when you jump the gun, so if something really should be settled by the local bishop, and you send it directly to Rome, they’re going to want to know what the local bishop said. There’s a certain order, a chain of command, that must be followed.”
“And again, nothing is as useful as a personal contact,” he emphasised. “Sometimes just coming to Rome, you can’t expect just to meet with people, but if you send information in advance, get a correspondence going, and from that go forward and you can get an appointment.
“People in Rome would be impressed that an individual would follow all these procedures. That they would make their case in a very matter-of-fact and substantiated way and that they would have the resources to come here and meet with them, all these things would argue for a greater attention being paid.”
And if your bishop is the problem?
“Then you have a difficulty in reporting it to Rome. You need to get another bishop to agree with you on the matter. And that is not as difficult as it sounds, because there are bishops who will collaborate with the laity.” He added that having an accredited canon lawyer with a pontifical degree adds a lot of weight with Roman officials.
Does all this mean that the laity have no place at the table?
“They do, but it’s not an institutional place. The laity is dealt with through the Pontifical Council for the Laity and different institutions that cater to the laity, but in terms of general functioning of the Roman Curia, it is a very clerical and hierarchical institution.”
Pro-life advocates often become frustrated that even after years of information being sent, and requests for action, little appears to be done. But these appearances can be deceptive.
“A lot of the results can be in the negative. In some cases, a bishop may not be promoted. So bishop so-and-so may not become archbishop so-and-so. Or a priest may get reported to his bishop and then not get a bigger parish. Or certain other benefices may not accrue to certain dioceses because there are things considered problematic there.
Meaney spoke about the work HLI is doing around the world to help seminarians develop an understanding of the life issues. Their group, “Seminarians for Life International” helps seminarians to make the pro-life apostolate a significant part of their priesthood.
Meaney said, “What we have found is that the current generation of seminarians is very interested in these issues, tend to be much more, for want of a better word, traditional or conservative in their attitudes towards the Church and towards different theological ideas.
“So the coming generations have a lot more Catholicity or faithfulness to them than previous generations. There’s a certain amount of the 1970s and 1980s that needs to pass, and I think that’s pretty much going to happen.”
Demographic change in the Church is slow, he said, but, as in the rest of the world, “inexorable.”