International crises: the Church is never neutral
By Roberto de Mattei | 16 April 2025
The situation in the world today is so intricate as to require great tranquillity of spirit and clarity of mind of anyone who wishes to find his way. The pandemic, the Russian-Ukrainian war and the election of Donald Trump have upended a false international balance. The political and intellectual class that has governed the world since the French Revolution is now seeing the breakdown of its power and illusions. Catholics cannot do otherwise than rejoice at the collapse of the pseudo-civilisation born of the French Revolution, remembering that there is only one civilisation worthy of the name: Christian Civilisation. But today the natural and Christian order is threatened by a global chaos that gets a contribution from all those positions that depart from the immutable teachings of the Church. It is in the light of these teachings that one must also judge the complex international situation. The effort that Catholics are called to make at this time is that of rising above a purely political reading of events to a supernatural reading, which takes into account in the first place the interests of God and of the Church.
To understand this, one must carefully consider the papal teachings collected in two volumes by the monks of Solesmes, La Paix Internationale (Desclée, Paris 1956), translated into Italian in 1962 by Edizioni Paoline, and in particular Pius XII’s Radio Message addressed to the whole world on Christmas Eve 1951, (vol. II, 615-627; full text in AAS, vol. 44 (1952), no. 1, pp 5–15). In this important document, the pope explains the Church’s contribution to the cause of peace.
The error that the pope wants to dispel is that of those who “consider the Church as a kind of earthly power, or a sort of world empire”, and ask it either to take political sides, in favour of one party or the other, or, on the contrary, to assume a position of political neutrality, forgetting that the Church cannot put itself at the service of purely political interests. Therefore, Pius XII warns:
“Statesmen, and at times even churchmen, who want to make the Spouse of Christ their ally or the instrument of their political alliances, whether national or international, would do injury to the very essence of the Church and would inflict damage on the life which is proper to her; in a word, they would bring her down to the same level on which conflicting temporal interests are locked in struggle. And this is and remains true, even where there is question of ends and interests legitimate in themselves.”
The Church does not contribute to peace with political choices, but by reminding the world of the great truths that transcend politics:
“Whoever, then, would wish to detach the Church from her supposed neutrality, or bring pressure to bear on her in the question of peace, or diminish her right freely to determine whether, when, or how she may wish to come to a decision in the various conflicts, such a one would not make the Church’s co-operation in the work of peace easier. For any decision on the Church’s part, even in political questions, can never be purely political, but must always be sub specie aeternitatis, in the light of the divine law, of its order, its values, its standards.”
The pope adds:
“It is not rare to see purely temporal powers and institutions abandon their neutrality, and align themselves today in one camp, tomorrow perhaps in another. It is a game of alliances which can be explained by the constant shifting of temporal interests. But the Church keeps herself aloof from such unstable alliances. If she passes judgment, that does not mean that she is thereby abandoning a neutrality hitherto observed; for God is never neutral toward human events in the course of history, and so neither can His Church be. If she speaks and judges on the problems of the day, it is with the clear consciousness of anticipating, in the power of the Holy Spirit, the sentence which at the end of time Her Lord and Head, judge of the universe, will confirm and sanction.”
The pope emphasises that God is never neutral in human affairs, and much less can the Church be so. It is never “neutral”; it takes part in the struggles of the world, but its criteria are not political, because they do not have in view the worldly interests of nations or individuals, but the glory of God and the good of souls. Pius XII warns:
“[The Church] cannot consent to judge according to exclusively political norms; she cannot tie the interests of religion to particular policies of a purely earthly scope; she cannot run the risk of giving any reason for doubting about her religious character; she cannot forget for an instant that her role of representative of God on earth does not permit her to remain indifferent, even for a single moment, between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in human affairs. …
“The Infant lying [in the cradle in Bethlehem] is the Eternal Son of God made man, and his name is princeps pacis, Prince of Peace … when the Church and her Supreme Pastor pass from this sweet intimacy of the Babe of Bethlehem, so peaceful and heartwarming, into a world that is far from Christ, it is like stepping out into a gust of freezing air. That world talks nothing but peace; but it has no peace. It claims for itself all possible and impossible legal titles to establish peace, yet does not know or does not recognize the mission of peacemaker that comes directly from God, the mission of peace deriving from the religious authority of the Church.
“Poor short-sighted men, whose little field of vision does not go beyond the possibilities of the present hour, beyond statistics of military and economic potential. How can they form the slightest idea of the worth and importance of religious authority for the solution of the peace problem? Superficial minds, unable to see in all their reality and fullness the value and the creative power of Christianity, how can they help being sceptical and disdainful of the power of the Church for peace?”
Pius XII continues and concludes:
“At the crib of the Divine Prince of Peace, We have to say again today what We have said before: The world is indeed far removed from that order willed by God in Christ, the order which guarantees a genuine and lasting peace … for a practical as well as a theoretical estimate of the contribution each one can make to the cause of peace, especially the Church, even in unfavourable circumstances and in spite of the sceptics and pessimists, We think it absolutely necessary to fix Our view on the Christian order, today lost sight of by so many, in order to see the crux of the problem now before us.
“In the first place, such a survey will convince any impartial observer that the heart of the problem of peace is now the spiritual order: the problem is a spiritual lack, a spiritual deficiency. Too rare in the world today is the deeply Christian sense of values; too few are the true and perfect Christians. In this way, men themselves set obstacles in the way of actuating the order willed by God.
“Everyone must be convinced of this spiritual element inherent in the danger of war. To awaken that conviction is in the first place the duty of the Church, and her primary contribution to the peace today.”
We are convinced of this and, faced with the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and all the crises of our time, we summarise our position in these terms: national and international political events must always and only be judged sub specie aeternitatis — in the light of the divine law, of its order, its values, its standards — because only the order willed by God in Christ repels war and guarantees that real and lasting peace which has nothing to do with the false peace invoked by politicians and by the worldly.