Photo: Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia watches as Pope Francis addresses the General Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life on 5 October 2017. ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images
In a recent comment piece commissioned by the Catholic Herald I addressed the clamour of concern raised in the Catholic media at some of the recent appointments to the Pontifical Academy for Life. One was reported as having tweeted several times in a way that implicitly supported access to abortion. Another was reported as publicly criticising the overturning of Roe v Wade by the US Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health. The conclusion to be drawn seemed evident enough: the Academy had redefined its mission since it was founded by John Paul II. The Academy has responded, and taken issue with the sources I consulted. From the information provided I will offer what will be – in part – a public response from the Academy to the controversy, through its press officer Fabrizio Mastrofini. In an email to me he took “the opportunity to better present the work that the Pontifical Academy for Life does”.
Regarding Prof Mariana Mazzucato, Mr Mastrofini asked the question: “who can really say that Mazzucato is pro-abortion? Where does this certainty come from? The ‘news’ is based on three or four tweets by the professor… To criticise on three or maybe four tweets is not acceptable to me.” He raised two points: first, that nowhere has the professor, in either her books or lectures, spoken in favour of abortion; secondly, that her appointment (as with all the other candidates) “was screened by the Pontifical Academy for Life’s Steering Committee, the Apostolic Nuncio in England, the Secretary of the UK Bishops’ Conference, it was screened by the Secretariat of State. It was then approved by the Pope.”
Of course, one might ask if any of these parties had seen Prof Mazzucato’s tweets. We are all familiar with the impact of past tweets on public figures when appointed to new roles. Scrutiny of one’s tweetography is inevitable now, so it should be second nature for any organisation to check the social-media output of candidates. But has the Church caught up to that? In the public square, prevention is better – and easier – than cure.
In his in-flight interview on the way back from Bahrain, Pope Francis spoke approvingly of the appointment of Professor Mazzucato, and from his words it was clear that she was appointed as an economist and because she is a woman: “She is a great economist from the United States, I put her there to give a little more humanity to it. Women carry their own, they don’t have to become like males. No! They are women; we need them.” In a letter to Il Foglio on 9 November 2022, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the Academy’s president, pointed out that Prof Mazzucato was appointed for her economic expertise on globalisation and the free market, and their impact on human inequality and thus life – and that he had expected any critique of her to be centred on her work in this field and not another.
Likewise, regarding Prof Roberto Dell’Oro, the Academy is adamant that he does “not support abortion”. The address given by Prof Dell’Oro on 12 October 2022 at Loyola Marymount addresses the reversal of Roe v Wade by distinguishing, but not separating, morality from legality. To say that his paper entailed clear support for abortion would be inaccurate. His argument centred on the failure he saw in the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision to consider adequately the autonomy of a woman’s moral agency, and critiqued the court’s originalist approach to the 14th amendment of the American constitution applied in Dobbs. Prof Dell’Oro developed an argument that sees law acting positively as well as negatively, serving an individual’s freedom: a freedom not only “from” but also a freedom “to”. By this he apparently means, for example, a freedom from harm and a freedom to flourish, and within this a freedom to choose.
This is the sort of academic reflection that always took place out of the public eye, and which contributed to a developing understanding of a particular issue. Simplistically put: theologians debate, the magisterium listens, and then it decides. Divorced from this dialectical context any individual argument can be misconstrued. In the case of Prof Dell’Oro, his critique of Dobbs as failing to account adequately for the autonomous moral agency of women in relation to the state’s power to legislate was seen by some, in isolation, as implicitly supporting freedom of choice regarding abortion. Prof Dell’Oro was rather addressing the role of the state in legislating on such issues as abortion. Since such a paper does not admit of easy explanation by tweet, it is better just left to the academics and the magisterium.
The modern problem for the Academy, and for the Church more generally, is what is called the optics. The optics are largely the rapid product of the electronic, especially social, media. ProfMazzucato’s appointment to the Academy may have been solely on the basis of her economic expertise and womanhood, but many would consider the issues surrounding global economic inequality to be matters related more specifically to justice than to an expanded definition of life. If Prof Mazzucato had been appointed to the now-abolished Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace there would have been little, if any, outcry. However, since abortion is a fundamental and specific issue pertaining to life, it was inevitable that her tweets sympathetic towards abortion would be noticed and cause alarm after her appointment to the Pontifical Academy for Life.
The Academy has been disturbed by the role of social media and non-mainstream news sources in shaping the reception of the Vatican’s actions. Mr Mastrofini was concerned that certain media outlets consistently adopted an adversarial line towards the Vatican and the Holy Father, choosing “to ignore the official point of view,” and promoting “a falsification of reality” that is symptomatic of “information disorder”. He objected to what we would call a hermeneutic of suspicion, and referred me several times to Archbishop Paglia’s 2017 National Catholic Register interview with Edward Pentin as a primary source for assessing the mission of the Academy today and the critiques of it. He lamented that, since the interview, “the criticism has remained the same; it has been repeated and is being repeated as if that interview did not exist.”
In the interview, Archbishop Paglia intended that the Academy would “present to the Church such a compelling, positive vision of the value and beauty of life that believers will be able to overcome the differences, and sometimes the suspicions, that prevent them, as persons of unquestioned goodwill, from cooperating with each other on life-related questions that are supremely important but on which reasonable and good persons may differ.” The membership of the Academy would be, he said, “talented and accomplished, but also as truly representative of all who value life at all its stages”. Speaking for the Academy, he said that “we must free our discussions from simplistic assumptions. We must be passionate in our love for objective truth.”
This, indeed, reads as a mission statement for the Academy. It signals that its work lies not so much in teaching as in conducting and enabling dialogue. Since the Academy is not an instrument of the Church’s magisterium, but rather a privileged provider of reflection and discussion to inform and assist the magisterium, this is justifiable. However, an artificial separation of various moral concerns is a hard sell to the modern world, and to the modern Church. It is inevitable that commentators will discern and question an artificial separation of moral issues within the expanded category of life. They are asking whether it best serves the mission of the Academy to appoint to it someone who supports one aspect of the Church’s teaching on life but not another. Regarding abortion, it is questionable to say the least that this is a subject on which “good persons may differ,” unless it is absolutely clear where the difference lies.
In our world of electronic media, optics are everything. Moreover, in social media the hermeneutic of suspicion is applied widely, especially to politics; it will inevitably be applied to the Church’s actions. In both church and state, appointments will be especially scrutinised since it is a maxim of modern thought that personnel is policy. Politicians and holders of government office give quasi-official updates on developing situations through Twitter, often before traditional press releases are issued. They do so, of course, in order to contribute to shaping the narrative at an early stage. Their previous social media posts will naturally be studied to see how consistent they are with more recent statements. This phenomenon will inevitably also apply to members of ecclesiastical bodies.
Given that the prevailing hermeneutic of suspicion is unlikely to disappear soon, it is a reality that the Church must face. The media organs of the Vatican need to adjust fully to this reality and contribute actively, in real-time, to the progress of debate and discussion on issues relevant to them. Authoritative responses in traditional modes will still be required, but if there is no official voice engaging in debate from the outset, the field is largely lost to the Church before she begins to engage in earnest.
Fake news on social media abounds, as we know from revelations of the manipulation of social media by foreign governments to influence elections. The challenge not only for the state, but for the Pontifical Academy for Life, and for the Church as a whole, is how best to employ social media effectively and fruitfully in service of the truth of the Gospel. The Church must engage in shaping emerging narratives from the outset, otherwise it will be simply too late.
Dom Hugh Somerville Knapman is a monk of Douai Abbey
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.