The Vatican and Permanent Neutrality

The essays in this book cover a fast-paced 150 years of Vatican diplomacy, starting from the fall of the Papal States in 1870 to the present day. They trace the transformation of the Vatican from a state like any other to an entity uniquely providing spiritual and moral sustenance in world affairs. In particular, the book details the Holy See’s use of neutrality as a tool and the principal statecraft in its diplomatic portmanteau. This concept of “permanent neutrality,” as codified in the Lateran Treaties of 1929, is a central concept adding to the Vatican's uniqueness and, as a result, the analysis of its policies does not easily fit within standard international relations or foreign policy scholarship. These essays consider in detail the Vatican’s history with “permanent neutrality” and its application in diplomacy toward delicate situations as, for instance, vis a vis Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan, but also in the international relations of the Cold War in debates about nuclear non-proliferation, or outreach toward the third world, including Cuba and Venezuela. The book also considers the ineluctable tension between pastoral teachings and realpolitik, as the church faces a reckoning with its history.

MARSHALL J. BREGER is Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America. He was Special Assistant to the President during the Reagan Administration. He has served as Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and as adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He writes a regular column for Moment magazine and has published widely on Jewish and legal issues and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Shma, Commentary, Reform Judaism, Midstream, and other Jewish periodicals.

Herbert R. Reginbogin is a Collegiate law fellow at the Catholic University of America Institute for Policy Research and professor of international relations and international law.

Pascal Lottaz is a Swiss academic at Kyoto University, Japan, where he researches neutral actors in international relations. He heads the research network neutralitystudies.com, which organizes regular academic conferences and publications. He has published four edited volumes and a monograph on neutrality. He is also the host of the popular YouTube Channel “Neutrality Studies”.

Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, USA. He has also taught at the Cooper Union, McGill, Princeton, Sciences Po, the University of Virginia, and Warsaw University, Poland. He is the author, most recently, of Catholics on the Barricades: Poland, France, and “Revolution”, 1891-1956 (2018) as well as being the editor/co-editor of seven books. His shorter writings have appeared in the TLS, the Nation, the New Republic, Commonweal, and the Washington Post.