Hubert Wolf

As a church historian, Hubert Wolf shows ways that church history can point out reform possibilities that are within the Roman Catholic tradition, but are very different from the current church. He is very critical of Vatican I and the dogma of papal infallibility.

As a Protestant, I am always pleased to see these themes picked up by RC writers - you get a different perspective. It is also very clear to me that Ecumenism can only succeed when the Roman Catholic church recovers some of these lessons from its past.… (meer)

A fairly dry but absorbing examination of a scandal the Vatican did an excellent job of covering up for 150 years. In 1858, at the convent of Sant'Ambrogio in Rome, a German princess who is serving as a nun makes a frantic appeal for help, claiming she is about to be murdered. The Church investigates and finds a case so disturbing it is handed over to the Holy Office, the new name for the Inquisition. This not the brutal, torture and the stake Inquisition of the Middle Ages, but an efficient and pedantic prosecution office manned by lawyers rather than witch-hunters. the investigation turns up in the seemingly normal convent the false worship of the Convent's founder, who had been discredited years before, sexual relations between nuns and nuns, and between nuns and priests, and most sinister of all, the murder and attempted murder of those who won't conform to the new order. The bulk of the blame centres on the young and beautiful Sr Maria Luisa, who has an apparent hold over the abbess, has manufactured "letters" purporting to be from Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and seduced other nuns into sexual activities under a guise of assumed holiness. While Wolf's slow, dry text could never be called exciting, it is thoroughly intriguing as he tracks the meticulous case-building of the Holy Office, and draws it into the wider context of the struggle within the Church between the so-called Ultramontanists, hard-line conservatives who want absolute power invested in Rome, and the liberal reformers, who want a more decentralized, pastoral church. The victims of this struggle, unfortunately, turn out to be the nuns themselves, poorly-educated girls thrust into an uncomfortable and manipulative environment, and in the end punished more severely than the male participants despite genuinely being victims as much as malefactors. In the end, the scandal proves too much for the Church to deal with, and it is decisively buried in their deepest archives. A fascinating story which has been concealed for too long, and a genuinely disturbing picture of the dangers of excessively regimented religious belief and practice. Great stuff.… (meer)

The Vatican must be having second thoughts about the wisdom of Pope John Paul II’s decision to open its secret files to scholars if Hubert Wolf’s excellent piece of scholarly sleuthing is any indication of what else may reside there. Wolf uncovered a scandal involving a nun committing almost every form of sexual abuse imaginable, making false claims of holiness and having direct communication with heaven even including feigned miracles and even attempted murder; not to mention priests breaking their vows of celibacy. All of this was duly exposed by a papal inquisition but then buried by the Vatican. Ironically, the principal guilty parties suffered quite different fates. The nun— Sister Maria Luisa—was punished severely and eventually ended up alone, penniless and insane; while an equally complicit priest—Fr. Giuseppe Peters aka Fr. Joseph Kleutgen was given a token punishment and eventually elevated by Pope Pius XI to the position of theological adviser at the first Vatican council. In that capacity, he was primarily responsible for determining central Church doctrines.

Wolf’s meticulous scholarship makes for slow reading, but is redeemed by a perspective on the crimes and their punishments that takes into consideration the religious thinking of the time (mid 19th Century) as well as the power struggles that existed in the Church’s hierarchy. Certainly some of this culture persists to this day when one considers how the Church has mismanaged the modern scandals of sexual abuse by pedophile priests.

Like most nuns of her time, Sr. Maria Luisa came from a humble background and did not have the benefits of education. Notwithstanding these impediments, she was obviously highly intelligent and driven by ambitions to become a leader in the Church. Her goal was to found an order of her own. Thus she viewed her wealthy and powerful new novice—Katharina von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen— as a way to achieve her goal. When Katherina became suspicious of the sexual abuses that Sr. Luisa was orchestrating, she needed to be silenced.

Wolf emphasizes that this was a time when religiosity and spiritualism were widely accepted by both lay people and the Church. So, even though much of this story sounds really insane, it would not seem strange to the people of that period. To this mix, one needs to add the large egos that existed at all levels in the Church, not to exclude even its convents. The authority of the male-dominated Church hierarchy was accepted without question and could serve to excuse all sorts of illicit behaviors. Moreover, it was a time of turmoil because the Church was facing a crisis, much like it is today. On one hand, liberal theologians were trying to modernize to accommodate a period of intense secularization; while on the other, conservatives—primarily led by the Jesuits— advocated for stricter interpretations of dogma, like the doctrine of papal infallibility. Wolf suggests that his primary source material, the five year Inquisition lead by the Benedictine, Vincenzo Sallua, despite being exhaustive, was influenced by the times and culture in the Church.

This is an important historical investigation that deserves to be read by scholars. Although it seems to be aimed at lay readers, most may find it to be a slog.… (meer)