Ultramontanism

ULTRAMONTANISM IS derived from ultra montes, which means “beyond the mountains.” It is a term used to designate traditional Catholicism that recognizes the pope as the ultimate authority and spiritual leader, and has traditionally advocated the doctrine of papal infallibility. The term reflects the fact that for most of the Catholic world, the pope is physically located on the other side of the Alps. Ultramontanism reflects the position of Roman Catholics who have historically privileged centralized papal authority over national leaders and local ecclesiastical structures. Historically, it was opposed by such nationalist movements as Gallicanism in France, which defended the special rights of the French monarch in the French Church, and ecclesiastical Gallicanism, which tried to claim an administrative independence from Rome for the French clergy, Josephinism in Austria, and the radical Febronianism in Germany—all ideologies promoting strong national churches, as well as Conciliarism, which subordinated papal authority to the ultimate jurisdiction of a council of bishops.

These countermovements arose during the crisis of the Great Schism, a division in the Roman Catholic Church that lasted from 1378 to 1417, during which time the relationship between papal authority and general councils was negotiated. Ultramontanism is divided into old ultramontanism and new ultramontanism. Old ultramontanism was a Medieval doctrine, and the term [Page 919]was frequently found in 13th-century texts and continued to be used until the Babylonian Captivity, a period from 1304 to 1377, when the pope was based in Avignon (France) and the papal authority was seen by some as being in the captivity of the French monarchy.

The tenets of ultramontanism were largely adopted by the Society of Jesus in the 17th century, and were promoted by theologians such as Francisco Suarez, an opponent of such diffusion of the papal authority as the divine right of kings doctrine.

During the post-Napoleonic era, new ultramontanism was resurrected in France, as a French Catholic project aimed to reverse the influence of Enlightenment rationalism and secular humanism on Church affairs and to revivify papal authority. A similar neo-ultramontanism emerged in Germany, where it resulted in a political struggle between the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and the papal authority. The rift between Germany and the Vatican lasted approximately 30 years, but diplomatic relations were restored by the end of the 19th century and the anti-Catholic laws passed during that period were repealed.

The revival of ultramontanism was supportive of such unilateral papal acts as the declaration of the immaculate conception in 1854 and the promulgation of the Syllabus of Errors in 1864. The 1870 proclamation of papal primacy and infallibility was a triumph and an apex of the ultramontanist agenda. Even though the Second Vatican Council (1965) reaffirmed papal infallibility, its approval of an increased role for the college of bishops and a greater voice for the laymen in congregational issues weakened the doctrine of ultramontanism. John Paul II, the Pope (from 1978), has favored the ultramontane principles of strong papal authority and centralization of the power of the Catholic Church in the Vatican.

The critics of ultramontanism view it as an authoritarian and reactionary ideology that seeks a return to a Medieval social cosmology, when the position of the Catholic Church was centralized, unambiguous, and undisputed, and that ignores the relationship between the religious and the civic spheres that has evolved.

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