Temporality and Geopolitics: The Case of Global Catholicism

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of temporality in geopolitics, particularly in geopolitics of religion. It argues that the spatial dimension of politics is always connected to temporality, as temporal politics is essential to the actors´ spatial moves, since it legitimizes them and gives them meaning. To show the practical relevance of temporality in geopolitics, the article sheds light on the geo-temporal narratives of the largest religious actor in the world, the Catholic Church. Analysing the Catholic Church’s approach to three selected regions, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, it argues that the Catholic Church uses two distinct geo-temporal strategies, one of secularized temporality and one of geo-temporal sacralization. The article concludes by arguing that since these approaches have very different political consequences, Catholic geopolitics would be undecipherable if its temporal dimension were omitted.

Notes

1. Philosophically, I subscribe to the Levinasian definition of religion as “the bond that is established between the same and the other without constituting a totality” (Levinas 1991, 40). Sociologically speaking, I focus on the much narrower, formal, top-down aspects of organized religion that consists of a “set of patterned practices, objects and relations“ which “favour some more than others“, in other words, “strategic religion” (Woodhead 2016, 7). This understanding of religion is also close to what Shakman Hurd calls “official“ or “governed religion”: “Religion as construed by those in positions of political or religious power“ (Hurd 2017, 8ff).

2. Even though there is an increasing number of exceptions; for the earliest critical texts that do not perceive it negatively see (Hurd 2008; Kubálková 2006).

3. I cannot reproduce these philosophical debates here. Suffice to say that the multiple contributions included Henri Bergson´s critique of the spatialization of time, Ernst Bloch´s study of non-contemporaneous contemporality, Nicos Poulantzas´ space-time matrices, Deleuze and Guattari´s re-interpretation of espace-temps, Reinhart Kosseleck´s spatial contextualization of historical time, and many others.

4. By temporality, I understand the secular flow of time and its perception by the consciousness, i.e. the succession of time and its perceived division into the past, the present, and the future. The temporality of religious geopolitics also explores the way in which the secular time is “ruptured” by transcendental events and the way the secular and the sacred interact in time.

5. Kosseleck argues that “[t]ime … can only be expressed in spatial metaphors” and continues by claiming that “it makes sense to say that experience based on the past is spatial since it is assembled into a totality within which many layers of earlier times are simultaneously present … ” (Kosseleck 2004, 260).

6. The final addition to the broader theoretical argument is the claim that the political usage of time and space creates narratives which link the spatio-temporal dimension to affectivity. References to space and time are never neutral; they always serve a purpose of commending, warning, instilling fear, creating bonds and the like. Both the past and the future are referred to in order to create a vision which is seen as attractive or dangerous by the citizenry. Spatial allusions serve a similar function – talking about close allies is a seemingly spatial expression that in fact expresses both temporality and affect. As this article focuses on the connection between space and time in Catholic geopolitics, I will not discuss the connection to affectivity in more detail here.

7. Levinas, in his turn, was influenced by the previous philosophical accounts of time, in particular those of Husserl and Heidegger.

8. For the analysis of a similar argument made by Deleuze, see Lampert (2006, 93): “Christian destiny programmes a return based on an original coming that it has already seen … In contrast, Jewish history moves irreversibly in a diagrammmatic straight line … ”

9. This claim is based on both a discourse analysis of the recent papal pronouncements, and the interviews conducted by the author in the Vatican (for details see below).

10. The Vatican works with various divisions of the world in its institutions, but typically it uses continents (Vatican 2020). Three common exceptions to this rule can be detected: First, instead of “the Americas” the triple division into North America, Central America and South America is sometimes used. Second, Australia is not treated separately, but in the broader framework of “Oceania”. Third, the Middle East is often treated separately, sometimes in combination with North Africa.

11. There are 544 references to the Middle East on the official website of the Vatican, while the much larger Asian continent shows 724 hits.

12. Latin America would be another interesting region, given its importance for the Church. However, based on my preliminary research, I left it out of the analysis. Despite his Latin American background, the current Pope dedicates surprisingly little attention to the region in his speeches (anonymized). Also, the Catholic temporality of Latin America to some extent resembles that of Africa and its relation to Europe is similarly ambivalent. Nonetheless, Latin America remains a promising region for further research.

13. The field research in Panama and Ghana relied on ethnographic methods, ranging from participant observation to interviews, but this article builds mainly on the first two legs, i.e. elite interviews and discourse analysis.

14. This means that regional variation may be quite substantial and that some regions, such as Latin America, develop their own distinct geopolitical narratives (see, for instance, the analysis in Puntigliano 2019). While these approaches are also an integral part of Catholic geopolitics, they are not the primary focus of this study.

15. Controversially, the Pope argued that “on the civil and political level, Chinese Catholics must be good citizens” and, when addressing the Chinese Catholics, that antagonism must be overcome “on both sides” (Message 2018).

16. To estimate the number of Catholics in China is notoriously difficult, but 12 million is the most frequently cited figure (BBC 2019; Sainsbury 2019a, 2019b).

17. This binary is strongest in discursive terms, but it also plays a certain role in institutional terms: the Council of Bishops´ Conferences of Europe has the most intense relationship with the African Catholic Church (Consilium Conferentiarum Episcoporum Europae 2020), and the cooperation between the European and the African church is the most active, ranging from top-level meetings to practical projects (I 2).

18. I would like to thank one of the anonymous referees for drawing my attention to this aspect of the relationship between the EU and the Catholic Church.

19. While the analysis covered all documents containing the word “Africa”, it revealed that these texts cover almost exclusively sub-Saharan Africa, especially when Christianity is discussed. Other parts of Africa (typically the Horn of Africa) are included mainly when humanitarian disasters, poverty or violent conflicts are discussed.

20. I would like to thank one of the anonymous referees for pointing this out.

21. It should be noted, however, that the current Pope is more prone than to explicitly stating his political preferences than his predecessor. For example, he unequivocally expressed his support for the two-state solution as the preferred settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (P1192).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Grantová Agentura České Republiky [GA19-10969S].