The following article is adapted from a larger document co-authored by Peter Kwasniewski, Izabella Parowicz, Joseph Shaw, and Piotr Stec, defending the proposition that the Traditional Latin Mass counts as a supreme example of intangible cultural heritage that deserves international recognition and legal protection. Those who wish to read the full document will find it here, with all the internal citations as well. The section we are sharing concerns the Magisterium’s repeated recognition of the importance of protecting the Church’s heritage—which may read ironically, in light of what has actually transpired in the past six decades, but which remains nonetheless perfectly true in itself.—PAK
What legal and institutional framework has the Catholic Church given, if any, to the protection of what she recognizes as her own heritage? This is a question of more than academic interest, since it concerns both ethical responsibilities and legal requirements.
The Duty to Protect the Patrimony of Art and Architecture
In the Code of Canon Law, the mention of cultural goods (or, as they are sometimes called, cultural patrimony) appears in the broader context of the administration of ecclesiastical goods, whose supreme administrator and steward is the Bishop of Rome, the Pope (Canon 1273). Canon 1284 stipulates that all stewards of ecclesiastical goods must carry out their task with the diligence of a good steward, taking particular care of the following: (1) the goods entrusted to their care are in no way lost or damaged, taking out insurance policies for this purpose insofar as necessary; (2) the ownership of ecclesiastical goods is protected by civilly valid methods; and (3) the prescripts of both canon and civil law or those imposed by a founder, a donor, or legitimate authority are observed and no damage is allowed to come to the Church from the non-observance of civil laws.
In contrast, it is difficult to find references in the Code of Canon Law to the Church’s intangible cultural heritage and the need for its protection. One such rare reference—a fairly generic one—is Canon 214, which stipulates that “the Christian faithful have the right to worship God according to the prescripts of their own rite approved by the legitimate pastors of the Church and to follow their own form of spiritual life so long as it is consonant with the doctrine of the Church.” It may be logically concluded that approved rites, understood as heritage, must be protected so that the faithful attached thereto can benefit from them.
With regard to the Church’s tangible heritage, at the 21st session of the General Conference of UNESCO in Belgrade in 1980, the Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage considered it “desirable that the Vatican City be protected under the World Heritage Convention and therefore recommended that, in conformity to the article 31 thereof, an invitation to accede to the Convention be addressed by the General Conference of UNESCO to the Holy See.” The inscription of the Vatican City, in recognition of its role as a witness to a history of two millennia and to a formidable spiritual venture, on the World Heritage List was made during the eighth session of the World Heritage Committee in Buenos Aires, October 29–November 2, 1984. In 1990, the Holy See and Italy jointly and successfully applied for an extension of the Historic Centre of Rome site on the World Heritage List. Following the World Heritage Committee’s recommendation expressed as early as 1980 for the Historic Centre of Rome to be inscribed on the list, the list of properties has since started to include the Properties of the Holy See in that City Enjoying Extraterritorial Rights and San Paolo Fuori le Mura.
Following the inscription of the Vatican City on the World Heritage List, the Church began to devote more space in her documents to the need to protect this heritage, recognizing the great pastoral potential of Christian art and architecture,[1] as well as their role in carrying out the work of evangelization.[2] Church documents relating to cultural heritage and its protection definitely focus on material, i.e., tangible, heritage. The Pontifical Commission for Preserving the Patrimony of Art and History was established under the Apostolic Constitution Pastor Bonus within the Congregation for Clergy in 1988. The Commission absorbed and took over the tasks of other previously existing organizations, such as the Central Pontifical Commission for Sacred Art in Italy, established by Pius XI in 1924, and the Pontifical Commission for Church Archives in Italy, established by Pius XII in 1954. It had the task of acting as a curator of the artistic and historical patrimony of the whole Church, with this patrimony including “in the first place, all works of every kind of art of the past, works that must be kept and preserved with the greatest care” (Art. 100). In particular, documents and materials (Art. 101) and movable objects (Art. 175) are to be kept, if necessary, in museums, archives, and libraries (Art.102). The Constitution directed the Commission to work closely with the Congregation for Seminaries and Educational Institutions and the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in order “to make the people of God more and more aware of the need and importance of conserving the artistic and historical patrimony of the Church” (Art. 103).
Subsequent documents have emphasized the need for bishops and priests to make “a renewed effort… regarding the conservation of these goods and their cultural and pastoral valorization, and an awareness of their role in the work of evangelization, the liturgy, and the deepening of the faith.”[3] When, in his Apostolic Letter Inde a pontificatus on 25 March 1993, Pope John Paul II renamed the aforementioned commission the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Patrimony of the Church, he also included material objects among this heritage: “works of art, historical documents, books and everything kept in museums, libraries and archives.” The Commission, in its 1994 letter to religious families, defined the scope of heritage to be protected as follows:
from majestic cathedrals to smaller objects; from the marvelous works of art of the great masters to the smaller expressions of the poorer arts; from the most penetrating literary works to the apparently arid financial registers which follow step by step the life of the people of God.
“Books and parchments” as well as the role of libraries were specifically mentioned in another 1994 letter of the Commission, about ecclesiastical libraries, drawing upon the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes of the Second Vatican Council from 7 December 1965, n. 58. In his address to the participants at the First Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church in 1995, Pope John Paul II defined cultural goods as
first of all the patrimony of painting, sculpture, architecture, mosaics and music, put at the service of the mission of the Church…, the wealth of books contained in ecclesiastical libraries and the historical documents preserved in the archives of the ecclesial communities [as well as] the literary, theatrical and cinematographic works produced by the mass media.
In 2000, the Pope drew attention to the importance and need for local churches to make appropriate use of their own cultural heritage.
The Commission’s 2001 circular letter The Pastoral Function of Ecclesiastical Museums mentioned “the cultural treasures of the Church” and “cultural goods [as] an expression of historical memory,” i.e., “works of different generations [whose] artistic value reveals the creative capacity of artists, craftsmen and local guild traditions that have been able to imprint on what is visible their religious experience and the devotion of the Christian community.” The importance of handing down the Church’s own patrimony of cultural goods is emphasized (1.1):
In the cultural patrimony of the Church, we find the immense art-historical patrimony disseminated around the world. It owes its identity to the use by the Church it was created for and this end should not be forgotten. For this reason, the Church needs to work on strategies designed to appreciate and present the art-historical patrimony in all its richness. Even when pieces have fallen into disuse, for example, because of liturgical reform, or because they are too old to be used, the pieces should be placed among the goods in use in order to show the interest of the Church in expressing in a variety of styles her catechesis, worship, culture and charity.
In 2002, Pope John Paul II stressed the necessity of an “effective collaboration with administrations and civil institutions in order to create together, each according to his/her own competence, effective working synergies to defend and safeguard the universal artistic heritage.”
The pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI and the pontificate of Pope Francis (to date) have not been rich in documents on the Church’s cultural heritage. In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI, by his Apostolic Letter Pulchritudinis fidei, closed the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church, transferring its tasks and activities to the Pontifical Commission for Culture, due to the convergence of the roles of the two bodies. However, a statement by Pope Francis on the occasion of a conference on the sad issue of decommissioning places of worship should be quoted. The Pope noted that cultural heritage is
part of the sacred liturgy, of evangelization and of the exercise of charity. In fact, [it is] in the first place among those “things” (res) that are (or were) instruments of worship, “holy signs” according to the expression of the theologian Romano Guardini (1930)—“res ad sacrum cultum pertinentes,” according to the definition of the conciliar Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium (122).
Noting further that “ecclesiastical cultural assets are witnesses to the faith of the community that has produced them over the centuries, and for this reason they are in their own way instruments of evangelization that accompany the usual tools of proclamation, preaching and catechesis,” the Pope has thereby encouraged the formulation of a theological discourse on cultural heritage.
