Ask Apple for something equivalent of Windows COM+ and convince them they have a good reason for doing so once they stop laughing, and then you might have it.
I realize this isn't the same thing, but a lot of Mac apps are scriptable through Apple's Open Scripting Architecture [1], so it's more than possible to use Python [2] or Ruby [3] or any other language with an OSA bridge to access and reuse application functionality or to automate tasks. According to Wikipedia, Microsoft Office 2008 supports OSA, so it's worth investigating with Microsoft Office 2011. You can use the ASDictionary app from the appscript page [4] to see what scriptable functionality, if any, various Microsoft Office for Mac applications support.
