Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
Revolution and Counter-Revolution
Originally
published as “Revolução e Contra-Revolução”, in “Catolicismo”, April 1959
(Parts I and II) and January 1977 (Part III)
Third
English Edition
Copyright
© 1993 The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property
(TFP)
First
English edition 1974. Second English edition 1980
The
American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP)
P.O. Box
1868
York, PA
17405
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
Part I
The
Revolution
CHAPTER I
The
Crisis of Contemporary Man
CHAPTER
II
The
Crisis of Western and Christian Man
CHAPTER
III
Characteristics
of This Crisis
1. IT IS
UNIVERSAL
2. IT IS
ONE
3. IT IS
TOTAL
4. IT IS
DOMINANTS
5. IT IS
PROCESSIVE
A. The
Decay of the Middle Ages
B. The
Pseudo-Reformation and the Renaissance
C. The
French Revolution
D.
Communism
E.
Monarchy, Republic, and Religion
F.
Revolution, Counter-Revolution, and Dictatorship
CHAPTER
IV
The
Metamorphoses of the Revolutionary Process
CHAPTER V
The Three
Depths of the Revolution:
1. The
Revolution in the Tendencies, in the Ideas, and in the Facts
2. The
Revolution in the ideas
3. The
Revolution in the facts
4.
Observations
A. The
Depths of the Revolution Are Not Identical to Chronological Stages
B. The
Differentiation of the Three Depths of the Revolution
C. The
Revolutionary Process Is Not Irrepressible
CHAPTER
VI
The March
of the Revolution
1. The
Driving Force of the Revolution
A. The
Revolution and the Disordered Tendencies
B. The
Paroxysms of the Revolution Are Fully Present in Its Seeds
C. The
Revolution Aggravates Its Own Causes
2. THE
APPARENT INTERVALS OF THE REVOLUTION
3. THE
MARCH FROM REFINEMENT TO REFINEMENT
4. THE
HARMONIC SPEEDS OF THE REVOLUTION
A. The
Rapid March
B. The
Slow March
C. How
These Speeds Harmonize
5.
OBJECTIONS REFUTED
A.
Slow-speed Revolutionaries and "Semi-counterrevolutionaries"
B.
Protestant Monarchies and Catholic Republics
C.
Protestant Austerity
D. The
Single Front of the Revolution
6. THE
AGENTS OF THE REVOLUTION: FREEMASONRY AND OTHER SECRET FORCES
CHAPTER
VII
The
Essence of the Revolution
1. THE
REVOLUTION PAR EXCELLENCE
A.
Meaning of the Word Revolution
B. Bloody
and Unbloody Revolution
C. The
Amplitude of the Revolution
D. The Revolution
Par Excellence
E. The
Destruction of the Order Par Excellence
2.
REVOLUTION AND LEGITIMACY
A.
Legitimacy Par Excellence
B.
Catholic Culture and Civilization
C. The
Sacral Character of Catholic Civilization
D. Culture and Civilization Par Excellence
E. Illegitimacy Par Excellence
3. PRIDE
AND SENSUALITY AND THE METAPHYSICAL VALUES OF THE REVOLUTION
A. Pride
and Egalitarianism
B.
Sensuality and Liberalism
CHAPTER
VIII
The
Intelligence, the Will, and the Sensibility in the Determination of Human Acts
1. FALLEN
NATURE, GRACE, AND FREE WILL
2. THE
GERM OF THE REVOLUTION
3.
REVOLUTION AND BAD FAITH
CHAPTER
IX
The
"Semi-counterrevolutionary" Is Also a Son of the Revolution
CHAPTER X
Culture,
Arts, and Ambiences in the Revolution
1.
CULTURE
2. ARTS
3.
AMBIENCES
4. THE
HISTORICAL ROLE OF THE ARTS AND AMBIENCES IN THE REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS
CHAPTER
XI
The
Revolution on Sin and Redemption, and the Revolutionary Utopia
1. THE
REVOLUTION DENIES SIN AND THE REDEMPTION
2.
HISTORICAL EXEMPLIFICATION: THE DENIAL OF SIN IN LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM
A. The
Immaculate Conception of the Individual
B. The
Immaculate Conception of the Masses and the State
3.
REDEMPTION BY SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: THE REVOLUTIONARY UTOPIA
CHAPTER
XII
The
Pacifist and Antimilitarist Character of the Revolution
1.
SCIENCE WILL BRING AN END TO WAR, THE MILITARY, AND POLICE
2. THE
DOCTRINAL INCOMPATIBILITY BETWEEN THE REVOLUTION AND THE UNIFORM
3. THE
TEMPERAMENT OF THE REVOLUTION IS CONTRARY TO THE MILITARY LIFE
Part II
The
Counter-Revolution
CHAPTER I
The
Counter-Revolution Is a Reaction
1. THE
COUNTER-REVOLUTION: A SPECIFIC AND DIRECT FIGHT AGAINST THE REVOLUTION
2. THE
NOBILITY OF THIS REACTION
3. A
REACTION TURNED AGAINST PRESENT-DAY ADVERSARIES
4. THE
MODERNITY AND INTEGRITY OF THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION
CHAPTER
II
Reaction
and Historical Immobility
1. WHAT
IS TO BE RESTORED
2. WHAT
IS TO BE INNOVATED
CHAPTER
III
The
Counter-Revolution and the Craving After Novelties
1. THE
COUNTER-REVOLUTION IS TRADITIONALIST
A. Reason
B. The
Smoking Wick
C. False
Traditionalism
2. THE
COUNTER-REVOLUTION IS CONSERVATIVE
3. THE
COUNTER-REVOLUTION IS AN ESSENTIAL CONDITION FOR AUTHENTIC PROGRESS
CHAPTER
IV
What Is a
Counter-Revolutionary?
1. IN
ACTUALITY
2. IN
POTENTIALITY
CHAPTER V
The
Counter-Revolution's Tactics
1. IN
RELATION TO THE ACTUAL COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY
A.
Individual Action
B.
Combined Action
2. IN
RELATION TO THE POTENTIAL COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY
3. IN
RELATION TO THE REVOLUTIONARY
A. The
Counter-Revolutionary Initiative
B. The
Revolutionary Counteroffensive
4. ELITES
AND MASSES IN THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY TACTICS
CRAPTER
VI
The
Counter-Revolution's Means of Action
1. A
PREFERENCE FOR GREAT MEANS OF ACTION
2. THE
USE OF MODEST MEANS: THEIR EFFICACY
CHAPTER
VII
Obstacles
to the Counter-Revolution
1.
PITFALLS TO BE AVOIDED AMONG COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARIES
2.
SLOGANS OF THE REVOLUTION
A.
"The Counter-Revolution Is Out of Date"
B.
"The Counter-Revolution Is Negativistic"
C.
"The Counter-Revolutionary Is Argumentative"
3. WRONG
ATTITUDES IN FACE OF THE REVOLUTION'S SLOGANS
A.
Ignoring Revolutionary Slogans
B.
Eliminating the Polemical Aspects of Counter-Revolutionary Action
CHAPTER
VIII
The
Processive Character of the Counter-Revolution, and the Counter-Revolutionary
"Shock"
1. THERE
IS A COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS
2.
TYPICAL ASPECTS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS
A. In the
Rapid March
B. In the
Slow March
3. HOW TO
DESTROY THE REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS
A. The
Many Ways of the Holy Ghost
B.
Nothing Should Be Hidden
C. The
"Shock" of the Great Conversions
D. The
Likelihood of this Shock in Our Days
E.
Showing the Whole Face of the Revolution
F.
Pointing Out the Metaphysical Aspects of the Counter-Revolution
G. The
Two Stages of the Counter-Revolution
CHAPTER
IX
The
Driving Force of the Counter-Revolution
1. VIRTUE
AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION
2.
SUPERNATURAL LIFE AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION
3. THE
INVINCIBILITY OF THF COUNTER-REVOLUTION
CHAPTER X
The
Counter-Revolution, Sin, and the Redemption
1. THE
COUNTER-REVOLUTION SHOULD REVIVE THE NOTION OF GOOD AND EVIL
2. HOW TO
REVIVE TUE NOTION OF GOOD AND EVIL
CHAPTER
XI
The
Counter-Revolution and Temporal Society
1. THE
COUNTER-REVOLUTION AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
A. Works
of Charity, Social Service, Associations of Employers, Workers,and So Forth
B. The
Struggle Against Communism
2.
CHRISTENDOM AND THE UNIVERSAL REPUBLIC
3. THE
COUNTER-REVOLUTION AND NATIONALISM
4. THE
COUNTER-REVOLUTION AND MILITARISM
CHAPTER
XII
The
Church and the Counter-Revolution
1. THE
CHURCH IS MUCH HIGHER AND FAR BROADER THAN THE REVOLUTION AND THE
COUNTER-REVOLUTION
2. THE
CHURCH HAS THE GREATEST INTEREST IN CRUSHING THE REVOLUTION
3 .THE
CHURCH IS A FUNDAMENTALLY COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY FORCE
4. THE
CHURCH IS THE GREATEST COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY FORCE
5. THE
CHURCH IS THE SOUL OF THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION
6. THE
IDEAL OF THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION IS TO EXALT THE CHURCH
7. IN A
WAY, THE PURVIEW OF THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION IS BROADER THAN THE ECCLESIASTICAL
AMBIT
8.
WHETHER EVERY CATHOLIC SHOULD BE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY
A. The
Implicit Counter-Revolutionary
B. The
Modernity of a Counter-Revolutionary Explicitness
C. The
Explicit Counter-Revolutionary
D.
Counter-Revolutionary Action That Does Not Constitute an Apostolate
9.
CATHOLIC ACTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION
10. THE
COUNTER-REVOLUTION AND NON-CATHOLICS
Part III
Revolution
and Counter-Revolution Twenty Years After
CHAPTER I
The
Revolution: A Process in Continual Transformation
1.
REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION AND THE TFPs: TWENTY YEARS OF ACTION AND
COMBAT
2. IN A
WORLD IN CONTINUOUS AND RAPID TRANSFORMATION, IS "REVOLUTION AND
COUNTER-REVOLUTION" STILL CURRENT? THE ANSWER IS AFFIRMATIVE
CHAPTER
II
The
Apogee and Crisis of the Third Revolution
1. THE
APOGEE OF THE THIRD REVOLUTION
A. On the
Road to Its Apogee, the Third Revolution Studiously Avoided Total and Useless
Adventures
B.
Adventure in This Revolution's Next Stages?
2.
UNANTICIPATED OBSTACLES TO THE THIRD REVOLUTION'S USE OF CLASSIC METHODS
A. The
Decline of Persuasive Power
B. The
Decline in the Capacity of Leadership
C.
Objection: The Communist Successes in Italy and France
3.
METAMORPHOSED HATRED AND VIOLENCE GENERATE TOTAL REVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGICAL
WARFARE
A. The
Two Great Goals of Revolutionary Psychological Warfare
B. Total
Revolutionary Psychological Warfare: A Result of the Third Revolution's Apogee
and Current Problems
4. THE
THIRD REVOLUTION'S PSYCHOLOGICAL OFFENSIVE WITHIN THE CHURCH
A. The
Second Vatican Council
B. The
Church: Today's Center of Conflict Between the Revolution and the
Counter-Revolution
C.
Reactions Based on "Revolution and Counter-Revolution"
D. The
Usefulness of the Action of the TFPs and Like Organizations Inspired by
"Revolution and Counter-Revolution"
5. AN
ASSESSMENT OF TWENTY YEARS OF THE THIRD REVOLUTION ACCORDING TO THE CRITERIA OF
"REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION"
CHAPTER
III
The
Aborning Fourth Revolution
1. THE
FOURTH REVOLUTION FORETOLD BY THE AUTHORS OF THE THIRD REVOLUTION
2. THE
FOURTH REVOLUTION AND TRIBALISM: AN EVENTUALITY?
A. The
Fourth Revolution and the Preternatural
B.
Structuralism and Pre-tribal Tendencies
C. An
Unpretentious Contribution
D. The
Opposition of the Banal
E.
Ecclesiastical Tribalism and Pentecostalism
3. THE
DUTY OF THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARIES IN FACE OF THE ABORNING FOURTH REVOLUTION
CONCLUSION
POSTFACE
APPROBATION
FOREWORD
Since its first publication in
the Brazilian cultural journal Catolicismo in 1959, Revolution and Counter‑Revolution
has gone through a number of editions in Portuguese, English, French, Italian,
and Spanish.
The present edition is the third
to be published in the United States. It includes recent commentaries on
Revolution and Counter‑Revolution's third part, which was added by the
author in 1976.
Revolution and Counter‑Revolution,
the basic book and inspiration of the many autonomous Societies for the Defense
of Tradition, Family and Property and like organizations, contains principles
of wisdom that can efficaciously stop the disintegration of civilization in the
world today.
The author of this work is the
world‑famous Brazilian Catholic philosopher Prof. Plinio Corrêa de
Oliveira. Over the years he has written numerous works that have received
noteworthy ecclesiastical approbation.
For example, in the late 40s,
his Em Defesa da Acao Catolica, denouncing the danger presented by
leftists encysted in the Catholic Action movement, prompted a letter of praise
from Msgr. Montini, then substitute for the Vatican secretary of state, written
on behalf of Pius XII.
In another work, The Church
and the Communist State: The Impossible Coexistence (1963), the author
proved that a Catholic could not view the establishment of a communist regime
in his country as morally acceptable. The Vatican's Sacred Congregation of
Seminaries and Universities called this work "a most faithful echo of all
the Documents of the supreme Magisterium of the Church, including the luminous
encyclicals Mater et Magistra of John XXIII and Ecclesiam Suam of
Paul VI."
In 1992, he wrote Nobility
and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII contrasting
two models of society. The first model is Christian, founded on the idea that
God wills proportional and harmonic inequalities among the social classes, all
of whose members are entitled to at least sufficient living conditions. The
second model is based on the erroneous idea that all inequality is unjust. The
book has been acclaimed in eloquent letters by Silvio Cardinal Oddi, Mario
Luigi Cardinal Ciappi, Alfons M. Cardinal Stickler, theologian Fr. Raimondo
Spiazzi, Thomist Fr. Victorino Rodriguez y Rodriguez, and canonist Fr.
Anastasio Gutierrez.
Yet, the most significant of
Professor Corrêa de Oliveira's works is Revolution and Counter‑Revolution.
Its significance was quickly recognized. Eugene Cardinal Tisserant wrote:
"The theme of this study is of the highest importance for the time in
which we live.... The analysis made by Professor Corrêa de Oliveira is clear,
precise and accurate. . . . It will be of interest to a considerable number of
our fellow citizens. I congratulate the author of this magnificent work."
Thomas Cardinal Tien, of China, stated: "Those of us who personally suffer
from the effects of communism are well able to calculate the accuracy and
urgent necessity of such a study."
All the editions of Revolution
and Counter‑Revolution have concluded with these words:
"We have not the slightest doubt in our
heart about any of the theses that constitute this work. Nevertheless, we
subject them all unrestrictedly to the judgment of the Vicar of Christ and are
disposed to renounce immediately any one of them if it depart even slightly
from the teaching of the Holy Church, our Mother, the Ark of Salvation, and the
Gate of Heaven."
Over thirty years have passed
since this statement was first published. In the meantime, Revolution and
Counter-Revolution has been spread throughout the world without any of its
theses being challenged as contrary to the Church's Magisterium. This fact
corroborates the earlier approbations and testifies to the integrity of this
enduring work.
To this must be added another
fact of enormous gravity. In the third part of the present work, the author
states that the main battleground of the struggle between anti‑order (the
Revolution) and order (the Counter‑Revolution) is no longer civil society
but the Holy Church herself.
Such a terrible state of affairs
is of first concern to Catholics. But it is also of concern to all men of good
will, for without the influence of the Church, temporal society will never rise
from the prostration to which it has been reduced by the same enemy: the
Revolution.
People seeking the most
effective way to combat this enemy will welcome a book that provides the
principles needed for the pursuit of this struggle.
The American Society for the Defense of
Tradition, Family and Property
(TFP)
INTRODUCTION
Today, Catolicismo publishes
its hundredth issue.1 To mark the event it wished to give this number a special
note that might deepen the already profound communication of soul between it
and its readers.
For this, nothing seemed more
appropriate than the publication of an essay on the subject of Revolution and
Counter‑Revolution.
The selection of this subject is
easy to explain. Catolicismo is a combative journal. As such, it must be
judged principally in relation to the end toward which its combat strives. Now,
whom, precisely, does it wish to combat? A reading of its pages may provide an
insufficiently
defined
impression in this regard. One frequently finds therein refutations of
communism, socialism, totalitarianism, liberalism, liturgicism, “Maritainism,”
and various other "isms." Nevertheless, one would not say that any
one of these has been emphasized over the others to such an extent that Catolicismo
could be defined by it alone. For example, it would be an exaggeration to
affirm that Catolicismo is a specifically anti‑Protestant or anti‑socialist
paper. One would say, then, that our journal has a plurality of ends. However,
one perceives that, in the
perspective
in which it places itself, all of these aims have, as it were, a common
denominator, and this is the objective our paper always has before it.
What is this common denominator?
A doctrine? A force? A current of opinion? Clearly, an elucidation of this
point would help explain the depths of the whole work of doctrinal formation
that Catolicismo has been doing in the course of these one hundred months.
* * *
However, the benefit that can be
derived from the study of Revolution and Counter‑Revolution goes far
beyond this limited objective.
To demonstrate this, we need but
glance at the religious scene of our country. Statistically speaking, the
situation of Catholics is excellent: According to the latest official data, we
comprise 94 percent of the population. If all of us were the Catholics we
should be, Brazil would now be one of the most admirable Catholic powers to
have arisen in the course of the twenty centuries of the life of the Church.
Why, then, are we so far from
this ideal? Can anyone truthfully say that the main cause of our present
situation is spiritualism, Protestantism, atheism, or communism? No! It is
something else, impalpable and subtle, and as penetrating as a powerful and
fearful radiation. All feel its effects, but few know its name or nature.
As we write these words, our
thoughts transcend the frontiers of Brazil, to our dear sister nations of
Hispanic America, and thence to all Catholic nations. In each, this same evil
exerts its undefined but overwhelming sway, producing symptoms of tragic
grandeur. Consider this example among others. In a letter written in 1956
regarding the National Day of Thanksgiving, Msgr. Angelo Dell'Acqua, substitute
for the Vatican secretary of state, said to Carlos Carmelo Cardinal de
Vasconcellos Motta of Sao Paulo: "Because of the religious agnosticism of
the states," there has been "a decline or almost loss of the sense of
the Church in modern society." Now what enemy struck this terrible blow
against the Bride of Christ? What is the common cause of this and so many other
concomitant and like evils? What shall we call it? What are the means by which
it acts? What is the secret of its victory? How can we combat it successfully?
Obviously, it would be difficult
to find a more timely subject.
* * *
This terrible enemy has a name:
It is called the Revolution.
Its profound cause is an
explosion of pride and sensuality that has inspired, not one system, but,
rather, a whole chain of ideological systems. Their wide acceptance gave rise
to the three great revolutions in the history of the West: the Pseudo‑Reformation,
the French Revolution, and Communism.2
Pride leads to hatred of all
superiority and, thus, to the affirmation that inequality is an evil in itself
at all levels, principally at the metaphysical and religious ones. This is the
egalitarian aspect of the Revolution.
Sensuality, per se, tends to
sweep aside all barriers. It does not accept restraints and leads to revolt
against all authority and law, divine or human, ecclesiastical or civil. This
is the liberal aspect of the Revolution.
Both aspects, which in the final
analysis have a metaphysical character, seem contradictory on many occasions.
But they are reconciled in the Marxist utopia of an anarchic paradise where a
highly evolved mankind, "emancipated" from religion, would live in
utmost order without political authority in total freedom. This, however, would
not give rise to any inequality.
The Pseudo‑Reformation was
a first revolution. It implanted, in varying degrees, the spirit of doubt,
religious liberalism, and ecclesiastical egalitarianism in the different sects
it produced.
The French Revolution came next.
It was the triumph of egalitarianism in two fields: the religious field in the
form of atheism, speciously labeled as secularism; and the political field
through the false maxim that all inequality is an injustice, all authority a
danger, and freedom the
supreme
good.
Communism is the transposition
of these maxims to the socioeconomic field.
These three revolutions are
episodes of one single Revolution, within which socialism, liturgicism, the
politique de la main tendue (policy of the extended hand), and the like are
only transitional stages or attenuated manifestations.
* * *
Naturally, a process so
profound, vast, and prolonged cannot develop without encompassing every domain
of human activity, such as culture, art, laws, customs, and
institutions.
A detailed study of this process
in all its areas of development is much beyond the scope of this essay.
Here ‑ limiting ourselves
to one vein of this vast matter - we attempt to sketch summarily the outlines
of the immense avalanche that is the Revolution, to give it an adequate name,
and to indicate very succinctly its profound causes, the agents promoting it,
the essential elements of its doctrine, the respective importance of the various
fields in which it acts, the vigor of its dynamism, and the mechanism of its
expansion. In a similar way, we then treat analogous points pertaining to the
Counter‑Revolution, and study some of the conditions for its victory.
Even so, in each of these themes,
we had to restrict ourselves to explaining what in our view are presently the
most useful elements for enlightening our readers and assisting them in the
fight against the Revolution. We had to leave out many points of capital
importance but of less pressing urgency.
This work, as we have said, is a
simple ensemble of theses by which one may better know the spirit and program
of Catolicismo. It would go beyond its natural proportions if it included a
complete demonstration of each affirmation. We have limited ourselves to
developing the minimum argumentation necessary for showing the relationship
between the various theses and giving a panoramic view of a whole side of our
doctrinal positions.
* * *
This essay may serve as a
survey. What exactly do the readers of Catolicismo in Brazil and elsewhere (who
are certainly among those most opposed to the Revolution) think about the
Revolution and the Counter‑Revolution? Although our propositions
encompass only part of the
subject,
we hope they will lead each of our readers to ask himself this question and to
send us his answer, which we would welcome with great interest.
Part I
The Revolution
CHAPTER
I: The Crisis of Contemporary Man
The
many crises shaking the world today - those of the State, family, economy,
culture, and so on ‑ are but multiple aspects of a single fundamental
crisis whose field of
action is
man himself. In other words, these crises have their root in the most profound
problems of the soul, from whence they spread to the whole personality of
present-day man and all his activities.
CHAPTER
II: The Crisis of Western and Christian Man
Above all, this is a crisis of
Western and Christian man, that is, Europeans and their descendants, Canadians,
Americans, Latin Americans, and Australians. We will study it especially as
such. It also affects other peoples to the degree that Western influence has
reached and taken root among them. In their case, the crisis is interwoven with
problems peculiar to their respective cultures and civilizations and to the
clash of these with the positive or negative elements of Western culture and
civilization.
CHAPTER
III: Characteristics of This Crisis
However profound the factors
that diversify this crisis from country to country, it always has five major
characteristics.
1. IT IS
UNIVERSAL
This crisis is universal. There
is no people that is not affected by it to a greater or lesser degree.
2. IT IS
ONE
This crisis is one. It is not a
range of crises developing side by side, independently in each country,
interrelated because of certain analogies of varying relevance.
When a fire breaks out in a
forest, one cannot regard it as a thousand autonomous and parallel fires of a
thousand trees in close proximity. The unity of the phenomenon of
combustion
acts on the living unity that is the forest. Moreover, the great force of
expansion of the flames results from the heat in which the innumerable flames
of the different trees intermingle and multiply. Indeed, everything helps to
make the forest fire a single fact, totally encompassing the thousand partial
fires, however different from one another in their accidents.
Western Christendom constituted
a single whole that transcended the several Christian countries without
absorbing them. A crisis occurred within this living unity, eventually
affecting the whole through the combined and even fused heat of the ever more
numerous local crises
that
across the centuries have never ceased to intertwine and augment one another.
Consequently, Christendom, as a family of officially Catholic states, has long
ceased to exist. The Western and Christian peoples are mere remnants of it. And
now they are all agonizing under the action of this same evil.
3. IT IS
TOTAL
In any given country, this
crisis develops in such a profound level of problems that it spreads or
unfolds, by the very order of things, in all powers of the soul, all fields of
culture, and, in the end, all realms of human action.
4. IT IS
DOMINANT
Considered superficially, the
events of our days seem a chaotic and inextricable tangle. From many points of
view, they are indeed.
However, one can discern
profoundly consistent and vigorous resultants of this conjunction of so many disorderly
forces when considering them from the standpoint of the great crisis we are
analyzing.
Indeed, under the impulse of
these forces in delirium, the Western nations are being gradually driven toward
a state of affairs which is taking the same form in all of them and is
diametrically opposed to Christian civilization.
Thus, this crisis is like a
queen whom all the forces of chaos serve as efficient and docile vassals.
5. IT IS PROCESSIVE
This crisis is not a
spectacular, isolated episode. It constitutes, on the contrary, a critical
process already five centuries old. It is a long chain of causes and effects
that, having originated at a certain moment with great intensity in the deepest
recesses of the soul and the culture of Western man, has been producing
successive convulsions since the fifteenth century. The words of Pius XII about
a subtle and mysterious enemy of the Church can fittingly be applied to this
process:
"It is to be found
everywhere and among everyone; it can be both violent and astute. In these last
centuries, it has attempted to disintegrate the intellectual, moral, and social
unity in the mysterious organism of Christ. It has sought nature without grace,
reason without faith, freedom without authority, and, at times, authority without
freedom. It is an “enemy” that has become
more and
more apparent with an absence of scruples that still surprises: Christ yes; the
Church no! Afterwards: God yes; Christ
no! Finally the impious shout: God is dead and, even, God never existed! And behold
now the attempt to build the structure of the world on foundations which we do
not hesitate to indicate as the main causes of the threat that hangs over
humanity: economy without God, law without God, politics without God."3
This process should not be
viewed as an altogether fortuitous sequence of causes and effects that has
taken place unexpectedly. Already at its inception, this crisis was strong
enough to carry out all its potentialities. It is still strong enough to cause,
by means of supreme upheavals, the ultimate destructions that are its logical
outcome.
Influenced and conditioned in
different ways by all sorts of extrinsic factors (cultural, social, economic,
ethnic, geographic, and others), it follows paths that are sinuous at times. It
nonetheless never ceases to progress toward its tragic end.
A. The
Decay of the Middle Ages
In the Introduction, we outlined
the main features of this process. It would not be amiss to add some details.
In the fourteenth century, a
transformation of mentality began to take place in Christian Europe; in the
course of the fifteenth century, it became ever more apparent. The thirst for
earthly pleasures became a burning desire. Diversions became more and more
frequent and sumptuous, increasingly engrossing men. In dress, manners,
language, literature, and art, the growing yearning for a life filled with
delights of fancy and the senses produced progressive manifestations of
sensuality and softness. Little by little, the seriousness and austerity of
former times lost their value. The whole trend was toward gaiety, affability,
and festiveness. Hearts began to shy away from the love of sacrifice, from true
devotion to the Cross, and from the aspiration to sanctity and eternal life.
Chivalry, formerly one of the highest expressions of Christian austerity,
became amorous and sentimental. The literature of love invaded all countries.
Excesses of luxury and the consequent eagerness for gain spread throughout all
social classes.
Penetrating intellectual
circles, this moral climate produced clear manifestations of pride, such as a
taste for ostentatious and vain disputes, for inconsistent tricks of argument,
and for fatuous exhibitions of learning. It praised old philosophical
tendencies over which Scholasticism had triumphed. As the former zeal for the
integrity of the Faith waned, these tendencies reappeared in new guises. The
absolutism of legists, who adorned themselves with a conceited knowledge of
Roman law, was favorably received by ambitious princes. And, all the while, in
great and small alike, there was a fading of the will of yore to keep the royal
power within its proper bounds as in the days of Saint Louis of France and
Saint Ferdinand of Castile.
B. The
Pseudo‑Reformation and the Renaissance
This new state of soul contained
a powerful although more or less unacknowledged desire for an order of things
fundamentally different from that which had reached its heights in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries.
An exaggerated and often
delirious admiration for antiquity served as a means for the expression of this
desire. In order to avoid direct confrontations with the old medieval
tradition, humanism and the Renaissance frequently sought to relegate the
Church, the supernatural, and the moral values of religion to a secondary
plane. At the same time, the human type inspired by the pagan moralists was
introduced by these movements as an ideal in Europe. This human type and the
culture and civilization consistent with it were truly the precursors of the
greedy, sensual, secularist, and pragmatic man of our days and of the
materialistic culture and civilization into
which we
are sinking deeper and deeper. Efforts to effect a Christian Renaissance did
not manage to crush in the germinal stage the factors that led to the gradual
triumph of neopaganism.
In some parts of Europe, this
neopaganism developed without leading to formal apostasy. It found significant
resistance. Even when it became established within souls, it did not dare ask
them - at least in the beginning - to formally break with the Faith.
However, in other countries, it
openly attacked the Church. Pride and sensuality, whose satisfaction is the
pleasure of pagan life, gave rise to Protestantism.
Pride begot the spirit of doubt,
free examination, and naturalistic interpretation of Scripture. It produced
insurrection against ecclesiastical authority, expressed in all sects by the
denial of the monarchical character of the Universal Church, that is to say, by
a revolt against the
Papacy.
Some of the more radical sects also denied what could be called the higher
aristocracy of the Church, namely, the bishops, her princes. Others even denied
the hierarchical character of the priesthood itself by reducing it to a mere
delegation of the people, lauded as the only true holder of priestly power.
On the moral plane, the triumph
of sensuality in Protestantism was affirmed by the suppression of
ecclesiastical celibacy and by the introduction of divorce.
C. The
French Revolution
The profound action of humanism
and the Renaissance among Catholics spread unceasingly throughout France in a
growing chain of consequences.
Favored by the weakening of
piety in the faithful caused by Jansenism and the other leavens sixteenth‑century
Protestantism had unfortunately left in the Most Christian Kingdom, this action
gave rise in the eighteenth century to a nearly universal dissolution of
customs, a
frivolous
and superficial way of considering things, and a deification of earthly life
that paved the way for the gradual victory of irreligion.
Doubts about the Church, the
denial of the divinity of Christ, deism, and incipient atheism marked the
stages of this apostasy.
The French Revolution was the
heir of Renaissance neopaganism and of Protestantism, with which it had a
profound affinity. It carried out a work in every respect symmetrical to that
of the Pseudo‑Reformation. The Constitutional Church it attempted to set
up before sinking into deism and atheism was an adaptation of the Church of France
to the spirit of Protestantism. The political work of the French Revolution was
but the transposition to the sphere of the State of the "reform" the
more radical Protestant sects had adopted in the matter of ecclesiastical
organization:
– the revolt against the King
corresponding to the revolt against the Pope;
– the revolt of the common
people against the nobles, to the revolt of the ecclesiastical "common
people," the faithful, against the "aristocracy" of the Church,
the clergy;
– the affirmation of popular
sovereignty, to the government of certain sects by the faithful in varying
degrees.
D. Communism
Some sects arising from
Protestantism transposed their religious tendencies directly to the political
field, thus preparing the way for the republican spirit. In the seventeenth
century, Saint Francis de Sales warned the Duke of Savoy against these
republican tendencies.4 Other sects
went even
further, adopting principles that, if not communist in the full sense of the
word today, were at least precommunist.
Out of the French Revolution
came the communist movement of Babeuf. Later, the nineteenth‑century
schools of utopian communism and the so‑called scientific communism of
Marx burst forth from the increasingly ardent spirit of the Revolution.
And what could be more logical?
The normal fruit of deism is atheism. Sensuality, revolting against the fragile
obstacles of divorce, tends of itself toward free love. Pride, enemy of all
superiority, finally had to attack the last inequality, that of wealth. Drunk
with dreams of a
one‑world
republic, of the suppression of all ecclesiastical or civil authority, of the
abolition of any Church, and of the abolition of the State itself after a
transitional dictatorship of the workers, the revolutionary process now brings
us the twentieth‑century neobarbarian, its most recent and extreme
product.
E. Monarchy, Republic, and Religion
To avoid any misunderstanding,
it is necessary to emphasize that this exposition does not contain the
assertion that the republic is necessarily a revolutionary regime. When
speaking of the various forms of government, Leo XIII made it quite clear that
"each of them is good, as long as it moves honestly toward its end,
namely, the common good, for which social authority is constituted,"5
We do label as revolutionary the
hostility professed against monarchy and aristocracy on the principle that they
arc essentially incompatible with human dignity and the normal order of things.
This error was condemned by Saint Pius X in the apostolic letter Notre
charge apostolique, of August 25, 1910. In this letter, the great and holy
Pontiff censures the thesis of Le Sillon, that "only democracy will
inaugurate the reign of perfect justice," and he says: "Is this not
an injury to the other forms of government, which are thus reduced to the
category of impotent governments, acceptable only for lack of something
better?"6
If one fails to consider this
error, which is deeply rooted in the process under study, one cannot completely
explain how it is that monarchy, classified by Pope Pius VI as the best form of
government in thesis (“praestantioris monorchici regiminis forma”7), has been
the object in the
nineteenth
and twentieth centuries of a hostile worldwide movement that has overthrown the
most venerable thrones and dynasties. From our perspective, the mass production
of republics all over the world is a typical fruit of the Revolution and a
capital aspect of it.
A person cannot be termed a
revolutionary for preferring, in view of concrete and local reasons, that his
country be a democracy instead of an aristocracy or a monarchy, provided the
rights of legitimate authority be respected. But, yes, he can be termed a
revolutionary if, led by the Revolution's egalitarian spirit, he hates monarchy
or aristocracy in principle and classifies them as essentially unjust or
inhuman.
From this antimonarchical and
antiaristocratic hatred are born the demagogic democracies, which combat
tradition, persecute the elites, degrade the general tone of life, and create
an ambience of vulgarity that constitutes, as it were, the dominant note of the
culture and civilization‑supposing the concepts of civilization and
culture can be realized in such conditions.
How different from this
revolutionary democracy is the democracy described by Pius XII:
"History bears witness to
the fact that, wherever true democracy reigns, the life of the people is as it
were permeated with sound traditions, which it is illicit to destroy. The
primary representatives of these traditions are first of all the leading
classes, that is, the groups of
men and
women or the associations that set the tone, as we say, for the village or the
city, for the region or the entire country. Whence the existence and influence,
among all civilized peoples, of aristocratic institutions, aristocratic in the
highest sense of the word, like certain academies of widespread and well‑deserved
fame. And the nobility is also in that number."8
As can be seen, the spirit of
revolutionary democracy is quite different from the spirit that must animate a
democracy according to the doctrine of the Church.
F.
Revolution, Counter‑Revolution, and Dictatorship
These considerations on the
position of the Revolution and of Catholic thought concerning forms of
government may lead some readers to inquire whether dictatorship is a
revolutionary or a counter‑revolutionary factor.
To provide a clear answer to
this question ‑- to which many confused and even tendentious replies have
been given -‑ it is necessary to make a distinction between certain
elements indiscriminately linked in the idea of dictatorship as public opinion
conceives of it. Mistaking dictatorship in thesis for what it has been in
practice in our century, the public sees dictatorship as a state of affairs in
which a leader endowed with unlimited powers governs a country. For its good,
say some. For its harm, say others. But in either case, such a state of affairs
is still a dictatorship.
Now, this concept involves two
distinct elements:
– the omnipotence of the State;
– the concentration of state
power in the hands of a single person.
The public mind seems to focus
on the second element. Nevertheless, the first is the basic element, at least
if we see dictatorship as a state of affairs in which the public authority,
having suspended the juridical order, disposes of all rights at its good
pleasure. It is entirely evident that
a
dictatorship may be exercised by a king. (A royal dictatorship, that is, the
suspension of the whole juridical order and the unrestricted exercise of public
power by the king, is not to be confused with the Ancien Regime, in which these
guarantees existed to a considerable degree,
nor, much
less, with the organic medieval
monarchy.) It is also entirely evident that a dictatorship may be
exercised by a popular chief, a hereditary aristocracy, a clan of bankers, or
even by the masses.
In itself, a dictatorship
exercised by a chief or a group of persons is neither revolutionary nor counter‑revolutionary.
It will be either one or the other depending on the circumstances that gave
rise to it and the work it does. This is the case whether it is in the hands of
one man or
in the
hands of a group.
There are circumstances that
demand, for the sake of the salus populi, a suspension of individual rights and
a greater exercise of public power. A dictatorship, therefore, can be
legitimate in certain cases.
A counter‑revolutionary
dictatorship - a dictatorship completely oriented by the desire for order ‑
must have three essential requisites:
It must suspend rights to
protect order, not to subvert it. By order we do not mean mere material
tranquility, but the disposition of things according to their end and in
accordance with the respective scale of values. This is, then, a suspension of
rights that is more apparent than real, the sacrifice of juridical guarantees
that evil elements had abused to the detriment of order itself and of the common
good. This sacrifice is entirely directed toward the protection of the true
rights of the good.
By definition, this suspension
is temporary. It must prepare circumstances for a return to order and normality
as soon as possible. A dictatorship, to the degree it is good, proceeds to put
an end to its very reason for being. The intervention of public authority in
the various sectors of the national life must be undertaken in such a way that,
as soon as possible, each sector may live with the necessary autonomy. Thus,
each family should be allowed to do everything it is capable of doing by its
nature, being supported by higher social groups only in a subsidiary way in
what is beyond its sphere of action. These groups, in turn, should only receive
the help of their municipality in what exceeds their normal capacity, and so on
up the line in the relations between the municipality and the region or between
the region and the country.
The essential end of a
legitimate dictatorship nowadays must be the Counter‑Revolution. This
does not mean a dictatorship is normally necessary for the defeat of the
Revolution. But, in certain circumstances, it may be.
In contrast, a revolutionary
dictatorship aims to perpetuate itself. It violates authentic rights and
penetrates all spheres of society to destroy them. It carries out this
destruction by sundering family life, harming the genuine elites, subverting
the social hierarchy, fomenting utopian ideas and disorderly ambitions in the
multitudes, extinguishing the real life of the social groups, and subjecting
everything to the State. In short, it favors the work of the Revolution. A
typical example of such a dictatorship was Hitlerism.
For this reason, a revolutionary
dictatorship is fundamentally anti‑Catholic. In fact, in a truly Catholic
ambience, there can be no climate for such a situation.
This is not to say that a
revolutionary dictatorship in one or another country has not sought to favor
the Church. But this is merely a question of a political attitude that is
transformed
into open or veiled persecution as soon as the ecclesiastical authority begins
to hinder the pace of the Revolution.
CHAPTER
IV: The Metamorphoses of the Revolutionary Process
As can be seen from the analysis
in the preceding chapter, the revolutionary process is the development by
stages of certain disorderly tendencies of Western and Christian man and of the
errors to which they have given rise.
In each stage, these tendencies
and errors have a particular characteristic. The Revolution, therefore,
metamorphoses in the course of history.
The metamorphoses observed in
the great general lines of the Revolution recur on a smaller scale within each
of its great episodes.
Hence, the spirit of the French
Revolution, in its first phase, used an aristocratic and even ecclesiastical
mask and language. It frequented the court and sat at the table of the royal
council. Later, it became bourgeois and worked for a bloodless abolition of the
monarchy and nobility and for a veiled and pacific suppression of the Catholic
Church. As soon as it could, it became Jacobin and inebriated itself with blood
in the Terror.
But the excesses committed by
the Jacobin faction stirred up reactions. The Revolution turned back, going
through the same stages in reverse. From Jacobin it became bourgeois in the
Directory. With Napoleon, it extended its hand to the Church and opened its
doors to the exiled nobility. Finally, it cheered the returning Bourbons.
Although the French Revolution ended, the revolutionary process did not end. It
erupted again with the fall of Charles X and the rise of Louis Philippe, and
thus through successive metamorphoses, taking advantage of its successes and
even its failures, it reached its present state of paroxysm.
The Revolution, then, uses its
metamorphoses not only to advance but also to carry out the tactical retreats
that have so frequently been necessary.
This movement, always alive, has
at times feigned death. This is one of its most interesting metamorphoses. On
the surface, the situation of a certain country looks entirely tranquil. The
counter‑revolutionary reaction slackens and dozes. But in the depths of
the religious, cultural, social, or economic life, the revolutionary ferment is
continuously spreading. Then, at the end of this apparent interval, there is an
unexpected upheaval, often more severe than the previous ones.
CHAPTER
V: The Three Depths of the Revolution: In
the Tendencies, in the Ideas, and in the Facts
1. THE
REVOLUTION IN THE TENDENCIES
As we have seen, this Revolution
is a process made up of stages and has its ultimate origin in certain
disorderly tendencies that serve as its soul and most intimate driving force.9
Accordingly, we can also
distinguish in the Revolution three depths, which, chronologically speaking,
overlap to a certain extent.
The first and deepest level
consists of a crisis in the tendencies. These disorderly tendencies by their
very nature struggle for realization. No longer conforming to a whole order of
things contrary to them, they begin by modifying mentalities, ways of being,
artistic expressions, and customs without immediately touching directly ‑
at least habitually ‑ ideas.
2. THE
REVOLUTION IN THE IDEAS
The crisis passes from these
deep strata to the ideological terrain. Indeed, as Paul Bourget makes evident
in his celebrated work Le Demon du Midi, "One must live as one thinks,
under pain of sooner or later ending up thinking as one has lived."2
Inspired by the disorder of these deep tendencies, new doctrines burst forth.
In the beginning, they at times seek a modus vivendi with the old doctrines,
expressing themselves in such a way as to maintain a semblance of harmony with
them. Generally, however, this soon breaks out into open warfare.
3. THE
REVOLUTION IN THE FACTS
This transformation of the ideas
extends, in turn, to the terrain of facts. Here, by bloody or unbloody means,
the institutions, laws, and customs are transformed both in the religious realm
and in temporal society. It is a third crisis, now fully within the field of
facts.
4.
OBSERVATIONS
A. The
Depths of the Revolution Are Not Identical to Chronological Stages
These depths, in a way, are
echeloned. But an attentive analysis shows that the operations of the
Revolution within them are so intermingled in time that these different depths
cannot be viewed as a number of distinct chronological unities.
B. The
Differentiation of the Three Depths of the Revolution
These three depths are not
always clearly differentiated from one another. The degree of distinctness
varies considerably from one concrete case to another.
C. The
Revolutionary Process Is Not Irrepressible
The movement of a people through
these various depths is controllable. Taking the first step does not
necessarily imply reaching the last and thereby sliding into the next depth. On
the contrary, man's free will, aided by grace, can overcome any crisis, just as
it can stop and
overcome
the Revolution itself.
In describing these aspects of
the Revolution, we act like a physician who depicts the complete evolution of
an illness right up to death, without meaning by this that the illness is
incurable.
CHAPTER
VI: The March of the Revolution
The previous considerations gave
us some data about the march of the Revolution, namely, its processive
character, its metamorphoses, its outbreak in the innermost recesses of the
human soul, and its externalization in acts. As can be seen, the Revolution has
a whole dynamic of its own. We can attain a greater appreciation of this by
studying additional aspects of the Revolution's march.
1. THE
DRIVING FORCE OF THE REVOLUTION
A. The
Revolution and the Disordered Tendencies
The most powerful driving force
of the Revolution is in the disordered tendencies.
For this reason, the Revolution
has been compared to a typhoon, an earthquake, a cyclone, the unleashed forces
of nature being material images of the unbridled passions
of man.
B. The
Paroxysms of the Revolution Are Fully Present in Its Seeds
Like cataclysms, evil passions
have an immense power‑but only to destroy.
In the first instant of its
great explosions, this power already has the potential for all the virulence it
will manifest in its worst excesses. In the first denials of Protestantism, for
example, the anarchic yearnings of communism were already implicit. While
Luther was, from the viewpoint of his explicit formulations, no more than
Luther, all the tendencies, state of soul, and imponderables of the Lutheran
explosion already bore within them, authentically and fully, even though
implicitly, the spirit of Voltaire and Robespierre and of Marx and Lenin.11
C. The
Revolution Aggravates Its Own Causes
These disordered tendencies
develop like itches and vices; the more they are satisfied, the more intense
they become. The tendencies produce moral crises, erroneous doctrines, and then
revolutions. Each of them, in turn, exacerbates the tendencies. The latter then
lead, by an
analogous
movement, to new crises, new errors, and new revolutions. This explains why we
find ourselves today in such a paroxysm of impiety and immorality and such an
abyss of disorder and discord.
2. THE
APPARENT INTERVALS OF THE REVOLUTION
The existence of periods of
accentuated calm might give the impression that at such times the Revolution has
ceased. It would thus seem that the revolutionary process is not continuous and
therefore not one.
However, these calms are merely
metamorphoses of the Revolution. The periods of apparent tranquility‑the
supposed intervals‑have usually been times of silent and profound
revolutionary ferment. Consider, for example, the period of the Restoration
(18l5~l830).12
3. THE
MARCH FROM REFINEMENT TO REFINEMENT
From what we have seen,13 each
stage of the Revolution, compared with the preceding one, is but a refinement.
Naturalistic humanism and Protestantism were refined in the French Revolution,
which in its turn was refined in the great revolutionary process of the
Bolshevization of the contemporary world.
The fact is that disordered
passions, moving in a crescendo analogous to the acceleration of gravity and
feeding upon their own works, lead to consequences which, in their turn,
develop according to a proportional intensity. In like progression, errors
beget errors, and revolutions prepare the way for revolutions.
4. THE
HARMONIC SPEEDS OF THE REVOLUTION
This revolutionary process takes
place at two different speeds. One is fast and generally destined to fail in
the short term. The other is much slower and has usually proven successful.
A. The
Rapid March
The precommunist movements of
the Anabaptists, for example, immediately drew in various fields all or nearly
all the consequences of the spirit and tendencies of the Pseudo‑Reformation.
They were a failure.
B. The
Slow March
Slowly, during the course of
more than four centuries, the more moderate currents of Protestantism, moving
from refinement to refinement through successive stages of dynamism and
inertia, have been gradually favoring, in one way or another, the march of the
West toward the same extreme point.14
C. How
These Speeds Harmonize
The role of each of these speeds
in the march of the Revolution should be studied. It might be said that the
more rapid movements are useless, but that is not the case The explosion of these extremisms raises a standard
and creates a fixed target whose very radicalism fascinates the moderates, who
slowly advance toward it. Thus, socialism shuns communism, which it silently
admires and tends toward.
Even earlier, the same could be
said of the communist Babeuf and his henchmen during the last flare‑ups
of the French Revolution. They were crushed. Yet, little by little, society
treads the path along which they wished to lead it. The failure of the
extremists is, then, merely
apparent.
They collaborate indirectly, but powerfully, in the advance of the Revolution,
gradually attracting the countless multitude of the "prudent," the
"moderate," and the mediocre toward the realization of their culpable
and exacerbated chimeras.
5.
OBJECTIONS REFUTED
Having considered these notions,
we can now refute some objections that could not have been analyzed adequately
before this point.
A. Slow‑speed
Revolutionaries and "Semi‑counterrevolutionaries"
What distinguishes the revolutionary who has followed the rhythm
of the fast march from the person who is gradually becoming a revolutionary
according to the rhythm of the slow march? When the revolutionary process began
in the former, it found little or no resistance. Virtue and truth lived a
superficial life in his soul. They were as dry wood that any spark could set
afire. On the contrary, when this process takes place slowly, it is because the
spark of the Revolution encountered, at least in part, green wood. In other
words, it has confronted considerable truth or virtue that remains hostile to
the action of the revolutionary spirit. A soul in this situation is divided and
lives between two opposing principles, that of the Revolution and that of
order. The coexistence of these two principles may give rise to very diverse
situations.
a. The slow‑speed revolutionary' allows himself to be
carried along by the Revolution, which he opposes only with the resistance of
inertia.
b. The slow‑speed
revolutionary who has counter‑revolutionary "clots "also allows
himself to be carried along by the Revolution, but on some concrete point he
rejects it. Thus, for example, he will be a socialist in every respect except
that he retains a liking for aristocratic manners. Depending on the case, he
may even go so far as to attack socialist vulgarity. This is undoubtedly a
resistance. But it is a resistance on a question of detail, made up of habits
and impressions. It does not return to principles. For this very reason it is a
resistance without any great importance, one that will die with the individual.
If it should occur in a social group, sooner or later, by violence or
persuasion, the Revolution inexorably will dismantle it in one or several
generations.
c. The “semi‑Counterrevolutionary”15
differs from the preceding only in that the process of "coagulation"
was more forceful in him and reverted to basic principles only some principles,
of course, and not all of them. In him, the reaction against the Revolution is
more pertinacious, more lively. It is an obstacle that is not merely inertia.
His conversion to an entirely counter‑revolutionary position is easier,
at least in thesis. Any excess of the Revolution might cause in him a complete
transformation, a crystallization of his good tendencies into an attitude of
unshakeable firmness. However, until this felicitous transformation takes
place, the "semi‑counter-revolutionary" cannot be considered a
soldier of the Counter‑Revolution.
The ease with which both the
slow‑speed revolutionary and the "semi‑counter-revolutionary"
accept the conquests of the Revolution is typical of their conformity.
While
affirming, for example, the thesis of the union of Church and State, they live
with indifference in a regime of their separation, without any serious effort
to make possible an eventual restoration of the union of the two under suitable
conditions.
B.
Protestant Monarchies and Catholic Republics
An objection could be made to
our theses: If the universal republican movement is a fruit of the Protestant
spirit, then why is there only one Catholic king in the world today16 while so
many Protestant countries continue to be monarchies?
The explanation is simple.
England, Holland, and the Nordic nations, for a series of historical,
psychological, and other reasons, have a great affinity with monarchy. When the
Revolution penetrated them, it could not prevent the monarchical sentiment from
"coagulating."
Thus,
royalty obstinately continues to survive in those countries, even though the
Revolution is penetrating deeper and deeper in other fields.
"Surviving" . .. yes, to the extent that dying slowly can be called
surviving. The English monarchy, reduced largely to a role of mere display, and
the other Protestant monarchies, transformed for most intents and purposes into
republics whose heads hold life‑long hereditary office, are quietly
agonizing. If things continue as they are, these monarchies will die out in
silence.
Without denying that other
causes contribute to this survival, we wish to stress this very important
factor, which falls within the scope of our exposition.
On the contrary, in the Latin
nations the love for an external and visible discipline and for a strong and
prestigious public authority is, for many reasons, much smaller.
Consequently, the Revolution did
not find in them such a deep‑rooted monarchical sentiment. It easily
swept away their thrones. But heretofore, it has not been sufficiently strong
to overthrow religion.
C.
Protestant Austerity
Another objection to our work
could arise from the fact that certain Protestant sects have an austerity
verging on exaggeration. How, then, can one explain all of Protestantism as an
explosion of the desire to enjoy life?
Even here the objection is not
difficult to resolve. When the Revolution penetrated certain environments, it
encountered a very strong love for austerity. A “clot” formed. Although the
Revolution was entirely successful in the matter of pride, it was not so in the
matter of sensuality. In such environments, life is enjoyed by means of the
discreet delights of pride and not by the gross pleasures of the flesh. It may
even be that austerity, encouraged by an intensified pride, reacted in an
exaggerated way against sensuality. But this reaction, however obstinate, is
sterile. Sooner or later, through lack of sustenance or by violence, it will be
destroyed by the Revolution. The breath of life that will regenerate the earth
will not come from a rigid, cold, and mummified puritanism.
D. The
Single Front of the Revolution
Such "clots" and
crystallizations normally lead to clashes between the forces of the Revolution.
Considering them, one might think that the powers of evil are divided against
themselves and that our unitary concept of the revolutionary process is false.
Such an idea is an illusion. By
a profound instinct that reveals they are harmonic in their essential elements
and contradictory only in their accidents, these forces have an astonishing
capacity to unite against the Catholic Church whenever they face her.
Sterile in the good elements
remaining in them, the revolutionary forces are only truly efficient in evil.
Thus, each of them, from its own side, attacks the Church, which becomes like a
city besieged by an immense army.
It behooves us not to fail to
include among these forces of the Revolution those Catholics who profess the
doctrine of the Church but are dominated by the revolutionary spirit. A
thousand times more dangerous than her declared enemies, they combat the Holy
City from within her walls. They well merit what Pius IX said of them:
"Though the children of
this world be wiser than the children of light, their snares and their violence
would undoubtedly have less success if a great number of those who call
themselves Catholics did not extend a friendly hand to them. Yes,
unfortunately, there are those who seem to want to walk in agreement with our
enemies and try to build an alliance between light and darkness, an accord
between justice and iniquity, by means of those so‑called liberal
Catholic doctrines, which, based on the most pernicious principles, adulate the
civil power when it invades things spiritual and urge souls to respect or at
least tolerate the most iniquitous laws, as
if it had
not been written absolutely that no one can serve two masters. They are
certainly much more dangerous and more baneful than our declared enemies, not
only because they second their efforts, perhaps without realizing it, but also
because, by maintaining themselves at the very edge of condemned opinions, they
take on an appearance of integrity and irreprehensible doctrine, beguiling the
imprudent friends of conciliations and deceiving honest persons, who would
revolt against a declared error. In this way, they divide the minds, rend the
unity, and weaken the forces that should be assembled against the
enemy."17
6. THE AGENTS
OF THE REVOLUTION: FREEMASONRY AND OTHER SECRET FORCES
Since we are studying the
driving forces of the Revolution, we must say a word about its agents.
We do not believe that the mere
dynamism of the passions and errors of men could coordinate such diverse means
to achieve a single end, namely, the victory of the Revolution.
The production of a process as
consistent and continuous as that of the Revolution amid the thousand
vicissitudes of centuries fraught with surprises of every kind seems impossible
to us without the action of successive generations of extraordinarily
intelligent and powerful conspirators. To think that the Revolution could have
reached its present state in the absence of such conspirators is like believing
that hundreds of letters thrown out a window could arrange themselves on the
ground to spell out a literary piece, Carducci's “Ode to Satan,” for instance.
Heretofore, the driving forces
of the Revolution have been manipulated by most sagacious agents, who have used
them as means for carrying out the revolutionary process.
Generally speaking, one can
classify as agents of the Revolution all the sects -- whatever their nature –
engendered by it, from its origin to our days, to disseminate its thought or to
concatenate its plots. The master sect, however, around which all the others
are organized as mere auxiliaries -- sometimes consciously and other times not
-- is Freemasonry, as clearly follows from the pontifical documents, especially
Leo XIII's encyclical Humanum genus, of April 20, 1884.
The success of these
conspirators, and particularly Freemasonry, is due not only to their
indisputable capacity to organize and conspire, but also to their clear
understanding of the Revolution's profound essence and of the use of natural laws‑the
laws of politics, sociology, psychology, art, economics, and so forth‑to
advance the attaining of their goals.
In this way, the agents of chaos
and subversion are like a scientist who, instead of merely relying on his own
strength, studies and activates natural forces a thousand times more powerful
than he.
Besides largely explaining the
success of the Revolution, this provides an important indication for the
soldiers of the Counter‑Revolution.
CHAPTER
VII: The Essence of the Revolution
Having rapidly described the
crisis of the Christian West, we will now analyze it.
1. THE
REVOLUTION PAR EXCELLENCE
As already stated, this critical
process we have been considering is a revolution.
A.
Meaning of the Word Revolution
By Revolution we mean a movement
that aims to destroy a legitimate power or order and replace it with an
illegitimate power or state of things. (We have purposely not said "order
of things.")
B. Bloody
and Unbloody Revolution
In this sense, strictly speaking,
a revolution may be bloodless. The one we are considering developed and
continues to develop by all kinds of means. Some of these are bloody, others
are not. For instance, this century's two world wars, from the standpoint of
their deepest consequences, are chapters of it, and among the bloodiest. On the
other hand, the increasingly socialist legislation in all or almost all
countries today is a most important and bloodless progress of the Revolution.
C. The
Amplitude of the Revolution
Although the Revolution has
often overthrown legitimate authorities and replaced them with rulers lacking
any title of legitimacy, it would be a mistake to think this is all there is to
the Revolution. Its chief objective is not the destruction of certain rights of
persons or families. It
desires
far more than that. It wants to destroy a whole legitimate order of things and
replace it with an illegitimate situation. And "order of things" does
not say it all. It is a vision of the universe and a way of being of man that the
Revolution seeks to abolish with the intention of replacing them with radically
contrary counterparts.
D. The
Revolution Par Excellence
In this sense, one understands
that this is not just a revolution; it is the Revolution.
E. The
Destruction of the Order Par Excellence
Indeed, the order of things
being destroyed is medieval Christendom. Now, medieval Christendom was not just
any order, or merely one of many possible orders. It was the realization, in
the circumstances inherent to the times and places, of the only authentic order
among men, namely, Christian civilization.
In his encyclical Immortale
Dei, Leo XIII described medieval Christendom in these terms:
"There was a time when the
philosophy of the Gospel governed the states. In that epoch, the influence of
Christian wisdom and its divine virtue permeated the laws, institutions, and
customs of the peoples, all categories and all relations of civil society. Then
the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, solidly established in the degree of
dignity due to it, flourished everywhere thanks to the favor of princes and the
legitimate protection of magistrates. Then the Priesthood and the Empire were
united in a happy concord and by the friendly interchange of good offices. So
organized, civil society gave fruits superior to all expectations, whose memory
subsists and will subsist, registered as it is in innumerable documents that no
artifice of the adversaries can destroy or obscure."18
Having begun in the fifteenth
century, the destruction of the disposition of men and things according to the
doctrine of the Church, the teacher of Revelation and Natural Law, is almost
complete today. This disposition of men and things is order par excellence.
What is being
implanted
is the exact opposite of this. Therefore, it is the Revolution par excellence.
Indubitably, the present
Revolution had precursors and prefigures. For example, Anus and Mohammed were
prefigures of Luther. Also, in different epochs, utopians dreamed of days very
much like those of the Revolution. Finally, on several occasions, peoples or
groups tried to
establish
a state of things analogous to the chimeras of the Revolution.
But all these dreams and
prefigures are little or nothing in comparison to the Revolution in whose
process we live. By its radicality, by its universality, by its potency, the
Revolution has penetrated so deep and is reaching so far that it stands
unmatched in history. Many thoughtful souls are wondering if we have not in
fact reached the times of the Anti‑Christ. Indeed, to judge from the
words of Pope John XXIII, it would seem they are not distant.
We tell you furthermore that in
this terrible hour, when the spirit of evil seeks every means to destroy the
kingdom of God, we must exert ourselves to the utmost to defend it, if you do
not wish to see your city lying in immensely greater ruins than those left by
the earthquake of fifty years ago. How much more difficult it would be then to
raise up the souls, once they had been separated from the Church or enslaved to
the false ideologies of our times!19
2. REVOLUTION AND LEGITIMACY
A.
Legitimacy Par Excellence
In general, the concept of
legitimacy is focused on only in the context of dynasties and governments.
Though heeding the teachings of Leo XIII in the encyclical Au milieu des
sollicitudes, one cannot ignore the question of dynastic or governmental
legitimacy, for it is an extremely grave moral matter that upright consciences
must consider with all attention.
However, the concept of
legitimacy applies to other problems as well.
There is a higher legitimacy,
characteristic of every order of things in which the Royalty of Our Lord Jesus
Christ, the model and source of legitimacy for all royalties and earthly
powers, is effectuated. To fight for legitimate rulers is an obligation, indeed
a grave one. Yet it is necessary to see the legitimacy of those in authority
not only as a good, excellent per se, but also as a means to an even higher
good, namely, the legitimacy of the entire social order, of all human institutions
and ambiences, which is achieved through the disposition of all things
according to the doctrine of the Church.
B.
Catholic Culture and Civilization
Therefore, the ideal of the
Counter‑Revolution is to restore and promote Catholic culture and
civilization. This theme would not be sufficiently enunciated if it did not
contain a definition of what we understand by Catholic culture and Catholic
civilization. We realize that the terms civilization and culture are used in
many different senses. Obviously, it is not our intention here to take a
position on a question of terminology. We limit ourselves to using these words
as relatively precise labels to indicate certain realities. We are more
concerned with providing a sound idea of these realities than with debating
terminology.
A soul in the state of grace
possesses all virtues to a greater or lesser degree. Illuminated by faith, it
has the elements to form the only true vision of the universe.
The fundamental element of
Catholic culture is the vision of the universe elaborated according to the
doctrine of the Church. This culture includes not only the learning, that is,
the possession of the information needed for such an elaboration, but also the
analysis and coordination of this information according to Catholic doctrine.
This culture is not restricted to the theological, philosophical, or scientific
field, but encompasses the breadth of human
knowledge;
it is reflected in the arts and implies the affirmation of values that permeate
all aspects of life.
Catholic civilization is the
structuring of all human relations, of all human institutions, and of the State
itself according to the doctrine of the Church.
C. The
Sacral Character of Catholic Civilization
It is implicit that such an
order of things is fundamentally sacral, and entails the recognition of all the
powers of the Holy Church, particularly those of the Supreme Pontiff: a direct
power over spiritual things, and an indirect power over temporal things
whenever they have to do with the salvation of souls.
Indeed, the purpose of society
and of the State is virtuous life in common. Now, the virtues man is called to
practice are the Christian virtues, and the first of these is the love of God.
Society and the State have, then, a sacral purpose.20
Undoubtedly, it is the Church
that possesses the proper means to promote the salvation of souls, but society
and the State have instrumental means for the same end, that is, means which,
set in motion by a higher agent, produce an effect superior to themselves.
D.
Culture and Civilization Par Excellence
From the foregoing it is easy to
infer that Catholic culture and civilization are the culture and civilization
par excellence. It must be noted that they cannot exist save in Catholic
peoples. Indeed, even though man may know the principles of Natural Law by his
own reason, a people
without
the Magisterium of the Church cannot durably preserve the knowledge of all of
them.21 For this reason, a people that does not profess the true religion
cannot durably practice all the Commandments.22 Given these conditions, and
since there can be no Christian order without the knowledge and observance of
the Law of God, civilization and culture par excellence are only possible
within the fold of the Holy Church. Indeed, as Saint Pius X stated,
civilization is all the more true, all the more lasting, all the more fecund in
precious fruits, the more purely Christian it is; it is all the more decadent,
to the great misfortune of society, the farther it withdraws from the Christian
ideal. Thus, by the intrinsic nature of things, the Church becomes also in fact
the guardian and protector of Christian civilization.23
E.
Illegitimacy Par Excellence
If this is what order and
legitimacy are, one easily sees what the Revolution is, for it is the opposite
of that order. It is disorder and illegitimacy par excellence.
3. PRIDE
AND SENSUALITY AND THE METAPHYSICAL VALUES OF THE REVOLUTION
Two notions conceived as
metaphysical values express well the spirit of the Revolution: absolute equality,
complete liberty. And there are two passions that most serve it: pride and
sensuality.
In referring to passions, we
must explain in what sense we use the word in this work. For the sake of
brevity, adhering to the usage of various authors on spiritual matters,
whenever we speak of the passions as promoters of the Revolution, we are
referring to disordered passions. And, in keeping with everyday language, we
include among the disordered passions all impulses toward sin existing in man
as a consequence of the triple concupiscence, namely, that of the flesh, the
eyes, and the pride of life.24
A. Pride
and Egalitarianism
The proud person, subject to
another's authority, hates first of all the particular yoke that weighs upon
him.
In a second stage, the proud man
hates all authority in general and all yokes, and, even more, the very
principle of authority considered in the abstract.
Because he hates all authority,
he also hates superiority of any kind. And in all this there is a true hatred
for God.25
This hatred for any inequality
has gone so far as to drive high‑ranking persons to risk and even lose
their positions just to avoid accepting the superiority of somebody else.
There is more. In a height of
virulence, pride could lead a person to fight for anarchy and to refuse the
supreme power were it offered to him. This is because the simple existence of
that power implicitly attests to the principle of authority, to which every man
as such ‑ the proud included can be subject.
Pride, then, can lead to the
most radical and complete egalitarianism.
This radical and metaphysical
egalitarianism has various aspects.
a. Equality between men and God.
Pantheism, immanentism, and all esoteric forms of religion aim to place God and
men on an equal footing and to invest the latter with divine properties. An
atheist is an egalitarian who, to avoid the absurdity of affirming that man is
God,
commits
the absurdity of declaring that God does not exist. Secularism is a form of
atheism and, therefore, of egalitarianism. It affirms that it is impossible to
be certain of the existence of God and, consequently, that man should act in
the temporal realm as if God did not exist; in other words, he should act like
a person who has dethroned God.
b. Equality in the
ecclesiastical realm: the suppression of a priesthood endowed with the power of
Orders, magisterium, and government, or at least of a priesthood with
hierarchical degrees.
c. Equality among the different
religions. All religious discrimination is to be disdained because it violates
the fundamental equality of men. Therefore, the different religions must
receive a rigorously equal treatment. To claim that only one religion is true
to the exclusion of the others amounts to affirming superiority, contradicting
evangelical meekness, and acting impolitically, since it closes the hearts of
men against it.
d. Equality in the political
realm: the elimination or at least the lessening of the inequality between the
rulers and the ruled. Power comes not from God but from the masses; they
command and the government must obey. Monarchy and aristocracy are to be
proscribed as intrinsically evil regimes because they are antiegalitarian. Only
democracy is legitimate, just, and evangelical.26
e. Equality in the structure of
society: the suppression of classes, especially those perpetuated by heredity,
and the extirpation of all aristocratic influence upon the direction of society
and upon the general tone of culture and customs. The natural hierarchy
constituted by the superiority of intellectual over manual work will disappear
through the overcoming of the distinction between them.
f. The abolition of the intermediate bodies
between the individual and the State, as well as of the privileges inherent in
every social body. No matter how much the Revolution hates the absolutism of
kings, it hates intermediate bodies and the medieval organic monarchies even
more. This is because monarchic absolutism tends to put all subjects, even
those of the highest standing, at a level of reciprocal equality in a lower
station that foreshadows the annihilation of the individual and the anonymity
that have reached their apex in the great urban
concentrations
of socialist societies. Among the intermediate groups to be abolished, the family
ranks first. Until it manages to wipe it out, the Revolution tries to lower it,
mutilate it, and vilify it in every way.
g. Economic equality. No one
owns anything; everything belongs to the collectivity. Private property is
abolished along with each person's right to the full fruits of his toil and to
the choice of his profession.
h. Equality in the exterior
aspects of existence. Variety easily leads to inequality of status. Therefore,
variety in dress, housing, furniture, habits, and so on, is reduced as much as
possible.
i. Equality of souls. Propaganda
standardizes, so to speak, all souls, taking away their peculiarities and
almost their own life. Even the psychological and attitudinal
differences
between the sexes tend to diminish as much as possible. Because of this, the
people, essentially a great family of different but harmonious souls united by
what is common to them, disappears. And the masses, with their great empty,
collective, and enslaved soul, arise.27
j. Equality in all social relations:
between grown‑ups and youngsters, employers and employees, teachers and
students, husband and wife, parents and children, etc.
k. Equality in the international
order. The State is constituted by an independent people exercising full
dominion over a territory. Sovereignty is, therefore, in public law, the image
of property. Once we admit the idea of a people, whose characteristics
distinguish it from other peoples, and the idea of sovereignty, we are perforce
in the presence of inequalities: of capacity, virtue, number, and others. Once
the idea of territory is admitted, we have quantitative and qualitative
inequality among the various territorial spaces. This is why the Revolution,
which is fundamentally egalitarian, dreams of merging all races, all peoples,
and all states into a single race, people, and state.28
l. Equality among the different
parts of the country. For the same reasons, and by analogous means, the
Revolution tends to do away with any wholesome regionalism whether political,
cultural, or other‑within countries today.
m. Egalitarianism and hatred for
God. Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches29 that the diversity of creatures and their
hierarchical gradation are good in themselves, for thus the
perfections
of the Creator shine more resplendently throughout creation. He says further
that Providence instituted inequality among the angels30 as well as among men,
both in the terrestrial Paradise and in this land of exile.31 For this reason,
a universe of equal creatures would be a world in which the resemblance between
creatures and the Creator would have been eliminated as much as possible. To
hate in principle all inequality is, then, to place oneself metaphysically
against the best elements of resemblance between the Creator and creation. It is
to hate God.
n. The limits of inequality. Of
course, one cannot conclude from this doctrinal explanation that inequality is
always and necessarily a good.
All men are equal by nature and
different only in their accidents. The rights they derive from the mere fact of
being human are equal for all: the right to life, honor, sufficient living
conditions (and therefore the right to work), property, the setting up of a
family, and, above all,
the
knowledge and practice of the true religion. The inequalities that threaten
these rights are contrary to the order of Providence. However, within these
limits, the inequalities that arise from accidents such as virtue, talent,
beauty, strength, family, tradition, and so forth, are just and according to
the order of the universe.32
B.
Sensuality and Liberalism
Along with the pride that breeds
all egalitarianism, sensuality in the broader sense of the term is the cause of
liberalism. It is in these sad depths that one finds the junction between these
two metaphysical principles of the Revolution, namely, equality and liberty,
which are mutually contradictory from so many points of view.
a. The hierarchy in the soul.
God, Who imprinted a hierarchical mark on all visible and invisible creation,
did the same on the human soul. The intelligence should guide the will, and the
latter should govern the sensibility. As a consequence of Original Sin, a
constant friction
exists
within man between the sensible appetites and the will guided by the reason: “I
see another law in my members, which fights against the law of my mind."33
But the will, even though a
sovereign reduced to governing subjects ever attempting to rebel, has the means
to always prevail . . . provided it does not resist the grace of God.34
b. Egalitarianism in the soul.
The revolutionary process aims to achieve a general leveling, but frequently it
has been no more than a usurpation of the ruling function by those who ought to
obey. Once this process is transposed to the relations among the powers of the
soul, it leads to the lamentable tyranny of the unrestrained passions over a
weak and ruined will and a darkened intelligence, and especially to the
dominion of a raging sensuality over the sentiments of modesty and shame.
When the Revolution proclaims
absolute liberty as a metaphysical principle, it does so only to justify the
free course of the worst passions and the most pernicious errors.
c. Egalitarianism and
liberalism. This inversion – right to think, feel, and do everything the
unrestrained passions demand‑is the essence of liberalism. This is
clearly shown in the more exacerbated forms of the liberal doctrine. On
analyzing them, one perceives that liberal‑
ism is
not interested in freedom for what is good. It is solely interested in freedom
for evil. When in power, it easily, and even joyfully, restricts the freedom of
the good as much as possible. But in many ways, it protects, favors, and
promotes freedom for evil. In this it shows itself to be opposed to Catholic
civilization, which gives its full support and total freedom to what is good
and restrains evil as much as possible.
Now, this freedom for evil is
precisely freedom for man as long as he is "revolutionary" in his
interior, that is, as long as he consents to the tyranny of the passions over
his intelligence and will.
Thus liberalism and
egalitarianism are fruits of the same tree.
Incidentally, pride, in breeding
hatred against any kind of authority,35 induces a clearly liberal attitude.
And, in this regard, it must be considered an active factor of liberalism.
However, when the Revolution realized that liberty would result in inequality
if men, being unequal in their aptitudes and their use of them, were left free,
out of hatred for inequality it decided to sacrifice liberty. This gave rise to
its socialist phase, which is but a stage in the process. The Revolution's
ultimate aim is to establish a state of things wherein complete liberty and
complete equality would coexist.
Thus, historically, the
socialist movement is a mere refinement of the liberal movement. What leads an
authentic liberal to accept socialism is precisely that under it a thousand
good or at least innocent things are tyrannically forbidden, while the methodical
satisfaction (sometimes with a show of austerity) of the worst and most violent
passions, such as envy, laziness, and lust, is favored. On the other hand, the
liberal perceives that the broadening of authority in the socialist regime is
no more than a means within the logic of the system for attaining the so
intensely desired goal of final anarchy.
The clashes between certain
naive or backward liberals and the socialists are, therefore, mere superficial
incidents in the revolutionary process. They are harmless misunderstandings
that disturb neither the profound logic of the Revolution nor its inexorable
march in a direction
that,
when one sees things clearly, is simultaneously socialist and liberal.
d. The rock‑and‑roll
generation. The revolutionary process in souls, as herein described, produced
in the most recent generations, and especially in adolescents of our days who
hypnotize themselves with rock and roll, a frame of mind characterized by the
spontaneity of the primary reactions, without the control of the intelligence
or the effective participation of the will, and by the predominance of fantasy
and feelings over the methodical analysis of reality. All this is fruit, in
large measure, of a pedagogy that virtually eliminates the role of logic and the
true formation of the will.
e. Egalitarianism, liberalism, and anarchism.
In accordance with the preceding items, the effervescence of the disordered
passions arouses, on the one hand, hatred for any restraint and any law, and,
on the other, hatred for any inequality. This effervescence thus leads to the
utopian conception of Marxist anarchism, in which an evolved humanity, living
in a society without classes or government, could enjoy perfect order and the
most complete liberty, from which no inequality would arise. As can be seen,
this ideal is simultaneously the most liberal and the most egalitarian
imaginable.
Indeed, the anarchic utopia of
Marxism is a state of things in which the human personality, having reached a
high degree of progress, would be able to develop freely in a society with
neither state nor government.
In this society – which would
live in complete order despite not having a government – economic production
would be organized and highly developed, and the distinction between intellectual
and manual labor would be a thing of the past. A selective process, not yet
determined, would place the direction of the economy in the hands of the most
capable, without resulting in the formation of classes.
These would be the only and
insignificant remnants of inequality. But, since this anarchic communist
society is not the final term of history, it seems legitimate to suppose that
these remnants would be abolished in a later evolution.
CHAPTER
VIII: The Intelligence, the Will, and the Sensibility in the Determination of
Human Acts
The previous considerations call
for an explication on the role of the intelligence, the will, and the
sensibility in the relations between error and passion.
It could seem that we are
affirming that every error is conceived by the intelligence to justify some
disorderly passion. Thus, a moralist who affirms a liberal maxim would always
be moved by a liberal tendency.
That is not what we think. The
moralist may arrive at a liberal conclusion solely through weakness of the
intelligence affected by Original Sin. In such a case would there necessarily
be some moral fault of another nature, carelessness, for instance? This is a
question beyond the scope of our study.
What we do affirm is that,
historically, this Revolution had its ultimate origin in an extremely violent
ferment of the passions. And we are far from denying the great role of
doctrinal errors in this process.
Authors of great worth -- de
Maistre, de Bonald, Donoso Cortes, and so many others -- have written numerous
studies on these errors and the way each was derived from the other, from the
fifteenth to the sixteenth century, and so on till the twentieth century.
Therefore, it is not our intention to insist on this matter here.
It does seem to us, however,
particularly opportune to focus on the importance of the passional factors and
their influence in strictly ideological aspects of the revolutionary process in
which we find ourselves. For, as we see it, little heed is paid to this point.
On account of this, people do not see the Revolution in its entirety and
consequently adopt inadequate counter‑revolutionary methods.
We will now add something about
the way in which passions can influence ideas.
1. FALLEN
NATURE, GRACE, AND FREE WILL
By the mere powers of his
nature, man can know many truths and practice various virtues. However, without
the aid of grace, it is impossible for him to perdure in the knowledge and
practice of all the Commandments.36
This means that in every fallen
man there is always a weakness of the intelligence and a first tendency, prior
to any reasoning, that incites him to rebel against the Law.37
2. THE GERM OF THE REVOLUTION
This fundamental tendency to
rebel can, at a certain moment, receive the consent of the free will. Fallen
man sins thus, violating one or more of the Commandments. But his rebellion can
go further and reach the point of a more or less unconfessed hatred for the
very moral order as a whole. This hatred, which is essentially revolutionary,
can generate doctrinal errors and even lead to the conscious and explicit
profession of principles contrary to Moral Law and revealed doctrine as such,
which constitutes a sin against the Holy Ghost.
When this hatred began to direct
the deepest tendencies of Western history, the Revolution began. Its process
unfolds today, and its doctrinal errors bear the vigorous imprint of this
hatred, which is the most active cause of the great apostasy of our days. By
its nature, this hatred cannot be reduced simply to a doctrinal system: It is
disorderly passion exacerbated to an extremely high degree.
Such an affirmation, which
applies to this particular Revolution, does not imp~ that there is always a
disordered passion at the root of every error. Nor does it deny that frequently
it was an error that unleashed in a given soul, or even in a given social
group, the disorder of the passions. We merely affirm that the revolutionary
process, considered as a whole and also in its principal episodes, had as its
most active and profound germ the unruliness of the passions.
3. REVOLUTION AND BAD FAITH
One could pose the following
objection: If the passions are so important in the revolutionary process, it
would seem that its victims are always, at least to some degree, in bad faith.
If Protestantism, for instance, is a child of the Revolution, is every
Protestant in bad faith? Does this not run contrary to the doctrine of the
Church, which admits there may be souls of good faith in other religions?
It is obvious that a person who
has complete good faith and is endowed with a fundamentally counter‑revolutionary
spirit may be caught in the webs of revolutionary sophisms (be they of a
religious, philosophical, political, or any other nature) through invincible
ignorance. In such persons there is no culpability.
Mutatis mutandis, the same can
be said of those who accept the doctrine of the Revolution on one or another
restricted point through an involuntary lapse of the intelligence.
But if someone, moved by the
disorderly passions inherent to the Revolution, shares in its spirit, the
answer must be otherwise.
A revolutionary in these
conditions may have become convinced that the Revolution's subversive maxims
are excellent. He will not therefore be insincere, but he will be guilty of the
error into which he has fallen.
Also, a revolutionary may have
come to profess a doctrine of which he is not convinced or is only partially
convinced. In this case, he will be partially or totally insincere.
In this respect, it seems to us
almost unnecessary to stress that when we affirm that the doctrines of Marx
were implicit in the denials of the Pseudo‑Reformation and the French
Revolution, we do not mean the adepts of these two movements were consciously
Marxist before the Marxist doctrine was put into writing and were
hypocritically concealing their opinions. The
orderly arrangement of the powers of the soul and, therefore, an increase in
the lucidity of the intelligence illuminated by grace and guided by the
Magisterium of the Church are proper to Christian virtue. This is why every
saint is a model of balance and impartiality. The
objectivity
of his judgments and the firm orientation of his will toward good are not even
slightly weakened by the venomous breath of the disorderly passions.
On the contrary, to the degree a
man declines in virtue and surrenders to the yoke of these passions, his
objectivity diminishes in everything connected to them. This objectivity
becomes particularly disturbed in the judgments a man makes of himself.
In each concrete case, it is a
secret of God to what degree a slow‑marching revolutionary of the
sixteenth or of the eighteenth century, his vision beclouded by the spirit of
the Revolution, realized the profound sense and the ultimate consequences of
its doctrine.
In any event, the hypothesis
that all were conscious Marxists is to be utterly excluded.
CHAPTER
IX: The "Semi‑counterrevolutionary" Is Also a Son of the
Revolution
Everything that has been said
herein provides grounds for a practical observation.
Spirits marked by this interior
Revolution might conserve a counter‑revolutionary attitude in respect to
one or many points due to an interplay of circumstances and coincidences, such
as being reared in a strongly traditional and moral milieu.38
Nevertheless, the spirit of the
Revolution will still be enthroned in the mentality of these "semi‑counterrevolutionaries."
In a people where the majority
are in such a state of soul, the Revolution will be irrepressible until they
change.
Thus, as a consequence of the
Revolution's unity, only the total counter‑revolutionary is an authentic
counter‑revolutionary.
As for the "semi‑counterrevolutionaries"
in whose souls the idol of Revolution begins to totter, their situation is
somewhat different. We shall discuss it later.39
CHAPTER
X: Culture, Arts, and Ambiences in the Revolution
Having described the complexity
and scope of the revolutionary process in the deepest levels of souls and,
therefore, in the mentality of peoples, we are prepared to point out the full
import of culture, arts, and ambiences in the march of the Revolution.
1.
CULTURE
The revolutionary ideas enable
the tendencies from which they originate to assert themselves with appearances
of acceptability in the eyes of their adherents and others. Used by the
revolutionary to shake the true convictions of the latter and thus to unleash
or exacerbate the
rebellion
of their passions, these ideas inspire and shape the institutions created by
the Revolution, and are to be found in the most varied branches of knowledge or
culture, for it is nearly impossible for any of these branches not to be
involved, at least indirectly, in the struggle between the Revolution and the Counter‑Revolution.
2. ARTS
Given that God established
mysterious and admirable relations between, on the one hand, certain forms,
colors, sounds, perfumes, and flavors and, on the other, certain states of soul
it is obvious that, through the arts, mentalities can be profoundly influenced
and persons, families,
and
peoples can be induced to form a profoundly revolutionary state of spirit. It
suffices to recall the analogy between the spirit of the French Revolution and
the fashions created during it, or the analogy between the revolutionary
turmoil of today and the present extravagances in fashion and in the so‑called
advanced schools of art.
3.
AMBIENCES
Ambiences may favor good or bad
customs. To the degree they favor good ones, they can oppose the Revolution
with the admirable barriers of the reaction, or at least the inertia, of
everything that is wholesomely customary. To the degree they favor bad customs,
they can
communicate
to souls the tremendous toxins and energies of the revolutionary spirit.
4. THE
HISTORICAL ROLE OE THE ARTS AND AMBIENCES IN THE REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS
For this reason, in point of
fact, it must be recognized that the general democratization of customs and
life‑styles, carried to the extremes of a systematic and growing
vulgarity, and the proletarianizing action of certain modern art contributed to
the triumph of egalitarianism as much as or more than the enacting of certain
laws or the establishing of certain essentially political institutions.
It also must be recognized that
if a person managed, for example, to put a stop to immoral or agnostic movies
or television programs, he would have done much more for the Counter‑Revolution
than ~{ in the course of the everyday proceedings of a parliamentary regime, he
had brought about the fall of a leftist cabinet.
CHAPTER
XI: The Revolution on Sin and Redemption, and the Revolutionary Utopia
Among the multiple aspects of
the Revolution, it is important to emphasize its inducement of its offspring to
underestimate or deny the notions of good and evil, Original Sin, and the
Redemption.
1. THE
REVOLUTION DENIES SIN AND THE REDEMPTION
As we have seen, the Revolution
is a fruit of sin. However, if it were to acknowledge this, it would unmask
itself and turn against its own cause.
This explains why the Revolution
tends not only to keep silent about its sinful root but also to deny the very
notion of sin. Its radical denial applies to Original and actual sin and is
effected mainly by:
·
Philosophical or juridical systems that deny the validity and existence
of Moral Law or
give this
law the vain and ridiculous foundations of secularism.
·
The thousand processes of propaganda that create in the multitudes a
state of soul that
ignores
morality without directly denying its existence. All the veneration owed to
virtue is paid to idols such as gold, work, efficiency, success, security,
health, physical beauty, muscular strength, and sensory delight.
The Revolution is destroying the
very notion of sin, the very distinction between good and evil, in contemporary
man. And, ipso facto, it is denying the Redemption by Our Lord Jesus Christ,
for, if sin does not exist, the Redemption becomes incomprehensible and loses
any logical
relation
with history and life.
2. HISTORICAL EXEMPLIFICATION: THE
DENIAL OF SIN IN LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM
In each of its stages, the
Revolution has sought to de‑emphasize or radically deny the existence of
sin.
A. The
Immaculate Conception of the Individual
In its liberal and
individualistic phase, the Revolution taught that man is endowed with an
infallible reason, a strong will, and orderly passions. Hence the concept of a
human order in which the individual‑supposedly a perfect being‑was
everything and the State nothing, or almost nothing, a necessary evil .. .
provisionally necessary, perhaps. It was the period when it was thought that
ignorance was the only cause of errors and crimes, that the way to close
prisons was to open schools. The immaculate conception of the individual was
the basic dogma of these illusions.
The liberal's great weapon
against the potential predominance of the State and the formation of cliques
that might remove him from the direction of public affairs was political
freedom and universal suffrage.
B. The
Immaculate Conception of the Masses and the State
Already in the last century, the
inaccuracy of at least part of this concept had become patent, but the
Revolution did not retreat. Rather than acknowledge its error, it simply
replaced it with another, namely, the immaculate conception of the masses and
the State. According to this
concept,
the individual is prone to egoism and can err, but the masses are always right
and never get carried away by their passions. Their impeccable means of action
is the State, their infallible means of expression, universal suffrage --
whence spring parliaments imbued with socialist thought – or the strong will of
a charismatic dictator, who invariably guides the masses to the realization of
their own will.
3.
REDEMPTION BY SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: THE REVOLUTIONARY UTOPIA
In one way or another, whether
placing all its confidence in the individual alone, the masses, or the State,
it is in man that the Revolution trusts. Man, self‑sufficient thanks to
science and technology, can resolve all his problems, eliminate pain, poverty,
ignorance, insecurity,
‑
in short, everything we refer to as the effect of Original or actual sin.
The utopia toward which the
Revolution is leading us is a world whose countries, united in a universal
republic, are but geographic designations, a world with neither social nor
economic inequalities, run by science and technology, by propaganda and
psychology, in order to attain, without the supernatural, the definitive
happiness of man.
In such a world, the Redemption
by Our Lord Jesus Christ has no place, for man will have overcome evil with
science and will have made the earth a technologically delightful paradise. And
he will hope to overcome death one day by the indefinite prolongation of life.
CHAPTER
XII: The Pacifist and Antimilitarist Character of the Revolution
The
pacifist and therefore antimilitarist character of the Revolution is easily
grasped in light of the preceding chapter.
1.
SCIENCE WILL BRING AN END TO WAR, THE MILITARY, AND POLICE
In the technological paradise of
the Revolution, peace has to be perpetual, for science has shown that war is
evil, and technology can overcome all its causes.
Accordingly, there is a
fundamental incompatibility between the Revolution and the armed forces. These
will have to be abolished. In the universal republic there will only be a
police force‑which will be abolished as soon as scientific and
technological advances have completed the eradication of crime.
2. THE
DOCTRINAL INCOMPATIBILITY BETWEEN THE REVOLUTION AND THE UNIFORM
The uniform, by its mere
presence, implicitly testifies to some truths that, although undoubtedly
somewhat generic, are certainly of a counter‑revolutionary character:
– the existence of values that are greater than life itself and for
which one should be willing to die -- which is contrary to the socialist
mentality, wholly characterized by abhorrence of risk and pain and by adoration
of security and utmost attachment to earthly life;
– the existence of morality, for the military condition is entirely
based upon ideas of honor, of force placed at the service of good and turned
against evil, and so on.
3. THE
TEMPERAMENT OF THE REVOLUTION IS CONTRARY TO THE MILITARY LIFE
Lastly, there is a temperamental
antipathy between the Revolution and the military spirit. The Revolution,
before it has full control, is verbose, declamatory, and scheming. The
resolution of matters in a direct, drastic, straightforward way -- the military
way – displeases what we could
call the
present temperament of the Revolution. We stress present in allusion to the
current stage of the Revolution among us, because there is nothing more
despotic and cruel than the Revolution when it is omnipotent. Russia has
provided an eloquent example of this. But even there the divergence remained,
since the military spirit is quite different from that of the executioner.
* * *
Having analyzed the
revolutionary utopia in its various aspects, we close the study of the
Revolution.
Part II
The Counter Revolution
CHAPTER
I: The Counter‑Revolution Is a Reaction
1. THE
COUNTER‑REVOLUTION: A SPECIFIC AND DIRECT FIGHT AGAINST THE REVOLUTION
If such is the Revolution, what
is the Counter‑Revolution? In the literal sense of the word ‑
therefore stripped of the illegitimate and demagogic connotations given it in
everyday language - the Counter‑Revolution is a reaction. That is to say,
it is an action directed against another action. It is to the Revolution what,
for example, the Counter‑Reformation is to the Pseudo‑Reformation.
2. THE
NOBILITY OF THIS REACTION
The Counter‑Revolution
derives its nobility and importance from this character of reaction. Indeed, if
the Revolution is killing us, nothing is more indispensable than a reaction
that aims to crush it. To be adverse in principle to a counter‑revolutionary
reaction is the same as desiring to deliver the world over to the Revolution's
dominion.
3. A
REACTION TURNED AGAINST PRESENT‑DAY ADVERSARIES
It must be added that the
Counter‑Revolution, in this light, is not and cannot be a movement in the
clouds, one that fights phantoms. It has to be the Counter‑Revolution of
the twentieth century, waged against the Revolution as it is in fact today.
Therefore, it has to be waged against the revolutionary passions as they are
inflamed today, revolutionary ideas as formulated today, revolutionary
ambiences as seen today, revolutionary art and culture as they are today, and
against the individuals and currents of opinion that, at whatever level, are
the most active promoters of the Revolution today. The Counter‑Revolution
is not, then, a mere recitation of the evil deeds of the Revolution in the
past, but an effort to bar its course in the present.
4. THE
MODERNITY AND INTEGRITY OF THE COUNTER‑REVOLUTION
The modernity of the Counter‑Revolution
does not consist in ignoring the Revolution nor in making a pact with it, even
in the slightest degree. To the contrary, it consists in knowing the Revolution
in its unchanging essence and in its relevant contemporary accidents, and
combating the former and the latter intelligently, astutely, and
systematically, using every licit means and the assistance of every child of
light.
CHAPTER
II: Reaction and Historical Immobility
1. WHAT
IS TO BE RESTORED
If the Revolution is disorder,
the Counter‑Revolution is the restoration of order. And by order we mean
the peace of Christ in the Reign of Christ, that is, Christian civilization,
austere and hierarchical, fundamentally sacral, antiegalitarian, and antiliberal.
2. WHAT
IS TO BE INNOVATED
However, by force of the
historical law according to which immobility does not exist in temporal things,
the order born of the Counter‑Revolution must have its own
characteristics that will make it different from the order that existed before
the Revolution. Of course, this affirmation does not refer to principles but to
accidents. These accidents are, nevertheless, of such importance that they
deserve to be mentioned.
Since it is impossible for us to
go into this matter at length, we will merely note that, in general, when a
fracture or a laceration occurs in an organism, the zone of mending or healing
is marked by special safeguards. It is the loving care of Providence acting
through secondary causes against the possibilities of a new disaster. This can
be observed in the case of broken bones, whose mend forms as a reinforcement in
the very zone of the fracture, or in the case of scar tissue. This is a
material image of an analogous fact that takes place in the spiritual order. As
a general rule, the sinner who truly amends has a greater horror for sin than
he had in the best years before his fall. Such is the history of the penitent
saints. So, also, after each trial, the Church emerges specially armed against
the evil that tried to prostate her. A typical example of this is the Counter‑Reformation.
By virtue of this law, the order
born of the Counter‑Revolution will have to shine even more than that of
the Middle Ages in the three principal points in which the latter was wounded
by the Revolution:
·
A profound respect for the rights of the Church and of the Papacy, and
the sacralization, to the utmost possible extent, of the values of temporal
life, all of this out of opposition to secularism, interconfessionalism, atheism,
and pantheism, as well as their respective consequences.
·
A spirit of hierarchy marking all aspects of society and State, of
culture and life, out of opposition to the egalitarian metaphysics of the
Revolution.
·
A diligence in detecting and combating evil in its embryonic or veiled
forms, in fulminating it with execration and a note of infamy, and in punishing
it with unbreakable firmness in all its manifestations, particularly in those
that offend against orthodoxy and purity of customs, in opposition to the
liberal metaphysics of the Revolution and its tendency to give free rein and
protection to evil.
CHAPTER
III: The Counter‑Revolution and the Craving After Novelties
The tendency of so many of our
contemporaries, children of the Revolution, is to unrestrictedly love the
present, adore the future, and unconditionally consign the past to scorn and
hatred. This tendency gives rise to a series of misunderstandings about the
Counter‑Revolution that should be brought to an end. Above all, it seems
to many that the traditionalist and conservative character of the Counter‑Revolution
renders it a born enemy of human progress.
1. THE
COUNTER‑REVOLUTION IS TRADITIONALIST
A. Reason
As we have seen, the Counter‑Revolution
is an effort developed in terms of the Revolution. The Revolution constantly
turns against a whole legacy of Christian institutions, doctrines, customs, and
ways of being, feeling, and thinking that we received from our forefathers and
that are not yet completely abolished. The Counter‑Revolution is
therefore the defender of Christian traditions.
B. The
Smoking Wick
The Revolution attacks Christian
civilization in a manner that is more or less like that of a certain tree of
the Brazilian forest. This tree, the strangler fig Urostigma olearia,
by wrapping itself around the trunk of another tree, completely covers it and
kills it. In its "moderate" and low‑velocity currents, the
Revolution approached Christian civilization in order to wrap itself around it
and kill it. We are in a period in which this strange phenomenon of destruction
is still incomplete. In other words, we are in a hybrid situation wherein what
we would almost call the mortal remains of Christian civilization, and the
aroma and remote action of many traditions only recently abolished yet still
somehow alive in the memory of man, coexist with many revolutionary
institutions and customs.
Faced with the struggle between
a splendid Christian tradition in which life still stirs and a revolutionary
action inspired by the mania for novelties to which Leo XIII referred in the
opening words to the encyclical Rerum novarum, it is only natural that
the true counter‑revolutionary be a born defender of the treasury of good
traditions, for these are the values of the Christian past that remain and must
be saved. In this sense, the counter‑revolutionary acts like Our Lord,
Who did not come to extinguish the smoking wick nor to break the bruised
reed.40 Therefore, he must lovingly try to save all these Christian traditions.
A counter‑revolutionary action is, essentially, a traditionalist action.
C. False
Traditionalism
The traditionalist spirit of the
Counter‑Revolution has nothing in common with a false and narrow
traditionalism, which conserves certain rites, styles, or customs merely out of
love for old forms and without any appreciation for the doctrine that gave rise
to them. This would be archaeologism, not a sound and living traditionalism.
2. THE
COUNTER‑REVOLUTION IS CONSERVATIVE
Is the Counter‑Revolution
conservative? In one sense, it is, and profoundly so. And in another sense, it
is not, and also profoundly so.
If it is a question of
conserving something of the present that is good and deserves to live, the
Counter‑Revolution is conservative.
But if it is a question of
perpetuating the hybrid situation in which we find ourselves, of keeping the
revolutionary process at its present stage, while remaining immobile like a
statue of salt, on the sidelines of history and of time, embracing alike what
is good and evil in our century, thus seeking a perpetual and harmonious
coexistence of good and evil, then, the Counter‑Revolution neither is nor
can be conservative.
3. THE
COUNTER‑REVOLUTION IS AN ESSENTIAL CONDITION FOR AUTHENTIC PROGRESS
Does the Counter‑Revolution
favor progress? Yes, if the progress is authentic. No, if it is the march
toward the revolutionary utopia.
In its material aspect, genuine
progress consists in the rightful use of the forces of nature according to the
law of God, for the service of man. For this reason, the Counter‑Revolution
makes no pads with today's hypertrophied technicalism, with its adoration of
novelties, speed, and machines, nor with the deplorable tendency to organize
human society mechanistically. These are excesses that Pius XII condemned
profoundly and precisely.41
Nor is the material progress of
a people the main element of progress in Christian understanding. The latter
lies above all in the full development of the powers of the soul and the ascent
of mankind toward moral perfection. Thus, a counter‑revolutionary
conception of progress supposes the prevalence of spiritual values over
material considerations. Accordingly, it is proper to the Counter‑Revolution
to promote, among individuals and the multitudes, a far greater esteem for all
that has to do with true religion, philosophy, art, and literature than for
what has to do with the good of the body and the exploitation of matter.
Finally, to clearly
differentiate between the revolutionary and counter‑revolutionary
concepts of progress, it is necessary to note that the counter‑revolutionary
takes into account that the world will always be a valley of tears and a
passageway to heaven, while the revolutionary considers that progress should
make the earth a paradise in which man lives happily with no thought of
eternity.
From the very notion of rightful
progress, one can see that the revolutionary process is its contrary.
Thus, the Counter‑Revolution
is an essential condition for the preservation of the normal development of
authentic progress and the defeat of the revolutionary utopia, which has only a
facade of progress.
CHAPTER
IV: What Is a Counter‑Revolutionary?
What is a counter‑revolutionary?
One may answer the question in two ways:
1. IN
ACTUALITY
The actual counter‑revolutionary
is one who:
– knows the Revolution, order, and the Counter‑Revolution in
their respective spirits, doctrines, and methods;
– loves the Counter‑Revolution and Christian order, and hates
the Revolution and “anti‑order”;
– makes of this love and this hatred the axis around which revolve
all his ideals, preferences, and activities.
Of course this attitude of soul
does not require higher education. Saint Joan of Arc was no theologian but
astounded her judges by the theological profundity of her thoughts. So also,
animated by an admirable understanding of the Revolution's spirit and aims,
simple peasants of Navarre, for instance, or of Vendee or Tyrol, have often
been the best soldiers of the Counter‑Revolution.
2. IN
POTENTIALITY
Potential counter‑revolutionaries are
those who have one or another of the opinions and ways of feeling of
revolutionaries, either because of inadvertence or some other occasional
reason, but without the very depth of their personalities being affected by the
spirit of the Revolution. Alerted, enlightened, and oriented, these persons
easily embrace a counter‑revolutionary position. And in this they are
different from the "semi‑counter-revolutionaries" mentioned
earlier. 42
CHAPTER
V: The Counter‑Revolution's Tactics
The tactics of the Counter‑Revolution
can be looked at in the light of persons, groups, or currents of opinion in
terms of three types of minds: the actual counter‑revolutionary, the
potential counter‑revolutionary, and the revolutionary.
1. IN
RELATION TO THE ACTUAL COUNTER‑REVOLUTIONARY
The actual counter‑revolutionary
is not as rare as one might think at first. He has a clear vision of things, a
fundamental love for coherence, and a strong soul. For this reason he has a
lucid notion of the disorders of the contemporary world and of the catastrophes
looming on
the
horizon. But his very lucidity makes him perceive the full extent of the
isolation in which he so frequently finds himself in a chaos that to him
appears to have no solution. Thus, many times, the counter‑revolutionary
keeps a disheartened silence -- a sad condition: "Vae Soli” ("Woe to
him that is alone"), the Scriptures say.43
A counter‑revolutionary
action must seek, above all, to detect such persons, acquaint them with each
other, and lead them to support each other in the public profession of their
convictions. This can be done in two different ways:
A.
Individual Action
This action must be carried out
first of all at the individual level. Nothing is more effective than the frank
and proud counter‑revolutionary stand taken by a young college student,
an officer, a teacher, a priest especially, an aristocrat, or a blue‑collar
worker who is influential within his circle. The first reaction will sometimes
be one of indignation. But if he perseveres, after a period that will vary
depending on circumstances, gradually others will join him.
B.
Combined Action
These individual contacts
naturally tend to raise up in the different milieus several counter‑revolutionaries
who unite in a family of souls whose strength is multiplied by the very fact of
their union.
2. IN
RELATION TO THE POTENTIAL COUNTER‑REVOLUTIONARY
Counter‑revolutionaries
should present the Revolution and the Counter‑Revolution in all their
aspects: religious, political, social, economic, cultural, artistic, and so on.
This is necessary because potential counter‑revolutionaries generally see
the Revolution and the Counter‑Revolution through only one particular
facet. Through it they can and should be attracted to the total vision of the
Revolution and the Counter‑Revolution. A counter‑revolutionary who
argues in only one sphere‑for example, politics‑limits his field of
attraction greatly, exposing his action to sterility and thereby to decay and
death.
3. IN
RELATION TO THE REVOLUTIONARY
A. The
Counter‑Revolutionary Initiative
There are no neutrals in face of
the Revolution and the Counter‑Revolution. There may indeed be
noncombatants, whose will or velleities are in one of the two camps, whether
consciously or not. By revolutionaries we mean, then, not only the integral and
declared partisans of the Revolution but also the "semi‑counterrevolutionaries."
The Revolution has progressed,
as we have seen, by hiding its complete face, its true spirit, and its ultimate
aims.
The best way to refute it among
revolutionaries is to show it in its entirety, whether as regards its spirit
and the general outline of its action, or as regards each of its apparently
innocent and insignificant manifestations or maneuvers. To thus snatch away its
veils is to deal it the
harshest
of blows.
For this reason, the counter‑revolutionary
effort must dedicate itself to this task with the greatest diligence.
Secondarily, of course, other resources
of well‑conducted dialectics are indispensable for the success of a
counter‑revolutionary action.
There are certain possibilities
of working together with the "semi‑counterrevolutionary" as
well as with the revolutionary who has counter‑revolutionary
"clots." This collaboration creates a special problem: Up to what
point is it prudent? As we see it, the struggle against the Revolution can only
be properly developed by uniting persons who are radically and entirely free of
the virus of the Revolution. It is very conceivable that counter‑revolutionary
groups may be able to work with the aforesaid elements for some concrete
objectives. But to admit a total and continuous collaboration with persons
infected with any influence of the Revolution is the most flagrant of
imprudences and the cause of perhaps most counter‑revolutionary failures.
B. The
Revolutionary Counteroffensive
As a rule, the revolutionary is
petulant, verbose, and strutting when he has no or only weak adversaries to
face him. However, if someone proudly and daringly confronts him, he grows
quiet and organizes a campaign of silence. One perceives amid the silence,
however, the discreet buzz of calumny or some murmuring against the “excessive
logic” of his adversary. But it is a confused and shamed silence that is never
broken by any worthwhile rejoinder. In face of this silence of confusion and
defeat, we could say to the victorious counter‑revolutionary the spirited
words written by Veuillot on a certain occasion: “Question the silence, and no
answer will it make.”43
4. ELITES
AND MASSES IN THE COUNTER‑REVOLUTIONARY TACTICS
To the extent possible, the
Counter‑Revolution should try to win over the multitudes. However, it
should not make this its chief goal in the short run. The counter‑revolutionary
has no reason to be discouraged because of the fact that the great majority of
men are not presently on his side. Indeed, an exact study of history shows us
that it was not the masses who made the Revolution. They moved in a
revolutionary direction because they had revolutionary elites behind them. If
they had had elites of the opposite orientation behind them, they likely would
have moved in the opposite direction. An objective view of history shows that
the factor of mass is secondary; the principal factor is the formation of
elites. For this formation, the counter‑revolutionary can always use the
resources of his individual action, and can therefore obtain good results in
spite of the shortage of material and technical means with which, at times, he
may contend.
CHAPTER
VI: The Counter‑Revolution's Means of Action
1. A
PREFERENCE FOR GREAT MEANS OF ACTION
Of course, in principle, counter‑revolutionary
action deserves to have at its disposal the best means: television, radio,
major press, and a rational, efficient, and brilliant publicity. The true
counter‑revolutionary should always tend to use these means, overcoming
the defeatist attitude
of some
of his companions who immediately surrender all hope of using them because they
constantly see them in the hands of the children of darkness.
However, we must recognize that,
in point of fact, counter‑revolutionary action will often have to be
undertaken without these resources.
2. THE
USE OF MODEST MEANS: THEIR EFFICACY
Even so, and with the humblest
of means, counter‑revolutionary action can obtain very appreciable
results if such means are utilized with uprightness of spirit and intelligence.
As we have seen, a counter‑revolutionary action is conceivable even if
reduced to mere individual activity. But it is inconceivable without individual
action, which, if well accomplished, opens the way for every progress.
Small journals of counter‑revolutionary
inspiration, if their standard is good, are surprisingly effective, especially
in the foremost task of acquainting counter‑revolutionaries with one
another.
Equally effective, or more so,
are books, a speakers’ platform, or a professorship at the service of the
Counter‑Revolution.
CHAPTER
VII: Obstacles to the Counter‑Revolution
1.
PITFALLS TO BE AVOIDED AMONG COUNTER‑REVOLUTIONARIES
The pitfalls to be avoided among
counter‑revolutionaries very often consist of certain bad habits of
agents of the Counter‑Revolution. The themes of counter‑revolutionary
meetings or publications should be carefully chosen. The Counter‑Revolution
should always be ideological in its approach, even when dealing with matters
fraught with detail and incidentals. To go over questions of current or recent
party politics may be useful, for example. But to overemphasize small personal
questions, to make a struggle with local ideological adversaries the main
objective of the counter‑revolutionary action, to portray the Counter‑Revolution
as if it were a mere nostalgia (even though this nostalgia is, of course,
legitimate) or a mere obligation of personal loyalty, however holy and just, is
to depict the particular as if it were the general, the part as if it were the
whole. It is to mutilate the cause one desires to serve.
2.
SLOGANS OF THE REVOLUTION
At other times, these obstacles
consist of revolutionary slogans that are frequently regarded as dogma even in
the best circles.
A. "The Counter‑Revolution
Is Out of Date"
The most prevalent and harmful
of these slogans claims that the Counter‑Revolution cannot flourish in
our day because it is contrary to the spirit of the times. History, it is said,
does not turn back.
If this peculiar principle were
true the Catholic religion would not exist, for it cannot be denied that the
Gospel was radically contrary to the milieu in which Our Lord Jesus Christ and
the Apostles preached. Also, Germano-Romanic Catholic Spain would not have
existed, for nothing is more like a resurrection, and hence in a certain way
like a return to the past, than the full reconstitution of the Christian
grandeur of Spain after the eight centuries from Covadonga to the fall of
Granada. The Renaissance, so dear to revolutionaries, was itself, from various
points of view at least, a return to a cultural and artistic naturalism that
had been petrified for over a millennium.
History, then, contains comings
and goings along the paths of good and the paths of evil.
Incidentally, whenever the
Revolution considers something to be consistent with the spirit of the times,
caution has to be exercised, for all too often it is rubbish from some pagan
time that it wishes to restore. What is new, for example, about divorce,
nudism, tyranny, or demagoguery, all of which were so widespread in the ancient
world? And why is the advocate of divorce regarded as modem while the defender
of indissoluble marriage is considered outdated? The Revolution's concept of
modern amounts to everything that gives free rein to pride and egalitarianism
as well as to pleasure‑seeking and liberalism.
B.
"The Counter‑Revolution Is Negativistic"
According to another slogan of
the Revolution, the Counter‑Revolution, by its very name, defines itself
as something negative and therefore sterile. This is a mere play on words, for,
based on the fact that the negation of a negation corresponds to an
affirmation, the human spirit expresses many of its most positive concepts in a
negative form: infallibility, independence, innocence, and others. Would it be
negativism to fight for any of these values just because of their negative
formulation? Did the First Vatican Council perform a negativistic work when it
defined papal infallibility? Is the Immaculate Conception a negativistic
prerogative of the Mother of God?
If insistence on negating,
attacking, and continuously watching the adversary is termed
"negativistic" in current speech, then perforce the Counter‑Revolution,
without being merely a negation, has in its essence something fundamentally and
wholesomely negativistic. It is, as we
have
said, a movement directed against another movement, and it is unthinkable for
one adversary in a fight not to have his eyes fixed on the other, maintaining
an attitude of polemics, attack, and counterattack.
C.
"The Counter‑Revolutionary Is Argumentative"
A third catch phrase criticizes
the intellectual works of counter‑revolutionaries for their negativistic
and polemical character, whereby they overemphasize the refutation of error
instead of simply explaining the truth in a clear manner indifferent to the
correction of error. These works are deemed counterproductive, for they
irritate the adversary and drive him away. Save for possible excesses, this
seemingly negativistic approach is profoundly justified. As previously stated,
the doctrine of the Revolution was contained in the denials of Luther and the
early revolutionaries, but it was only made explicit very gradually over
centuries. Accordingly, counter‑revolutionary authors sensed from the
very beginning‑and legitimately so‑that in all revolutionary
formulations there was something which transcended the formulations themselves.
Within each stage of the revolutionary process it is much more important to
consider the mentality of the Revolution than simply the ideology enunciated in
that particular stage. If such work is to be profound, efficient, and entirely
objective, the progress of the Revolution's march must be followed step by step
in a painstaking effort to make explicit what is implicit in the revolutionary
process. Only in this way is it possible to attack the Revolution as it should
be attacked. All this has obliged counter‑revolutionaries to keep their
eyes fixed on the Revolution, while elaborating and affirming their theses in
terms of its errors. In this arduous intellectual labor, the doctrines of truth
and order that exist in the sacred deposit of the Magisterium of the Church
constitute the treasury from which the counter‑revolutionary draws things
new and old44 to refute the Revolution as he sees deeper and deeper into its
tenebrous abysses.
Thus, in several of its most
important aspects, counter‑revolutionary work is wholesomely negativistic
and polemical. For analogous reasons, the ecclesiastical Magisterium more often
than not defines truths in relation to the heresies arising in the course of
history, and it formulates these truths as a condemnation of the opposing
errors. The Church has never feared that she would harm souls by acting in this
way.
3. WRONG
ATTITUDES IN FACE OF THE REVOLUTION'S SLOGANS
A.
Ignoring Revolutionary Slogans
The counter‑revolutionary
effort must not be bookish. In other words, it cannot content itself with
dialectics against the Revolution at a purely scientific, academic level. While
recognizing the great, even very great, importance of this level, the Counter‑Revolution
must habitually keep its sights trained on the Revolution as thought, felt, and
lived by public opinion as a whole. In this sense, counter‑revolutionaries
ought to give very special importance to the refutation of revolutionary catch
phrases.
B.
Eliminating the Polemical Aspects of Counter‑Revolutionary Action
Sadly, the idea of presenting
the Counter‑Revolution in a more "sympathetic" and
"positive" light by preventing it from attacking the Revolution is
the most efficient way to impoverish its content and dynamism.45
Anyone who employs this
lamentable tactic displays the same lack of sense as a chief of state who, in
face of enemy troops crossing his border, were to halt all armed resistance in
the hope of neutralizing the invader by gaining his sympathy. In reality, he
would destroy the
impetus
of the reaction without stopping the enemy. In other words, he would surrender
his homeland.
This does not mean that the
language of the counter‑revolutionary should not show nuances befitting
the circumstances.
The Divine Master, when
preaching in Judea, which was under the proximate influence of the perfidious
Pharisees, used strong language. On the contrary, in Galilee, where the simple‑hearted
people predominated and the influence of the Pharisees was smaller, His
language was more tutorial and less polemical.
CHAPTER
VIII: The Processive Character of the Counter‑Revolution, and the Counter‑Revolutionary
"Shock"
1. THERE
IS A COUNTER‑REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS
It is evident that, like the
Revolution, the Counter‑Revolution is a process, and therefore its progressive
and methodical march toward order can be studied.
Nevertheless, there are some
characteristics that profoundly differentiate this march from the movement of
the Revolution toward complete disorder. This results from the fact that the
dynamism of good is radically different from the dynamism of evil.
2.
TYPICAL ASPECTS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS
A. In the
Rapid March
When discussing the two speeds
of the Revolution, we saw that some souls arc gripped by its maxims in a single
moment and at once draw all the consequences of error.46
B. In the
Slow March
We saw also that others accept
the revolutionary doctrine slowly, step by step. In many cases, this process
develops continuously down through generations. A “semi‑counterrevolutionary”
who is strongly opposed to the paroxysms of the Revolution has a son who is
less opposed to them, a grandson who is indifferent to them, and a great
grandson who is fully integrated in the revolutionary flux. The reason for
this, as we have said, is that certain families have in their mentality,
subconscious, and ways of feeling a remnant of counter‑revolutionary
habits and leaven that holds them partly bound to order. In such families the
revolutionary corruption is not as dynamic, and therefore error can only
advance in their spirits step by step, as it were, disguising itself.
This same slowness of rhythm
explains how many people change their opinions enormously in the course of
their lives. For example, as adolescents, they have a severe opinion about indecent
fashions, according to the environment in which they live. Later, as customs
“evolve"
in a more dissolute direction, these persons adapt themselves to the successive
fashions. As they grow old, they applaud styles of dress that in their youth
they would have strongly condemned. They reached this point because they have
passed slowly and imperceptibly through the nuanced stages of the Revolution.
They had neither the perspicacity nor the energy required to perceive where
they were being led by the Revolution, which was acting within and around them.
Gradually, they ended up going perhaps even as far as a revolutionary of their
own age who in his adolescence had opted for the first speed. Truth and
goodness lie defeated in these souls, but not so defeated that, in face of a
grave error and a grave evil, they might not suffer a start that at times, in a
victorious and salvific way, will make them perceive the perverse depth of the
Revolution and lead them to take a categorical and systematic attitude of opposition
to all its manifestations. To avoid these wholesome shocks of the soul and
these counter‑revolutionary crystallizations, the Revolution moves step
by step.
3. HOW TO
DESTROY THE REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS
If this is bow the Revolution
leads the immense majority of its victims, by what means can one of them
separate himself from this process? Is this means different from that by which
persons dragged by the high‑speed revolutionary march convert to the
Counter‑Revolution?
A. The
Many Ways of the Holy Ghost
No one can set limits to the
inexhaustible variety of God's ways within souls. It would be absurd to attempt
to reduce such a complex matter to schemata. One cannot, then, in this matter,
go beyond indicating some errors to be avoided and some prudent attitudes to be
proposed.
Every conversion is a fruit of
the action of the Holy Ghost, Who speaks to each one according to his
necessities, sometimes with majestic severity and at other times with maternal
suavity, yet never lying.
B.
Nothing Should Be Hidden
Thus, in the journey from error
to truth, the soul does not have to contend with the crafty silences of the
Revolution nor with its fraudulent metamorphoses. Nothing it ought to know is
hidden from it. Truth and goodness are thoroughly taught to it by the Church.
Progress in goodness is not secured by systematically hiding from men the
ultimate goal of their formation, but by showing it and rendering it ever more
desirable.
The Counter‑Revolution
must not, then, disguise its whole breadth. It must adopt the eminently wise
rules laid down by Saint Pius X as the normative code of behavior for the true
apostle: "It is neither loyal nor worthy to hide Catholic status,
disguising it with some equivocal banner, as if such status were damaged or
smuggled goods."47 Catholics should not "veil the more important
precepts of the Gospel out of fear of being perhaps less heeded or even
completely abandoned."48 To this the Holy Pontiff judiciously added:
"No doubt it will not be
alien to prudence, when proposing the truth, to make use of a certain
temporization when it is a matter of enlightening men who are hostile to our
institutions and entirely removed from God. Wounds that have to be cut into, as
Saint Gregory said, should first be touched with a delicate hand. But such
skill would take on the aspect of carnal prudence if made a constant and common
norm of conduct. This is all the more so since in this way one would seem to
have very little regard for Divine grace, which is conferred not only upon the
priesthood and its ministers but upon all the faithful of Christ, so that our
words and acts might move the souls of these men."49
C. The "Shock" of the Great
Conversions
Though we
have decried the attempt to reduce this matter to simple schemata, it
nevertheless seems to us that complete and conscious adherence to the
Revolution as it concretely presents itself is an immense sin, a radical
apostasy, from which one can only return by means of an equally radical
conversion.
Now, according to history, it
seems that the great conversions usually occur by a fulminating thrust of the
soul caused by grace on the occasion of a given internal or external fact. This
thrust is different in each case but often has certain similar features. In
fact, when a revolutionary converts to the Counter‑Revolution, this
thrust not infrequently takes place along the following general lines:
a. In the soul of the hardened
sinner who, in the rapid march of the process, went immediately to the extreme
of the Revolution, there are always resources of intelligence and common sense
and tendencies toward good that are more or less defined. Although God never
deprives these souls of sufficient grace, He frequently waits until they have
reached the very depths of misery, wherein He suddenly brings home to them the
enormity of their errors and sins as if in a fulgurant flash. Only when he had
fallen into the state where he would fain have filled his belly with the husks
of the swine did the prodigal son really see himself as he actually was and
return to his father's house.50
b. In the lukewarm and shortsighted soul, which is
slowly shipping down the ramp of the Revolution, there still act certain
supernatural leavens not entirely refused; values of tradition, order, and
religion still glow like embers under the ash. Such souls, by a wholesome shock
in a moment of extreme disgrace, may also open their eyes and instantly revive
everything that was pining and wasting away within them; it is the rekindling
of the smoking wick.51
D. The Likelihood of This Shock in Our
Days
Now, since all humanity finds
itself in the imminence of a catastrophe, this seems to be precisely the great
moment prepared by the mercy of God. Both high‑ and low‑speed
revolutionaries can open their eyes in the terrible twilight in which we live
and be converted to God.
Without demagoguery, without
exaggeration, but at the same time without weakness, the counter‑revolutionary
must zealously take advantage of the tremendous spectacle of this darkness to
bring the facts home to the children of the Revolution, and thus produce in
them the saving "flash." To boldly point out the perils that beset us
is an essential feature of an authentically counter‑revolutionary action.
E. Showing the Whole Face of the
Revolution
It is not sufficient to point
out the risk that our civilization may disappear altogether. We must know how
to reveal amid the chaos that envelops us the whole face of the Revolution in
its immense hideousness. Whenever this face is revealed, outbursts of vigorous
reaction appear.
For this reason, during the
French Revolution and throughout the nineteenth century, the counter‑revolutionary
movement in France was stronger than ever before. Never had the face of the
Revolution been seen so well. The immensity of the maelstrom in which the old
order of things had been shipwrecked had suddenly opened the eyes of many
people to a host of truths silenced or denied by the Revolution down through
the centuries. Above all, the spirit of the Revolution had become clear to them
in all its malice and in all its profound connections with ideas and habits
long considered innocent by most people.
Thus, the counter‑revolutionary must
frequently unmask the whole face of the Revolution in order to exorcise the
spell it casts upon its victims.
F. Pointing Out the Metaphysical
Aspects of the Counter‑Revolution
The quintessence of the
revolutionary spirit consists, as we have seen, in hating, in principle and on
the metaphysical plane, all inequality and all law, especially Moral Law.
Moreover, pride, rebelliousness, and impurity are precisely the factors that most
impel mankind
along the
way of the Revolution.52
Therefore, one of the very
important parts of counter‑revolutionary work is to teach a love for
inequality considered on the metaphysical plane, for the principle of
authority, and for Moral Law and purity.
G. The Two stages of the Counter‑Revolution
a. With the radical change of
the revolutionary into a counter‑revolutionary, the first stage of the
Counter‑Revolution ends in him.
b. The second stage may take
quite a long time. In it, the soul proceeds to adjust all his ideas and ways of
feeling to the position taken in the act of conversion.
These two great and quite
distinct stages delineating the counter‑revolutionary process are
presented here as they occur in a soul considered by itself. Mutatis
mutandis, they may occur in large groups and even in whole peoples as well.
CHAPTER
IX: The Driving Force of the Counter‑Revolution
There is a driving force of the
Counter‑Revolution, just as there is one of the Revolution.
1. VIRTUE AND COUNTER‑REVOLUTION
We have singled out the dynamism
of the human passions unleashed in a metaphysical hatred against God, virtue,
good, and especially against hierarchy and purity, as the most potent driving
force of the Revolution. Likewise, there exists a counter‑revolutionary
dynamism, though of an entirely different nature. Passions as such (here
referred to in their technical sense) are morally indifferent; it is their
disorderliness that makes them bad. However, while regulated, they are good and
obey the will and reason faithfully. It is in the vigor of soul that comes to a
man because God governs his reason, his reason dominates his will, and his will
dominates his
sensibility,
that we must look for the serene, noble, and highly effective driving force of
the Counter‑Revolution.
2. SUPERNATURAL LIFE AND COUNTER‑REVOLION
Such vigor of soul cannot be
explained unless supernatural life is taken into account. The role of grace
consists precisely in enlightening the intelligence, strengthening the will,
and tempering the sensibility so that they turn toward good. Hence, the soul
gains immeasurably
from
supernatural life, which elevates it above the miseries of fallen nature,
indeed, above the level of human nature itself. In this strength of the
Christian soul lies the dynamism of the Counter‑Revolution.
3. THE INVINCIBILITY OF THE COUNTER‑REVOLUTION
One might ask, of what value is
this dynamism? We respond that in thesis it is incalculable and certainly
superior to that of the Revolution: "Omnia possum in eo qui me
confortat" (“I can do all things in Him who strengthens me").53
When men resolve to cooperate
with the grace of God, the marvels of history are worked: the conversion of the
Roman Empire; the formation of the Middle Ages; the reconquest of Spain,
starting from Covadonga; all the events that result from the great
resurrections of soul of which peoples are also capable. These resurrections
are invincible, because nothing can defeat a people that is virtuous and truly
loves God.
CHAPTER X
The Counter‑Revolution, Sin, and the Redemption
1. THE COUNTER‑REVOLUTION SHOULD
REVIVE THE NOTION OF GOOD AND EVIL
One of the most significant
missions of the Counter‑Revolution is reestablishing or reviving the
distinction between good and evil, the notion of sin in thesis, of Original
Sin, and of actual sin. When performed with a profound compenetration of the
spirit of the Church, this task does not produce despair of the Divine Mercy,
hypochondria, misanthropy, or the like, so frequently mentioned by certain
authors more or less imbued with the maxims of the Revolution.
2. HOW TO REVIVE THE NOTION OF GOOD
AND EVIL
The notion of good and evil can
be revived in various ways, including:
·
Avoiding all formulations that smack of secularist or interdenominational
morality, because secularism and interdenominationalism logically lead to
amorality.
·
Opportunely pointing out that God has the right to be obeyed and that,
therefore, His Commandments are true laws, which we ought to observe in the
spirit ofobedience and not simply because they please us.
·
Emphasizing that the law of God is intrinsically good and according to
the order of the universe, in which the perfection of the Creator is mirrored.
For this reason, it should not only be obeyed, but loved; and evil should not
only be shunned, but hated.
·
Spreading the notion of a reward and of a chastisement after death.
·
Favoring social customs and laws in which uprightness is honored and
wickedness suffers public sanctions.
·
Favoring customs and laws meant to prevent proximate occasions of sin
and even those conditions that, having the mere appearance of evil, may be
harmful to public morality.
·
Insisting on the effects of Original Sin in man, his frailty, the
fruitfulness of the Redemption by Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the need for
grace, prayer, and vigilance in order for man to persevere.
·
Making use of every opportunity to indicate the mission of the Church
as the teacher of virtue, the fountain of grace, and the irreconcilable enemy
of error and sin.
CHAPTER
XI The Counter‑Revolution and Temporal Society
The Counter‑Revolution and
temporal society is a theme that has been treated in depth from various
standpoints in many valuable studies. This study, since it cannot encompass the
entire subject, restricts itself to giving the more general principles of a
counter‑revolutionary temporal order54 and to analyzing the relations
between the Counter‑Revolution and some of the major organizations that
fight to better the temporal order.
1. THE COUNTER‑REVOLUTION AND
SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
Within
temporal society, there are numerous organizations dedicated to dealing with
the social question and having in view, either directly or indirectly, the same
supreme end as the Counter‑Revolution: the establishment of the Reign
ofOur Lord Jesus Christ. Given this community of ends,55 it is necessary to
study the relations between the Counter‑Revolution and these
organizations.
A. Works of Charity, Social Service,
Associations of Employers, Workers, and So Forth
a. To the degree that these
works normalize social and economic life, they are prejudicial to the
development of the revolutionary process. In this sense, they are ipso facto
precious auxiliaries of the Counter‑Revolution, even if only in an
implicit and indirect way.
b. Nevertheless, in this
respect, it is worthwhile to call to mind some truths that are unfortunately
often obscured among those who devote themselves selflessly to these works.
There is no doubt that such
works can alleviate and, in some cases, eliminate the material necessities that
are the cause of so much unrest among the masses. But the spirit of the
Revolution does not arise primarily from misery. Its root is moral and
therefore religious.56 Accordingly, to the extent their particular nature
allows, these works must promote a religious and moral formation that gives
special emphasis to warning souls of the revolutionary virus, which is so
powerful in our days.
·
Holy Mother Church compassionately encourages everything that might
relieve human miseries. She does not blind herself to the fact that she cannot
eliminate all of them, and she preaches a holy resignation to sickness,
poverty, and other privations.
·
Undoubtedly in these works there are precious opportunities for
creating a climate of understanding and charity between employers and workers
and, consequently, for demobilizing those who are on the brink of class
struggle. But it would be incorrect to suppose that kindness always disarms
human wickedness. Not even the innumerable benefits conferred by Our Lord
during His earthly life deterred the hatred the wicked had for Him. Thus,
although in the fight against the Revolution one should preferably guide and
enlighten souls in an affable manner, it is evident that, against its various
forms -- Communism, for example -- a direct and express combat by all just and
legal means is licit and generally even indispensable.
·
It is particularly to be observed that these works should inculcate in
their beneficiaries or associates a true sense of gratitude for the favors
received, or, when it is not a question of favors but of acts of justice, a
real appreciation for the moral uprightness that inspires such acts.
·
In the preceding paragraphs, we had principally the worker in mind. It
should be pointed out, however, that the counter‑revolutionary does not
systematically favor one social class or another. While highly zealous for the
right of property, he should nevertheless remind the higher classes that it is
not enough for them to fight the Revolution in the fields in which it attacks
their personal interests, and, paradoxically, to favor it -- as one so often
sees -- by word or example in every
other terrain, such as in family life, at the beaches, swimming pools, and
other diversions, in intellectual and artistic pursuits, and so on. A working
class that follows their example and accepts their revolutionary ideas will
inevitably be used by the Revolution against the "semi‑counterrevolutionary"
elites.
·
An aristocracy and a bourgeoisie that vulgarize their manners and dress
in order to disarm the Revolution harm themselves. A social authority that
degrades itself is comparable to the salt that has lost its savor. It is good
for nothing save to be cast out and trodden on by men.57 In most cases, the
scorning multitudes will do just that.
·
Although maintaining their station in life with dignity and energy, the
upper classes should have direct and benevolent contact with the other classes.
Charity and justice practiced at a distance are inadequate to establish links
of truly Christian love among the social classes.
·
Above all, those who own property should remember that if there are
many people willing to prevent communism from encroaching on the right to
private property (regarded, of course, as an individual right with a function
that is also social), it is because this is desired by God and intrinsically
according to Natural Law. Now, this principle refers to the property of the
worker as much as to that of the employer. Consequently, the same principle
behind the anticommunist struggle should lead the employer to respect the right
of the worker to a just wage, in keeping with his own needs and those of his
family. It is worth recalling this in order to emphasize that the Counter‑Revolution
is not only the guardian of the property of the employer but of that of the
worker too. Its struggle is not on behalf of groups or classes, but for
principles.
B. The
Struggle Against Communism
We will now consider
organizations whose main purpose is not the construction of a proper social
order but rather the struggle against communism. For reasons already expounded
in this work, we deem this kind of organization to be legitimate and often even
indispensable. Of course, in saying this, we are not identifying the Counter‑Revolution
with abuses that organizations of this kind may have committed in one country
or another.
Nevertheless, we believe that
the counter‑revolutionary efficacy of such organizations can be greatly
increased if their members, while remaining within the sphere of their
specialized activities, keep certain essential truths in mind:
REVISED
TO HERE
·
Only an intelligent refutation of communism is efficacious. The mere
repetition of catch phrases, even when clever and apt, is insufficient.
·
This refutation, when made in cultured circles, must be aimed at the
ultimate doctrinal foundations of communism. It is important to point out its
essential character as a philosophical sect that deduces from its principles a
particular concept of man, society, the State, history, culture, and so on,
just as the Church deduces from Revelation and Moral Law al the principles of
Catholic civilization and culture. Accordingly, no conciliation is possible
between communism – a sect that contains the plenitude of the Revolution -- and
the Church.
·
So‑called scientific communism is unknown by the multitudes, and
the doctrine of Marx does not attract the masses. An ideological anticommunist
action among the general public must be aimed at a very widespread state of
spirit that often makes anticommunists ashamed to oppose communism. This state
of spirit springs from the more or less conscious idea that all inequality is
unjust and that not only great fortunes but even medium‑sized ones must
be eliminated, for if there were no rich there would be no poor. This reveals
vestiges of certain socialist schools of thought of the nineteenth century,
perfumed with romantic sentimentalism. It gives rise to a mentality that claims
to be anticommunist but, nevertheless, frequently calls itself socialist.
This mentality, which is becoming more and
more powerful in the West, is a much greater danger than Marxist indoctrination
itself. It leads us slowly down a slope of concessions that may reach the
extreme point where nations on this side of the Iron Curtain will have become
communist republics. Such concessions, which show a tendency to economic
egalitarianism and state control, can be noted in every sphere. Private
enterprise is more and more limited. Inheritance taxes are so onerous that in
certain cases the federal treasury is the principal heir. Government
interference in such things as exchange, export, and import makes industry,
commerce, and banking dependent on the State. The State intervenes in wages,
rents, prices, in everything. It has industries, banks, universities,
newspapers, radio stations, television channels, and more. And while
egalitarian statism transforms the economy in this way, immorality and
liberalism are tearing the family apart and paving the way for so-called free
love.
Unless this
mentality is specifically fought, the West will be communist in fifty or one
hundred years, even should a cataclysm engulf Russia and China.
·
The right of property is so sacred that, even if a regime were to give
the Church full liberty and even full support, she could not accept as licit a
social organization in which all property were held collectively.
2. CHRISTENDOM AND THE UNIVERSAL
REPUBLIC
While opposing a universal
republic, the Counter‑Revolution is also adverse to the unstable and
inorganic situation created by the sundering of Christendom and the
secularization of international life in modern times.
The full sovereignty of each
nation does not prevent the peoples that live within the fold of the Church,
gathered as one huge spiritual family, from constituting bodies profoundly
imbued with the Christian spirit, and possibly presided over by representatives
of the Holy See, to resolve their differences at the international level. Such
bodies could also favor the cooperation of the Catholic peoples for the common
good in all its aspects, especially with regard to the defense of the Church
against the infidels and the protection of the freedom of missionaries in pagan
lands or those dominated by communism. Finally, such bodies could enter into
contact with non-Catholic peoples for the maintenance of good order in
international relations.
Without denying the important
services that lay bodies may have rendered on various occasions, the Counter‑Revolution
should always call attention to the terrible shortcoming that lies in their
secularism and alert persons to the risk of these bodies becoming a germ of a
universal republic.58
3. THE COUNTER‑REVOLUTION AND
NATIONALISM
In this connection, the Counter‑Revolution
must favor the maintenance of all sound local characteristics, in whatever
field, in culture, customs, and so on.
But its nationalism does not
consist of the systematic disparagement of what belongs to others nor the
adoration of national values as if they were extraneous to the great treasury
of Christian civilization.
The grandeur the Counter‑Revolution
desires for all countries is and can be only one: Christian grandeur, which
entails the preservation of the values peculiar to each and a fraternal
relationship among them all.
4. THE COUNTER‑REVOLUTION AND
MILITARISM
The counter‑revolutionary
must lament armed peace, hate unjust war, and deplore the arms race of our
days.
However, since he is under no
illusion that peace will always reign, he considers the military class a
necessity in this land of exile, and requests that it be shown all the
sympathy, gratitude, and admiration rightfully owed to those whose mission it
is to fight and die for the common good.59
CHAPTER
XII: The Church and the Counter‑Revolution
As we have seen, the Revolution
was born from an explosion of disorderly passions that is leading to the total
destruction of temporal society, the complete subversion of the moral order,
and the denial of God. The great target of the Revolution is, then, the Church,
the Mystical Body of Christ, the infallible teacher of the Truth, the guardian
of Natural Law, and, therefore, the ultimate foundation of temporal order
itself.
Accordingly, we must examine the
relation between the Divine institution that the Revolution wants to destroy
and the Counter‑Revolution.
I. THE CHURCH IS MUCH HIGHER AND FAR
BROADER THAN THE REVOLUTION AND THE COUNTER‑REVOLUTION
The Revolution and the Counter‑Revolution
are extremely important episodes in the history of the Church, for they
constitute the very drama of the apostasy and the conversion of the Christian
West. Even so, they are mere episodes.
The mission of the Church does
not lie only in the West, nor is it bound by time to the length of the
revolutionary process. Amid the storms through which she passes today, she
could proudly and tranquilly say: “Alios ego vidi ventos; alias prospexi animo
procellas "("I have already seen other winds, I have already beheld
other storms")60 The Church has fought in other lands, against adversaries
from among other peoples, and she will undoubted continue to face problems and
enemies quite different from those of today until the end of time.
The Church's objective is to
exercise her direct spiritual power and her indirect temporal power for the
salvation of souls. The Revolution is an obstacle that arose to prevent the
accomplishment of this mission. For the Church, the struggle against this
specific obstacle (among so many others) is no more than a means limited to the
dimensions of the obstacle – most important means, of course, but, nevertheless,
only a means. Thus, even if the Revolution did not exist, the Church would
still do everything she does for the salvation of souls.
We might make the matter clearer
if we compare the position of the Church in face of the Revolution and the
Counter‑Revolution with that of a nation at war. When Hannibal was at the
gates of Rome, all the forces of the Republic had to be marshaled and directed
against him. This was a vital reaction against a most powerful and nearly
victorious foe. Did it make Rome a mere reaction to Hannibal? Could anyone
believe such a thing?
It would be just as absurd to
imagine that the Church is only the Counter‑Revolution.
In this regard, it should be
made clear that the Counter‑Revolution is not destined to save the Spouse
of Christ. Supported as she is on the promise of her Founder, she does not need
men to survive. On the contrary, it is the Church that gives life to the
Counter‑Revolution, which, without her, is neither feasible nor even
conceivable.
The Counter‑Revolution
wants to contribute to the salvation of the many souls threatened by the
Revolution and to the prevention of the catastrophes that menace temporal
society. To do this, it must rely on the Church and humbly serve her, instead
of vainly imagining that it is saving her.
2. THE CHURCH HAS THE GREATEST
INTEREST IN CRUSHING THE REVOLUTION
If the Revolution does exist, if
it is what it is, then the crushing of the Revolution is within the mission of
the Church, it is in the interest of the salvation of souls, and it is of
special importance for the greater glory of God.
3. THE CHURCH IS A FUNDAMENTALLY
COUNTER‑REVOLUTIONARY FORCE
Considering the term Revolution
in the sense employed herein, the words of this heading are the obvious
conclusion to what we have said above. To state the contrary would be to say
that the Church is failing in her mission.
4. THE CHURCH IS THE GREATEST COUNTER‑REVOLUTIONARY
FORCE
The primacy of the Church among
counter‑revolutionary forces is obvious if we consider the number of
Catholics, their unity, and their influence in the world. But this legitimate
consideration of natural resources has a very secondary importance. The real
strength of the Church lies in her being the Mystical Body of Our Lord Jesus
Christ.
5. THE CHURCH IS THE SOUL OF THE COUNTER‑REVOLUTION
If the Counter‑Revolution is the
struggle to extinguish the Revolution and to build the new Christendom,
resplendent with faith, humble with hierarchical spirit, and spotless in
purity, clearly this will be achieved, above all, by a profound action in the
hearts of men. This action is proper to the Church, which teaches Catholic
doctrine and leads men to love and practice it. Therefore, the Church is the
very soul of the Counter‑Revolution.
6. THE IDEAL OF THE COUNTER‑REVOLUTION
IS TO EXALT THE CHURCH
This is an evident proposition.
If the Revolution is the opposite of the Church, it is impossible to hate the
Revolution (considered in its entirety and not just in some isolated aspect)
and to combat it without ipso facto having the ideal of exalting the Church.
7. IN A WAY, THE PURVIEW OF THE
COUNTER‑REVOLUTION IS BROADER
THAN THE
ECCLESIASTICAL AMBIT
The foregoing serves to show
that the action of the Counter‑Revolution involves a reorganization of
all temporal society. "There is a whole world to be rebuilt from its very
foundations,"61 said Pius XII at the sight of the ruins with which the
Revolution had covered the whole earth.
Now, while this task of a
fundamental counter‑revolutionary reorganization of temporal society
must, on the one hand, be wholly inspired by the doctrine of the Church, it
involves, on the other hand, innumerable concrete and practical aspects that
are properly in the civil order. And in this respect, the Counter‑Revolution
goes beyond the ecclesiastical ambit, though always intimately bound to the
Church in every matter that has to do with her Magisterium and indirect power.
8. WHETHER EVERY CATHOLIC SHOULD BE
COUNTER‑REVOLUTIONARY
In so far as he is an apostle,
the Catholic is a counter‑revolutionary. But he can be one in different
ways.
A. The
Implicit Counter‑Revolutionary
He may be one implicitly and, as
it were, unconsciously. This is the case of a Sister of Charity at a hospital.
Her direct action is aimed at the cure of bodies and, above all, the good of
souls. She can perform this action without speaking of the Revolution and the
Counter‑Revolution. She may even live in such special conditions that she
is unaware of the phenomenon Revolution and Counter‑Revolution. Nevertheless,
to the degree that she really benefits souls, she will be diminishing the
influence of the Revolution upon them. This is implicitly waging Counter‑Revolution.
B. The Modernity of a Counter‑Revolutionary
Explicitness
Given that our times are immersed
in the phenomenon Revolution and Counter‑Revolution, it seems to us a
condition for wholesome modernity that it be deeply
understood
and faced up to perspicaciously and energetically as circumstances dictate.
Thus, we believe it is most
desirable that all present day apostolate, whenever it be the case, have an
explicitly counter‑revolutionary intention and tone.
In other words, we believe that ‑
regardless of the field in which he works ‑ the truly modem apostle will
greatly add to the effectiveness of his labors if he discerns the Revolution
within his field and exerts a corresponding counter‑revolutionary
influence in all his actions.
C. The Explicit Counter‑Revolutionary
No one may deny that it is licit
for certain persons to take upon themselves the task of developing a
specifically counter‑revolutionary apostolate in Catholic and non‑Catholic
circles. This they will do by proclaiming the existence of the Revolution,
describing its spirit, method,
and
doctrines, and urging everyone to counter‑revolutionary action.
In so doing, they will be
putting their activities at the service of a specialized apostolate as natural
and meritorious as (and certainly more profound than) the apostolate of those
who specialize in the struggle against other enemies of the Church, such as
spiritism and Protestantism.
To influence the numerous
Catholic and non‑Catholic circles in order to alert souls against, say,
the evils of Protestantism is undoubtedly legitimate, and necessary for an
intelligent and efficacious anti‑Protestant action. The Catholics who
devote themselves to the apostolate of
the
Counter‑Revolution will proceed in an analogous manner.
Possible excesses in this
apostolate ‑ which may happen as in any other - do not invalidate the
principle we established. After all, "abusus non tollit usum ("abuse
does not abolish use").
D. Counter‑Revolutionary
Action That Does Not Constitute an Apostolate
Finally, there are counter‑revolutionaries
who do not practice an apostolate in the strict sense, for they devote
themselves to the struggle in certain fields such as specifically partisan
politics or economic undertakings to combat the Revolution. Undoubtedly, these
activities are
highly
relevant and can only be looked upon with approval.
9. CATHOLIC ACTION AND COUNTER‑REVOLUTION
If we employ the expression
Catholic Action in the legitimate sense that Pius XII gave it (that is, a group
of associations that, under the direction of the Hierarchy, collaborate with
its apostolate), then in our view, the Counter‑Revolution in its
religious and moral aspects is a most important part of the program of a
soundly modern Catholic Action.
Naturally, counter‑revolutionary
action can be pursued by one individual working alone or by several working
together in a private capacity. With due ecclesiastical approval, this action
can even culminate in the formation of a religious association especially
dedicated to fighting the Revolution.
Obviously, counter‑revolutionary
action in the strictly partisan or economic terrain is not part of the goals of
Catholic Action.
10. THE COUNTER‑REVOLUTION AND NON‑CATHOLICS
May the Counter‑Revolution
accept the cooperation of non‑Catholics? Are there counter‑revolutionary
Protestants, Moslems, and others? The answer must be carefully nuanced. There
is no authentic Counter‑Revolution outside the Church.62 But it is
conceivable that certain Protestants or Moslems, for instance, are in a state
of soul in which they begin to perceive all the wickedness of the Revolution
and to take a stand against it. Such persons can be expected to form obstacles,
at times even great ones, against the Revolution. If they respond to grace,
they can become excellent Catholics and, therefore, efficient counter‑revolutionaries.
Until then, they at least oppose the Revolution to some degree and can even
force it back. In the full and true sense of the word, they are not counter‑revolutionaries.
But their cooperation may and even should be accepted, with the care that the
directives of the Church demand.
Catholics ought to be
particularly mindful of the dangers inherent in interdenominational
associations, as Saint Pius X wisely warned:
"Indeed, without mentioning other
points, the dangers to which – because of associations of this sort – our
people expose or certainly can expose both the integrity of their faith and the
just obedience to the laws and precepts of the Catholic Church are
incontestably grave."63
Among non‑Catholics, our
best apostolate should focus on those who have counter‑revolutionary
tendencies.
Part III
Revolution and Counter-Revolution
Twenty Years After
In 1976 the author was asked to
write a preface to a new Italian edition of Revolution and Counter‑Revolution.
He deemed it better, instead, to present an analysis of the evolution of the
revolutionary process in the nearly twenty years since the essay's first
edition. He therefore
added
this third part, which was first published in 1977. In 1992, in the afiermath of
the fall of the Iron Curtain, the author updated this analysis with some
commentaries
published
herein.‑Ed.
CHAPTER
I: The Revolution: A Process in Continual Transformation
Since so much time ‑
marked by so many events ‑ has elapsed since the first edition of
Revolution and Counter‑Revolution, one could fittingly ask if there is
anything to be added regarding the matters treated in the essay. The answer
could only be yes, as the reader will see.
1.
REVOLUTION AND COUNTER‑REVOLUTION AND THE TFPs: TWENTY YEARS OF ACTION
AND COMBAT
Twenty Years After, the title of
a novel by Alexandre Dumas – so appreciated by Brazilian adolescents until the
moment now long past when profound psychological transformations destroyed the
taste for that kind of literature – is brought to mind by an association of
images as we begin these notes.
We just looked back to 1959;
1976 is almost over. Therefore, we are approaching the end of the second decade
of this book's circulation. Twenty years...
In this period, the essay's
editions have multiplied.64
It was not our intention to make
Revolution and Counter‑Revolution a mere study. We wrote it also with the
intention of making it a bedside book for about one hundred young Brazilians
who had asked us to orient and coordinate their efforts in view of the problems
and duties they faced at the time. This initial handful ‑ the seed of the
future TFP‑soon spread throughout Brazil, which is the size of a
continent. Propitious circumstances favored, pari passu, the formation
and development of analogous and autonomous organizations throughout South
America. The same occurred later in the United States, Canada, Spain, and
France. More recently, intellectual affinities and promising cordial relations
began to link this extensive family of organizations to personalities and
associations of other countries of Europe. In France, the Bureau Tradition,
Famille, Propriété,65 founded in 1973, has been fostering the resulting
contacts and approximations as much as possible.
These twenty years, then, were
years of expansion. They were years of expansion, yes, but years of intense
counter‑revolutionary struggle as well.
Considerable results have been
achieved in this way. As this is not the moment to enumerate them all,66 we
limit ourselves to saying that, in each country where a TFP or a similar
association exists, it has been continuously combating the Revolution, that is,
more particularly, so‑called Catholic leftism in the religious realm and
communism in the temporal realm. In the genuine combat against communism, we
include the battle against all modes of socialism, for these are merely
preparatory stages or larval forms of communism. This combat has always been
waged according to the principles, goals, and norms of Part II of this study.67
The fruits thus obtained well
show the accuracy of what is said in this work on the inseparable themes of
Revolution and Counter‑Revolution.
2. IN A WORLD IN CONTINUOUS AND RAPID
TRANSFORMATION, IS REVOLUTION AND COUNTER‑REVOLUTION STILL CURRENT? THE
ANSWER IS AFFIRMATIVE
At the same time that the
editions and fruits of Revolution and Counter‑Revolution were multiplying
on six continents,68 the world – impelled by the revolutionary process that has
been dominating it for four centuries – underwent such rapid and profound
changes that, as we launch this new edition, it is appropriate to ask, as we
have already said, whether on account of these changes something should be
rectified or added in regard to what we wrote in 1959.
Revolution and Counter‑Revolution
is situated sometimes in the theoretical field and sometimes in a
theoretic-practical field very close to pure theory. Thus, it should not
surprise anyone if in our judgment no event has altered the study's content.
Assuredly, many of the methods
and styles of action used by the Brazilian TFP, which was being formed in 1959
– and by its sister organizations – were replaced or adapted to the new
circumstances. Others were introduced. However, as all these methods and styles
are situated in an inferior field that is effectual and practical, Revolution
and Counter‑Revolution does not address them. Accordingly, nothing in the
text needs to be modified.
All this notwithstanding, there
would be much to add if we wished to relate Revolution and Counter‑Revolution
to the new horizons that history is opening. But this would not fit in a simple
supplement. We do think, though, that a summary of what the Revolution did in
these twenty years - a review of the world scene as transformed by it - would
help the reader to easily and conveniently relate the study's contents to
present reality. This we shall proceed to do.
CHAPTER
II: The Apogee and Crisis of the Third Revolution
1. THE APOGEE OF THE THIRD REVOLUTION
As we have seen,69 three great
revolutions constituted the chief stages of the process to gradually demolish
the Church and Christian civilization: in the sixteenth century, humanism, the
Renaissance, and Protestantism (First Revolution); in the eighteenth century,
the French Revolution (Second Revolution); and in the second decade of this
century, Communism (Third Revolution).
These three revolutions can only
be understood as parts of an immense whole that is the Revolution.
Since the Revolution is a
process, it is obvious that, from 1917 to the present, the Third Revolution has
continued its course. It is now at a true apogee.
When we consider the territories
and populations subject to communist regimes, we see that the Third Revolution
holds sway over a world empire without precedent in history. This empire is a
continuous cause of insecurity and disunion among the greatest noncommunist
nations. Moreover, the leaders of the Third Revolution control the strings that
move, throughout the noncommunist world, the openly communist parties and the
immense network of cryptocommunists, paracommunists, and useful idiots
infiltrated not only into the noncommunist, socialist, and other parties, but
also into the churches,70 professional and cultural associations, banks, the
press, television, radio, the movie industry, and the like. And as if this were
not enough, the Third Revolution applies with devastating efficacy ‑ as
we shall subsequently explain ‑ the tactics of psychological conquest.
With these tactics, communism is succeeding in reducing immense segments of the
noncommunist Western public opinion to a foolish apathy. Such tactics enable
the Third Revolution to expect, in this terrain, yet more remarkable successes
that are even more disconcerting to observers who analyze events from outside
the Third Revolution.
COMMENTARY
Crisis
in the Third Revolution: An Inevitable Fruit of the Marxist Utopias
The
international dimensions of the Third Revolution’s apogee was already
notorious, as the text notes. With the passing of time, the general picture of
this apogee became even clearer, whether on account of the geographical and
populational expansion of communist domination, the worldwide diffusion of Red
propaganda and the weight of the communist parties in the Western world, or the
penetration of communist tendencies into national cultures.
These factors – heightened by a
global panic of the atomic threat that Soviet aggressiveness posed to all
continents – led to a policy of almost universal softness and capitulation in
relation to Moscow: the German and Vatican Ostpolitiken, the sweeping
wind of unconditional pacifism, the proliferation of political slogans and
formulas that prepared so many bourgeois to view the triumph of communism as
inevitable in the near future.
Have we not all lived under the
psychological pressure of this leftist optimism, which was enigmatic as a
sphinx for the indolent centrists and threatening as a leviathan for those –
like the TFPs and followers of Revolution and Counter-Revolution in so
many countries – who well discerned the “apocalypse” to which this was leading?
How few then were those who
perceived that this leviathan was afflicted by a worsening crisis it could not
overcome since it was an inevitable fruit of Marxist utopias!
This crisis now seems to have
disintegrated the leviathan. But, as will be seen further on, this
disintegration has spread an even more deadly climate of crisis throughout the
world.
The inertia ‑ when not the
overt and substantial collaboration - of so many "democratic"
governments and crafty private economic powers of the West in face of communism
(already so powerful) paints a dreadful global panorama.
Under these conditions, should
the course of the revolutionary process continue as it has heretofore, it is
humanly inevitable that the general triumph of the Third Revolution will
ultimately impose itself on the whole world. How soon? Many would be alarmed
if; as a mere hypothesis, we were to suggest twenty years. To them, this period
would seem surprisingly brief. In reality, who can guarantee that this outcome
will not take place within ten years, five years, or even less?
The proximity, indeed the
eventual imminence, of this utter devastation is indubitably one of the notes
that indicate the greatest change in the world conjuncture when we contrast the
horizons of 1959 and 1976.
A. On the Road to Its Apogee, the Third
Revolution Studiously Avoided Total and Useless Adventures
Even though the mentors of the
Third Revolution have the capacity to launch themselves at any moment in an
adventure for the complete conquest of the world by a series of wars, political
blows, economic crises, and bloody revolutions, clearly such an adventure
presents
considerable
risks. The mentors of the Third Revolution will accept running these risks only
if it seems indispensable to them.
In effect, if continuous use of
classic methods carried communism to the pinnacles of power without exposing
the revolutionary process to risks not carefully circumscribed and calculated,
it is understandable that those who guide the universal Revolution hope to
attain total world domination without exposing their work to the risk of
irreparable catastrophes, inherent to every great adventure.
B. Adventure in This Revolution's
Next Stages?
The success of the usual methods
of the Third Revolution is endangered by the rise of unfavorable psychological
circumstances that have become strongly accentuated over the last twenty years.
Will such circumstances compel
communism to choose adventure henceforth?
COMMENTARY
Perestroika
and Glasnost: Dismantling the Third Revolution or Metamorphosing Communism?
At the end of 1989, the highest
directors of international communism decided the moment had finally arrived to
initiate communism’s greatest political maneuver.
This maneuver would consist in
demolishing the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall. Its effects would coincide
with the implementation of the “liberalizing” programs of glasnost
(1985) and perestroika (1986) so as to precipitate the apparent
dismantling of the Third Revolution in the Soviet world.
In turn, this dismantling would
gain for its chief promoter and executor, Mikhail Gorbachev, the emphatic
sympathy and unreserved confidence of Western governments and of numerous
private economic powers of the West.
From these, the Kremlin could
expect a massive inflow of financial resources for its empty coffers.
The ample fulfillment of this
expectation enabled Gorbachev and crew to continue floating, tiller in hand, on
a sea of misery, indolence, and inaction that the unhappy Russian populace,
until recently subjected to complete state capitalism, continues to face with
disconcerting passivity. This passivity is propitious to the generalization of
moral apathy and chaos and perhaps to the formation of an internal contentious
crisis that could degenerate into a civil or world war. 71
Such was the setting when the sensational
and hazy events of August 1991 broke out, with Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and others
as protagonists, in this game that paved the way first for the transformation
of the U.S.S.R. into a loose confederation of states and afterwards for its
dissolution.
There is talk of the prospective
fall of Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba and the possible invasion of Western
Europe of hordes of famished people from the East and the Maghreb. The several
attempts made by multitudes of needy Albanians to enter Italy could have been a
heralding of this new “barbarian invasion.”
In the Iberian Peninsula, as in
other parts of Europe, there are some who associate these hypotheses with the
effects of the presence of multitudes of Mohammedans casually admitted in
previous years at several points of the continent and with construction
projects for a bridge over the strait of Gibraltar, which would facilitate
further Moslem invasions of Europe.
There would be a curious
similarity of effects between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the building of
this bridge: Both would open the European continent to invasions analogous to
those Charlemagne
victoriously repelled, namely, the barbarian or semi-barbarian hordes from
the East and the Mohammedan hordes from regions south of the European
continent.
One would say that the
premedieval scenario is repeated.
Yet, something is missing; the
ardor of springtime faith among the Catholic populations called to confront
both impacts simultaneously. Above all, someone is lacking: Where can
one find today a man on par with Charlemagne?
Were we to imagine the
development of these hypotheses in the West, the magnitude and drama of their
consequences would certainly astound us – even though our overview does not
encompass all the consequences being predicted by experts from different
intellectual circles and by objective media.
For example, there is a growing
opposition between consumer countries and poor countries, that is, between rich
industrialized nations and nations that are mere producers of raw materials.
This opposition is expected to
result in a world-wide clash between two sets of ideologies: one in favor of
unlimited enrichment; the other, of “miserabilist: subconsumerism.
This eventual clash inevitably
brings to mind the class struggle proclaimed by Marx.
Therefore we ask: Will this
struggle be a projection, on a world scale, of a clash analogous to the one
Marx envisioned primarily as a socioeconomic phenomenon within nations, a
struggle that will involve every nation according to its own characteristics?
If this happens, will the
struggle between the First and Third Worlds become a disguise by which a
metamorphosed Marxism, shamed by its catastrophic socioeconomic failure, tries,
with renewed chances of success, to attain the final victory, a victory that,
so far, has eluded Gorbachev, who though certainly not the doctor is at least
the bard and prestidigitator of perestroika?
Yes, of perestroika,
which is undoubtedly a refinement of communism, as confessed by its author in
his propagandistic essay Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the
World:
“The aim of this reform is to
ensure...the transition from an excessively centralized management system
relaying on orders, to a democratic one, based on a combination of democratic
centralism and self-management.”72
And what is this self-management
if not “the supreme objective of the Soviet state,” as established in the
Preamble to the Constitution of the former U.S.S.R.?
2. UNANTICIPATED OBSTACLES TO THE
THIRD REVOLUTION'S USE OF CLASSIC METHODS
A. The Decline of Persuasive Power
Let us examine the circumstances
that may force communism to choose the path of adventure.
The first is the decline of the
persuasive power of communist proselytism.
There was a time when explicit
and categorical indoctrination was international communism's principal
recruiting method.
For reasons too extensive to
enumerate, conditions have become considerably adverse to such indoctrination
in almost all the West and in vast segments of public opinion. Communism's
dialectics and its full and open doctrinal propaganda have visibly declined in
persuasive power.
This explains why in our days
communist propaganda is carried out in an increasingly disguised, mild, and
gradual way.
Its disguise is effected either
by spreading sparse and veiled Marxist principles through socialist literature,
or by instilling in the culture of the establishment itself certain principles
that, like seeds, later bear fruit, leading centrists to an inadvertent and
gradual acceptance of the communist doctrine in its entirety.
B. The Decline in the Capacity of
Leadership
This decrease in the Red creed's
direct persuasive power over the multitudes ‑ which the recourse to these
indirect, slow, and laborious methods denotes ‑ is accompanied by a
correlative decline in communism's leadership capacity.
Let us examine how these
correlative phenomena are manifested and what their fruits are.
– Hatred,
Class Struggle, Revolution
Essentially, the communist
movement is and considers itself to be a revolution born of class hatred.
Violence is the method most consistent with it. This is the direct and
fulminating method, from which the mentors of communism expected the greatest
results with the least risk in the shortest possible time.
This method presupposes a
leadership capacity in the communist parties. In the past, this capacity
enabled them to create discontent, transform it into hatred, articulate this
hatred in an immense conspiracy, and thus succeed, with the "atomic"
force of this hatred's impetus, in destroying the present order and implanting
communism.
– The
Decline in Guidance of Hatred and in Use of Violence
But the capacity to guide hatred
is also slipping from the hands of the communists.
We will not extend this writing
by going into an explanation of the complex causes of this fact. We limit
ourselves to observing that violence resulted in fewer and fewer advantages for
the communists during these twenty years. To prove this, we need only recall
the invariable failure of the guerrilla warfare and terrorism spread throughout
Latin America.
It is quite true that violence
has been dragging virtually all of Africa toward communism. But this says very
little about the tendencies of public opinion in the rest of the world. The
primitivism of most of Africa's aboriginal populations places them in special
and unequivocal conditions. The growth of violence there has been due not so
much to ideological motives as to anti-colonialist resentments, which communist
propaganda exploited with its customary astuteness.
– The Fruit and
Proof of This Decline: The Third Revolution Metamorphoses Into a Smiling
Revolution
The clearest proof that over the
last twenty or thirty years the Third Revolution has been losing its capacity
to create and direct the revolutionary hatred lies in its self‑imposed
metamorphosis.
During the post‑Stalinist
thaw with the West, the Third Revolution donned a smiling mask, exchanged
polemics for dialogue, pretended to be changing its mentality and attitude, and
welcomed all sorts of collaboration with the adversaries it had tried to crush
through violence.
In the international sphere, the
Revolution thus successively passed from the Cold War to peaceful coexistence,
then to the "dropping of ideological barriers," and finally to frank
collaboration with the capitalist powers, labeled, in the language of
publicity, “Ostpolitik” or "detente."
In the internal sphere of the
various Western countries, the politique de la main tendue (policy of the
extended hand), which had been a mere artifice for deceiving a small minority
of leftist Catholics during the Stalin era, became a true detente between
communists and pro-capitalists. It was an ideal way for the Reds to initiate
cordial relations and fraudulent approximations with all their adversaries,
whether religious or temporal.
Out of this came a series of
"friendly" tactics: the fellow travelers, the legalistic
"Eurocommunism" (affable, and cautious toward Moscow), the
"historic compromise," and the like.
As we have said, these
stratagems provide advantages for the Third Revolution today. But they are
slow, gradual, and dependent on a myriad of variables for their fruition.
At the height of its power, the
Third Revolution ceased to threaten and attack and began to smile and request.
It ceased advancing in military cadence, shod in cossack boots, in order to
progress slowly at a discreet pace. It abandoned the straight path ‑ the
shortest and chose a zigzag path marked with uncertainty.
What an enormous change in
twenty years!
C. Objection: The Communist
Successes in Italy and France
But, someone will object, the
successes of these tactics in Italy and France do not permit one to affirm that
communism is retreating in the free world, or even that the smiling communism
of today is progressing more slowly than the scowling communism of the Lenin
and Stalin years.
First of all, in answer to this,
one must say that the general elections in Sweden, West Germany, and Finland,
as well as the regional elections and the present instability of the Labor
Government in Great Britain, attest to the inappetence of the great masses for
socialist “paradises," communist violence, and so on.73 There are
expressive signs that the example of these countries has already begun to
reverberate in those two great Catholic Latin nations of Western Europe, thus
hindering the communist advance.
But, in our opinion, it is
necessary above all to question how authentically communist is the growing
number of votes obtained by the Italian Communist party or the French Socialist
party (of which we speak since the French Communist party is stagnant). Both
parties are far
from
having benefited only from the votes of their own electorates. Certainly
considerable Catholic support – whose real amplitude only history will one day
reveal in its full extent ‑ has created entirely exceptional illusions,
weaknesses, apathies, and complicities around the Italian Communist party. The
electoral projection of these shocking and artificial circumstances explains,
in large measure, the growth in the number of people voting for the Communist
party, many of whom are by no means communist voters. Nor should we forget the
direct or indirect influence of certain Croesuses upon the voting. Their
frankly collaborationist attitude toward communism allows electoral maneuvers
from which the Third Revolution draws an obvious profit. Analogous observations
can be made in regard to the French Socialist party.
3. METAMORPHOSED HATRED AND
VIOLENCE GENERATE TOTAL REVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE
To grasp more clearly the scope
of these immense changes in the communist panorama, it is necessary to analyze,
as a whole, communism's great present‑day hope, namely, revolutionary
psychological warfare.
As we have already said,
international communism – though necessarily born of hatred and turned by its
own internal logic to the use of violence exercised by means of wars,
revolutions, and assassinations – was compelled by great, profound changes in
public opinion to dissimulate its rancor and to pretend it had desisted from
these means.
Now, if such desistance were
sincere, international communism would have denied itself to the point of self‑destruction.
But this is far from being the
case. Communism uses the smile only as a weapon of aggression and warfare. It
does not eliminate violence but transfers it from the field of physical and
palpable operations to the field of impalpable psychological actuations. Its
objective: to gradually and invisibly obtain the victory in the interior of
souls that it could not win through drastic and visible means, according to the
classic methods, because of certain circumstances.
Of course, this is not a
question of carrying out a few sparse and sporadic operations in the realm of
the spirit. On the contrary, it is a question of a true war of conquest –
psychological, yes, but total – targeting the whole man and all men in all
countries.
COMMENTARY
Revolutionary
Psychological Warfare: The Cultural Revolution and the Revolution in the
Tendencies
With the Sorbonne student
rebellion in May 1968 numerous socialist and Marxist authors generally came to
recognize the need for a form of revolution that would prepare the way for
political and socioeconomic changes by influencing everyday life, customs,
mentalities, and ways of living. This modality of revolutionary psychological
warfare is known as the cultural revolution.
According to these authors, only
this preponderantly psychological and tendential revolution could change the
public’s mentality to the point that would permit implementing the egalitarian
utopia. Without this mental change, no structural change could last.
This concept of cultural
revolution encompasses what the 1959 edition of Revolution and
Counter-Revolution termed the “Revolution in the tendencies.”74
We insist on this concept of
total revolutionary psychological warfare.
In fact, psychological warfare
targets the whole psyche of man. That is, it acts on him in the various powers
of the soul and in every fiber of his mentality.
It targets all men: partisans or
sympathizers of the Third Revolution as well as neutrals and even adversaries.
It uses any means. At each step
it needs to have at its disposal a specific factor to lead each social group
and even each man imperceptibly closer to communism, however slightly. And this
is so in every area: in religious, political, social, and economic convictions;
in cultural attitudes; in artistic preferences; and in the ways of being and
acting in the family, in the workplace, and in society.
A. The Two Great Goals of Revolutionary
Psychological Warfare
Given the Third Revolution's
present difficulties in carrying out ideological recruitment, the most useful
of its activities is aimed not at its friends and sympathizers, but at the
neutrals and its adversaries:
a. to deceive and slowly put the
neutrals to sleep;
b. to divide at every step,
disarticulate, isolate, terrorize, defame, persecute, and block its
adversaries.
These are, in our view, the two
great goals of revolutionary psychological warfare.
In this way, the Third
Revolution becomes capable of winning ‑ not so much by increasing the
number of its friends as by destroying its adversaries.
Obviously, to carry on this warfare,
communism mobilizes all the means of action it possesses in Western countries
as a result of the apogee attained there by the Third Revolution's offensive.
B. Total Revolutionary Psychological
Warfare: A Result of the Third Revolution's Apogee
and Current
Problems
Total revolutionary
psychological warfare therefore results from a combination of the two
contradictory factors previously described: on the one hand, communism's peak
of influence over almost all key points of the great machine that is Western
society; on the other, its diminishing ability to persuade and lead the
profound levels of Western public opinion.
4. THE THIRD REVOLUTION'S
PSYCHOLOGICAL OFFENSIVE WITHIN THE CHURCH
It would be impossible to
describe this psychological warfare without carefully examining its development
in what is the very soul of the West, that is, Christianity, and more precisely
the Catholic religion, which is Christianity in its absolute fullness and
unique authenticity.
A. The Second Vatican Council
Within the perspective of
Revolution and Counter‑Revolution, the greatest success attained by the
smiling post‑Stalinist communism was the Second Vatican Council's
enigmatic, disconcerting, incredible, and apocalyptically tragic silence about
communism.
It was the desire of this
Council to be pastoral and not dogmatic. And, in fact, it did not have a
dogmatic scope. But its omission regarding communism might make it go down in
history as the apastoral Council.
We shall explain the special
sense in which we make this statement.
Imagine an immense flock
languishing in poor, arid fields and being attacked on all sides by swarms of
bees and wasps and birds of prey. The shepherds begin to irrigate the fields
and drive away the swarms and birds. Can this activity be termed pastoral? In
theory, certainly.
However, if at the same time the
flock were under attack by packs of voracious wolves, many of them covered with
sheepskins, and the pastors fought against the insects and birds without making
any effort to unmask or drive away the wolves, could their work be considered
pastoral,
proper to good and faithful shepherds?
In other words, did those in the
Second Vatican Council who wished to scare away the lesser adversaries but gave
free rein ‑ by their silence ‑ to the greater adversary act as true
pastors?
Using "aggiornate"
tactics (about which the least that can be said is that they are contestable in
theory and proving ruinous in practice), the Second Vatican Council tried to
scare away, let us say, bees, wasps, and birds of prey. But its silence about
communism left full liberty to the wolves. The work of this Council cannot be
inscribed as effectively pastoral either in history or in the Book of Life.
It is painful to say this. But, in
this sense, the evidence singles out the Second Vatican Council as one of the
greatest calamities, if not the greatest, in the history of the Church. From
the Council on, the "smoke of Satan”75 penetrated the Church in
unbelievable proportions. And this smoke is spreading day by day, with the
terrible force of gases in expansion. To the scandal of uncountable souls, the
Mystical Body of Christ entered a sinister process of self‑destruction,
as it were.
COMMENTARY
Astonishing
Calamities in the Church’s Post-Conciliar Phase
The historic declaration of
Paul VI in the allocution Resistite fortes in fide, of June 29, 1972, is
fundamental for a better understanding of the calamities in the post-Conciliar
phase of the Church. We quote the Poliglotta Vaticana.
"Referring to the situation
of the Church today, the Holy Father affirmed that he had the feeling the “the
smoke of Satan has entered into the temple of God through some crack.” There is
doubt, uncertainty, complexity, restlessness, dissatisfaction, confrontation.
People no longer trust the Church; they trust the first secular profane prophet
who speaks to us through some newspaper or social movement, running after him
and asking him if he has the formula of true life. We do not realize that we
are already owners and masters of it. Doubt has entered our consciences through
windows that ought to be open to the light....This state of uncertainty also
reigns in the Church. It was thought that after the Council the history of the
Church would enter a sunny day. It entered instead a cloudy, stormy, dark,
skeptical, and uncertain day. We preach ecumenism and yet we ourselves are
farther and farther apart. We seek to dig abysses instead of filling them.
How did this happen? The Pope
confided one of his opinions: An adverse power has intervened. His name is the
devil, the mysterious being to which Saint Peter also alludes in his Epistle.76
The same Pontiff, in an
allocution to the students of the Pontifical Lombard Seminary on December 7,
1968, had affirmed:
"The Church finds herself
in an hour of disquiet, of self-criticism, one might even say of
self-destruction. It is like an acute and complex interior upheaval, which no
one expected after the Council. One though of a blossoming, a serene expansion
of the mature concepts of the Council. The Church still has this aspect of
blossoming. But since “bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu,”
the aspect of sorrow has become most notable. The Church is also being wounded
by those who are part of her.77
His Holiness John Paul II also
painted a somber picture of the Church’s situation.
"One must be realistic
and acknowledge with a deep and pained sentiment that a great party of today’s
Christians feel lost, confused, perplexed, and even disillusioned: ideas
contradicting the revealed and unchanging Truth have been spread far and wide;
outright heresies in the dogmatic and moral fields have been disseminated,
creating doubt, confusion, and rebellion; even the liturgy has been altered.
Immersed in intellectual and moral “relativism” and therefore in
permissiveness, Christians are tempted by atheism, agnosticism, a vaguely
moralistic illuminism, a sociological Christianity, without defined dogmas and
without objective morality."78
In a similar vein, Joseph Cardinal
Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine for the Faith, later
stated:
"Results since the
Council seem to be in cruel contrast to the expectations of all, beginning with
those of John XXIII and Paul VI....The Popes and the Council Fathers were
expecting a new Catholic unity, and instead one has encountered a dissension
that – to use the words of Paul VI – seems to have gone from self-criticism to
self-destruction. A new enthusiasm was expected, but too often there has been
boredom and discouragement instead. A new leap forward was expected, but
instead we find ourselves facing a process of progressive decadence....It must
be clearly stated that a real reform of the Church presupposes an unequivocal
turning away from the erroneous paths that led to indisputably negative
consequences."79
From
this resulted an immense debacle for the Church and what still remains of
Christian civilization. The Ostpolitik of the Vatican, for example, and the
massive infiltration of communism into Catholic circles are effects of all
these calamities. And they constitute additional successes of the psychological
offensive of the Third Revolution against the Church.
History narrates the innumerable
dramas the Church has suffered in the twenty centuries of her existence:
oppositions that germinated outside her and tried to destroy her from outside;
malignancies that formed within her, were cut off by her, and thereafter
ferociously tried to destroy her from outside.
When, however, has history
witnessed an attempted demolition of the Church like the present one? No longer
undertaken by an adversary, it was termed a "self‑destruction"
in a most lofty pronouncement having world-wide repercussion.80
From this resulted an immense debacle for the
Church and what still remains of Christian civilization. The Ostpolitik of
the Vatican, for example, and the massive infiltration of communism into
Catholic circles are effects of all these calamities. And they constitute
additional successes of the psychological offensive of the Third Revolution
against the Church.
COMMENTARY
The
Vatican Ostpolitik
On reading these lines about Ostpolitik,
someone could ask if the enormous changes that took place in Russia resulted
from an ingenious move by the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Perhaps the Vatican, on the
basis of the best information, foresaw that communism, corroded by internal
crises, would begin in its turn to self-destruct. And to encourage the world
headquarters of materialistic atheism to this autodemolition, the Catholic
Church, situated on the other extreme of the ideological spectrum, feigned her
own destruction. Perhaps this is what led communism to markedly diminish its
persecution of the Church. After all, if both were moribund, and arrangement
would be understandable. In other words, it is to the flexibility of the Church
that we should attribute the conditions for the flexibility of the communist
world.
It would be fitting to reply
that if the members of the Sacred Hierarchy knew that indigence and ruin would
force communism to self-destruct, they should have denounced the misery and
convoked all the peoples of the West to prepare the way for rehabilitating
Russia and the world as soon as communism effectively collapsed.
They should not have remained
silent, letting the phenomenon evolve without benefiting from Catholic
influence and the generous and solicitous cooperation of Western governments ,
since only this denunciation could have prevented the Soviet collapse from
reaching its present dead end, wherein everything is misery and imbroglio.
In any case, it is false to say
that the self-destruction of the Church has hastened the self-destruction of
communism – unless there were a secret treaty between the two in this regard.
But such a treaty – or suicidal
pact – would lack any legitimacy and usefulness for the Catholic world, not to
mention everything in this mere hypothesis of offense to the popes in whose
pontificates this double euthanasia was supposedly arranged.
B.
The Church: Today’s Center of Conflict Between the Revolution and the
Counter-Revolution
In 1959, the year we wrote
Revolution and the Counter‑Revolution, the Church was considered the
great spiritual force against the worldwide expansion of the communist sect.
In 1976, innumerable
ecclesiastics, including bishops, figure as accomplices by omission, as
collaborators, and even as driving forces of the Third Revolution.
Progressivism, installed almost everywhere, is converting the formerly verdant
forest of the Catholic Church into wood that can easily be set afire by
communism.
In a word, the extent of this
change is such that we do not hesitate to affirm that the center ‑ the
most sensitive and truly decisive point in the fight between the Revolution and
the Counter‑Revolution ‑ has shifted from the temporal to the
spiritual society.
The Holy Church is now this
center. In her, progressivists, cryptocommunists, and procommunists confront
antiprogressivists and anticommunists.81
C. Reactions Based on Revolution
and Counter‑Revolution
Has the efficacy of Revolution and Counter‑Revolution
been annulled by these numerous changes? On the contrary.
In 1968, the TFPs then existing
in South America, inspired in particular by Part II of this essay ("The
Counter‑Revolution"), organized national petition drives addressed
to Paul VI, requesting measures against leftist infiltration into the Catholic
clergy and laity of South America.
Altogether, 2,060,368 people in
Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay signed the petition during a 58‑day
period.
To our knowledge, it is the only
mass petition – on any subject – signed by the sons of four South American
nations. And, as far as we know, it is the largest petition in the history of
these four countries.82
The answer of Paul VI was not
merely silence and inaction. It was ‑ how it pains us to say it - a
series of acts whose effect continues to give prestige and facility of action
to many promoters of Catholic leftism today.
At the sight of this rising tide
of communist infiltration into the Holy Church, the TFPs and like organizations
did not become discouraged. And in 1974 each of them published a declaration83
expressing their inconformity with the Vatican Ostpolitik and their
resolve "to resist to the face."84
One of the declaration's
passages, referring to Paul VI, expresses the document's spirit:
"On our knees, gazing with
veneration at the person of His Holiness Pope Paul VI, we express all our
fidelity to him. In this filial act we say to the Pastor of Pastors: "Our
soul is Yours, our life is Yours. Order us to do whatever you wish. Only do not
order us to cross our
arms in
face of the assailing Red wolf. To this our conscience is opposed."
Not stopping at these efforts,
the TFPs and like organizations in their respective countries promoted during
the course of 1976 nine editions of the
Chilean TFP best-seller, The Church of Silence in Chile: The TFP Proclaims the
Whole Truth.85
In almost all countries, the
respective edition included a prologue describing numerous and impressive
national events analogous to what had occurred in Chile.
The response of the public to
this great publicity effort can be termed a victory: 56,000 copies were printed
in South America alone, where, in the most populous countries, the total
pressrun of a book of this nature, when successful, is usually 5,000 copies.
In Spain, more than 1,000
secular and regular priests from all regions of the country signed an
impressive petition giving the Sociedad Cultural Covadonga86 their firm support
for the courageous prologue of the book's Spanish edition.
D. The Usefulness of the Action of the
TFPs and Like Organizations Inspired by Revolution
and
Counter‑Revolution
In this specific battlefield,
what has been the practical effect of the counter‑revolutionary activity
of the TFPs, inspired by Revolution and Counter‑Revolution?
By denouncing the danger of
communist infiltration to Catholic opinion, the TFPs have opened the eyes of
Catholics to the snares of unfaithful pastors. Consequently, the latter are
leading fewer and fewer sheep along the paths of perdition onto which they
themselves have wandered, as even a summary observation of the facts leads one
to conclude.
This is not a victory in itself,
but it is a precious and indispensable condition for one. The TFPs give thanks
to Our Lady for being able, within the spirit and methods of the second part of
Revolution and Counter‑Revolution, to do their share in the great
struggle in which other wholesome forces – one or another of great scope and
capability for action – are presently engaged.
5. AN ASSESSMENT OF TWENTY YEARS OF
THE THIRD REVOLUTION ACCORDING TO THE CRITERIA OF REVOLUTION AND COUNTER‑REVOLUTION
The situation of the Third
Revolution and the Counter‑Revolution has been outlined herein on the
basis of how they appear shortly before the twentieth anniversary of the
publication of this book.
On the one hand, the apogee of
the Third Revolution makes a success of the Counter‑Revolution in the
near future more difficult than ever.
On the other, the same anti‑socialist
allergy that presently constitutes a grave obstacle to the victory of communism
creates medium‑term conditions that are decidedly favorable for the
Counter‑Revolution. The various counter‑revolutionary groups spread
throughout the world have the noble historic responsibility of making good use
of these conditions.
The TFPs have strived to
contribute their part to the common effort, having spread during the last
twenty years across the Americas, with a new TFP in France, giving rise to a
similar dynamic organization in the Iberian peninsula, and projecting its name
and contacts in other countries of the Old World with the strong desire of
working with all the counter‑revolutionary groups fighting there.87
Twenty years after the launching
of Revolution and Counter‑Revolution, the TFPs and similar organizations
stand shoulder to shoulder with the front‑line organizations in the
counter‑revolutionary struggle.
CHAPTER
III: The Aborning Fourth Revolution
The panorama presented here
would be incomplete were we to fail to mention an internal transformation in
the Third Revolution. It is the Fourth Revolution that is being born of it.
It is being born, yes, in the
manner of a matricidal refinement. When the Second Revolution was born, it
refined,88 overcame, and dealt a mortal blow to the First Revolution. The same
occurred when, by an analogous process, the Third Revolution sprang from the
second.
Everything
indicates that the Third Revolution has now arrived at the moment, at once
culminating and fatal, when it generates the Fourth Revolution and thus exposes
itself to being killed by it.
In the clash between the Third
Revolution and the Counter‑Revolution, will there be time for the process
that generates the Fourth Revolution to develop entirely? Will the latter
effectively open a new stage in the history of the Revolution? Or will it be
simply an abortive phenomenon, which will rise up and disappear without having
a major influence in the clash between the Third Revolution and the Counter‑Revolution?
The greater or lesser space to be reserved for the Fourth Revolution in these
hurried and summary notes would depend on the answer to this question - an
answer that only the future can give completely.
Since what is uncertain should
not be treated as if it had the importance of what is certain, we will devote a
very limited space to what seems to be the Fourth Revolution.
1. THE
FOURTH REVOLUTION FORETOLD BY THE AUTHORS OF THE THIRD REVOLUTION
As is well known, neither Marx
nor the generality of his most notorious followers (whether orthodox or
heterodox) considered the dictatorship of the proletariat to be the final phase
of the revolutionary process. This dictatorship is, according to them, nothing
but the most refined, dynamic aspect of the universal Revolution. And, in the
evolutionist mythology inherent to the thinking of Marx and his followers, just
as evolution will develop to infinity over the centuries, so also the
Revolution will be endless. From the First Revolution, two other revolutions
have already been born. The third, in its turn, will generate another. And so
on...
It is impossible to predict
within the Marxist perspective what the Twentieth or Fiftieth Revolution would
be like. However, it is possible to predict what the Fourth Revolution will be
like. This prediction has already been made by the Marxists themselves.
This revolution will necessarily
be the overthrow of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a result of a new
crisis. Pressured by this crisis, the hypertrophic state will be victim of its
own hypertrophy. And it will disappear, giving rise to a scientistic and
cooperationist state of things in which ‑ so the communists say ‑
man will have attained a heretofore inconceivable degree of liberty, equality,
and fraternity.
2. THE FOURTH REVOLUTION AND
TRIBALISM: AN EVENTUALITY?
How shall this come to pass? We
cannot but wonder if the tribal society dreamed of by today's structuralist
currents provides the answer to this question. Structuralism sees in tribal
life an illusory synthesis between the height of individual liberty and of
consentaneous collectivism, in which the latter ends up devouring liberty. In
this collectivism, the various "I's" or the individual persons, with
their intelligence, will, and sensibility, and consequently with their
characteristic and conflictual ways of being, merge and dissolve in the
collective personality of the tribe, which generates one thought, one will, and
one style of being intensely common to all.
Of course, the road to this
tribal state of things must pass through the extinction of the old standards of
individual reflection, volition, and sensibility. These will be gradually
replaced by forms of thought, deliberation, and sensibility that are
increasingly collective. It is, therefore, principally in this field that the
transformation must take place.
In what manner? In tribes, the
cohesion among the members is assured mainly by a way of thinking and feeling
common to all, from which result common habits and a common will. Individual
reason is reduced to almost nothing, in other words, to the first and most
elementary movements that this atrophied state permits. "Savage
thought,"89 the thought that does not think and is turned only to what is
concrete - such is the price of the tribal collectivist fusion. It belongs to
the witch doctor to maintain, on a mystical level, this collective psychic life
by means of totemic cults charged with confused "messages" but rich
in the ignes fatui or even fulgurations emanating from the mysterious world of
transpsychology or parapsychology. By acquiring these "riches," man
would compensate for the atrophy of reason.
Reason‑formerly
hypertrophied by free interpretation of the Scriptures, Cartesianism, and other
causes, divinized by the French Revolution, used to the point of the most
unabashed abuse in every communist school of thought ‑ would now be
atrophied and enslaved by transpsychological and parapsychological totemism.
A. The Fourth Revolution and the
Preternatural
“Omnes dii gentium daemonia”
("All of the gods of the gentiles are devils"), say the Scriptures.90
In this structuralist perspective, in which magic is presented as a form of
knowledge, to what degree may a Catholic perceive the deceitful flashes, the
canticle (at once sinister and attractive, soothing and delirious, atheistic
and fetishistically credulous) with which, from the bottom of the abysses where
he lies eternally, the Prince of Darkness attracts those who have denied Jesus
Christ and His Church?
This is a question that
theologians can and should discuss. We mean the real theologians, that is, the
few who still believe in the existence of the devil and hell, especially the
few among these few who have the courage to face the scorn and persecution of
the mass media and to speak out.
B. Structuralisin and Pre‑tribal
Tendencies
To the extent that one sees the
structuralist movement as a more or less exact (but, in any event, precursory)
figure of the Fourth Revolution, one must view certain phenomena generalized
over the last decade or two as preparing and driving the structuralist impetus.
Thus, the overthrow of the
traditions of dress in the West, increasingly eroded by nudism, obviously tends
toward the appearance and consolidation of habits that will tolerate, at most,
the cincture of feathers worn by certain tribes, substituted, where the cold
demands it, with coverings somewhat like those used by the Laplanders.
The rapid disappearance of the
rules of courtesy can only end up in the absolute simplicity (to use only this
qualifier) of tribal manners.
The growing dislike for anything
that is reasoned, structured, and systematized, can only lead, in its last
paroxysms, to the perpetual and fanciful vagabondage of jungle life,
alternating, likewise, with the instinctive and almost mechanical performance
of some activities absolutely indispensable to life.
The aversion to intellectual
effort, notably to abstraction, theorization, and doctrinal thought, can only
induce, ultimately, a hypertrophy of the senses and of the imagination,
resulting in the "civilization of the image," about which Paul VI
felt duty‑bound to warn mankind.91
Also symptomatic are the ever
more frequent idyllic eulogies of a cultural revolution that will generate a
postindustrial society, still ill‑defined but whose first specimen would
be – some say is – Chinese communism.
C. An Unpretentious Contribution
We know full well that panoramic
views – always vast and summary – lend themselves to many objections.
Necessarily abbreviated due to
the constrictions of the present chapter, our overview is but an unpretentious
contribution to the studious reflections of people gifted with that daring and
unique finesse of observation and analysis which, in all epochs, enables some
men to foresee tomorrow.
D. The Opposition of the Banal
Others, instead of using
foresight, will simply do what banal and timid souls have been doing throughout
the centuries. Smiling, they will term such transformations impossible. Why?
Because they clash with their mental habits; these transformations violate
common sense, and for banal men, history normally follows the path of common
sense. So, in face of these perspectives, they will incredulously and
optimistically smile, just as Leo X smiled about the trivial "quarrel of
friars," which was all he saw in the nascent First Revolution. Or they
will smile like the "Fenelonian" Louis XVI smiled when he saw the
first ferments of the Second Revolution in splendid palace salons, lulled at
times by the silvery sound of the harpsichord, or glittering discreetly in bucolic
ambiences and scenes like his wife's Hameau. His smile was no different
from that
of many high – and some of the highest – dignitaries of the Church and of
Western temporal society before the manipulations of smiling post‑Stalinist
communism or the upheavals announcing the Fourth Revolution.
If one day the Third or Fourth
Revolution, aided by ecumenical progressivism in the spiritual realm, takes
over the temporal life of humanity, it will be due more to the carelessness and
collaboration of these smiling optimistic prophets of common sense than to all
the fury of the revolutionary hosts and their propaganda.
COMMENTARY
Opposition
From the Prophets of Common Sense
These are strange prophets
indeed, since their prophecies invariably amount to affirmation that nothing
will happen.
Eventually their various forms
of optimism conflicted so flagrantly with the post-1976 facts that, to retain
them, their adepts adopted the fallacious and totally hypothetical hope that
the recent events in Eastern Europe will lead to the definitive disappearance
of communism and therefore of the revolutionary process it spearheaded until
recently.92
E. Ecclesiastical Tribalism and
Pentecostalism
Obviously, it is not only the
temporal realm that the Fourth Revolution wants to reduce to tribalism. It
wants to do the same with the spiritual realm. How this is to be done can
already be clearly seen in the currents of theologians and canonists who intend
to transform the noble, bone‑like rigidity of the ecclesiastical
structure – as Our Lord Jesus Christ instituted it and twenty centuries of
religious life molded it – into a cartilaginous, soft, and amorphous texture of
dioceses and parishes without territories and of religious groups in which the
firm canonical authority is gradually replaced by the ascendancy of
Pentecostalist "prophets," the counterparts of the structuralist‑tribalist
witch doctors. Eventually, these prophets will be indistinguishable from witch
doctors. The same goes for the progressivist‑Pentecostalist parish or
diocese, which will take on the appearances of the cell‑tribe of
structuralism.
COMMENTARY
The
“Demonarchization” of the Ecclesiastical Authorities
In this historical/conjectural
perspective, certain modifications in themselves alien to this process could be
seen as steps in a transition between the pre-Conciliar status quo and the
extreme opposite indicated here.
An example of this would be the
trend toward a collegiality viewed as (1) the only acceptable means for
exercising power inside the Church and (2) an expression of a
“demonarchization” of ecclesiastical authority, whose different levels would
become ipso facto much more conditioned by the levels immediately below them.
All this taken to its last
consequences could tend toward the stable and universal establishment of
popular suffrage inside the Church – not that on occasion she did not use it to
fill certain hierarchical offices. In keeping with the dream of the advocates
of tribalism, it could eventually result in an indefensible dependence of the whole
hierarchy on the laity, as supposedly the only voice of God. Of God? Or of some
witch doctor, whether a Pentecostalist guru or a sorcerer, who feeds his
“mystical revelation” to a tribalistic laity? Would it be by obeying this laity
that the Church hierarchy would fulfill its mission of obeying the will of God
Himself?
3. THE DUTY OF THE COUNTER‑REVOLUTIONARIES
IN FACE OF THE ABORNING FOURTH REVOLUTION
When innumerable facts grouped
in a reasonable way suggest hypotheses like this one on the beginning of the
Fourth Revolution, what can the counter‑revolutionary still do?
In the light of Revolution and
Counter‑Revolution, it behooves him, first of all, to emphasize the
preponderant role that the Revolution in the tendencies93 has in the generative
process of this Fourth Revolution and in the world resulting from it. He should
prepare to fight, not only alerting men against this preponderance of the
tendencies, which is becoming the rule today even though fundamentally
subversive of good human order, but also using all legitimate and appropriate
means in the tendential field to combat this same revolution in the tendencies.
The counter‑revolutionaty should also observe, analyze, and foresee the
new steps of the process in order to erect as soon as possible every obstacle
against the supreme form of tendential revolution and of revolutionary
psychological warfare: the aborning Fourth Revolution.
If the Fourth Revolution has
time to develop before the Third Revolution attempts its big adventure, the
fight against it might call for another chapter of Revolution and Counter‑Revolution.
Such a chapter, all by itself might take up as much space as that devoted to
the three previous revolutions. Why? Because processes of decadence tend to
complicate everything almost infinitely. This is why each phase of the
Revolution is more complex than the preceding one and obliges the Counter‑Revolution
to make efforts that are likewise more detailed and complex.
* * *
With these perspectives on the
Revolution and the Counter‑Revolution and on the future of the work that
must be done in face of both, we end these considerations.
Uncertain, like everyone, about
tomorrow, we prayerfully raise our eyes to the lofty throne of Mary, Queen of
the Universe, while addressing her in a paraphrase of the Psalmist's words to
Our Lord:
Ad te levavi oculos meos, qui
habitas in coelis. Ecce sicut oculi servorum in manibus dominorum suorum, sicut
oculi ancillae in manibus dominae suae; ita oculi nostri ad Dominam Matrem
nostram donec misereatur nostri. (Unto thee I lift up my eyes, unto thee, who
dwellest
in the heavens. See how the eyes of servants are fixed on the hands of their
masters, the eyes of a handmaid on the hand of her mistress! So our eyes are
fixed on Our Lady and Mother, waiting for her to have mercy on us.)94
Yes, we turn our eyes to Our
Lady of Fatima, requesting of her the contrition that will obtain for us the
great pardons, the strength to wage the great battles, and the abnegation to be
detached in the great victories that will bring the establishing of her Reign.
We desire these victories with our whole heart, even if to reach them, the
Church and the human race must undergo the apocalyptic – but how just, regenerating,
and merciful – chastisements she predicted in 1917 at the Cova da Iria.
CONCLUSION
Having updated the first (1959)
edition of Revolution and Counter‑Revolution by the addition of the
preceding pages, we wondered if the brief Conclusion to the original text and
to subsequent editions should be replaced or at least modified. After rereading
it carefully, we are convinced there is no reason to omit it or even alter it.
We say today as we said then: In
view of what is stated herein, the present‑day scene is very clear for
anyone who acknowledges the logic of the counter‑revolutionary
principles. We are in the extreme throes of a struggle between the Church and
the Revolution, a struggle that would be mortal if one of the contenders were
not immortal. Therefore, in concluding, it is right that we, sons of the Church
and fighters in the battles of the Counter‑Revolution, should filially
consecrate this book to Our Lady.
It was the Immaculate Virgin who
crushed the head of the Serpent, the first, the major, the eternal
revolutionary, the instigator and foremost upholder of this Revolution, as of
any before or after it. Mary is, therefore, the Patroness of all those who
fight against the Revolution.
The universal and all‑powerful
mediation of the Mother of God is the counter‑revolutionaries' greatest
reason for hope. And, at Fatima, she already gave them the certainty of victory
when she declared that, even after an eventual surge of communism throughout
the world, "finally, my Immaculate Heart will triumph!"
We beseech the Virgin,
therefore, to accept this filial homage, a tribute of love and an expression of
absolute confidence in her triumph.
We would not wish to end this
work without a tribute of filial devotion and unrestricted obedience to the "sweet
Christ on earth," the pillar and infallible foundation of the Truth, His
Holiness Pope John XXIII.
“Ubi Ecclesia ibi Christus, ubi
Petrus ibi Ecclesia” ("Where the Church is, there is Christ; where Peter
is, there is the Church"). It is then to the Holy Father that we direct
our love, our enthusiasm, our dedication. It is with these sentiments, which
have animated all the pages of Catolicismo since its foundation, that we have
ventured to publish this work.
We have not the slightest doubt
in our heart about any of the theses that constitute this work. Nevertheless,
we subject them unrestrictedly to the judgment of the Vicar of Christ and are
disposed to renounce immediately any one of them if it depart even slightly
from the teaching of the Holy Church, our Mother, the Ark of Salvation, and the
Gate of Heaven.
POSTFACE
After reading the previous
words, the reader will necessarily wonder where the revolutionary process
stands today. Is the Third Revolution still alive? Or does the collapse of the Soviet
empire permit us to affirm that the Fourth Revolution is erupting in the
deepest levels of the political reality of Eastern Europe, or even that it has
won?
We must make a distinction.
Today, the currents of thought that advocate the implantation of the Fourth
Revolution have spread – though in different forms – throughout the world and
reveal nearly everywhere a marked tendency to increase in volume.
In this sense, the Fourth
Revolution is in a crescendo that is promising to those who desire it and
threatening to those who oppose it. However, it would be exaggerated to say
that the present order of things in the former U.S.S.R. is already totally
modeled according to the Fourth Revolution and that nothing of the Third
Revolution remains there.
The Fourth Revolution, although
having also a political dimension, identifies itself as a cultural revolution.
In other words, it broadly encompasses all aspects of human existence.
Therefore, the political clashes that may occur among the nations that once
formed the U.S.S.R. could strongly condition the Fourth Revolution, yet they
will hardly dominate the events, the ensemble of human acts encompassed by the
cultural revolution.
But what about the public
opinion of the former Soviet countries (many of them still ruled by old
communists)? Has it nothing to tell us
about this, since, according to Revolution and Counter‑Revolution, it had
such a great role in the previous revolutions?
This question cannot be answered
unless other questions are answered first. Is there truly a public opinion in
these countries? Can it be induced to participate in a systematic revolutionary
process? If not, what are the plans of the top national and international
leaders of communism for orienting this public opinion?
These
questions are difficult to answer, as presently public opinion in the former
Soviet world is evidently indifferent, amorphous, and immobilized by the weight
of seventy years of total dictatorship. Under this tyranny, every individual
feared to manifest his religious or political opinion in many circles, even to
his closest relative or most intimate friend. A probable denunciation ‑
veiled or open, true or false - could consign him to indefinite hard labor on
the frozen expanses of Siberia. Nevertheless, these questions must be answered
if we are to render a prognosis of the course of events in the erstwhile Soviet
world.
Moreover, the international
media continues to publicize the eventual migration of famished semicivilized –
ergo semibarbarian – hordes to the prosperous European countries living under
the regime of Western consumerism.
Starved not only of food but of
ideas, what do these pitiable people understand of the free world, at once
supercivilized and gangrenous? On meeting it, would they not clash with it? And what would result from this clash, both in
an invaded Europe and, by extension, in the old Soviet world? A self‑managing,
cooperationist, structuralist‑tribalist revolution95 or an immediate
world of total anarchy, of chaos and horror, which we would not hesitate to
call the Fifth Revolution?
At the moment this edition goes
to press, any answer to these questions would be manifestly premature. Not that
they should not be asked now, for the future is so unpredictable that it might
be too late to ask them tomorrow. Indeed, of what use are books, thinkers, or
remnants of civilization in a tribal world beset by the hurricanes of the
disordered human passions and the deliria of structuralist‑tribalist
"mysticism"? what a tragic situation, in which nobody would be
anything in the empire of Nothingness.
* * *
Gorbachev is still in Moscow,
where he will remain, at least as long as he does not accept the highly
preferential invitations quickly extended him by the prestigious universities
of Harvard, Stanford, and Boston after his downfall,96 or the regal hospitality
offered by Juan Carlos I, King of Spain, in the renowned palace of Lanzarote,
on the Canary Islands,97 or the university chair to which he was invited by the
famous College de France.98
Defeated in the East, the
communist ex‑leader's only difficulty seems to be choosing among the many
flattering invitations he is receiving from the West. Thus far, he has decided
to write a syndicated series of articles for newspapers in the capitalist world
- a world whose highest levels continue
to provide him fervent and inexplicable support ‑ and to travel to the
United States amid great publicity to raise funds for the Gorbachev Foundation.
Thus, even though Gorbachev is
overshadowed in his own country ‑ and seriously questioned in the West –
Western magnates endeavor in various ways to maintain the floodlights of a
flattering publicity beamed on the man of perestroika, who made a point,
throughout his whole political career, of showing that his reform is not
communism 's contrary but its refinement.99
As for the weak Soviet
federation that was agonizing when Gorbachev was overthrown, it became a
quasiphantasmal “Commonwealth of Independent States," whose inter‑member
friction worries statesmen and political analysts. Several of these republics
have nuclear weapons and the capability to launch them at a neighbor (or at the
enemies of Islam, whose influence grows daily in the former Soviet world),
causing great apprehension among those concerned for global balance.
The effects of these eventual
atomic aggressions could be multiple. Principal among them could be the exodus
of populations formerly contained by the Iron Curtain. Driven by the rigors of
bitter winters and by the dangers of immense catastrophes, they might feel
redoubled impulses to "request" the hospitality of Western Europe.
and of American nations.
In Brazil, Lionel Brizola,
Governor of the State of Rio de Janeiro, has already proposed (to the applause
of the nation's minister of agriculture) attracting farmers from Eastern Europe
through government land‑reform programs.100 Argentine president Carlos
Menem, in contacts with the European Economic Community, has said he is willing
to have his country accept many thousands of these immigrants.101 The head of
the Colombian Foreign Office, Mrs. Nohemi Sanin, has stated that her country's
government was studying the possibility of admitting technicians from the East.102
This is how imminent the waves of
invasion may be.
And what of communism? What
happened to it? Enthralled at the perspective of a long‑lasting universal
peace, or even an everlasting peace that would abolish the terrible specter of
a global nuclear hecatomb, most of Western public opinion was gripped by the
sensation that communism had died.
The West's honeymoon with this
supposed paradise of amity and peace is gradually losing its harmony, as
evidenced by the above‑mentioned threat of all sorts of aggressions
thundering in the territories of the defunct U.S.S.R. Will the Western
impression that communism has ended
prove any more reliable?
At
first, the voices that questioned the authenticity of communism's demise were
few, isolated, and poorly documented.
Nevertheless, little by little,
shadows began to appear on the horizon. It was noted that in countries of
central Europe, the Balkans, or the former U.S.S.R. some of the new holders of
power had been important figures in the local communist party. The move toward
privatization in all these countries, with the exception of the old East
Germany, is generally more apparent than real, proceeding at a snail's pace
that reveals the lack of an entirely defined direction.
So, did communism die in these
countries? Or did it simply enter into a complicated metamorphosis? The doubts in this matter are growing just as the
last echoes of the universal rejoicing at the supposed collapse of communism
are discreetly fading away.
The Western communist parties
had withered in the sight of all at the crash of the first cave‑ins of
the U.S.S.R.
But already today several of them are
reorganizing under new names. Is the change of names a resurrection? A
metamorphosis? I am inclined to opt for the second hypothesis. As for
certainties, only the future can give them.
This updating of the general
scene in face of which the world is taking a position seemed indispensable for
any attempt to impart a little light and order to a horizon in whose quadrants chaos is predominating. And
what is the spontaneous path of chaos if not the unintelligible worsening of
itself?
* * *
Amid this chaos, only one thing
will not fail, namely, the prayer transcribed a little earlier and which is in
my heart and on my lips, just as it is in the heart of all who see and think as
I do:
Unto thee I lift up my eyes,
unto thee, who dwellest in the heavens. See how the eyes of servants are fixed
on the hands of their masters, the eyes of a handmaid on the hand of her
mistress! So our eyes are fixed on Our Lady and Mother, waiting for her to have
mercy on us.
Behold the affirmation of the
unvarying confidence of the Catholic soul, which kneels but remains firm amid
the general convulsion – firm with all
the firmness of those who, in the storm, and with a strength of soul even
greater than it, continue to affirm from the bottom of their heart: “Credo in
Unam, Sanctam, Catholicam et Apostolicam Ecclesiam” that is, "I believe in
the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, against which, as promised to
Saint Peter, the gates of hell will never prevail."
SOME
TESTIMONIES OF ILLUSTRIOUS
FIGURES REGARDING BOOKS
BY THE AUTHOR
Revolution and Counter-Revolution
As we mentioned in the Preface,
the publication of Revolution and Counter‑Revolution had an immediate and
profound impact. Ecclesiastical personages like those already quoted, as well
as theologians, professors, and conservative leaders from around the world,
acclaimed the author's analysis of and solution to the contemporary crisis.
More than thirty years after its first edition, the essay's repercussion
continues to grow, especially among youth. Three testimonies regarding
Revolution and Counter‑Revolution are herein transcribed exempli gratia.
– Ed.
Lima,
July 24, 1961
NUNCIATURA APOSTOLICA EN EL PERU
Distinguished
Professor,
The reading of your book
“Revolution and Counter‑Revolution” made a magnificent impression on me
because of the courage and mastery with which you analyze the process of the
Revolution and shed abundant light on the true causes of the crumbling of moral
values disorienting consciences today. and also because of the vigor with which
you indicate the tactic and the methods to overcome it.
I especially appreciated the
second part of your book, highlighting the efficacy of Catholic doctrine and
the spiritual remedies the Church possesses to combat and vanquish the forces
and errors of the Revolution.
I am certain that your book has
rendered an important service to the Catholic cause and that it will help
gather the forces of good in order to soon solve this great contemporary
problem. This is, in my opinion, the way repeatedly indicated by the present
Vicar of Christ, who, with so much conviction and solicitude, has insisted on a
profound renewal of Christian and sacramental life as a sure remedy for the
evils afflicting the world, evils that government leaders vainly seek to solve
through the precarious efficacy of weapons. technology, and purely human
progress. I wish, most
dear Professor, a widespread diffusion of and a well‑merited response to
your book from Catholic leaders wishing to join the ranks of the counter‑revolutionary
movement.
Please
accept the testimony of my sincere admiration for your work and the expression
of my deepest esteem.
Romolo
Carboni
Titular
Archbishop of Sidon
Apostolic
Nuncio
Archbishop Romolo Carboni was born in Fano,
Italy, in19l1. Ordained in 1934, he was made a bishop in 1953. He was raised to
the archepiscopate and appointed Apostolic Nuncio to Peru in 1959. He served as
Nuncio to Italy from 1969 to 1936 and now lives in retirement in Fano.
SANTO
DOMINGO EL REAL
DOMINICAN
FATHERS
July 17,
1984
Dear
Friend,
Yesterday, at a stretch, I read
the 1973 Spanish edition of your magnificent book Revolution and Counter‑Revolution,"
which you had kindly sent me.
I had already read other works
of yours and I have been aware of your colossal defense of Christian
civilization for quite a while.
I understand perfectly the third
part of this edition (“Twenty Years After”), on the concern regarding the
infiltration of the Church in the post‑Conciliar times. Since your faith
is deeply rooted in the indefectability of THE CHURCH, this phenomenon will be
a further stimulus to labor with hope...
A small book of mine will be ready
next month. I will send you a copy as soon as it is available.
With an embrace,
Victorino
Rodriguez. O.P.
Fr. Victorino Rodriguez y
Rodriguez. O.P., is one of the most distinguished intellectual figures of Spain
today. Born in Carriles, Asturias, on February 14, 1926, he joined the Order of
Saint Dominic when he was 19. Ordained a priest in 1952, he traveled to Rome to complete his studies and
obtain a doctorate.
An eminent theologian and
presently prior of the Convent of Santo Domingo el Real in Madrid, he was
professor of the School of Theology of San Esteban in Salamanca and held a
chair at
the Pontifical University of the same city. He is professor of Madrid's
Superior Council of Scientific Investigations and member of both the Royal
Academy of Doctors of the same city and the Pontifical Roman Theological
Academy. More than 250 of his books and articles have been published, many by
the renowned publishing house Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos of Madrid.
Rome,
February 10, 1993
Distinguished
Professor,
It was with extreme interest,
pleasure, and personal benefit that I read the Spanish copy of Prof. Plinio
Corrêa de Oliveira's work dedicated to me with expressions of great affection
and esteem, for which I am grateful.
"Revolution and Counter‑Revolution"
is a masterly work whose teachings should be disseminated far and wide so as to
penetrate the conscience, not only of all those who consider themselves truly
Catholic, but I would say even more, of all other men of good will. In it, the latter
would learn that salvation can be found only in Jesus Christ and His Church;
the former would feel confirmed and fortified in their Faith and
psychologically and spiritually forewarned and immunized against the cunning
process that employs many of them as useful idiots or fellow travelers.
Its analysis of the
revolutionary process is impressive and revealing on account of its realism and
profound understanding of history, from the end of the Middle Ages in
decadence, which paved the way for the paganizing Renaissance and the pseudo‑Reformation,
thence for the terrible French Revolution, and. soon after, atheistic
Communism.
That historical analysis is not
only external. The actions and reactions it deals with are also explained in
light of the human psychology, both the individual psychology and the
collective psychology of the masses. However, it is necessary to recognize that
someone directs this profound and systematic de‑Christianization. Man
undoubtedly tends toward evil – pride and sensuality – but were not someone
holding the reins of these disorderly tendencies and sagaciously coordinating
them, they most probably would not have produced such a constant, skillful, and
systematic action, which, tenaciously maintained, profits even from the ups and
downs caused by the resistance and natural "reaction" of the opposing
forces.
"Revolution and Counter‑Revolution"
also foresees, although using caution in its prognoses and by means of
hypotheses, the next possible evolution of the revolutionary action and, in
turn, that of the Counter‑Revolution.
The book abounds in
perspicacious sociological, political, psychological, and evolutive insights
and observations, not few of which are worthy of an anthology. Many of them
outline the intelligent "tactics" that favor the Revolution and those
that may and should be used in a general counter-revolutionary "strategy."
In sum, I would dare to affirm
that this is a prophetic work in the best sense of the word. It should be
taught in the Church’s centers of higher education so that at least the elite
classes become fully aware of a crushing reality about which, I believe, they
do not have a clear notion. This, among other things, would contribute to
revealing and unmasking the useful idiots or fellow travelers, among whom are
found many ecclesiastical figures, who act in a suicidal manner by playing the
enemy's game; this group of idiots, allies of the Revolution, would in good
measure disappear....
The second part of the book well
explains the Counter‑Revolution's nature and the courageous and
"aggressive" tactics that counter‑revolutionaries must
implement while always avoiding excesses and improper and imprudent attitudes.
Before such realities, one
doubts there is a true "strategy" in the Church as there is in the
Revolution. One does find many "tactical" elements, actions, and
institutions, but they seem to act in isolation, without a notion of the whole.
The concept of a Counter‑Revolution and the realization that a Counter‑Revolution
is acting could unify and provide a greater sense of collaboration within the
Church.
I must congratulate the TFP
movement for the stature and quality of its founder, Prof. Plinio. I foresee
and desire with all my soul a vast development and a future full of counter‑revolutionary
successes for the TFP.
I conclude stating that the
spirit with which this work is written greatly impresses me: It is a profoundly
Christian spirit, one with a passionate love for the Church. This book is an
authentic product of Christian wisdom. It is moving to find in a layman such a
sincere devotion to the Mother of Jesus and ours - a clear sign of predestination.
"Uncertain, like everyone, about tomorrow, we prayerfully raise our eyes
to the lofty throne of Mary, Queen of the Universe.... We beseech the Virgin,
therefore, to accept this filial homage, a tribute of love and an expression of
absolute confidence in her triumph" (pp. 165, 167).
Rome,
September 8, 1993
Feast of
the Nativity of Our Lady
Fr.
Anastasio Gutierrez
Fr. Anastasio Gutierrrez, C.M.F., is one of the Catholic
Church's most renowned canonists.
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina,
in 1911, Father Gutierrez is a Spanish citizen who has lived in Rome for the
last fifty years.
In Rome, he received his
doctorate in Canon Law from the
Pontifical Lateran University Later, he held a chair at that
university's School of Canon Law, eventually becoming its dean. Father Gutierrez served as a peritus during
the Second Vatican Council, and for many years was Cardinal Larraona's
assistant in the Congregation for the Religious. He also is a founder of the
Institutum Iuridicum Claretianum of Rome.
He participated in the
commission charged to write the new Code of Canon Law, and is presently a
consultant to the following Vatican dicasteries: Congregation for the Oriental
Churches, Congregation for the Clergy, and Congregation for the Institutes of
Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. He is also a consultant to
the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, the highest
Church organ for canonical questions.
More recently, Father Gutierrez
became postulator of Queen Isabella of Castile's cause of canonization.
Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in
the Allocutions of Pius XII
Rome,
February 10, 1993
Distinguished
Professor,
It was with keen interest that I
read your work “Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of
Pius XII to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility.”
The thought of the great Pope
Pius XII, as one can see in the documents mentioned, remains entirely relevant,
and you have taken the good initiative of presenting it to today's public along
with opportune annotations. tt is useful to remind people, as Paul VI himself
did after the Second Vatican Council, that the teachings his predecessor
addressed to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility continue to be fully valid.
In the comments and
documentation with which you facilitate a more complete understanding of the
full range of Pius XII's magisterium, one can see great erudition and sureness
of thought, justly highlighted by the well‑known French historian Georges
Bordonove in his foreword to [the French edition of] this work.
I am certain that I am
performing a good deed by recommending your book to all who wish to deepen
their knowledge of the wise and enlightening teachings of Pius XII.
Hoping your timely book will have
a wide circulation, I send you cordial greetings.
Silvio
Card. Oddi
Silvio Cardinal Oddi was born in
Morfasso, in the province of Piacenza, Italy, in 1910. Having completed his
studies at the Angelicum of Rome, lie entered the Pontifical Ecclesiastical
Academy. At the service of the Secretariat of State, the still very young
Father Oddi began a brilliant career in Vatican diplomacy.
Cardinal Oddi speaks Several
languages and is one of the best informed ecclesiastics on the Middle Fast,
where he held diplomatic posts in several countries. On behalf of the Holy See,
he also undertook very delicate missions in Yugoslavia and in Cuba immediately
after the accession of the communist regime. In 1969, while Apostolic Nuncio in
Belgium, he
received
the news of his elevation to the cardinalate. Since then he has resided in
Rome, holding high offices in the Vatican Coria. In 1979, John Paul II made him
Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, a position he held until 1985. He
is presently Pontifical Legate for the Sanctuary of Saint Francis of Assisi.
Cardinal Oddi, an expert on life
in the Vatican, of which he has been a protagonist in the last decades, is
often interviewed by the Italian and international press on the situation of
the Church in our days.
Rome,
February 13. 1993
Distinguished
Professor,
Your great renown and the words
of praise and encouragement given for your work by the illustrious Fr.
Victorino Rodriguez, O.P., generally considered one of the glories of
contemporary theology, have led me to read with lively interest your book
“Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII to
the Roman Patriciate and Nobility.”
When Pius XII gave the world the
splendid series of fourteen allocutions to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility,
there were many who saw them less as a theological, philosophical, and
historical work regarding values destined to yet play a fundamental and
timeless role, than as a nostalgic effusion of love for virtues, greatnesses,
and glories that the world understood less and less.
The most recent of the
abovementioned allocutions was that of 1953. More than thirty years later, we
can now see how wrong the people were. Indeed, Pius XII had seen the course of
events correctly. Today, not only is the old hostility to the nobility
gradually dying out, but there are prominent intellectuals emerging most
everywhere who emphasize how detrimental is the loss of authentic elites – with
the concomitant vulgarization of the human type – to culture and the lifestyle
of contemporary society. This is why in many places we now see manifested an
ardent aspiration for the restoration of influence of authentic elites over the
multitudes, so that the latter may once again become – in accordance with Pius
XII's teachings – peoples instead of nameless masses (cf. Christmas radio
message off Holiness Pius XII, 1944).
In this historical context. your
work proves to be extraordinarily timely, since in echoing the magisterium of
Pope Pius XII a commenting on it with such notable penetration and consistency
makes an appeal to the nobility and the analogous elites to contribute, with
more courage than ever before, toward the common spirit and temporal good of
all nations.
Indeed it falls to them, as that
immortal Pope underscored to fulfill the precious mission of communicating by
example, word, and action the treasure of religious and temporal truths of
Christianity, the luminous torch of so ninny truths that societies can never
forget without the risk of succumbing to the vortex of chaos and moral misery
that threatens them.
I therefore hope for the best of
receptions for your book, to which you have devoted the vast resources of your
intelligence and erudition. besides your unlimited love for the Church. May it
please Divine Providence to grant it widespread circulation, so that both the
preferential option for the nobles, inspired by Pius XII and high-lighted by
you, and the preferential option for the poor, to whom the current Pontiff has
devoted his ardent love, will be forever better understood.
Mario
Luigi Card. Ciappi. O.P.
His
Eminence Mario Luigi Cardinal Ciappi
Mario Luigi Cardinal Ciappi.
O.P., was born in Florence on October 6. 1909. and was ordained a priest on
March 26, 1932. For many years be was a professor at the Angelicum, where he
taught Moral and Dogmatic theology and Mariology. Among his students was the
then Father Karol Wojtyla, later His Holiness John Paul II. Cardinal Ciappi
went on to become dean of the Faculty of Theology at this athenaeum. He was
elevated to the episcopal dignity as titular of the Church of Miseno on June
10, 1977, and in the Consistory of June 27 of the same year he received the
cardinal’s hat from the hands of Paul VI.
Until 1939 he was theologian of
the Pontifical Household, that is, private theologian of the Holy Father.
Cardinal Ciappi is currently president of the Pontifical Roman Academy of Saint
Thomas Aquinas and Catholic Doctrine, which gathers some of the greatest names
in contemporary theology.
Vatican
City, Feast of Saint Joseph, 1993
Most
illustrious Professor,
I thank you heartily for the
kind gift of your work “Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the
Allocutions of Pius XII to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility,” sent to me in
its Italian translation.
It made a deep impression on me
for several reasons: first of all, for its timeliness, in that it is the
reaffirmation of the teachings of the great Pope Pius XII on the subject at a
historico‑cultural moment when ferocious hostility to the nobility,
spread all over the world by the French Revolution, seems everywhere to be
diminishing.
Secondly, the work – amid the
universal decay of natural and, above all, Christian values – will awaken in
many hearts everywhere the desire to see nobiliary elites, who in past
centuries played an important and often decisive role in upholding these values
through their lives and actions, once again setting for humanity the examples
it needs so urgently and supremely.
A third reason derives from your
observations‑which seem to me extremely relevant‑regarding the
formation, alongside the nobilities and elites of blood, of nobilities and
elites of spirit and mind that, by associating and organizing among the many
existing noble souls, are assuming all over the world the roles of exemplars of
and guides toward a natural and perennial order of things. This, whether to
support the nobilities of blood still existent and now re‑emerging, or to
replace those no longer capable of efficaciously reacting to the manifest
decadence of our days, as has happened in more than one instance.
Using vast and solid
documentation, you have done a fine analysis of the very complex sociopolitical
reality of our day, and commenting with great logical rigor on the luminous
teachings of Pius XII, you have shown how much he and his successors up to John
Paul II continue to expect from the existing nobility and future analogous
elites for the religious, moral. and cultural uplifting of the world.
I therefore rejoice at this
book, illustrious Professor, and wish it a broad circulation, so it may spark,
sustain, and build a deep and vast sensitivity to this excellent tool for the
re‑creation of a sound natural ethics and a revived religious morality
that may lead all humanity to that peace, prosperity and happiness that only
authentic and genuine values can realize and guarantee.
To these good wishes ~ add my
fervent prayers to the Lord and to the Mother of the Church, that they may
sustain you in the work which is both beneficent and painfully pressing in the
times in which we live.
Yours in
Christ.
Alfons M.
Card. Stickler, S D B
Alfons M. Cardinal Stickler,
S.D.B., was born in Neunkirchen. Austria, in 1910. While still young he entered
the Salesian Congregation and made his first Studies of philosophy and theology
in Austria and Germany, later specializing in Canon Law at the Roman School of
San Apollinare and the Pontifical Lateran University.
His particular vocation to the
study of juridical sciences led him to teach at the Pontifical Athenaeum
Salesianum, first in Turin and later in Rome. Father Stickler became dean of
the Canon Law School and then rector of the athenaeum, an office beheld from
1958 to 1966. Placing his
superior academic talents at the service of the Holy See. Father Stickler,
after having directed the Pontifical Institute of Higher Latin Studies, was
named Prefect of the Vatican Library. an institution unequaled in the world on
account of its bibliographic treasures.
In 1983 John Paul II elevated
him to the episcopal dignity and made him Pro‑Librarian. Afterward. upon
making him a cardinal, he appointed him Librarian and Archivist of the Holy
Roman Church, an office that since its creation in the sixteenth century has
been held by great ecclesiastical figures. Cardinal Stickler held this office
until 1988. Especially notable among his important responsibilities was his
participation ill the commission responsible for developing the new Code of
Canon Law.
A Call to
Reflection
(Published
in the September‑ October 1994 issue of TFP Informa, the organ of the
Ecuadorian TFP)
A serious and objective study of
history shows that all times, all cultures, and all races have had undeniable
differences among their constituents. There have always been wise men and
ignorant men, classes that rule and classes that obey, rich and poor. Christ
Himself taught, "The poor will always be with you." The variety of
elements within human society is as natural and human as the variety of elements in the human body. As the body
has a diversity of organs, it has a
diversity of functions. Mankind has a like diversity.
Although this diversity is so
natural, there is a tendency, when speaking of society's components, to
consider the differences as contradictory, as alien to human nature. Thus was
born the slogan of the French Revolution, which set the desire for liberty
equality, and fraternity as the
foundation of society, not according to the Christian concept that all human
beings are equal because they are creatures of the same God and sons of the
same Father, but according to the erroneous concept that there should be no
differences of any kind between human beings. This denial of the diversity of
functions among men contradicts God's plan in creating the universe and
corresponds to the rationalist theory that all social inequalities must be
eliminated, through violence if necessary.
That way of thinking
characterized the French Revolution and also led materialistic sociologists to
the idea of class struggle, practical atheism, and the use of tyranny to
eliminate everything that could be considered favorable to the acceptance of
the difference of values that is part of the historical reality of society.
Marxism‑Leninism, inspired in this dialectic, rejected the values of the
Christian faith and espoused a materialistic and atheistic philosophy.
The class struggle preached by
Marxism received a death blow with recent events in the Soviet Empire. But the
new concept that must inspire the
reestablishment of society destroyed by historical materialism has not been
explored. For this, a new insight into the understanding of the human being is
needed, as well as a deeper study of the variety of values in society. We need
to ask ourselves: Is the idea of radicalizing unity valid? Or is an in‑depth
study concerning the transcendental variety of the factors that constitute
society necessary?
Basing himself on interesting
Church documents, this is what the intelligent and profound thinker Plinio
Corrêa de Oliveira proposes to do. He has written a work that can positively
help to study and resolve this problem. Entitled "Nobility and Analogous
Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII," it deals with a
seemingly new subject: social elites and the seasoned aristocracy of the old
nobility. The author declares that elites must reclaim the social values of the
privileged class, of the families with a heritage, of the families with a
background enriched by titles and traditions.
To some, reviving the social
values of the elites may seem anachronistic and obsolete. Nevertheless, Pope
Pius XII, remembering the old and noble traditions of his own family, presents
the nobility of former times not only as holders of titles but, above all, as
holders of a treasure of great virtues that benefited not just elite families
but all of society.
Based on these reflections, I
would venture to affirm that immorality and corruption have assumed scandalous
proportions in modern society precisely because a wrong criterion of equality
has crept in. In every society, in every culture, in every community, groups
that stand out from the rest by their greater culture, by their greater
morality, by a sense of nobility that not only dignifies an individual but
conquers the admiration and respect of those who come to know these human
values and, even more, Christian virtues, should be cultivated and fostered. For
the same reason, the larger the community of families characterized by the
practice of the human and Christian virtues, the better oriented society in
general will be.
Pius XII left us a whole arsenal
of documents in which, especially addressing the Roman nobility, he exalts the
traditional virtues of the families considered noble and urges the Patriciate
to cultivate qualities and virtues that should adorn a family (or person) that
feels or considers itself noble. He exhorts the elites not only to maintain
their ancestral values of nobility, but to purify them with the teachings of
Christ.
For all these reasons I believe
the launching of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira's book is a prophetic call for
contemporary society to make an examination of conscience regarding the true
nobility that distinguished the men of the past, and the genuine virtues that
must contribute to the building of a more human and Christian society. True
nobility is based not on vanity and selfishness, but on the solid foundation of
truth and goodness. We are convinced, therefore, that this book is a call to a
serious reflection that will culminate in the return to the eternal values of
the human being that are a basis of greatness and likeness with God.
Ibarra,
June 21,1993
Bernardino
Cardinal Echeverria Ruiz
Bernardino Cardinal Echeverria
Ruiz, O.F.M., was born in Cotacachi, Ecuador, in 1912. He became a Franciscan
in 1928 and was ordained in 1937. He studied at the Pontifical Institute
Antoniano in Rome and received his doctorate in Philosophy in 1941. Returning
to Ecuador, he filled high posts in the Ecuadorian Province of his Order,
founding numerous apostolic works and carrying Out important missions in and
outside his country.
He was named bishop of Ambato in
1949, a dignity he held for twenty years. He was secretary, vice‑president,
and president of the Ecuadorian Bishops' Conference, of which he was recently named honorary president. He
represented this body at the Latin American Bishops' Conference (CELAM), of
which he is a founding member, and he was honored with the title of Assistant
to the Apostolic See.
In 1969 he was designated
archbishop of Guayaquil, a see he held until 1989. He revitalized its
seminaries and apostolic movements, built churches, and strove for the
establishment of new religious orders in the Archdiocese. He headed national
movements in the field of pastoral work and the defense of the Faith, carrying
out campaigns with great repercussion in Catholic opinion for the inclusion of
the name of God in the Constitution, the defense of private education, and the
promotion of devotion to the Most Holy Virgin.
The author of several books and
a frequent lecturer, he had weekly and daily radio and television programs. A
Fellow of the Language Academy, he has received decorations from the Ecuadorian
nation and from other countries, including Spain's Commendation of Isabella the
Catholic.
After accepting his resignation
as archbishop of Guayaquil in 1939 in accordance with Canon Law, the Holy
Father named him apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Ibarra. As in his
former posts, the Prelate has been tireless in his rebuilding of destroyed
churches and in his vast pastoral work.
He received the cardinal's hat
in the November 1992 Consistory as titular of Saints Nereus and Achilleus,
being the third Ecuadorian to receive this high honor.
SANTO
DOMINGO EL REAL
DOMINICAN
FATHERS
Madrid,
January 25, 1993
Dear
friend and admired Professor,
I have read closely the original
of your magnificent work "Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the
Allocutions of Pius XII to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility," which you
were kind enough to send me for review. I am greatly honored by your confidence
in my evaluation and possible comments. In addition, I admire your ardent
desire to be well‑founded when launching so noble a cause, as well as
your humility in requesting the opinion of someone far less knowledgeable than
you about the subject, both in its doctrinal and historical dimensions. I
must say that I found absolutely nothing to criticize or even to improve in
your undertaking. I would, however, like to highlight what I consider very
good:
First, the very writing of a
book on this subject. It was needed; and your selection of a starting point and
major basis for discussion could not have been better, namely, the successive
New Year allocutions of Pius XII to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility. This
exceptional Pope Pacelli, whose mind, heart, and blood were noble, was
singularly attentive to the problems and expectations of his times. Thus, he
could not help but be concerned with the problems of the nobility, to whom he
addressed these allocutions, now opportunely brought to us by a Brazilian nobleman,
in whose person one finds so much devotion to the Apostolic See and love for
Christian civilization.
Second, the timeliness, since
the genuine values of the nobility are currently eclipsed in the post‑revolutionary
"egalitarianism" and the inorganic modern democracies. More renown
("nobile" = "noscibilie," distinguished, excellent, famous)
is given to numbers (of votes or dollars) than to dignifying qualities
(knowledge, virtue, art). Yet, as I heard the great theologian Santiago Ramirez
say on several occasions, "truth is not democratic, but
aristocratic." I hope that your carefully documented, thoughtful work will
bring the traditional nobility to the forefront, as bearers of dignity,
honesty, and humanism open to God and to the social common good.
Third,
I think that the harmonic complementarity you establish between the
"preferential option for the poor," so accentuated in the new
evangelization, and the "preferential option for the nobility" is
very just and Christian. Indeed, these two outlooks are not exclusive, but
complementary. I believe this is the key: One should love the best more, and
help the neediest more. Hence the two harmonized preferential options. The
charitable option for the indigent should not diminish the singular esteem
deserved by the nobility, especially when such esteem is at a low ebb in times
of widespread egalitarianism. Very much to the point is the information on the
high percentage of canonized saints among the nobility. It was Pius XII who, in
1943, canonized Saint Margaret of Hungary, O.P., daughter of the King of Hungary and grand‑daughter
of the Emperor of Constantinople.
Fourth, in an era of
"pacifism" (or peace at any cost), it is also advantageous to give
thought to the topic of just war, so often waged by the nobility, whether
military' or civil and ecclesiastical.
The Magisterium and Theology had and have much to say in this regard, as
Document XI reminds us.
Fifth and last, at a time when
democracy, with no discernment or ulterior ethical resolution, is the sole
political dogma for many, it is opportune to recall the Church's social
doctrine on the forms of government. The Papal Magisterium has incorporated
Saint Thomas's nuanced doctrine, taken
up so often by Catholic thinkers and now by you in Appendix IV of your work.
I could highlight many other
interesting points of your work, but do not wish to unduly lengthen this letter
nor to repeat what the reader will find more adequately and more elaborately
expounded in the book. With these remarks I hope to attest to having read the
original with pleasure and to respond to your friendly gesture.
Victorino
Rodriguez O.P.
See
previous letter from Fr. Rodriguez for biography.
March 5,
1993
Distinguished
Professor.
I have attentively read your
work The Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius
XII to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility," which you were so kind to send
to me.
I deem felicitous your idea of
giving wide diffusion to those documents of Pius XII, which at first glance
might seem devoid of relevance to the present day. In fact, however, your lucid
and documented commentaries show the foresightedness of the theme discussed by
that Pontiff. Furthermore, you opportunely recall the beautiful words of Paul
VI: “We would like to say many things to you. Your presence provokes much
reflection. So it was also with Our venerable Predecessors, especially Pope
Pius XII of happy memory. . . . We want to believe that the echo of those
words, like a gust of wind swelling a sail, . . . still vibrates in your
thoughts, filling them with the austere and magnanimous appeals that nourish
the vocation preordained for you by Providence and sustain the role still
required of you today by contemporary society."
Your long experience as professor,
congressman, and public figure makes your commentaries all the more intelligent
and instructive, pleasantly facilitating the reading of the Pontifical
documents, which are of such lofty and estimable value.
I did not find in your pages any
error of a theological or other nature regarding the teachings of the Church. I
can only hope that your excellent work will be given a warm and full reception
by the public for whom it is intended.
Fr.
Raimondo Spiazzi, O.P.
Fr. Raimondo Spiazzi, O.P., was
born in Moneglia, in the province of Liguria, Italy. in 1918. He was ordained a
priest in 1944 and obtained a doctorate in Sacred Theology at the Angelicum
three years later.
He began his long career as a
university professor teaching Fundamental Theology, Moral Philosophy, and
Sociology at the Studio Domenicano of Turin and Dogmatic Theology at the Centro
Cattolico di Cultura of the same city.
In 1949 he returned to Rome,
where he lectured, first at the University Pro Deo and then at the Angelicum,
whose School of Social Sciences he founded. In 1954 he was appointed dean of
the Institute of Religious Sciences at the Angelicum. In 1957 he began to teach
Pastoral Theology at the Pontifical Lateran University, and, in 1967. Dogmatic
Theology at the Center of Theology for the Laity of the Vicariat of Rome,
becoming its dean in 1987.
Father Spiazzi served as
Apostolic Visitor to the seminaries in Lombardy and Milan and as Provincial of
the Dominican Order for Piedmont and Liguria. Paul VI personally nominated him
a perius of the Second Vatican Council.
He is now consultant to the
Congregation for Catholic Education and member of several study commissions of
the Vatican congregations and the Vicariat of Rome. He also belongs to the
Pontifical Academy of Our Lady Immaculate, the Pontifical Roman Theological
Academy, and the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas. He is rector of
the Basilica of. San Sisto Vecchio on the Appian Way.
Father Spiazzi has published
numerous hooks and over 2.000 articles. Many of the latter have appeared in
Italian and foreign magazines.
July 20,
1993
My Dear
Juan Miguel,
I received your missive of the
5th along with the beautiful work of Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, your
distinguished founder: “Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites ...” You have
given me a present of great value, a work whose scientific, historical,
sociological, human, and Christian wisdom is inestimable. I believe that with
my 81 years, my 55 years of professorship and predominantly socio‑juridical
study, my 50 years in this elevated lookout that is Rome, I have some claim to
be able to judge it and above all appreciate it. I repeat: It is a work of a
wisdom and equity of judgment that can hardly be matched by so many books,
which are excellent if you will, but lack what we could call a great thinker's
charism of knowledge and experience. For me, it is not so much the documental
basis as the elaborations of Professor Corrêa de Oliveira, who ranges over the
fields of history, social psychology, philosophy, theology, and Christian
ethics with profound insight and analytical capacity. In short, Professor
Corrêa de Oliveira is a great MASTER who deserves to figure at the head of this
elite class.
The work's presentation is on
par with its content; like the work's theme, it is noble... My congratulations. May it have the diffusion
it merits.
Your most
affectionate friend
Fr
Anastasio Gutierrez C M F
See
previous letter of the Rev. Fr. Anastasio Gutierrez for biographical data.
Excerpts
from Georges Bordonove 's foreword to the book's French edition
Prof. Corrêa de Oliveira ranks
among the clear‑sighted minds that perceive. with an almost painful
sharpness, the metamorphosis underway in today's society, whose final features
one cannot foresee. He fears, not without reason, that the combined effect of a
galloping progress and a mistaken egalitarianism will eventually obliterate the
individual by the monstrous leveling [of society]. It is in this perspective
that be identifies, with Pius XII, the mission the patriciate has, unless it
prefers to scuttle itself and disappear. In other words, he invites the elites
not to dwell in the lamentation of vanished grandeur, not to estrange
themselves from society, but rather to resolutely enter the active life, to
place their talents, their heritage of experience, their family traditions, and
even their way of being, at the service of society, with the sole concern for
the common good....
This work is remarkable in all
aspects, notably for the abundance and rigorous exactness of its documentation,
the author's universal culture, his solid argumentation, and the transparency
of his thought. The reader will also appreciate the Professor's prospective
effort when he addresses the question of the world's future. . . . It proposes
an itinerary; it erects the first landmarks for the road to be followed.
Is this the announcement of that
twenty‑first century which, it has been said, will either be mystical or
will not be at all?
Georges
Bordonove
The renowned historian Georges
Bordonove was born on May25, 1920, in Enghien (Seine‑et‑Oise),
France. He studied at the Licee Fontanes and at the Literature and Law School
of Poitiers, graduating in Literature and Law. The author of almost 70 books
and essays, numerous articles and short Stories, several of them award‑winning
(Grand Prix des Libraires de France. 1959; Prix Bretagne. 1963). Bordonove is a
Knight of the Legion of Honor. Commander of the National Order of Merit, and
Officier des Arts et des Lettres.
Other
Works
Vatican
Palace, February 26, 1949
SECRETERIA DI
STATO DI SUA SANTITA
Illustrious
Sir,
Moved by your filial dedication
and piety, you offered the Holy Father the book "In Defense of Catholic
Action," in which you reveal perfect care and persevering diligence.
His Holiness is very pleased
with you for having explained and defended Catholic Action – of which you have
a complete knowledge and for which you have great esteem – with penetration and
clarity so that it has become clear to all how important it is to study and
promote this auxiliary form of the hierarchical apostolate.
The August Pontiff hopes with
all his heart that this work of yours results in rich and mature fruits and
that from it you may harvest neither small nor few consolations. And as a
pledge that it be so, be grants you the Apostolic Benediction.
Meanwhile, with due consideration.
I declare myself,
Devotedly
yours
J.B.
Montini
Substitute
Dr.
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
President
of Catholic Action
Archdiocese
of Sao Paulo, Brazil
Msgr.
Giovanni Battista Montini
Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini,
the future Paul VI, was born in Lombardy, Italy, in 1897. After his ordination
in 1920, he pursued studies at the Pontifical Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics
and the Pontifical Gregorian University. In 1924 he began 30 years of service
in the Secretariat of State: as undersecretary from 1937 until 1954, he was
closely associated with Pius XII.
He was ordained archbishop of
Milan in 1954, and was inducted into the College of Cardinals in 1958. He was
elevated to the Papacy In 1963.
He reconvened the Second Vatican
Council. The main thrust of his pontificate was toward institutionalizing the
trends of the Council.
He died in 1978.
Rome,
December 2, 1964
SACRED CONGREGATION OF SEMINARIES AND
UNIVERSITIES
Most
Reverend Excellency,
Only now have we been able to
read the ample and profound study of the illustrious Professor Plinio Corrêa de
Oliveira, of the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo, on the important
theme “The Freedom of the Church in the Communist State” (third enlarged
edition, Sao Paulo, 1964), which your Most Reverend Excellency was kind enough
to send to this Sacred Congregation with the very kind letter that reached our
offices this past November.
At the same time that we express
to you our sincere gratitude, we congratulate Your Excellency and the eminent
author, justly celebrated for his philosophical, historical, and sociological
knowledge, and we wish the widest circulation for this compact pamphlet, which
is a most faithful echo of all the Documents of the supreme Magisterium of the
Church, including the luminous encyclicals “Mater et Magistra” of John XXIII
and "Ecciesiam Suam" of Paul VI, happily reigning.
May Our Lord grant that all
Catholics comprehend the necessity of being united “in uno sensu eademque
sententia” in order to avoid the illusions, deceits, and dangers which today
threaten His Church internally.
With sentiments of particular
esteem and consideration, with all my heart I profess myself once again to Your
Most Reverend Excellency
Most
devoted in Jesus Christ
G. Card.
Pizzardo
Dino
Staffa, Secretary
Most
Reverend Exceflency
Antonio
de Castro Mayer
Bishop of
Campos
Giuseppe Cardinal Pizzardo was
born in Savona, Italy, in I 877, and was ordained in 1903. He was named an
archbishop in 1930 and a cardinal in 1937.
His service to the Church
spanned the reigns of five popes. He served on several congregations,
commissions. and in other capacities, including the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith and the commissions for biblical studies and the revision
of the Code of Canon Law. Serving also in the Vatican diplomatic corps, he was
one of the key negotiators of the 1929 Lateran Treaty.
Although chairman of one of the
preparatory Commissions for the Second Vatican Council, he took no part in the
Council's debate.
Cardinal Pizzardo died in Rome
in 1970 at 93, the oldest of the 131‑member College of Cardinals.
Archbishop Dino Staffa was born
in Fabriago, Italy, in 1906. He was ordained for his native diocese of Imola in
1929, hut soon after was sent to Rome for higher studies. He served in various
Roman Congregations. as a professor of Canon Law at the Pontifical Lateran
University. and on various Vatican courts, including as Prefect of the Supreme
Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura from 1969 until his death.
He was raised to the episcopate
in 1960 and created a cardinal in 1967.
His writings include
commentaries on Canon Law, histories of the Pontifical and other ecclesiastical
academies and of Apostolic delegations, and works on the freedom of Catholic
schools.
Cardinal Staffa died in 1977.
Footnotes
1. This
introduction was first published in the April 1959 issue of the Brazilian
journal Catolicismo.
2. Cf.
Leo XIII, apostolic letter Parvenu a la vingt‑cinquieme annee
March 19, 1902, in Fr. John J. Wynne, S.J., The Great Encylica1Letters of
Pope Leo XIII (New York: Benziger Bros., 1903), pp. 559‑560.
3. Pius
XII, allocution to the Union of Men of the Italian Catholic Action on October
12, 1952, Discorsi e radiomessagi di Sua Santita Pio XII (Vatican:
Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana. 1953), vol.14, p.359.
4. See
Sainte‑Beuve, Etudes des lundis ‑ XVIIeme siecle ‑
Saint Francois de Sales (Paris: Librairie Garnier, 1928), p.364.
5. Leo
XIII, encyclical Au milieu des sollicitudes, February 16, 1892, Bonne
Presse, Paris, vol.3, p. 116.
6. Saint
Pius X, Notre charge apostolique, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol.2,
p.618.
7. Pius
VI, allocution to the Consistory of June 17, 1793, Les Enseignements
Pontificaux ‑- La Paix Interieure des Nations, by the monks of
Solesmes (Paris: Deselee & Cie), p.8.
8. Pius
XII, allocution to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility, January 16, 1946, Discorsi
e radiomessaggi, vol.7, p.340.
9. See
Part I, Chapter 3, 5; also Chapter 7, 3.
10. Paul
Bourgct, Le Demon du Midi (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1914). vol. 2, p. 375.
11. Cf.
Leo XIII, encyclical Quod Apostolici muneris, December 28, 1878, in Fr.
Joseph Husslein, S.J., Social Wellsprings: Fourteen Epochal Documents by
Pope Leo XIII (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1940), p.15.
12. See
Part 1, Chapter 4.
13. See
I, C, above.
14. See
Part II, Chapter 8, 2.
15. See
Part I, Chapter 9.
16. The
author is referring to the King of the Belgians. Subsequently, in 1975, Prince
Joan Carlos was sworn in as King of Spain.‑Ed.
17. Pius
IX, letter to the president and members of the Saint Ambrose Circle of Milan,
March 6, 1873, in I Papi e la Gioventu (Rome: Editrice A.V.E., 1944), p.36.
18. Leo
XIII, encyclical Immortole Dei, November I, 1885, Bonne Presse, Paris,
vol.2, p.39.
19. John
XXIII, radio message of December 28, 1958, to the population of Messina, on the
fiftieth anniversary of the earthquake which destroyed that city, L'Osservatore
Rornano (weekly French edition), January 23, 1959.
20. Cf.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, De Regimine Pnncioum, I, l4-15.
21. Cf. First Vatican Council, sess. III, chapter 2 (Denzinger l7-16).
22. Cf
Council of Trent, sess. VI, Chapter 2 (Denzinger 812).
23. Saint
Pius X, encyclical Il fermo proposito, June II, 1905, Bonne Presse,
Paris, vol. 2, p.92.
24. Cf. l
John 2:16.
25. See
item m, below.
26. Cf.
Saint Pius X, apostolic letter Notre charge apostolique, August 25,
1910. America Catholic Quarterly Review, vol.35 (October 1910), p.700.
27. Cf.
Pius XII, Christmas broadcast, 1944, in Vincent A. Yzermans, Major Addresses
of Pope Pius XII (St. Paul: North Central Publishing Co., 1961), vol.2, pp.
81‑82.
28. See
Part 1, Chapter 11, 3.
29. Cf. Summa
Contra Gentiles, II, 45; Summa Theologica, I, q. 47, a. 2.
30. Cf. Summa
Theologica, 1, q. 50, a. 4.
31.
Ibid., q.96, aa.3,4.
32. Cf.
Pius XII, Christmas broadcast, 1944, op. cit., pp.81‑82.
33. Rom.
7:23.
34. Cf.
Rom. 7:25.
35. See
item A, above.
36. See
Part I, Chapter 7, 2, D.
37.
Donoso Cortes's important development on this truth is very pertinent to the
present work. See his "Ensayo sobre el Catolicismo, el Liberalismo y el
Socialismo," in Obras Completas (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores
Cristianos, 1946), vol.2, p.377.
38. See
Part I, Chapter 6, 5, A.
39. See
Part II, Chapter 12, 10.
40. Cf.
Matt. 12:20.
41. Cf.
Christmas broadcast, 1957, in Yzermans, The Major Addresses of Pope Pius XII,
Vol. 2, p.233.
42. See Part I, Chapter 9.
43. Eccles. 4:10.
43. Louis
Veoulot, Oeuvres Completes (Paris. Lethielleux Librairie‑ Editeur,
n.d.), vol.33, p.349.
44. Cf.
Matt. 13:52. 45. See Part II. Chapter 8, 3, B.
45. See
Part II. Chapter 8, 3, B.
46. See
Part I, Chapter 6, 4.
47. Saint
Pius X, letter to Count Medolago Albani, President of the Socioeconomic Union
of Italy, November 22, 1909. Bonne Presse, Paris, vol.5, p.76.
48. Saint
Pius X, encyclical Jucundo sane, March 12, 1904, Bonne Presse, Paris,
vol. 1, p.158.
49. Ibid.
50. Cf.
Luke 15:16‑19.
51. Cf.
Matt. 12:20.
52. See
Part I, Chapter 7, 3.
53.
Phil-4:13.
54. See
especially Part I, Chapter 7, 2.
55. See
Part II, Chapter 12, 7.
56. Cf.
Leo XIII, encyclical Graves de Communi; January 18, 1901, in Wynne, The Great
Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII, pp.485‑486.
57. Cf.
Matt.5:13.
58. See Part I,
Chapter 7, 3, A, k.
59. See
Part I, Chapter 12.
60.
Cicero, Familiares, 12,25,5
61. Pius
XII, exhortation to the faithful of Rome, February 10, l952, Discorsi e
radiomessaggi. vol.13, p.471.
62. See
no.5, above.
63. Saint
Pius X, encyclical Singulari quadam, September 24, 1912. Bonne Presse. Paris,
vol.7, p.275.
64.
Besides two initial printings in Catolicismo, Revolution and Counter‑Revolution,
in book form, has had two editions in Portuguese, three editions in Italian
(one in Turin, two in Piacenza), six in Spanish (one in Barcelona, one in
Bilbao, one in Santiago, Chile, one in Colombia, and two in Buenos Aires), two
in French (in Brazil and Canada), and two in English (in Fullerton, California,
and in New Rochelle, New York). It has also been transcribed in full in the
magazines Que Pasa? (Madrid) and Fiducia (Santiago, Chile). These editions
total about 90,000 copies.‑Ed.
65. Now
the Association Francaise pour la Défense de la Tradition, de la Famille et de
la Propriété.
66. See
the book Um homem, urna obra, uma gesto ‑ Homenagem das TEP’s a Plinio
Corrêa de Oliveira (Sao Paulo: Edicoes de Amanha, 1989), which includes
ample historical data on TFPs and TFP Bureaus in 22 countries on six
continents.‑Ed.
67. Regarding
the fight against the more recent forms of socialism, Prof. Plinio Corrêa de
Oliveira's What Does Self‑Managing Socialism mean for Communism: A
Barrier? Or a Bridgehead? deserves special mention. It was widely published
in 1982 (in 50 major Westem newspapers and magazines, with a total of over 33
million copies). This publication prompted Friedrich A. Hayek, Nobel Prize
winner in economics, to write a letter of high praise. Also of great interest
are the books Espana. anestesiada sin percibirlo, amordazada sin saberlo,
extraviada sin quererlo: Ia obra del PSOE and Ad perpetuam rei memoriam,
published by the Spanish TFP in 1988 and 1991 respectively.‑Ed.
68.
Revolution and Counter‑Revolution has also had significant circulation in
Australia, South Africa, and the Philippines. – Ed.
69. See
Introduction and Part I, Chapter 3, 5, A‑D.
70. We
speak of the infiltration of communism into the various churches It is
indispensable to register that this infiltration is a supreme danger to the
world, specifically in so far as it is carried on in the Holy Roman Catholic
and Apostolic Church. The reason for this is that she is not merely a species
of the genus churches. She is the only living and true Church of the living and
true God, the only Mystical Spouse of Our Lord Jesus Christ. In relation to the
other churches, she is not a greater and more brilliant diamond among smaller
and less brilliant ones: She is the only true diamond among “similars"
made of glass.
71. In
February of 1990, the author released a manifesto titled "Communism and
Anticommunism on the Threshold of the Millennium's Last Decade." An
earnest questioning of communist leaders in both East and West regarding
perestroika, it was published in 21 newspapers of 8 countries and had wide
repercussion, especially in Italy. – Ed.
72.
Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World (New
York: Harper & Row, 1987), p.34.
73. This vast anti‑socialist
saturation in Western Europe, although fundamentally a reinvigoration of the
center and not of the right, is of indisputable importance in the fight between
the Revolution and the Counter‑Revolution. For, to the extent that
European socialism senses it is losing its rank and file, its leaders will have
to display a distancing from and even a wariness of communism. In turn, the
centrist currents, in order not to be taken for socialists by their own
electorates, will have to manifest an even more accentuated anticommunist
position. And the right wing of the Centrist parties will have to declare
itself to be even militantly anti‑socialist.
In other words, the leftist and
centrist currents in favor of collaborating with communism will suffer what
occurs to a train when the locomotive is suddenly braked. The car immediately
behind it is hit with the shock and is pushed in a direction opposite the one
it was travelling. In turn, this car transmits the shock to the second car with
an analogous effect, and so on, down to the last car.
Could this present accentuating
of the anti‑socialist allergy be the first manifestation of a profound
phenomenon destined to durably impoverish the revolutionary process? Or is it a
mere ambiguous and passing spasm of common sense amid the contemporary chaos?
What has occurred thus far does not yet provide grounds for an answer.
74. Part
I Chapter 5.
75. Cf.
sermon of Paul VI on June 29, 1972.
76.
Insegnamenti di Paulo VI, vol.10, pp.707‑709.
77.
Ibid., vol.6, p 1188.
78. John
Paul II, allocution to the religious and priests participating in the First
Italian National Congress on Missions to the People for the 80s, February 6,
1981. L 'Osservatore Romano, February 7, 1981.
79. From
Vittorio Messori, Vittoria Messori a colloquio con il cardinale Joseph
Ratzinger – Rapporto sulla fede (Milan:
Edizioni Paoline, 1985), pp.27‑28.
80.
Allocution of Paul VI to the Lombard Seminary, December 7, 1968.
81. Since the 1930s, with the group that
later founded the Brazilian TFP, we have been employing the best of our time
and possibilities of action and combat in the battles leading up to the great
battle inside the Church. Our first extensive undertaking in this struggle was
the publication of the hook Em Defesa da Acao Catolica (Sao Paulo:
Editora Ave Maria, 1943), denouncing the resurgence of modernist errors in
Brazil's Catholic Action movement. It is also fitting to mention our much more
recent study A Igreja ante a escalada da ameaca comunista – Apelo aos Bispos
silenciosos (Sao Paulo: Editora Vera Cruz, 1976), pp. 37‑53.
Today, after more than forty
years, the struggle is at its height, permitting one to foresee developments of
an amplitude and intensity difficult to measure. In this struggle we are
gladdened by the presence in the ranks of the TFPs and like organizations of so
many new brothers‑in‑ideal, in over twenty countries on six
continents. It is legitimate also on the battlefield for the soldiers of the
good to say to one another: “Quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare fratres in
unum” (“Behold how good it is and how pleasant where brethren dwell together in
unity”) (Psalm 132:1).
82. In
1990 the TFPs surpassed this record with the largest petition drive in history.
They gathered 5,212,580 signatures for the liberation of Lithuania, then under
the Soviet yoke.
83.
Titled 'The Vatican Policy of Distention Toward the Communist Governments ‑
The Question for the TFP: To Take No Stand? Or to Resist?," this
declaration, a veritable manifesto, was published, beginning in April 1974, in
57 newspapers in 11 countries.‑Ed.
84. Gal.
2:l1.
85. This
work ‑ monumental for its documentation, its argumentation, and the
theses it defends - had a truly epic forerunner even before the installation of
communism in Chile, namely, Fabio Vidigal Xavier da Silveira's Frei: El
Kerensky Chileno. It denounced the decisive collaboration of the Chilean
Christian Democratic party and its leader Eduardo Frei, then president of the
country, in paving the way for the Marxist victory. Published in Brazil,
Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Italy, and Venezuela. the book went through
seventeen printings, with more than 100,000 copies.
86. Today
the Spanish TFP: Sociedad Espanola de Defensa de la Tradicion, Familia y
Propiedad‑TFP Covadonga.
87. There
are now TFPs and like organizations in Argentina, Australia. Bolivia, Brazil.
Canada, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, France, Germany, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal,
South Africa, Spain, the United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela. They have
representation offices in Rome, Paris, Frankfurt, London, Edinburgh, San José
de Costa Rica, Sydney, and Wellington (New Zealand). In addition, a dynamic
group of TFP friends recently formed in the Philippines.
88. See
Part I, Chapter 6, 3.
89. Cf.
Claude Levy‑Strauss, La pensee sauvage (Paris: Plon, 1969).
90. Psalm
95:5.
91.
"We well know that modern man, overwhelmed by speeches, gives signs of
being increasingly tired of listening and, worse still, of being irresponsive
to words. We are also aware of the opinions of numerous psychologists and
sociologists who affirm that modem man has already transcended the civilization
of the word ‑ which has become practically inefficacious and useless ‑
and lives today in the civilization of the image" (Apostolic exhortation Evangelii
nuntiandi, December 8, 1975,
Documentos Pontificios, 6th ed. [Petropolis: Vozes, 1984], no. 188, p.30).
92. Regarding
this hope, see the commentaries added to Chapter 2 of this Part III.
93. See
Part I, Chapter 5, 1‑3.
94. Cf.
Psalm 122:1‑2.
95. See
Part III, Chapter 2, commentary “Perestroika and Glasnost: Dismantling the
Third Revolution or Metamorphosing Communism?"
96. Cf.
Folha de S. Paulo, December 21, 1991.
97. Cf. O
Estado de S. Paulo, January 11, 1992.
98. Cf.
Le Figaro, March 12, 1992.
99. See
Part III, Chapter 2, commentary – Perestroika and Glasnost: Dismantling the
Third Revolution or Metamorphosing Communism?"
100. Cf.
Jornal do Tarde, Sao Paulo, December 27,1991.
101. Cf.
Ambiro Finonciero, Buenos Aires, February 19, 1992.
102. Cf. El Tiempo, Bogota, February 22, 1992.