Recently a pseudonymous author wrote a reply to E. M. Milco’s two recent critiques of liberalism (see here and here). It’s a bit of a queer piece, what with the author’s insistence that Catholic Action is a “neo-Catholic strategy” of relatively recent vintage. Moreover, the author seems to misunderstand “traditionalism” (and by this I assume he means traditional Catholicism) as an alternative to Catholic Action as opposed to its continuation. No traditional Catholic worth his salt should set aside lightly that the principles of Catholic Action are part of the authentic magisterium of the Church and arguably received their fullest explication during the reign of St. Pius X. Here is an extended excerpt on the matter, lifted from Papa Sarto’s 1905 encyclical Il Fermo Proposito:
6. This fact, however, is no reason to lose courage. The Church well knows that the gates of hell will not prevail against her. Furthermore, she knows that she will be sorely afflicted; that her apostles are sent as lambs among wolves; that her followers will always bear the brunt of hatred and contempt, just as her Divine Founder received hatred and contempt. So the Church advances unafraid, spreading the Kingdom of God wherever she preaches and studying every possible means she can use in regaining the losses in the kingdom already conquered. “To restore all things in Christ” has always been the Church’s motto, and it is especially Our Own during these fearful moments through which we are now passing. “To restore all things” — not in any haphazard fashion, but “in Christ”; and the Apostle adds, “both those in the heavens and those on the earth.” “To restore all things in Christ” includes not only what properly pertains to the divine mission of the Church, namely, leading souls to God, but also what We have already explained as flowing from that divine mission, namely, Christian civilization in each and every one of the elements composing it.
7. Since We particularly dwell on this last part of the desired restoration, you clearly see, Venerable Brethren, the services rendered to the Church by those chosen bands of Catholics who aim to unite all their forces in combating anti-Christian civilization by every just and lawful means. They use every means in repairing the serious disorders caused by it. They seek to restore Jesus Christ to the family, the school and society by re-establishing the principle that human authority represents the authority of God. They take to heart the interests of the people, especially those of the working and agricultural classes, not only by inculcating in the hearts of everybody a true religious spirit (the only true fount of consolation among the troubles of this life) but also by endeavoring to dry their tears, to alleviate their sufferings, and to improve their economic condition by wise measures. They strive, in a word, to make public laws conformable to justice and amend or suppress those which are not so. Finally, they defend and support in a true Catholic spirit the rights of God in all things and the no less sacred rights of the Church.
8. All these works, sustained and promoted chiefly by lay Catholics and whose form varies according to the needs of each country, constitute what is generally known by a distinctive and surely a very noble name: “Catholic Action,” or the “Action of Catholics.” At all times it came to the aid of the Church, and the Church has always cherished and blessed such help, using it in many ways according to the exigencies of the age.
Two years earlier, in his motu proprio Fin Dalla Prima Nostra, Pius X set forth “the fundamental plan” of Catholic Action. No Catholic should feel entitled to deviate from these and other core principles of the Church’s social magisterium. Rather they should invest the time to learn what these principles are and, from there, devise the means to put them into practice. This is easier said than done, of course, especially at a time in global history where liberalism has managed to box-out almost every other competing ideology on the planet to become absolutely normative (or nearly so). But there are small ways that arise in the course of everyday life to help “restore all things in Christ.” They include—but are certainly not limited to—keeping a small icon or crucifix at one’s desk at work; praying before meals, even when in public; correcting in charity those who besmirch the Faith; showing love toward the poor and less fortunate; taking time out during the day to pray; etc. All of these acts are, by today’s lights, quite radical; but they also have the benefit of conforming to the desires of a great pope and, more importantly, Christ the King of all peoples.
This post originally appeared at Opus Publicum.
]]>Dubium: Is integralism essentially bound up with racism, nationalism, and totalitarianism?
Responsum: Negative.
Before proceeding to the explanation, it is important to identify exactly what is meant by the term “integralism.” An earlier article, “Catholic Integralism and the Social Kingship of Christ,” set forth the core principles of integralism and its inextricable bond to the Catholic Church’s doctrine of the Kingship of Christ. A more detailed and theologically refined explication of “the integralist thesis” is available on Pater Edmund Waldstein’s blog, Sancrucensis. P. Edmund closes his discussion and defense of integralism with the following passage from Thomistic philosopher-theologian Charles De Koninck’s seminal work, On the Primacy of the Common Good:
When those in whose charge the common good lies do not order it explicitly to God, is society not corrupted at its very root? . . . Political prudence rules the common good insofar as the latter is Divine. For that reason Cajetan and John of St. Thomas held that the legal justice of the prince is more perfect than the virtue of religion. . . . The ordering to the common good is so natural that a pure intellect cannot deviate from it in the pure state of nature. In fact the fallen angels, elevated to the supernatural order, did turn aside from the common good but from that common good which is the most Divine, namely supernatural beatitude, and it is only by way of consequence that they lost their natural common good. The fallen angels ignored by a practical ignorance (ignorantia electionis) the common good of grace; we, on the other hand, have come to the point of being ignorant of every common good even speculatively. The common good, and not the person and liberty, being the very principle of all law, of all rights, of all justice and of all liberty, a speculative error concerning it leads fatally to the most execrable practical consequences.
Neither article identifies integralism with the ideologies of racism, nationalism, and totalitarianism. That is only fitting. For though it is a historical fact that the label “integralist,” like its French variant “integrist,” has been appropriated by, or misapplied to, socio-political movements which have little to do with the magisterial teachings of the Catholic Church and the deep intellectual patrimony which supports them, that does not mean that The Josias, or any other Catholic cooperative dedicated to the restoration of Christ’s social reign, ought to surrender the term.
At the same time, however, it is incumbent upon those who embrace a refreshened and authentic Catholic integralism to distance themselves from non-Christian movements, past and present, which tended to view religion through an instrumentalist lens. Whether these movements worshipped blood, soil, or both is irrelevant; that they did not place our Lord Jesus Christ at the center of their respective programs renders them poor representatives of truly Catholic integralism. More critically, by adopting positions which conflict with the Church’s magisterium and the natural law, nationalist and racialist movements, and those who continue to be influenced by them, wittingly or unwittingly place themselves against God, the true fount from which all political authority flows, Whose gift of unmerited Salvation is, now and always, the final end of mankind.
As for racism, Pope Pius XII, in his 1939 encyclical Summi Pontificatus (paragraph 38), affirms the “marvelous vision,” first set forth by St. Paul, “which makes us see the human race in the unity of one common origin in God” and, further,
[T]he unity of nature which in every man is equally composed of material body and spiritual, immortal soul; in the unity of the immediate end and mission in the world; in the unity of dwelling place, the earth, of whose resources all men can by natural right avail themselves, to sustain and develop life; in the unity of the supernatural end, God Himself, to Whom all should tend; in the unity of means to secure that end.
With respect to totalitarianism and nationalism, which reduce and distort the place of God and the true religion in political life, Pius XII’s condemnation is clear and therefore worth quoting at length (paragraphs 52-55):
[T]here is yet another error no less pernicious to the well-being of the nations and to the prosperity of that great human society which gathers together and embraces within its confines all races. It is the error contained in those ideas which do not hesitate to divorce civil authority from every kind of dependence upon the Supreme Being . . . and from every restraint of a Higher Law derived from God[.] Thus they accord the civil authority an unrestricted field of action that is at the mercy of the changeful tide of human will, or of the dictates of casual historical claims, and of the interests of a few.
Once the authority of God and the sway of His law are denied in this way, the civil authority as an inevitable result tends to attribute to itself that absolute autonomy which belongs exclusively to the Supreme Maker. It puts itself in the place of the Almighty and elevates the State or group into the last end of life, the supreme criterion of the moral and juridical order, and therefore forbids every appeal to the principles of natural reason and of the Christian conscience.
. . .
Nonetheless, one must not forget the essential insufficiency and weakness of every principle of social life which rests upon a purely human foundation, is inspired by merely earthly motives and relies for its force on the sanction of a purely external authority.
Where the dependence of human right upon the Divine is denied, where appeal is made only to some insecure idea of a merely human authority, and an autonomy is claimed which rests only upon a utilitarian morality, there human law itself justly forfeits in its more weighty application the moral force which is the essential condition for its acknowledgment and also for its demand of sacrifices.
If we look to the draft encyclical Humani Generis Unitas of Pius XI, we can see that Pius XII developed these thoughts in continuity with his predecessor. Though unpublished at the time of his death in 1939, the document prefigured Pius XII’s words by identifying the destructive effects of racism, including its tendency to falsely tie race and religion together while fueling international tensions.
While some modern-day nationalists go to great lengths to distinguish themselves from run-of-the-mill racists, there can be little denying that some of history’s most visible and destructive nationalist movements, such as National Socialism and Romania’s Iron Guard, were fueled by racialist ideology. Further, in an era where almost all Western countries are comprised of different ethnic groups, it is particularly important to remain vigilant against conflating national interests with racist intents. A Catholic integralist may perhaps rightly lament poorly crafted immigration policies which, among other things, indiscriminately allow the importation of religious and intellectual error into his country; but he should in no way lose the desire to serve as a witness to the truth and lead his newfound fellow countrymen to the true religion, which is the Catholic Faith.
In closing, it is important to remember that neither Pius XI nor Pius XII state that Catholics cannot be patriotic. Love of country is, to a measured extent, part of integralism insofar as it desires the concrete political community to be oriented to the common good. If integralism is in any sense “subversive” it is only against those false ideas which continue to wreak havoc on the social, economic, and cultural lives of modern liberal-democratic states. It is a lie to say that integralists wish simply to swap out one form of ideologically driven oppression for another. Although the integralist thesis neither accepts the modern reconstruction of “rights” based on individualism, nor tethers itself to fanciful notions of egalitarianism and libertinism, it remains dedicated to the truth that man is free, and only free, when he chooses the good. To embrace any other conception of liberty would run the risk of rejecting the objective moral order of the world altogether while continuing to support liberalism—an ideology no less destructive than the others rejected here.
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Contrary to popular belief, Catholic integralism—or what I shall refer to simply as “integralism” for the duration of this essay—is not first and foremost a political program. For the integral understanding of Christianity begins first with the supernatural society established by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, namely the Corpus Mysticum, the Holy Catholic Church, which transcends the temporal sphere and has for its end the salvation of souls. By carrying out its mission in the world, the Catholic Church possesses indirect power over the temporal sphere which is exercised for the good of souls. This indirect power in no way sullies the Church’s divine mission nor dilutes it by way of overextension since the civil authority retains at all times direct power over temporal matters.
Sitting at the head of both the ecclesiastical and civil authorities is Christ the King. Contrary to distortions which entered the Church’s liturgy nearly a half-century ago, the Kingship of Christ is not exclusively spiritual. Although Christ’s spiritual rule in this world began 2,000 years ago and can in no way be abrogated, the temporal acceptance of this rule, that is, the recognition of Christ’s reign in its full integrity and truth only came about after the course of centuries whereby the civil rulers, whose authority was never their own and always from God, accepted the divine mission of the Church and her supernatural constitution. While the nations of this world have drifted far from accepting this reality, their denial cannot with any true effect “uncrown” or “dethrone” Christ. His social reign may, through ignorance or sin, be unrecognized and unimplemented by the present civil authorities, but they possess no right to do so. As Pope Pius XI made clear in his great encyclical Quas Primas, “It would be a grave error, on the other hand, to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power.”
Integralism follows this reminder of Pius XI with the utmost degree of seriousness. Even in the absence of states and more localized political communities which are fully permeated with the teachings of the Catholic Church, integralists live out their public lives, be it in the workplace or the voting booth, under the reign of Christ. That is, there is no separation between private “religious life” and public “citizen life”; the obligations in justice which should bind all nations at all times continues to bind all Catholics, regardless of what the civil authority recommends. While prudential considerations will affect application, no Catholic businessman, for instance, holds the right to pay his workers unjust wages simply because liberal economic ideology equates “justness” with the prevailing market wage. Similarly, no Catholic politician, regardless of which level of office he holds (municipal, state, or national), has the right to support immoral laws legalization, inter alia, abortion, same-sex unions, narcotics, prostitution, and pornography. Integralism recognizes no right to abscond from moral duty in the name of temporal convenience.
Here it is important to stress that integralism is neither romantic nor utopian. On the charge of romanticism or the accusation that integralists simply want to “turn back the clock” on human history, it must be said that while there may be some integralists who believe that something like that should occur, such a fantastical belief is not intrinsic to integralism. Indeed, a brief glance back over the last several centuries of papal teachings on religion and society reveals, at least up until 50 years ago, a desire to maintain an integral approach to political and economic affairs in the modern world. Given the rapid pace of change that occurred between the 19th and 20th centuries, the great popes of the past sometimes felt compelled to address the same topic in a relatively short time span. For example, it only took 40 years since the promulgation of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum for Pius XI to issue Quadragesimo Anno which both deepened the former’s economic prescriptions while extending them to a world reeling from the effects of unbridled capitalism and economic depression. Neither Leo XIII nor Pius XI called for dismantling the modern industrial machine, intentionally retarding scientific and technological progress, nor restoring the older system of social safeguards, such as guilds, in isolation from the economic revolution which had occurred over the course of the previous two centuries. Integralism embraces timeless principles, but not without two eyes fixed firmly on the concrete situation which the world finds itself in.
As for the claim that integralists are utopians, nothing could be further from the truth. While an integral relationship between Church and State reached its high point during the Middle Ages, integralists acknowledge that this relationship was never perfect and that the sinfulness and shortcomings of man often undermined the ability of the Church to fully furnish the world with her treasures. At the same time, integralists recognize that plethora of non-Catholic forces which continue to conspire against the Church and the social rights of Christ the King. While these forces have changed over the centuries, taking on new platforms upheld with fresh lies, they remain a grave challenge to the restoration of a truly Catholic culture and a society which radiates with the splendor of truth. It must also be stressed that a disturbing number of modern errors have made their way into Corpus Mysticum, infecting both clerics and laity with the virus of liberalism which leads to the disastrous syndromes of indifferentism and relativism. Integralism is dedicated to combatting these errors, first for the good of the Church and her divine mission and, second, for the common good of society which can never be divorced rightly from man’s intended supernatural end.
The future of integralism as a significant force within the life of the Church and the nations of the world is unwritten, but the principles of integralism, which are bound to the truth of Christ’s rightful rule in the spiritual and temporal spheres, will survive with the Church until the Second Coming. The defeatist mindset which holds that the days of integralism have passed and that a “new order” or “new relationship” must be established between the Church and the world remains a prevalent temptation; and like all temptations, which are from the devil, must be resisted. Equally tempting to integralists is despair. Have the affairs of the Church and society not become so corrupted with error and moral rot that there is no longer any hope or, if there is hope, it is in trying to escape the world and pray for the eschaton? Ah, but no Catholic has any right to despair. None! The integral Catholic must remain fortified by the messages of light which God, in His love and compassion for his frail, fallen, and fearful creatures has delivered through the Church. And above all the integralist repairs to the words of their savior and king: “These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
]]>Lamentably few Catholics today, outside of traditional circles, seem interested in reading Catholic Social Teaching or, better put, the Church’s social magisterium in holistic, continuous manner. Ideological fracturing within the Church has led various camps to adopt certain elements of Catholic Social Teaching for their own while discarding others which appear inconvenient to their oftentimes tendentious interpretations of the magisterium. In two earlier articles, one for the online venue Ethika Politika and another for The Angelus magazine, I shed critical light on the “hermeneutic of selectivity” which reigns supreme in contemporary discussions of Catholic Social Teaching. Although it is impossible to offer a clean taxonomy of the hermeneutic of selectivity, it typically appears in one of three forms:
It is necessary to note here that there can be significant overlap between the latter two hermeneutics of selectivity, though the second tries to keep itself within the orbit of actual papal documents more than the third. The neoliberal/libertarian approach can itself be broken down into smaller pieces, with anarcho-capitalists such as Jeffrey Tucker and Tom Woods representing the most extreme form of this hermeneutical approach while certain Catholic thinkers associated with the officially non-confessional Acton Institute, such as Fr. Robert Sirico and Samuel Gregg, represent a more moderate, though still choosy, brand of hermeneutics. At the end of the day, however, all three hermeneutical approaches butcher the magisterium and leave Catholics believing that the Church has ratified, on the one hand, either free-market or New Deal-style liberalism or, on the other, set forth a radical social vision which is both frighteningly utopian and anti-hierarchical.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to see how any of these three hermeneutical approaches, and the results they reach, can be squared with St. Pius X’s contributions to the Church’s social magisterium. Without getting into details—some of which are set forth in my aforementioned article in The Angelus—a cursory glance at the encyclical Notre Charge Apostolique, which was directed against the French Sillonist movement, throws cold water on the egalitarian aspirations of socialist Catholics. In paragraph 23, the saintly pontiff writes: “Thus, to the Sillon, every inequality of condition is an injustice, or at least, a diminution of justice. Here we have a principle that conflicts sharply with the nature of things, a principle conducive to jealously, injustice, and subversive to any social order.” Today, both social-justice and socialist Catholics make much of inequality, arguing that its existence can be, and must be, stamped out without regard to the social vices which can attend such views. In fact, the egalitarian outlook ignores a fundamental truth, one found in Leo XIII’s Quod Apostolici Muneris and repeated by St. Pius X in his motu proprio Fin Dalla Prima Nostra, articles I and III: “Human society, as established by God, is composed of unequal elements, just as the different parts of the human body are unequal; to make them all equal is impossible, and would mean the destruction of human society” and, further, that “it follows that there are, according to the ordinance of God, in human society princes and subjects, masters and proletariat, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, nobles and plebeians, all of whom, united in the bonds of love, are to help one another to attain their last end in heaven, and their material and moral welfare here on earth.”
Lest one assume that Pius X, who continues to hold the reputation of being an arch-reactionary in the minds of many contemporary Catholics, limited himself to attacking radical social movements with nothing to say to those who are today attached to neoliberal/libertarian visions of the unbridled marketplace, it is important to look further at the text of Fin Dalla Prima Nostra which, inter alia, binds capitalists in justice to pay just wages, to not injure workers financially through usury, and to ensure that their family lives are protected (article VIII). In union with his predecessor, Leo XIII, and eventual successor, Pius XI, Pius X’s vision of capitalist/labor relations is a harmonious one maintained through private aid, insurance, trade, and professional associations. Instead of first seeking centralized, state-based solutions, Pius X advocated a fresh form of Catholic Action dedicated to reforming the socio-economic order.
While some, as Richard L. Camp observes in his book The Papal Ideology of Social Reform pgs. 89-90, have seen a greater emphasis on private charity over political reform in Pius X’s magisterial contributions, Camp concludes that this view is “not entirely fair.” He goes on to write:
It would have been more just to say that Pius X felt social Catholics were neglecting the role of charity too much in their zeal for reform, and he wanted to right the balance. He never rejected reform itself as a goal for Catholics as long as it was kept within the bounds of Catholic teaching and tradition. This was clear in his early encyclicals such as E Supremi Apostolatus (October 4, 1903) in which he took as his motto “The Restoration of All Things in Christ” and applied it to the social field. The Catholic Church was interested, he said, not only in the spiritual welfare of peoples but in their material prosperity as well. In a world restored to Christ, the wealthy would be both just and charitable to the humble, and the latter would endure in patience the privations of their less fortunate condition. In another encyclical [Il Fermo Proposito], he declared that the teachings of Jesus gave support to the material well-being of individuals and families in society. In so far as the clergy and laity were trying by just and charitable means to improve the economic conditions of the masses, they were performing a religious duty.
Pius X, in his wisdom and prudence, paid careful attention to how social movements involving Catholics ought to be conducted while, in Notre Charge Apostolique especially, warning against a false political ecumenism which prompts the faithful “to leave[ ] [their] Catholicism outside the door so as to not alarm [their] comrades[.]” When surveying the contemporary Catholic landscape and the numerous Catholic-backed movements, institutions, and publications which have absorbed not only a neutral view of Christianity, but a neutral view of religion, so as to advance their potentially dubious liberal or Leftist goals, it is necessary to ask if such enterprises are being carried out in a spirit of true conformity with the magisterial pronouncements of Pius X and thus, by extension, the Church’s social magisterium as a whole. Sifting through this troubling reality remains a project for another day, however.
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The overall teaching is clear. It is part of the Church’s mission to seek out the State and be united with it; it is the duty of the State to be subject to the Church in matters religious, including those pertaining to the eternal law and the natural law. When the State attempts to create positive law that is contrary to the natural or eternal law, the law itself is invalid. But the Church betrays herself if in confronting evil laws she abandons the State to its own devices. The Church has a positive mission to create concord between the Church and State, not to sow dissension between them.
This is where things start to get a bit wobbly. While the Church cannot and must not “abandon the State to its own devices,” it must remain vigilant not to become a handmaid of the secular State either. To do so could have a disastrous impact on faith and morals.
That is not hyperbole, for we know from history this is true. In his towering contribution to the recent anthology Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church, Archbishop Cyril Vasil, S.J., Secretary of the Congregation for Oriental Churches, documents the problematic creation of ecclesiastical divorce in the Eastern Orthodox Church due to the conflation of Roman-Byzantine civil law and Orthodox canon law at the close of the first millennium. Following this move, the Eastern Church was assigned full authority over blessing and examining marriages, meaning that it “had to conform is practices to State and civil legislation. Then once civil legislation began to allow divorce and successive remarriages, the Eastern Church was obligated to recognize these practices.”
Such recognition carried a steep price for Eastern Orthodox doctrinal coherence. While numerous ex post facto “theories” have been put forth over the centuries to justify the Orthodox practice of ecclesiastical divorce (though sometimes different terminology is used), the hard reality is that the Byzantines, by accepting divorce duties from the State, exported the idea to other parts of the Orthodox world, including the emerging Russian and other Slavic churches. Now, more than 1,000 years later after it became cemented in Orthodoxy’s doctrine, ecclesiastical divorce remains an intractable source of contention between the Western and non-Catholic Eastern churches.
Some might object here and say that the situation in the Byzantine Empire, with its caesaropapist ecclesial-political arrangement, is a far cry from our current situation where the lines between secular government and Church authority are clearly demarcated. But is it that clear? For nearly two centuries influential elements in the American Catholic Church have sought to strike concords with the American brand of secular liberalism, demonstrating that “good Catholics” can be “good citizens” with “good citizens” here meaning a willingness to accept the privatization of religion in exchange for a package of ostensibly secure civil and political rights. Given the depth of catechetical confusion which now runs rampant, up to and including the active attempt of influential Catholic clerics and laity to fuse secular-liberal economic and social values onto the teaching of the Church, it would appear there is more than one way for the Corpus Mysticum to come under the thumb of the State.
Returning now to Joseph’s exhortation, it is critically important for faithful Catholics living in these unfortunate and uncertain times to make prudent choices concerning where and when it will accept, abandon, or agitate against the State and the dominant culture of relativism, hedonism, and religious indifferentism it promotes. At times Joseph seems too ready to declare the government of the United States illegitimate and lacking authentic authority. Even if that were true, would that not add to the argument that the Church, and all Christians of good will, ought to “get out of the marriage business” when that “business” is being conducted on behalf of an unlawful authority? We might wish to pray and reflect (but most of all pray) deeply on that question before pushing hearts and minds down such a perilous path.
None of this is to say that Reno and First Things, with its historic neoconservative orientation, warrant anything less than skepticism when they try to establish new marching orders for the American Catholic Church. Reasonable men can disagree over the intelligence and effectiveness of the “Marriage Pledge,” especially if that pledge is not accompanied by an unequivocal statement from the American hierarchy that the Church is not surrendering its custody over marriage in toto. However, Reno’s call represents a potentially necessary action that the Church may have to follow in order to remain free of the contemporary secular State’s influence.
]]>In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Dear pilgrims of Notre-Dame,
Here you are finally reassembled in the company of your guardian angels, themselves also present in the thousands, whom we salute with affection and gratitude, at the conclusion of this ardent pilgrimage filled with prayer, song, and sacrifice; and already, many of you have recovered the white robe of baptismal innocence. What happiness!
Here you are reassembled by God’s grace, in the heart of this blessed cathedral, under the watchful gaze of Our Lady of ‘la Belle Verrière’, one of the most beautiful images of the Holy Virgin Mary. The image before which we know that Saint Louis knelt after completing a pilgrimage barefoot.
Is this not sufficient to have us recover the taste for our Christian and French roots? We thank you, dear pilgrims, for having set out by the thousands to honor this Holy Virgin, and it is these thousands of voices, coming from thousands of hearts of all ages and conditions, which afford us, this evening, the most living image of Christendom.
We thank you for presenting yourselves thus, every year, like a living parable; for as you advanced during the course of this three—day trek towards Mary’s shrine praying and singing, you expressed the very condition of the Christian life, which is that of a long pilgrimage, a long march towards Paradise! And your walk ended in church, which is the image of the Heavenly Sanctuary.
The Christian life is a pilgrimage, often painful, which passes through Golgotha, but is illumined by the splendours of the Spirit. And which leads to glory. Oh! We may well be persecuted, but I forbid that we be pitied. For we belong to a race of exiles and voyagers, gifted with a prodigious power of invention, but refusing—that is its religion—to be distracted from the things of Heaven.
It that not what we shall sing, presently, at the end of the ‘Credo’: ‘Et expecto’—and I await,– ‘Vitam venturi saeculi’,–the life of the world to come? Oh! Not an earthly golden age, fruit of a supposed evolution, but God’s true Paradise, of which Jesus spoke to the good thief: “Today, you shall be with me in Paradise!”
If we seek to pacify the earth, to beautify the earth, it is not in order to replace Heaven, but so that the earth be Heaven’s stepladder.
And if, one day, faced with the growth of barbarism, we were obliged to take up arms in defense of our earthly cities, it is because, as our dear Péguy has said: “they are the image and the beginning, the body and the test of the House of God.”
But even before the hour sounds for a military reconquest, is it not permissible to speak of crusade, at least when a community finds itself threatened in its families, in its schools, in its sanctuaries, in the soul of its children?
And so it is, dear friends, that we are not afraid of revolution: we rather fear the eventuality of a counter-revolution ‘without God’!
This would be to remain trapped in the infernal cycle of laicism and desacralization! There is no word to express the horror that the absence of God from the modern world’s institutions should inspire in us! Look at the U.N.: elaborate architecture, giant halls, the flags of every nation blowing in the wind. ‘No crucifix’!
The world organized without God, without any reference to its Creator. An enormous blasphemy!
Visit a state school: the children are instructed in everything. ‘But silence about God’! What an atrocious scandal! This is a mutilation of the mind, an atrophy of the soul—not to mention the laws permitting the abominable crime of abortion.
But the saddest and most shameful of all is that the mass of Christians ends up becoming accustomed to this state of affairs. They do not protest; they do not react. Or, to give themselves an excuse, they invoke the changing norms of society. How shameful!
If there be anything worse than this declared renunciation, said a friend of ours, it is the smiling abandonment of principles, the gradual slide down the slippery slope, with airs of fidelity. Is there not a putrid scent wafting from modern civilization?
Well then! Against this apostasy of state and civilization which is destroying our families and our cities, we propose a great remedy across the entire body politic; we propose what is the ‘idée-force’ of any civilization worthy of the name: ‘Christendom’!
What is Christendom? Dear pilgrims, you know what it is and you’ve just experienced it: Christendom is a covenant between earth and Heaven; a pact, sealed in the blood of the martyrs, between the world of men and the Paradise of God; a play, both candid and serious, a humble beginning of Eternal Life. Christendom, my dear brothers, is the light of the Gospel projected upon our homeland, our families, our mores, our works. Christendom is the earthly body of the Church, her bulwark, her inscription in time.
Christendom, for us French, is Gallo-Roman France, daughter of her bishops and monks; it is the France of Clovis converted by Saint Clotilde and baptized by Saint Rémi; it is the land of Charlemagne counselled by Alcuin the monk, both of whom organized Christian schools, reformed the clergy, and protected the monasteries.
Christendom, for us, is 12th century France, covered with a white mantle of monasteries, where Cluny and Cîteaux were rivals in holiness, where thousands of clasped hands, consecrated to prayer, interceded day and night for the cities of man!
It is 13th century France, governed by a saintly king, son of Blanche of Castille, who invited to his table Saint Thomas Aquinas, while the sons of Saint Dominic and Saint Francis set out on the roads and in the cities, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom.
Christendom, in Spain, is Saint Ferdinand, the Catholic king; it is Isabelle of France, sister of Saint Louis, emulating her brother in piety, courage, and wise benevolence.
Christendom, dear pilgrims, is the military profession, tempered and consecrated by chivalry, the highest incarnation of the military ideal; it is crusade, where the sword is placed at the service of the faith, and where charity expresses itself through courage and sacrifice.
Christendom is a laborious spirit, the taste for a job well done, the self-effacement of the artist behind his work. Do you know the names of those who crafted the capitals of these columns, and these stained-glass windows?
Christendom is intelligent and creative energy, prayer translated into action, the use of bold, new techniques. It is the cathedral, breathtaking image of Heaven, immense vessel where Gregorian chant, suppliant and radiant, rises unanimous to vaulted heights, and then descends in layers of silence to our pacified hearts.
Christendom, my brothers,–let us be truthful,–is also a world threatened by the forces of evil; a cruel world where passions clash, a country in the grip of anarchy, the Kingdom of the Lilies ravaged by war, fire, famine, pestilence: sowers of death in countryside and city.
A woeful France, deprived of her king, in total decline, headed for anarchy and pillage. And it is in this universe of mire and blood, that the humus of our sinful humanity, watered by the tears of prayer and penitence, would cause to germinate the finest flower of our civilization, the purest and noblest, its stem the straightest ever to appear in our soil of France: Joan of Domrémy!
Saint Joan of Arc will complete, for us, the definition of Christendom. It is not only cathedral, crusade, and chivalry; it is not only art, philosophy, culture, and men’s works rising like a sacred liturgy to the throne of God. It is also, and especially, the proclamation of the kingship of Jesus Christ over souls, institutions, and mores. It is the temporal order of intelligence and love, submitted to the most high and most holy kingship of the Lord Jesus.
It is the affirmation that the sovereigns of the earth are but the viceroys of the King of Heaven. “The kingdom is not yours, said Joan of Arc to the dauphin, it is my Lord’s”—”And who is your Lord?” Joan is asked.—”The King of Heaven, replies the young girl, and He entrusts it to you, in order that you govern in his name.”
What a broadening of our perspective! What a grand vision of the dignity of the temporal order! In one striking phrase, the shepherd girl from Domrémy gives us God’s design for the internal rule of nations.
For the nations,–and ours in particular,–are families loved by God, loved so much that Jesus Christ, having redeemed them and washed them in his Blood, wishes also to reign over them, with a kingship of perfect peace, justice, and love: a prefiguration of Heaven.
“France, are you faithful to the promises of your Baptism?” asked the Pope, five years ago. Most Holy Virgin Mary, Our Lady of France, Our Lady of Chartres we ask you to heal the illness of this people, to restore its childlike purity, its filial honor. We ask you to renew its farming vocation, its peasant vocation, its large families lovingly and respectfully tending the bounteous land. This land which, over the centuries, has been able to produce honest bread and fruits of holiness.
Most Blessed Virgin, revive in this people its vocation of soldier, plowman, poet, hero, and saint. Restore for us the soul of France!
Deliver us from the ideological scourge constraining the soul of this people. The crucifix has been banned from schools, courts, and hospitals. They have arranged for man to be educated without God, to be judged without God, and to die without God!
It is therefore to a crusade and a reconquest that we are called. To reclaim our schools, our churches, and our families.
So that, one day, if God grants us this grace, we shall see coming towards us, at the conclusion of our efforts, the much loved and radiant features of she who was called by our ancestors, gentle France. Gentle France, image of the gentleness of God!
Would it be permitted us, this evening, before thousands of pilgrims, to speak of the gentleness of God?
It is a monk who speaks to you. And the gentleness of God, you know, rewards beyond all expectation, the battles that his servants wage for the Kingdom.
Paternal gentleness of God. Gentleness of the Crucified! O gentle Virgin Mary, wrap our embattled souls in your mantle of gentleness and peace.
We invite all of Christendom to meet here, next year, at Notre-Dame of Chartres, which, from this day forward, shall be our national Czestochowa.
May the Holy Spirit enlighten you, may the Most Blessed Virgin watch over you, and may the angelic Hosts protect you. Amen!
(Translated from the French by Peter Vere and Raymond Lévesque)
[The text of this sermon is inherited from Opus Publicum.]
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