Charles A. Coulombe

Rome and Romanticism

2012-01-30T07:22:00.000-08:00

Romanticism is a much-used word; because of itsvery wide-spread usage, it has become as hard to define as Catholicism incertain dioceses. Depending upon whom you read or speak to, it might appearvariously as a personality diagnosis, an artistic movement, a penchant for loveaffairs, or a sheer pejorative for unrealistic thought or views. What is itreally? Whence does it come?

That indefatigable source, the 1911 EncyclopaediaBritannica, carries no general definition of “Romanticism,” althoughreferences to it abound in that opus. The online “Wikipedia” tells us that “Ina general sense, ‘Romanticism’ covers a group of related artistic, political,philosophical and social trends arising out of the late 18^th and early19^th centuries in Europe. But a precise characterization and a specificdescription of Romanticism have been objects of intellectual history andliterary history for all of the twentieth century without any great measure ofconsensus emerging. Arthur Lovejoy attempted to demonstrate the difficulty ofthis problem in his seminal article "On The Discrimination ofRomanticisms" in his Essays in the History of Ideas (1948): “somescholars see romanticism as completely continuous with the present, some see itas the inaugural moment of modernity, some see it as the beginning of atradition of resistance to the Enlightenment, and still others date it firmlyin the direct aftermath of the French Revolution.”

Very confusing, to be sure. The word “Romance”itself comes from the post-Latin dialects in which such Medieval works as the GestaRomanorum, the Chansons de Geste, and the earlier versions of theArthurian stories were written. After a period of neglect starting with theReformation (and downright ridicule in the 18^th century), thesetales were prized by the generation of European writers, artists, and composerswho came to maturity in the wake of the French Revolution. Featuring suchheroes as Charlemagne and Arthur, and dealing with such topics as the HolyGrail, such stories were an enormous departure from the rationalisticstandpoint of the Enlightenment.

Of course, underneath the radar of such folk asVoltaire were the rumblings of Gothicism and Ossianism in the British Isles, and the Sturm und Drang in Germany. For all that the Enlightenedproclaimed the reorganisation of society according to “rational” principles,and the altering or overthrow of existing altars and thrones (such as Austria’sJoseph II, Prussia’s Frederick II, and Russia’s Catherine II might want tobanish superstition from their own religious establishments, but fiercelyresisted any challenge to their own power), something was brewing under thesurface.

While to-day we tend to think of theEnlightenment purely in terms of its role as a precursor to the FrenchRevolution, it is important to remember its role in informing the policies ofsuch “Enlightened Despots” as the three above-named, Spain’s (and Naples’)Charles III, Portugal’s Joseph (admittedlymanipulated by “his” minister, Pombal), and France’s Louis XV (similarly“guided” by Choiseul). Abolition of local liberties and privileges going backto the Middle Ages, assaults on the guild system, and tightening of censorshipwere all the order of the day. Although designed to make the local Sovereignever more master of his dominions, these policies had, ironically, the effectof loosening the respect in which the subjects had held their Monarchs. In Latin America and Belgium in particular, this kind ofcentralisation directly set the stage for revolution.

As with the State, so did the Enlightenmenthave its way with the Church. Its first great victory, of course, was theabolition of the Jesuits (although, ironically, non-Catholic “Greats” Catherineand Frederick refused publication of the Bull in their countries). Thepre-existing Gallicanism, joined by newly-coined movements like Febronianismand Josephinism, wanted to reduce the Catholic Church in each European Kingdom to a department of state, as werethe various established Protestant churches in their countries, or the OrthodoxChurch in Russia. Even Bishops got into the act,such as the Fathers of the Synod of Pistoia in Tuscany, and Elector-Archbishop Klemens Wenceslasof Cologne. All of these wished to reduce thePapacy to the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury in modern Anglicanism.

Aufklärung Catholicism, whether on the part ofroyals, nobles, or high ecclesiastics was also concerned much with lifting ofcivil disabilities from Jews and Protestants, as well as extending the role ofthe vernacular in the liturgy --- both measures much resisted by the rank andfile. In the purely religious realm, would-be reformers saw the then-manner ofoffering the liturgy as spiritless and dead, with too little emphasis onteaching the faithful. It was during this period that Gregorian chant began tobe banished from the life of most of the Church in favour of more “popular”hymnody --- the introduction of which caused riots in many places. In France, such alterations had beenadvocated by the remnants of the Jansenist party. Dom Guéranger, in his Institutionsliturgiques, (vol. II, pp. 202f.) cites an example, as conducted by M.l’Abbé Jacques Jobs, the Curé of Asnières:

Arrivingat the foot of the altar he said the opening prayers, and the people answeredin a loud voice. He next went to a chair on the epistle side of the sanctuary.Here he intoned the Gloria and Credo, without, however, reciting either of themthrough; nor did he say the Epistle or Gospel. He only said the Collect. He didnot recite anything that the choir chanted. . . . They recited the formulaaloud to show that their offering was being made in the name of the people. Theentire Canon, as might be expected, was likewise recited aloud. The celebrantlet the choir say the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei. . . . The communion of thepeople was not preceded by that of any of the ordained priests, as was thecurrent custom. The subdeacon, although clothed in the tunic, communicated withthe laity. Nevertheless the church of Asnières did not think it proper yet to use the vernacular in the liturgy. Allthat was done was that before vespers a sort of deaconess [sic-une espèce dediaconesse] publicly read the gospel of the day in French.

One is reminded of the comment by Louis XVI,who, when reproached by a friend for appointing a notorious evil-liver to adiocese, replied “What am I to do? At least this one believes in theTrinity!” Indeed, developments inliturgy echo those in theology, where various divines attempted to remove themiraculous from the life of the Church, and focus on ethics, education, andmaterial prosperity.

In architecture, Baroque, Rococco, andsurviving Gothic were to be banished in favour of the Neo-Classical ---although it can be beautiful, its relative lack of ornamentation was more inkeeping with the mindset of the Enlightenment. History too was re-examined by“Catholic” scholars under the influence, and the deeds of Chivalry, theCrusades, and the Inquisition dismissed as barbarous. Shrines, pilgrimages, andsacraments were deemed “superstitious” by some, while others questionedmonastic vows and clerical celibacy.

At the same time, it must be remembered that agreat many of the “Enlightenment Catholics” really believed that they weretruly helping the Church. Charles III of Spain, who most cruelly persecuted theJesuits, also bound all of his civil servants to take an oath to defend thedoctrine of the Immaculate Conception to the death, and ordered and subsidisedthe work of Bl. Junipero Serra in California.

So things stood when the French Revolutionbrought down the whole weakened structure like a house of cards. Gone were theEnlightened Despots. But when the dust settled, a figure fit to stand by any ofthem (and both more successful and through-going than they were) arose:Napoleon Bonaparte.

Despite his coming to power invoking theRevolution, the programme of the soi-disant Emperor of the French waspurely that of the Enlightenment. From his reorganised map of Europe, to the centralising CodeNapoleon, to his religious policy culminating in the concordat with Pius VII, Napoleon’s work incarnated that ofJoseph II and the rest.

Historically, Romanticism was born in thehearts and minds of the resistance to Napoleon --- even though many Romanticsinitially embraced him as a hero figure, akin to Charlemagne. His attempt to dofor Europe what his predecessors tried to doto each of their countries aroused the fires of nationalism in their breast ---German, Italian, English --- and even French. The brutality of Napoleon’spolice and censors drove “subversive” writers deep within their souls; histotal control of Europe led minds to wander elsewhere, beyond the Continent.

Here we find the origins of the main themes ofRomanticism, although, as we noticed, the roots of the phenomenon were alreadypresent. A longing for the Medieval past, and for the contemporary exotic ---whether Asia or the wilds of America; an exaltation of the needs of theindividual (and by extension, the self) over the wishes of the community;preference for folklore over the sort of learning perceived to have brought theEnlightenment, and of intuition over reason, custom over legislation; afascination with intense feeling --- including horror and humour --- over themundane: these were the hallmarks of the Romantic revolt, in literature, art,and music, in politics, and most certainly in religion.

Perhaps the first inkling of the effect the newmovement would have in the latter sphere came with the publication in 1799 ofan essay by the Romantic writer, Friederich von Hardenberg (better known asNovalis), Christendom or Europe? Its opening paragraph was a battle cry, achallenge thrown down to everything that had happened to Europe since the Reformation:

Thereonce were beautiful, splendid times when Europe was a Christian land, when one Christendom dwelt in thiscontinent, shaped by human hand; one great common interest boundtogether the most distant provinces of this broad religious empire. Although hedid not have extensive secular possessions, one supreme ruler guided andunited the great political powers. A numerous guild which everyone could joinranked immediately below the ruler and carried out his wishes, eagerly strivingto secure his beneficent might. Each member of this society was honoured on allsides, and whenever the common people sought from him consolation or help,protection or advice, being glad in exchange to provide richly for his diverseneeds, each also found protection, esteem, and a hearing from the more mightyones, while all cared for these chosen men, who were armed with wondrous powerslike children of heaven, and whose presence and favour spread many blessings.Childlike trust bound people to their pronouncements. How cheerfully each couldaccomplish his earthly tasks, since by virtue of these holy people a safefuture was prepared for him, and every false step was forgiven by them, andevery discoloured mark in his life wiped away and made clear. They were theexperienced helmsmen on the great unknown sea, under whose protection allstorms could be made light of, and one could be truly confident of a safearrival and landing on a shore that was truly a fatherland.

While this was surely a rosy, not to say Romantic,picture of the Middle Ages, it was not without truth entirely --- and boreenough to seem a heavenly alternative to the chaos and disbelief engulfing theworld in which Novalis and his contemporaries toiled. Indeed, it was the verysupernaturalism that repelled so many Enlightenment Catholics, which attractedNovalis, and many of his contemporaries, as well as the resistance thatCatholics were offering the Revolution and later Bonaparte in such places asthe Vendee, Tyrol, and the South and East of Italy.The fact that the Faith of these fighters was grounded in the miraculous andthe Sacramental, rather than in intellectual abstractions, was not lost on thenascent Romantics.

Four years after Novalis’ opus (and one afterhis death), France itself produced an elaboration ofthe same theme in François Rene, Vicomte deChateaubriand’s Genie du Christianisme. This “Genius of Christianity”had an enormous effect on French public opinion. Single-handedly resurrectingrespect for the Middle Ages, Chateaubriand showed his readers that Catholicismwas not only true and good, but beautiful. As with Romanticism itself, the bookseemed misty and ethereal at times, but nevertheless provided real-worldresults: specifically, orienting French public opinion favourably toward theprospect of coming to an accommodation with the Holy See.

The Romantic Revolt started gathering steam atthat time, picking up an unusual group of adherents along the way --- evenreaching the man who, apart from Napoleon, was arguably the most powerful rulerin Europe: Tsar Alexander I. All sorts ofwriters began pouring forth ever increasing attacks on Bonaparte, and everstronger defences of altar and throne onthe other. Such men as Joseph de Maistre and Louis de Bonald in France (both of whom began writing in thelate 1790s), Friederich von Schlegel, and Johann Joseph Görres (who left theranks of the Left and had become a Romantic by 1802), gained an ever-increasingaudience --- both for themselves and the Church. Even in Protestant Britain,Sir Walter Scott inspired interest in the Catholic past, with his tales ofKnights and Jacobites.

The fall of Napoleon led to a tidal wave ofRomanticism. It is not too much to say that its influence was key in Pius VII’s regaining of the Papal States; certainly Tsar Alexander’s “HolyAlliance” owed much to this climate of opinion as well. In the immediateaftermath of the Restoration, the Romantics rode high, doing their best not torestore the mere ancienne regime, but the Middle Ages --- most specifically interms of the relationship between Church and State.

To be sure, a sort of leftwing Romanticismwould develop as well, taking much of its fuel from the movement’s concern withthe individual. But most of these folk eventually took the road they travelledbecause the restored governments under which they lived were not Romantic orMedieval enough, in essence. Of such a type were Lammenais, Victor Hugo, andLamartine, all of whom began political life as fanatical supporters of theBourbon monarchy of France.

In Italy, political Romatic Conservatism splitinto two irreconcilable parts: the particularist defenders of the small statesof the peninsula, such as Naples’ Principe di Canosa, the Papal States’ MonaldoLeopardi, and Sardinia’s Clemente Solaro della Margherita; and the Neo-Guelphs,like Gioberti and Cesare Balbo, who wanted to see Italy united under the Pope.Of their number, for a time, was Bl. Pius IX.

Politically, Conservative Romanticism was afailure, buried under the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and the unifications ofItaly and Germany. What emerged was a Europe where most governments (save,partially, Austria-Hungary) espoused the principles of theEnlightenment as filtered through Napoleon, Cavour, and Bismarck. At the hands of such regimes, theChurch was suffer much. They would, of course, perform a suicide pact from 1914to 1918. Their leadership would then be replaced by figures who were at leastDespots, if not Enlightened --- we enjoy the aftermath of their rule to-day,when Hitler’s view of humanity as mere economic cogs without souls seems to bedominant in governments of whatever ideological hue.

In the arts and society, however, Romanticismfared much better. In England, Kenelm Digby published the firstedition of The Broadstone of Honour in 1822. This work was to have anenormous effect in Britain, akin to that of Chateaubriand in France. It directly fuelled Tennyson’s Idyllsof the King, and the whole of the 19^th century ArthurianRevival, itself contributing to such things as Pre-Raphaelitism, the Arts andCrafts Movement and Art Nouveau. Similar Romantic offshoots had a similaraffect in Iberia, France, Germany, and Austria. In Russia, the Slavophile Movement arose, andin Eastern Europe,under Romantic influence, long-suppressed nationalities from Poland and Ukraine to Greece had cultural revivals.

Even in America, Romanticism produced suchdisparate figures as Washington Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck, NathanielHawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe. Mixing European and American themes, theseauthors were instrumental in the foundation of American literature. Each ofthem, in their way, exposed their audiences to bits of Catholicism, despitenone of them (save possibly Halleck) having actually converted. Hawthorne’s daughter Rose, of course, didconvert and went on to become foundress of the Hawthorne Dominicans and acandidate for sainthood.

It was precisely in this religious sphere,however, that Romanticism was to win its greatest successes. In Vienna, such men of the movement asSchlegel were the basis of the circle around St. Clement Mary Hofbauer, and itis to Romantic writer Clemens Brentano that we owe the writings of Bl. AnneKatherine Emmerich. Although the Bourbon regime fell in 1830, Romanticismfuelled the efforts of such as Dom Prosper Gueranger, Fr. Lacordaire (restorerof the Dominicans), Montalambert, and on and on. In Britain, both Oxford Movement and theGothic wing of the Catholic Revival (a la Pugin) owed much to Digby and SirWalter Scott. Germany saw its own Romantic artisticoffshoot, the Nazarenes, morph with the aid of local disciples of Dom Guerangerinto that great citadel of Christian art, the Abbey of Beuron.

In fact, the entirety of the internationalCatholic Revival of the 19^th century, with its proliferation ofguilds aiming at sanctifying every element of society, and of Catholicpolitical parties to do the same for government; the revival of Latin Liturgy,Gregorian Chant, Gothic architecture, religious orders, explosion of missionaryactivity, monasteries, pilgrimages, and proliferation of devotions; and with itsexpansion of Catholic scholarship and historical rehabilitation of Chivalry,the Crusades, and the Inquisition (much inspired, to be sure, by theabove-noted military struggles of Catholics during the Counter-Revolutionarystruggles in Europe from 1789 to 1815), were all firmly based in Romanticism.It was, in fact, a Romantic view of the Crusades that inspired Catholics totake up arms for the Faith in what was perhaps the last declared Crusade, thedefence of the Papal States from 1860 to 1870, one of the noblest oblations of blood ever offeredup.

Some of this influence lasted well into the 20^thcentury. To mention only a single solitary example, the noted Oxford literary circle of the Inklings ---most famously J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams, were certainlyRomantics; there is an example which could be multiplied many times over.

It may well be argued that the Middle Ages towhich the Romantics looked for inspiration was a fairy-land that never existed.Perhaps; but it must be remembered that the Medievals themselves, unlike theirdescendants, did not look to their own time and place for perfection. Rather,the best of them looked to Heaven, to the “Land of the Living,” as their truehome, from which they were exiles in this world of shadows and pain. Ratherthan pretend that they could find true happiness here, they looked at creationas at once concealing and symbolising greater and ultimately indescribablerealities. It was to those that the Medievals looked, and to them that they aspired.This aspiration, in turn, was what the best of the Romantics built their hopesand works upon.

We live in a time ourselves when, until theelection of Benedict XVI, the religiousproject of the Aufklärung seems just about accomplished. The LiturgicalRevival launched by Dom Gueranger went in precisely the direction heabominated; the “rationalisation” of theology proceeded apace. All of theelements of our Church’s history hated by the Enlightened are to-day almostuniversally abominated; what they called superstition and barbarism, many ofour most influential scholars still call likewise. Many Bishops’ Conferences (andindividual bishops) remain Febronian to the core, and happily subscribe to thepolitical views of their local rulership rather than to those of the Holy See. Suchprelates resistance to reforms emanating from Rome are typified by the receptiongreeting the motu proprio SummarumPontificum.

In many ways, Pope Benedict seems a figure ofRomanticism, from his tastes in literature and music to his view of the placeof the Church in the World. Not only his liberation of the Tridentine Mass, buthis pushing through with an accurate translation of the Novus Ordo and hisattempt to bring Anglo-Catholicism (itself a product of the Romantic era ifever there was one) into the Church, and his rapprochement with the (especiallyRussian) Orthodox underscore this. Such practical Romanticism as may be foundin the works of advocates of the Benedictine Reform like Aidan Nichols’ Christendom Awake and The Realm deserve space next to Novalis,Chateaubriand, Gueranger, Digby, and the rest.

Nevertheless, if the post-Vatican Enlightenmentdid indeed bring a new dawn to the Church, increase the fervour of theFaithful, and advance the Christianisation of Society and the World, then thehopes of the Enlightened (despots or otherwise) of the 18^th centuryand their latter day disciples have been fulfilled. What can the honest man dosave agree with them, and follow in their train? But if not, we need to lookwith new eyes once again at the “evening isles fantastical” of the Romanticsand their descendants, as our Pope seems to have done. The struggle between thetwo schools boils down to one of vision: ought Catholics to strive for theHeavens, or be content with the Earth? One could offer a theological answer, ofcourse; but this writer would submit that history offers the ultimate testfirst enunciated by Christ Himself: “By their fruits you shall know them.” Abit too practical and unromantic, perhaps, but that is a luxury we can concedeHim.

Royal California

2012-01-08T19:00:00.000-08:00

C.S.Lewis once famously declared that “Where men are forbidden to honour a kingthey honour millionaires, athletes or film stars instead: even famousprostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will beserved; deny it food and it will gobble poison.” The unkind might say thatCalifornia is proof of this, and to an enormous degree they would be right. Butonly to an enormous degree --- far from entirely: as with everything else inthe Dream State, we once had our own monarchy, firmly rooted in fantasy.Presided over by the redoubtable Emperor Norton I, it wasperhaps the most sensible regime under which Anglo-Californians have lived.

Buteven in the mundane history which anchors the rest of the planet, Royalty hasplayed a large part on the California stage. As recounted in the firstinstallment of this column, our founder was Charles III of Spain. Not onlydid he accomplish the tasks therein related, Charles set up the Pious Fund ofthe Californias, with all of its later complications. His role, althoughoften ignored, is not completely forgotten, as his statuesin various parts of the State remind us. Charles’ grandson, Ferdinand VII,funded a number of public works around California, including La Placita, Los Angeles’ first CatholicChurch. Not too surprisingly, losCalifornianos were strong Monarchists:when the 1810 revolution in Mexico ended government subsidies, the Mission padresand rancheros dug into their pockets and paid the royal officials themselves ---for a decade California was a sort of free-floating polyp of the SpanishEmpire. Royal anniversaries were celebrated with as much ceremony as the littlecolony could manage: High Masses, processions, fandangos, bear- andbull-baiting and the like. Independence was not welcomed here, but the blow wasinitially softened by the Monarchical governmentof the First Mexican Empire.

Independenceand American conquest has not removed California from the memory of successiveSpanish Monarchs. AlfonsoXIII played the part of royal Santa Claus; despite the United Statesnicking Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam from him during his youth,he showered California with many gifts, such as bellsfor Mission Santa Clara, provincialbanners for the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse, and knighthoods for thoseinstrumental in restoring the California Missions. His grandson Juan Carlos I has visited here severaltimes, dedicating the aforementioned statues of Charles III and being feted by the descendants ofthe Dominguez clan, who owe their present status and wealth to their royalland grant.

Ofcourse, Charles III’s initial moves here were made in response to fear of Russian expansion. Butwhen the Muscovites finally did arrive in 1812, settling at Fort Ross and Bodega Bay, they werefriendly. Although those posts were evacuated in the 1840s, the Tsars continuedtheir interest in the Golden State. In 1863, Tsar Alexander II sent naval squadrons toSan Francisco and New York in a show of support for the Union during the CivilWar (as a counter to Anglo-French support of the Confederacy; in 1888 AlexanderIII gave a number of giftsto San Francisco’s Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral. After the Revolution, many White Russians settled inSan Francisco and Los Angeles. The RussianOrthodox Church here happily venerates Nicholas II and his family as saints, and theheiress to the throne, Grand DuchessMaria Vladimirovna, made a very successful visithere last year.

TheChinese Emperorshowed a great deal of interest in hissubjects who came here, amongst other things endowing a templefor them in Oroville. After a failed attemptin 1898 by Emperor Guangxuto initiate a Meiji-likerestoration in China, his adviser, Kang Youwei fled abroad. Inexile he formed branches of the Save TheEmperor Association; with a number of branches in California’s Chinatowns,it mobilized support for Constitutional Monarchy against both the EmpressDowager and Sun Yat Sen’s republicans. Before defecting to the latter, Homer Lea conducted his WesternMilitary Academy in Los Angeles on the site of today’s Union Station.

Ifall the world’s peoples have come here, so too have subjects of all the world’sMonarchs, reigning and deposed. The Danish town of Solvangand the Emmaus Church in Yorba Linda are magnetsfor their royal visitors, and QueenMargrethe II’s former guards have an association in Los Angelesthat observes her birthdaywith a ball; Queen Beatrixof the Netherlands’ birthday has recentlyjoined the calendar of Southland festivals; the Royals of Norway and Swedenvisit the Seamen’s Church in San Pedro, which appeals to both Norse and Swedes. The Royal Society of St. George and the British United Services Club, among manyother groups, mobilize support for their Monarch,while Iranian, Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Romanian, Thai, Saudi, and Bulgarian organizations beat the drum fortheirs. The International Monarchist League has a chapter in Los Angeles, andvarious corners around the State will see liturgical commemorations of Charles I of England, Louis XVI of France, and Bl. Charles of Austria.The latter’s son, Otto von Habsburg,had in my childhood a weekly column in the Tidings,the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ newspaper.

Wherethere are royals, there are knights. While we have our fair share of phonyorders here, there are a number of real ones: Malta, Holy Sepulchre, St. John, and St.Lazarus, to name a few. Even the Constantinians of theCastro obedience are holding their 2011 annualconference in Los Angeles.

Despiteour liberalism and egalitarianism, even non-ethnic Californians kowtow whenconfronted with foreign Royals. This writer noticed this on two occasionsshowing Los Angeles to King Kigeli Vof Rwanda (my only foray to the Playboy Mansion). In1988, I observed how Hollywood’s elite fell over themselves when meeting Sweden’sCarl XVI Gustaf and Queen Sylvia at a reception at the Motion Picture Academy (I was pushed out ofthe way at the champagne bar by Cesar Romero). A similaratmosphere took hold at the 1997 memorial for Princess Diana at St. James Episcopal Church,Los Angeles, where Michael York was the eulogist, and the late Michael Jacksonchief mourner.

SometimesRoyals themselves have sought refuge here: an Egyptian Queen whodisgraced her family by converting to Catholicism holed up in Beverly Hills,while a DanishPrince briefly sought connubial bliss at a chicken ranch in Arcadia. Itwas at San Diego’s venerable Hotel DelCoronado that Edward VIII, then Prince of Wales, mighthave first met Wallis Warfield; it was a near miss. Most famous of all,perhaps, was our only resident Monarch, Yugoslavia’s Peter II, whospent his last years in our part of the world, and received a royal funeral ata localSerbian Church. Without a doubt His late Majesty would be gratified indeedto see the role his sonnow plays in their homeland.

Insteadof the tyranny implied in the royal appointment of a governor at Monterey, weCalifornians are now free to elect our own --- and sadly enough, do. But we arenot without our own native monarch, Jose I --- self-dubbed“the Widow Norton,” and founder (ess) of the Imperial Court System.While s/he may not appoint the governor, from their decisionsone must suppose that s/he does appoint the State judiciary. C.S. Lewis wasright.

Age of (Gutless) Wonder

2011-11-22T05:30:00.001-08:00

We live in an age of wonder. A satellite can tell us about tides and storms on Titan; one of my best friends has a robot dog that is exhibiting jealousy toward his robot vacuum cleaner (to be fair, poor Speedy, as the techno—canine is called, did try to make friends with the new contraption at first; the far less intelligent cleaning machine ignored these overtures). Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, one can carry on thoughtful written conversations with any number of intelligent people around the globe, and there are few interests, no matter how arcane, that do not have their own corner of cyberspace.

Images of long—dead stars can play their part in new movies — I much enjoyed Lord Olivier's latest performance in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Had my first landlord in L.A., the famed T.V. Psychic, Criswell, not 'departed our dimension in 1982,' as Tim Burton put it, he might well be amazed. Or perhaps not — he did predict that Mae West would be elected President in 1960, that brain transplants would be available via vending machines, and that the world would end in 1999.

But even more astonishing for that prophet would be a parallel development; at the same time that technology is taking us to dizzying heights, we moderns have lost one essential trait: guts!

Oh, not all of us, to be sure. It did take guts, I suppose, for Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court to rule traditional Marriage unconstitutional; for innumerable States, Counties, Cities, and now foreign countries to outlaw smoking in public places; for the municipal governments of Pasadena and Newport Beach, California, to ban flambé dishes served tableside in restaurants; and for the State Legislatures of Massachusetts and New York to force Catholic hospitals in their jurisdictions to violate their religion by providing for their employees contraceptives.

Or perhaps not. Just as it takes little bravery to push an old lady into the street or abuse an infant, it may be that the judges and politicians in these episodes accurately evaluated the resolve of their opponents. Take the last named case. In that instance (and when the California Supreme Court ordered that State's Catholic Charities to take similar action), the response of the local Catholic bishops was simply to announce that they would 'pursue legal channels.' Given the current state of the Judiciary, one can surmise where those channels will flow.

Much more effective would have been for at least one of the bishops affected to rise up and say something to the effect of 'Ladies and Gentlemen of the Legislature (or Supreme Court), we fully realize your commitment to your own values, and how much it galls you that we will not pay for our employees' contraceptives. Fair enough; you run the government, and power always decides. But we will not violate our consciences. If you insist upon this, we are withdrawing from health care (or charity work, in the case of California). We are all too aware of the financial burden this action will place upon your shoulders, and deeply regret this. However, you have only two choices: you may allow us to continue to work as we have, at our expense and under our rules, or you may see to the matter yourself, at your own cost. You cannot have it both ways; but please rest assured that if you do pursue the latter course, you will have the satisfaction of being able to do whatever you want in terms of health care, unfettered by our doctrines. We shall be only too happy to refer those in need to you directly.' One supposes that busloads of ill and/or indigent descending upon the public buildings in Albany, Boston, or Sacramento would be quite a sight, indeed.

But such a spectacle will not occur, and the bishops will probably cave. Yet it is not only Their Lordships who suffer from gutlessness: far from it. How many elected executives and legislatures could challenge power—mad courts via executive orders and legislative set—asides, over issues ranging from abortion to the Ten Commandments in courthouses? It will not happen, however.

The cross is in the middle right section.

In my own County of Los Angeles, the mere threat of a lawsuit from the omnipotent ACLU was enough to force three of the five county supervisors to remove the little cross commemorating the place of the Spanish Missions in our history from the County Seal — at a cost of over $700,000 to the tax payers. Of course, the ACLU were flush from victory over the City of Redlands, California, who also had had such an historical reference in their municipal seal (the city fathers there had also caved rather than go to court). But despite a favorable legal precedent in Texas, the Supervisors were not prepared to fight, despite the majority outcry from the citizenry. Even if they would not go to court, the Supervisors should at least charge the ACLU for the changeover of seals — they want it, they should pay for it! No guts.

Not that there is no sense of outrage in the modern world — far from it! But this sense is wonderfully selective. Take, for example, Prince Harry's swastika armband at his ill—fated masquerade party. Outrage radiated throughout the World, and there are steps being taken in the European Parliament to ban the odious symbol throughout the EU, just as it is in Germany. But apart from the threat of censorship (if the swastika is banned, what would prevent future European Parliaments from outlawing full frontal nudity in film?), why is there no similar outrage over the hammer and sickle? Not only did the Communists kill far more people than the Nazis, they are continuing to do so in Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, and, of course, our most favored nation, China. Yet one hears nothing from either politicos or media.

Moreover, the Prince's faux pas has led to calls for the abolition of the Monarchy. But when his grandmother's government lowered the age of consent to 14, and legalized gay sex in public restrooms, little was said. (Prime Minister Blair's ban on hunting has provoked strident opposition, but of course incomes are threatened). Yet, surely, if an act of insensitivity on the part of a Prince merits the abolition of the Crown, the turning of Britain into a brothel could be argued to be a cause for abolishing the Prime Ministry? Both are idiotic arguments to be sure, but it is noteworthy that neither the Palace nor the Tories see fit to point out the inconsistencies. Again, no guts. (But, to be fair, since the new measures' passage arrests for both public lewdness and pedophilia have dropped considerably).

A large part of the problem in North America, Europe, and Australasia is that few have the guts to stare reality in the face. That reality is this: there are two kinds of folk in public life. Those who are content to administer the population that has fallen into their hands (perhaps liking them more or less as they are), and those who are not so content. These latter look at the folk beneath them, tenuously connected as they are via the ballot box, the tax collection, or the T.V. Screen, and are annoyed. The plebes must be pushed, prodded, cajoled, or otherwise beaten into whatever new pattern pleases the pusher, prodder, and cajoler. Of such stuff are or were Britain's Blair, Spain's Zapatero, Ireland's Ahern, Belgium's Verhoefstrat, Germany's Schroeder, and France's Jospin. So too were our Clintons. But these are only the most visible: you see the breed in the courts, in the media, and on every level of government and civil service.

Most of these folk are Baby Boomers (or the 'Generation of '68,' as our European friends call them). Like their contemporaries in China, they favor Cultural Revolution, albeit in a gradual mode. No one prattles about democracy more than they do. But if we define 'democratic' as meaning government that reflects the will of the majority, then they are most certainly not. The vast majority of people are generally content with whatever conditions they find themselves in — if they are not, bloodshed results. Now, I will not pretend that I think the majority are always right; but then, I do not pretend to be a democratic leader. Were I in power, and wanted to put across a manifestly unpopular measure, I should have to say 'I'm right, and you folks are wrong,' and some such — and of course, the consequences would have to be faced.

But our current leadership classes will not say that, and for good reason: it would take guts. More than that, it would reveal the deep contempt they have for their subjects and their subjects' traditions. It is not just that we proles are wrong, we are stupid — as, presumably, were the ancestors who bequeathed us the customs and manners now being dismantled.

In return for giving up all we have inherited from the past, however, we will be given wonders beyond compare, machinery exceeding our wildest expectations. But if we take the bargain, I fear, in the words of John XXIII, '...poor mortal creatures may well become like the machines they build—cold, hard, and devoid of love.' Surely, the view of human life — whether abortable or euthanasable — espoused by most of the dominant classes seems that way. Still, it may be just as well for us moderns. Machines lack both heart and guts; we may not find it much of a change.

Hollywood on the Elbe

2011-10-25T19:08:00.000-07:00

I had a very strange dream the other night. Having gone on foot too far south, or else having missed a bus or metro stop (it was not quite clear), I found myself walking by my old school, Virgil Junior High http://www.virgilms.net/. It was after Midnight, not a very good time to be in that neighborhood. Indeed, in my time we had more stabbings than any other school in the City, and it has been a fitting scene for such films as Halls of Anger and American History X. In any case, I was wondering how best to get to Hollywood, and kept walking south on Vermont, coming to a rock and rubble strewn alley that does not exist in the waking world. Stepping into it, I was confronted by a very strange old hag, who was plaintively calling “Lauriiieeee…Laurieee.” Presuming that she was calling after a lost cat or some such, I was torn between wanting to help her, who should not be alone in such a place at such a time, and fear that she was a vampire, zombie, or some other unearthly visitant. The latter impulse won out, and passing her by, I came to what appeared to be an old and disused warehouse, only to see a young blonde girl talking on a cellphone pass inside.

Going to the doorway, I saw her walk up a flight of stairs, still talking. I called up to her, “are you Laurie?” She nodded, kept moving and speaking on the phone, and out of my view apparently opened a door from which sounds of singing and laughter emerged. Following in her wake, I entered the room myself. There, in a large studio were a great mass of people, some quite normal looking, others very odd, but all having a good time. The place was shabbily furnished as such abodes often are, but in the middle, seated behind a desk, was a very old white-haired man holding forth to a bunch of admirers. This being a dream (although he does not exist in the waking world), I knew who he was.

The ancient before me was in fact an old and once very famous German film-maker, friend and contemporary of such as Wilder, Lang, and von Stroheim, who like them had come to Hollywood to escape from Hitler. Now he was the last of his kind, and I was amazed to see him alive, let alone so spry and vibrant. To my delight, he recognized me, saying “Ah! It is Charles Coulombe, the writer!” Speaking to a tall and rather stupid looking young man who was standing nearby, he said, “Clear the books off that chair for him to sit down!” As the seeming dimwit did so, the old director told me in confessional tones, “his forte in writing is really light comedy, so I have been having him read Wodehouse, Thorne Smith, and the like. He is actually quite brilliant.” The tall fellow replied, albeit in a voice as stupid sounding as his appearance, with a witticism which (although I cannot remember it) was horribly clever and set us all off laughing wildly. The old man beamed at his disciple, and then at me, and said, “you see!”

Speaking to me, he switched to rather an odd German, partly Berliner, partly Wiener, with a touch of Yiddish (my own German in response was better than it has been in years). He told tales, recited rhymes and sang nursery songs, most of which I have not heard in ages. Herr Direktor then opined, “no matter how we may try to escape them, the earliest influences stay with us always!” The conversation went on to various other channels, and I awoke in a very cheerful mood.

Now, while a Jungian might declare that the two ladies in the dream were expressions of my anima (and feminists and wiccans note that the matron was absent, although the crone and the virgin were there), it was the figure of the old man who claimed my attention. While he was no one I have met in real life, he was in fact a composite.

Back during the mid to late 70s, Los Angeles was still home to the aging remnants of the wave of Central and Eastern European immigrants that had sought refuge there throughout the inter- and postwar periods from various revolutions and dictators --- generally noblemen, bourgeoisie, or artists. Russian, German, Czech, Pole, Lithuanian or Croatian, they had all sought in the Big Nowhere a place where they could reconstruct their lives as well as possible. Their clubs, churches, and restaurants allowed them to gather and relive les bon vieux temps passé. In dusty, tchotchke-filled eateries like the Little Prague and the Paprika, the hum of their conversations cast quite the spell on your correspondent as he blundered through his teens. To see such folk on the RTD bus lines, holding themselves erect and alert amidst the students and street people was an inspiration.

Were you fortunate enough to know any of these folk personally, their often dingy little apartments, hung with scenes from the motherland, black and white photos of grim or happy folk in elegant though far outdated finery, and pictures of long dead or deposed emperors and kings transported you from the grimy L.A. streets of the 1970s to an unconquerable Ruritania of the mind. Given a sympathetic audience, they would tell amazing stories of horror and escape, and bring out treasures --- a medal, perhaps, or a piece of jewelry or porcelain --- that they had managed to rescue from the wreck of their lives and fortunes.

Now, what impressed this writer with these people was not simply their nostalgia, enjoyable as it was. It was their verve, their joi-de-vivre. They had looked upon horror; some had been tortured, all had lost friends and relatives to unspeakable fates at the hands of the minions of Hitler, Stalin, or both. Yet here they were --- haunted by such a past, but not destroyed by it. As the decades had passed, the pleasanter memories of their pasts, the effort to build new lives here, and their ongoing interests in the arts, politics, religion, or whatever it might be, allowed them not merely to carve out pleasant niches for themselves. These things also helped them pass on what they had learned of endurance with grace to folk who had never endured such hardships.

When an American looks at a Western European over the age of 60 --- or an Easterner over 40 --- he is looking at someone who has lived through the unlivable: things beside which the Great Depression that bedeviled our people seems almost pleasant. It is certainly true that those horrors gutted Europe as a society. But some individuals came through it with their interiors intact, and more than a few of those came here.

Whatever difficulties may face these United States in the future, if something of the brave spirit and love of life that powered those exiles of my youth can be passed on to at least of some of the young of today, what lies ahead of us may not be utterly unpleasant. Who knows? It might even be worth seeing!

Hermetic Imagination: The Effect of the Golden Dawn on Fantasy Literature

2011-09-23T20:27:00.000-07:00

Beyond these fields and this borderland there lies the legendary wonder-world of theurgy, so called, of Magic and Sorcery, a world of fascination or terror, as the mind which regards it is tempered, but in any case the antithesis of admitted possibility. There all paradoxes seem to obtain actually, contradictions coexist logically, the effect is greater than the cause and the shadow more than the substance. Therein the visible melts into the unseen, the invisible is manifested openly, motion from place to place is accomplished without traversing the intervening distance, matter passes through matter. There two straight lines may enclose a space; space has a fourth dimension, and untrodden fields beyond it; without metaphor and without evasion, the circle is mathematically squared. There life is prolonged, youth renewed, physical immortality secured. There earth becomes gold, and gold earth. There words and wishes possess creative power, thoughts are things, desire realises its object. There, also, the dead live and the hierarchies of extra-mundane intelligence are within easy communication, and become ministers or tormentors, guides or destroyers of man. There the Law of Continuity is suspended by the interference of the higher Law of Fantasia. (A.E. Waite, The Book of Ceremonial Magic, University Books, NY 1961, pp. 3-4)

This rather lengthy quotation serves well as an introduction to the Hermetic or Magical world-view. It is in complete contradiction, needless to say, of the more or less materialistic perspective our education and upbringing have bestowed on us modern Europeans, North Americans, and Australasians. Since at least the Enlightenment, educated opinion has insisted on what we call the scientific method. Relying on the purely measurable, it has provided us with the technology necessary to provide us with all the conveniences we possess---surely a telling argument in any case. But to understand the World view of W.B. Yeats, Arthur Machen, and Charles Williams, as well as that of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn to which they all belonged, we must first pick up a little of its history. While the Magical world-view may not be popular among us today, it is an integral part of practically all pre-industrial societies. In Europe, the country-folk from time immemorial to this century (and in some out-of-the-way places even yet) saw this everyday life of ours as interpenetrated with beings and actions from other worlds co-existent with this one:

Often they are described as distant realms, but almost as frequently they are imagined to lie so close alongside normal space that transition from one to the other is only too easy, in both directions. Certain places and times facilitate the transition. Supernatural powers break through into the normal (or can be summoned to it) at turning points of time: midnight, midday, New Year's Eve, Halloween, May Eve, Midsummer Night. Similarly with space; it is at boundaries, thresholds, cross-roads, fords, bridges, and where verticality intersects the horizontal, as on top of mounds, down wells, under trees, that Otherworlds are accessible...One key is ambiguity, the concept both/and and neither/nor. If a man stands exactly on the boundary where three parishes meet, at the stroke of midnight, in which parish is he, and what date is it? He has cut loose from normal space and time. He has also reversed normal human conduct by going outside at night, the time when supernatural beings are active, but humans should be asleep. In such circumstances, he places himself in contact with "the other;" he can reach, or be reached by, fairies, ghosts, or demons. (Jacqueline Simpson, European Mythology, p. 34).

While the same views may be found in all the world's folklore and mythology (as, for example, the Australian aboriginal "dream-time," so often invoked today), in Europe the influence of Christian doctrine made a great impact. Even as Faerie was conceived in terms like those just quoted, so too were Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, which realms also erupted into our own in various ways. Churches were seen as outposts of the celestial, brought down at the Sacrifice of the Mass and other Sacraments. Purgatory, through the medium of ghosts (ala Hamlet's father) played its part. Hell too, through its demons, those of Faerie who were evil (the "unseelie court," as the Scots put it), Werewolves, Vampires, and so on, made its presence felt. Human beings too could align with the infernal in return for supernatural power; these were of course the Witches of song and story.

In the philosophical world, the meeting of Hermeticism (the belief that the visible world is an analogy of the invisible, summed up in the phrase "as above, so below") and Neoplatonism (with its insistence that the Platonic Archetypes were the realities, of which earthly expressions were mere shadows) with Christianity produced several waves of educated folk who shared this magical concept of the world. First came such Neoplatonic Church Fathers as St. Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and St. Augustine. Then came the Ultra-Realist scholastics such as John Scotus Eriugena, Pope Sylvester II, William of Auvergne, Roger Bacon, Bl. Raymond Lully, St. Bonaventure, and St. Albertus Magnus, many of whom looked to Alchemy, Astrology, and the Qabalah as a means of interpreting the revelation implicit in creation---a revelation supplementary, but inferior to, Holy Writ. Lastly, the Classical Humanists such as Reuchlin, Pico della Mirandola, Cardinal Bessarion and Aeneas Piccolomini were similarly inclined. The Reformation, put an end to most such developments. While the next few centuries would produce a few figures like Jakob Bohme and Claude de St. Martin, for the most part materialism and "modern" scientific method grew in their monopoly of Europe's intellectual life. The Enlightenment was the fruition of this process. Then came the French and Industrial Revolutions, which idolised the materialistic. Almost inevitably, there came a reaction---Romanticism. Romanticism encompassed many allied themes. To the Materialist assumption of the all-importance of the body and the group, it opposed the individual. To the mechanistic view of nature it replied with a Naturphilosophie which again saw nature as at once veiling and representing spiritual realities. To the cult of progress, the Romantics also opposed a love of the Medieval past and the Peasant or Exotic present.

Perhaps the greatest of the Romantic philosophers was the incomparable Franz von Baader, who later inspired Vladimir Soloviev. From the outpouring of all of this throughout the 19th Century, interest arose in much of the literate European public in fantasy literature, spiritualism, and the occult: The industrial revolution naturally gave rise to an increasingly marked interest in the "miracles" of science. It promoted the invasion of daily life by utilitarian and socio-economic preoccupations of all kinds. Along with the smoking factory chimneys came both the literature of the fantastic and the new phenomenon of spiritualism. These two possess a common characteristic: each takes the real world in its most concrete form as its point of departure, and then postulates the existence of another, supernatural world, separated from the first by a more or less impermeable partition. Fantasy literature then plays upon the effect of surprise that is provided by the irruption of the supernatural into the daily life which it describes in a realistic fashion...It is interesting that occultism in its modern form---that of the nineteenth century---appeared at the same time as fantastic literature and spiritualism. The French term occultisme was perhaps first used by Eliphas Livi (1810-1875), whose work is sometimes somewhat misleadingly identified with the beginnings of occultism itself...Like the fantastic and the quasi religion of spiritualism, nineteenth century occultism showed a marked interest in supernatural phenomena, that is to say, in the diverse modes of passage from one world to the other. (Antoine Faivre, "Occultism", op. cit.). Not too unsurprisingly, the Occult revival in France which featured men like LÎvi, Papus, Peladan, Grillot de Givry, and many others, was paralleled by a similar movement in French literature featuring such names as Barbey d'Aurevilly, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, and Huysmans.

Josephine Peladan

While many of these considered themselves loyal Catholics, the standard theologians of the time, much under Neo-Thomist influence, regarded them suspiciously. This phenomenon was not restricted to the continent. In 1875, Helena Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in New York, which soon spread throughout the English speaking world. Originally very Western in emphasis, studying such topics as alchemy and the writings of Paracelsus, the Society took on a strongly Oriental tone after Mme. Blavatsky took a voyage to India, and claimed to have made contact with various Tibetan "Ascended Masters." A number of members took issue with this (among whom was Rudolf Steiner, who eventually founded his own Anthroposophical Society in Germany). A further objection to the course of the T.S. was that its membership were encouraged only to study occult doctrine, not to practise it---that is, not to practise Magic. But an organisation formed in 1888 soon attracted many Theosophists who wished either a more Western teaching or Magical practise, or both: The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

THE GOLDEN DAWN

This society was formed as a result of the discovery in a bookstall of a cypher MS by one Rev. A.F.A. Woodford. Supposedly, this manuscript was written by a German Rosicrucian lady, and invited anyone interested in setting up a similar organisation to contact her. In concert with Macgregor Mathers, a Scottish student of the Occult, and Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, the Golden Dawn was accordingly organised. From the very beginning, its membership fell roughly into two categories: those who were of a Western-Theosophical bent (many of whom, as just noted, had left the T.S. for that particular reason), and those of a more explicitly Christian orientation. This uneasy mix would erupt later into open conflict; but at the very beginning both camps were united in declaring that "to establish closer and more personal relations with the Lord Jesus, the Master of Masters, is and ever must be the ultimate object of all the teachings of our order."

Unexceptional as this goal was, the Order's means of reaching it were quite unusual. The G.D. aspired to be not merely a complete academy of occult knowledge (as indeed the T.S. had claimed to be) but also a forum for Mystico-Magical practise---which Magic was seen as being like that of Eliphas Levi. In the words of Stephan Hoeller, Magic in this sense is "an umbrella term for the growth or expansion of consciousness by way of symbolic modalities." To impart both knowledge and practise, an elaborate system of grades was established; as the student ascended these grades, he or she learned ever more esoteric skills. These latter included knowledge of Qabala (which Hebrew system's model of all reality---the "Tree of Life"---provided the G.D. with its basic ideational framework); Tarot; Geomancy; Astrology; Alchemy; and ritual Magic. The workings of the last-named included making of sigils and talismans, communing with Elementals, evocation of Demons, and invocation of Angels. As well, the Golden Dawn initiate was taught "skrying," which included both clairvoyance and astral travel.

From its beginning, the G.D. attracted a highly literary membership. In addition to the three whom we shall consider, Algernon Blackwood, Dion Fortune, Sax Rohmer, actress Florence Farr, Maud Gonne, E. Nesbit, and Evelyn Underhill were all members at one time or another, either of the G.D. itself or of one of the splinter groups which survived the Order's disruption in 1900. With the publication of the Order's rituals by Israel Regardie, we are now in a better position to gauge the ideology of the G.D. then were earlier writers on the topic. Concurrent with its Western-Theosophic and Qabalistic viewpoint (themselves manifestations of Hermeticism and Neo-Platonism) the G.D. also reflected in its rituals the Christian emphasis earlier referred to. While subsequent authorities (notably Regardie) have sought to minimise this in accordance with their own biases, it is still evident from an examination of the material. Indeed, it is alleged that many of the first members of the Anglican Community of the Resurrection (the Mirfield Fathers) were members, although this would be hard to substantiate. Still, there can be no doubt that many G.D. Fratres and Sorores achieved in their own devotional lives the same synthesis between Hermeticism/Neoplatonism and Sacramental Christianity that characterised Medieval Ultra-Realists, Renaissance Humanists, and (in a much less conscious way) European folk-culture members. In a word, their Christianity, while tied to the dogmas of Revelation, saw the world as both a symbol and concealment of higher realities, contact with which was attainable both through magic and divination, and on a purer and greater level, through the Sacraments.

Most representative of these was perhaps the Catholic A.E. Waite, who formed a separate, more explicitly Christian Mysticism-oriented Golden Dawn group in 1903. Commenting on Claude de St. Martin's works, Waite wrote: "It is difficult to agree that a system which includes institutions of such efficacy [the Sacraments], and apparently of divine origin, can at the same time transmit nothing. It becomes more apparent...that the failure in transmission is not in the Church, but in the ministers. The Church assists us towards regeneration by operating divers effects at divers seasons" (The Unknown Philosopher, p. 331). He goes on to say "...I think the Church Catholic is preferable to the most exotic plant of Lutheranism..." (ibid., p. 333). A good understanding of Waite's position is important, because Yeats, Machen, and Williams all elected to follow him, and his view of matters esoteric is the strand of Golden Dawn tradition which informs their work. He wrote of the Golden Dawn itself: "It is not in competition with the external Christian Churches, and yet it is a Church of the Elect, a Hidden and Holy Assembly...It is a House of the Holy Graal in the sanctity of a High Symbolism, where the sacred intent of the Order is sealed upon Bread and Wine" (quoted in Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings, p. 82).

Odd though Waite's views may appear to many today, they were not unechoed on either side of the channel. In her 1963 foreword to Waite's similarly-viewed French contemporary Grillot de Givry's Sorcery, Magic, and Alchemy, Cynthia Magriel informs us that De Givry lived in a moment in history and in France when his views, though strange to most Catholics, could be tolerated. They were shared in part by a number of Catholics who were considered no worse than eccentrics. Thus the Baron de Sarachaga, a Basque and a nephew of St. Teresa [of Avila], for forty years headed the Institut des Fastes; this school was approved by Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII. Pierre Dujois, a learned hermetist, wrote of this school in 1912: "There exists in Paray-le-Monial [the centre of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus] a mysterious Cabalic centre, sincerely Catholic it seems, and where the bizarre orthodoxy is nevertheless accepted and even encouraged by the Church..." (p. 5). So the mixture of orthodoxy and magic we encounter in the writings of our three authors, deriving from the Golden Dawn and particularly from Waite, was not without contemporary as well as past parallels. This is an important point, because for varying reasons Christian and non-Christian writers alike have attempted to set up a dichotomy between the Christian and occult elements in the three's work where there is in fact a synthesis---a synthesis which in these particular cases is the direct result of their membership in the Golden Dawn. Let us now look at each of them.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Of the three, Yeats' connexion with the Golden Dawn is the best known and documented. In his Autobiography, pp. 341-342, he discusses his involvement with the Golden Dawn and its history, calling it "the Hermetic Students," but giving Mathers and Westcott their proper names. His Memoirs, published posthumously, are full of bits of gossip about the Golden Dawn and its members. Of the Order, he says therein, "I...value a ritual full of the symbolism of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance..." (p. 27). He had come to the Golden Dawn after having been expelled from the Theosophical Society by Madame Blavatsky for actually practising Magic. Yet even before his entrance into the T.S., he and a number of other Dublin Anglo-Irish youths had formed a "Dublin Hermetic Society" for the study of European Magic and Mysticism, and to a degree of Eastern religion. Why? "All were parched by the desiccated religion which the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian Church, now purged of their old evangelicalism, provided." (Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and The Mask, p. 41). Certainly Yeats' exposure to the folk and fairy lore of the Irish played its part also. Yeats entered into the Golden Dawn with great gusto in 1890. He followed its practises, and claimed to have particularly benefited from clairvoyance. For Yeats Magic and Poetry were near synonymous. When in 1892 a friend wrote to him questioning the "healthiness" of his Golden Dawn activity, he wrote back

Now as to Magic. It is surely absurd to hold me "weak" or otherwise because I chose to persist in a study which I decided deliberately four or five years ago to make, next to my Poetry, the most important pursuit of my life. Whether it be, or be not, bad for my health can only be decided by one who knows what Magic is and not at all by any amateur. If I had not made Magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen have ever come to exist. The Mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. (The Letters of W.B. Yeats, ed. Allen Wade, p. 210).

W.B. Yeats

In 1897, Yeats published Rosa Alchemica, an allegory of his studies with the Golden Dawn. But in practically everything he wrote, the world-view enunciated in the opening quote was evident. Whether he was dealing with fairy-lore or mystic visions, the conviction that this world both symbolises and conceals greater realities was ever obvious in his work. In 1915, he wrote a poem for initiation into the highest grade of the Golden Dawn's outer order:

FOR INITIATION OF 7 = 4

We are weighed down by the blood & the heavy weight of the bones We are bound by flowers, & our feet are entangled in the green And there is deceit in the singing of birds. It is time to be done with it all The stars call & all the planets And the purging fire of the moon And yonder is the cold silence of cleansing night May the dawn break, & gates of day be set wide open.

It were useless to belabour the point much further. But what is not so well-known is the degree to which Waite (whom Yeats followed in the 1903 split) must have influenced Yeats' views of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. There can be no doubt of Yeats' disenchantment with both the Protestantism of his youth, and with the Irish Catholic hierarchy. He complained in 1907 of the "ingratiating manner...of certain well-educated Catholic priests, a manner one does not think compatible with deep spiritual experience" (Autobiography, p. 282). Two years later he wrote in his diary: "Catholic secondary education destroys, I think, much that the Catholic religion gives. Provincialism destroys the nobility of the Middle Ages" (op. cit., p. 304). Certainly, at first glance, such anti-clericalism, read in the light of his comment in Rosa Alchemica that "...I knew a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to custom," would imply a Mysticism completely unChristian. But this would be a superficial reading indeed. In fact, it would appear that his view of the central Christian dogma of the Incarnation, while reminiscent of orthodoxy, was given the esoteric emphasis familiar to readers of Waite's work:

Western civilisation, religion, and magic insist on power and therefore on body, and hence these three doctrines---efficient rule---the Incarnation---thaumaturgy. Eastern thoughts answer to these with indifference to rule, scorn of the flesh, contemplation of the formless. Western minds who follow the Eastern way become weak and vapoury, because unfit for the work forced upon them by Western life. Every symbol is an invocation which produces its equivalent expression in all worlds. The Incarnation invoked modern science and modern efficiency, and individualised emotion. It produced a solidification of all those things that grow from individual will. (op. cit., pp. 292-293). In one sweep, we see that the causes for Yeats' break with the Theosophical Society (Mme. Blavatsky's Eastern interests and her dislike of practical magic experimentation) he believed to be linked directly to the Incarnation. There are other examples of Yeats' specifically Christian esotericism, derived from the Golden Dawn and Waite. One must suffice, however. In his essay "Ceremonial Union," (Hermetic Papers, pp. 189-194), Waite describes the unity existing between Order members, a unity which permits them to share, via their ritual connexion, each other's pains and difficulties, and so lessen them. Compare Yeats:

A French miracle-working priest once said to Maud Gonne and myself and to an English Catholic who had come with us, that a certain holy woman had been the "victim" for his village, and that another holy woman who had been "victim" for all France, had given him her Crucifix, because he, too, was doomed to become a "victim." French psychical research has offered evidence to support the historical proofs that such saints as Lydwine of Schiedam, whose life suggested to Paul Claudel his L'Annonce faite ‡ Marie, did really cure disease by taking it upon themselves. As disease was considered the consequence of sin, to take it upon themselves was to copy Christ. (op. cit., p. 199). Thus it was that a few years later, in 1917, he would write comparing the contemporary French Poets like Jammes and Peguy to those of his youth like MallarmÎ:

Nothing remained the same but the preoccupation with religion, for these poets submitted everything to the Pope, and all, even Claudel, a proud oratorical man, affirmed that they saw the world with the eyes of vine-dressers and charcoal-burners. It was no longer the soul, self-moving and self-teaching---the magical soul---but Mother France and Mother Church. Have not my thoughts run a like round, though I have not found my tradition in the Catholic Church, which was not the Church of my childhood, but where the tradition is, as I believe, more universal and more ancient? (Mythologies, pp. 368-369). It would appear that as Yeats grew older, he did, at least with one part of his complex psyche, ever more closely synthesise esotericism and mystical Christianity. But he would never be a conventional parishioner---nor did he ever settle publicly into any denomination. He would, until his death, remain critical of clerics of every denomination. Yet it may well be that his final word on the matter might be summed up in an editorial he ghost-wrote for the short lived artistic journal To-Morrow in 1924:

TO ALL ARTISTS AND WRITERS

We are Catholics, but of the school of Pope Julius the Second and of the Medician Popes, who ordered Michael-angelo and Raphael to paint upon the walls of the Vatican, and upon the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the doctrine of the Platonic Academy of Florence, the reconciliation of Galilee and Parnassus. We proclaim Michaelangelo the most orthodox of men, because he set upon the tomb of the Medici "Dawn" and "Night," vast forms shadowing the strength of antediluvian Patriarchs and the lust of the goat, the whole handiwork of God, even the abounding horn. We proclaim that we can forgive the sinner, but abhor the atheist, and that we count among atheists bad writers and Bishops of all denominations. "The Holy Spirit is an intellectual fountain," and did the Bishops believe that, the Holy Spirit would show itself in decoration and architecture, in daily manners and written style. What devout man can read the Pastorals of our Hierarchy without horror at a style rancid, coarse and vague, like that of the daily papers? We condemn the art and literature of modern Europe. No man can create, as did Shakespeare, Homer, Sophocles, who does not believe, with all his blood and nerve, that man's soul is immortal, for the evidence lies plain to all men that where that belief has declined, men have turned from creation to photography. We condemn, though not without sympathy, those who would escape from banal mechanism through technical investigation and experiment. We proclaim that these bring no escape, for new form comes from new subject matter, and new subject matter must flow from the human soul restored to all its courage, to all its audacity. We dismiss all demagogues and call back the soul to its ancient sovereignty, and declare that it can do whatever it please, being made, as antiquity affirmed, from the imperishable substance of the stars. (Ellmann, op. cit., pp. 246-247). We are close here to Grillot de Givry's desire to build at Lourdes "a gothic jewel," which would "teach the clergy a lesson in architecture which they need," and Waite's gleeful repetition of St. Martin's maxim "The Church should be the Priest, but the Priest seeks to be the Church." It is just such surface anti-clericalism, concealing a desire to reintegrate the Christian Mysteries into Man's Art and conception of reality---whence they had been sundered by the Enlightenment and the Industrial and French Revolutions---which constituted the quest of that segment of the Golden Dawn with which Yeats, Machen, and Williams had affiliated. This writer has seen in one source an indication that Yeats' first burial at Roquebrune in 1939 was conducted with Catholic rites. Should this be true, it would mean that he must have been received into that Church on his deathbed; such a reconciliation would not have been with the clergy he regarded as being in the main rationalist, but with the Sacramental and Mystical system they represented. It would mean that he had achieved at his death the Hermetic conjunction he at times approached in his work.

ARTHUR MACHEN

Where Yeats' attachment to Christianity is tenuous, there is no such ambiguity with Arthur Machen. As Ireland did for Yeats, so Wales cast its glamour over Machen. H.P. Lovecraft wrote of him that: "He has absorbed the medieval mystery of dark woods and ancient customs, and is a champion of the Middle Ages in all things---including the Catholic faith" (Supernatural Horror in Literature, p. 88). Unlike Yeats, Machen was never estranged from the faith of his youth. But the lore of the neighbourhood of Caerleon upon Usk, one of Arthur's cities, so it was said, worked powerfully upon his imagination. From this early experience he evolved the credo that "Man is made of mystery and exists for mysteries and visions." This view of life turned him early to writing of the fantastic. In "The Novel of the White Powder," he wrote "The whole universe, my friend, is a tremendous sacrament; a mystic, ineffable force and energy, veiled by an outward form of matter; and man, and the sun, and the other stars, and the flower of the grass, and the crystal in the test tube, are each and every one as spiritual, as material, and subject to an inner working" (Tales of Horror and the Supernatural, p. 57). On his own, with just his admittedly mystical religion and his Celtic imagination, he had arrived at the same conclusions as the Hermeticists, Neoplatonists, and Ultra-Realists. He expressed much of the same viewpoint in "The Great God Pan:"

Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and hill following after hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchards, the fields of ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed beds by the river. You see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that all these things---yes, from the star that has just shone out in the sky to the solid ground beneath our feet---I say that all these are but dreams and shadows: the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes. There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision, beyond these "chases in Arras, dreams in a career," beyond them all as beyond a veil. (op. cit., p. 62). These two stories were written in 1895 and 1896. At the time that Machen wrote them, while he was perhaps temperamentally oriented in the direction of such beliefs, he was not inclined to give them much credence in the workaday world---in any case they were hazy, being based upon general impressions of life rather than experience of Magic. This changed with his entrance into the Golden Dawn in 1898. There he gained practical knowledge of what he had guessed. In an 1899 letter written to French novelist Paul-Jean Touletin, he declared:

When I was writing Pan and The White Powder, I did not believe that such strange things had ever happened in real life, or could ever have happened. Since then, and quite recently, I have had certain experiences in my own life which have entirely changed my point of view in these matters. Henceforward I am quite convinced that nothing is impossible on this Earth. I need scarcely add, I suppose, that none of the experiences I have had has any connexion whatever with such impostures as spiritualism or theosophy. But I believe we are living in a world of the greatest mystery full of unsuspected and quite astonishing things. (Louis Pauwels, Jacques Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians, pp. 212-213). In the 1903 split, Machen also followed Waite, whose more Christianised esotericism he apparently found congenial. Three years later, a new collection of his fiction appeared. While it included both of his older pieces, new material was included, in which obtains a certain shift of tone. In the first two works, he had been very vague about the shape of things, as we have seen. There is in part an almost Manichean quality to his description of reality---as well as a certain tentativeness. But the post-Golden Dawn material is at once more strictly in line with Christian dogma, and more authoritative. So he commences "The White People" with "Sorcery and sanctity...these are the only realities. Each is an ecstasy, a withdrawal from the common life" (Machen, op. cit., p. 116). After declaring that real sin is an obscene alteration of reality, he writes, "Holiness requires as great, or almost as great, an effort; but holiness works on lines that were natural once; it is an effort to regain the ecstasy that was before the Fall. But sin is an effort to gain the ecstasy and the knowledge that pertain alone to angels, and in making this effort man becomes a demon" (p. 119). Similarly, a character in "The Red Hand" remarks "There are Sacraments of evil as well as good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight" (The Strange World of Arthur Machen, pp. 170-171). As for Waite, so too for Machen, the Holy Grail was an important theme. Symbolising at once the Eucharist, the Crucifixion, and the ecstasy Machen believed was the heart of Christianity, he returned to it again and again. In "The Great Return," he described the Grail's coming to a remote Welsh village during World War I, and the veil it removes during its short stay from the world around us:

...if there be paradise in meat and in drink, so much the more is there paradise in the scent of the green leaves at evening and in the appearance of the sea and in the redness of the sky; and there came to me a certain vision of a real world about us all the while, of a language that was only secret because we would not take the trouble to listen to it and to discern it. (Tales, p. 222).

The presence of the Grail causes not only miracles but clarity of vision:

Old men felt young again, eyes that had been growing dim now saw clearly, and saw a world that was like paradise, the same world, it is true, but a world rectified and glowing, as if an inner flame shone in all things, and behind all things. And the difficulty in recording this state is this, that it is so rare an experience that no set language to express it is in existence. A shadow of its raptures and ecstasies is found in the highest poetry; there are phrases in ancient books telling of the Celtic saints that dimly hint at it; some of the old Italian masters of painting had known it, for the light of it shines in their skies and about the battlements of their cities that are founded on magic hills. But these are but broken hints. (op. cit., p. 237). This union of the Catholic with the Hermetic, of the Christian with the Esoteric, would, it must be again repeated, have made perfect sense to the Ultra-Realist, the Humanist, or the peasant. For Arthur Machen, it required whatever experiences he gained in the Golden Dawn to transmute the iron of impression into the gold of conviction. What began as instinct on his part was, through the medium of his time in the Golden Dawn, made into experience. This in turn gives his later works the feeling of one who knows whereof he speaks. Yet it also presents those of us comfortable with neat compartments marked "religion," "magic," and "literature," with tremendous problems of classification. So it is that Gunnar Urang in Shadows of Heaven is quite perplexed by Machen's definitions of literature in his Hieroglyphics, which he quotes on p. 150:

If we, being wondrous, journey through a wonderful world, if all our joys are from above, from the other world where the Shadowy Companion walks, then no mere making of the likeness of the external shape will be our art, no veracious document will be our truth; but to us, initiated, the Symbol will be offered, and we shall take the Sign and adore, beneath the outward and perhaps unlovely accidents, the very Presence and eternal indwelling of God. "But," Urang grumbles in reply, "he proposes another, quite different test: 'literature is the expression, through the artistic medium of words, of the dogmas of the Catholic Church, and that which is any way out of harmony with these dogmas is not literature;' for 'Catholic dogma is merely the witness, under a special symbolism of the enduring facts of human nature and the universe.'" For Machen, however, as for Yeats (at least, for Yeats when he was in the mood in which he wrote the earlier referred to To-Morrow editorial), these two tests are not different; rather they are the same. This synthesis between Christianity and ecstasy and the Hermetic would have been well recognised by Bl. Raymond Lully or Pico della Mirandola. That it is not to us tells us much about the avenues in which religious and literary thought have flowed since then. But Machen was able to see the synthesis---precisely because of his experience with the Golden Dawn.

CHARLES WILLIAMS

Charles Williams stands out among the three because of both his overtly theological oeuvre , and because of his close connexion with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He joined the Golden Dawn in 1917, and was active for at least five years thereafter. He too was attached to Waite's group, and as we shall see, some major themes in his work may be derived from that source. There can be no doubt that Williams' novels owed their themes to areas studied by the Golden Dawn.

Shadows of Ecstasy pulsates with the Hermetic dictum, "as above, so below." War in Heaven concerns the Grail, Many Dimensions the Philosopher's Stone, and The Place of the Lion the Platonic archetypes. We are confronted with the Tarot deck in The Greater Trumps, necromancy in All Hallow's Eve, and ghosts, witchcraft, and damnation in Descent into Hell. Despite this, it is usual to downplay Williams' membership in the Golden Dawn as a factor in his artistic vision. His close friend, Alice Hadfield, remarks:

In the end, what did Waite's Golden Dawn mean to him? Surely his outlook and philosophy were not generated, or indeed much affected, by it. He was thirty-one when he joined and his mind was already well-based, developed, and directed. His three following works, Divorce, Windows of Night, and Outlines of Romantic Theology, scatter the shadows of such a suggestion.

Referring long afterwards to the making of a magical circle against the dangers of the Dark, he wrote that he still felt the darkness, though it is "known to be merely untrue." (Charles Williams, p. 31) This is a view echoed by many other Williams scholars. The distinguished critic Thomas Howard declares:

Williams was not interested in the occult at all except during a brief period in his early life. One might be pardoned for forming the impression from his novels that he was quite caught up in the occult, but this would be a mistake. His imagination was aroused by certain ideas that crop up in occult lore, but he remained a plain Anglican churchman all his life. He accepted the taboos that rule out forays into the occult. (The Novels of Charles Williams, pp. 23-24). While both of these statements reflect a very commonly held view, emphasising separation between the esoteric and Christianity, it is in this case based upon a false understanding of what the Golden Dawn was all about. The activities of its best known non-primarily-literary member, Aleister Crowley, have served to bring upon the Order enormous discredit, despite the fact of his early expulsion therefrom. As has been observed the whole point of the Order was, in essence, to reveal experientially to its members the subtler realities of the cosmos. Assuming Christianity to be literally true, such experimentation could only reveal this. We are very far here from the kind of opportunistic evocation castigated by Williams in Many Dimensions, The Greater Trumps, and All Hallow's Eve. It is doubtless true that Williams came to the Golden Dawn with a fully formed world-view; so too did Machen and Yeats, for only such would be interested in joining this kind of a group anyway. What the Golden Dawn offered to these men and their colleagues was a) a coherent philosophy of the esoteric; and b) some type of actual experience which they, at any rate, accepted as objective factual confirmation of this philosophy (obviously, the exact nature of such confirmation is open to question). Carpenter admits that "Waite himself discouraged the Order of the Golden Dawn from practising 'Magia', the Renaissance term for white magic, and certainly he was opposed to any meddling in 'Goetia' or black magic" (op. cit., p. 82). Neither Williams, Yeats, nor Machen appear to have done much vis-a-vis evocation of demons, in keeping with Waite's strictures. Presumably the ritual, meditation, clairvoyance, and divination that was practised was sufficient to confirm the Order's teachings to them. The result has been described by Urang:

Charles Williams, in short, is a thoroughgoing supernaturalist. He predicates modes of existence other than those perceived by the senses and known by reason and takes for granted that the natural order proceeds from and is dependent upon a reality which is invisible and which operates by laws transcending those discoverable in the physical world. He is eager to insist, however, that the supernatural is not divorced from the natural; one is not to escape from sensory illusion into spiritual reality. It is rather the true form of the natural, so that one knows the supernatural through images within the natural. Shakespeare, says Williams, conceived the whole supernatural life in terms of the natural, and his work should stand as a rebuke to "arrogant supernaturalists." (op. cit., p. 56). This is as true of Machen and Yeats as it is of Williams; it is an outlook directly traceable to the influence of the Golden Dawn. There are many specific instances one could cite of particular traces of the Golden Dawn in Williams' work. For example, his conception in Taliessin through Logres of the Map of Europe corresponding to the human body is obviously connected with the sephiroth of the Qabalistic tree of life. But it is Williams' central doctrines of co-inherence, exchange, and substitution which figure in and inform all his prose fiction which most point up his Hermetic legacy. Alice Hadfield defines them thusly:

Co-inherence. Christ gave his life for us, and his risen life is in each one if we will to accept it. Simply as men and women, without being self-conscious or portentous, we can share in this life within the divine co-inherence of the Trinity, and in so doing live as members one of another. In our degrees of power, intelligence, love, or suffering, we are not divided from God or each other, for Christ's nature is not divided. Exchange. The whole natural and social life of the world works as a process of living by and with each other, for good or bad. We cannot be born without physical exchange, nor can we live without it. But we can each day choose or grudge it, in personal contacts in neighbourhood, and in our society under the law. To practise this approach to co-inherence we can find strength in the risen power of Christ linking all men. Substitution. Another way of approach to co-inherence is by compact to bear another's burden. One can take by love the worry of another, or hold a terror, as one member of Christ's life helping, through that life, another member in trouble.

Williams also saw these three principles as operating not only between the living in space and time, but also between the living and the dead---or the unborn. (op. cit., p. 32). Here we see a proposal strikingly like Waite's in "Ceremonial Union," and reminiscent of Yeats' observations regarding "victims." This is deeply esoteric matter here. Yet it is also profoundly Christian, being a restatement of the idea of the "Mystical Body of Christ," exemplified by St. Paul: "We being many are one bread, one body; for we all partake of the one bread" (I Cor., x, 17). Here we see at once the identification of the Church with her founder, with the Sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, binding all together. In time, Williams felt the need to give some kind of structure to like-minded friends. He founded in 1939 a loosely organised "Order of the Companions of the Co-inherence." To its membership were given seven guidelines. One of these advocated the study "of the Co-inherence of the Holy and Blessed Trinity, of the Two Natures in the Single Person, of the Mother and Son, of the communicated Eucharist, and of the whole Catholic Church" (Hadfield, op. cit., p. 174). Another set down the Order's four feasts: the Annunciation, Trinity Sunday, the Transfiguration, and All Souls (loc. sit.). All of this is extremely reminiscent of Waite's version of the Golden Dawn. It is interesting to note that the Golden Dawn observed five feasts; these were the four solstices and equinoxes, and their high festival, the feast of Corpus Christi. All of these concepts, applied to Christianity, may seem peculiar---particularly as expressed in Williams' fiction. Dr. Howard tells us, "...his religious vision was not idiosyncratic. It was a matter of traditional Christian orthodoxy. But his way of picturing it all was emphatically idiosyncratic" (op. cit., p. 294). But it is only idiosyncratic if one is referring to Aristotelian and/or post-Reformation forms of Christianity. Urang (p. 156) tells us that, for Williams, "Particularity must submit to the Idea, individual experience to dogma." Further, "the unity he celebrates is one attained by including the natural within the supernatural. He focuses upon the structures of the natural and derives an 'ontology of love;' but he locates and interprets these structures by means of the insights available in the supernaturalist frame of reference." The Double Truth (the idea that what is true in theology may be false in philosophy) which has undergirded much of Western Christianity for a long time is indeed alien to all of this. But the Fathers, the Ultra-Realists, the Classical Humanists, and the orthodox Romantics would all have recognised this concept. However Williams initially arrived at it, there can be no doubt that he saw it codified and demonstrated while a member of the Golden Dawn.

CONCLUSION

One may legitimately wonder what influence the Golden Dawn had on Lewis and Tolkien via Williams. Certainly That Hideous Strength is universally acknowledged to have been greatly affected by Lewis' acquaintance with Williams. Its description of the Company of St. Anne's is certainly evocative of Williams' Companions of the Co-inherence; from afar off it carries therefore also the mark of the Golden Dawn. Ithell Colquhoun, a relative of G.D. co-founder MacGregor Mathers, opines that "Lord of the Rings has a tinge of the Golden Dawn though this may be filtered through E.R. Eddison rather than Williams, since passages near the beginning of The Worm Ouroboros (1922) are so pervaded by the G.D. atmosphere as to make one speculate on its author's esoteric background" (Sword of Wisdom, p. 234). But the well-known suspicion JRRT had for Williams' ideas in this area leads one to suspect a rather different source for the "tinge" Colquhoun detects. Tolkien was a cultural Catholic, deeply read in both folk-lore and in pre-Reformation literature. These were themselves suffused, albeit more or less unconsciously, with the magical or Hermetic world-view, of which, after all, the Golden Dawn was only one exponent. Through it, however, and more particularly through the influence of Yeats, Machen, and Williams (to say nothing of Blackwood, Nesbit, etc.,) the Hermetic/Neoplatonic worldview has come be to commonplace throughout fantasy literature. Exiled from mainstream Christian theology, academic philosophy, and the sciences, it has nevertheless subsisted, and even thrived---at least among readers of such literature. But developments in such areas as Depth Psychology and the New Physics suggest that it may indeed have a validity beyond the pages of fiction. The popularity of the New Age might notify Christianity of a hunger unfed by either social activism or doctrinal rationalism.

The Christian Hermeticism encompassed by the Golden Dawn, like all such Hermeticism, might well be symbolised by a scene in the Medieval Quest of the Holy Grail (p. 275), wherein Joseph of Arimathea took from the Vessel a host made in the likeness of bread. As he raised it aloft there descended from above a figure like to a child, whose countenance glowed and blazed as bright as fire; and he entered into the bread, which quite distinctly took on human form before the eyes of those assembled there. When Josephus had stood for some while holding his burden up to view, he replaced it in the Holy Vessel. In a real sense, the whole conundrum regarding an authentic understanding of the Golden Dawn's teaching may be symbolised by the Ace of Cups in the Tarot Deck. Considered merely as a fortune telling device, it can mean plans or latent thoughts, ready to be put into action but whose meaning is still hidden. On a higher level it is said to mean psychic protection and knowledge. But its appearance suggests a world of meaning. For it shows a chalice held by a hand descending from a cloud. The Dove of the Holy Ghost conveys directly into it a wafer bearing a cross, and out from the chalice pour into the sea streams of pure and living water. We have at once a representation of the Sacramental system (the Eucharist and Baptism), and of the Holy Grail. Two mysteries, one attainable only at the end of a long quest, and the other so near as to be taken for granted. Yet they are in fact one. This is deepest Christian Hermeticism indeed. It is to the honour of the Golden Dawn that the Order both developed an authentic strand of such Hermeticism, and attracted members of the calibre necessary to convey such to a world not without need of it.

The Lord of the Rings - A Catholic View

2011-09-12T22:54:00.000-07:00

Mr. Paul Edwin Zimmer, of Greyhaven, remarked to me once that most analysis of the work of J.R.R. Tolkien was undertaken from the Evangelical Protestant or from the Anglican point of view. As Tolkien himself was a fervent Catholic, he reasoned, a Catholic critique might shed new light. Thus encouraged, I began.

It will be the contention of this paper that much of Mr. Tolkien's unique vision was directly shaped by recurring images in the Catholic culture which shaped JRRT, and which are not shared by non-Catholics generally. The expression of these images in Lord of the Rings will then concern us.

To begin with, it must be remembered that Catholic culture and Catholic faith, while mutually supportive and symbiotic, are not the same thing. Mr. Walker Percy, in his Lost in the Cosmos, explored the difference, and pointed out that, culturally, Catholics in Cleveland are much more Protestant than Presbyterians in say, Taos, New Orleans, or the South of France. Erik, Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, points out that the effects of this dichotomy upon politics, attributing the multi-party system in Catholic countries to the Catholic adherence to absolutes; he further ascribes the two-party system to the Protestant willingness to compromise. However this may be, it does point up a constant element in Catholic thought---the pursuit of the absolute.

Here we must make an aside in regard to the U.S. Catholic culture in America is practically non-existent, except in attenuated form among such peoples as the Hispanos and Indians of Northern New Mexico, the Cajuns and Creoles of Louisiana and the other Gulf States, and the old English Catholic settlements of Maryland and Kentucky. Elsewhere the Faith was brought by immigrants, and its attendant culture has, like all imported ones in the States, veered between preservation and assimilation. This was exacerbated by the fact that Catholic leadership in the United States was early committed to a programme of cultural melding. In addition, this leadership was primarily Irish, a nationality which had been deprived of much of its native culture by centuries of Protestant Ascendancy. Hence it has been extremely difficult for Americans, even American Catholics, to understand or appreciate the Catholic thing (as Chesterton described it) in a cultural context. I am reminded of the astonishment of a classmate of mine (from a typical American Catholic High School) at seeing an anthology of Catholic poetry. This situation has been greatly accentuated in the past twenty years by the changes occurring after Vatican II.

This being so, it will be necessary to describe a little of the uniquely Catholic world view. In fine, it is a sacramental one. At the heart of all Catholic life is a miracle, a mystery, the Blessed Sacrament. Surrounded traditionally by ritual and awe, it has been the formative aspect of Catholic art, drama, and poetry. The coronation of Kings, swearing of oaths, marriages, celebrations of feast-days, all have a Eucharistic character. Before the advent of Cartesianism, it was held (among other and higher things) to be the highest act of Magic, before which all other acts of theurgy, goetia, or sympathetic magic were as nought. It was the unitive force of the Catholic world, mystically uniting in sacrificial bond all the altars across the globe.
This great miracle was held to be prefigured by the sacrifice of the Jewish temple, and indeed to have been foreseen in some dim way also by the mysteries and philosophies of the ancient world. Hence nothing that was not evil in these older faiths was rejected out of hand, although a clear distinction was made between them and Catholicism.

Under this influence, Catholic societies were societies of wonder. Life was held to be a series of miracles. With God Himself appearing on the altar, in consumable form, how difficult were wizards, elves, or the change of seasons? As Aragorn replied to Eothain: "The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!" So might reply any European of the past, or a Cajun, Galwayman, Sicilian, Micmac, Tagalog, Alfur, or Baganda of today. It is this quality which leads us to dub those peoples "mythopoeic," and their modern equivalents "superstitious" or "backward."

Politically, traditional Catholic culture has been hierarchical. Feudalism itself was formed in great degree by the Faith, as is shown by the great difference between the Feudal system of European history, and its equivalents in the India of the Mughals, the Japan of the Tokugawa, and the China of the Warring States. Ideas of Chivalry and Hierarchy suggested by the Church did not merely shape European Catholic polity, but continue to determine political structures in such settings as Catholicised African tribes, ethnic Catholic Asian settlements, and Latin America. The relationships of King to Subject, of Lord to Vassal, of Comrade to Comrade-in-Arms remain, though often under other names.

In traditional Catholic societies, the King is, in a lessened sense, the Vicar of God. While not approximating the Sacral Kingship of non-Catholic peoples, the Catholic Monarchy nevertheless retains a certain sacredness. This remains the case, even when in conflict with the Church. After the calamities of the Reformation, English Civil War, Glorious, French, Industrial, and Russian Revolutions, etc., the King became more than that; he became the exiled leader of the faithful, whose return alone would bring a return to the old ways, and an end to change and unrest.
These various themes continue to affect Catholic consciousness today. We will observe how far Tolkien was a cultural as well as a doctrinal Catholic (despite being raised in a Protestant land) and how these themes emerge in Lord of the Rings.

The Birmingham Oratory which provided the backdrop of JRRT's life from 1904 to 1911, was founded by Cardinal Newman and remained a stronghold of cultural Catholicism. Fr. Francis Morgan, JRRT's guardian, he described as a "Welsh-Spanish Tory," surely as Ultramontane a combination as one could wish for. Even today, with some few exceptions, the houses of the Oratory around the world are renowned for both orthodoxy and learning. It was here that our author's religious sense was formed, and during this time that his literary and linguistic interests began. Later, his studies were confined primarily to works of the pre-Reformation. Beyond Chaucer, he had little interest. Judging by his later work, his early environment and studies supplied that which would have been supplied had he lived in a Catholic country. Had he lived away from the Oratory, a living example of Catholic culture, one wonders what the effect on his work would have been.

In the sphere of doctrine, of course, the influence of Catholicism upon JRRT is readily apparent. In this regard he himself admitted as much, when he wrote in a letter to Deborah Webster of 25 October 1958, "far greater things may colour the mind in dealing with the lesser things of a fairy-story."

The Blessed Sacrament was very much at the heart of JRRT's devotional life. As he informs his son on p. 339 of his Collected Letters:

I myself am convinced by the Petrine claims, nor looking around the world does there seem much doubt which (if Christianity is true) is the True Church, the temple of the Spirit dying but living, corrupt but holy, self-reforming and rearising. But for me that Church of which the Pope is the acknowledged head on earth has as chief claim that it is the one that has (and still does) ever defended the Blessed Sacrament, and given it most honour, and put (as Christ plainly intended) in the prime place. "Feed my sheep" was His last charge to St. Peter; and since His words are always first to be understood literally, I suppose them to refer primarily to the Bread of Life. It was against this that the W. European revolt (or Reformation) was really launched---"the blasphemous fable of the Mass"---and faith/works a mere red herring.

This one finds echoed in the figure of lembas, which "had a potency that increased as travellers relied on it alone, and did not mingle it with other foods. It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure..." (Vol. III, p. 262). This is all very reminiscent of the large literature of Eucharistic miracles, and of such people as St. Lydwine, St. Francis Borgia, and Theresa Neumann, who lived off only the Blessed Sacrament.

Another unique feature of Catholic life which distinguishes it from that of other Christians is the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which JRRT shared enthusiastically. As an example, we cite a letter to Robert Murray, S.J., in which he speaks of "...Our Lady, upon which all my own small perception of beauty, both in majesty and simplicity is founded." To a degree in the figure of Galadriel, but more particularly in that of Elbereth may one discern the shadow of Mary:

Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear!
O Queen beyond the Western Seas!
O Light to us that wander here
Amid the world of woven trees!
Gilthoniel! O Elbereth!
Clear are thy eyes and bright thy breath,
Snow-white! Snow-white! We sing to thee
In a far land beyond the sea.
O stars that in the Sunless Year
With shining hand by her were sown,
In windy fields now bright and clear
We see your silver blossom blown!
O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!
We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees,
Thy Starlight on the Western Seas.

One is immediately reminded of the English hymn by John Lingard, with which JRRT was certainly familiar:

Hail, Queen of Heaven, the ocean star,
Guide of the wand'rer here below:
Thrown on life's surge, we claim thy care---
Save us from peril and from woe.
Mother of Christ, star of the sea,
Pray for the wanderer, pray for me.
Sojourners in this vale of tears,
To thee, blest advocate, we cry;
Pity our sorrows, calm our fears,
And soothe with hope our misery.
Refuge in grief, star of the sea,
Pray for the mourner, pray for me.

As earlier observed, the Catholic view of the world is a sacramental one; the centre of Catholic life, according to C. G. Jung, "...is a living mystery, and that is the thing that works..."

Opponents of the Church have often claimed that the sacraments are "mere" magic. The phrase hocus pocus is a parody of the words of consecration, Hoc est enim corpus meum. As Galadriel observes, "...this is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem also to use the same words of the deceits of the enemy." Indeed, one may go so far as to say that the effect of magic, wielded for good, is in Lord of the Rings the same as that of the Sacraments upon the life of the devout Catholic. Protection, nourishment, knowledge, all are held to flow in supernatural abundance from them. In his prayer after communion, St. Thomas Aquinas asks that the Blessed Sacrament be "...a strong defence against the snares of all enemies, visible and invisible." St. Bonaventure declares it to be "...the fountain of life, the fountain of wisdom and knowledge, the fountain of eternal light..." In a word, as the Sacraments are the means of Grace in the Catholic world, magic---wielded by the wise---is the means of Grace in Middle Earth.

The Sacraments are the centre and cause of all authentic Catholic Mysticism, and the Saints have owed their remarkable careers to them. Certainly, in terms of the physical phenomena of Mysticism (Eucharistic miracles; ecstasies; the stigmata; levitation; bilocation; luminous irradiance; supernatural fragrances; infused knowledge; vision through opaque bodies; supernatural power over objects, etc.) the great mystics have often performed wonders worthy of Gandalf and Elrond (one thinks of St. Jean Vianney, the Cure d'Ars, for example, or of Padre Pio). This too is something of which JRRT would have been aware. As Arthur Machen observed, the only realities are sanctity and sorcery.

From the realm of Myth, Magic, and Mystery, we now descend to that of history. There is a particularly Catholic view of history, summed up by JRRT in a letter to Amy Ronald of 15 December 1956: "actually, I'm a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect 'history' to be anything but a long defeat---though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory."

In the range of modern Catholic history, there are certain archetypes, which, it may be argued, are reflected in Lord of the Rings , in the manner he described. The ones we will examine are: a) the age of Faith, or the organic state; b) Church versus State; c) the great King; d) the onset of modernity and the martyr-King; e) the Restoration (successful or otherwise).

The concept of society as an organic whole, without class conflict, with a communal structure, is one that has characterised Catholic social thought since the Roman Empire. In many ways the Shire expresses perfectly the economic and political ideals of the Church, as expressed by Leo XIII in Rerum novarum, and Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno. Traditional authority (the Thain), limited except in times of crisis; popular representation (the Mayor of Michel Delving), likewise limited; subsidiarity; and above all, minimal organisation and conflict. It is the sort of society envisioned by Distributists Belloc and Chesterton in Britain, by Salazar in Portugal, by the framers of the Irish Constitution, by Dollfuss in Austria, and by Smetona in Lithuania. How ever far short or close these dwellers in the real world came to their goal, the fact remains that it is something very close to the Shire they had in mind.

In the ages of faith, while both Church and State were dedicated to roughly the same ends, they often differed as to how to go about achieving them. Then too, human nature and greed often sowed discord. Sometimes the life-and-death struggle with Islam was hindered by these quarrels. In Lord of the Rings, we see these struggles reflected in the tension between Gandalf and Denethor II. Gandalf, indeed, partakes of much of the nature of the Papacy. He belongs to no one nation, and in a very real sense he is leader of all the free and faithful. This is so because his power is magical rather than temporal, just as the Pope's is sacramental. Denethor's interest is wholly national. To his statement "...there is no purpose higher in the world as it now stands than the good of Gondor," Gandalf replies, "the rule of no realm is mine, neither Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care...For I also am a steward." Thus might Boniface VIII have spoken to Philip the fair, or Gregory VII to Henry IV, or Innocent III to King John. Gandalf also reminds one of the Fisher-King in the Grail legends, who himself is a symbol of Peter-in-the-Boat.

On the other hand, the Catholic imagination was also haunted by the image of the great Kings, like Arthur, St. Ferdinand III, and St. Louis IX. These were held to have been the ideal prototypes for rulers: pious, brave, wonderful in a manner unapproachable for those of later times. In three characters in particular, Elendil, Gil-Galad, and Durin, do we find the yearning for the great King in terms with which Western Catholics of yesteryear and Third World Catholics of today would be familiar:

Gil-Galad was an Elven-King.
Of him the harpers sadly sing!
The last whose realm was fair and free
Between the Mountains and the Sea.
and again:
The world was young, the mountains green,
No stain yet on the moon was seen.
No words were laid on stream or stone,
When Durin woke and walked alone.
The world was fair, the mountains tall,
In Elder days before the fall
Of mighty kings in Narthgarond
and Gondolin' who now beyond
Western Seas have passed away:
The world was fair in Durin's day.

So might have a Medieval minstrel mourned the Nine Worthies; so might a modern one mourn the Negus, or the Mwami, or the Kabaka. The forms change, but for a Catholic, the subject rarely does.

The upheavals earlier referred to destroyed Catholic unity, splintered society, and destroyed much that was beautiful. The enclosures and various other economic measures ended Western Society's communal nature. The great present-day expressions of these forces of modernity are Capitalism and Communism, with all they represent. JRRT's feelings about such things are clear. In The Hobbit, we are told of Goblins that "they invented some of the machines that have since troubled our world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions have always delighted them..." Of course, the descriptions given in The Scouring of the Shire are particularly apropos.

In the struggle between Tradition and Modernity, three famous monarchs lost their lives: Charles I, Louis XVI, and Nicholas II. While the first and last were not officially Catholics, they were at least culturally so. Traditional forces in England, France, and Russia were solemnly canonised by the Anglican and Russian Orthodox Churches; Louis XVI is still regarded as a martyr by thousands of French Royalists. Each owed their deaths to two items: a desire to uphold the Traditional constitution of Church and State in their respective realms, and a personal weakness or flaw which reduced their effectiveness in so doing. They also shared heroic deaths which, to great degree, redeemed their mistakes in the eyes of many of their subjects. All of this applies to Isildur as well.

The social ideas earlier referred to were contradicted by the events of history. With their end as fact, they became hope. This hope became concentrated in the cause of the deposed sovereign, who would, upon his return to power, set all things to rights again:

'Till then, upon Ararat's hill
My hope shall cast her anchor still,
Until I see some peaceful dove,
Bring home the branch she dearly love;
Then will I wait, till the waters abate,
Which now disturb my troubled brain:
Else never rejoice, till I hear the voice,
That the King enjoys his own again.

As time passed, the claims went to heirs, but the ever hopeful adherents continued their struggle. Thus, the Jacobites fought for the Stuarts in 1689-1690, 1715, 1719, and 1745-46; the Carlists in Spain rebelled in 1833-39, during the 1840s and 50s, and in 1872-76---they also played a key role in the Spanish Civil War on the Nationalist side. The Chouans and the Vendeens continued guerrilla warfare against the French Republic all through the Revolution; even today, French Royalism flourishes. The Miguelists of Portugal continued their agitation against first the liberal monarchy and then the republic down to the present. Since the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Habsburg adherents have pursued dreams of restoration. So greatly did Hitler fear this possibility that he named the planned invasion of Austria Case Otto, after the exiled heir. Whatever may become of their political hopes, the canonisation of Charles, the last Emperor, may be presaged by the incorruptibility of his remains at Madeira.

However this may be, such people looked to a restoration to restore the Church to prominence, curb industry, revive the smallholder and the old order of society. As Robert Burns observed:

The Church is in ruins, the State is in jars,
delusions, oppressions, and murderous wars.
We dare nae well say it, but we ken wha's to blame,
There'll never be peace 'till Jamie comes hame.

As it became apparent that Jamie would not come home, nor would Don Carlos, nor Dom Miguel, nor the Comte de Chambord, many looked for less regal saviours. From such desires emerged (and emerge) such men as Franco, Pilsudski, and many of the better Latin American Caudillos. In a sense, this Catholic political messianism is even present in the careers of such diverse figures as Kennedy and Castro.

Aragorn succeeds where Bonnie Prince Charlie and the others failed. Instead of the field of Culloden's defeat and mourning, we have the field of Cormallen's victory and rejoicing. In Middle Earth, the "good old cause" triumphs. The Dunedain, so like the Jacobites, Carlists, and Legitimists for most of their history, gain at last the victory. From being the Young Pretender, Aragorn becomes Charlemagne, restorer of the Empire. Indeed, his restored kingdom has much in common with the Carolingian Renaissance. It would not be unfair to say that it is this which Catholics have at the bottom of their minds when they consider things political. In Middle Earth, all things do become well, for the King indeed enjoys his own again.

There are other symbols time does not allow us to explore: the dark Lord's forces might represent not only Modernity, but the Islam which was Christendom's greatest previous enemy; the Tower of Guard, Minas Tirith, might be seen as a symbol of the Church Militant, of the Res Publica Christiana. But we have examined a few of the most evocative motifs in terms of the Catholic Psyche.

In his Hieroglyphics: Notes on the Ecstatic in Literature, Mr. Arthur Machen declares, "Literature is the expression, through the artistic medium of words, of the dogmas of the Catholic Church, and that which is in anyway out of harmony with these dogmas is not literature," for "Catholic dogma is merely the witness, under a special symbolism of the enduring facts of human nature and the universe." Whether or no JRRT would have agreed with this definition, he did say, in the letter to Fr. Murray, S.J., already cited, "Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision...For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism."

It has been said that the dominant note of the traditional Catholic liturgy was intense longing. This is also true of her art, her literature, her whole life. It is a longing for things that cannot be in this world: unearthly truth, unearthly purity, unearthly justice, unearthly beauty. By all these earmarks, Lord of the Rings is indeed a Catholic work, as its author believed; but it is more. It is this age's great Catholic epic, fit to stand beside the Grail legends, Le Morte d'Arthur, and The Canterbury Tales. It is at once a great comfort to the individual Catholic, and a tribute to the enduring power and greatness of the Catholic tradition, that JRRT created this work. In an age which has seen an almost total rejection of the Faith on the part of the Civilisation she created, the loss of the Faith on the part of many lay Catholics, and apparent uncertainty among her hierarchy, Lord of the Rings assures us, both by its existence and its message, that the darkness cannot triumph forever.

"A-HUNTING WE WILL GO": Part I

2011-08-13T21:50:00.000-07:00

THE HOUNDS TO THE VILLAGE WILL COME
What a fine hunting day and balmy as May
And the hounds to the village will come
Every friend will be there and all trouble and care
Will be left far behind us at home.
See servants and steeds on their way
And sportsmen their scarlet display
Let's join the glad throng and go laughing along
And we'll all go a-hunting today.
(anon. English folk-song)

The name of the holy St. Francis has been much abused in this century; for the manly and deep-hearted friar, who merited to receive the stigmata and underwent much for the sake of his God and King has oftentimes been transformed into a sickly wall-lily, much given to languishing about in communion with birds and animals. Now fond he was of them, certainly, and all of nature. But when he preached to them, it was because no man would hear what he had to say, not because he thought they were human. This is an important distinction, because St. Francis' name is constantly invoked in the cause of Animal Rights, surely one of the oddest of all the odd causes ever to spawn in this oddest of centuries.

It must be admitted that I am an animal lover. Dogs, cats, horses, mice, rats, fish, hamsters, guinea pigs, snakes, lizards, birds---I have enjoyed them all. But nevertheless, Animal Rights and pseudo-Franciscanism annoy me no end, for one signal reason. Although generally not accepted entirely in Catholic circles, these ideologies have spread quietly the notion that one of the greatest of arts and sports is somehow un-Christian: hunting. Inevitably, we are told of how terrible the notion of the chase is; its cruelty is surely unbecoming to civilized man. Our ancestors, more Catholic than we, knew better. The knights of old were much addicted to hunting with hounds---venery; and with birds of prey---falconry. Disputes between lovers of the two were many, and Leon Gautier describes the case made by a supporter of the former:

"One may easily perceive...that you have not been accustomed to associate with intelligent animals like my hounds and harriers. The education of one good blood-hound, I can tell you, requires as much care as do all your falcons, and at least the beast is fond of you, and reciprocates your caresses. Do you tell me of your going out hunting, indeed? The really animated and delightful scene is on a hunting morning when we go forth to chase the stag or the wild boar. There is the pack baying round you with the beaters, and the attendants with the relays. The favourite hound is encouraged by name, 'Eh, brochart, hie away, lad.' Then the hounds are uncoupled and set upon the scent of the game. On, on! Then the hunt plunges into the wood, and reposes there in the middle of the day in the leafy glades beneath the overhanging trees.

"Then after a while the baying of the hounds again arises, they are again in the scent, they bark, they bay, they have reached the boar, they attack him! The enormous beast defends himself stoutly and fiercely: he places himself against a tree and rolls over and disembowels ten of the boar-hounds. Blood flows, not only that of the dogs: the boar's blood ensanguines the sward, and the noble blood of the huntsman mingles with it, The hounds redouble their cries and their efforts to avenge their master. The animal is at length overcome; pierced with twenty spears he is nailed to the ground; dead! (Chivalry, pp. 151-2).

This may seem bloodthirsty, indeed; but we do need to remember, firstly, that the world of our ancestors was not the safe place we think of today. Let us go back in memory to Europe of the Merovingian Kings. The barbarian invasions had settled down, and whatever traces of paganry remained were slowly being worked upon. The small towns, villages, and forts linked by dirt tracks across the face of Christendom were islands of light in a sea of wooded darkness, and a squirrel leaping from bough to branch could travel from Brittany to the Urals.

Nor were these the woods we think of today, with their smaller green trees creating a pleasant shade over maintained forest paths; no, these were veritable temperate jungles. Perhaps only one tract of this sort remains today: the Bialowiecza Forest straddling the border of Poland and Belarus. One modern writer has recorded his impressions thereof:

My eyes had to adjust to the gloom under the dense canopy of the trees. My skin registered the drop in temperature and the increase in humidity. (In summer, humidity inside the forest may reach 100 per cent.) My nose picked up the rank, dank vegetable odour of leaf mould, humus, bog water and decaying wood. In that silent place my ears registered every sound, so that even the minutest noise seemed magnified: a pine cone fell on the soft forest floor with a thud like a hammer blow, a maple leaf fluttered down among the branches with a clatter like broken crockery, the mad cackle of a jay and the rattle of a woodpecker echoed and re-echoed between the myriad noise-reflecting surfaces of the tree-trunks like the uproar of a blasphemous congregation in a cathedral. But it was on my innermost sense that the forest made the strongest impression. It seemed to me that in the Bialowiecza Forest one was confronted with a kind of mirror image of the inner recesses of the human mind; and in the continuous cycle of growth, death, decay and regeneration that I saw all around, I was painfully reminded of our own mortality, and of the biochemical function we would each have to perform sooner or later when we give back to the common pool the cells of which we, like all other living things, are composed (Douglas Botting, Wilderness Europe, p. 85).

There were fearful inhabitants in forests of this kind. Most fearsome of all, perhaps, was the aurochs, or wild bull. Ancestor of our modern cattle, it was a large black animal standing six feet at the shoulder with spreading, forwardly curved horns. Just as fearsome was the European bison, forest-dwelling cousin of our own American buffalo. Somewhat resembling our version, it too could be found throughout the European forest. Much smaller but nastier in disposition was the wild boar; hunted with spear, it had a cunning lacking in the large bovines. The great hulking brown bear was smarter yet.

There were the moose, which Europeans call elk; the red deer, the roe deer, and the fallow deer. Lesser game were present also; the genet, the marten, the fox, the otter, the badger, hare rabbit, and squirrel. Nor were beasts of prey absent either---the lynx and wild cat prowled. But perhaps dominant in our ancestor's minds was the wolf. As Fr. Montague Summers writes:

For long centuries throughout all Europe there was no wilder brute, no more dreaded enemy of man than the savage wolf, whose ferocity was a quick and lively menace to the countryside such as perhaps we cannot in these latter days by any stretch of the imagination even faintly realize and apprehend. Whilst yet large tracts of every country, steppes and moorland, sierra and wold, upland, fell and plain, were utterly deserted and only trodden by man with peril and mortal danger to himself, the wolf proved a fearful foe. He dwelt in those formidable forests which long continued his veritable strongholds, fortresses from which he could not be dislodged, Riddlesdale and Bowland, Sherwood and Bere and Irwell in England; Ettrick, Braemar, Rothiemurchus, Invercauld in Scotland; in Ireland Kilmallock, the wilds of Kerry, the Wicklow mountains, Shillela [from which latter place originated the famous Irish walking-stick]; in France, Fontainebleau, Vincennes, the thick-hedged slopes of the Jura and Vosges; in Germany and central Europe the Schwarzwald, the Ahmerwald, the Wald-Viertel, and many more. Monarchs hunted him, and legislated and offered rich rewards for his destruction. But for many a hundred years and a hundred years again did the wolf defy all attempts at extirpation (The Werewolf, p. 22).

But other, less easily dealt with animals dwelt also in the forest, as our ancestors believed; the unicorn, for one, and the dragon. Moreover the fairies and rather more unpleasant characters in the way of goblins and demons could be found there also. While holy hermits might take up their residence in the forest's depths, so too might robbers---and not always benevolent ones like Robin Hood and his Merry Men, all under the merry greenwood tree, either. There too was the mysterious Green Man, a half-human, half supernatural figure analogous in European folklore to the North American Indian Sasquatch or Bigfoot, and the Tibetan Yeti. So it is not too surprizing that in the days of Clovis, everyone was allowed to hunt and to clear what forest he could, regardless of station.

The Kings and nobility, however, had a special responsibility to defend the peasants not only from invaders, but also whatever evil lurked inthe woods. Still, the forest and its denizens were not merely fearsome, they were also valuable resources. Hunting was as good a practice for warfare as was tourneying; moreover, the opponent was not human. As they shrank, forests were set aside for Royal and noble use. Bialowiecza Forest, eventually the last refuge of the European bison, and Jaktozowka Forest, which similarly served for the aurochs (less successfully; the last one died in 1627, although German geneticists have "bred back" animals at least similar in appearance and habits---if one could derive modern cattle from the old animal, could not the reverse be done?) were so reserved to the Polish Kings. The French Monarchs created a whole administration, the Eaux et Forts (waters and forests) to cover the network of forests around the Kingdom: such forests as Fontainebleau, Vincennes, Villers-Cotterts, Retz, and St. Germain were monitored by a large team of foresters. The Louvre was built originally as a hunting box for the pursuit of wolves. In England, even more rigid forest and game laws were passed. As in France, a full civil service of foresters in varying ranks was appointed. Such well known English Forests as the New Forest, Epping Forest,the Forest of Dean, Sherwood Forest (home of Robin Hood) and Shakespeare's Forest of Arden were all so set aside. The Holy Roman Emperor himself had a rather similar setup; among his domains was the grand and spacious Forest of the Ardennes. In all countries, small or dangerous game was permitted to commoners to hunt : fox, wildcat, badger, squirrel, hare, and sometimes rabbit or wolf. Landowners could (and were) granted hunting rights on their own land.

This hunting was generally conducted on horseback with hounds---in a manner similar to that of fox-hunting today. Together the hunters would ride after their quarry, signalling to each other by means of horns---when the quarry was first sighted, and so on. Kings and nobles grew to love the sport; Elector John George II of Saxony (reigned 1656-80) was hereditary Lord High Master of the Chase for the Holy Roman Empire, and so loved hunting that he refused the crown of Bohemia because their stags were inferior in size to his own Saxon breed. He established the magnificent Hunt Museum remaining today in Dresden. In this he only emulated Bl. Charlemagne, first of the Holy Roman Emperors. In between fighting at the frontiers of Christendom, the great Emperor would gallop through the forsts in pursuit of game. His city of Aix-la-Chappelle (Aachen) owes its origin to one of his hunting trips. While pursuing a stag across a stream, his horse imnmediately pulled his hoof out of the water and retreated. Examining the leg, Charlemagne found it scalded and the water hot; he built a chapel in the shape of a horseshoe on the spot. After he built his palace there, the city grew up around it. To this day the rotonda around the hot spring is in the shape of a horse shoe, reminding us of its origins. The Emperor was summoned one time to the Vosges mountains, where a bear was terrorizing the neighborhood. With his huntsmen and hounds, Charles pursued him; the bear disabled many of the hunters and dogs. At last, Charles alone standing up to him, face to face on a hill-top, where thethe bear took the monarch in a crushing bear-hug. At last, Charles struck him with his dagger and flung the animal off the precipice. The witnesses cried out, "long live Charles the Great!," which is how he came to be called Charlemagne. Although he was jealous indeed of his hunting rights, he allowed the monks of the Abbey of St. Denis to chase the stags who were overgrazing their woods, on the proviso that the venison would be fed to the postulants and novices, and the hides used to bind missals.

His successor on the throne of France, many centuries later, St. Louis IX was just as great a huntsman. In Palestine during the crusades he hunted lions, while at home he allowed commoners to hunt, provided always that they give a haunch of any animal they killed to the lord of the place. From this comes the custom in Europe today of giving the foot of theslain quarry to whomever leads the hunting party. Louis XV stopped on his way back from his Coronation in Rheims to chase the stag in Villers-Cotter90t before returning to Paris. The martyred Louis XVI was also particularly fond of hunting. Even such Popes as Pius II, Julius II, and LeoX were avid huntsmen, and it was permitted even to religious, so long asthe animals pursued presented a threat either to people or crops.

The chase helped develop the code of honor chivalry had bestowed on the high-born. If hunting for pleasure and not for food, the means at the hunter's disposal must be limited so that the quarry might have a chance to escape; further, wounded animals ought not to be pained more than strictly necessary. Thus even today, one does not shoot a sitting duck or wait for a game-animal to drink at a water hole. The hunting code yet demands that one track down and shoot a wounded animal, rather than leaving it to die in pain if pursuit should be inconvenient. Alongside this code grew up a hierarchy of each "hunt," as a group of hunters, horses, and hounds were and are called. Master of Hounds, beaters-in, and so forth all developed particular roles; similarly, the hunt itself became ceremonial to a great degree, the coup de grace (stroke of grace) being given to the quarry with a ceremonial knife or short sword---designed to be swift and as painless as possible. From hunting has developed much of what we call gentlemanly behavior.

Quest for the Catholic State

2011-08-02T15:28:00.000-07:00

After the French Revolution Count Joseph de Maistre, probably the greatest of counter-revolutionary thinkers, uttered this warning: "Know how to be a monarchist: in the past it was instinct, today it is a science." He was fully aware that traditional loyalties and institutions had been questioned by the revolutionary turmoil; in particular rationalism and illuminism attacked the Throne and the Altar and pursued a strategy of laicisation of State and unchristianising of society. They fought sacred monarchies because they denied that authority is derived from God and rejected the idea that society is a natural development of families, is founded on traditions, is an organic entity; to this they proposed the notion of a hypothetical contract. De Maistre knew very well that political battles must first be won in the field of ideas, a teaching which was to be stressed by another great French monarchist, Charles Maurras, and that the Revolution, even if defeated on the battlefield, still lay in wait (Massimo de Leonardis, "Monarchism in Italy," Royal Stuart Review, vol. 8, no. 1, 1990, p. 5).

Up until 1848, Catholic social theorists and politicians alike had to a great degree simply ignored the industrial proletariat. While they continued to fight for Catholic Monarchy, local liberties and traditions, and the countryside over the town, they had ignored the growth of the proletariat and what was called the "social question"---the reduction of the industrial workers to semi-permanent misery; the result was the loss of the Faith among such masses, and the rise correspondingly of socialism and communism. The revolutions of 1848 and the following few years made such aware of two important facts: the Church had to face the industrial age, and just as they had been forced by the Revolution to turn what had been before an instinctual acceptance of the natural order of things into a conscious ideology, so too must they now find a way to apply that ideology---developed initially in defense of traditional and rural institutions---to modern life.
Just as in the first part of the 19th Century, men like De Maistre, De Bonald, von Baader, and MŸller arose to elaborate and popularize the Church's social teachings, so too did they in the second half. As early as 1869, German bishop Wilhelm von Ketteler declared that the working classes required six things:

1) increase of wages corresponding to the true value of labor;
2) shorter hours of labor;
3) days of rest;
4) abolition of child-labor in factories;
5) prohibition of women, particularly mothers, from working in factories; and
6) young girls should not be employed in factories (lest the latter two seem horribly sexist, it should be remembered that then as now, family life was disrupted when mothers had to work, and young girls could be employed at a fraction of even the pittance paid men).

The fact that these proposals seemed radical then says much about conditions at the time. Soon men like him all over Europe would be attempting to unite the older strand of Catholic social thought with the new conditions. Always, however, they would be hampered by the fact that by this time the reins of power in most of Europe were in liberal hands.

Already, though, the world had seen one government at least in integrally Catholic hands, showing what the Church's teachings could give the nation and the ruler who dared to apply them. The country so blessed was Ecuador, and the ruler, Gabriel Garcia Moreno.

The coming of independence to Latin America saw the formation in every country there of two parties: Liberal and Conservative. The latter looked to Spain in particular and Europe in general for social and political inspiration. They wished to retain the Catholic Church in the position which she had had from the first settlement; further, they wanted the great estates to remain like those of Europe---self-contained communities which, while they may not have made their owners a great deal of money did build social stability. The Liberals looked to the United States as a guide, wanted separation of Church and State, and wished to turn the great estates into money-making concerns, like factories. These two groups had clashed since independence. The Conservatives had indeed produced some great leaders, like Mexico's Agust’n I and Guatemala's Rafael Carrera. But these were inevitably opposed by powerful U.S.-backed forces. In any case, as the 19th Century progressed, both parties were faced with the impact such inventions as the railroad must make on their countries.

Born in 1821 to an aristocratic family of Ecuador's capital, Quito, Garcia Moreno studied theology in the university there. Thinking he had a vocation to the priesthood, he received minor orders and the tonsure; but his closest friends and his own interests convinced him to pursue a more worldly career. Graduating in 1844, he was admitted to the bar. Starting his career as both lawyer and journalist (opposed to the Liberal government in power) he made little headway. In 1849 he embarked on a two year visit to Europe to see first hand the effects of the 1848 revolution. He made a second trip in 1854-56. Louis Veulliot (himself a great champion of the Faith in the press) described what these trips did for Garcia Moreno:

In a foreign land, solitary and unknown, Garcia Moreno made himself fit to rule. He learned all that was necessary for him to know in order to govern a nation, formerly Christian but now falling fast into an almost savage condition...Paris, which is at once a Christian and a heathen city, is the very place where the lesson he needed vould best be acquired, since the two opposing elements may there be seen engaged in perpetual conflict. Paris is a training school for priests and martyrs, it is also a manufactory of anti-Christs and assassins. The future president of Ecuador gazed upon the good and the evil, and when he set out for his home afar, his choice was made.

He returned home in 1856 to find his country in the grip of strident anti-clericals; he was elected a senator and joined the opposition. Although himself a Monarchist (he would have liked to have seen a Spanish prince on the throne) he bowed to circumstances and allowed himself to be made president after a civil war the year after his return---so great had his stint in the country's Senate made his reputation. In 1861 this was confirmed in a popular election for a four year term. Unhappily, his successor was deposed by the Liberals in 1867. But two years later he was reelected, and then again in 1875. During his period in office, he propelled his nation forward, all the while uniting her more closely to the Faith.

Personally pious (he attended Mass, daily, as well as visiting the Blessed Sacrament; he received every Sunday---a rare practice before St. Pius X---and belonged to the Workingmen's section of the Sodality, in which he was quite active), he believed that the first duty of the State was to promote and support Catholicism. Church and State were united, but by the terms of the new concordat, the State's power over appointments of bishops inherited from Spain was done away with---at Garcia Moreno's insistence. The 1869 constitution made Catholicism the religion of the State and required that both candidates and voters for office be Catholic. He was the only ruler in the world to protest the Pope's loss of the Papal States, and two years later had the legislature consecrate Ecuador to the Sacred Heart.

In more worldly things, he came to office with an empty treasury and an enormous debt. To overcome this, he placed the government on stringent economy and abolished useless positions, as well as cutting out the corruption which siphoned off tax dollars. As a result he was able to provide Ecuadoreans with more for less. Slavery was abolished, but there was full compensation for the owners; (thus neither former slaves nor masters suffered economically). The army was reformed, with officers being sent to Prussia to study, and illiterate recruits taught basic skills. Houses of prostitution were closed, and hospitals opened in all the major towns. Railroads and national highways were built, telegraph extended, and the postal and water systems improved. City streets were paved, and local bandits suppressed. Garcia Moreno further reformed the universities, established two polytechnic and agricultural colleges and a miltary school, and increased the number of primary schools to 500 from 200. The number of students in them grew from 8000 to 32,000. To staff the enormously expanded health-care and educational facilities, foreign religious were brought in. All of this was done while expanding the franchise and guaranteeing equal rights under the law to every Ecuadorean.

But the Liberals (not without contacts and support in the American Embassy) hated Garcia Moreno; when he was elected a third time in 1875, it was considered to be his death warrant. He wrote immediately to Pius IX asking for his blessing before inauguration day on August 30:
I wish to obtain your blessing before that day, so that I may have the strength and light which I need so much in order to be unto the end a faithful son of our Redeemer, and a loyal and obedient servant of His Infallible Vicar. Now that the Masonic Lodges of the neighboring countries, instigated by Germany, are vomiting against me all sorts of atrocious insults and horrible calumnies, now that the Lodges are secretly arranging for my assasination, I have more need than ever of the divine protection so that I may live and die in defense of our holy religion and the beloved republic which I am called once more to rule.

Garcia Moreno's prediction was correct; he was assasinated coming out of the Cathedral in Quto, struck down with knives and revolvers. So passed from the scene one of the greatest Catholic statesmen the world has ever seen. He showed that making Catholicism the basis of public policy will not doom a country to poverty, but quite the opposite; all Catholic Latin American politicians who have followed since owe him a great debt.

In Europe, there were few truly Catholic governments. Even in Austria-Hungary, Liberals often had the upper hand. If they were not quite able to destroy what Catholicism remained in public life, they were able to prevent it from spreading to real solutions of the social question.
Yet following the leads of Bishop von Ketteler and Garcia Moreno, Catholic social theorists continued to work. In France, one such was Charles, Marquis de La Tour du Pin (1834-1924). A nobleman, he owned and ran a large estate which his old and distinguished family had successfully preserved through the Revolution. His first taste of practical social Catholicism was his father's admonition: "Never forget that you will be only the administrator of these lands for their inhabitants." After a decorated military career (which ended in 1882), he threw himself into the fight to build out of France's Third Republic a just nation. Horrified both by the poverty of Parisian workingmen and by their profound alienation from Church and nation, he collaborated with Albert, Count de Mun in forming workingmen's circles. These would provide centers where industrial laborers could find entertainment, fellowship, education and mutual assistance---under Catholic auspices---and so be both uplifted and made immune to Communist propaganda. This was a valuable experience for La Tour du Pin; together with his convictions that Catholicism must regain its rightful place in the life of France, and that France must once again have a King, it was the origin of his unique social and political vision. Because of the influence of La Tour du Pin's teachings on future events, we will quote a detailed description of them:

Men must have certain personal rights, and also certain common rights, due to the social organization, which it is the duty of government to recognize. These rights are a part of the national constitution. Whether codified or not, the real constitution of a country is what is traditional, permanent, and essential to the principles of its political institutions. It is an historic product; the sum total of solutions given to the eternal problem of reconciling authority with the desire for liberty.

In the past, this problem was less acute, for men had a different conception of liberty. To us today liberty is individualistic and means the absence of restraints; to them, because they were more truly Christian, it was social, and meant the free play of the institutions which ensure social justice, that is to say, an equitable distribution of the burdens and advantages of society.
The true basis of such institutions is the association of men acording to their functions. Thus only is the sense of social solidarity developed. To be genuine, a representative system must make room for all social collectivities. Both the feudal and the corporative regimes were just such organizations of men, not according to classes, but according to functions.

A political body should represent, not individuals, but social bodies, organic elements, such as bishoprics, fiefs, cities, communes, corporations. When laws are to be elaborated, it is only from such organized bodies that one can expect competence, independence, and prudence. When classes and interests are represented there is a constant current, and no violent movements occur, but when the parliament is based on an unorganized universal suffrage, only opinion is represented, and all is ephemeral---it is a mere demagogy.

La Tour du Pin was favorable to the creation of an aristocracy. There have never been closed castes in Christian countries, he pointed out, but only classes. These will always exist, for a society necessarily develops an aristocracy, which is the mainspring of its civilization. If society is not to be a chaos, a natural selection of families by heredity must be allowed to take place. The hereditary possession of the land is the truest source of distinction and authority; it alone can create a genuine nobility.

When a parliament represents permanent forces, as it does in countries like England [or did until the change of constitution in 1911---CAC] (where the absolutism of the ancien regime did not penetrate), when a peerage is a real House of Lords, that is to say, of those possessing great fiefs, and representing the families which have always shared in the sovereignty, the result is good. But in France the nobility had ceased during the ancien regime to be a political order, and had become a mere social class. This was one of the reasons why at the Restoration it was so hard to reconstruct a representative system.

In addition to the peerage, which already represents the class of landowners and the profession of soldiers, there are three types of interests which should be represented. They are (1) the taxpayers, (2) constituted bodies in the State, and (3) professional organizations. As to the first category, the family is the primordial unit of representation, as it is of society. Each head of a family has a right to select mandataries who will consent to taxation. Widows and unmarried women should here have in this respect equal rights with fathers, for they represent a family. Electoral colleges may be formed of these heads of families. They should be divided into three classes, according to the amount of taxes which they pay, and the burden should be distributed equally among these three groups.

As to the second category, churches, universities, and legal bodies, as well as the professional corporations, must have representation. It cannot be regulated, however, as in the case of the taxpayers; it must be based on the hierarchical principle which is the very structure of these bodies.

Most important of all is professional representation. The corporative regime must be introduced into all occupations, and become the basis of economic, social, and political life. All occupations create common rights and interests, and the associations which arise from these should be organized, and erected into political as well as economic units.

The representatives of the taxpayers would constitute the administrative organs, which would be autonomous in the communes, and in the State would exercise a control over the use of public monies, through a chamber of deputies, which would vote the budget. The budget, however, should normally be voted for a number of years ahead, unless there is some unusual expense to be provided for.

Another chamber should exist, formed by the representatives of the social bodies, which would have the right to be consulted on all technical and economic matters. This would secure a balance between the opinion of the moment, represented by the taxpayers' delegates, and the permanent interests of the country, represented by delegates of the organized bodies. The consent of both chambers would be necessary for measures which concerned all.

The chambers are not, however, to have a supreme authority, either in legislation or administration. It is the king in his council who governs, and the States [legislatures], Provincial or General, have merely rights of consent and control. They are not to sit in permanence, or be convoked regularly, for this would lead to a divided sovereignty, and perpetual struggle.
This political structure as conceived by La Tour du Pin was founded on the corporative organization of industry, professions, and the land. His ideas with regard to this corporative regime are precise. What should the contract of labor provide for the worker, for the owner, and for society? he asked. This contract is an exchange of services. Both capitalist and laborer must procure a living from it, each according to his condition, and living implies a home and the means of rearing a family.

The corporative regime is not socialistic; it admits that inequalities of social condition must be respected. Its basis is the fact that labor and capital are mutually dependent. Its principle is the admission of a right and a duty for each member of the association, and of reciprocal duties between the association and the State. The corporation is, like the commune, a state within the State, a social institution, with a fixed place in the community, and obligations to it.
In the Middle Ages the land was for the peasant, and the tool for the worker. Today the laborer has no real rights, no guaranty of fixed work, no safe tomorrow. Socialism, on the contrary, gives no rights to capital. The corporative regime gives rights to both.

A corporation should include all who are engaged in a given industry, in whatever capacity, for they are all interdependent, and the salary or profit of each, according to his place will depend alike on the profit of the industry.

The fundamental functions of a corporation are: first, the formation of a corporate patrimony, i.e., an insurance fund, to be levied partly on the profits of capital, and partly on the wages of labor, and to serve both as a protection for the workers, in old age and illness, and as a reserve for the industry itself, to enable it to survive times of stress; and second, the verification of professional capacity, both of workers and directors, and the supervision of the quality of production. This will limit, but will not do away with competition, and access to trades and professions. It will protect the public and safeguard the skill which is the laborers' capital. A third function would be the representation of each element in a corporative government. This will allow disputes as to wages and the conditions of labor to be settled by those who are actually interested in the industry in question, either as workers or owners.

The land, like the tools of industry, must yield the means of subsistence to those who cultivate it. It belongs to the poor as well as to the rich. Society has rights in it, and the individual only a tenancy.

In every case the duties, not the rights of property owners should be stressed. Property is the basis of society only if it is reasonably accessible to all. The masses to become conservative must be given a stake in the community. Liberalism destroyed the old corporations, in which everyone had some interest, and free competition lowered the standard of living, and did not respect the needs of family life. The State exists only to protect society, and if misery becomes so great that a large number of members do not want society to be preserved, the State will not be able to act.
La Tour du Pin saw the need of decentralization. He thought that it could best be realized by means of indirect professional representation. All professional associations should send delegates to a local syndical chamber, in which owners and workers would be equally represented. These local chambers would send delegates to a body which would have its place of meeting in the chief town of the arrondissement . These in turn would send delegates to provincial chambers. Thus agriculture and industry, producers and retailers, as well as the liberal professions, would each possess a provincial chamber, and these chambers could unite, when necessary, to discuss their common interests. They would then form a body much like the old Provincial Estates. These chambers should be presided over by a permanent official, emissary of the central power, and there should also be a central office in each province to permit the government to keep in touch with the local corporations.

La Tour du Pin was hostile to the liberal conception of a free Church in a free State. In practice, he said, this had proved unfavorable to religion. The Church once had the right of ministry, that of teaching, and that of administering justice when its interests or its members were concerned. Today only the first of these is left, for the Church's judicial power had disappeared, and her right to teach is strongly contested.

Both the idea that religion is a private matter, and the belief that the Church should be submitted to the control of the State are errors. "Man," he said, "is a religious being, and the social order always corresponds more or less closely to a religious idea." Religious society is the best society, and its precepts must be practiced. No attack upon it must be allowed. All that is not Christian in the spirit and habits of society must be banished. Dissidents may be tolerated, but they should be treated, not as members of the community, but as strangers.

This very long quotation is useful because it shows not only what La Tour du Pin, but most other Catholic social theorists arrived at by the late 19th Century---the idea of the Corporate state. Men like Ramon Nocedal in Spain, Karl, Baron von Vogelsang in Austria, and Giuseppe Toniolo in Italy elaborated the same ideas in their own countries. The latter was influential in persuading Leo XIII to accept these notions; the result was the groundbreaking 1891 encyclical, Rerum novarum. In this, Leo XIII held up corporatism as the Catholic ideal.
As a result, the Catholic or Christian Social Parties in Austria-Hungary, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands all adopted the Corporate State as their long-term goal. In France, the chance to form such a group was ironically scuttled by Leo's order that French Catholics should abandon Royalism and "rally to the republic;" this in hopes of convincing the government not to seize the churches. While Leo's strategy failed to preserve the property, it did manage to split the most activist French Catholics into two factions. In Italy no Catholic party was formed because to take part in electoral politics would have meant recognition of the Italian government's legitimacy (impossible due to their usurpation of Rome).

In Spain and Portugal too the Catholics were split by dynastic disputes. In any case, since the whole nature of electoral politics as we know them and in which the Catholic parties had to function is and was Liberal, these groups often had to defer any work on the Corporate state to some unknown future, and spend the immediate working for easier goals---often including piecemeal parts of the total program. So it was as the new 20th Century dawned.

The First World War destroyed much of value, including the Habsburg Empire of Austria-Hungary. But it also destroyed faith in the Liberal vision of progress; its horrible devastation led many to think more of the next world. Further, the unleashing of Communism in Russia (and its bloody attempts at rule in Finland, Hungary, Bavaria, Slovakia, and elsewhere) brought many to think more seriously of non-Liberal Capitalist alternatives. But it was the world-wide Depression in 1929, threatening the very foundations of the international Capitalist economy which led many folk in many lands to ponder the Corporate State anew. Although Monarchism and Catholicism were bound up together with Corporatism in many people's view, the three were not necessarily identical, as attempts to put them into practice showed. At any rate, Pius XI reinforced and updated his predecessor's endorsement of Corporatism in his encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, issued in 1931.

Portugal had suffered a revolution in 1910, which expelled King Manoel II and put in an anti-clerical regime. On May 27, 1926, a popular rising against the regime began in Braga, in the north. On June 17th, the rebels entered Lisbon. The presidency was given to General Oscar Carmona. He summoned to the capital one Professor Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, an instructor of economics at the University of Coimbra. Like Garcia Moreno, Salazar had been ordained in minor orders, and was a fervent Catholic. Moreover, he was at Coimbra a student of the writings of La Tour du Pin. Eventually, he became Prime Minister, and in 1932 gave his country a new, Corporative constitution. In this document, the ideas given in the earlier quote by La Tour du Pin were erected into law. The result was called the Estado Novo, the New State. Corporations representing labor and capital in every branch of industry were erected.

The economy of Portugal had been in foreign hands for a long time; Salazar restored the position of the Portuguese fishermen, farmers, and artisans. The Church reassumed her rightful place in the national life. He declared that when the country was ready, he would bring back her King. Above all, Salazar tried, as had La Tour du Pin, von Vogelsang, and the other Corporate theorists, to put an end to the rule of party and faction. In his own words:

...we seek to construct a social and corporative state corresponding exactly with the natural structure of society. The families, the parishes, the townships, the corporations, where all the citizens are to be found with their fundamental juridical liberties, are the organisms which make up the nation, and as such they ought to take a direct part in the constitution of the supreme bodies of the state. Here is an expression of the representative system that is more faithful than any other.

What was the result? Throughout the 1930s, World War II, and the 50s, Portugal did rather well. The Corporations continued to grow, and the standard of living rose. But in the early 60s revolts against Portuguese rule broke out in the African possessions of Angola, Mozambique, and Portuguese Guinea. Although the guerrillas were armed by both the Soviet Union and the United States, Salazar resolved to fight. Incapacitated by a stroke in 1968, he died two years later. His successors were not as able as he, and in time the strain of fighting the world's two superpowers by proxy ruined the national economy. A coup in 1974 ended Salazar's experiment. But what would have been the outcome had the New State been allowed to develop in peace is a question, which, while unanswerable, is deserving of a good deal of thought.

Another attempt to inaugurate a Catholic, Corporate state took place in Austria. The rump remaining from the German-speaking areas of the former Empire was always in a rather precarious position economically. The Depression hit the country badly. The rise of the Nazis to power in Germany caught the country in a vise; to stave off Hitler, successive Austrian governments had to turn to Mussolini. Moreover, the Socialists and Communists were very active. Surrounded by dangers internal and external, Austrians looked for strong Catholic leadership. They found it in Engelbert Dollfuss.

Born in 1892, Dollfuss had studied law and economics at Vienna. He became secretary to the Lower Austrian Peasant Federation, and in 1927 director of the Lower Austrian chamber of agriculture. In 1931 he became chancellor. At the Christian Social party conference in April 1933, the need to reconstruct Austrian society if it was to stave off its enemies was of paramount concern. At that conference, Dollfuss' assistant, Kurt von Schuschnigg declared that the "reconstruction of the state" was "indivisibly connected with the reform of society," and that Quadragesimo anno was the guide. A new Corporative constitution was adopted on June 19, 1934.

It is a remarkable document. Its preamble reads: "In the name of almighty God from Whom all justice emanates, the Austrian people receives for its Christian, German Federal State on a corporative foundation this constitution." In keeping with this, the Concordat with the Holy See was elevated to Constitutional law. Corporative legislative bodies like the Federal Cultural Council and the Federal Economic Council were erected. Dollfuss, lover of Austrian institutions that he was, favored a Habsburg restoration. But although he gave his county a good constitution, he did not see it in operation for long.

The Austrian Nazis were fearful that Dollfuss' activities would prevent the country's being annexed by Germany. On July 25, 1934, a group of 150-200 Nazis seized the chancellery, and murdered Dollfuss. Although the attempted coup was put down, it was nevertheless a great blow to Austrian independence.

Dollfuss' constitution did survive him---for four years. At last, abandoned by the West, Austria submitted to her northern neighbor. For the short period that Dollfuss' reforms were in effect, they produced some excellent results. Unhappily we shall never know their potential.
Lithuania also attempted a similar solution to the problems of the Great Depression, Communism, and Nazism. After a pro-Communist government was deposed in 1926, Antanas Smetona, who had led the nation to independence in 1918, returned to power. Under his sponsorship, a new constitution in 1931 made Catholicism the religion of the State, and established Chambers of Commerce and Agriculture to function in typical corporative style. A 1935 law created a Chamber of Labor to safeguard the workers' cultural, economic, and social interests. Here again, only five years would pass before Soviet troops ended the experiment---but what was accomplished in the meantime showed great promise.

The next year, Lithuania's neighbor to the north, Latvia, adopted a Corporative government; this even though only 29% of Latvians were Catholic. Still, it conformed to the general pattern otherwise:

A corporative form of government came into effect with the formation, in January 1936, of a National Economic Council, made up of the elected boards of the newly created chambers of commerce, industry, agriculture, artisans, and labor. A State Cultural Council was also created, consisting of the boards of the Chamber of Professions, and the Chamber of Literature and Art. These councils were allowed to collaborate with the respective government departments, individually and jointly. The two National Councils constituted the Joint Economic and Cultural State Council, which was convoked by the President of the Republic, and worked in close collaboration with the Cabinet of Ministers. The Joint State Council represented all sections of the nation, including the national minorities. It passed resolutions by a simple majority vote of its members.

The reorganization of the producing population on a guild basis was paralleled by a readjustment in municipal and rural self-government, where elections were now held along guild rather than political lines. A new communal law provided for an organic coordination between the various corporative chambers and the self-governing territorial administrations. It was generally conceded at the time that the direct participation of every producing socio-economic group in the governmental machinery insured that national unity which both public opinion and the men in office sought as a remedy for the current ills and a new foundation for the future security of the state (Alfred Bilmanis, A History of Latvia, pp. 360-361).

Needless to say, the Soviets put an end to all of that also in 1940.

The year 1936 also saw the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. The Falange, the coalition of Carlists, Alfonsinos, and Corporatists who won that conflict in 1939, maintained the following point along with the 27 others in their program:

9. From the economic viewpoint we conceive of Spain as a large producer's syndicate. We shall organize corporatively Spanish society by means a system of syndicates, according to fields of production, syndicates which will be at the service of national economic integrity.
The Falange did form some of these syndicates; moreover, they spread the idea of Corporatism throughout Latin America. Even in the American held-Phillipines, a branch of the Falange existed, organized by Andres Soriano and Enrique Zobel.

But some of these nations had by 1937 their own native Catholic Corporatist movements, friendly to but independent of the Spanish Falange. The Sinarquistas of Mexico (see the December 1993 issue) maintained as one of their 16 points:

The members of the same craft or profession must unite, building corporate groups. Over these professional or corporate groups, a superior power must be established, in charge of their mutual relationships and directing them to the common good. Similar professional corporations must unite within themselves, submitting to a supreme authority embodied in the political structure of the nation.

Laureano Gomez, head of the Colombian Conservative Party after 1930, and president from 1950 to 1953, was interested in Corporatism; so too was Jose Uriburu, Argentine president, 1930-31. But in order to be friendly with the U.S. Franco tacitly dropped Corporatism after 1955, and most Latin Americans followed suit. Quadragesimo anno made such an impression in the Netherlands that Corporations were actually formed at the behest of the minority Catholic party, and endowed with a certain amount of governmental power in the 1938 constitution; World War II and German occupation ended this experiment. In Belgium, Robert Poulet, a journalist, played an important part in the Reaction group. This consisted of men of letters, war veterans, corporatists, etc. Established in in 1932, its organ for the next two years was the Revue Reactionnaire,. It tried to foster a "powerful current of opinion against parliament and democracy;" it felt that the old parties must disappear and "abdicate their sovereignty into the hands of the king." The king, who would govern with the help of a corporatist system, would be given the most extensive powers, including legislation. In 1935 the Revue Ractionnaire was succeeded by the Revue de l'Ordre Corporatif (1935-1940) which continued the struggle for a "corporate monarchy." The previous year, Poulet and various other Reaction members took over the Nation Belge. This latter held that the Parliamementary regime was dying, and should be replaced by a corporatist state organized around the king. Of similar views were Pierre Nothomb (b. 1887), writer and orator, founder of the weekly L'Action Nationale (1924-1930), and Paul Hoonaert, who was executed by the Nazis.

In Ireland, Corporatism inspired the work of Frs. Denis Fahey and Fr. E. Cahill; it also had some influence on the 1937 constitution.

As might be expected, Corporatist ideas were not unknown in France, home of La Tour du Pin. They were popularized by the famed Charles Maurras of l'Action Fran?aise. Due to his influence and those like him, the regime of Marshal Petain at Vichy experimented with Corporatism during the two years of their partial independence from the German occupiers in 1940-42. After that date, former Socialists like Pierre Laval were forced into positions of power by the Germans; these soon ended the Corporatist effort.

Corporatism crossed over to Quebec from France; the movement l'Action Francaise Canadienne, led by Fr. Lionel Groulx, became so influential that Cardinal Villeneuve himself opined on April 17, 1937, "We have and there some bits of social justice, but these appearances of remedies do not suffice. We need more than that: full corporatism." As Sinarquismo came across the border to the Southwest, so did folk inspired by Groulx come with the French-Canadians to New England. Thus was founded the 20s-era paper in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, La Sentinelle, edited by Elphege-J. Daignault (1879-1937).

Unfortunately, Mussolini and Hitler attempted to claim Corporatism for themselves, leading some to claim that it is merely Fascism. But this attempt is belied by two important facts. The one is that in true Corporatism, as elaborated by Popes and lay theorists and politicians, the Corporations are organic, that is, true developments from the grass-roots. The great dictators tried to make them artificially; it did not work well, and in the case of Italy the attempt was given up after 1937.

The other important point is that many of their opponents were true corporatists. Fr. Luigi Sturzo's Popular Party (Catholics could vote in Italy after World War I), were among the bitterest opponents of the Fascists. They had as their motto, Libertas, a liberty which was not "the liberal, individualist, antiorganic atomic conception, which is based on the [false] conception of the sovereignty of the people." In Germany, the heroic Claus, Count von Stauffenberg, who attempted to assasinate Hitler as part of a coup on July 20, 1944, was surrounded by Corporatists. Apart from emphasizing the need for Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular in German public life, von Stauffenberg had some very Corporatist things to say:

How can people fit to govern be recruited from all sections of the population? Is it possible, and if so how, to establish popular representation in Germany, perhaps on an entirely different basis than that of conventional political parties---perhaps building on the political reality of a system of local communities, vocational groups, or associations of common interests which might be given a public voice of their own in Parliament instead of deviously pursuing their objectives through self-interested parties or by parleying with such parties.

Relations between entrepreneurs and workers must be based on their common tasks, and their joint responsibility toward the community as a whole and towards the individual human being.
He was, by all accounts, a great man, von Stauffenberg; one wonders how, had he been sucessful, he would have served his country and his continent. Is it not odd that Nazi, Fascist, Communist, and Capitalist alike all opposed these Corporatists? One might be tempted to say that destruction of the unique Catholic social and economic vision was the one thing which united both Allies and Axis in World War II.

But why bother with all this old news now? What can this pack of lost opportunities tell us today?

Three things. First, Corporatism was an attempt to apply the never-changing teachings of the Church in the social sphere to the changed conditions brought on by industrialism. The shift in developed countries over the last few decades from an industrial to an information/service economy is as great a shift, and quite as traumatic. Surely it needs to be addressed from a Catholic viewpoint.

Second, we are in the grip of a recession deeper than any we have had since the Great Depression. It is precisely at such times that economic scarcity drives us to question whether or not there are better alternatives to our present economic and political system.
Thirdly, it will be apparent from all that has been written here that in many ways we in these United States are the acme of classical Liberalism. Apart from the Mexican and French-Canadian immigrants spoken of, and the late Fr. Charles E. Coughlin, no one has ever seriously suggested that the social and financial life of this county ought to be organized upon Catholic principles. For good reason; to do so would require our nation's conversion.

Yet we have such an admirable band of predecessors, as we have just read. It would be good if we could emulate them.

Ultra-Realism FAQ

2011-07-19T12:14:00.000-07:00

1. What is an ultra-realist/neo-Platonist?

Let's start with the first part --- neo-Platonist. A "Platonist" is a follower of the Greek philosopher Plato (428-348 B.C.). A disciple of Socrates (indeed, Platoës written accounts of his teacher's thoughts are the only record we have of them), Plato was also the mentor of Aristotle, with whom, however, he disagreed in several ways. Plato's writings on various topics are voluminous. In a nutshell, he taught that spirit is superior to matter, and that this physical world at once symbolises and conceals a greater, spiritual one.

Various of his later followers over many centuries amplified or elaborated one or another of his teachings. These are called Neo-Platonists. There were and are many different schools of them, often differing wildly. The Church Fathers, the Catholic writers of the first six centuries, were all Neo-Platonists. Their teachings on the supremacy of the spiritual, etc., were filtered through and corrected by Christian Revelation. For example, they did not regard the flesh as evil, in the way that some Neo-Pagans did; rather, although they found it inferior and often trying to the spirit, they knew that the Body is destined to rise in glorified form on the Last Day, and spend eternity with the Soul in heaven (or in hell, if that's how the individual goes!).
As to Ultra-Realism, this refers to a specific Platonic teaching. Plato held that both abstract ideas like "love" and "truth" and concrete things like "horse" or "table" were earthly manifestations of certain "archetypes" or "universals." Thus, we are men because we partake of the Universal "Man."

For Plato, these Universals subsist in a supernal realm of their own, of which this one is a mere reflexion --- even as the things in it are reflexions of the Universals. Christian Neo-Platonists, however, taught that, while real, the Universals exist in the mind of God. They are, so to speak, the patterns through which He continues to will the existence of Creation minute-by-minute. This is called, in terms of classical philosophy, "Realism."

Plato's student Aristotle, however, was a materialist --- he believed that matter was self-existent, with neither beginning nor end, and that there is no personal God. For him, although the Universals are real in a sense, they derive their reality from the sum total of their physical manifestations. In other words, where Plato would teach that horses are horses because they reflect "Horse," Aristotle held that "Horse" is "Horse" because it reflects horses. The distinction (and the very ideas discussed!) may seem terribly abstract, but as we shall see, they have had frightfully concrete results.

At any rate, when Aristotle was re-discovered in the 13th century, and popularised by St. Thomas Aquinas, his view of the Universals came to be called "Moderate Realism," as opposed to the older view, which received in its turn the title of "Ultra-Realism." After a while, the two titles came to be used interchangeably with Neo-Platonist on the one hand, and Aristotelian and Thomist on the other. But of course, the two "Realist" titles refer to only one aspect of either body of teaching, and in fact there have been Moderate Realists who were Neo-Platonists in most other areas.

One key area where the question of the Universals affects Catholic dogma is in understanding the Fall of Man. For the Ultra-Realist, it was a simple question. Typical of their views was that of Odo of Tournai (d. 1113), summarised by Paul Glenn thusly:

The human race is of one specific substance. At first, this substance was found in only two persons. They sinned, and being the whole human substance, this entire substance was vitiated by their sin. Hence Original Sin is transmitted by natural necessity to all human individuals. New births are not productions of new substances, but are merely new properties of the already existing human substance. Individual men differ only accidentally.

By the same token, Baptism has the effect of removing the individual from the substance or Universal of Fallen Humanity, and inserting him into that of Redeemed Humanity. In a nutshell, it makes of him a new creature. This is all rather reminiscent of genetics, actually --- not surprising in the light of the 1311 definition of the Council of Vienne, that the soul is the form of the body. In this last we see again Plato's assertion that the material symbolises the spiritual.

But for the Moderate Realists, the whole question of the Fall is problematic. If the Universal "Man" derives its reality from the sum total of men who have ever been or ever will be, how could the Sin of Adam taint them all? As Fr. Frederick Copleston, S.J., a leading Thomist and historian of philosophy put it, "How Theologians understand Original Sin to-day is not clear to me." Nor could it be.

Another key teaching of most Ultra-Realists is that --- in contradiction to Aristotle --- the Will precedes the Intellect. That is, that the Will is the basic motive force of the personality which dominates and controls the Intellect, the faculty which receives and processes information. Central to understanding the significance of this teaching is the notion of Good Will versus Bad Will. Good Will is love of Truth; Bad Will is love of self. Obviously, all human beings have both sorts, in quantities which vary from time. But to the degree that an individual is Good-willed, his intellect will discern the Truth. To the degree that he is Bad-willed, his intellect will accept or interpret perceived reality according to what fulfils his selfish motives. Thus, someone who knows better can apostatise, while someone with a minimum exposure to the Faith can convert. Of course, there are all sorts of other repercussions.

For the Moderate Realist, however, the Intellect precedes the Will: one can only know Good if one is exposed to it or taught it. In a word, the individual is at the mercy of his upbringing and education. Of course, were this true, all those educated alike, with similar early-life experiences, would turn out the same way. There could be neither apostasies nor conversions. We know that this is not the case however. There are a number of other differences, but these are perhaps the most germane.

2. Why do you think everyone should be an ultra-realist? Shouldn't it just suffice that one adheres to Church doctrine?

These are questions you might well ask a Thomist! But let's tackle them in reverse. Firstly, for one's salvation, per se, all you require adherence to the Churchës doctrine. But we do not live in a vacuum. One has to live oneës Faith, and deal with the world around him while he does so. Philosophy in general is one's way of looking at reality. The minute you begin to apply the Faith to living --- presto! You are a philosopher! Then it becomes a question of what philosophy you will use. The criteria are simple: does the given philosophy a) gibe with the Faith?; and b) does it correspond to objective reality? (there are of course schools of thought which maintain either that there is no objective reality or that we cannot know what it is if it exists --- we need not worry about those).

By this yardstick alone, Aristotelianism and its derivatives are found wanting, because of their materialism: they are philosophies ill-fitted for Catholics, because they deny the basis of Catholicism (even though some of them affirm the Faith consciously), and because they are simply untrue, as we shall see.

3. Do you think moderate realism contributed to the decline of the Church?

Indeed I do. In fact, it rocked the very foundations of both the Medieval Church and State. Medievalist Norman F. Cantor of New York University says:

We do not, however, need the romantic projection of the Middle Ages. Directly accessible to us is the medieval intelligentsia's perception of its own culture and society. In assessing their own world, medieval intellectuals were heavily conditioned by a persistent idealism that saw in society around them signs of the earthly incarnation of the Heavenly City. The perception of the early-twelfth-century poet Bernard of Morval was the base line in Medieval assessment: "God's own nation, God's own congregation. Magnificent towers, fair homeland of flowers, thou country of life [Trans. E.J. Martin].

The central dogma of the Incarnation likewise governed the social perceptions of medieval people. They were preconditioned by the dogma of the Incarnation, and the philosophy of "realism" which underlies it, to find the ideal within the material, the beautiful within the ugly, the moral and peaceful in the midst of violence and disorder. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among usÖfull of grace and truth." Since everything was of divine creation, medieval intellectuals had no doubt that all the pieces would ultimately fit together in an idealistic, morally committed structure. Whatever they saw or experienced was part of a divine manifestation.

The Catholic or universal Church does not merely aim to be an aggregation of particular Christian communities and of the believers composing them; she regards herself as a superior power, as a reality distinct from and independent of the individuals belonging to the fold. If the Idea, that is, the general or universal, were not a reality, "the Church" would be a mere collective term, and the particular churches, or rather the individuals composing them, would be the only realities. Hence, the Church must be [Ultra-] realistic, and declare with the Academy [Plato's School]: Universals are real. Catholicism is synonymous with [Ultra-] realism.

These notions had political repercussions as well. If a given Pope or Emperor were evil, this was not held to diminish the essential goodness of the Institutions which they headed. Moreover, resistance to evils committed by Pope or Emperor did not necessarily imply disloyalty to Church or Empire.
Similarly, the doctrine grew up on the national level of the "King's Two Bodies." The Body Political was simply the King as embodiment of the Crown. He never died, nor could do any wrong. He was Crowned and anointed by God through the medium of the country's leading prelate, and in some places was held to have miraculous powers. Loyalty to the King was indeed a holy obligation.
But there also subsisted in the person of the King the Body natural. This was the human being who wore the Crown at the moment. He could sin, he could err, he would die. If he stepped out of bounds, if he broke the law, then loyalty demanded he be compelled to step back within its bounds. Hence Magna Carta is couched as a gracious confirmation of the rights of his Bishops and Barons by a loving King. We moderns might consider it an exercise in hypocrisy, since we know that King John was forced to sign it by the great men of his realm. But it would not have been seen that way by either the King or the Magnates.
This is because, for the Medievals, Law was also seen as something self-existent; it bound King and Subjects alike. It could not be created, and legislation in our sense did not exist. Rather, it was something to be discovered and concretely applied to any given situation. It was thus considered natural that different provinces should have wildly differing systems of law, and that the King should reign in each province in accord with its particular legal code.
But that reign was, in itself, a very intangible thing. The medieval world distinguished between authority and power. Authority, which came from God, was the right to say what ought to be done; power was the ability to make it happen. In a word, it was the difference between a doctor's authority to prescribe, and his patient's power not to fulfil that prescription. Without the Secret Police and Internal Revenue of the Modern State, the King's power outside his capital, palaces, and estates was limited. Power was widely diffused among the Church, nobility, and guilds. But the King's authority, subject to the law, was unlimited. Hence, although there were no FBI nor RCMP to enforce it, the King's Peace was observed on the King's Highways. When private citizens or groups suppressed banditry, they did not (although unsubsidised by and often unknown to the King) enforce peace on their own account, but in the name of the King. If His Majesty wanted to bring a restive city or great lord to heel, he must declare them outside his protection --- "outlawed." In a word, the Medieval state, to a degree unbelievable to us to-day, rested upon an act of collective Faith, a product of Neo-Platonism.
This being true of national entities, it was truer still of the Holy Roman Empire. In theory, the Empire had never died. Rather, it encompassed all of Christendom, and its frontiers ran wherever a baptised Christian lived. Founded by Constantine and renewed (in the West) by Charlemagne, it formed the psychological and spiritual bedrock of all European governance. As Viscount Bryce puts it:

The realistic philosophy, and the needs of a time when the only notion of civil or religious order was submission to authority, required the World State to be a monarchy: tradition, as well as the continued existence of a part of the ancient institutions, gave the monarch the name of Roman Emperor. A king could not be universal sovereign, for there were many kings: the Emperor must be universal, for there had never been but one Emperor; he had in older and brighter days been the actual lord of the civilised world; the seat of his power was placed beside that of the spiritual autocrat of Christendom. His functions will be seen most clearly if we deduce them from the leading principle of medieval mythology, the exact correspondence of earth and heaven [Neo-Platonism again! CAC]. As God, in the midst of the celestial hierarchy, rules blessed spirits in Paradise, so the Pope, His vicar, raised above priests, bishops, metropolitans, reigns over the souls of mortal men below. But as God is Lord of earth as well as of heaven. So must he (the Imperator coelestis ) be represented by a second earthly viceroy, the Emperor ( Imperator terrenus), whose authority shall be of and for this present life. And as in this present world the soul cannot act save through the body, while yet the body is no more than an instrument and means for the soul's manifestation, so there must be a rule and care of menës bodies as well as their souls, yet subordinated always to the well-being of that element which is the purer and more enduring. It is under the emblem of soul and body that the relation of the papal and imperial power is presented to us throughout the Middle Ages. The Pope, as Godës Vicar in matters spiritual, is to lead men to eternal life; the Emperor, as vicar in matters temporal, must so control them in their dealings with one another that they are able to pursue undisturbed the spiritual life, and thereby attain the same supreme and common end of everlasting happiness. In view of this object his chief duty is to maintain peace in the world, while towards the Church his position is that of Advocate or Patron, a title borrowed from the practise adopted by churches and monasteries of choosing some powerful baron to protect their lands and lead their tenants in war. The functions of Advocacy are twofold: at home to make the Christian people obedient to the priesthood, and to execute priestly decrees upon heretics and sinners; abroad to propagate the Faith among the heathen, sparing not to use carnal weapons. Thus does the Emperor answer in every point to his antitype the Pope, his power being yet of a lower rank, created on the analogy of the papalÖThus the Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire are one and the same thing, seen from different sides; and Catholicism, the principle of the universal Christian society, is also RomanismÖ

Nor was this view confined to the West. Between 1394 and 1397, Anthony IV, Patriarch of Constantinople, wrote a letter to Prince Basil I of Moscow, reprimanding the Muscovite Prince for having had the Byzantine Emperorës name removed from the liturgy. The Patriarch

took a particularly grave view of Basilës statement: "We have the church, but not the emperor." To acknowledge the authority over Russia of the Patriarch but not of the Emperor is, Anthony points out, a contradiction in terms: for "it is not possible for Christians to have the Church and not to have the Empire. For Church and Empire have a great unity and community; nor is it possible for them to be separated from one another." And, in an attempt to make the Russian sovereign see the grievous error of his ways, and in pursuance of his own duty as "universal teacher of all Christians," the Patriarch solemnly reiterated the basic principle of Byzantine political philosophy. "The holy Emperor," he writes, "is not as other rulers and other governors of other regions areÖ.He is anointed with the great myrrh, and is consecrated basileus and autocrator of the Romans --- to wit, of all Christians." These other rulers, "who are called Kings promiscuously among the nations," exercise a purely local authority; the basileus alone is "lord and master of the oikoumene," the "universal Emperor," "the natural King" whose laws and ordinances are accepted in the whole world. His oecumenical sovereignty is made manifest by the liturgical commemoration of his name in the churches of Christendom; and, as the patriarchës letter pointedly implies, the prince of Moscow by discontinuing this practise within his realm had deliberately rejected the very foundations of Byzantine law and government.
There are few documents which express with such force and clarity the basic theory of the Medieval Byzantine Commonwealth. The Patriarch Anthonyës letter is a classic exposition of the doctrine of the universal East Roman Empire, ruled by the basileus , successor of Constantine and vicegerent of God, supreme law-giver of Christendom, whose authority was held to extend, at least in a spiritual and "metapolitical" sense, over all Christian rulers and peoples. The fact that this solemn and defiant political profession of faith was made from the capital of a state that was facing political and military collapse, only emphasises the astonishing strength and continuity of this political vision which pervades the entire history of Byzantium and had hitherto been accepted implicitly by the nations of Eastern Europe.

This Imperial ideology, on the surface so foreign to our own time, is nevertheless a key concept to grasp. Accepted from Ireland (whose High King was held to "take stock" from the Holy Roman Emperors by the Brehon Laws) to Russia, it has had numerous repercussions in subsequent history.
Kings and Emperors alike owed their allegiance and their authority to the Church; indeed, it may be said that the Catholic religion expressed via Neo-Platonism was quite simply the animating spirit of all sectors of society, high and low. Because we tend to-day to focus our attention (favourable or otherwise) on the externals of the Church --- her clergy, laws, and property, we tend to forget that these were not the major concerns of Medieval Christians. For them, the Church was a living thing, a Universal bound about and nourished by the Seven Sacraments, through which she rescued those who entered her through Baptism from the fallen world. Outside her portals lay only death and the dominion of the devil; inside her bosom alone could humanity find personal salvation. The figure of Noahës Ark was used to illustrate this point. Church membership was necessary to avoid hell not because of mere technicality, but because only her Sacraments applied the merits of Christ directly to the believer. Without this application, the ruin wreaked by Adamës Fall on Creation could not be expunged from the individualës soul, nor could he be incorporated into the Body of Christ, without whom, as the Gospels told our ancestors, no one could come to the Father.
The Medieval synthesis in Church and State began to unravel early in the 13 th century. This was due in large part to the growth of Aristotelian philosophy. As we have seen, the basically materialist, Aristotle did not believe in a transcendent world of spirit superior to this one, by which actions in this world must be gauged; he held that the Universals derived their reality from the sum total of their parts --- their physical manifestations. Although initially condemned by Church authorities (and regarded with suspicion by the Franciscans, Augustinians and other theological schools for a considerable time afterward), the attempted synthesis of Aristotlianism with Catholicism had far reaching effects upon a society based in large degree upon the unseen.
It took time for the Aristotelian worldview to pass down through society (indeed, amongst much of the European peasantry it would be 1914 or later). But its results were close at hand. The notion of Christendom as an invisible yet tangible organisation began to break down almost immediately. The trans-national effort needed to establish and maintain the Crusader States in Palestine and Syria began very quickly to wither as national rulers looked more to their own affairs. By 1291, the last posts in the East had fallen. From that time until 1571, when another international force defeated the Turks at the battle of Lepanto, Islam would sweep through Asia Minor and the Balkans. Even Lepanto did not halt their advance on land, and so late as 1683 the Turks would come close to taking Vienna. The Muslims would roll over Greek and Bulgar, Serb and Romanian, Croat and Magyar, with very little help from the distracted West. Nor would the Russians receive much either, when the Tartars overwhelmed them. These lessons would not be lost on the Christian East.
Kings ever more considered themselves independent of the Empire, while the Guelph and Ghibelline struggles between supporters of the Pope and the Emperor, the two pillars of Christendom, reduced Germany and Italy to anarchy. Nor was the intangible Kingës peace spared, as the Thirty Years War (as much a French civil conflict as a struggle between France and England) enveloped France, after which the Wars of the Roses shattered England. Castile and various other Spanish states likewise suffered civil war, even while struggling to eject the Moors from their remaining possessions. The Black Death slaughtered thousands, while the rise of a money economy altered the nature of European commerce profoundly. Some men prospered, others went broke, and a bourgeoisie began to rise alongside banking. The Church itself suffered the Great Schism; if ever there were a signal that the old Christendom was vanishing, surely the spectacle of three warring Popes was it.
As the 15th century progressed, however, in France, England, and elsewhere, Kings and Princes attempted to tame the chaos with a new order, based not upon theory, but fact: the nobles must be tamed, the Church controlled, the provinces unified. The Tudors in England and the Valois in France set themselves just that task. Nor were they the only ones.
All of this was merely external, however. The internal effects upon Church belief were if anything, more devastating. The earlier mentioned problem with Original Sin boiled and bubbled along. Then too, the obvious contradictions between Catholic teaching and Aristotelian philosophy led some philosophers to the "Double Truth," the notion that something can be true in philosophy and false in theology, or vice versa. Thus, as in Orwellës 1984, a Churchman could hold two mutually contradictory positions with equal fervour.
In time (about 1492, to be precise), a New World was discovered, which appeared to be completely un-evangelised. In it were multitudes who had never heard --- as it was thought --- of Christ and His Church. To the still basically Neo-Platonic rank-and-file of Church members, this was a grand opportunity. The spread of the Gospel to Men of Good Will had always been a major priority. But for Aristotelians it posed a major problem.
Since, for them, the Intellect preceded the Will, they were at a loss to understand why God would have created so many who had no opportunity to receive the Faith. Not for them the knowledge of St. Francis Xavier that he had been sent to the East Indies by God at the time he was due to the Good Will and receptivity of his hearers; not for them the miraculous bilocations of Ven. Maria de Agreda to similarly Good-Willed Indians; no, they must decide for themselves that God had created folk who were incapable of receiving the Faith.
This settled, they then attempted to maintain the justice of God by inventing the notion of Invincible Ignorance, a term borrowed from Moral Theology. In that area, it simply meant that if a person did not know a sin was wrong, he was not responsible. The Aristotelians then taught that if a person did know the Faith, he did not need to know it, he did not have to belong to it. He would be saved on his own merits, so to speak, without membership in the Church, the definition of which they could not arrive at anyway. In time, this became the idea of the "Anonymous Christian" --- universal Salvation. In a word, the adoption of Moderate Realism led, over many centuries, to the eventual political extinction of Christendom, and essential dismissal of the Church as irrelevant by its most influential theologians.

4. Who were some famous ultra-realists and/or Christian Neoplatonists?

There is a long list, to be sure. In truth, I should probably start with St. John the Evangelist. The prologue of his Gospel (to say nothing of its body, his Epistles and the Apocalypse) sum up the whole of Christian Neo-Platonism/Ultra-realism. One could add St. Dionysius the Areopagite, convert of St. Paul, first Bishop of Athens, first Bishop of Paris, and author of The Divine Hierarchies and other works. (Yes, I am aware that people since Luther have declared that these four qualities belong to four separate Dionysii, and insist on calling the author the "Pseudo-Dionysius;" I consider their pretensions exploded by the writings of such as Dom Gueranger and the martyred Archbishop Darboy).
I will give a chronological listing with names and dates, and suggest that you run to the encyclopaedia to look them up!
St. Justin Martyr (d. 166)
St. Irenaeus (140-202)
St. Hippolytus (d. 235)
St. Clement of Alexandria (150-214)
Origen (185-254) Arnobius (d. 325)
Lactantius (d. 330)
St. Athanasius (295-373)
St. Basil the Great (331-379)
St. Gregory Nazianzen (330-391)
St. Gregory of Nyssa (332-395)
Synesius (370-413)
Nemesius of Phoenicia (5th century) St. Hilary of Poitiers (320-368)
St. Ambrose (340-397)
St. Jerome (331-420)
St. Augustine (354-430)
St. Leo the Great (400-461)
St. Prosper of Aquitaine (d. 463)
Claudius Mamertus (d. 473)
Boethius (480-522)
St. Gregory the Great (540-604)
St. Gregory of Tours (539-594)
St. Leander (534-601)
St. Isidore (570-636)
St. Idlephonse (d. 667)
St. Bede the Venerable (674-735)

As you can see, the list encompasses virtually all of the Church Fathers. And, of course, while this is not a matter of Faith, on matters of Faith the unanimous opinion of the Fathers approaches Infallibility! Anyway, letës continue into the Middle Ages.

Alcuin (735-804)
Fredegis (early 9th century)
John Scotus Erigena (810-878)
Gerbert [Pope Sylvester II] (945-1003)
St. Anselm (1033-1109)
Odo of Tournai (d. 1113)
Bernard of Chartres (d. 1130)
Thierry of Chartres (d. 1155)
William of Conches (1080-1154)
St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153)
Hugh of St. Victor (1096-1141)
Robert Grosseteste (1170-1253)
Richard of St. Victor (d. 1175)
Walter of St. Victor (mid-12th century)
Bernard of Tours (mid-12th century)
William of Auvergne (d. 1249)
Alexander of Hales (d. 1245)
St. Bonaventure (1221-1274)
Roger Bacon (1214-1294)
St. Albert the Great [to a degree] (1193-1280)
Alexander of Hales (1170-1245)
Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini [Pius II] (1405-1464)
Peter of Tarentaise [later Bl. Innocent V] (1224-1276)
St. Thomas Aquinas [surprise!] (1225-1274)

The inclusion of these last two will surprise many, no doubt. But it is warranted because both were far more beholden to their predecessors than to Aristotle. Nevertheless, St. Thomas Aquinas is regarded as the great Catholiciser of Aristotle, and so, from now on, opposition to one is to some degree, opposition to the other. Of course, it should be bourne in mind that St. Thomas was canonised for his heroic virtue, not his philosophy.

Richard Fishacre (d. 1243)
John of La Rochelle (1190-1245)
Hugh of St. Cher (1200-1263)
Thomas of York (d. 1260)
Etienne Tempier (d. 1279)
Robert Kilwardby (1215-1279)
William de la Mare (d. 1290)
Gerard of Abbeville (1220-1272)
John Peckham (1220-1292)
Henry of Ghent (d. 1293)
Richard of Middleton (d. 1300)
Roger Marston (d. 1303)
Bl. Raymund Lully (1235-1315)
Matthew of Aquasparta (1240-1302)
Giles of Rome (1247-1316)
Peter Olivi (1248-1298)
William of Ware (1255-?)
Bl. John Duns Scotus (1266-1280)
Antonius Andre (d. 1320)
Francis of Mayron (d. 1325)
Meister Eckhart (1260-1327)
John of Bassoles (d. 1347)
Peter of Aquila (d. 1361)
John Tauler (1290-1361)
Bl. Henry Suso (d. 1366)
Bl. John Ruysbroek (1293-1381)
Gerard Groote (1340-1384)
Florentius Radewijns (1350-1400)
Peter dëAilly (1350-1420)
Henrik Mande (1360-1431)
John Gerson (1363-1429)
Raymund of Sabunde (d. 1432)
Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464)
Denis the Carthusian (1402-1471)
Cardinal Bessarion (1403-1472)
Johannes Rechlin (1455-1522)
Joannes Mauburnus (1460-1501)
Trithemius of Sponheim (1462-1516)
Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494)
John Colet (1467-1519)
Girolamo Seripando (1492-1563)
Paracelsus (1493-1541)
Geronimo Cardano (1501-1576)
Johann Gropper (1501-1559)
Maurice OëFihely
Antonio Trombetta
Francesco Licheto
Bernadino Telesio (1508-1588)
Francesco Patrizzi (1529-1597)
Johann Arndt (1555-1621)
Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639)
Godfrey Goodman (1583-1656)
Luke Wadding (1588-1657)
Henry More (1614-1687)
Claude Frassen (1620-1711)
Lodovico Sinistrari (1622-1701)
Bl. Junipero Serra (1713-1784)
Ignaz Frank (d. 1794)
Franz Wallraf (1748-1824)
Karl von Eckartshausen (1752-1803)
Joseph de Maistre (1754-1821)
Louis de Bonald (1754-1840)
Franz von Baader (1765-1841)
Joachim Ventura de Raulica (1792-1861)
Louis Bautain (1796-1867)
Augustine Bonnetty (1798-1879)
Casimir Ubaghs (1800-1875)
Alphonse Gratry (1805-1872)
Dom Prosper Gueranger (1805-1875)
Charles Lindley Wood, Lord Halifax (1839-1934)
Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900)
Arthur Machen (1863-1947)
Louis Charbonneau-Lassay (1871-1946)
Emile Grillot de Givry (1874-1929)
Montague Summers (1880-1947)
Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977)
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)
Leonard Feeney (1897-1978)
Valentin Tomberg (1900-1973)

5. Who were some famous moderate realists/Thomists?

The first was, to a degree, St. Albertus Magnus, followed of course by St. Thomas himself. Of course, the argument may be made that St. Thomas himself was not a Thomist, as that word is generally received. He did, after all, quote St. Dionysius the Areopagite more than he did Aristotle. At any rate, here are some of the more prominent Thomists down to our own day.

St. Robert Bellarmine
John Quidort
Thomas Jorz
Thomas Sutton
Herve of Nedellec
Peter of Auvergne
Godfrey of Fontaines
Humbert of Preuilly Paul Socinas (d. 1494)
John A Lapide (d. 1494)
Dominic of Flanders (d. 1500)
Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1469-1534)
Francis de Sylvestris de Ferrara (1474-1528)
Francis de Vittoria (1480-1546)
Dominic de Soto (1494-1560)
Melchior Canus (1509-1560)
Bartholomew de Medina (1527-1581)
Peter Fonseca (1528-1599)
Domingo Banez (1528-1604)
Francis Toletus (1532-1596)
Louis Molina (1535-1600)
John de Mariana (1537-1624)
Francis Suarez (1548-1617)
Gabriel Vasquez (1551-1604)
Richard Hooker (1553-1600)
Marsilio Vasquez (d. 1611)
John of St. Thomas (1589-1644)
Jean Baptiste Gonet (d. 1681)
Antoine Goudin (1639-1695)
Blaise of the Holy Conception
Joseph Saenz de Aguirre (d. 1699)
Matteo Liberatore (1810-1892)
Joseph Kleutgen (1811-1883)
Desire Mercier (1852-1926)
Joseph Marechal (1878-1944)
Jacques Maritain (1882-1973)
Etienne Gilson (1884-1978)
Mortimer Adler (1902-)
Karl Rahner (1904-1984)
Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984)
Emeric Coreth (1919-)

Some might object to the inclusion of Rahner, Lonergan, Marechal and Coreth on this list; nevertheless, on all issues where more mainstream Thomists disagreed with the Neo-Platonists, Augustinians, and Scotist, the "Transcendental Thomists" (as Rahner, etc. labelled themselves) line up with the Thomists.

6. Why did ultra-realism go out of style?

Why indeed? How to explain fads in philosophy, or anywhere else? As we mentioned, Aristotelianism is materialistic. Did society become more materialistic as Aristotelianism grew in influence, or vice versa? It is a sort of chicken and egg question. But certainly, as the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment succeeded each other, physical world loomed ever larger into view, and the spiritual ever farther. Moreover, St. Thomasë canonisation, and the employment of his philosophy (or, to be more accurate, more or less distorted versions of it) in the Counter-Reformation, seemed to grant it official status, as though it were THE Catholic philosophy. Why did moderate realism go out of style? Like any revolutionary idea, it was left behind by more radical developments. Conceptualism arose, which held that the Universals are mere concepts; then came Nominalism, which held that they were mere names. Luther, interestingly enough, was a Nominalist. In any case, over a long period of time, Moderate realism was simply not spiritual enough to satisfy believers, nor materialistic enough to satisfy non-believers. It is revealing that (although there are exceptions either way), strict Thomists have tended to be academics and scholars, whereas Catholic missionaries, lay writers, orthodox liturgists, politicians, and so on have tended toward one or another variety of Neo-Platonism --- even if they have not recognised it as such.

7. But isn't Thomism the official philosophy of the Catholic Church?

Er, no. It does have a special status of sorts, thanks to Leo XIII's endorsement of it in his encyclical Aeterni Patris. But that same encyclical gave equal status (though it did not treat it in any detail) to the work of St. Bonaventure.
It is important to remember that, prior to St. Thomas, there were twelve centuries of Church life without Thomism. The Churchës doctrinal definitions, her liturgies, all her official acts up to that point were originated without Thomist or Aristotelian influence. When such influence arose in the 13th century, its adherents were called "Moderns," as opposed to the Ultra-realist "Ancients." Several of St. Thomasë philosophical teachings were condemned in the 1270s by the Archbishops of Paris and Canterbury, and by the Universities of Paris and Oxford. Although the condemnations were lifted after St. Thomasë canonisation in 1313, the Franciscans and Augustinians did not accept Thomism, preferring in the case of the former St. Bonaventure and Bl. Duns Scotus, and in that of the latter amplifications of St. Augustine. In any case, the definition of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary --- rejected by St. Thomas --- shows that Thomism cannot be considered the sole authentic Catholic philosophy.
Of course, a lot of snide commentary by Thomist writer in the philosophical textbooks of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s led to the use of such phrases as "Exaggerated Realism" for Ultra-Realism. A friend of mine, Stephen Frankini, was so annoyed by this that he took to calling Moderate Realism "Inadequate Realism." In any case, the very existence of such books gave Thomism an "official" feel to it not at all justified in reality.

8. Wasn't the height of Thomism the high point of the Church?

Not at all. No sooner did Thomism gain wide acceptance in the 14th century, than Nominalism came in and nearly superseded it. After that, Thomismës finest hour was the period between 1918-1965. This produced the Transcendental Thomism mentioned earlier, and the more mainstream "Neo-Thomism" of men like Jacques Maritain.
In the period since the Council, the corrosive effect of Transcendental Thomism has been made manifest. Less obvious has been that of Neo-Thomism. The materialism implicit in it grew greater and greater; human reason became --- practically speaking --- more important than revelation. In the 13th century, the difference between Ultra- and Moderate Realism seemed to be more one of emphasis, the more so since the proponents on both sides were pious Catholics. Thus, as Angelus Gambatese tells us in his biography of St. Bonaventure (p. 20):

The Platonist sees things in God; the Aristotelian sees God at the summit of things. If both philosophies lead to religion, it is undeniable that the religious element is more spontaneous in a philosophy of the Platonic type for it penetrates its very structure.

By the same token, Aristotelian philosophies, with their reliance on reason, become less and less religious; by so doing they become less authentic. Dogmas become mere formulas, divorced from reality. Jacques Maritain himself, at the end of his life, well described the process in his Peasant of the Garonne:

This "Thomist philosophy" was no theology, since they had withdrawn from it the light proper to theology to transfer it into the kingdom of reason using only its natural powers. Still less was it a philosophy, since it remained structured after the theological treatise from which it emerged, and possessed neither the gait and method, nor the light characteristic of philosophical research. Without the characteristic light of theology, and that proper to theological research, it had practically no light at all. (p. 136).

This was a recipe for disaster --- the very disaster which has overcome us.

9. What freedom does a Catholic have in choosing a philosophy?

An enormous amount --- so long as he always remembers that the revealed Truths of our religion take precedence over any philosophy; and that anything which conflicts with those Truths is simply false.

10. Did St. Thomas Aquinas reject ultra-realism?

Indeed he did. He followed Aristotle against Plato in asserting that the Universals derive their reality from the sum total of their physical examples. Moreover, he differed from then-accepted philosophy on a number of different issues:

a. Plurality of Forms

This is the teaching that every individual person or thing is made an individual by virtue of being a combination of various "substantial forms" or qualities, which are real in themselves. For example, a certain person is a Man, French, Baptised Catholic, Blue-Eyed, Breathing, Four-Limbed, and so on. Each of these is a concrete expression of a Universal; taken together, they form the individual we call Jean-Luc Sansargent. So it is for very individual person or thing. Aristotle and St. Thomas taught, however, that the individual is simply as he is, and all of his qualities accidental. Again, while seemingly arcane on the surface, this question is filled with all sorts of implications regarding sin and salvation; it was precisely on this point that St. Thomasë teachings suffered the condemnations earlier mentioned.

b. "Rational Seeds" --- Seminal Reasons

This idea refers to the potentialities locked within each substance and individual, which can lead to change, given the right stimulus. For instance, the acorn has the oak-tree inside it; the wood has the potential to be ash; water can be stem etc. Obviously we can see here the a foreshadowing of genetic theory. But this too Aristotle and St. Thomas denied.

c. Divine Illumination

Here we see the Christian acceptance that beyond a certain point, reason cannot go. Man can, by virtue of his reason, figure out that there is a Creator, that He ought to be worshipped, etc. But anything more complex requires direct illumination from God; indeed, without such illumination we can be sure of nothing of importance. Aristotle and St. Thomas denied this, holding that human reason unaided can go quite far, indeed.

d. Subtle Matter

This is the assertion that angels and spirits are made of a matter like but unlike that of the physical world; unlike it that it can be invisible, weighs little, moves quickly, etc; like in that beings composed of it can affect physical objects, and can be, as it were, measured or perceived to some degree. Holders of this belief would assert that only God can be immaterial, for He alone is unchangeable. (Angels, while of immovable Will, did change at least once, when they took up sides at Satan's revolt). Moreover, the Second Council of Nicaea ruled in favour of this belief, when it approved the following passage from a book by John of Thessalonica:

Respecting Angels, Archangels, and their powers, to which I also adjoin our own Souls, the Catholic Church is indeed of the opinion that they are intelligences, but not entirely bodiless and senseless, as you Gentiles aver; she on the contrary ascribes to them a subtile body, aerial or igneous, according to what is written: "He makes His angels spirits, and His ministers a burning fire."

Although not corporeal in the same way as ourselves, made of the four elements, yet it is impossible to say that Angels, Demons, and Souls are incorporeal; for they have been seen many a time, wearing their own body, by those whose eyes the Lord has opened.
In any case, this was also the teaching of Plato; following Aristotle, St. Thomas denied this. There were other issues involved, but these are the best known.

11. On what issues did St. Thomas Aquinas clash with St. Bonaventure?

All of the above, to be sure. Also, St. Thomas held that the Will precedes the Intellect; St. Bonaventure believed it was the other way around. But there was more that that at issue; it was a question of the whole tone of philosophy. How rigid is the proper boundary between theology and philosophy? For St. Thomas, the twain could never meet, although theology was superior; for St. Bonaventure, any philosophy which ignored theology simply could not be true. How could there be any real wisdom if one ignores the major facts of existence? And, of course, there was one other little problem. Neo-Platonism does indeed appeal to the poet in us, to the adventurer. It can be little surprise that both Dom Gueranger and Fray Junipero Serra were both Platonists. But Aristotle and his teachings were and are coldly intellectual. Thus we see that part of the problem is a matter of disposition. If one wishes to go out and do great deeds for Christ, St. Bonavenutre and his ilk will inspire him. If he wishes simply to stay in the lecture hall and calmly contemplate reality, he will find the Summa Theologica more to his taste. But as I have said, St. Thomas was not really a Thomist, and refused to finish the Summa. If you really want to understand St. Thomas, read his Office for the Feast of Corpus Christi, and his Catena Aurea. Then (if you can find one) attend Mass in the old Dominican Rite --- the same Rite he offered.

St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas were the dearest of friends at the University of Paris; as they were united in life, as they are in heaven, so ought they to be in our esteem.

12. Which were you first, an ultra-realist or a monarchist?

A Monarchist, to be sure. For a start, it was sentimental; being French-Canadian on my fatherës side, I knew that Louis XIV had sent my ancestors to Canada, and that Louis XVI was unjustly murdered. My mother was a fierce Habsburg proponent, and my father had as well an attachment to the Jacobites. What was true of Louis XVI was also true of Charles I and Nicholas II. I felt a great deal of sympathy for the Loyalists, giving up everything for their Monarch and going off in exile to Canada and the Bahamas. And of course, I knew that Christ was King, not President. Certainly the rich symbolism of Royal ceremony had it effect as well.
When I got older I began to study these things in and out of school. It seemed to me that the Reformation and the American, French, and Russian Revolutions were all symptoms of the same basic phenomenon. Moreover, I read various theorists of Monarchy, not least of all Belloc and Chesterton. By the time I left College, I was a confirmed Monarchist.
I then learned of the question of "No Salvation Outside the Church." It was apprent to me from my historical research that certainly the Church HAD taught this dogma, and just as certainly that her spokesmen now denied it. How was this possible for an infallible Church? And if it were possible with this dogma, why not all the others. Surely, if the Church is not necessary for the Salvation of every one, it is necessary for no one. Moreover, the Crusades and the Inquisition would have been the worst injustices, and missionary work of kind useless folly. My discovery of the work of Fr. Feeney supplied the answer: the dogma of Salvation was simply true, despite all the non-infallible claptrap to the contrary.
But this left another question. How did we get into the strange position of a majority of the clergy calling heresy the very dogma which alone justifies their existence (as an income-absorbing class, that is)? In other words, how did we get into this mess.
Again, history provided an answer. In great (though not sole) part, our troubles stem from the attempt to express the Faith through basically materialistic terms. Judged from the perspective of Aristotle, the Catholic Faith is folly. If one attempts to combine the two, he may succeed for his own time; but in the end the inborn tendencies of the philosophy must (and have work themselves out. Rather than seeing the Faith as an organic whole, which has repercussions in every corner of life, from government to art, it becomes a mere set of propositions to be memorised --- or altered, if they do not accord with what appears to be reason.
And so, I became an Ultra-Realist, convinced that the great ruin can only be reversed if the ideas which created the Catholic synthesis in the first place are allowed to act. To do that they must once again be promoted. Thus I stand.

13. Did you become one as the result of the other?

Certainly. As just intimated, my researches into the decline of Monarchy reinforced those into the decline of the Church. The republican Charles Fenyvesi writes:

An age of fable has ended. The world has gotten old; skepticism is our wisdom. We do not believe in the magic of pedigree, and we expect the son not to take up his fatherës role. There are no more once-and-future Kings foretold and prayed for; no secret sons and false pretenders; no Royal pathos of trust and betrayal. We have cancelled faith, the gold standard of monarchy, as well as "the Pleasure of His Majesty," once the common currency.
Republican accountability requires a pursuit of the rational. Citizens bow to the technician whose presumption is efficiency and whose excuse is science. He knows all about systems, and "functional" is his highest praise.

With very little alteration, much can be said of the changes in the Church. So you might say that the analogy of the decline of Monarchy prepared me to accept Ultra-Realism, when, like almost all who consider themselves Traditional Catholics, I had always thought that Thomism was simply THE Catholic philosophy.

14. How is the Platonic world-view demonstrated from Scripture?

Constantly, particularly in the New Testament, although the Wisdom books, with their personification of Wisdom as a Holy Woman (and prefiguring of the Virgin) are certainly very much in that style. Throughout the New Testament we are told of the importance of "Good Will." St. John tells us that God "enlightens every man who comes into the world." There is peace "for men of Good Will." The Church is certainly treated like a Platonic Universal in the Epistles, rather than a mere sum of its members. All this stuff about becoming a new creature at baptism and so on. It is for this reason that Moderate Realists rarely look to the Bible as a source of philosophical knowledge, simply dismissing it as religious.

15. Specifically, why did the medieval theologians/philosophers reject the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception? It can't be because of Aristotle because the Ultra realists, such as Bonaventure, denied the doctrine as well.

Yes and no. Our belief in the Immaculate Conception goes back to the Bible, when The Archangel Gabriel addressed Mary as "full of Grace," something manifestly impossible if the person so addressed was in Original Sin. The early fathers all believed the Mary was Immaculate from her conception; the Eastern Fathers being more explicit on this point, however, than the Western. The liturgical observance of the Feast started in the East, from whence it spread to England and then to the rest of Europe (ironic in the light of this doctrineës later denial by the Anglicans and Orthodox. The first serious opposition came from St. Bernard of Clairvaux (an Ultra-Realist) who simply could not believe that the Holy Ghost could be involved in something so unclean (to his mind) as Conception). From his time on, two new issues arose: first, the Aristotelian notion that the soul does not enter the body until the "quickening" became almost universal long before Aristotleës philosophy was re-discovered; second, it was feared that declaring Our Lady to be free from original sin would somehow diminish Our Lordës uniqueness. These latter two views were summed up by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa; after the Summa became the official teaching manual of the Dominicans, that order made denial of the dogma part of its official stance. Even the feast of the Immaculate Conception would only be celebrated by them as the "Sanctification" for a long time.

However, among those untouched at all by Aristotle, the beief continued to spread. Bl. Raymund Lully was the first post-St. Bernard theologian to preach it openly. Then Bl. Duns Scotus described it in the terms we know to-day. But so late as the 17th century, Pope Gregory XV (1621-1623) forbade either proponents or opponents of the doctrine to label each other as heretics --- so there was quite a good deal of confusion until relatively recently."

Australia and the Fourth of July

2011-07-01T22:40:00.000-07:00

Two occurrences are foremost in my mind right now. The one is my country's upcoming (as these lines are written) celebration of Independence Day on 4 July. The other is an article I read about the decision of the government of the state of Queensland in Australia to remove all references to the Queen and the Crown from oaths and legislation (I should think that the state name would be changed too, to "Keatingland" or some such, but no one has broached it). The officer responsible explained the move by saying "It's time we stood on our own feet."

The latter episode in the light of the former is, to this Yank, laughable. The arguments against the Monarchy in Australia are threefold. The first two are common to Britain also, viz: a) the Monarchy is undemocratic, and b) that the Queen's offspring are behaving in a feckless and immoral manner. The third is peculiar to countries who share the Monarchy, like Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica, and so on: the Crown is a colonial institution, and an insult to our nationhood.

These notions are easily exploded by the experience of the United States. First, there is the notion that a republic is a guarantee of popular freedom, or as it is mis-named, "Democracy." But who are the sorts of individuals who generally bring about the conversion of Monarchies into republics? Whether we wish to speak of the Afrikaaner Nationalists in South Africa, or Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, or Robespierre in France or... the list is endless. But were any of these the kind of folk to whom a sane individual would wish to entrust his fate? "Ah," one might ask, "but what of the founders of your own glorious republic, whose Independence you will celebrate with fireworks (if local authorities graciously permit you to use them)?" What indeed? Let us consult historian Norman Gelb:

Liberty is always among the first casualties of war, even of wars fought to defend freedom. But its demise in revolutionary America, even before independence was proclaimed and before loyalists could be said to be lending aid and comfort to the enemy, showed liberty to be merely an empty catch phrase for many of the people aroused to action in its name. Not only was the liberty of individual dissidents suppressed with unseemly haste and unwarranted vigour, but freedom of the press, so proudly attained under British rule, quickly became a dead letter. As the orators of the Revolution thundered on about individual rights, individuals who dared to publish sentiments opposing their conemnation of Britain and their call to arms were subjected to indignities, penalties, and the forced closure of their journals....(Less Than Glory, p. 159).
In the opening stages of the revolution---indeed, even before hostilities broke out, Loyalists throughout the 13 colonies were harassed and intimidated by the "Sons of Liberty, which group every American schoolchild is taught to revere, and of whom Jay Stevens wrote (Yankee Magazine, July 1993, p. 56): "With their constant marching, their badges, their passwords, their numerous feasts and festivals...the Sons of Liberty bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the Brownshirts of our own century. Composed in part of dockworkers, apprentices, and street toughs, they enforced the boycotts, harassed the aristocracy, taunted the British officers, beat up the British officials, and tarred and feathered Tory sympathizers and informants." When the war was over, 100, 000 people were forced to leave, the equivalent proportionately to-day of 12,000,000. Three years after a war fought alledgedly to end unjust taxation had ended, the farmers of Massachussetts rose up against the new State government because of heavy taxation---unlike any in the time of King George.

Still, in the English-speaking world (save, alas, for Ireland), the day when men believed strongly enough in something to fight for it seems to have passed. All is done now through votes, media, and the stroke of a pen. The Queen reigns, but does not rule---and if she reigns through a Governor-General appointed by a local Prime Minister, that Prime Minister is correspondingly more powerful. But this is not enough. Politicos want more than power, they want to be worshipped. Undoubtedly, many a Commonwealth premier would be in Nirvana, were he able to halt traffic in his private plane at his nation's second largest airport, while receiving a £150 haircut. But the presence of even an old party hack turned Governor-General is enough to spoil the fun. Every piece of legislation with its ornate Monarchic language serves to remind him of a terrible fact: he is only a caretaker, not a god. That reminder must go.

Now we come to the Royal peccadilloes. Again, this is amusing. Statistics shows that divorce and so forth grow ever larger in Britain (in this free republic, the rate is something like 50%). It is rather unfair to accuse the Royals of being undemocratic, and then be upset if they follow their subjects' actions, rather than guide them. Besides; does anyone seriously think the republican rulers are moral paragons? Most have been simply unspeakable. Even in my own country, where they can be relatively benificent, folly, madness, and crime have stained more than a few administrations. The lurid revelations our President's alleged mistress in Penthouse magazine make all that MI-5 have dragged up from phone-tapping seem positively child-like and innocent. If immorality on the part of its leaders were a reason for abolition, there would be no institutions: political, business, religious, or any other sort; remaining on Earth---and that includes even families.

Let us look at colonialism now. First and foremost, let it be remembered that most of the peoples of the world have or had hereditary rulers. George Heaton Nicholls, later to be a prominent fighter for the Crown in South Africa, was High Commissioner in London for SA during World War II. There he found much opposition to King George II's return to Greece, a return Nicholls' PM, General Smuts, supported. Of this affair, Nicholls observed:

The opposition to the return of the King existed just as strongly in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, as it did in some political circles of the United Kingdom. The outcome of the plebiscite betrayed the failure of all these people to understand the deep spiritual significance and mysticism which surrounds a hereditary ruler fulfilling his predestined task and how curiously unaware they were of a loyalty for a crowned head which exists among all common peoples who have not been influenced by revolutionary propaganda. Those of us who have had experience inn administration of the native tribes in Africa, know with what a deep sense of satisfaction an hereditary chief is accepted as their spokesman to the world. Centuries of tradition and ritual are not easily erased by the arguments of the London School of Economics, however logical they may be. (South Africa in My Time, pp. 372-373).

Indeed, if it is a question of colonialism, surely our glorious republic's annexation of the Kingdom of Hawai'i is an interesting inversion of what is pretended to be the pattern. For that matter, President Roosevelt's Indian Re-organisation Act of 1934, which deposed all the traditional tribal rulers with more subservient elected ones was another. European Monarchies did very well with the concept of "indirect rule," because the local rulers' postion could be made analogous in law to a feudal lord's. Certainly, for many such colonial rule meant safety, peace, and food. Native republics, freed of faraway Queen and traditional native ruler alike, have rarely given their subjects these things for very long.

Ah, but what about us sons of the Europeans, in our far away American and Australasian homes? Surely a republic is most suited to us---have not the United States everything a Monarchy could provide them? No. We did have two things which did, for a long time supply us with the requisite stability. One was an apolitical judiciary; the other was a sort of Americanist religion, which led us to venerate as sacred everything---flag, constitution, liberty bell---having to do with our country in the abstract. The Founding Fathers were elevated in the national consciousness from a clique of revolutionaries to sainthood. But the first of these is gone, and the second is going. We have nothing to replace them.

In any case, neither Canada, Australia, nor New Zealand have a similar national idolatry. Their people retain something of Christianity in their makeup, and so for them the dicta of John Healy, turn-of-the-century Catholic Archbishop of Tuam remains valid:

The character of Kings is sacred; their persons are inviolable; they are the anointed of the Lord, if not with sacred oil, at least by virtue of their office. Their power is broad---based upon the Will of God, and not on the shifting sands of the people's will...They will be spoken of with becoming reverence, instead of being in public estimation fitting butts for all foul tongues. It becomes a sacrilege to violate their persons, and every indignity offered to them in word or act, becomes an indignity offered to God Himself. It is this view of Kingly rule that alone can keep alive in a scoffing and licentious age the spirit of ancient loyalty, that spirit begotten of faith, combining in itself obedience, reverence, and love for the majesty of kings which was at once a bond of social union, an incentive to noble daring, and a salt to purify the heart from its grosser tendencies, preserving it from all that is mean, selfish, and contemptible. (P.J. Joyce, John Healy, pp. 68-69).

Would that the good Archbishop's countrymen---or for that matter, their opponents, had heeded his words. But whether one likes it or not, all of us formed by the cultures which grew out of Europe have a need for Monarchy. In its rituals, its manner, it links us---not always consciously---to our ancestors, for whom Christendom was at once one Holy Church outside of which there was no salvation, and one Sacred Empire, outside of which there were neither safety nor civilisation. It brings us further back also, to a time common to all mankind, when the figures of Father, Priest, and King were one---yet a mere shadow upon Earth of One greater still.
We ignore these truths at our peril. Whether in London, or Paris, or Sydney, or Los Angeles, human nature is the same. C.S. Lewis put the problem very well:

Monarchy can easily be debunked, but watch the faces, mark well the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut: whom no rumour of the polyphony, the dance, can reach---men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes or film stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.

The Feeneyite FAQ

2011-06-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

1. Why is it so important to defend the doctrine "extra ecclesiam nulla salus"?

For a number of reasons. The most obvious is simply that it is the foundational docrine of the Church. If there IS salvation outside the Church, than she becomes a rather pointless organisation, ultimately. Even if her doctrines ARE true, what does it matter if you don't need to believe them to be saved? You'll find out for yourself once you go to heaven. Beyond that, though, the witnesses to the literal truth of this doctrine---from Christ Himself in the Gospels, to the Father and doctors, Popes and Councils, at their most solemn---are such that if this doctrine is not true, the whole of the Church's teachings, indeed, of the Divinity of Christ, to which the Church is the only certain witness---lose their credibility. We see of course the concrete results of loss of belief in this doctrine to-day. Bereft of a real reason for both the Church they serve and their own vocations, priests and religious attempt to reorient both to other causes---political, social, cultural, or whatever. Some of these efforts do have a a value in themselves, but many are actually practical denials of the Faith. Since we no longer believe in the need to "save souls," missionary and evangelising efforts have decayed to the point of near-irrelevance. And all doctrines have been called into question, since none are better or more authoritatively attested than "Extra Ecclesiam nulla Salus." If that one is false, why not the others? It is the denial of this doctrine which is at the root of our problem as a Church (although there are very many other contributing factors). Beside this, there is the fact that we are required, individually, to believe Christ's revelation ourselves if we are to save our own souls. Since this doctrine is part of that revelation, we must spread it as well as hold it.

2. Aren't there better causes to fight for such as the restoration of the Tridentine Mass?

The restoration of the Tridentine Mass by itself, while a great help, would not solve our problems. Its greatness is not to be found primarily in its beauty or solemnity, but in its clear expression of the DOCTRINAL reality of the Mass---just as a failure to do so is the real problem with the Novus Ordo. But that doctrinal reality, as just mentioned, has come into question---and that is the real reason why the Traditional Mass had to go. "Speaking of how to pray, dogmas come first, not liturgies." Many of those who have caused the most damage, such as the late Fr. Karl Rahner, S.J., happily said the Tridentine Mass for most of their careers. The Mass said by Fr. Martin Luther was so similar that the average layperson of to-day assisting him in 16th century Wittenberg would notice little difference from the Tridentine. But just as Luther's eventual abandonment of the Mass was a symptom rather than a cause of his heresy, so it is to-day. And fighting the liturgical symptoms without addressing the doctrinal roots of our problems is like putting a silk robe on a leper.

3. What if the person has never heard of the Catholic Church but lives a good life?

If such a person is truly of good will (that is, to a greater or lesser degree has a love of truth which is greater than their love of self), God will somehow get the Faith to him before he dies---we have seen this from the time of the Ethiopian eunuch in the Book of Acts down to the present day. But good will is a rare thing (those of us who go to confession know this). Further, we must beware of the phrase "good life." Since none of us can know (as the Council of Trent teaches infallibly) whether or not we ourselves are in a state of Grace---the only definition of a good life that has any meaning---we are not in a position to evaluate the spiritual position of anyone else. As Our Lord said, "none is good save he who does the will of my father in heaven."

4. But didn't certain Saints believe in Baptism of Desire including Ambrose, Augustine, and Aquinas?

St. Ambose certainly did not. Many people interpret one speech of his (the oration over Valentinian) to mean that he did. But it is known historically that his words at that time were meant to both comfort his audience and conceal what he knew about a certain political sias Christ commanded, and go forth to all nations, baptising and teaching them all things He taught us. It would be far kinder to leave them in their ignorance, which is so much easier to keep than our Catholic Faith with all its rules.

"The Church has never accepted even the most holy and most eminent Doctor,
and does not now accept even a single one of them, as the principal
source of truth. The Church certainly considers Thomas and Augustine
great Doctors, and she accords them the highest praise; but she
recognizes infallibility only in the inspired authors of the Sacred
Scriptures. By divine mandate, the interpreter and guardian of the Sacred
Scriptures, depository of Sacred Tradition living within her, the Church
alone is the entrance to salvation; she alone, by herself, and under the
protection and guidance of the Holy Ghost, is the source of truth."

Pope Pius XII
Allocution to the Gregorian University, Oct. 17, 1953

"The custom of the Church has very great authority, and ought to be
jealously observed in all things, since the very doctrine of Catholic
doctors derives its authority from the Church. Hence, we ought to abide
by the authority of the Church rather than by that of an Augustine or a
Jerome or of any doctor whatsoever."

Thomas Aquinas
Summa Theologica, II-II, q.10, art.12

"It would be a serious abuse to replace the Word of God with the word of
man, no matter who the author might be."

Pope John Paul II
Dominicae Cenae, Feb. 24, 1980

"I hereby condemn as heretical the notion that when anyone finds a
doctrine clearly established in St. Augustine, he may absolutely hold and
teach it, disregarding any Bull of the Pope."

Pope Alexander VIII
Denzinger 1320

"None of the faithful should have extraordinary opinions proposed to them,not even from Catholic doctors; instead, they should listen to those opinions which have the most certain criteria of Catholic truth:
universality, antiquity, and unanimity."

Clement XIII
In Dominico Agro

5. And what about those Saints in the martyrology who were not baptized with water?

These are inevitably termed as "catechumens." Now we think of catechumen as always meaning unbaptised. But according to the testimony of St. Ambrose and others, many catechumens continued to learn the Faith after Baptism, and so continued to be called catechumens. Many of these were martyred. Others were arrested before baptism, and so are referred to as catechumens on that count. But we know that it was early Church practise to baptise immediately upon arrest---even in prison, and even infant children of prisoners (which, incidentally, is one of our proofs against the Baptists that the early Church did practise infant Baptism, even if it was not the general rule it later became). There are a few examples (St. Emerentiana, St. Alban) which mention the unbaptised dying as martyrs and going to heaven anyway, in a sort of baptism of blood. But these accounts are garbled, (the one involving St. Alban actually seeming to imply that a fountain of water sprang up miraculously for---it is not stated explicitly, but what else than baptism)? Moreover, "baptised in one's own blood" was a turn of phrase---like "baptised in Turk's blood," as was often written of the Crusaders. In any case, the Martyrology. from whence these stories come, is neither infallible nor a doctrinal text.

6. What if the person is "invincibly ignorant" and has no way of knowing that the Church is the sole means of Salvation?

As with the person of "good life," it is not up to us to judge on the supposed "invincibility" of someone's ignorance. If that person is of goodwill, God will get the Faith to him. But the implication here is that ignorance is salvific. Surely it exonerates one from the immediate sin of not joining the Church, as Pius IX taught. But that is a negative thing. Christ taught that Baptism is necessary for salvation "Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God." The Athanasian Creed, accepted as Infallible by the Church, begins with the warning: "Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith, except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly." Were ignorance capable of saving one, it would be the cruelest thing to do as Christ commanded, and go forth to all nations, baptising and teaching them all things He taught us. It would be far kinder to leave them in their ignorance, which is so much easier to keep than our Catholic Faith with all its rules.

7. But doesn't the Council of Trent teach Baptism of Desire?

Not at all. It declares that the "Votum" (vow, NOT mere desire) to baptised can justify one. But it does not say that one can be saved that way. Justification is the state of being pleasing to God, of having one's sins forgiven---such as you and I are when we step out of the confessional. But that is certainly not the same as being saved. The proof of this is that Trent anathematises anyone who would "make a metaphor" of Our Lord's words, "Unless a man be born again..." That means we must take that phrase----a phrase which does not permit exceptions---literally. Certainly, no one will claim that Baptism of Desire is anything more than a metaphor. What is forgotten here is that Baptism does not just forgive sins. It directly applies the merits of Christ's death to the individual soul; it makes of the baptised person a "new creature" (no longer a member of fallen humanity, which of its nature cannot enter into heaven, he becomes a member of redeemed humanity, which can); it places an indelible mark on the soul; it grafts him into the Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ; and it infuses knowledge of the Truth in a sub- or superintellectual manner---and all of these are necessary to enter into Heaven. An individual who is in the state of justification but has not received these other effects, is like one of the just of the Old Testament. Their sins were forgiven them; but they could not ascend to Heaven precisely because they were sons of Adam. They had to be united to Christ, because "no one ascends to the Father except through me." This union was accomplished for them by Christ when He "descended into hell," as we say in the Apostle's Creed. For those of us in the New Law, that can only happen through Baptism. Of course, it is far easier for us than for the Old Law people, who had no sacramental graces.

8. But the last few Popes believe that non-Catholics can be saved? Are you smarter or holier than the Pope?

Regardless of what Popes believe as private individuals, Catholics must believe what has been solemnly defined in the past. There have been a few Popes who have taught or held varous heresies---but as they did not attempt to pronounce them ex cathedra, infallibility is not threatened. When faced with such situations, the Catholics is obliged to stick with defined dogma, even if the Pope does not appear to. We may not judge the Pope; but we are responsible before God for our own beliefs and actions. It does not matter in this case if the Pope is holier and smarter than I am. His holiness and intelligence will not follow me to the Judgment---only my decisions will. 9. But what about the Baltimore Catechism and Vatican II? The Baltimore Catechism is not infallible. It was the creation of James Cardinal Gibbons, 19th century Archbishop of Baltimore and a notorious Americanist (a heresy condemned by Pope Leo XIII in 1893). His Eminence intended it to replace more orthodox catechisms---like St. John Neumann's---which did not menton desire. Vatican II was not a doctrinal council. It neither defined dogma nor anathematised those who disagreed. Such men as Fr. Karl Rahner, S.J., who were experts there, admittedly lobbied to change Church teaching, and planted "time bombs" in the documents. These were open-ended statements, vague enough to mollify the orthodox, but also able to be seized upon by the radicals after the Council as mandates to do whatever they chose. At Vatican II's end, Paul VI, aware that there was contradiction between the Council and prior teaching, declared that if such contradictions were perceived, the given document must be interpreted by prior tradition. Neither the Baltimore Catechism nor Vatican II could reverse prior dogmatic definitions.

9. But what about the Baltimore Catechism and Vatican II?

The Baltimore Catechism is not infallible. It was the creation of James Cardinal Gibbons, 19th century Archbishop of Baltimore and a notorious Americanist (a heresy condemned by Pope Leo XIII in 1893). His Eminence intended it to replace more orthodox catechisms---like St. John Neumann's---which did not menton desire. Vatican II was not a doctrinal council. It neither defined dogma nor anathematised those who disagreed. Such men as Fr. Karl Rahner, S.J., who were experts there, admittedly lobbied to change Church teaching, and planted "time bombs" in the documents. These were open-ended statements, vague enough to mollify the orthodox, but also able to be seized upon by the radicals after the Council as mandates to do whatever they chose. At Vatican II's end, Paul VI, aware that there was contradiction between the Council and prior teaching, declared that if such contradictions were perceived, the given document must be interpreted by prior tradition. Neither the Baltimore Catechism nor Vatican II could reverse prior dogmatic definitions.

10. Protestants can have valid Baptism. How do you know that they are not simply "material heretics", therefore still be part of the Catholic Church?

Because they themselves would reject any such identification. There are three marks of a Catholic: subjection to the Pope, sacramental Communion withe Church, and adherence to the dogmas of the Faith. No one outside the Church has these three, and most would be insulted if you told them they were somehow members. They know they are not Catholics and do not pretend to be. On the other hand, validly baptised "Protestant" babies, until they reach the age of reason and begin to think of themselves as Protestants, are Catholics. Should they die before they reach that point, they go straight to heaven.

11. But isn't it wrong to judge others?

This is often quoted, apropos of very little. We are certainly supposed to discern --- that is a gift of the Holy Ghost! The actual quote from Our Lord is : "Judge not, lest ye be judged! Now, obviously this is not a warning against discerning right from wrong, good from evil, heresy from orthodoxy. Our Lord asked "What part have the children of light with the children of darkness?" This obviously requires some kind of evaluation on the part of the supposed child of light.

Even people who warn against judging do it themselves all the time. You would not have a convicted child molester baby-sit your children would you, nor hire a felon as your accountant? Yet are you not judging?

What Our Lord is warning us against is harsh judgements in areas where we ourselves may be guilty (a common human deed). You may certainly, if you study what the Churchës teaches, judge the heresy of another individual --- if you donët mind not being judged yourself, by God. Where we need to be careful is in judging the morals of others, and above all their intrinsic worth. The Council of Trent teaches that we cannot know absolutely if we are in the State of Grace or not. That being so, we are in a poor way to judge the moral standing of any but the most open of evil-livers.

And yet, how many people when faced with heresy will piously intone, "judge not" --- and then immediately attack the supposed moral foibles of others? The Inquisition was always far more just than the tribunal of gossip.

The Rulers and the Ruled

2011-06-19T19:39:00.000-07:00

The late Malcolm Muggeridge often declared that the modern world is based on fantasy. By this, alas, he didn’t mean such beguiling (and ultimately true) books as The Lord of the Rings, but rather, a refusal to look reality in the face; that is, we are resolved to attempt to reshape the cosmos to our liking. Since we can’t really do this, we pretend that what we want is so --- even though we know it isn’t. Orwell called it “double-think.”
The title of this essay was suggested by that of an English ghost story, “The Haunters and the Haunted;” the implication of which being that the reader will have a hard time figuring out just who is being appeared to and whom the apparition. So it is with the nature of power in the modern world --- by which, incidentally, this writer means Europe, North America, Japan, and Australasia. Across the rest of the globe, except for Latin America, the Philippines, and possibly India and a few other places (which are in various stages of transformation --- though from what to what has yet to be ascertained), there is rarely a question as to whom the rulers may be, and who the ruled.

Muggeridge and Orwell had an advantage in knowing the power of fantasy, for they lived under Constitutional Monarchies. As they have evolved, these sorts of nations have become showplaces of shared fiction. Not only in Great Britain, but in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Japan, Scandinavia, and Benelux, the pageantry of royalty clothes the reality of power. On state occasions, even now, the sovereign rides by crowds of cheering subjects in a gilded coach; laws are enacted in the name of the Monarch; the armed forces swear their allegiance to him, and so forth. Charities, learned bodies, schools, and churches all treasure their connections to the Crown. Even favored tradesmen proudly display their warrants as purveyors to the court.

But in those countries immediate power rests with whomever holds a majority in Parliament. If the Sovereign delivers the speech from the throne amidst Medieval (or at least 19th century) pomp, it is the Prime Minister who writes the speech. The laws may be executed in the name of the Crown, but that wearer of that crown has nothing to say about them. In practice the Monarch cannot exercise his veto, even if he wanted to. Although in some of these nations, it is theoretically possible that the Sovereign might directly intervene to safeguard the Constitution, it is unlikely to happen --- the one time in recent years it did, in 1975, when Sir John Kerr, Governor-General of Australia dismissed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, it was done without reference to Queen Elizabeth II, the Sovereign whose representative Sir John was. In Sweden and Japan, even this phantom power has been taken away.

Of course, since the 1960s, much has changed with reigning Monarchies, as with all else in Western society. The marriage and divorce of the Prince of Wales and his siblings, as well as various attendant scandals, have tarnished the appearance of the House of Windsor in the Commonwealth (the fact that in this they resemble at least 50% of their British subjects is conveniently ignored). But it is not just in divorce or sexual scandal that modern royals ape modern commoners. Not a single heir presumptive to a modern European throne has married a fellow royal; the Crown Princes of Spain and Norway have married, to use a quaint phrase, “women with pasts,” in the latter case, complete with illegitimate child. The former “Family” of royalty has been broken.
These and kindred developments have led many in the media and political classes to chip away at what remains of the institution. In the name of “democracy,” appointed positions one by one become political, rather than royal, gifts. Royal symbols are chiseled away at, and the lords of the media indulge in constant sniping and ridiculing of the institution. At least one of the major parties declares itself in favor of abolition of the Monarchy, and keeps up a constant propaganda on the point --- whether in power or as the “loyal opposition.” The fact that such politicians have sworn oaths of allegiance to the Sovereign they undermine is of little consequence; perjury, as we proved with the impeachment of Mr. Clinton, is not a crime.

But when the desiccated Crown is overturned, and replaced, so to speak, with the politician’s top hat, does the golden age at last arrive? Um, no. In parliamentary republics such as Third and Fourth Republic France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Greece, and Austria, dreary old politicians take turns replacing each other as tenants of the former royal palace. Unable to invent new symbols of legitimacy and authority, they must adopt the former ones: presidential guard units --- often in uniforms little altered from those of the King --- listlessly protect the nominal heads of state. Small royal prerogatives are jealously clutched: the President of Austria retains the right to legitimize bastards, while his brother of Germany automatically becomes Godfather to every seventh child. Even in rigorously secular France, President Jacques Chirac (who, in lieu of a Christmas Message in 2003, delivered a thundering speech in favor of preserving the French Revolution’s “tradition” of laïcisme) joyfully fulfills religious roles inherited from the Monarchy: Co-Prince of Andorra with the Spanish Bishop of Urgel; canon of Rome’s Basilica of St. John Lateran; and Protector of the Holy Places in Israel-Palestine (exercised through the French Consul-General of Jerusalem, who is rendered various liturgical honors by the Catholic churches of the Holy Land as a result). Institutions with the sort of connections earlier mentioned to the former Monarchy continue to boast of them. A walk through the inner city of Vienna, if confined to looking at shop windows, would convince the average tourist that there is still an Emperor in the Hofburg, given the enormous number of double-eagles gracing establishments still advertising the Imperial Warrant.

None of this hand-me-down pomp stirs up a great deal of interest on the part of the citizenry of such countries, however. With the exception of France (whose presidency was invested with a great deal of power by De Gaulle when designing the Fifth Republic), many, perhaps most, of the citizens of such republics cannot even name their presidents. In any case, as in the Constitutional Monarchies, real power is exercised by the majority power in Parliament. The only difference is that even the shadow of authority is lacking. When a major change in the law is required by those in power, the population is bombarded with referenda until they give in: the introduction of divorce in Ireland is a classic example.

Now, we Americans might smile pityingly at all this, secure as we are in possession of the oldest and most successful republican constitution in the world. Every four years we vote for our President; we vote for our representatives and senators, for our governors and assemblymen, for our sheriffs and supervisors and district attorneys and mayors and aldermen and on and on. In these United States, the people rule!

Do we, indeed? This is most comforting. In common with the citizens of the parliamentary governments just described, we describe ourselves (save for a few hold-outs who prefer the title “constitutional republic”) as a “democracy.” This Greek-derived moniker is held to mean “majority rule.” Now we are not going to quibble with this definition, as many Conservatives do. This writer is all too aware that while we Americans were enjoying “representative democracy,” the subjects of the unlamented Soviet Bloc groaned under the yoke of “people’s democracy” (as do those of Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and our “most favored nation,” China today). Idi Amin described cannibalism as “nutritional democracy.” But never mind, we will take the word as read.
But if, in these States of ours, the majority rules, why is their will (as stated through polls, for whatever use those may be) constantly thwarted? Why is same-sex marriage, which, despite constant propagandizing, is opposed by a clear majority --- even in Massachusetts --- in the process of being imposed? Why was abortion, which was similarly opposed at the time of its imposition, enshrined in law? Even today, a clear majority is disgusted by partial-birth abortion, but in all likelihood the long-awaited ban on the practice will be overturned? A majority, similarly, oppose endorsing everything the Israeli government chooses in Palestine: yet both the incumbent president and his democratic opponent have done so, the former blithely ignoring violations of ultimata he himself has imposed upon that government. Although Israel is, to be sure, a sovereign nation, the 15 billion dollars a year with which our government endows them ought to buy us a preponderant place in their councils, one might think.

Yet this sort of thing descends from questions of high policy to ones of mere lifestyle. Prayer in schools, religious symbols on public property, community observance of Christmas --- these are all things which the majority support, provided that they are tailored to the tastes of the local community. Yet they are ever more rigorously being removed. Whether it be grace over meals at the Virginia Military Institute, or the Ten Commandments in the Alabama State Court House, or the cross in the city seal of Redlands, California, they are ripped out in the face of community protests.

We have arrived at the point where shop employees in many places may be fired for saying “Merry Christmas,” rather than “Happy Holidays.” (In the spirit of genial acceptance, this writer himself has taken to insisting on “Happy Holidays” for Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Arbor Day, or any other observance). But by far the vast majority of Americans celebrate Christmas in some form, and most of those think it has something or other to do with Christ. Yet more and more, they are unable to say so. At least the authorities are happy to import ever-larger quantities of “holiday ornaments” from China. One can only wonder what the inmates of the factories who produce them think of the whole thing. Well, at least somebody is making profits.

Now, whence come these developments? To a great degree, from the major media, whose owners and minions have achieved social prominence. They try their damndest, with some success, to influence the populace’s attitudes. But they do have their limits. The furor over the film, The Passion of the Christ, underscores the wide chasm between the views of the chattering classes and the interests of the public. It also illustrates the truth of French sociologist François Berger that “India is the most religious nation in the world, and Sweden the least; the United States are a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes.” The unkind might translate that into a nation of rednecks ruled by effete chardonnay-swillers, but the truth of the statement remains. Certainly, it is said here in Southern California that the Upper Class make movies and television programs, the Middle Class do the production work, and the Lower Class watch them.

But the amount of damage the media can do is minimal in the last analysis. They can ridicule, and corrupt taste, but they cannot, by themselves, affect structural change. No, in most of the cases cited, it was the Judiciary who have done that. Unfettered, for the most part, by the electoral process, they have come to manufacture law rather than to interpret it --- and that manufacture goes unchallenged by any prominent elected official, political party, or citizens’ group.

But is this so bad? Would we have eliminated segregation, for example, without an activist judiciary? Surely, only the Warren Court had the power to, in Van Helsing-like manner, thrust a stake into Jim Crow’s heart? Perhaps; this writer, for one, does not mourn Jim Crow (although he does object strongly to attacking Confederate symbols as racist --- one might as well attack the Stars and Stripes as a prime symbol of the evils of Reconstruction, which in themselves created Jim Crow). But upon what basis did the Warren Court act? Not, to be sure, on that of majority rule. Most white southerners supported or were indifferent to segregation; most Yankees might be vaguely opposed, but not to the point of doing anything. For that matter, upon what basis did their successors in the Supreme and Lower Courts do what they have done in the past four decades?

To get a grasp on the topic, we will leave ol’ Jim alone for a moment, and look to the phrase upon which most of the undemocratic measures of the Courts have been based for the last six decades: Separation of Church and State. Although popular throughout the Western Nations today, the notion that the religion of the people should have nothing to do with their government arose first in the United States, even though the term “Separation of Church and State” appears nowhere in our Constitution. What DOES appear is a clause forbidding Congress to establish a single religion for the whole nation, and proscribing loss of civil rights to any American citizen because of his religious beliefs. The reason for this is simple: of the 13 original states, at independence seven of them in whole or in part recognised the Anglican as their official church, three the Congregational, and three no such establishment. Catholicism was illegal in ten of them. Thus the newly sovereign State authorities had no desire to allow Congress to intervene in what was seen as a local question; the alliance of France and Spain required that civil disabilities be lifted from the Catholics, while the activities of both Catholics and Jews on the rebel side seemed to require their being granted civil rights. The last State to do so (Connecticut) did not give up its established Church until 1833.

Nevertheless, although no specific form of Christianity was thereafter established in the European sense, it was held for a long time that the United States were in fact a “Christian” country (whatever that might mean). On February 29, 1892, the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Trinity Church vs. the United States, mentioned that

If we pass beyond these [mentioned legal] matters to a view of American life, as expressed by its laws, its business, its customs, and its society, we find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth. Among other matters note the following: The form of oath universally prevailing, concluding with an appeal to the Almighty; the custom of opening sessions of all deliberative bodies and most conventions with prayer; the prefatory words of all wills, ‘In the name of God, amen;’ the laws respecting the observance of the Sabbath, with the general cessation of all secular business, and the closing of courts, legislatures, and other similar public assemblies on that day; the churches and church organizations which abound in every city, town, and hamlet; the multitude of charitable organizations existing everywhere under Christian auspices; the gigantic missionary associations, with general support, and aiming to establish Christian missions in every quarter of the globe.
On this basis, the Court declared that “These and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.” What distinguishes this decision from those of later, 20th century courts is that is was based, not upon abstract theory, but upon the actual way life is lived by the citizens of these United States --- now as well as then. In a word, it was democratic.

Now let’s pick up Jim Crow again. Using the argument just posed, Jim Crow could never have been eliminated through judicial action, because the fact was that he was enshrined in law and social life, and that all interpretations of the Constitution previous to 1954 had been favourable to him (cf. Plessy vs. Ferguson). In a word, democracy could not, or would not, of itself, right the wrong of segregation. Only appeal to a higher law could do that.

True. But what was the higher law that trumped Plessy vs. Ferguson and Trinity Church vs. The United States alike? What was the sheet of music the Supreme and lesser courts would sing from? We do not know. Indeed, we know less now than we did in 1954. The “Borking” of Judge Bork pointed out that the doctrine of “Original Intent” --- that is, that the ideas of the framers of the Constitution ought to be employed in interpreting it --- was voided. During his own confirmation hearings, Mr. Justice Clarence Thomas had to swear that he did not believe in what Western Civilization has always called the “Natural Law.” Fine. So neither Original Intent nor Natural Law guide the Judiciary. Then what does? The answer can only boil down to: their own whims.
What makes this particularly difficult is that the Judiciary have arrogated to themselves the role of a third, all-powerful house of the legislature. While they are unelected, there is no appeal from their decisions, no higher authority to rein them in. Whether this is good or bad may be a matter of opinion; what is not debatable is that the judiciary as it is currently constituted negates any claim this nation may have to calling itself a democracy. To be fair, one might temper one’s reaction to this statement by meditating on the “Strange Career of Jim Crow.”

“But wait!” you might say, “wait! What about the elected branches? We still elect the president and congress, the governors and legislatures! What about them?” What about them? While one might point out, for example, President Bush’s actions in pushing for a Constitutional amendment banning homosexual marriage and his successful ban on partial-birth abortions, what do those really mean? The much vaunted amendment reserves the name “marriage” to male-female couples, but preserves “civil unions” intact; in any case, it is highly unlike that Congressman David Drier (R-CA), chairman of the House rules committee and a “libertarian” is highly unlikely to let it get to the floor of the House. It is to be doubted that the president will force him to. Similarly, with the court case surrounding the partial birth ban, the president directed the attorney general to give up seeking the medical information essential to the government winning the case. Luckily, the decision will take place after the election. In all these areas and many more, there are in reality a lot of things the president and governors could do to regain power from the judiciary if they wished to: executive set-asides, interim appointments, and the like. But they will not. Why? I do have a theory.

More important than their motivations, just for the moment, is the reaction of the people who elect the legislative and executive branches, pay for their salaries, and --- whether through the active Army and the Reserve, or else the National Guard --- send their sons and daughters to die for them. Just how do the people react? With apathy. In California, where the legislature are masters of avoiding uncomfortable questions, any truly difficult question is referred to the populace on election day. Luckily, if the result is something the potentates of Sacramento don’t want, it inevitably dies in the courts. The result in the Golden State, as in most of the country, is very low voter turnout.

It was most amusing, after Tony Blair made a great commotion about having introduced American-style politics to Britain, to see the lowest voter turnout in British elections since 1918. But they were simply emulating the semi-conscious, inarticulate response of the American electorate to a political scene where their opinions do not matter. It is not that either British or Americans decided that voting is not worth the bother, it is simply that anything else becomes more important: watching T.V., taking a nap, or helping the neighbour’s collie with his dental floss. Given what we have seen, who can blame them? Are they not already disenfranchised?

How to solve this dilemma? How to bring the citizenry back to participation in the process? Well, we really need to dig deeper. First, we must go back to Jim Crow and democracy. There are a number of fantasies that our supposed democratic form of government has given us. It is time to look at a few a realities of organized society that transcend national and temporal boundaries. What is about to be said would not apply to small tribes in New Guinea. But it would apply to Medieval Rwanda, Tang China, Feudal Europe, or 21st Century America.

The first is that there is a distinction between power and authority. Authority is the right to say what ought to be done; power is the ability to make things happen. Your doctor has the authority to prescribe medicine, but only you have the power to take it. Authority has many sources; in pre-World War II Japan, it came to the Emperor from his ancestress, the Sun Goddess --- even today this affects the course of Japanese politics. In Medieval Europe, it came to the Emperor, and to the Kings, through the Grace of God, mediated by the Church and her Pope. In contemporary democracies, it is said to come through the will of the people, whatever that may --- this is difficult, because intangible. In any case, in older and in more primitive societies, power is often diffuse, lodging, as in Medieval Europe, in churchmen, guilds, nobles, cities, universities, and the like. In this maze of institutions, the wielder of authority is like an orchestra leader; if he is good, or at least able, the results are more or less harmonious. If he is the opposite, the result is not dictatorship but anarchy and its attendant evils: civil unrest, famine, and disease. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were the inevitable attendants of authority poorly used.

In modern societies, thanks to technology and other factors, power tends to be concentrated, and authority diffuse. Thus the holders of power have more control over their subjects in the contemporary world than their opposite numbers in days gone by could have dreamed of. Those subjects, holding authority only as an abstract whole rather than as individuals, have little ability to supervise those who, in essence, control their lives. Where Monarchs remain, while they have much less power than early modern centralizers such as Henry VIII or Louis XIV, they are about on a par with their Medieval predecessors. But in the face of the powers of today, that means little.

Authority always derives from or is mediated through a state religion. Contrary to what we have just seen regarding separation of Church and State, this rule admits of no exceptions. Every human society requires some animating spirituality or philosophy that embodies faith in things unseen. In most arrangements this will be expressed in Coronation Rites, civic liturgy, and the like; but so universal is this requirement that even Communist countries erected Marxism into a religion --- “There is no God, and Marx is His Prophet.” For all that the leaders of these countries disdained and disdain any hint of the unseen, their declared end, “the withering away of the state” and perfect equality, requires as much faith as any paradise ever dreamed of by saint or prophet. There is a reason for this; Man will never submit to power for its own sake. He can be compelled to do by brute force, but such a compulsion does not produce loyalty. He will only accept (and fight) for something that can claim links to the transcendent, no matter how vaguely. Moreover, he will only cheerfully obey laws that can make this same claim.

Which brings us to the next point: every society has rulers and ruled. Regardless of how the rulers derive their power, or the authority to use it, they are the ones who make the decisions. Nor could it be otherwise. Few of us have the ability or the knowledge to rule --- much less the expertise to handle the system in which we live. This is a separate issue as to whether the rulers are competent. This writer knows nothing at all about making shoes. Even if his cobbler is a fool who doesn’t know a sneaker from an oxford, he can make shoes; his customers can’t. So it is with rulers.

As for the ruled --- well, we are pretty much along for the ride. At the end of the day, we can grumble and go along with our rulers’ program, or we can rebel. But, inevitably, men who also have the talents we lack as a whole lead such rebellions or revolutions. We overthrow the old regime, and presto! A new set of rulers emerges to bedevil us with some of the old annoyances and (in all likelihood) new ones as well.

Lastly, every society has a class system of some sort, whether based on invention, money, land, heredity, military prowess, or some combination of the lot. It may be complex or simple, but inequality is a part of life. In modern times, it is never so quick to emerge as when attempts are made to suppress it. Yet, oddly enough, when systems change, it is amazing how many of the upper classes are able to make lateral transfers into the new structure. The other interesting point is that, in most places, the lower the class the larger its proportion of the general population, though there are exceptions (the American Middle Class in the 1950s, the Untouchables in India, for example).

History, as we have implied, shows the universal nature of these rules. But in the United States we have steadfastly pretended that most of them do not exist here. Those two that we did accept, we have abolished in recent decades. Traditionally, authority in the United States was held to descend from Providence (whatever or whoever that might be) to the People; the Holy Writ of this arrangement was the Constitution. Indeed, for many, even still, that document still holds quasi-religious awe. But for the establishment, authority is an empty concept, and most of the rest of us do not know what it is. Without an authority capable of saying anything, we are forced, when faced with what seems to be an illegitimate use of power, to simply scratch our heads and say, “that ain’t right!” But we would be hard put to say why. The judiciary have, in a very real sense, made themselves the source of authority; thus for many of us, whatever is legal is moral. For this reason few of us really want to fight for the losing side in, say, a Supreme Court judgment.

The mantra of separation of Church and State, often repeated by the swamis on the various courts, has removed any idea of some form of Christianity (or any other organized faith) as our state religion. Nevertheless, we have one; even if, as in the old Soviet Union it is felt more by its negative actions than its positive ones. Just what is it? Alas, it is hard to put a finger on it. We’ll need to go back a little in time to understand it.

The famous Puritans, whom we celebrate every Thanksgiving, in a real sense began construction of America’s religious mind. For a number of historical reasons, New England was, for a long time, the leading intellectual centre of America. While Calvinist doctrines decayed, and the descendants of the Puritans gave birth to Unitarianism, certain attitudes were passed on, not only to them, but also to most Americans. Some of these were the famed Puritan Work Ethic, which gave the making of money a sacramental patina --- the more so because riches were one way to show one’s neighbours (and oneself) that he was among the elect. Correspondingly, mere artistic pursuits, which could not demonstrate profitability, were suspicious. Conviction of one’s own righteousness (accompanied by a complete lack of introspection) followed from total identification with the Chosen People of the Old Testament --- a trait, incidentally, shared by other Calvinist peoples, like the Ulster Scots and the Afrikaaners. From this belief came the notion of the “shining city on the hill,” which has remained an important part of the American self-image ever since. But with it followed a disdain of the foreigner and his ways, as of the Canaanite.

While most of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were Christians of one sort or another, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin were Deists --- that is to say, believers in a god who set the universe in motion and left man to puzzle his way out. Although the first two were nominal Anglicans, Adams was a Congregationalist, and Franklin was buried in an Anglican Church, they had little use for the tenets of their putative faiths. They believed their deity to be benevolent, and in a moral code, and in good citizenship. Above all, they held that conduct is more important than creed; that is, that it doesn’t matter what one believes, so long as he is a “nice person.”

This attitude was actually quite helpful, in a temporal sense, to the infant nation. In a country where all sorts of Protestant sects --- formerly quite inimical to each other (the Puritans had put Baptists and Quakers to death, as well as witches), it provided a way whereby all could live quite peacefully together. This arrangement was helped further by the growth of Unitarianism in the early 19th century. Although the actual numbers of the new faith have always been small, they have wielded an influence out of all proportion to their numbers. Given the importance of such men as Emerson and Thoreau in American literature (and so in American classrooms), the ideas of Unitarianism --- and above all, its tone --- are implanted in most of our minds. The Unitarians substituted a belief in temporal progress for individual salvation, and so have pursued social change as a religious crusade. In the 19th century it was abolitionism, in the 21st, it is gay rights. But whatever the cause of the moment, the Unitarians are out to further it!

At the same time, however, as the Unitarians arose, so too did the Great Revival. In part it was a reaction to the dryness and intellectualism of many American Protestant churches of the time. The Revival swept much of the country, and injected being “born again,” “saved once and for all,” and “getting religion” into the national consciousness.

By the time of the Civil War, these four streams --- Calvinism, Deism, Unitarianism, and Revivalism --- had penetrated the consciousness of the Protestant majority pretty thoroughly. Of course, the exact proportions differed from church to church, congregation to congregation, and person to person. But it was a heady mix, perhaps best typified by the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

After the war, another church began to add its input to the national religious bloodstream. Although the Episcopal Church was the oldest Protestant faith in the country, it had been severely damaged by the Revolution, due to its association with the Crown. But following 1789 it reinvented itself, and functioned after the Civil War as a quasi-national church. Its churches became much more ornate, its rituals more stately, and its connection to the newer power structure which emerged from the War became tighter. It is no coincidence that the “National” Cathedral in Washington and St. John’s, Lafayette Square, near the White House (called the “Church of the Presidents”) are both Episcopalian. The example of the Episcopal Church influenced the other Protestant bodies as well; Gothic Methodist, Presbyterian, and other sort of churches rose all over the country. Stained glass made a major comeback. As it was for Catholics, so too for Protestants, the period between the Civil War and World War II was the golden age of church architecture. In any case, Episcopalian influence, as in choirs, buildings, set prayers, and so on, gave a ritual form to the set of ideas which had dominated the country by 1860.

This mixed faith itself began to unravel in the 1950s. As we shall see, Catholics and Jews had already been entering the ranks of the elite for a while, and now the stream became a flood. Of course, both Catholics and Jews showed a willingness (at least on the part of their more influential members) to shed most of their distinctive doctrines and practices as the price of admission. Surely the great national faith could do as much for them.

In time, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists would join the upper ranks as well, and in their turn go through what the Catholics and Jews had. This process is far from complete. But as good an example as can ever be found in stone of this process is the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. Although nominally Catholics, it was a designed as a “sacred space for all people.” Not surprisingly, the great civic rituals, which, in eastern cities would be held in the local Episcopal cathedral, in Los Angeles are held here. This writer attended an interfaith memorial on September 11, 2002, for the Twin Tower victims. While there were hymns, scriptures, and prayers from every conceivable Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist group imaginable, three things remain lodged in the brain: Anjelica Huston’s performance as Mistress of Ceremonies, the elite of Hollywood and the City government singing the chorus of What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love while Burt Bacharach played on the piano, and Roger Cardinal Mahony praying to God to “preserve us in the unity of the faith we share.” In appearance, this is a new face for the national religion; but in reality, it is the same old syncretism at work.

That, then, is its ritual side, repeated in interfaith services of all kinds around the country. But it is its philosophical side that characterizes and “ensouls,” so to speak, our society. It is not a dogmatic faith, but in essence, it holds, with Calvinism, that it is simply correct, and any who challenge it are evil; with Unitarianism that change is progress, and progress is salvation, and so an end in itself; with Episcopalianism it sanctifies whatever the upper reaches of society care to do. It is this odd, half-consciously held religion, which animates our institutions --- especially our judiciary --- today. It is far from monolithic, and hard to pin down. But its works are mighty, and it is as American as apple pie.

Now we move on to the rulers. As with our national faith, our rulership has altered and shifted over the two centuries of national life we have enjoyed. Like the religion that empowers it, it is not monolithic, and very hard to tack down --- “dominant classes” would appear more correct than “ruling class.” But even so, we can distinguish three basic periods in their existence.

The first is the pre-and post-revolutionary period: from about 1730 to somewhere in the 1830s or 40s in the North, and 1865 in the South. These were the families who formed the Whig oligarchy in the colonies. Merchants, smugglers, and the like in New England and the major cities from New York to Savannah, they were landed gentry for the most part elsewhere. These were the gentlemen who ran the colonial assemblies, and tangled with the Crown over the Stamp Tax and such. Very well educated in the various European literatures, history, and much else, they were remarkable in many ways. But they were also extremely diverse: in New England, where the Congregational was the established church, rebels tended to be of that faith, and Loyalists Anglican (although there were many exceptions either way). But in the southern colonies, where the Church of England was established, the Presbyterians tended to be Loyalist and the Anglicans rebel. This was a pattern repeated, in accordance with the local situation, in every colony.

Of course, while they spoke of no taxation without representation, they did not practice it; but in invoking it they paved the way for others. So the post-war period saw such outbreaks as Shay’s and the Whiskey Rebellion. Both the major parties --- Federalist and Democratic-Republican were for the most part in their hands. This is not to minimize the differences between them, but it does explain why, after the Federalists dissolved in 1816, the survivors could be received by the D-R’s, ushering the “Era of Good Feeling” under President Monroe. It was America’s only period as a one party state, and it did not last long!

At any rate, in the north, these folk began to be superseded by bankers and industrialists --- a development much mourned by Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving. By the time of the Civil War, although many individuals of this sort remained in government, and many more remained wealthy, as a group they were partly absorbed and partly left behind by the new money. The defeat of the Confederacy ended the only real rival to the new dominant classes. Men like Mellon, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Morgan, and the like epitomized them. Through factories, railroads, mining, newspapers, banking, oil, and much else, these “Robber Barons” developed the West and Florida, and laid the foundation for America’s world economic supremacy. At the same time they were often crude and vulgar, cared nothing for their employees, and simply were not that nice. Mark Twain lampooned them viciously in such works as The Gilded Age, and Henry Adams mourned their coming to power in The Education of Henry Adams.

But many of them were aware of their shortcomings. In attempt to turn themselves into a sort of American aristocracy, they built great homes staffed with many servants, importing art from all over Europe with which to furnish them. To turn their sons into gentlemen, they provided lucrative incentives for the St. Grottlesex-type schools and the Ivy League colleges to turn into imitation English public schools on the one hand, and ersatz Oxbridge on the other. Many of these new aristocrats embraced the Episcopal Church in droves; in return it embraced them. Without lavish funding from the new elite, many of the most beautiful churches (Episcopal or otherwise) would not have been possible. Above all, a tone was set. What was left of the colonial aristocracy and the progeny of the Robber Barons alike made a point of going into public service --- whether civilian or military. Many of the dead officers on the American side in both World Wars came from such families.

But, of course, if years 1865-1941 saw the dominance of this group, it also saw the rise of a new American character, firmly based, however upon the old (or at least an imagined version of it). If it was the golden age of Church architecture, so it was of civil: court houses, city and town halls, schools, public libraries --- all the profusion of government were housed in as elegant quarters as the public purse (often helped by the local wealthy). This was the time when what we consider the traditional customs of such holidays as Christmas, Easter, Hallowe’en, Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, Independence Day, and the like were codified. Vaudeville was getting ready to slide into motion pictures, Tin Pan Alley was churning out tunes; in a word, what we today would recognize as our national identity was being forged.

The Depression damaged the WASP elite, and World War II broke it down further. During that latter conflict, the Bureau of Wages and Prices specifically targeted multi-servant households for elimination through taxation. After the war, many big houses were sold; and a second time a class-wide feeling of dejection set in. Debutante Balls were thrown, and private clubs remained open. But there was certainly a touch of autumn in the air.

At the same time, American life in the 50s and certainly the 60s was revolutionized. In a couple of decades, the orderly (if synthetic) lifestyle of the American elite was turned upside down (although, to be sure, it happened to many other Americans as well). After the Supreme Court legalized birth control in 1964, sexual mores flew out the window; the baby boomers became physically mature (for many, “growing up” would never happen), and the hippy movement emerged. Foul language and very “informal” clothing became the rage. They had to be them. Were they ever! Protesting the War in Vietnam became the seminal moment for some, drugs for others. In any case, the old patterns had broken down, and America was ready for a new elite.

As with the last transition, the change was gradual, and many of the old dominant classes made it --- not surprisingly, both major presidential candidates in 2004 are members’ if Yale’s Skull and Bones Club. While such membership still means something today, it is not quite what it was 50 years ago. Feminism allowed certain women to attain top roles in the hierarchy (although most had to content themselves with acting crudely and working like packhorses, and calling it equality). The ever-burgeoning number of Catholics who retained the title while rejecting their Church’s teachings was also able to enter the elite --- a process facilitated by bishops willing to overlook such lapses. Jews were also able to enter the rulership in larger numbers than ever before, although with few exceptions, however, these were not Orthodox. The new leadership were not united by nominal religion or by ethnicity. What served to set them apart from their fellows were two things, one of which was money.

The other, however, was a similar world-view. Now, to be sure, some are called “conservatives,” and some “liberals.” But this means little, practically. Their differences are far outweighed by their similarities. Just what are these? The first is a shared experience of the cultural revolution of the 1960s. They tend to be disdainful of tradition, to a great or lesser degree (though ready to invoke its memory when necessary). As an example, President Clinton gave only a single white-tie state dinner during his eight-year reign (for the King and Queen of Spain). They much prefer casual clothes to suits, and jeans to dresses. For political types, being photographed without ties is very important, as it shows them to be “natural.”

These are small things, but they are indicative of a desire for personal comfort, for persona freedom, as opposed to the traditional requirements of leadership. This desire in turn betokens an unfettered pragmatism. Ideology, as such, plays little role for them if it gets in the way of what they want. Carried over into public life, this manifests in a willingness to jettison received positions in favour of immediate advantage: thus the Republican Party does not really oppose abortion and homosexual marriage in an effective way, and the Democratic Party is happy to sacrifice organised labour in the name of globalisation. Predictably, their respective core constituencies do not notice this.

However, this ruthlessness does not make them realists. They pursue what they believe to be their interest doggedly, but they do not stop to consider the probable results of their actions. The thirst of the Neo-Cons around President Bush for a war in Iraq was palpable, because it allowed that faction of the rulership (who themselves for the most part avoided their generation’s blooding in Vietnam) to accomplish the messianic goal of “democratising” the Near East. But neither the goal nor the means employed bore any relationship to Constitutionality, existent reality, or anything else. In this, however, they were patently at one with their more “liberal” confreres, who refuse to see the havoc their population policies have made with, for example, the tax base.

There is another trait that makes the current rulership unique. They are completely irresponsible, in the sense of not being accountable for their actions. Because of the legerdemain of electoral politics, those actually responsible for national decision making in the media, judiciary, and elsewhere are not forced to receive the opprobrium proper to their decisions. In this sense, elected officials become scapegoats. They themselves are not truly representative in any case. Most elected politicians are like athletes and artists, in the sense that they cheerfully sacrifice every other consideration to being and remaining elected. Principle means nothing to them, if it would mean their falling afoul of the media, judiciary, etc. Generally wealthier than their putative constituents (60% of U.S. Senators are millionaires), they do not resemble them in the least.

Indeed, it is interesting that they themselves lead lives quite different from the patterns they urge upon their people: making it economically difficult for the less fortunate to attend any other than public schools, they send their own children to private schools. Engineering conditions that make it imperative for both parents of the average American family to work, they keep their own spouses home --- and so it goes. As noted, they certainly do not share the religious beliefs of their subjects. It is ironic to note that, in comparison, the late lamented hereditary peers of Britain’s House of Lords were far more democratic than the professional politicians of the House of Commons. Given that, as with most people, they owed their positions in life to chance or providence, they were far more like the ordinary British Subject than most M.P.s could hope to be. This was reflected in the Lords’ Hansards, wherein the questions they asked on legislation were very much like what the common man might ask, save that they were generally framed in complete sentences. The removal of such peers from the legislative process only served to seal its control by the “professionals.”

One man who is perhaps typical of the new rulership is the Chevalier Rupert Murdoch, K.S.G. This Presbyterian Papal Knight is a man of little loyalty --- temporal or religious --- save to himself and his minions. Beginning life as an Australian press magnate, he surrendered his native citizenship for an American passport in order to retain his media empire in the United States. The Chevalier nevertheless continues to exercise a dominant role in Australia, where, for example, he funds that country’s republican movement. Weeks after accepting his Papal Knighthood (something arranged by his Catholic spouse in return for his donation of millions of dollars to Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles), he divorced said wife and took on a much younger model. Of course, he ordered his Australian and British papers (the latter including the venerable Times of London and a host of semi-pornographic tabloids) not to report on his latest honour. While his own private life is not ideal, he has directed his sheets in Britain to expose any possible scandal in the royal family. But Murdoch need not fear the spiritual results of his actions: his ongoing donations to the Catholic Cathedral of Los Angeles have earned him a place in the crypt, whenever he should be gathered to his ancestors. The objection that might be raised of his not being Catholic can be answered by saying that his ex-wife was, and that the Church does not recognise his divorce. The Archdiocese has sold him his “stairway to heaven.”

The problem with this ruling class is not that it is in power (for someone must be), but rather that it is feckless. There are four major problems facing the West and the United States right now:

The loss of Christianity has removed any definition worth fighting for from Western Civilisation;
The institutions produced by that civilisation are dying for that reason;
The low birth-rate among the native-born in Western countries jeopardises their ultimate survival, and, more immediately, threatens to wreak havoc on their labour force, armed services, and tax base; and
External enemies (most notably radical Islam) are gathering force and ferocity. The heavy responsibility which the current rulership bears for the first three dilemmas makes it unlikely that they will deal with either them or the fourth one effectively.

What, then, is the solution? As a believing Catholic, this writer believes that the application of the Church’s social and political principles is the only long-term solution for our problems. But this cannot happen unless and until the majority of Westerners return to the Faith that founded their culture. Until the institutional Church regains a sense of missionary urgency, and imparts that to her members, this is not likely to happen. Given that many Bishops question or deny major tenets of Catholicism, we cannot expect any movement on this front. Perhaps a new Pontiff will address this situation, but it will take decades for anything like the required effort to be mounted on a large scale.

Revolution, perhaps? No. As mentioned, even if such were possible, the new rulership would likely be no better than the current, and quite probably worse. Moreover, the attendant unpleasantness would surely negate any future benefits.

No, as a beginning, it is necessary for people to begin to see how things really are. A great deal of the dangers which face us are attributable to the populace believing that their leadership is somehow representative of them. Facing the sad truth --- that most of those who rule us are not answerable to us and do not care about us, would paradoxically make them more accountable. Treating voting as performance art, rather than as a sacramental rite, would help a great deal. Voting one’s conscience --- even if it means voting for a minor party --- is preferable to continuing to play the game. For that matter, not voting at all --- provided one notifies one’s nominal party on advance --- might also be useful. This is not throwing your vote away --- given the few number of times that a candidate one really supports is elected --- and even fewer times keeps the promises that put him into office, you are no more likely to waste your vote than by voting for the party line. You will get as much in return. Above all, the Murdochs of this world must be held accountable. A million letters to the Chevalier on one issue or another might accomplish a great deal more than writing one’s congressman.

But it is important to remember that any purely political solutions are mere stopgaps. In 1926, in his Encyclical Quas Primas, Pope Pius XI declared that “If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ.” As things stand, any attempt to do this in the United States would be shut down immediately by the ACLU. But Pope Pius knew what would be the eventual result of such action, and followed the quoted sentence with: “What We said at the beginning of Our Pontificate concerning the decline of public authority, and the lack of respect for the same, is equally true at the present day. ‘With God and Jesus Christ,’ we said, ‘excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation.” It would take someone either very blind, or else in power, not to see the truth of the last sentence.

Of course, as Catholics we know that the end of the West will not be the end of the Church or of her Divine mission to spread the teachings and Kingship of Christ. But it shall mean the end of this country, and of those nations from whom most Americans descend. As loyal children of the Church, we have an obligation to evangelise our neighbours and our country; as patriotic citizens we have an obligation to defend our country and struggle for her spiritual and material welfare. What we dare not forget --- as so many of our co-religionists, clerical and lay, who have been subsumed into the power structure have --- is that the two goals are inseparable, and, indeed, the same.

American Catholicism - Can It Be Conservative?

2011-06-17T13:58:00.000-07:00

Conservative American Catholicism --- is there such a thing? There are, to be sure, men like Pat Buchanan, who are called such. But just what is Conservative American Catholicism? The best way to find out is to define each word separately, and then look at them together.

First, America. While those of us who were born and live in the United States use the word interchangeably with the name of our country, it should be remembered that Spanish-speakers refer to both continents bearing that name when they use this term. To this day, our use of “America” grates on them. Still, for the purposes of this article the standard U.S. usage will be followed; Canadians, who are certainly North Americans, refuse to use the title at all.

While both Latin Americans and Canadians are only too aware of what divides them from Americans, Europeans are not, generally. They may (and often do) resent the power and influence of the United States --- while happily gobbling McDonald’s foods, wearing blue jeans, imitating American customs seen on television, and rejecting their own religious, social, and moral traditions in favour of ersatz American practises. But, because of our similarities in physical appearance and dress, they do not realize what fundamentally separates us.

The most obvious are what have been called “race and space.” Both the Indians and the descendants of the African slaves (the former in a more psychological, the latter in a more material manner) have affected tremendously the descendants of European colonists and later immigrants in many, many ways. African cooking and music, for example, have had enormous repercussions upon all Americans. Then too, the Indian Wars, struggles for and against slavery, and continuing guilt (and efforts to suppress it) over both of these questions, continue to play a role in the national mind.

The enormous size of the United States also plays its part. What is basically a single culture extends for three thousand miles, over a terrain of incredible diversity. Fifty State governments and thousands of county, municipal, and other lesser authorities run day-to-day affairs according to many different patterns reflecting their individual histories. The Governors of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine are assisted by Governor’s Councils, who preside over appointments and pardons; the Governor of Connecticut maintains Foot Guards and Horse Guards, while his colleague of Rhode Island, alone of all State Chief Executives, appoints the County Sheriffs (everywhere else they are elected; in some States they are held to represent the State government, while elsewhere they are looked on as responsible to the county populace). Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Virginia are called Commonwealths rather than States, and the first named shares with Delaware the appointment of “Prothonotaries” to preside over the courts and the notariate in their respective counties. Louisiana calls its counties “Parishes,” and maintains a variety of the Code Napoleon, as opposed to the English Common law prevailing in the other States. New Jersey’s counties are presided over by “Boards of Chosen Freeholders,” and the land, inheritance, and mineral laws in California, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona are based upon Spanish rather than English principles. The town of Glen Cove, New York, continues to be governed according to the Royal Charter granted by James II. Nebraska alone has a unicameral legislature, while the Assemblies of Pennsylvania, Maryland, South Carolina, and Virginia feature daily speaker’s parades, complete with maces (in the latter two cases, crowned relics from colonial times), as is done throughout the British Commonwealth. Some of the States still retain the ancient Court of Common Pleas, although most do not. In Connecticut, counties have degenerated to nothing more than lines on the map, without even Sheriffs (since 2000); in California, they are mighty fiefdoms, little less powerful than the State government itself --- even the invincible City of Los Angeles struggles for supremacy with the attendant County regime.

One could go on and on; but the point is that each American State differs from every other. This is true in ethnic makeup, as well. Some places, like Massachusetts, offer a grafting of a dizzying array of ethnic groups onto the descendants of the Puritan English. In my father’s relatively small home town of New Bedford, Massachusetts, the Catholic Church alone offers French-Canadian, Irish, German, Portuguese, Italian, and Polish parishes; add to this mix the Orthodox Greeks and Slavs of various varieties, as well as Arabs, Puerto Ricans, and Scandinavians, and you have quite a mixture. Even the blacks there are diverse --- Portuguese-speakers from the Cape Verdes, Southern Immigrants and their offspring, and descendants of the early African slaves brought to the area in the 17th century. In the major cities, the mix is far more complex. There are also long-established colonial-era groups, such as the Pennsylvania Germans, the Louisiana Cajuns, and the New Mexico Hispanos, whose settlement predates Independence, and who have to some degree maintained their languages and cultures in the face of immigration; they generally continue to play a part on the local scene.
Despite all of this diversity, however, there is also a tremendous conformity, an overarching national ethos, which is best understood as a sort of secular religion. As with all non-Christian religions, it has its foundational myths, its holy relics, its shrines, its demi-gods, and its dogmas. Central to it is a sort of worship of the nation and its institutions. Much of the power this faith derives comes from its ongoing ability to unify in the face of the diversity we have been exploring; it takes the place for Americans of a common faith and/or allegiance to a Sovereign and his dynasty.

To understand this religion, which we shall call Americanism, we must look first at its central myth, which is a kind of sacralised American history. In this reading, the Puritans who first settled New England were like the Patriarchs of the Old Testament and the Children of Israel. Fleeing the English Crown and its Catholically-tarnished Church, (analogous to the oppression of Pharaoh in the Old Testament), they made their Exodus across the Sea, arriving in the Promised Land. Here they had to deal with the Canaanites, who were of course the Indians. Thus far, the myth is like that of most exiled Calvinist peoples, such as the Ulster Scots of Ireland, the Afrikaaners of South Africa, and the Mormons of Utah.

But the story here becomes more elaborate; for unlike those peoples, the Americans received a New as well as an Old Covenant. The Founding Fathers (such as Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin) are like the Apostles, with the American Revolution itself playing the role of Passion and Resurrection. The Constitution, inspired by the Holy Ghost, is Scripture (along with the Declaration of Independence), and the formation of the government is thus an act of God Himself --- whomever or whatever He may be. Such places as Independence Hall in Philadelphia (wherein the Sacred Documents were signed), the Freedom Trail in Boston, and the White House, Capitol, Washington and Jefferson Monuments, and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., are Holy places, much like those in Rome, Jerusalem, or Mecca.

The Civil War becomes itself a redemptive act, whereby the sacred Union was saved by the heroism of a Saviour-figure, Abraham Lincoln (there is still a parallel Confederate tradition which was strong in the South until the 1970s, but it was sort of a dissenting sect, rather like Shiite versus Sunnite Muslims; its holders too venerated the Pilgrims, Washington, et al.).

So formed by God, the United States are the shining city on the hill, beacons of liberty for an oppressed and heathen world, and the last, best hope of Mankind. Here, belief in any other faith or none is fine, so long as such belief disagrees neither with the national mythos nor with the other doctrines of the tribe. Among these is the notion that conduct is more important than creed. But there are others. From the Calvinism of the Puritans came the idea that that those whom God has chosen for salvation (through no effort of their own) will be blessed by Him in this life; since we cannot know precisely who is among this elect, we must strive mightily to achieve wealth, to demonstrate our goodness. This is known as the Puritan work ethic. With time, this idea has been secularised and sublimated into the American mind, with certain concrete results: the acquisition of wealth is unconsciously sacramental; the poor are inherently stupid or wicked; and anything that is not obviously profitable --- the arts and humanities, for example --- are suspect of being unworthy of pursuit by “decent” people because “impractical.” (One unfortunate result of this has been to allow these areas to be monopolised in America to some degree by Marxists and/or Liberals; similar things have occurred in Europe and Latin America in recent decades for different reasons, to be sure. But the fact remains that Conservative academics and artists in those areas are both more numerous and better regarded than here).

Another jealously guarded dogma is that of equality. There is not, so the common belief runs, a class system in America. So pervasive is this idea that the word “classless,” which in Great Britain means egalitarian, in the United States simply means “vulgar.” An often quoted maxim is that “anyone can grow up to be President.” The fact that 40 to 60% of United States Senators are millionaires escapes notice. But in truth, the Upper Classes in America, unlike those in Europe, are invisible; as such they are also unapproachable. An important component of the leading elite here is bound up with entertainment, and it has been wryly observed that we now have three classes: the proles who watch T.V., the Middle Class who make it, and the elite who appear on it. But they are careful to dress like the proles, in order to give the impression that they are where they are simply by accident --- an accident which might happen to anyone. This view is an oversimplification, to be sure, but not without some validity.

The superiority of the Centre is yet another firmly held belief. In this view, anything which might be castigated as “out of the mainstream” or extreme is automatically discounted. Of course, few bother to consider just what those titles mean. Thus, on July 31, 2002, CNN hailed Hilary Rodham Clinton as a “Moderate;” given her views on various topics however, it was hard to tell how the news network arrived at that conclusion. Similarly, in the 2002 California gubernatorial race, Democratic Governor Gray Davis castigated his Republican opponent, Bill Simon, as “out of step with California.” But given Davis’ violent espousal of Gay marriage, despite the State populace voting for a bill forbidding it on a referendum, one hardly knows what he means. But so long as these statements are not examined in detail, they do tend to carry weight with voters.

But perhaps the most key of all these dogmas for our purpose is that of “Separation of Church and State.” While often bandied about today throughout the formerly Christian West (and progressively accruing particular popularity in Europe as the EU continues to emerge as an entirely secular super-state), it is a concept entirely unknown before the birth of the United States. In the rest of the world --- divided as it is between Muslim, Buddhist, and pagan nations --- it remains even to-day a novel, indeed, unnatural, concept, save in Communist China and North Korea. In those places, whatever the form of government, the local religious authorities continue to a greater or lesser degree to sanctify the State with their ceremonies and advice, while the State in its turn more or less subsidises them and pays at least lip service to their doctrines.

Perhaps the ironies involved in the situation are no better illustrated than in the current Pope’s permission to build a mosque in Rome. The previous attempt to do so, in 1930, featured the then King of Saudi Arabia’s request to Benito Mussolini for similar permission; the Duce replied that he would be happy to so, when the King authorised construction of a Catholic cathedral in Mecca. European attitudes have altered, while Muslim have not --- one can imagine the Saudi government’s reply to any such request today.

In any case, the notion that the religion of the people should have nothing to do with their government arose first in the United States, although the term “Separation of Church and State” appears nowhere in our Constitution. What DOES appear is a clause forbidding Congress to establish a single religion for the whole nation, and proscribing loss of civil rights to any American citizen because of his religious beliefs. The reason for this is simple: of the 13 original states, at independence seven of them in whole or in part recognised the Anglican as their official church, three the Congregational, and three no such establishment. Catholicism was illegal in ten of them. Thus the newly sovereign State authorities had no desire to allow Congress to intervene in what was seen as a local question; the alliance of France and Spain required that civil disabilities be lifted from the Catholics, while the activities of both Catholics and Jews on the rebel side seemed to require their being granted civil rights. The last State to do so (Connecticut) did not give up its established Church until 1833.

Nevertheless, although no specific form of Christianity was thereafter established in the European sense, it was held for a long time that the United States were in fact a “Christian” country (whatever that might mean). On February 29, 1892, the United States Supreme Court (of which more presently), in the case of Trinity Church vs. the United States, mentioned that “If we pass beyond these [mentioned legal] matters to a view of American life, as expressed by its laws, its business, its customs, and its society, we find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth. Among other matters note the following: The form of oath universally prevailing, concluding with an appeal to the Almighty; the custom of opening sessions of all deliberative bodies and most conventions with prayer; the prefatory words of all wills, ‘In the name of God, amen;’ the laws respecting the observance of the Sabbath, with the general cessation of all secular business, and the closing of courts, legislatures, and other similar public assemblies on that day; the churches and church organizations which abound in every city, town, and hamlet; the multitude of charitable organizations existing everywhere under Christian auspices; the gigantic missionary associations, with general support, and aiming to establish Christian missions in every quarter of the globe.” On this basis, the Court declared that “These and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”

But commencing in 1948, the Supreme and/or lower Federal and State Courts systematically ruled as unconstitutional prayer in government schools (which was inevitably of a Protestant nature), blasphemy laws, Christmas pageants in schools, religious displays on public property, and so on. At present, there is an ongoing legal dispute as regards the words “Under God” in the pledge of allegiance, and the display of the Ten Commandments in courthouses and schools. On the part of the media, legal circles, and other such folk, it is considered that any mention of God in public life is an assault on the “wall of separation between Church and State.” Things have evolved to the point that in many major cities shop assistants can be fired for saying “Merry Christmas;” the term “Happy Holidays” being insisted upon.

But there is a tremendous difficulty here. The French sociologist, François Berger has noted that “Sweden is the least religious country on Earth, and India the most. The Americans are a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes.” The tremendous religious gap between the rulers and the ruled in the United States is thrown into high relief by such remnants of religiosity as the invocation of God in almost all the preambles of the State Constitutions (though not the Federal; interestingly enough, one of the major differences between the American and the Confederate constitutions was the latter’s similar invocation); the opening of all legislative sessions in both State and Federal capitols with prayer; and the commencement of Supreme Court daily business with the marshal of the court’s cry, “God Save the United States and this Honourable Court” (a cry repeated in appropriately amended form in most other courts).

It might be pointed out here too that various of the “Christian” sects which co-exist have each contributed their bit to the generic religious tone of the country, which is under attack --- a tone well-illustrated most recently, however by the “National Day of Prayer and Mourning” Service in the National (Anglican-Episcopal) Cathedral in Washington, D.C., presided over by the President, the Episcopalian Bishopess of the City, the Rev. Billy Graham, and other spiritual leaders. From the Anglicans, we have received a fondness for antiquated English in prayer, together with a certain style of hymnody and a focus of unity in intent rather than doctrine in prayer. From the Methodists comes the notion that an experience of Christ as Saviour (or even just a realisation of the existence of God) makes for a personal knowledge of one’s own salvation which cannot be voided by one’s behaviour. The Lutherans made Christmas and Easter respectable. The Unitarians taught us that all religions, however they might contradict each other dogmatically, are all really saying the same thing, whatever that might be, and that the quest for Truth is more important than finding it. Even the Catholics have contributed in small ways, allowing athletes of all persuasions to cross themselves before seeking a goal during a game. All of these motifs, of course, are accompanied by such patriotic songs as “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” as sacred music. But against even this vague religiosity, the elites are sworn enemies.

The tension between these two sides will not be solved easily; but, the national religion does have a solution. As with any faith, there is a body which receives wisdom from on high and adjudicates doctrinal disputes. For us, this is the afore-mentioned Supreme Court. For a number of reasons, among Americans, what is legal is moral, and vice versa. Thus, the majority of Americans firmly believed that abortion was murder, until the Court decided in 1973 that it was a Constitutional right. This event reversed exactly the proportions between the pro- and anti-abortion forces. (Of course, while the Court’s dehumanising the foetus flew in the face of empirical science, it made some sense in law; the German position, where the foetus is a human being who just happens to be legally indefensible, while having some precedent in recent German history, and being at least biologically correct, might leave some doubt as to the inherent goodness of the constitutional arrangements there --- a doubt which we Americans need never fear). But just what principles this body of the wise bases its choices upon is no longer clear. When Judge Robert Bork was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Reagan in 1987, His Honour doomed his candidacy by declaring for “Original Intent,” the doctrine that what the writers of the Constitution meant by this or that clause ought to be consulted by Supreme Court Justices to-day in determining the constitutionality of any measure under consideration. When Mr. Justice Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Court by George Bush I in 1991, part of his price of admission was to swear that he did not believe in the classical “natural law.” So the decisions of the Supreme Court, like those of the Oracle at Delphi, come directly from the gods, with no intervening human source.

But the American religion faces the same problem as all others: the status of unbelievers. While it is obvious that the rest of the Western world is following our lead (as evidenced by the current Belgian government’s dominant party altering its name from “Social Christian” to “Social Humanist,” banning crucifixes from government schools, abolishing the Te Deum for the Royal Family, and enacting a euthanasia law so liberal it was protested by the Dutch --- no mean feat in itself), such imitation, although gratifying to the American ego, can never in itself suffice. While such self-hatred of their traditions on the part of Europeans doubtless amuses the non-European world, much more is required.

If a Frenchman, Italian, or Englishman is told that something is un-French, un-Italian, or un-English, he will reply simply that it is foreign. But “un-American” carries with it the same implications that “un-Christian” once did. It is in fact the greatest pejorative one can use in this country. This is logical; for if, as we constantly remind ourselves, we are indeed the “last best hope of mankind,” then it follows that all others are more or less beyond the pale, to the degree that they do not resemble us. It therefore becomes difficult for most Americans to care about foreign ways or customs, or to think of them in any sense as being more than inferior.

What is odd about this is that all of the governmental institutions we prize so highly have foreign roots; the panoply to which we referred earlier came to us primarily from British, but to a lesser degree from French, Spanish, and Dutch sources. This element of our history is passed over lightly, however; most Americans believe that their country is more or less auto-genetic. Mind you, this is not a conscious belief, and would vanish quickly with a little self-examination. But as the world’s last Empire, the United States do not have the introspection of the defeated, which plays such a large part in modern European discourse.

Nevertheless, as a great and broad-minded religion, while denouncing the infidel, Americanism welcomes converts. Our immigrants, despite historical lapses, are generally welcomed with open arms, so long as they adopt our mores. They may retain large portions of their ancestral faiths, so long as they accept the major tenets of our own. This has posed little problem for Protestants, Jews, or Buddhists. But for Catholics, and most recently, Orthodox, of their nature oriented toward a radically different view of life, this acceptance has cause major strains.

The next word we must define is “Conservative.” This is an extremely difficult one, because it means so much to so many. At base, it might be considered an impulse of personality, if it simply means a dislike of change. Ambrose Bierce, the witty and bitter American writer, defined the word thusly in his 1906 Devil’s Dictionary: “Conservative: a statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.” Certainly, Conservative is, linguistically, bound up with preservation; but this is not an ideological notion. The last defenders of the Soviet Union were called “Kremlin Conservatives” by our media.

Erich von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, the Austrian political writer, much preferred to call himself a “man of the Right,” rather than a Conservative. Pointing out that “Conservative” as a party affiliation was restricted to the Protestant European nations (Great Britain, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Prussia), and that it meant preserving the often anti-Catholic establishments of those nations, he felt that it was a bad term for Catholic nations. K-L would add that “Right” in various European languages --- German, French, Italian, Spanish, etc., also meant “correct,” as well as “law.” Even in English, he concluded, we speak of “rights,” and could easily say, “Right is right.” But, nevertheless, we shall use the standard word.

But just what is Conservatism, in an ideological sense? Some would say that what differentiates the Conservative from the Liberal is a belief in the Fall of Adam --- that is, that Man cannot perfect himself by his own efforts. In Europe and Latin America, others, of a more historicist and less theological/philosophical turn of mind, would call Conservative those who to a greater or lesser degree reject the programme of either or both the Reformation and the French, 1848, Russian, and allied revolutions. This rejection ranges all the way from a call for restoration of the Monarchy and traditional religious and social arrangements, to a more “practical” attack on some aspect of the programme, such as secularisation of education or destruction of private property through excessive taxation.

This sort of Conservatism takes many forms, just as the revolutions it opposes do. In Austria and Central Europe, there is a longing for the Habsburgs; in France for the Bourbons, and in Spain the Carlists. Even the Latin American Conservatives, such as the late Pablo Antonio Cuadra y Cardenal in Nicaragua, long for restoration of the place of the Church in the life of the country, and reunion on some level or other with mother Spain or Portugal. From Kralik in Austria to De Maistre in France to Soloviev in Russia to Alaman in Mexico, there are any number of anti-Revolutionary authors and schools of thought.

On a less elevated level, there are various nostalgically-minded groups of folk in countries like Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, and Portugal made up of refugee colonists and their descendants who long for their respective nations’ days of Empire. There are re-enactment units of various vanished armies. For that matter, (in keeping the root meaning of “Conservative”) even certain European associations devoted to conservation of the environment, preservation of historic buildings, or performance of various folkloric events might be considered Conservative (although, in America, as with academics and artists, such folk are usually of the left).

But what of the United States? An easy answer is that what Americans call “Liberals,” Europeans and Latin Americans call “Socialists;” what the former name “Conservatives,” the Americans deem “Liberals,” (after the Manchester School); but what are called “Conservatives” in Europe and Latin America simply don’t exist as an organised body in the United States. Given that the most irreconcilable Loyalists to the Crown were exiled to Anglo-Canada and the Bahamas after the revolution which gave us independence (there to become the ideological --- and in many cases, biological --- ancestors of Conservatives in those two countries, which remain Monarchies), it might well be said that Conservatism in the United States can be called the right wing of our national Liberalism.

However true this is in a larger sense, there have of course ever since 1783, been factions which called themselves or were called by others, “Conservative.” It has been an article of Faith among such folk that the revolution itself was a Conservative thing; those who call it such would place it with the “Glorious” revolution of 1688, and the July revolution of 1830, as Conservative attempts to redress a political balance allegedly upset by reigning Kings. Although this is a disputable point, to say the least, it is at least interesting that the need is felt to cloak said revolutions in legality.

When the American War between the States broke out, although there were any number of other issues involved, the Southern rebels claimed to be Constitutional Conservatives, holding that they were rebelling against the Washington government for the same reasons their grandfathers had attacked the Royal government. Although economic self-interest was thus given ideological significance (as indeed it had been for their grandfathers) this was not a motive for their northern allies, the so-called “Copperheads.” These folk too urged an end to Federal attacks on the South, claiming that it was Lincoln’s government who were really revolutionary.

With the rise of big business after the Civil War, its proponents took the title “Conservative” in opposition to the forces of Labour, and later of Government, who wished to restrict their heretofore untrammelled liberty. This was of course the reverse of the situation in Europe and Latin America, where nobles and landowners banded together to resist the aspirations of the industrial bourgeoisie, sometimes making common cause with the socialist workers’ parties to do so. This is why limitations upon Capitalism and government social aid were traditionally a part of European right-wing parties’ programmes, although these did not go so far as nationalisation, so dear to the hearts of Marxists.

There the situation remained until the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (President 1933-1945), who, under the guise of rescuing the nation from the Great Depression, expanded the role of government in the United States to the enormous proportion it maintains to-day (or rather, who initiated the process of such expansion, which continues into our own time, receiving a new burst of vigour with every conflict the nation is involved in). It was partly in reaction to Roosevelt’s New Deal that an actual ideological Conservatism began to develop in the United States.

Its first stirrings were felt in the 1920s, and to some degree reflected disgust on the part of certain intellectuals with the Puritan underpinnings of American culture themselves. Such men as George Santayana, H.L. Mencken, Lucius Beebe, and H.P. Lovecraft, while having no religious faith of their own, were certainly displeased with what they found; at the same time that they rejected the philistinism American Calvinism had bred, they also refused to accept either Communism or Catholicism. In a nutshell, while skewering the evils they saw, they had no alternatives to them.}

On a more positive note, the New Humanists, such as Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt, sought to re-establish the national culture on the basis of “traditional” morals and ethics; for some in the movement, this meant Plato; for Babbitt and his closer disciples, it meant Buddha. Seeing this programme as too vague, certain members of the group turned to more substantial things, T.S. Eliot, for example, moving to Britain and declaring himself for Anglo-Catholicism and Royalism.

For those either left behind or of less academic bent, solutions somewhat closer to life were required. A group of poets at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University, a band of neo-Romantics called “the Fugitives,” turned their attention in the aftermath of the 1929 Depression to social and economic questions. Seeing the culprit in these areas to be the concentration of industrial and economic power in the North-East, they re-emerged as the “Southern Agrarians,” holding the agriculturally-based society which prevailed in their region prior to the Civil War to be much preferable to that which dominated the entire nation afterwards. They published a set of essays to this effect in 1930, entitled I’ll Take My Stand. A few years later, with English Catholic social theorists Hilaire Belloc and Douglas Jerrold, and like-minded decentralist and agrarian folk from the North, they issued Who Owns America.

At the same time, various American writers, such as Ross Hoffman, took inspiration from various European sources, for example Charles Maurras. All of these varying groups were invited by Seward Collins, initially a New Humanist, to write for his American Review, probably the foremost American Conservative journal of the 1930s. Like the nation itself, they were a disparate bunch; despite their best efforts, and those of more populist figures like the priest Fr. Charles Coughlin and Governor Huey Long of Louisiana, there was little real challenge to FDR’s monopoly of power. The opposition Republicans had little to offer by way of an alternative; the most ideologically committed among them, such as Senator Robert Taft, opposed not only Roosevelt’s domestic policy, but also the President’s deep desire to involve the country in World War II. They suffered a severe setback with Pearl Harbour, which made American entry into the War impossible to resist, and dissent from the government’s objectives tantamount to treason.

But the end of the War and the expansion of Communism into Eastern Europe and China gave American Conservatism a new lease on life. The defeat of Senator Taft’s anti-interventionist wing of the Republican Party and the accession of President Eisenhower to power forced Conservatives to articulate what, if anything, their principles were. Thus, the 1950’s saw two major occurrences: the publication of The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana, by Russell Kirk and the emergence of a magazine, The National Review, edited by William F. Buckley.

The events of the following decades --- the Black Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, the Hippie movement, and all of the other historical occurrences the nation shared up until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, resulted in the emergence of several different groups all claiming to be called “Conservative.”
The first of these are the so-called Libertarians. These folk, taking their cue from such figures as Tom Paine, see in government itself a definite evil which must be reined in. Ranging from near-anarchists to radical privatisers, they believe in reducing the role of government to foreign affairs, defence, and police services (some of the more radical would even remove the latter to the private sector). There would be no social welfare, no regulation of industry and agriculture, no public libraries; utilities and education would be entirely privatised. Many Libertarians further believe that there should be no government regulation of morality; abortion, adultery, drugs --- indeed, everything save murder and theft should be decriminalised. On this score, they would come into conflict with many other Conservatives. Some among the Libertarians question the legitimacy of the Federal government itself, holding that the States alone should remain; some few would break it down even further to the counties and cities.

On the other side of the spectrum are the so-called “New Right,” pioneered during the late 1970s by such figures as Richard Viguerie and Paul Weyrich. This group, made up to great degree of ethnic Catholics disaffected by the Democratic party’s stand on such things as abortion and homosexual rights, and fundamentalist Protestants, appealed to people who had long stood outside party politics as such and whose views were not philosophically articulated. Thanks to mass mailings and the like, the New Right folk were mobilised in 1980 to elect Ronald Reagan as President. Opposed to “big government” and the social changes initiated during the 1960s, the rank and the file of the New Right often found it easier to say what they were against than what they were for.

A number of former 60s radicals --- many of whom were Jewish --- had come to realize that the sorts of defence reductions in the face of the Soviet menace which had been favoured by many Democrats in general and President Jimmy Carter in particular also meant that American ability to defend Israel would suffer. Dubbed “Neocons,” these converts also discovered that Capitalism worked better than the Socialism they had espoused in their youth. Rather than the “tax and spend” solutions proffered by the Left, the Neocons became enamoured of “fiscal conservatism.” But as far as the legal emplacement of the social revolution which came to a head in the 70s, with its abortion, contraception, easy divorce, couples living together out of wedlock and the like, they were either neutral or more or less supportive. Typical among them are such worthies as Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz, Irving Kristol, and Michael Novak.

The last group of the Conservative coalition we will examine are the so-called “Paleocons.” While sharing a similar vision of the ills afflicting society (they tend to very concerned with the social ills ignored by the Neocons), they are made up themselves of several interlocking factions. Anglo-American Conservatives, of the sort epitomised by the afore-mentioned Russell Kirk, speak much of restoring an “order” established by the Founding Fathers, and see both our Revolution and Civil War as being essentially Conservative occurrences, even as mentioned earlier. They tend to lay a great deal of store in the continuity of our institutions with the British, and to reverence such writers as Edmund Burke. The Southern Agrarians, such as M.E. Bradford, have survived; true to their roots, they emphasise, in addition to the social concerns and belief in “traditional” culture common to Paleocons, a belief in State and community autonomy, as well as a lingering affection for the Confederate cause. For both of these sets, what is important is a return to what they consider to be “good old American values.” Lastly, there are Catholics who are tied to the Church’s social teaching, and often one or more strands of European or Latin American Conservatism. Not surprisingly the Paleocons are probably the only set which would be recognised as Conservative overseas.

What bound these groups together (and allowed them to unite to the extent of putting Mr. Reagan in the White House) was Communism. The Soviet threat defined Conservatism just as surely as it did Liberalism. But what was surely their greatest joy, the fall of the Soviet Union, was also their defeat. For ever since, they have endeavoured to define themselves; this endeavour splintered the fragile coalition, and eight years of Bill Clinton solidified their loss of power. Today, those Conservatives more concerned with tradition and social questions are faced with a President who agrees with them to some degree --- but not to the extent of endangering his position. The alternative to this, of course, is more of a Clintonesque replacement. In a word, classical American Conservatism is both deeply divided and without a practical answer to the paradigm shift which has occurred in the country since the 1960s. Since the results of that shift --- diminished birth-rate, shattered families, functional illiteracy, and the like --- do not bode well for the long-term survival of the nation, this is a large problem. The knowledge that these things are worse in Europe provides small comfort.

Now, let us look at our last word: Catholic. In English, as in other languages, this word has also meant “universal,” and as late as the 20th century, one could still write of someone as having “catholic tastes.” So ignorant have we become, however, that many a fundamentalist Protestant can sincerely say, not out of malice but sheer lack of knowledge, that they are “Christian, not Catholic.”

Nevertheless, most non-Catholics in America mean by “Catholic” people who look to the Pope as their religious leader. As late as 1968, that was a fair definition. But today, “Catholic” has several different meanings. Obviously, there are indeed those who subscribe to all four of the Catholic Creeds and the defined dogmas flowing from them, and so accept the Pope as Visible Head of the Church. Some of these believe that the changes since Vatican II contradict to a greater or lesser degree the teachings contained in those Creeds and dogmas, and so withhold practical allegiance from the current Pontiff to that degree. Others insist that such contradictions are inherently impossible, and cleave to whatever comes from Rome, willy-nilly; often this leads them to into conflict with local bishops and pastors. The first group are called “Traditionalists,” and the second, “Conservatives.” Some of the former, most notably the Society of St. Pius X, founded by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, were declared by the Vatican to have brought excommunication upon themselves (an action which has been questioned by some Canon lawyers), and are called “schismatic” by the Roman authorities. Whether or not they are --- and one is reminded of the same authorities’ concern for the Eastern Orthodox, whose leadership do not recognise Papal authority over themselves at all --- their 1988 consecration of Bishops did encourage the Holy See to establish via an indult a place for religious orders, parish-type communities, and individuals to have access in a few places to traditional rites. While this is done in full communion with the Holy See, it should be remembered that most beneficiaries of the Indult passed through a period of rebellion against at least their local hierarchy. A third group, more amorphous than the first two, is made up of Catholics who pursue either a more strictly devotional life, such as members of the Legion of Mary, or who follow such activities as pro-life.

A second, and far more visible group, is made up of Bishops, priests, and prominent (often political) lay figures, which more or less reject Papal authority in everyday practice, while giving some lip service to it. These “Titularists,” as we might call them, often began their rebellion in 1968, when Paul VI issued Humanae vitae, his encyclical renewing the Church’s age-old ban against artificial contraception. Predictably rejected by several national hierarchies and tacitly ignored by almost the rest of the clergy, it was also openly rejected by political “Conservative” William F. Buckley; of course, he had earlier rejected the social teachings of John XXIII. In any case, ecclesiastically speaking, by 2002, the Holy See had only so much authority in American dioceses as the local bishop was willing to give it; in most cases, that was very little. One prominent Cardinal even openly denies Transubstantiation. The lay equivalent was of course was the whole flock of “Catholic” politicians (epitomised by Senator Edward Kennedy, brother of the late John F.) who are “personally” opposed to abortion, but happily vote for it, and praise it as part of “women’s rights.” Both sets, of course, are devoted to what St. Pius X called “Modernism.” Alas, this crew, clerical and lay, is the example of “Catholic” most familiar to Americans. The fact that the situation is the same in Europe is little comfort.

There is, however, a third group, made possible through the lack of catechesis and the misinformation provided by the second faction, and larger than either it or the first. This is made up of folk who call themselves Catholic without knowing what the word means. Their size may be gauged by two statistics: one is that only 30% (according to a Gallup poll) of U.S. Catholics believe in Transubstantiation (certainly the most distinctive of the Church’s doctrines); the second is that while folk calling themselves “Catholic” are, according to the census the largest single religious group in the country, those calling themselves ex-Catholic are the second. The Titularists are not making more Liberal Catholics, they are making non-Catholics. What makes this fact even crueller is that large numbers of Hispanics, the largest growing group in the birth-starved United States, are losing their faith through ignorance of it, combined with heavy evangelisation by Protestants and other sects such as the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Worse yet, through American funding and the use of such converts, inroads are being made by these groups in Latin America itself.

But the problem of Titularism is an old one in the United States, even though its coupling with Modernism in the latter half of the 20th century made it especially dangerous. Apart from old established enclaves in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Missouri, Texas, California, Arizona, Florida, and New Mexico, Catholicism in the United States is an immigrant Faith. However, John Carroll, the first Catholic Bishop of Baltimore (appointed in 1789) favoured vernacular Masses, election of Bishops, and limitation of Papal authority in the United States; luckily this tendency was tamped down by the French émigré clergy who largely staffed the Church in America after the Revolution in their homeland. But starting with the Potato Famine in the 1840s, droves of Irish came over to America. Desirous of being accepted by mainstream Americans (who cruelly discriminated against them in such episodes as the Know-Nothing Riots), they tried as much as they could to accept the dogmas of the American faith, while retaining as well their Catholicism.

This was an experiment fraught with peril. Two factions emerged among the Irish-American clergy in the 19th century. The “Americanists,” led by Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore and Archbishop Ireland of St. Paul, who held that the Church in the United States, because of the country’s unique culture, freedom, and so on not only must be different from that in the rest of the world, but should be seen as a prototype for the rest of the Church, even as the States must be so seen for the entire globe. There could be no question of attempting to convert such a paradisiacal nation. In response, the “Ultramontanes,” led by Archbishops Corrigan of New York and McQuaid of Rochester, replied that the American Church was and must be an integral part of the Universal Church, and that the United States must be converted. The eminent convert Orestes Brownson added his voice to theirs, and declared in his essay, Catholicity Necessary for Popular Liberty, that conversion to the Faith was absolutely essential if the States were to survive as a free nation.

Complicating matters further was the influx after the Civil War of large numbers of non-English-speaking Catholics --- French-Canadians, Germans, Poles, Italians, and many more. In a hostile, Protestant environment, the leadership of these groups --- both clerical and lay --- believed in the necessity of preserving their native cultures in order to safeguard their religion. Every such ethnic group had as a saying some variant of the French-Canadian maxim, Qui perd sa langue, perd sa foi --- “Who loses his language, loses his Faith.” Ethnic parishes were formed in cities and towns which received these newcomers; but they soon came into friction with many of the largely but not exclusively Americanist bishops under whom they lived. The fact that the Emperor of Austria and the King of Bavaria poured millions of dollars into the American Church (and would continue to do so until 1914) was largely ignored by many of the very Irish bishops who benefited from this largesse (which is practically forgotten to-day). The immigrants were an embarrassment, and must be assimilated. This attitude led to the 1890s Cahenslyite controversy with the German Catholics, and the 1920s Sentinelle affair with the French-Canadians --- both of which were more or less quietly settled; it also brought about schism for certain Polish, Lithuanian, and Ruthenian groups, for which Archbishop Ireland was directly responsible. In the end, Pope Leo XIII condemned the heresy of Americanism in 1896; but as the Americanist prelates denied that they held such heresy, and the Pope did not pursue the matter, things stood as they were.
But they did not improve; two key things did occur: after World War II, the Vatican became financially dependent on the American Church, and Modernism met and married Americanism. The result was the Titularism of to-day, which dominates the American Church and affects the rest of Catholicism around the world. Its most recent development has been the growth of a homosexual sub-culture among the clergy, which at the time of writing, although daily exposed more clearly, still appears almost supreme in this country. In the 19th century, the Catholic clergy put the national flag in our sanctuaries to show that they were good Americans; this practise has been universally adopted by clerics of all faiths, substituting their own denominational flag for that of the Vatican which the priests also inserted. After Vatican II, the Church in America created specific Mass propers for Independence Day and Thanksgiving (the latter is particularly ironic, given that holiday’s Puritan origins). This, then, is Catholicism in the United States.

It only remains for us now to tie these three words together --- American, Conservative, and Catholic. Although “Conservative,” as we have noticed, does apply to one faction --- the “Pope can do no wrong” set, we shall use it here to apply to all the three sorts of orthodox Catholicism in this country, although many would object to its usage in this fashion.

In Europe and Latin America, Conservative Catholics tend to identify with a particular political faction. French CCs will often be Monarchist, and often favour the Legitimist over the Orleanist claimant. The Carlists in Spain are also CC, although some of the Conservatives there support Juan Carlos’ position, perhaps more than that King does himself. In Austria and all the lands of the old Monarchy, the Habsburgs still claim loyalty, and have even regained some amongst Paneuropa and other such minded folk in Italy and Germany. The House of Savoy was always regarded, because of its theft of the Papal States, with some suspicion by the most Conservative Catholics there; but the piety of Umberto II rallied a number of them to his dynasty; still others support the Bourbons of Naples and Parma, and the Habsburgs of Modena and Tuscany. Polish Catholic Conservatives look both to their own elective Monarchy, and to the pre-World War II National Democrats of Roman Dmowski. The heir to the Portuguese throne, Dom Duarte, claims the whole-hearted support of his nation’s CC’s, while Brazilian members of the tribe look both or either to Lusofonia and/or a restoration of their own Empire --- the former cause attracts Eurasian Catholics in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Hispano-America and the Philippines look, as mentioned earlier, to Hispanidad, while CC French-Canadians have their own tradition of la Survivance, connected to French Royalism and latterly to Maurras. So it goes in every Catholic nation. In Protestant northern Europe, such folk tend to support their subsisting Monarchies, while wishing to substitute the Catholic for the State Church (retaining its establishment intact).

In the face of American power and the “progress” of society, many, if not most, of these aspirations might be dismissed as pipe dreams. What is important about them, however, is that they represent local variations of the same notion: a Catholic State, wherein Christ is recognised by the civil authorities as King, the laws of the land reflect that fact, and the Church is assisted in her mission rescuing of souls from eternal damnation. If this goal seems difficult in to-day’s world, it must have seemed far more so when the Apostles set off to evangelise the Roman Empire and the rest of the world. What is important is that Conservative, or better, orthodox Catholics have in each of those nations a pattern from which to work; they are indeed trying to restore something which once existed.

But for the American Catholic of this stripe, things are more difficult. Even were it possible, a restoration of constitutional, political, and social conditions to their status in 1933, or 1912, or 1860, or 1774, or whenever a given American Conservative might locate utopia, is not enough. The spiritual void which has ruined us will not be fixed by voting out abortion, abolishing the New Deal, closing the Federal Reserve Bank, restoring State Sovereignty and the Constitution, or even by Crowning a King. For our problem is religious, and there can be no solution to the American dilemma without the nation’s conversion to Catholicism --- even as Orestes Brownson declared. It was so with the decadent Roman Empire and the barbarian tribes which infested her; conversion brought about the transformation of both into Christendom, as a by-product of the Salvation of the individual. So it will be, if our country is to continue for a long period, with these United States. But even as the Romans and barbarians were turned by this process into something quite different, so would we be.
Such ideas have not been unknown here. In the 1950s, the journal Integrity called for a thorough conversion of the country, as did Triumph in the 1960s. But both were decidedly minority voices. In the latter journal, it is telling that the editors were all men who had spent a great deal of time in Italy, Spain, or France. The notion of an integrally Catholic state and culture remained foreign to those whose horizons extended no further than our borders.

All of which brings us back to Pat Buchanan. Politically speaking, Pat might well be considered the best example of American Conservative Catholicism. Religiously, he is strictly orthodox, and a Latin Mass goer. In political terms, he is a strict constitutionalist --- constantly calling for limits to the government’s power. He is also an isolationist, denouncing America’s imperial expansion as a means of spreading misery abroad and destroying freedom at home. Continually, as do most American Conservative Catholics, he invokes the Founding Fathers and American tradition, up till recently apparently not noticing that there might be a conflict.
But in a recent interview with Latin Mass magazine, he did acknowledge that the roots of our decline might very well lie with our foundation in heresy, and that “good old American” values might be severely deficient. One hopes that he will continue along this path; he could do a lot.

What, then, are we left with? For the orthodox Catholic in America, true patriotism cannot mean, as it can for the Conservative non-Catholic, simply waving the flag and calling for “the Constitution and sound money.” Despite the buckets of blood poured out by martyred missionaries, and by lay Catholics in this nation’s wars, we are in reality strangers here. Two things, then, are necessary; that we realise, despite the blood-price we have paid, that we American Catholics are like our brothers in India and Japan; and that as with them, our love for our country can only really be displayed in attempting to convert her to the truth---which can save her as a country as surely as it can save her individual citizens eternally. Unlike our brethren in Europe and Latin America, we do not have too much of a glorious past from which to draw inspiration; but that may be a strength as well as a weakness.