Articles by Dr. Peter Chojnowski

Corporation Christendom: The True School of Salamanca

2009-12-21T08:01:00.000-08:00

Corporation Christendom: The True School of Salamanca
By: Dr. Peter Chojnowski
Feast of St. Peter Chysologous
Revised: December 21, 2009

“In the market economy the individual is free to act within the orbit of private property and the market. His choices are final.” Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

When we read this text from the grandfather of modern Neo-Liberalism (Which manifests itself, in the United States, in the movements called Libertarianism and Neo-Conservatism), we are not surprised. Von Mises, culturally Polish and politically Austrian, but a practical atheist in his political philosophy, is concerned to render absolute, the only absolute (other than “market forces”) he seems to acknowledge as having any relevance for the affairs of mankind, the volitional determination of individuals. Nor are we surprised when he unfolds his basic conception of reality and applies it to the public actions of individuals. Referring to the entire doctrinal and moral activity of Christian Civilization and comparing it to his idea of the autonomous, self-interested, and willful individual, von Mises states, “In urging people to listen to the voice of their conscience and to substitute considerations of public welfare for those of private profit, one does not create a working and satisfactory social order [emphasis mine].” In one sweeping statement, von Mises has negated Christendom and every social, economic, and moral teaching of the Catholic Church; this statement, also, renders “inoperative” the entire Classical moral and philosophical tradition.
Such statements by the hero of contemporary Libertarianism and Neo-Conservatism (read, Neo-Jacobinism), need not disquiet us at all if we understand it exactly as he meant it to be, a statement by one who upheld the modern Liberal, anti-Christendom world-view and denigrated the civilization, overall and in its detail, built by the Catholic Church; this civilization, of course, was constructed in a certain way, on account of the Church’s attempt to conform the circumstances and the means of man’s life to the Eternal Law, which includes within itself the Providential Plan by which each created being is brought to a state of perfect fulfillment and satisfaction. Christendom, unlike the “market forces,” presupposes real freedom; if man was not free and meant to be fulfilled in his freedom, Christendom would not be needed. “Freedom,” of course, is meaningless, and soon becomes bizarre (as in our own commercialist culture), if it is not directed towards a true “good” that fulfills human nature. If freedom does not achieve a true satisfaction of human nature, why is freedom “good”? If, however, freedom is “good” because it genuinely fulfills human nature, economic “freedom” or the ability to sell goods made and to purchase goods made by others, must be subordinated to over-arching considerations of the “good.” Since we are speaking about a public “good,” we must speak about the “common good,” in which every private good is included. The common good entails the fulfillment of human nature at large. If all of the above reasoning is valid, economic freedom to buy and sell must be ordered to the achievement of a truly fulfilled human nature, both individually and commonly.
Only those with the most animalistic conception of man would think that the ability to buy and sell things is the pivot around which should turn an individual life, a political ideology, or the efforts of the State. That “man does not live by bread alone” is not only a religious truth, but is, also, a bit of wisdom testified to by universal human experience. It is the religious devotion of man, his virtuous moral actions, and his aesthetic and emotional appreciation and expression, which are the higher aspects of man’s being that mercantile trade is meant to facilitate and sustain. In light of this, it is perfectly rational that the normal and traditional (i.e., non-Liberal) societies and governments of the past have tried to ensure that the buying and selling that went on amongst men, truly facilitated the genuine end of all economic relationships, the full and complete good of men, both individually and as, necessarily, living within a civic body. It was for this reason that such notions as “the just price” and the “the just wage” were normative, and limitations on the use and procurement of private property were instituted.
One point in favor of Ludwig von Mises, however, one not shared in by a number his disciples, is that he recognized that the whole bulk, theoretical and practical, of historical Christendom was against his understanding of the proper order of things. He, at least, recognizes that there was a very definite concept of “justice” in “medieval” Christendom. He simply relativizes it. In pure Nietzschean fashion, he insists that claims about the “justice” of this or that social arrangement or economic condition, are merely an attempt by some to preserve an arbitrarily adopted “utopia.” “They call ‘just’ that mode of conduct that is compatible with the undisturbed preservation of their utopia, and everything else unjust.” Von Mises, also, does not claim St. Thomas Aquinas as an early advocate of Liberal Capitalism and the “free-market economy.” He understands that St. Thomas, as a Catholic philosopher and theologian, held views profoundly at variance with his own, including in matters of economics. With regard to the question of the “just price,” von Mises writes: “If Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine of the just price had been put into practice, the thirteenth century’s economic conditions would still prevail. Population figures would be much smaller than they are today and the standard of living much lower.” The sentence following should, also, be of interest to those who would like to see the sharp distinction between von Mises’ Liberalism and the great tradition of the Christian World: “Both varieties of the just-price doctrine, the philosophical and the popular, agree in their condemnation of the prices and wage rates as determined on the unhampered market.” If Aquinas was a capitalistic Pre-Liberal, von Mises certainly did not see it; in fact, he uses St. Thomas’s teachings as the embodiment of the very mentality and outlook, which he is rejecting.
A) De Roover’s Libertarian Dreaming
To base one’s ideas solely on conceptions prevailing in relatively current times, has never been a very attractive option. The American Whigs of 1787 looked to Republican Rome and the French Democrats of 1789 could look to Democratic Athens. Looking back 2,000 years for a political model is a genuine example of antiquarianism. At least Napoleon, with his later emulation of Charlemagne, only had to look back 1,000 years to find an example of a situation in which his newly chosen form of government, “worked” (We must keep in mind here that the reason people had not, for so long, adopted these first two old systems of government was because they were historically conscious enough to realize that they had not “worked”). A number of Libertarians have felt the need to trace their ideas back to the established thought of Catholic Christendom. We can only speculate as to their motives. However, what is clear is this, within the second half of the 20th century and, even, into our own, there have been some Libertarians who identify nascent Capitalistic ideas (I simply identify Capitalism here as the economic form of Liberalism – not to be confused with American Leftism) as existing within the corporate organism that was Christendom, prior to the “dawning” of the Enlightenment. There are some more reckless Libertarian thinkers who would even state that, not only are there Liberal anomalies within the paradigm of historical Christendom, but rather, that Liberalism is the Christian civilizational paradigm itself. The recurrent focus of such Libertarian “dreaming” is the late Renaissance Spanish School of Salamanca and Sts. Bernadine of Siena and Antonino of Florence. The main issue, although not the only one, is the one of the “just price.” Can it be that the later Scholastics, as represented by the School of Salamanca, along with the two Renaissance saints known for their sermons on economic concerns, should be identified as early advocates of Liberal Capitalism due to their, supposed, insistence that the “just price” which must be upheld by Church, State, and Society at large, is simply the one which is assigned to a product due to the interplay of producer supply and consumer demand? If economic “justice,” at this most basic and essential level, is simply a matter of adhering, faithfully, to the “laws of supply and demand,” we can say that the view of these Catholic thinkers could, indeed, be characterized as an example of Early Economic Liberalism. If there were something more to “justice” than the simple end result of the interplay of the free will of producer and the free choice of the consumer, than their thought could not be denominated as a early form of von Misesian Neo-Liberal/Libertarian conceptions.
When looking for an example of a Neo-Liberal who represents this attempt to find roots in the distant past for Liberal doctrines that seem quite modern, we can turn to Raymond de Roover who published an article entitled, “The Concept of the Just Price: Theory and Economic Policy” in Journal of Economic History (December 1958). Here it is interesting to read De Roover’s portrayal of the “typical” view of medieval thought as it relates to the topic of the “just price.” In this article, we read, “According to a widespread belief – found in nearly all books dealing with the subject – the just price was linked to the medieval conception of a social hierarchy and corresponded to a reasonable charge which would enable the producer to live and to support his family on a scale suitable to his station in life. This doctrine is generally thought to have found its practical application in the guild system. For this purpose the guilds are presented as welfare agencies which prevented unfair competition, protected consumers against deceit and exploitation, created equal opportunities for their members, and secured for them a modest but decent living in keeping with traditional standards [emphasis mine].” I will place in the footnote all the authors who held these universally acknowledged “misconceptions.” Such was the “idyllic” view of the Middle Ages upheld by the great German economist Max Weber and by the British author, controversialist, and historian, Arthur Penty. According to De Roover, another famous German economist, Werner Sombart (1863-1941), went even further: according to him, not only the medieval craftsmen but even the merchants strove only to gain a livelihood befitting their rank in society and did not seek to accumulate wealth or to climb the social ladder. This attitude, Sombart claimed, was rooted in the concept of the just price “which dominated the entire period of the Middle Ages.”
De Roover, however, has a different understanding of the common mind of the Christian Era as regards prices and economic activity in general. Amidst the presence of many non sequiturs, confused and, even, contradictory historical claims, we find de Roover throwing out various red herrings such as, “Thomas Aquinas himself recognizes that the just price cannot be determined with precision, but can vary within a certain range, so that minor deviations do not involve any injustice. This…is not in accord with Marxian dialectics; but it agrees with classical and neoclassical economic analysis” [emphasis mine] So an obvious and balanced moral statement about a minor aspect of the just price issue, because it does not agree with the Marxist theory, makes St. Thomas’ economic position into one that “agrees with classical and neoclassical analysis.”
The bizarre and forced logic present in de Roover’s analysis can only be touched upon here. For example, one of the “naïve” economists, Werner Sombart cites Heinrich von Langenstein (1325-1397) to the effect that “if the public authorities fail to fix a price, the producer may set it himself, but he should not charge more for his labor and expenses than would enable him to maintain his status (per quanto res suas vendendo statum suum continuare posit).” This is fully in accord with the “traditional” understanding of social and economic thinking in the Catholic Middle Ages. Langenstein continues in the same vein, “And if he does charge more in order to enrich himself or to improve his station, he commits the sin of avarice.” This position, of von Langenstein, was “regarded as a characteristic formulation of the scholastic doctrine of the just price,” according to de Roover. Having been cited by Sombart, de Roover insists that it was “copied by one author after another.” De Roover tries to throw cold water on the enthusiasm, on the part of economic historians, for the writings of Langenstein, by stating that, “Langenstein was not one of the giants in medieval philosophy but a relatively minor figure.” This statement is, of course, totally irrelevant to the topic at hand. The question was not whether or not Langenstein was one of the “giants” of medieval philosophy, but whether his statement of economic theory and practice can be seen as “characteristic.” Someone need not be a giant in order to be characteristic. “Giants,” of course, are not characteristic at all, but that is another point entirely.
When de Roover does treat a giant, St. Thomas Aquinas, we find contradictory statements interwoven with more than questionable deductions. With regard to St. Thomas, he focuses on the topic that he – de Roover – believes will confirm that the “majority of the [Scholastic] doctors” held that the “just price” did not correspond to cost of production as determined by the producer’s social status, but was “simply the current market price.” Clearly, de Roover understood that if the just price meant something other than the Capitalistic “just the price,” his attempt to root Neo-Liberal Capitalism in Catholic social tradition and thought would fail. He had to prove that the “justice” of the price charged in the times of Christendom was nothing other than the price that the item could fetch on the open marketplace. The plan was to portray St. Thomas as an early economic liberal and, then, indicate how later Scholastic thought followed him and, thereby, set the stage for Adam Smith and Capitalistic Manchester Liberalism.
De Roover starts his analysis of the position of St. Thomas on the question of the “just price” by stating that in the works of Aquinas, “the passages relating to price are so scattered and seemingly so conflicting that they have given rise to varying interpretations.” He then goes on to state, unambiguously, what St. Thomas definitely meant by the term “the just price.” As he goes on “definitively” articulating St. Thomas’ position, he proceeds to contradict his own interpretation of and statements about this position. For example, de Roover states, “By selecting only those passages favorable to their thesis, certain writers even reached the conclusion that Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas had a labor theory of value.” In a footnote, on the same page, he states, “As a matter of fact, Aquinas comes close to saying that any exchange of two commodities should be based on the ratio between the amounts of labor expended on each.” Isn’t he affirming here that Aquinas had a “labor theory of value,” when he was just one paragraph above, chiding “certain writers” for reaching the conclusion that St. Thomas “had a labor theory of value”?
The Liberal scholar’s reasoning becomes somewhat more convoluted when we find him, at the beginning of a paragraph, stating that St. Thomas “nowhere puts the matter [of the just price] so clearly,” and by the end of the paragraph states that “this [single] passage [which is only a story addressing a very limited moral question] destroys with a single blow the thesis of those who try to make Aquinas into a Marxist, and proves beyond doubt that he considered the market price to be just.” So, within a single paragraph, made up primarily of an illustrative story about a merchant selling wheat in a town when he knows that more wheat is on the way, we go from Aquinas the Ambiguous to Aquinas the Absolute. When we look for the passage cited by de Roover, in the Secunda Secundae of the Summa Theologica, we find that the article cited has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of the just price. It is from the question dealing with “Cheating” and the specific article is entitled, “Whether the Seller Is Bound to State the Defects of the Thing Sold?” St. Thomas states here that a seller is acting rightly, from the view point of strict justice, if he merely accepts the amount offered for his wheat by the buyer, without informing the buyer of the greater amount of wheat to come. In other words, it is not unjust to fail to provide information that one could provide about the relative short-term worth of one’s products. St. Thomas ends by saying, “If however he were to do so, or if he lowered his price, it would be exceedingly virtuous on his part: although he does not seem to be bound to do this as a debt of justice.” From this short story concerning a very specific moral question, having nothing in itself to do with economic systems or the general topic of the just price, de Roover takes it as proven that “Aquinas upheld market valuation instead of cost,” thus beginning a pre-Capitalist tradition in moral theology, which bore fruit in the late Renaissance Salamanca School and in the economic related sermons preached by St. Bernadine of Siena and St. Antoninus of Florence in the 15th century.
Before treating the real attitude of the late Scholastics in Salamanca and the sermons of St. Bernadine of Siena and St. Antoninus of Florence, it is worthwhile to look at a simple reply to an objection, present in Question 77, “On Cheating, Which is Committed in Buying and Selling.” In Article 1, the same article from which de Roover draws his conclusions about the “free market” inclinations of St. Thomas, we read, in Reply to Objection 2, a line of reasoning that would, certainly, put St. Thomas outside the boundaries of any form of Liberal Capitalistic sympathies. Here he cites St. Augustine who says, “th[e] jester, either by looking into himself or by his experience of others, thought that all men are inclined to wish to buy for a song and sell at a premium. But since in reality this is wicked, it is in every man’s power to acquire that justice whereby he may resist and overcome this inclination. The example, cited by St. Thomas, which St. Augustine uses to illustrate this idea, is one of a man who gave the just price for a book to a man who through ignorance asked a low price for it. Here we see the virtuous buyer, who knows the real value of the book, ignoring the market value of the book (the one which was being asked by the seller of those wishing freely to buy), and, instead, justly compensating the seller for his loss. St. Thomas concludes from this example that the “capitalistic” drive to buy as cheaply as possible and sell as dearly as possible – expressive, as it is, of an unlimited drive for acquisition and an overriding self-interestedness – can be overcome just like any vice is overcome. He acknowledges, however, that this self-interested attitude – which is, precisely, the attitude assumed by Liberal Capitalism – is “common to many who walk along the broad road of sin.” Here we see clearly that economic attitude of Christendom contrasted with the economic attitude of Neo-Liberalism. Neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas Aquinas are anything like Neo-Liberals. Clearly the “market price” is not, necessarily, the “just price.” To quote a phrase commonly used by Raymond de Roover, “This text…does not lend itself to a different interpretation.”
B) The Spanish Fairs and Renaissance Banking
To offer proof that the Scholastics, early or late, did not adhere to Libertarian principles of economic life, it is best to cite the historical works of the Neo-Liberals themselves. The two which draw our attention are The School of Salamanca: Readings in Spanish Monetary Theory 1544-1605 by Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson and Raymond de Roover’s San Bernadino of Siena and Saint Antonino of Florence: The Two Great Economic Thinkers of the Middle Ages. Our task can, also, be simplified if we can demonstrate, using the research of the Neo-Liberal scholars themselves, that the later Spanish Scholastics of Salamanca, along with the two above-mentioned saints, were fully within the great intellectual, social, and economic tradition of Catholic Christendom most particularly concerning the question of the “just price.” If the “just price” is formulated in a way, which allows for many factors other than the exigencies of “supply and demand” (i.e., whether there is a social and moral aspect of the determination of price) and, especially, if there is a role for the “prince” in the determination of “market prices,” than we can safely reject the notion that these Catholic scholars of the past accepted a paleo-Capitalistic conception of the determination of price and, hence, of the entire economic life of society.
Even though Salamanca University was the most prominent place of higher learning in the European world at the time, it was Spain’s position as master of the New World that set the stage for a concentration on the problems of economics by the Scholastics of Salamanca. The gold and silver coming from the mines of the Americas made Seville, the homeport of the treasure fleet, the economic center of and primary money market in Continental Europe during the middle of the 16th century. Here we have a place where there was a large circulation of money and a high price level. Tomás de Mercado (d. 1585), a Dominican from Mexico who was present in Seville and preached on commercial morality, portrays the merchantile and financial situation that grew up in these conditions to us. According to Mercado, when the fleet comes in, every merchant puts into the bank all the treasure that is brought to him from the Indies, the bankers having first given a pledge to the city authorities that they will render good account to the owners. The bankers served their depositors free of charge and used the money deposited with them to finance their own operations. Most of the gold and silver brought in by the fleet passed in this way through the hands of the bankers and served as a basis for credit. The opening for usury was occasioned, however, by these transactions. As Mercado complained at the time, “money-changers sweep all the money into their own houses, and when a month later the merchants are short of cash they give them back their own money at an exorbitant rate.” In Spain, concludes Mercado, “a banker bestrides a whole world and embraces more than the Ocean, though sometimes he does not hold tight enough and all comes crashing to the ground.”
The above stricture, on the part of Mercado (who died on a ship in 1585 on his way back to Mexico), against the financial transactions of bankers and merchants, was an articulation of an idea that was of ancient origin. Interest paid simply for the use of money during a certain period of time was considered usurious and universally condemned. Much of the moral thought about economics coming out of Spain during this period was, specifically, an attempt to grapple with the moral considerations occasioned by certain attempts to avoid the Church and State’s condemnation of usury.
The attempted circumventing of the usury laws occurred in a very subtle way. It originated in a seemingly legitimate attempt to deal with two practical difficulties encountered by merchants at the time. First, there was there was, generally, a lack of cash available at the time, requiring merchants to set debts against one another at the merchant “fairs” held at various times, in various places, throughout the year. Second, the merchants of the period, at the various fairs, had to act as money changers since, often, a debt was incurred in one place, say Seville, and paid in another, say Flanders. In this regard, it was generally agreed that the merchant who paid out money in one place and recouped himself in another was entitled to make a reasonable charge for his services. Even with regard to this type of “financial service,” to charge a similar fee for bills transferring money from one Spanish fair to another was forbidden by a royal decree in 1551. Clearly the Spanish Catholic Crown was even willing to “dislocate the whole business of the fairs” rather than allow merchants to become involved in unnecessary “financial servicing.” There, also, developed situations in which borrowed money was not to be paid back at the next fair but at one years later. Due to the “fees” attached to such “financial services,” these became loans camouflaged as fees and involving a high payment of interest. According to Grice-Hutchinson, these met with “fulminations from both Church and State.”
It is when dealing with this question of the transference of funds from one fair to another, that Grice-Hutchinson, as representative of the Neo-Liberal Economic School, focuses on the question of “price” and the factors determining the “prices” of both money and goods.
C) The Function of Money and the Question of Foreign Exchange
Medieval ideas about the origin and functions of money are largely based on a few short passages in Aristotle’s Politics and Nicomachean Ethics. Here, Aristotle insists that the function of money was its use as a medium for the exchange of goods. Money was first invented to overcome the difficulties of transport and need that are bound to arise in a barter economy. Money, therefore, is meant to serve as a common denominator that brings into line with each other things diverse in nature: “Making all things commensurable, equalizes them.” Along with rendering commensurable for the seller and buyer what is, by nature, qualitatively different, money can serve as “capital,” or as a store of value to be used at a future time. Aristotle emphasizes the function of money as a man-made instrument by indicating that its value rests on custom and that it, “rests on us to change its value or make it wholly useless.” Averroes (1126-1198), whose commentary on the Ethics was translated into Latin early in the 13th century, follows Aristotle closely on the origin and functions of money.
Since St. Thomas Aquinas upheld this traditional view that money was invented for purposes of exchange, he held that it was unlawful to take payment for the use of money lent, which payment is known as usury. Here we have a reassertion of Aristotle’s own condemnation of usury. St. Thomas himself applies this to our issue under discussion, gain on account of the foreign exchange of money, by condemning this practice outright. Merchants who attempt to make money by lending money where money is plentiful and collecting it where money is scarce for a real financial gain, meet the following statement by St. Thomas, from his Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, I, lvii: “Likewise the art of money or acquisition is natural to all men for the purpose of procuring food, or money with which to buy food, out of natural things such as fruit or animals. But when money is acquired not by means of natural things but out of money itself, this is against nature.” This teaching concerning making money on the basis of the relative “price” of money in one place or another, appears again in 1532 when the Spanish merchants of Antwerp sent their confessor to Paris to get a ruling on the legitimacy of exchange transactions from the learned doctors of the University. They condemned forthright all exchange business. The point that the Neo-Liberals, represented by Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson, would like to draw out of this incident is that, in this reply, the rate of exchange fluctuates according to the state of supply and demand and is not derived from the labor and costs incurred by the person in whose favor the bill is drawn. The assumption here being that that which all think should determine the “price” of money, is the same as what all think should determine the price of commodities. This is an arbitrary assumption. Moreover, the doctors of the University of Paris are, apparently, merely speaking of a matter of fact. In itself, it by no means determines what the Scholastic doctors will say about the “just price” of things that ought be sold, namely commodities. What we are truly left with from this reply is a further verification of a perennial teaching of the Christian Era; money should not be made off money. As St. Thomas states, such activity is justly deserving of blame, because, considered in itself, “it satisfies the greed for gain, which knows no limit and tends to infinity.”
D) The School of Salamanca and the Just Price
When considering what the, purportedly, innovative School of Salamanca said about this important question of the “just price,” the economic issue extraordinaire in the Middle Ages, I came across a text, included in The School of Salamanca by Grice-Hutchinson, which led me to hesitate for a moment. Here, in a citation from Domingo de Soto’s book De Justitia et Jure published in 1553, we find the following in answer to the question, “Should prices be determined according to the judgment of the merchants themselves?”: “Firstly….excluding fraud and malice, we should leave merchants to fix the price of their wares. Secondly…. every man is the best judge of his own business. Now, the business of merchants is to understand merchandise. Therefore, we must defer to their opinion in settling prices. Thirdly, that a man may do as he likes with his own property. Consequently, he may ask and receive whatever price he can extort for his wares.” “Now,” I said to myself, “we have a big problem.” “Domingo de Soto is an important figure in the history of the School of Salamanca. He was a Dominican, a contemporary of the School’s founder Vitoria, and considered to be one of its best writers on economic subjects. In 1532 Soto was appointed to a chair of theology at Salamanca. His fame was such that, in 1545, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain Charles V appointed de Soto, now regarded as the most eminent of the Spanish theologians after Vitoria, as his own representative at the Council of Trent. He became Charles’ own confessor 2 years later. Surely if this man held for the “free market” approach to commodity pricing, such must be a genuine teaching emanating out of Salamanca.”
After some uncomfortable consternation, it dawned on me what I was reading; rather than being de Soto’s own position and teaching on the matter these were the Objections to Soto’s own position, which always, of course, appear first in any properly organized Scholastic article. De Soto’s own teaching on the matter of the just and proper price is perfectly in line with what you would expect a Catholic theologian of a still flourishing and faithful civilization to say.
De Soto’s first “conclusion” with regards to this issue is to make a distinction that is the common-sense ground work for any discussion of prices: the price of a “good” (or commodity) is not determined by its essence (how the thing fits into the whole hierarchy of creation), but rather, “by the measure in which [it] serve[s] the needs of mankind.” Here he affirms what was taught during this same period (1554) by another Salamancan scholar Diego de Covarrubias, “The value of an article does not depend on its essential nature but on the estimation of men, even if that estimation be foolish.” The “goods” we are citing here are “goods” which are good insofar as they service human needs. These things, therefore, have a price insofar as they are valuable in the eyes of the citizens; these goods or commodities would allow the citizens to satisfy their human needs. De Soto concludes this foundational claim about prices by saying, “We have to admit, then, that want is the basis of price.” Things are, therefore, more desirable, and therefore will go for a higher price, insofar as they more perfectly satisfy man’s desire for fulfillment and sustenance, irrespective of the place which the thing holds in the hierarchy of Creation. As St. Augustine states (City of God, Book 2, chapter 16), “a man would rather have corn than mice in his house”; this, even though mice are ontologically more perfect than grains of wheat.
When speaking of the “want” which is at the basis of all economic life and pricing, de Soto recognizes, in a very balanced way, that when we speak of “want” we must not exclude a recognition of the fact that the city needs “adornment”; even though such things are not necessary for human life, it is something which render life “pleasurable and splendid.”
In de Soto’s second “conclusion,” we find a statement which directly contradicts the Libertarian claims that the later Scholastics of Salamanca thought that nothing should be considered when calculating price, other than “supply and demand.” De Soto lists supply and demand as one of the elements that go into determining the just price for an item. “Next, we must bear in mind the labor, trouble, and risk which the transaction involves. Finally, we must consider whether the exchange is, for better or worse, to the advantage or disadvantage of the vendor, whether buyers are scarce or numerous, and all other things which a prudent man may properly take into account.” In other words, much to the consternation of those who would insist that the Salamanca School recognized nothing but the needs of “supply and demand,” we find one of its most prominent scholars asserting that the entire process and situation of production and sale must be considered when the just price is calculated. Social and economic prudence is truly queen here.
We find out in the next paragraph who it is, exactly, who is entitled to make a binding judgment, while employing this social and economic prudence. The answer to this question depends upon another Scholastic distinction. This distinction is between the “legal” price and the “natural” price. These are, as de Soto states, the “two-fold” aspect of the “just price.” Here we find that “the just legal price” is that which is fixed by the prince. The “discretionary” or “natural price” is that which is current when certain prices are not legally controlled. De Soto states that this distinction is one drawn by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics (V, chapter 7). Notice, in this regard, de Soto is not making a “value judgment,” saying that the “legal price” is bad and the “natural price” is good. As we will find, the application of these two different types of prices depends upon what type of good or commodity we are speaking of.
The next few paragraphs of the passage we have been citing are very significant and are echoed by other scholars of the Salamanca School. De Soto states, “To understand the [above] Conclusion and to judge its validity, and to see why it is necessary for prices to be controlled, we must realize that the matter is a primary concern of the republic [in the sense of res publica or the commonweal] and its governors, who, in spite of the arguments repeated above [i.e., those “free market” arguments in the Objections], ought really to fix the price of every article. But since they cannot possibly do so in all cases, the task [of “fixing” the price of those commodities which the prince has not fixed] is left to the discretion of buyers and sellers. The price that results is called the natural price because it reflects the nature of the goods, and the utility and convenience which they bring [emphasis my own].”
In proof that the term “legal price,” entails no negative judgment on this form of pricing, we can cite de Soto as stating, “When a price is fixed by law (for instance, when a measure of wheat or wine, or a length of cloth, is sold for a certain sum) it is not lawful to increase this price by even a farthing. If the excess be great, then it is mortal sin and a matter for restitution.” Those prices, which are not regulated, especially the prices of commodities extraneous to the basic needs of the citizenry, can “enjoy a certain latitude within the bounds of justice.” Here we find that even the prices allowed to fluctuate, must be kept within the bounds of justice; “justice,” in this case, meaning the requirements of the common good.
E) The Complexity of the Just Price Reaffirmed
De Soto was, as was every Scholastic, an inheritor of a centuries old tradition of scholarship and learning. His statements concerning the advisability of “fixing” prices, had antecedents deep in the heart of the Middle Ages. That characteristic, “non-giant,” the Viennese scholar Heinrich von Langenstein was an advocate of a strict system of price controls. He advises the prince, however, to fix prices in accordance with the customary price, which is determined by “the degree of human want.” Moreover, Langenstein shows a completely balanced approach to the question of the just price. He acknowledges that there is an objective factor, in the sense that it should be fixed by some authority standing outside the market, and yet subjective as being the product of subjective factors. Some of those subjective factors that Langenstein mentions are: supply and demand, utility, cost of production, remuneration of labor, cost of transport, and risk. All of these are to be taken into account when determining value. Just like St. Thomas Aquinas, Langenstein understood “supply and demand” to play a part in determining price. Grice-Hutchinson herself recognizes this to be the generally held position of the Scholastic tradition, when she writes, “we have seen that the concepts of utility and rarity were placed high in the traditional list of factors determining value which accompanied scholastic discussions of the ‘just price.’” She, also, admits, “we have seen that our Scholastic writers regarded utility and rarity as the primary, though not the sole, determinants of value [emphasis mine].”
If we should look, specifically, for another member of the School of Salamanca who affirms de Soto’s teaching on the desirability of fixing prices, especially those of “staple” commodities, we come upon one Pedro de Valencia. In his Discurso sobre el precio del trigo, he states that, “those who allege that a thing is worth the price it will fetch must be understood as referring only to things that are not essential to life, such as diamonds, falcons, horses, swords, and also to other commoner things when there is no fraud, compulsion or monopoly, and when vender and purchaser enjoy equal liberty or suffer equal need [emphasis mine].” Recognizing, however, that in matters of real need the citizenry is at a distinct disadvantage in any exchange, he states, “in the case of bread, in years when it is dear – the vendor always enjoys liberty and plenty, and the purchaser always suffers urgent need and want.” Now we come to the question of the just price, “The just price is not whatever a thing will fetch on account of the purchaser’s need, nor can such a price in conscience be demanded. No price is just or should be regarded as current if it is against the public interest, which is the first and principal consideration in justifying the price of things.”
F) Bernadine of Siena and Antonino of Florence: Saints Misconstrued
We ought be very much surprised when we find a Neo-Liberal scholar like Raymond de Roover focusing our attention on two great saints, St. Bernadine of Siena and St. Antonino of Florence. It is, first of all, surprising to see that they are termed, “The Two Great Economic Thinkers of the Middle Ages,” when they lived their lives square in the heart of the blossoming Italian Renaissance. That these thinkers are acclaimed as far-sighted prophets of the goodness of Liberal Capitalism is also surprising, since their attitude towards economics itself could not be farther away from the mentality of a von Mises, who would hold the laws of private property and the “free-market” to be adverse to the “heterogeneous” moral claims made by the divine and natural law. Here it would be useful to recall von Mises statement that, “In urging people to listen to the voice of their conscience and to substitute considerations of public welfare for those of private profit, one does not create a working and satisfactory social order [emphasis mine].” The only thing which the two great saints under consideration intended by their preaching and writing on economic issues was to “urg[e] people to listen to the voice of their conscience and to substitute considerations of public welfare for those of private profit.” They, also, held that only if such things were done, would a just and satisfying civil order be attained.
When we consider the moral teachings of St. Bernadine (1380 – 1444) as these relate to economic issues, what we are analyzing are 14 sermons, which are part of a larger collection of sermons entitled De Evangelio aeterno (Concerning the Eternal Gospel). These Latin sermons, as opposed to his Italian ones, were meant to be read rather than preached. Here we can see the continuation of a long tradition, echoed in our own age by men like Heinrich Pesch, S.J., of including economic questions within the larger framework of ethics. In these sermons of St. Bernadine (a Franciscan and the great apostle of devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus), we find the general teachings of the Church as regards economic life repeated anew. As de Roover himself admits, the condemnation of usury was a prominent theme in St. Bernadine’s writings. Just as was the case with the other Scholastics, St. Bernadine was “preoccupied with another set of problems [as opposed to questions of “how the market operates”]: what is just or unjust, licit or illicit? In other words, the stress was on ethics: everything was subordinated to the main theme.” Both St. Bernadine and St. Antonino (Archbishop of Florence from 1445 to 1459), both frown upon acquisitiveness as leading to sin and eternal perdition. St. Antonino deals with the whole topic of market transactions in section of his Summa moralis that deals with the sin of avarice. Moreover, economics was discussed within the framework of contracts, as Roman law understood these. The virtues that regulated the individual and collective economic actions of men were the virtues of distributive and commutative justice (i.e., the State giving to its citizens “their due” and citizens “giving to each other their due”). Let us face it, the only “due” that the Libertarians allow is the absolute claim that each man has to have the government and his fellow citizens respect his, already demarcated, private property right. They forget what the Distributists remembered quite well, all men have a certain right to private property. Those who uphold the Social Teachings of the Catholic Church, better than their Libertarian antagonists, understand the role of private property in personal and familial fulfillment.
When we study de Roover’s book on these two, putatively, innovative saints, we find ourselves at a loss to find a significant teaching that is not firmly rooted in the wisdom of the Catholic past or one which is not clarified, in a purely traditional way, by the later Scholastics of the School of Salamanca. As de Roover himself recognizes, St. Bernadine, like the Medieval Scholastics before him, understood price determination to be a social process. Price is not set by the arbitrary decision of individuals but collectively by the community as a whole. St. Bernadine makes this explicit when he states, “the price of goods and services is set for the common good with due consideration to the common valuation or estimation made collectively by the community of citizens [emphasis mine].” According to de Roover, in the writings of St. Bernadine, there was “only minimal analysis of changes in demand or supply as this affects prices.
With regard to the above question of price, as we found earlier with his analysis of the economic thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, de Roover’s portrayal of the intellectual “innovations” of St. Bernadine is very forced and often involves the use of statements that do not at all prove his point, in fact, they often contradict it. One example is his citation of a single sentence, from the “sermons” of St. Bernadine, which seems to indicate that the saint held to an idea of the “just price” which was convertible with the idea of “market valuation.” In support of this view, he cites St. Bernadino as defining the “just price” as, “the one which happens to prevail at a given time according to the estimation of the market, that is, what the commodities for sale are then commonly worth in a certain place.”
As we have seen, however, with regard to this determination of price based upon “supply and demand” and “market conditions,” there was a solid moral tradition, passing into late Scholastic times, in which it was considered perfectly reasonable that prices of certain inessential items were allowed to “float” freely, their value being determined by how much someone, who did not absolutely need the item, was willing to pay. De Roover himself seems to recognize that the language of “just price” as “prevailing market price” refers to just this situation and to these kinds of goods. And yet, that de Roover wants to insinuate that St. Bernadino equated the “just price” with the “one that happens to prevail at a given time according to the estimation of the market” in all cases, is clear. With his usual hesitant definitiveness he says, “This statement [about just price and prevailing market price], it seems to me, is so clear that it does not admit any other construction.”
If, as he seems to say, St. Bernadino equated just price with market price, all prices should, for justice’s sake, be subject to the free flow of market forces – any interference would be, according to this view, an interference in the market’s setting of the “just price.” That this is not St. Bernadine’s view is made clear, again by de Roover himself, when he admits that the Franciscan taught “prices may be fixed for the common good.” Society, then, is in charge of setting prices. Who does not hear the echo of the entire economic ethos of Christendom in St. Bernadine statement that, prices may be fixed for the common good, “because nothing is more iniquitous than to promote private interests at the expense of general welfare.”
G) St. Antonino, the Just Price, and the Just Wage
St. Antonino of Florence was explicitly committed to the position that civil authority had the right and, often, the obligation to fix prices for the sake of the common good. Clearly the “common estimation” by which prices ought be determined, included the possibility of the State explicitly setting the price of items. According to de Roover, “Sant’ Antonino…states that it might be desirable under certain circumstances to have prices of victuals [i.e., food stuffs] and other necessities fixed by the bishop, or even better, by the civil authorities. If there is such regulation, it is binding and victuallers and other tradesmen may not, without sinning, raise the price above the legal minimum.” Rather than being anything like a “free market” advocate, the Archbishop of Florence reaffirms the traditional condemnation of usury and monopoly. He, also, insisted upon there being a “just wage.” The calculation of what would constitute a “just wage” was a social and a complex process that would involve the consideration of many different elements. To quote de Roover’s citation of St. Antonino, “Sant’ Antonino states that the purpose of wages was not only to compensate the worker for his labor but also to enable him to provide for himself and his family according to his social situation.” Moreover, “it was as unfair and sinful to pay less than the just wage because a worker had mouths to feed as it was unfair to pay less than the just price because of the seller’s urgent need for cash.” St. Antonino clearly saw man as a whole, not just as a private property owning (or not owning) unit. The whole talk about a “just wage” (not to mention a “just price”) means nothing unless we understand man to be a social creature and all of man’s activities and social interactions, including his economic ones, as having an orientation to the higher and more perfect good, at least the true and fulfilling good of human existence. We see this over-arching teleological (from the Greek word telos or goal) understanding of the human good present in the following statement that de Roover makes concerning the teaching of St. Antonino: “The purpose of a fair wage was to enable the worker to earn a decent living, the purpose of a decent living was to enable him to lead a virtuous life, and the purpose of a virtuous life was to enable him to achieve salvation and eternal glory.” As we might expect, from what we have seen from the various Libertarian writers cited in this article, de Roover “summarizes” St. Antonino’s position by overturning everything he had previously stated concerning the saints’ teaching: “St. Antonino’s own wage theory according to which the just wage was set by common estimation, that is, by market forces without any reference to individual needs.” Here he is asserting A and not A simultaneously. Here we have the manipulation of a classical Christian moral text by a Libertarian whose views on economics, logic, politics, society, and, even simple human psychology would be completely inexplicable to our saintly Renaissance bishop.
H) Restoration Economics
Why does all of this matter? Much of “conservative” and “libertarian” thought, in the United States, in the British Commonwealth, and on the Continent of Europe has attempted to find a way to, as Arthur Penty put it, “stabilize the abnormal.” What is truly needed is a return to the normal. What we have seen when analyzing the actual statements made by the Medieval and Renaissance moral theologians on economic issues is a balanced portrayal of what the “normal” is. What has been amazing to see is not how innovative they were, in a Liberal direction, but rather, how traditional and deeply Christian they were. That there was room for discussion on such questions as the worth of money as a result of foreign exchange is a perfectly normal manifestation of the Catholic desire for justice and a deep prudence that understands the multiplicity of situations in which human beings act. Such prudence cannot be taken as a revolutionary innovation or for an opening to modern economic liberalism.
The basis of our current “abnormal” is an inflated and unnatural understanding of man as an individual, free to “create” his own “value system,” which, to a certain extent, means to “create his own world.” Liberalism, in its economic and political manifestations, has created a situation in which the ancient psychological, social, economic, and political tapestry of human societies has been unraveled. By upholding an ethereal concept of “choice,” it has robbed us of our honor, our personal security, and our heritage. This entire conception of man and human existence is embedded in the Neo-Liberal equation of the “just price” with the “market price.” That Arthur Penty and many others would present the “just price” and its attainment as the primary purpose of the Medieval Guild System is testimony to the fact that the very social life of Christendom, in a very real way, pivoted upon this reality. That “justice” should involve more than mere “freedom of choice,” rather including within the very term an idea and concrete historical reality expressive of a higher order and more fundamental and essential obligations, is testimony to the fact that the spiritual psychology of Christendom was profoundly different from the one we find possessed by all those who reject the ancient way, whether they be Socialists, Globalists, or Libertarians. For those who would, correctly, seek for a life outside of the spiritually suffocating totalitarian Liberalism that we find ourselves immersed in, Penty warns them that any attempt to realize the dream of an independent rural existence without price controls put into place, would result, for most, in economic suicide for families and for individuals. These are sobering words. Our struggle must then take on a more encompassing religious, moral, and even political dimension if our children and our children’s children are to live a life richer and, hence, more traditional than our own.

2009-09-05T06:59:00.001-07:00

The Dollar's Demise: The Coming American Default

2009-06-25T06:13:00.000-07:00

The Dollar as Toxic Asset: The Coming American Default
By: Dr. Peter E. Chojnowski
May 5, 2009

If the saying is true that, “The greatness of a depression is commensurate to the government’s efforts to prevent it,” we can assuredly say that we are in the greatest downturn ever to threaten the prosperity of our civilization. As of this writing, the United States Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank has committed $13 trillion to bailouts and “stimulus” packages. To put this “injection of liquidity” into perspective, we can say that the United States government has spent more money propping up the financial system since August of 2008, as it spent, with inflation adjusted dollars, on all the wars in its history put together. To make another illustrative comparison, the entire gross domestic product (GDP) for the year 2008 (i.e., the total amount of goods and services produced in the nation) totaled $14 trillion. This tally works out to $42,105 for every man, woman, and child in the United States and some 14x the $900 billion of currency in circulation. Not desiring to “cry wolf,” Dana Johnson, chief economist for Comerica Bank in Dallas, said, “The comparison to GDP serves the useful purpose of underscoring how extraordinary the efforts have been to stabilize the credit markets.”
This attempt to “stabilize the credit markets” has taken two forms in the United States, “stimulus” and “bailout”.
A) “Stimulating” a Zombie Economy
The most basic, and seemingly inconsequential, aspect of the attempt by government to “increase liquidity” and “demand” within the economy is the $787 billion dollar “stimulus” package offered by the Obama administration. To use the adjective “inconsequential” seems fitting on account of the fact that the package would pump a mere $185 billion into the economy this year. The very partisan legislation, having received only 3 Republican votes in the Senate and none in the House, includes extra-spending, a large increase in the debt limit, and some small-scale tax cuts. With regard to the tax cuts, millions of American workers can expect to see about $13 extra in their weekly paychecks beginning in June; this tax credit, in the year 2010, will result, on average, in $7.70 more in the typical American’s pay-packet per week. Not, seemingly, having learned from catastrophic indebtedness of the American family, which caused the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, first-time homebuyers will be eligible for a $8,000 tax credit and those who buy a new car before the end of the year can write off the sales tax. In this regard, can we assume that all the borrowers who “earn” these tax credits, are “credit worthy” or is the government simply encouraging borrowing for the sake of pumping up the GDP? We seem to be simply attempting to “re-inflate” the credit-bubble here.
With regard to the new spending portion of the “stimulus package,” some of the money goes for worthwhile projects, like development of alternative energy sources and infrastructure projects that have been put off for decades. Even the “positive” aspects of the spending allocations, however, demonstrate that this legislation is truly nothing more than an attempt to “stimulate” and not to repair a national economy that began to realize in September 2008 that it was primarily a “phantom” economy; the appearance of life, without the substance. The $90 billion to be spent on the nation’s infrastructure, for example, is only a meager down payment on the repairs needed to fix the problems with the bridges and highways. The $9.2 billion earmarked for environmental projects and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will only, according to reports, make a dent in the backlog of cleanups facing the EPA and the long list of chores at the country’s national parks, refuges and other public lands. This expenditure too can be considered to be a mere down payment on a much bigger problem.
What many of the expenditures in the “stimulus package” do is to federalize projects and programs that have been cut back by near-bankrupt state governments. Of course, with federal money comes federal control. For example, for those who lose their jobs and who want to extend their health insurance coverage for 18 months (the COBRA program), the federal government will now pick up 65% of the total cost of that premium for the first 9 months. With regard to education, the package allocates some $54 billion of federal money to compensate for state budget cuts over the next 3 years. This means that the federal government will try to ensure that the potential 600,000 elementary and secondary school teachers that would have been laid off on account of state budget cuts, will not need to be laid off.
B) No Banker Left Behind
“Quantitative Easing” is the term being used to describe the Treasury’s and Federal Reserves injection of trillions of dollars into the financial system in order to keep it afloat and prevent “deflation.” It has been these regular injections of trillions of dollars into the banking system, which has dwarfed the relatively paltry hundreds of billions allocated by Congress for the purpose of “stimulus” and buying “toxic assets” from the 5 largest banks. In describing this “quantitative easing” policy, the Federal Reserve, on March 21, 2009, said, “In these circumstances, the Federal Reserve will employ all available tools to promote economic recovery and preserve price stability. The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to ¼ % [N.B., the European Central Bank has just lowered this same interest rate to 1%, a record low] and anticipates that economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period. To provide greater support to mortgage lending and housing markets, the Committee decided today to increase the size of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet further by purchasing up to an additional $750 billion of agency mortgage-backed securities, bringing its total purchases of these securities to up to $1.25 trillion this year, and to increase its purchases of agency debt this year by up to $100 billion to a total of up to $200 billion. Moreover, to help improve conditions in private credit markets, the Committee decided to purchase up to $300 billion of longer-term Treasury securities over the next six months.”
What you have in the above is a summary of the unprecedented intervention in the financial system. Traditionally, the key number that the Fed would vote on and that they would communicate to the public with a statement like the above, would be a target interest rate that the Fed had settled on for the Fed funds rate, an interest rate charged on overnight interbank loans. The Fed, however, has recently found that keeping the fed funds rate at near zero has not helped to bolster and stabilize the banks and the equity markets. That is why they have reverted to buying US government securities (i.e., monetizing the debt) and trying to get the credit flowing by relieving the banks of risky assets like mortgage-based securities. All of this, of course, occurred only 2 weeks before Treasury Secretary Geithner new Public-Private Partnership Investment Program (PPIP) to price and remove toxic assets from banks’ balance sheets to the tune of some $500 billion to $1 trillion.
C) Paper Mill on the Potomac: The Marginal Productivity of Debt
Whether the extra expenditure will “grow” the economy or not, is still an open question. What is not an open question, however, is that both “stimulus” and “added liquidity” will radically boost the national debt of the United States. Forecasters expect the 2009 deficit to top 2.1 trillion dollars, which is more than 3x last year’s shortfall. The overall National Debt is now approximately 11 trillion dollars.
The thinking of the past and present administrations, Bush and Obama, and the past and present Federal Reserve chairmen, Greenspan and Bernanke, is that the more money “printed,” either through government expenditure or lower interest rates --- both of which produce more debt --- the greater likelihood of stopping both economic contraction and asset deflation. Will, however, this be the case? Can such a scenario be assumed? What seems to be the great-unasked question, in this regard, is whether greater amounts of public and private debt will in any way “grow” the economy and encourage only moderate inflation. What we are really speaking about here is the “quality of debt”. What do we mean by the “quality of debt”? The Keynesians in the Bush and Obama administrations take comfort in the fact that the total national debt as a percentage of GDP is safely below 100% in the United States, while it is 100% or higher in some other countries. According to Melchior Palyi, a Hungarian-born Chicago economist who died in the early 1970s, the significant ratio to watch is additional debt to additional GDP, in other words, the amount of GDP contributed by the creation of $1 in new debt. This is the ratio that determines the “quality of debt”. For example, if the marginal productivity of debt was ½, then $2 in debt had to be incurred in order to increase the nation’s output of goods and services by $1. An increase in total debt by $1 could no longer reproduce its cost in the form of an equivalent increase in the GDP. In this situation, debt would have lost whatever justification it may have once had.
To chart the “quality of debt” historically, we can say that in the 1950s, when the dollar was still redeemable in the sense that foreign governments and central banks could covert their dollar balances into gold at the fixed statutory rate of $35 per ounce, the marginal productivity of debt was 3 or higher, meaning that the addition of $1 in new debt caused the GDP to increase by at least $3. When, in 1971, Richard Nixon defaulted on the international gold obligations of the United States, the marginal productivity of debt fell below the critical level of 1. If the marginal productivity of debt is ½, then $2 in debt had to be incurred in order to increase the nation’s output and services by $1.
As long as debt was constrained by gold, deterioration of debt was relatively slow. It took the economy 35years after Nixon’s taking the US off the gold standard for the capital of society to erode and be consumed through a steadily deteriorating marginal productivity of debt. The year 2006 was a watershed. Late in that year, the marginal productivity of debt dropped to zero and then went negative for the first time ever. Here a red light warning of an imminent economic catastrophe was set off.
If Palyi’s theory is correct, being supported by such economists as Peter Warburton and Antal Fekete, when there is a negative marginal productivity of debt, it indicates that any further increase in debtedness would necessarily cause economic contraction. In view of the fact that the marginal productivity of debt is now negative we can see that the damage-control measures of the Obama administration, which are being financed through creating unprecedented amounts of new debt, are counterproductive. It could, moreover, be the direct cause of further economic contraction of an already prostrate economy, including unemployment. This is, perhaps, what the head of the European Union and Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek meant when he publicly characterized Obama’s plan to spend nearly $2 trillion to push the US economy out of recession as the “road to hell.”
D) Dumping the Dollar: America’s Stealth Default
If many Europeans and American economists worry about deflation, its seems as if the Chinese government is definitely worried about inflation. They have good reason to worry. “A policy mistake made by some major central bank may bring inflation risks to the whole world,” said the People’s Central Bank in its quarterly report. “As more and more economies are adopting unconventional monetary policies, such as quantitative easing major currencies’ devaluation risks may rise,” it said. Premier Wen Jiabao, at the Communist Party summit in March, left no doubt that China was extremely irritated with Washington’s response to the credit crisis set off by the AIG (i.e., American International [Insurance] Group) and Lehman Brothers collapse. The Chinese have come to suspect that the United States is engaged in stealth default on its debt by driving down the dollar. Premier Wen continued, “We have lent a massive amount of capital to the United States, and of course we are concerned about the security of our assets. To speak truthfully, I do indeed have some worries.” A few days later, the Chinese central bank chief wrote a paper suggesting a world currency based on Special Drawing Rights issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This call to replace the US dollar as the world reserve currency was recently echoed by a United Nations panel of economists. The panel was led by US economist Joseph Stiglitz, the 2001 Nobel economics laureate, who told a press conference that there was “a growing consensus that there are problems with the dollar reserve system.” Such as system was “relatively volatile, deflationary, unstable and had inequity associated with it.” “Developing countries are lending the United States trillions of dollars at almost zero interest rates when they have huge needs themselves,” Stiglitz noted. “It’s indicative of the nature of the problem. It’s a net transfer, in a sense, to the United States, a form of foreign aid.” A new global reserve currency, however, “is feasible, non-inflationary and could be easily implemented.” Feeling that the Bretton-Woods Agreement of 1944, which established the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency --- and the United States as the beneficiary of the world-wide need to possess the dollar and dollar-denominated assets, is coming to an end, the Kremlin’s chief economic advisor, Arkady Dvorkevich, has publicly stated that Russia would favor the partial return of the gold standard, as part of a system of a new world currency based on Special Drawing Rights (SDR) issued by the IMF. The Kremlin has already instructed the its central bank to gradually raise the gold share of foreign reserves to 10%.
What was, perhaps, the most surprising aspect of the very public call by the Chinese for a new global reserve currency to replace the US dollar was the lack of any real objection to this proposal coming from the US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. When speaking at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Geithner was asked about China’s Central Bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan’s call for a new international reserve currency. Geithner said that he had not read Zhou’s proposal, but that “he understood it was a plan designed to increase the use of the IMF’s special drawing rights. And we’re actually quite open to that.” Having just, nonchalantly, thrown into question America’s 65 year commitment to the enshrinement of the US dollar as the world’s reserve and commodity trading currency, Geithner was subtly given the heads up that he had driven the value of the US dollar down some 1.3% against the Euro, since his remarks about the Chinese proposal began. This occurred when Roger Altman, who worked with Geithner as deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, asked Geithner if he wanted to “clarify” his comments. “I’d like to ask one final question, in effect on behalf of the market” [hint: you are causing months of dollar appreciation to disappear], said Altman, founder of Evercore Partners, Inc., “Let me ask the question this way. Do you see any change over the foreseeable future in the basic role of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency?” Apparently catching the hint, Geithner responded, “I think the dollar remains the world’s dominant reserve currency.”
E) Obama’s Multi-lateral New World Order: The End of the Americanist Paradigm
If Secretary Geithner is “open” to the idea of the end of the United States’ domination of the economic and political processes of the world, which would result from the toppling of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, Barack Obama seems to be acting as if that “toppling” has already taken place. In the context of holding a press conference with Angela Merkel in Baden-Baden after the G-20 meeting in April, Obama was asked about his “grand designs” for NATO and said simply, “I don’t come bearing grand designs,” instead, “I’m here to listen, to share ideas and to jointly, as one of many NATO allies, help shape our vision for the future.” When asked by two American reporters for his response to the claim by Gordon Brown (referred to as “Crash Gordon” in Britain) that the “Washington consensus is over,” meaning the uni-lateral American exceptionalism, Obama did not object, but seemed, rather, to agree, noting the term “Washington consensus” had its roots in a set of economic policies that have been shown to be defective. Obama’s vision of the world as a consortium of “enlightened” nations fighting the remnants of religious militancy and exclusivism, won the appreciation of Nicolas Sarkozy, when the French leader praised this new post-Americanist global system and the man that made it happen, “It feels really good to work with a US president who wants to change the world and who understands that the world does not boil down to simply the American frontiers and borders….And that is a hell of a good piece of good news for 2009.”
A concrete manifestation of this new New World Order, was the activation of the IMF’s power to create money and to begin a global “quantitative easing”. The leaders at the G-20 summit literally tripled overnight to $750 billion, the IMF’s ability to provide credit to national economies on the edge. The move is akin to a national central bank such as the Federal Reserve creating the money out of thin air, except this is on a global scale. A list of the countries that the IMF has already “bailed out” are Latvia, Iceland, Pakistan, Hungary, Belarus, Serbia, Bosnia, and Romania. In April, Mexico became the first G-20 nation to ask the IMF for immediate help. Along with providing the IMF with plenty of national “bailout money” and the world with the basis for a global currency (N.B., the SDR), the G-20 leaders, with the support of Barack Obama, established a international Financial Stability Board, which appears to be meant as a global financial regulator. Obama appears to take it for granted that the post-WWII United States dominated and determined world has ceased to be and that another one is emerging. At the end of the G-20 conference in April, he stated, “I think we did OK.” Bretton Woods in 1944 was a simpler affair, “Just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy, that’s an easy negotiation, but that’s not the world we live in.”
F) Hyperinflation or Deflationary Spiral? Possibilities for 2009
That what we have witnessed since the September collapse of Lehman Brothers has been an unprecedented intervention in the banking and economic sector on the part of the government and central banks of the world, is not the issue which is being currently debated. What is being debated is the ultimate consequence of such a “injection of liquidity” (i.e., printing of money) into the financial system. As Peter Schiff has recently stated, what we are suffering from now is an overdose of past stimulus. A larger dose will only worsen the condition. According to Schiff, “The Greenspan/Bush stimulus of 2001 prevented a much needed recession and bought us seven years of artificial growth. The multi-trillion dollar tab for that federally-engineered economic bullet-dodging came due in 2008. The 2001 stimulus had kicked off a debt-fueled consumption binge that resulted in economic weakness, not strength. So now, even though the recent stimulus administered a much larger dose, we will likely experience a much smaller bounce. One can only speculate as to how much time this stimulus will buy and what it will cost when the bill arrives.”
Whatever the consequences, clearly the response of the governments of the world to the current financial crisis reveals, unequivocally, the extent of the crisis. The talk about “green shoots” coming from the “in the pocket” economists employed by the mass media and their corporate and financial sponsors must be a siren song that causes us to tie ourselves to the mast and plug our ears. The IMF in the “green shoots” month of April was saying that the world had entered “by far the deepest global recession since the Great Depression.” A recession which would cost the nations of the world “trillions of dollars in lost business, millions of people thrust into hunger and homelessness and crime on the rise.” This assessment of the current downturn as “the worst since the Great Depression,” was further confirmed by a recent statement of Professor Tim Congdon of International Monetary Research, in which he stated that company bank deposits in Europe have begun to contract at rates not seen since the early 1930s, threatening severe damage in the coming months. “It’s a catastrophe. Company bank deposits have been falling at 1% a month since December. It is what happened in the US during the Great Depression, and it is why we are seeing such a horrific recession in Europe.”
The word “since” the Great Depression is even somewhat deceptive in this context. Mark Twain said, “History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” The current financial and economic crisis is both “like” the Great Depression and, yet, distinctly different. The “distinctly different” here should not, however, be an occasion for comfort. Even the IMF has pointed out the differences, saying, “While the credit boom in the 1920s was largely specific to the United States, the boom during 2004-2007 was global, with increased leverage and risk-taking in advanced economies and many emerging economies. Levels of integration are now much higher than during the inter-war period, so US financial shocks have a larger impact,” it has said. This should engender a great concern since, “Synchronized world recessions striking all major regions are ‘historically rare’ events. They last one and a half times as long as typical downturns, and are followed by painfully slow recoveries.” Leap/Europe 2020 has given 3 reasons why this current crisis is distinctly more dangerous that was the Depression of the 30s. First, “today’s world is far more integrated than in the 1930s so this crisis is definitely the first truly global crisis ever. The 1930s one was essentially limited to the US and Europe. Second, our societies depend much more on the financial sphere than 80 years ago. Credit (especially consumer credit) has been the key tool for our GDP growth in the past decades; so the impact of the financial meltdown is going to affect more deeply and durably our societies than it did 70 years ago. Finally, the US, which is the epicenter of the current global crisis, was an ascendant world power in the 1930s when now it is a decaying one. So the impact of the crisis will reinforce the downward trends affecting the US today when, in the 1930s, the crisis impact was strongly diminished by the upward trend affecting the US at that time.” This leads to the conclusion that, “this crisis will be much stronger and last much longer than in the 1930s, especially in the case of the US which is at its epicenter.” All Lollipop Guild economists aside. In regard to those “green shoots” of recovery that we hear about on CNBC, let us apply to them what Dr. Samuel Johnson said about second marriages, they are “the triumph of hope over experience.”
Although many economists make the conclusion that the only result of the inundation of the economy with trillions of fake dollars by the Fed and the Treasury will inevitably produce an unprecedented hyperinflation, especially when the Chinese stop buying US Treasuries and begin bringing their $1.4 trillion reserve back to the United States by spending it on American commodities, if what Melchior Palyi said is true concerning the marginal productivity of debt, it is rather a deflationary spiral that ought to concern us now. Clearly there has been a sharp decline in the amount of US debt that the Chinese are willing to take on; because of the “policy mistake” --- to quote the Chinese, of “quantitative easing,” they are clearly showing signs that they view the US dollar and US Treasuries as “toxic” due to the increasing likelihood of a US default, whether officially or by stealth. Could this debasement of the US currency lead to deflation, rather than inflation, however? Could our currency become worth too much and become scarce, rather than being worth too little and overly plentiful?
The trajectory for a future downward deflationary spiral is clear enough. While prices for primary products such as oil and food may, initially, rise, there is no purchasing power in the hands of the consumer, nor can they borrow as they once did, in order to pay the higher prices. The flood of newly created money has gone to bail out banks. Very little will trickle down to the ordinary consumers who are still squeezed by the debts that they have contracted in the past. Price rises are, then, unsustainable, insofar as the consumer is unable to pay them. When consumers become squeezed, merchants become squeezed; when merchants become squeezed they are forced to retrench and lay-off people and this rise in unemployment put less cash into the hands of the consumer --- and so the vicious cycle goes. For the “stimulus” money that does get into the hands of the people, it is fair to assume that it will be used to pay off the debt that, in spite of all the transference from banks to government of “toxic debt,” are still the unaltered obligation of the consumer. Switzerland has been the first Western nation to tip into deflation. Swiss consumer prices fell .4% in March (year-on-year). The Swiss Consumer Price Index will be at –1% by July. This tipping into the deflationary spiral described above is, says Philipp Hildebrand, a governor of the Swiss National Bank, “something that we must prevent at all costs. The current situation is extraordinarily serious.” All are concerned that Switzerland is entering an economic situation resembling that of Japan. “We don’t fully realize in the West what a catastrophic collapse Japan has suffered,” says Albert Edwards, global strategist at Société Générale. Japan’s industrial output fell 38% in February (year-on-year), mostly concentrated into the last 5 months. No economy imploded at this speed in the 1930s. If America enters this type of deflationary spiral, the word “depression” will seem a bit too optimistic.

Our Lady as Woman and Warrior

2009-02-13T17:56:00.000-08:00

Here is one of the article, published in The Angelus about 11 years ago, in which I discuss the various understandings of the name of "Lady" as given to the Mother of God. I publish it again now in order to present the entire document so that people can read for themselves what I have said and not fall victim to the various writers on the internet who insist on distorting everything I have to say about women and the Blessed Virgin Mary. One of the passages most viciously attacked, was taken from the 1913 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia published under St. Pius X. Here is the article to set the record straight. Please send my your comments via my email address found in my profile.

Our Lady: Woman and Warrior
When researching the subject of the Blessed Virgin Mary, what is most obvious is the wealth of material which one must grapple with and, secondly, the greater and greater degree of doctrinal and dogmatic definitiveness with which the Catholic Church has presented to the faithful the complete reality of the Mother of God. Whereas, by the seventh century, the doctrinal questions concerning the nature and person of Our Lord Jesus Christ had been resolved by the first six Ecumenical Councils of the Church, the doctrinal and dogmatic clarification concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary has continued into the nineteenth and twentieth century (e.g., the dogmatic definitions of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption), and we can even assert that such an attempt at clarification continues into our own (e.g., concerning Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of All Graces. Cf. Newsweek, Aug. 27, 1997).
Just as the Catholic Church moves, perhaps, towards a definition of the last of the great Marian doctrines, there is another aspect of Our Lady which is distinctly and, without question, pertinent, and even essential, for our times. As the tide of Feminism has risen, hopefully, to its high point in our time, it is imperative for those who wish to remain faithful to Tradition to look to the most perfect of woman in order to both provide for ourselves an ideal and model of feminine virtue and to help us purge ourselves of the Feminist preconceptions which only those in the best of circumstances could have avoided acquiring, even "subconsciously."
That is why I intend to consider, in this article, the Blessed Virgin Mary as our "Lady." Why as "lady"? On account of the fact that the "lady," in all of her various aspects and roles, is commonly accepted to be the model of what all woman, on the natural level, ought to be. Just as the masculine ideal is one of being a "master," whether of one’s own house or of one’s craft, the noble feminine ideal of the "lady" includes both the aspects of "mistress" of her master’s house and the inspiration and companion of those who enter into battle.
A) Mary as Lady
This topic and focus suggests itself, on account of two "controversies" regarding the Mother of God, one etymological and one exegetical. The etymological question concerns the meaning of the Holy Name "Mary" itself. Of course, "Mary" is the English form of the Hebrew Miryam or Miriam, which was the name of the sister of Moses (giving rise to speculation that the name is of Egyptian origin), and of several women in the New Testament as well as of Our Lady. This name is analogous to the Syriac and Aramaic name Maryam. This same name appears throughout the Vulgate Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, as Maria. The difficulty in interpreting the name lies in the fact that there are 70 possible meanings of the name Miryam. Even though all of these exist as possibilities, there are some meanings, which are more likely than others. The interpretation of the name thought to have been given by St. Jerome, stella maris or "star of the sea," is not the one favored by current scholarship. Instead, following the lead of St. Peter Chrysologus and St. John Damascene, along with the meaning of the name in the Syriac tongue, the rendering of "lady" has been given; "lady" signifying here the counterpart of a "master" or "lord." Moreover, this particular interpretation appears to be more probable when we consider the some of the other interpretations given to the name by various scholars; all appear to be aspects of the model feminine type, which we would refer to as a "lady." For instance, we have "mistress," the "strong one" or the "ruling one," the "exalted one," and the "gracious" or "charming" one. Of these other renderings, the most widely accepted is that of the "fat" or "well-nourished" one. As we might imagine, for the peoples of the Near East to be "well-nourished" was synonymous with beauty and bodily perfection. "Mary," then, implies the beauty and perfection of the true "lady."
The New Eve
Not only does the very Holy Name of Mary indicate the ways in which she is truly blessed amongst women, but the role of the Mother of God as the New Eve, the woman of obedience and holy submission as opposed to the Eve of rebellion and autonomy, indicates the way in which Our Lady, as a woman, has crushed the head of the serpent by her exemplary possession of specifically feminine virtues. Just as Eve was misled by Satan on account of her inconstancy, changeableness, and exaggerated concern for the sensibly immediate (i.e., the attractiveness of the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil), the Blessed Virgin Mary conquered the ancient tempter of Eve by simply accepting all that God willed to bestow upon her and achieve through her. Mankind begins its ascent to sanctification through the voluntary passivity of a woman, whereas it fell from this state of sanctification on account of Eve’s aggressive attempt to dominate the will of man through subtle manipulation.
That a woman should be a conqueror through passive acceptance of the will of another, rather than through the assertion of her own will, is testified to by the Fathers and the Doctors of the Church when they speak of Our Lady as the New Eve. The teaching of Our Lady as the "reversed" Eve, appears in the Ave, maris stella: "Oh! by Gabriel’s Ave, Utter’d long ago, Eva’s name reversing, Establish peace below." This teaching of Our Lady as being a "reversed" Eve, appears in Venerable Pope Pius IX’s bull Ineffabilis Deus, defining the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. St. Irenaeus (c. 180) expresses the common understanding of the Fathers when we states: "Eve was led away by an angel’s word to flee God after transgressing His word. Mary has good tidings brought by an angel that she should bear God within herself after obeying His word." So it is by Our Lady’s very being and her acceptance of God’s will that she conquers the seducer of Eve.
When speaking of Our Lady as the "passive" conqueror of the ancient Adversary of mankind, we necessarily refer to the passage in the Book of Genesis in which God curses the serpent by stating the following: "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel (Gen. III, 15)." It is concerning this passage that we encounter the second of the "controversies" mentioned earlier. This one is exegetical. Assuming that the "she" mentioned is a prophetic reference to Our Lady, is it she who will crush the head of the head of the Evil One or will it be her "seed" who crushes it.
The "difficulty" lies in the fact that in the Vulgate text, the pronoun (ipsa) refers to the woman, while in the Hebrew text and, also, in the Greek translation of the Hebrew text, the same pronoun refers to the seed of the woman. According to the Latin Vulgate, the woman herself will win the victory; according to the Hebrew text, she will be victorious through her seed. Rather than seeing some intentional corruption of the original text by St. Jerome, who was fully conversant with Hebrew, we ought to see the Vulgate translation as an explanatory version expressing explicitly the fact of Our Lady’s part in the victory over the serpent, which is contained implicitly in the Hebrew original. Therefore, if Our Lady crushes the head of the Evil One and, on that account, establishes eternal enmity between her offspring and the serpent’s, she either does it on account of her very being (i.e., her Immaculate Conception) or she does it through her acquiescence to God’s redemptive plan, her Fiat. Whichever reading we should give this passage, Our Lady conquers through an exemplary instance of the feminine virtue of voluntary passivity.
For St. Bernard, there is no question as to the implications or the intent of the passage from the third chapter of Genesis. He, likewise, understands Our Lady’s triumph to be a reversal of Eve’s seduction. Moreover, St. Bernard understands it to be significant that it was not merely a "person" who was chosen to crush the head of the ancient serpent by her existence and her acts of voluntary submission to the Divine Will, but, rather, a woman. Here we see the essential connection between womanhood and maternity, both in the natural and in the supernatural orders; while Eve was the mother of all in the order of nature, Mary is the mother of all in the order of grace.
St. Bernard speaks of Our Lady as woman, mother, and valiant conqueror of the Evil One, when he states in one of his sermons, "Of whom, then, if not of the Virgin, does the Lord appear to have spoken when He said to the serpent, ‘I will put enmities between thee and the woman?’ But if you are not yet convinced that He was alluding to Mary, attend to what follows, ‘She shall crush thy head.’ For whom but Mary was that victory reserved? She undoubtedly crushed the serpent’s venomous head by bringing to naught every attempt of the wicked one to seduce her with his suggestions of pleasure and pride. Again, whom else but Mary was Solomon seeking when he asked: ‘Who shall find a valiant woman?"
In the above, St. Bernard recognizes that in light of the way in which God was going to redeem mankind, through the Incarnation and the propitiatory Sacrifice of the Cross, it would be a woman, a woman who would combine the two morally licit forms of feminine life, by whose immaculate being and by whose fiat all who shall be saved will be saved. In the following passage, he again points to Our Lady as the one chosen by God to fill the role of the "valiant woman": "But he knew also from the Scriptures the promise made by God - and it seemed to him only natural [emphasis mine] - that he who had conquered by a woman should be conquered by a woman. And hence he [King Solomon] cried out in an excess of admiration, ‘Who shall find a valiant woman?’ That is to say, ‘If the salvation of us all, and the recovery of our innocence, and our victory over Satan, thus depend upon a woman, it is absolutely essential to find a valiant woman, who shall be capable of accomplishing so difficult a task. But who shall find such a valiant woman?’ . . . . ‘Far and far from the uttermost bounds is the price of her.’" With the Blessed Virgin, we have a woman who is valiant, because she is steadfast. It is the New Eve who forever refutes Virgil’s stricture in the Aeneid that: Varium et mutabile semper femina.
C) Our Lady’s Sorrows: Passion and Endurance
The victory of Our Lady over the Evil One spoken of in Genesis involves a combat, which has three distinct aspects. The first is the most purely passive. The term "passive" here, refers not to a state of inactivity or any state which lacks actuality, rather, I use the term in the sense that Aristotle used it to describe an attribute of a being by which it receives some form of actuality or perfection from another being. It is in her Immaculate Conception, in which she, from the first moment of her existence, exists free from all stain of Original Sin that she inflicts the first defeat on Satan. Since it was her soul which was free from Original Sin, and since the soul is the "first act" of a living being, in the very primal actuality of her being she defeated Satan’s desire to make the entirety of mankind endure a period during which they did not bear within themselves the very image and likeness of God. It is on account of the sinlessness of her being that the Little Chapter of Prime in the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin states: "Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array?"
"Rejoice, O Virgin Mary, thou alone hast destroyed all heresies in the whole world." This antiphon from Matins in the Little Office, states clearly the understanding of the Church which holds that Our Lady, by being the Mother of God, defeats all heresies which in any way throw into question the Hypostatic Union (i.e., the union of a human nature and a divine nature in the Divine Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ). The dogma of the Divine Maternity was affirmed at the very same Ecumenical Council (Ephesus 431) in which the unity of the two natures in one Divine Person was asserted. If Mary is the Mother of God, then she is the mother of the "whole" Christ, the Mother of a Christ who cannot be divided. From the moment of Our Lady’s Fiat, the Divine Logos would be Man and God, Soul, and Body for Eternity. By her voluntary Fiat, unlike her Immaculate Conception, Our Lady was not purely passive. Her single affirmation of the Father’s will for her, was what made her the instrument by which the True Religion was introduced into the society of men. St. Bernard emphasizes the refutation of heresy as being a consequence of Our Lady’s Fiat, when he states, "For Mary is the woman, promised of old by God, who shall crush the serpent’s head with the foot of her virtue, and for whose heel he has lain in wait with many wiles, but all to no purpose. It is through Mary alone that every impious heresy has been vanquished. One heresiarch maintained that Christ, although brought forth by her, was not formed from her flesh. . . . whilst [another], unable to endure that she should be called the Mother of God [i.e., Nestorius, condemned by the Council of Ephesus], impiously sought to deprive her of that crowning title. But the serpents lying in wait have been crushed, the would be supplanters have been trodden under foot, the slanderers of Mary have been put to confusion [by true doctrine], and, behold, all generations now call her blessed." We find a perfect artistic representation of this teaching that by being the Mother of God Our Lady puts to rest the intellectual fermentation of unbelievers, in the chapel of St. Januarius in Naples. There we find a fresco by Il Domenichino showing the triumph of the Virgin Mother over the Protestant Revolt. Here we find a young hero treading underfoot Luther and Calvin, who are identified by name in inscriptions. He carries a white banner on which we read three answers to the protestant attacks: Semper Virgo – Dei Genitrix – Immaculata. In Emile Male’s book Religious Art After the Council of Trent, we read the following description of this overtly apologetic work of art: "Against the innovators, the young champion of the Virgin affirms that she was virgin before and after the birth of Jesus, that she is the Mother of God and not merely the Mother of Christ, and finally that she is free from original sin. Near him a young woman, Prayer, carries the rosary that the Lutherans denounced as an invention of Satan. The Ave Maria mounts up to the Virgin, who is on her knees before her Son. She offers to Him the prayers of mankind which have moved her heart to pity, and two angels put into the scabbard the sword of divine wrath."
It was, of course, in her internal suffering, exemplified in her Seven Sorrows, that Our Lady showed herself completely to be both woman and warrior, that is, a true lady. In the fourteenth century, we hear St. Catherine of Siena exclaiming, "O Mary, you bring us the fire of God’s mercy! Your are the liberator of the human race, since Christ purchased it with His passion, and you, Mother, purchased it with the pain of your body and the anguish of your soul." When we meditate on the most "active" way in which Our Lady participated in Our Lord Jesus Christ’s conquest of Satan, we find that this active role was, likewise, a type of "passivity," a true passion. How can one who is continuously submitting be considered a "valiant" woman, a woman useful in and used to battle? To fail to see the valiant nature of Our Lady’s life and her passion is to fundamentally misunderstand the true nature of the virtue that has always characterized the valiant, the virtue of fortitude or courage.
According to Aristotle and, before him, the Classical Greek ethical tradition as a whole, fortitude was considered to be the virtue which regulated and rightly channeled our natural fear of the horrible, so that the object provoking our fear would not interfere with our attainment of the difficult and great good. The quintessential possessor of this virtue was the warrior, the man who faced, as part of his normal life, the most naturally horrible thing, death. To be brave in battle meant to so control our fear of death, that it would not interfere with our achievement of the difficult good of victory in battle, hence, safety for the commonweal from its enemies. Notice here, that it is not the man who does not fear who is brave, he is simply reckless; it is the man who fears, but does not let fear become his master, who is the man of true fortitude.
Concerning this virtue possessed by the valiant soldier in battle, St. Thomas Aquinas makes a very interesting and penetrating point. Of the two principal acts of fortitude, endurance and attack, endurance is more of the essence of the virtue. Keeping in mind that fortitude has to do with allaying the fear of death, St. Thomas gives three reasons why endurance is more difficult than an aggressive attack. First, because endurance normally infers being attacked by something stronger than oneself, whereas, aggression connotes that one is attacking as though one were the stronger party. Second, because he or she who endures already feels the presence of danger, whereas the aggressor looks upon danger as something to come. Finally, endurance implies length of time; it is more difficult to remain unmoved for a long time, than to be moved suddenly by the call to attack. This is why St. Thomas speaks of the martyrs, who were "valiant in battle," as the ones who manifested the virtue of fortitude to the most heroic degree. They endured by cleaving to the good of the Faith and to the good of Grace amidst the roaring beasts.
It is Our Lady, undergoing an internal suffering at the foot of the Cross, that we would attribute endurance to in the highest degree. Her endurance, however, for which she is given the title Co-Redemptrix, is an endurance different for the one of the martyrs. Her exemplary endurance, for which she can, also, be given the title "valiant in battle," mirrors that of her Divine Son. Just like the Holy Martyrs, Our Lord and Our Lady did not attack the unjust like a soldier would in a just war. They endured a great evil, the infliction of death, in order to attain a great good. Our Lord Jesus Christ, however, did not have to "cleave" to the good, since He is the Good, the source of all grace, and the intellectual expression of God the Father’s own being. Neither was he faced with a superior and, circumstantially invincible force; He is the Omnipotent Lord of all. He laid down His own life; it was not taken from him. The real sufferings, however, both psychological and physical, had to be endured. It was precisely by enduring those sufferings, and enduring the death that was the consequence of those sufferings, that evil, death, sin, and Satan were defeated. By endurance they were reduced to naught. Here we are confronted with a conquering passivity; one that will not be moved.
Our Lady of Compassion, the one who stands at the foot of her dying Son’s Cross, does not undergo the physical pains which afflict her Redeemer. Neither is she, being a human person, stronger than those who oppress her by lacerating her only begotten Son. Rather, her own sufferings, which were her sympathetic endurance of the Passion of her Son, were not an enduring of, but rather, an enduring with. By enduring with her Son to the end, to His death, by standing with Him, she shared in the redemption of all of mankind; to her belongs the booty of the Savior. "Bruis’d, derided, curs’d, defil’d, She beheld her tender child; All with bloody scourges rent. For the sins of His own nation, saw Him hang in desolation, Till His spirit forth He sent." It is with the tears, that only a mother could shed, that Our Lady showed herself to be the consummate woman, warrior, and lady. The true Mistress of the Lord’s household.

Interview on the Crash of 2008

2009-01-31T08:57:00.000-08:00

The Crash of 2008: An Update
Interview with Dr. Peter Chojnowski
October 10, 2008
In the July CFN, you published the article "American Foreclosed: The $500 Trillion Debt Bubble Pops." Could you give us a quick recap of that article and how it relates to the present economic meltdown?
Yes. I would like to thank CFN for giving me this opportunity to provide an up-date to the articles written this summer, which tried to outline the causes and the consequences of the implosion of the financial system that could be foreseen earlier this year. So much has changed since that the first article, "America Foreclosed" was written in June. Talk about a financial implosion due to the credit and mortgage crisis and the popping of the housing bubble has gone from the "fringe" to the halls of Congress and the main stream media. In fact, where can you go today where you don’t hear everyday people speaking about "the Fed," "depression," asking "How many hundreds of points did the market fall today?" To hear public school teen-agers speaking about the origin of the Federal Reserve at an athletic facility, as I did yesterday, is truly an exceptional and new experience. Only 4 months ago, this was unthinkable. To date, nothing stated in "America Foreclosed" has to be taken back, with one exception, which I will mention shortly. In that article, I tried to trace the origins of the sub-prime housing crisis that was then very much in the news. Much of the present crisis can be traced to the action of Richard Nixon taking the United States off the gold standard and, thereby, creating an infinite possibility for the US government to create an infinite supply of money to benefit the current party in power and their financial and political backers. The ability to create money or credit (N.B., these two are actually identical in our present financial system) at will, without having to worry about a tie to a very finite quantity of a precious metal, was the necessary condition for the "liquidity and credit binge" which marked the years 1987-2006, the years that Alan Greenspan was chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank. Through constant interest rate cuts and incessant liquidity injections, Greenspan created debt bubble in the history of the human race. As an example, in the year 2001, interest rates were cut 11 times in the year 2001. This followed huge liquidity injections of at least 200 billion dollars in the months leading up to the Y2K non-event. This amounted to a 14% yearly increase in the money supply. Easy credit and an abundant supply of money created the biggest financial bubbles that the globe has ever seen. The dot.com bubble was transformed into a stock market equity bubble, which became a housing bubble, which itself became a home-equity credit bubble. These financial bubbles, while wildly exaggerating the worth of Internet companies, stocks, and houses, also, drove the American people into a chasm of debt. The United States became ridiculously "overleveraged." As I mention in the article, the American people racked up more mortgage debt from 2003 to 2005 ($3.7 trillion) as they had in all the years since the founding of the United States to 1990 ($3.8 trillion). It was the absurdity of the "Ninja loan," no income, no job, and no assets, which is at the root of this present global systemic crisis, that, as of today, threatens to collapse the entire Capitalist financial system.
Would you do the same for your September CFN article, "The Fall of the Phantom Assets: Economic Autumn 2008"?
In this second article, written in August of 2008, I tried to present the details of the "New Economy" and, what I called, "Win/Win Capitalism," which, in the 2 months since, has ceased to exist or, rather, has shown itself to be the illusion that it always was. According to "Phantom Assets," what is "Win/Win Capitalism"? "Win-Win Capitalism" is a economic form in which speculative risk has been eliminated. This is actually the most proximate cause of the present financial meltdown. Even though, according to Charles Morris in his Trillion Dollar Meltdown, American Capitalism has always tried to minimize risk by establishing various domestic monopolies, it was only beginning in the 80s under Reagan, intensifying in the 90s under Clinton, and, finally, reaching absurd heights of recklessness under Bush in the years 2003-2007, that there has been a New Economy conceived of in which financial speculators and banks can eliminate risk, or so they thought, by "packaging" and "securitizing" debt. If the mortgage-issuing bank could sell the debt to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac and, in the process, gain all relevant fees for initiating the loan, it had made money and was free of any worries concerning defaults on the loans they issued. The loan-initiating bankers were willing to issue loans to any and all, since they benefited by the initial fees taken and did not have to worry about the new "homeowners" defaulting. Masses of mortgages were packaged up into CMOs (collateralized mortgage obligations) and sold to investors who believed that they were investing in risk-free securities since the mortgage investment "packages" were tranched so that high-yield, but high-risk, "junk bonds" were supported by low-yield but "investment" grade "secure" bonds. Everyone was going to make money or have the house of your dreams and every one was financially "safe". Risk had been eliminated.
All variety of derivative contracts, also, "hedged" investments so that they seemed relatively-risk free. To quote derivative specialist Satyajit Das, "CDO [Collateralized Debt Obligation] tranching is the black art of dissimulation. Investors are told that they are getting access to a ‘diversified’ portfolio of credit risk and are promised highly customized credit risk. It is very clever spin." Options, Puts, futures contracts, credit-default swaps, were all ways of hedging risk by either "swaping" debt liability (thereby providing a kind of insurance against the risk of default) or "betting" on the rise or fall of stocks --- or even, financially betting on the state of the weather! There was a derivative contract for every taste. Such was the "financial economy" that was estimated to be, before the crash that is, worth 1,000x the "real economy" (i.e., the one that actually produces goods and services). It was a huge inverted pyramid of debt and financial claims upon debt, with a question mark where the asset capstone was supposed to be.
You were well aware of what would happen and sounded a warning. Why, in your opinion, did the US House and Senate appear to be caught off guard when the meltdown struck? First, they believe in the system as a substitute religious faith. How can such a gigantic and all-encompassing reality fail? Just as we believe that God has all the wherewithal within Himself to triumph in any situation, no matter how adverse to His cause, so too these men and women hold that the system that they have served so faithfully had all the wherewithal, within itself, to smooth out any "bumps in the road." Think about it. What if I had said in my summer articles that in September we would have the chairman of the Senate finance committee Chris Dodd on Good Morning America saying that he had been informed by the Secretary of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Chairman that the United States was within days of the meltdown of its entire financial system. Who would have believed such "extremism," and, yet, that is exactly what happened. Who would have believed that within 4 months of the first article the phrase, "imminent systemic global meltdown" would be part of the headline news on CNBC. It is time for all to give a warm hug of apology to your much-maligned local "doom and gloomster"; the economic implosion that they predicted is happening before our very eyes.
What do you think of the government’s explanation of the crisis? The explanation of the politicians, that this is due to the greed of financiers, is tainted by hypocrisy, since it was the administrations of both parties that enabled the financiers to engage in this wildly profitable orgy of "risk-free" capitalism. They are, also, the beneficiaries of political donations from the banking industry to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Listen, the reason for the present collapse of the stock market (as of October 10th, 2008, the DOW has lost 40% of its value since its height exactly one year ago) is simple. In a very real way, nothing has changed. What we are now realizing, however, is that risk avoidance is a two-headed coin, it made for the boom and it is making for the bust. According to investor and New York University professor Nouriel Roubini, "The world is experiencing the simultaneous bursting of housing, equity, bond, credit, commodity, hedge fund and private equity bubbles….The financial system is breaking down, panic and lack of confidence in any counterparty is sharply rising and investors have totally lost faith in the ability of policy authorities to control the meltdown." In their continued attempt to avoid risk, investors and banks are no longer investing in derivative contracts and "financial instruments" or loaning to everyone and anyone with "don’t ask, don’t tell" loans, rather they are hoarding cash and refusing to loan to anyone. This is why the bond markets and credit markets have frozen up. According to David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York, "Nobody wants to take on any risk. Everybody just wants to get their money and put it under the mattress." Here we have one connection between the financial economy and the real economy. Businesses cannot finance themselves in the bond market, since there are no buyers. If they cannot finance themselves by selling paper in the commercial paper markets, they must cut on business expansion, lay-off workers, or simply declare bankruptcy. Martin Crutsinger, writing for AP Economics, "The credit markets remain stubbornly locked up. The benchmark rate that banks charge each other for loans, known as Libor, rose to 4.75% from 4.52% a day earlier, signaling banks are still afraid to make loans because they worry they won’t be paid back." The credit markets cannot remain frozen long before you have the halting of economic activity. The entire Capitalist/Credit-based economic system depends upon trust. According to one financial specialist I spoke with yesterday, banks are simply avoiding loaning and investing and simply "fleeing to safety" by investing in very low-yield Treasury bills. The deluge of cash and credit that the Fed has injected into the financial system, there was an injection of over 800 billion last week, is not being loaned out but rather returned to the US government. These huge capital injections will not restart the economy, but, eventually, will ignite hyper-inflation.

What is your opinion of the $700 billion dollar bailout?
I was outraged at first --- that the taxpayer should pick up these bonds and mortgages just when they have ceased to be profitable, while the major investment banks made an incredible amount of money when these bonds were "high-risk" and "high-yield." Secondly, it does not address the real problem. The system is awash in debt and there no way of paying it back. There is, in any commercially advanced country, three layers of debt, governmental debt, the debt of banks and businesses, and finally, private consumer debt (e.g., your mortgage). This legislation simply would transfer the debt problem from the second to the first tier. It does nothing to alleviate the debt problem fastened on to the backs of the American people. It is the sinking fortunes of the American people which is causing the implosion of the House of Usury that is currently shaking the world. It was exciting when the House Republicans defeated the measure. It was disgusting when, with added pork for all, the bailout was so easily passed. Most of the money for this bailout will be going to only a few banks, such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and J.P. Morgan. If this bailout was, as the politicians said, meant to "prop up the market," it failed dismally. Why did the House pass the resubmitted bailout when Senate passage produced a several hundred point drop in the Dow. It is very likely, that the national governments will not be able to handle this crisis. It will be quickly sent up to the international level and some international solution will be imposed, which may or may not work. Indeed, yesterday (October 10th), Silvio Berlusconi, premier of Italy, after a cabinet meeting, said that the leaders of the world might close down the markets and then "rewrite the rules of international finance" (i.e., change the current world system in a fundamental way).

Since the meltdown hit, we have seen some people driven to despair rather quickly. A 49 year old British millionaire with a wife and young son committed suicide by throwing himself from a moving train; a 90 year old woman in Ohio twice shot herself in the stomach when she was threatened with foreclosure eviction (she lived and the bank then said she could keep her home); a man in California murdered his entire family and then killed himself because he could not find work; a 60 year old frustrated investor in Stamford, CT walked into a bank and threatened to blow it up. As a Catholic professor, specializing in Ethics, could you comment on this? What does this say about modern society when it comes to facing suffering and hardship?
I really think that this economic crash will hit our world even harder than did the 1929 Crash. That is saying a lot, but I cannot avoid thinking it. If you have had a people who have been taught for generations that the essence of life is the fulfillment of the "American Dream," a purely secular fulfillment, then we wonder how these people can maintain their equilibrium when that "Dream," which for the past 40 years or so has depended upon cheaper and cheaper credit, begins to resemble a nightmare. Clearly most people in our own civilization do not understand St. Augustine’s famous prayer that, "you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee, Oh Lord." Personally, I have held for a long time that it was the easy credit economy which propped up the Liberal political, economic, social, and educational system. Without this prop, the inherent instability of such a system will reappear. We have "families" which are not really families, we have "neighbors" who are not really neighbors, we have "schools" that are not really schools, we have governments who have lost their concern for the common good, "banks" don’t really have any money. The list could go on and on. When all the credit cushioning is taken away, how will we react to the primary realities of human existence that we have covered over by comfort and technology, realities which our ancestors knew about and dealt with daily? More and more we are going to have to have mercy in our hearts and pity in our minds for the people around us as they suffer through the downfall of the phantasmagoric world that Wall Street has created. If times get tough, how will we cope? Most people have lost those survival skills, the self-sufficiency, and the familial and community ties necessary to continue on even when the system has ceased to function. One opinion I will venture here, we miss the point if we only focus on the obvious day to day unfolding of the economic implosion or the stock market crash. I believe that what we are going through is a "paradigm shift," a changing of the "world-view" or philosophical, religious, and ideological scheme that has dominated our world since the Enlightenment. The change may be slow or very fast, but very soon we will realize that --- while we were watching the market crash on CNBC, Liberalism died. We always knew that it would. As a Viennese wit would have it, "everything has an end, except the sausage, which has two"! What will replace the Liberal System? I really cannot even guess, other than to say that what ever it is, it will be more "real," either in an enlivening way or in a very frightening way.
What stage are we now at in the Systemic Global Economic Crisis?
With the collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, the Systemic Global Financial Crisis was upon us. Overlooking the fact that the National Debt Clock temporarily ran out of digits, when the National Debt passed to $10.148 trillion, the US government has either nationalized or bailed out the major mortgage lenders and the largest insurance company in the world. All these things have happened within the last 2 months. "Unprecedented" has been a word on the lips of innumerable financial analysts since this summer. When it looked like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and J.P. Morgan were going down and when it became clear how much the failed Lehman Brothers was involved in every aspect of international finance, the Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, proposed that the US government pay these newly minted savings banks (they had to change their status as "investment banks") for all the formerly profitable bad debt they had accumulated. It seems as if the Parable of the Bad Steward gives us our explanation as to the reason for the Crash of 2008. Whereas the Federal Government has forgiven the bad debt of the major former investment banks, actually planning to pay them, at a decent price, for the bad debt in order to "recapitalize" them, it seems as if Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley are not as forgiving towards their own debtors. It seems that there is a research note circulating around financial circles, which indicates that the recent plunge in the stock market has been due to the "newest" large banks, who have changed their status as investment banks so as to have more of a cash base, have issued "margin calls" to hedge funds and other professional traders who use these banks as prime brokers. Since margin calls require hedge funds and investors to put up actual dollars to back up their "leveraged" financial assets, they are a very serious matter. They help reveal how little actual "money" is in the system. These margin calls were not issued because of market loses, but more because the recently-bailed out big banks arbitrarily decided that they wanted their customers too use less leverage (i.e., they wanted a larger ratio of cash to debt). Margin rates as low as 15% for broker deals were raised to 35%, hedge funds who had been used to operating with large amounts of debt (i.e., high leverage) were told that they had to bring accounts up to a much larger percentage of equity. With credit markets frozen, the only place to raise case to meet margin calls was to sell stock. That is what really sent the market over the edge. First notice of these margin calls were issued on October 2nd. Rumors are that the most massive calls are due on October 13, 2008. It seems as if the stock market will go down much more than the 40% it is down already. The bear market, beginning this summer is still very much underway.
Make a prediction as to how this economic crisis will unfold in the coming months and what will be the consequences for the average American?
Clearly we are not experiencing merely a recession or a simple bear market. On October 11, 2008, the head of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) Dominique Strauss-Kahn said, "Intensifying solvency concerns about a number of the largest US-based and European institutions have pushed the global financial system to the brink of systemic meltdown." Clearly, we cannot imagine the financial system returning to the way it was before this present crisis in which $8.4 trillion has been lost in the stock market. That must stricken value must have an effect on the real economy. With the British government planning to nationalize their banking system, beginning with The Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS, and Secretary Paulson speaking in the same vein, we must say that laissez-faire economics will not set the agenda for a very very long time. If the System can be saved, the governments of the world will attempt Statist solutions, whether on the national or the international levels. They realize that if another huge bank goes bust, so does the global financial system. The problem with the present situation is that the massive injections of liquidity, the nationalizations, and the transference of toxic debt from private banks to the government, is that the more the disappearance of trillions of dollars from the world economy and its inevitable effect on the real economy will simply increase the number of loan defaults, both on the personal and corporate levels, thus leading to further write-downs and the further evaporation of financial trust which is the glue holding together the system. According to Nouriel Roubini, "In a typical year US corporate default rates are about 3.8% (average for 1971-2007); in 2006-2007 (the height of the easy credit regime) this figure was a puny 0.6%....Corporate default rates will surge during the 2008 recession and peak well above 10% based on recent studies." These inevitable defaults will likely produce a vicious circle of losses, write-offs, credit contraction, forced liquidation, fire-sales of assets at below fundamental prices, and bankruptcies of businesses and banks who are suffocated by not having sufficient access to credit. My guess would be that the world is going through a "controlled" systemic meltdown right now, but the corporate media is supporting their corporate financial masters by focusing solely on the day to day "rallies" and "runs." I still do not believe that people realize the implications of the Fall of the House of Usury.

Announcement

2009-01-28T19:03:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,
This is just to let you know that I no longer have the web address, pelicanproject.org
Neither I nor any one associated with my work, articles, or books has anything to do with the organization, on the web, now billing itself as the Pelican Project.org. We will continue using the name Pelican Project, in our publishing, since we have been using this name for the past 6 years. I have no idea who these people are nor what their intention was in taking a name which we have long ago chosen to identify our work.

Book Review of Fr. Vincent McNabb’s The Church and the Land

2007-02-16T20:05:00.000-08:00

By: Dr. Peter Chojnowski
November 3, 2006

If Catholics are going to confront the world with the idea that they have the solutions to the ultimate problems of human life and society, they must, also, provide this same neo-pagan world with the proximate solutions to their ultimate problems. This, more than any other idea, is the point of Fr. Vincent McNabb’s recently republished text, The Church and the Land. McNabb, born Joseph McNabb in Portaferry, Ireland near Belfast in 1868 and ordained a priest in the Dominican Order, spent his entire life living out the statement in St. Thomas’ Summa that the most perfect form of human life is the one in which the contemplative channels his own attained wisdom into action, both through teaching others and acting amongst the society of men to achieve the good of all. The wisdom which Fr. McNabb drew upon was common fare for many Catholics prior to the twin disasters of World War II and Vatican II. The three works that he speaks of as being his well of inspiration were the Bible, the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas, and Rerum Novarum, the encyclical on the condition of the working class issued in 1891 by Leo XIII. The coherent social teaching of the Catholic Church, beginning with Rerum Novarum, was, for Fr. McNabb, simply Thomism-in-action. Action, the actual realizing of “the good of the true,”was clearly the intent of The Church and the Land. If we see the concrete lived problems of the age, and we know the Catholic moral, doctrinal, and social principles which are meant to be remedies for any human problems, we cannot but desire to implement those truths, in the lives of real men, women, and children, in order to help ameliorate the evils incumbent upon life in the Liberal System and facilitate theirmovement towards their ultimate end. The problems which Fr. McNabb was addressing in 1925, when he wrote this text, were real, for example, the rapid decline of Catholic cultural life and practice in the urban milieu of England and America, along with the lower birthrates which were causing the Catholic portion of the citizenry in Britain and America to plummet relative to the overall growth in population. In support of this, he cites American Archbishop Edwin O’Hara who documented the demographic fact that the general population of the United States had increased by 17% from 1906 to 1916, while the Catholic Church increased its numbers by only 10% during the same period. This was compared to a 19% increase in membership in Protestant churches. Fr. McNabb’s answer to these very concrete problems was simple, Catholic families must return to the land if they are to serve as the building blocks of a restored Christian Order. This advice to the Catholics of the 1920s, 30s, and early 40s was not merely a matter of demography, but a grave moral concern, since he continually asserts that modern urban life is a proximate occasion of sin. Throughout this text, Fr. McNabb provides examples of the moral compromises that almost inevitably follow from life in the urban/suburban world of contemporary cities. What we see in McNabb’s advocacy of the Back-to-the-Land movement in England was not merely a practical moral solution to real human problems, but a general questioning of the progressive nature of our contemporary Liberal, Consumerist, and Technology-dominated world. In his “Attempt at a Social Balance Sheet,” McNabb challenges us by forcing us to look at the damage done to normal human life by industrialism and urbanization. How many families have their own Home? How many workers live over their work? How many mothers go out to work? How many children are in the average family? These are questions which the modern manipulators of mass opinion insist do not matter. But they do matter? Not only for Depression Era urban workers, but for ourselves in this MicroAge. Are we not continually saying that milieu matters? Is it not the case that the whole reason for reestablishing Christendom, other than to make everything a footstool of Our Lord Jesus Christ, is to make the external society more conducive to living the life of virtue, both natural and supernatural? Does the technology-based urban system, which is expanding every day, incline us and ours to the life that God wishes us to live. Does it provide us with the daily food for contemplation from which a stable life of human nobility and meritorious supernatural acts flow? Fr. McNabb’s answer is clearly, “No.” It is a “No” that has the potential to shake the inhuman economic system which daily forces men and women to sacrifice the normal so that a few richmen may increase their profits. The way in which McNabb’s critique throws into question the foundations of the current economic system is by focusing on the fact that the modern capitalist industrial economy, and certainly all of the socialist economies that have been known, concentrates human effort and manpower on the production of what Fr. McNabb calls “secondary goods.” The key to rectifying man’s economic maladies and dislocations is the dedication of the greater part of human manpower to the production of “primary goods,” the food, clothing, fuel, and shelter that man needs to sustain life. By focusing their craft know-how upon the basic means of human sustenance, the nation, the local community, or even, in a certain way, the family can attain a level of self-sufficiency that would establish them as stable and coherent communities. In this regard, Fr. McNabb, being always the Dominican, cites the political teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, in his text De Regimine Principum, to advance this view that the self-sufficient society and community, especially in regard to the production of “primary goods,” is the best form of human society. Citing from Chapter III of the De Regno, as this text is often called, McNabb points out that St. Thomas states, “The more a thing is found to be self-sufficient the better it is; because what needs another is clearly wanting. . . . Therefore it is better for a city if it has a sufficiency of things from its own lands, than if it should be exposed to commerce.” To this St. Thomas adds the authority of Aristotle who stated that, ”it is more fitting that the citizens should be occupied outside cities, than that they should dwell always within the city walls.” Here we see how McNabb, advocating a flourishing agrarian life, perfectly fits within Aristotelian-
Thomistic social, political, and economic thought. It is in the informative introduction by Dr. William Fahey, professor at Christendom College, that we find an answer to the question which continually surround the Agrarian answer to many of the modern world’s problems, “How can this pleasing vision of the way society ought to be be realized in the lives of real men and women in our own age?” In answer to this question, Dr. Fahey first provides us with a summary of the concrete results of the agrarian Catholic Land Movement as it really existed, both in Britain and the United States prior to World War II. Confronted with the economic catastrophe of 1929-1930, some 26,000 men took advantage of temporary government subsidies to move from urban areas to farming properties. According the statistics cited, some 73% of these transplanted city-dwellers remained on the land as successful small-holding farmers. These efforts in England, Wales, and Scotland were encouraged by Popes Pius XI and Pius XII, the British Catholic Hierarchy, and a host of Catholic intellectuals. The race to the rural was even more impressive in the United States. Here,between the years 1930 to 1932, some 764,000 moved from the city to the countryside to take uplife on the land. By quoting from St. Thomas Aquinas’ De Regimine Principum and by continually citing Pope Leo XIII’s statement in Rerum Novarum that, “The law should favor ownership. Its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the humbler classes to become owners,” Fr. McNabb firmly sets his agrarian vision within the intellectual tradition of the Catholic world. The palpable and enticing goals set by Fr. McNabb, the American Catholic Rural Life Movement, the British Catholic Land Movement, and the Distributist League were instrumental in reviving an appreciation in the first half of the 20th century for the traditional political outlook of the Catholic Church that emphasized subsidiarity (i.e., a decentralized political and economic order) and the common good. Understanding himself to be only following a path cut by the great doctors of the Catholic past and, specifically, responding to the cry in Rerum Novarum that, “a remedy must be found, and found quickly,” we are not surprised that, in this text, Fr. McNabb explicitly denies that he is a part of any political movement, rather he understood himself to be a pastor of souls who was urging families to find a life in harmony with nature, a life where work, worship, intellectual leisure, and family life were all of a cloth, for the good of their bodies and their souls. “If the thoughts and hopes that have inspired [this book] do not inspire some of our readers, the book will have been written in vain. Indeed, not only will the writing of the book, but even the many years of life and thought behind the book, have been in vain. To find no one answering our Call to Contemplatives will seem to give the lie to one of our deepest and most mature convictions.” In this quotation from the first chapter of The Church and the Land, entitled “A Call to Contemplatives,”which he insists should, also, be read as the last chapter, Fr. McNabb states that what he is calling for is an Exodus. An Exodus from the modern techno-urban versions of the “flesh-pots” of Egypt to the land “flowing with milk and honey.” In order to clarify for his reader what he intends by this “call” and his reasons for drawing this comparisonbetween the flight of the Israelites from captivity in Egypt to the “wilderness” of Sinai and the “Back to the Land Movement” which he led, McNabb emphasizes that it is only for a religious motive that anyone would desert the cities for the difficult life of the country or remain on the land in spite of the financial enticements of the suburbs or the city. In pointing out that the Israelites left Egypt not to inherit a land of “milk and honey,” but to “worship God,” McNabb preached in 1925 what we traditional Catholics heard at a much later date from Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. In his Priestly Jubilee Sermon on September 23, 1979, the Archbishop stated, when addressing the lay faithful, “And I wish that, in these troubled times, in this degenerate urban atmosphere in which we are living, that you return to the land whenever possible. The land is healthy; the land teaches one to know God; the land draws one to God; it calms temperaments, characters, and encourages the children to work.” Why encourage “contemplatives” to rediscover the land? Shouldn’t we leave them alone lest they hurt themselves? Does it help the advancement of Thomism, the perennial philosophical tradition of the Church, that thinking men and women know what feed grain is needed for a ewe in her last period of gestation? Yes, it does. If the Realism of St. Thomas is to be more to us than a system of true, but remote, abstractions, we must continually refer back to the natural realities that generated the concepts in the first place. It is not to be forgotten that the primary referent for Aristotelian philosophy is organic being. In the farm yard there is no Cartesian “pure extension.”

The Smear Reports by Dr. John Rao

2006-12-20T18:21:00.000-08:00

Michael Matt made reference to one of the most poignant incidents of the Vendée’s rising during the French Revolution in his talk for the Roman Forum’s Conference, “Catholics on the Global Auction Block”, in New York City on November 11th. He noted how many of the Catholic Vendéens, having had their normal routine disrupted, having marched into battle and seemingly having made their point, did what normal people would most want to do: they went home, where they hoped, finally, to be left in peace. Unfortunately, their enemies, driven by revolutionary obsessions, simply would not cease and desist. Ready to go for the jugular, they refined their techniques, kept up their pressure and, in the end, directed the republican army’s notorious “infernal columns” against their Catholic fellow countrymen in history’s first known genocide.
This incident sticks out in my mind a great deal these days in connection with the strange fallout from my recent appearance in Prague and the attack on my lecture there by Cardinal Vlk. Remnant readers will remember that I wrote an open letter to the Cardinal to explain that he was indeed correct in identifying me as an opponent of Americanism, but that he had no grounds for accusing me of thereby giving aid and comfort to anti-Semites, neo-Nazis and terrorists. Having made my point, all I really wanted to do was to put the whole issue behind me. I did not see the need for defending myself any further over an open and shut case, just as I would not feel pressed to devote vast amounts of time proving to someone who insisted that jumping off the Empire State Building would leave him uninjured that he might, perhaps, actually be wrong.
Three things only were on my mind for my post-Vlkian existence: continuing my regular writings against the influence of that crushingly powerful Americanist/Pluralist vision of political and social life which has given believing Catholics the “freedom” to recite their dogmatic principles in little Never Never Land hideaways in exchange for public enslavement to history’s most successful materialist enterprise; working, alongside my colleagues on this and other journals, to end Catholic support for a war in Iraq fomented by naturalist ideologues and self-interested politicians, and this before the inevitable reaction to its wildly mendacious and unjust character was cleverly manipulated to chastise the Faith along with its erring children; and, finally, finishing a book on Church History demonstrating how loyal Catholics through the ages have all too often been misled by a sophistic use of words to betray the message of the Word Incarnate.
Unfortunately, I had not taken account of the fact that my own ordinary daily priorities might be disrupted due to the impact of a new set of “infernal columns”--those published on several Catholic web sites, inspired by certain spiritual and intellectual concerns packaged in a form which was, until a month or so ago, totally unknown to me. These columns were clearly ready for action, and determined to press the story of my problems with Cardinal Vlk to the bitter end. I do not believe that their march was occasioned by a real interest in the substance of what I had said in Prague, but by a conviction that my talk there could provide further material for a cause célèbre. This could be seen in their effort to splice it into a taller tale, a story involving one of the most extraordinary collections of truths, half truths, historical howlers, equivocations, insinuations, speculations regarding issues of secondary esoteric import and obsessions with individual persons’ daily labors that I have ever encountered to date.
Alas!, I am ultimately a “small fry” in the list of desperados targeted by these new infernal columns. Nevertheless, their assaults have left a smear on my own reputation which will now remain imbedded on the Internet, perhaps for all eternity. Bloggers, indulging an idle curiosity dangerous to their souls, will discuss the slur to wile away the evening hours when there is nothing else to do, many of them experiencing that frisson of joy which comes from thinking that they are “onto and sharing something really big”. Inevitably, despite all the evidence to the contrary, some will come away from their game-playing thinking that John Rao must be, if only just a teeny-weeny little bit, a touch neo-Nazi, a touch anti-Semitic and a touch Islamic terrorist--all because he is anti-Americanist. After all, was his name not seen out there in cyberspace, tossed together, suggestively, by defenders of the Faith, with an array of identifiable Bay Guys? You know. The old, familiar Stalin-Hitler-Mohammed-John Rao nexus?
What this, in turn, means is that I am forced to take desperately needed time away from teaching what I consider to be really important for Catholics to know if they are to protect themselves in a very dangerous contemporary world; time that now must be spent to defend myself against absurdities; to prove that that leap off the Empire State Building is really bone-crushing after all. Well done, Smear Reports! Let the mind games being! Let the secondary, peripheral and esoteric concerns of Never Never Land Catholicism take precedence and triumph over the substantive matters that are truly destroying us.
Now smearing of Catholics dedicated to the Traditional Mass by their conservative brethren is obviously not a new phenomenon. I remember how angry we at Una Voce America were some years ago over the hatchet job done on us by one such group of concerned conservatives which constituted itself the unquestioned voice of doctrinal and liturgical orthodoxy and then printed its bizarre and misleading conclusions on the Internet. But The Smear Reports I am speaking of today are not of this conservative genre; these new ones are issued by men and women who call themselves traditionalists, and whose guns are aimed with obvious gusto against others who take pride in the same name.
Perhaps there are many such organizations and sites on the Internet. How could I know for certain unless I took another thousand hours away from eating, bathing and sleeping to hunt through the Black Hole opened up by Google for me to find out? There are only two of them—Fringe Watch and the LeFloch Report-- with which I am now familiar, and that just recently due to the persistent prodding of a young friend of mine deeply outraged by their arguments. Though reflective of different attitudes towards the Indult and the Society of St. Pius X, they appear to work hand-in-hand. It seems to be the latter, the one which is friendly to the Society, that has mobilized its infernal columns against my unsuspecting self.
What worries The Smear Reports? Its editors would argue that it is obviously the defense of the pure, unadulterated Catholic Faith. More specifically, they would say that they are troubled by the horrendous danger of subversion and secularization of the Catholic Faith due to the infiltration of the ranks of the traditionalist movement by a very specific group of representatives of what they call “perennialism”. Perennialism, they explain, is a mixture of philosophical, theosophical and theological speculations of gnostic character that seeks to unify men on the basis of common natural truths expressed throughout history under different outward forms. Ultimately pagan in its presuppositions, perennialism is used today to promote the victory of an anti-Catholic, secularist, rightist, racist, misogynist, ruralist movement. Infiltration of traditionalist circles is taking place either directly, through the work of true believers, or indirectly, through the connivance of useful idiots, yours truly among them. The perennialist, right-wing, racist victory would clearly be better served by the unity of its would-be Catholic allies, and, hence, the devotion of its fifth columnists and fellow-travelers to a “traditionalist ecumenism” which seeks to downplay the substantial differences within our own ranks. Traditionalist ecumenism, one ought to be advised, only seems to be acceptable when practiced against the danger of perennialism by Fringe Watch and the LeFloch Report, whose anti- and pro-Society backs must be sore from the mutual love taps they regularly give to one another.
As intimated above, the problem with The Smear Reports is not that they are devoid of truth. They often affirm sound principles, such as the importance of believing in the Social Kingship of Christ. They frequently attack gnostic and pagan notions which truly are reprehensible, and have indeed left a trail through all of human history. In fact, there is an extensive mainline scholarly literature on the so-called “Hidden Tradition” which contemporary groups seek to apply to modern religious, political and social life.
What makes The Smear Reports dangerous is the fact that, having asserted their Catholicism and made some interesting points about the perennial esoteric tradition, they then deal with individuals, groups and events in an equivocal fashion, relating everything they study to the service of their idée fixe: i.e., the supreme and overriding significance of the infiltration of traditionalism by right-wing racist perennialist organizations, true believers and fellow travelers. Obsession with this point prevents them from: a) really coming to terms with their targets, not just as robotic straw men and useful fuel for causes célèbres, but thoughtfully, so as to grasp how and to what degree their ideas and action might or might not be open to Catholicism; b) recognizing which of the Church’s manifold enemies is actually most dangerous today, and has already effectively infiltrated the traditionalist movement with its own esoteric principles; c) properly understanding the doctrinal principles behind the Social Kingship of Christ and their relation to human action in a world of free will; and, d) avoiding themselves becoming propagandists for an infinitely more successful naturalist “perennialism” than that carried by the mosquito they are dedicated to swatting.
Allow me to preface an elaboration of these assertions by saying something about the Catholic Social Movement that grew out of the nineteenth century struggle against the secularizing naturalism of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution to fight for the attainment of the Social Kingship of Christ. This movement gained the full support of the Church from the reign of Blessed Pius IX (1846-1878) onwards. Central to its battle for a social order and social institutions transformed under Christ the King was a sense of the urgent need to fight against the idea that social structures and social authorities were somehow unimportant to the individual’s efforts to gain salvation; that man could live a truly human life aimed towards God in a world where both society and individual, as well as the natural and supernatural realms, were clinically divided from one another and allowed to work at cross purposes.
Hence, the movement’s full-scale war for the Kingship of Christ and against the twin naturalist errors of an anti-social, individualist liberal capitalism and anarchism on the one hand, and an anti-individual, socially totalitarian marxism on the other. Hence, also its opposition to the separation of Church and State supported by both these different wings of naturalism. In fighting this war, Catholics actively seeking the Social Kingship of Christ showed their understanding of man’s holistic character. They underlined their recognition that all false separations of body and spirit would inevitably lead to the creation for a new kind of twisted unity of government with naturalist ideologies transformed into bizarre pseudo-religions themselves.
The chief problems for Catholics dedicated to “restoring all things in Christ” from the 1800’s onwards were two-fold. One was the fact that the influence of the naturalism and materialism of liberals, anarchists, marxists and then fascists--who subordinated a primary commitment to any idea to a restoration of order based on the will of a powerful leader--was exceedingly strong. Another was the realization that while the Faith gave broad guidelines to their actions, much of their temporal labor had to be based upon reason and prudential considerations, and that these, being fallible, could engender internal divisions over practical political programs and strategies.
Catholic political parties and pressure groups desiring the Social Kingship of Christ thus found that they had to be as wise as serpents. They had to maneuver to gain a hearing for their weaker position in a world dominated by their foes, all of whom shared much in common, as similar by-products of the same underlying Enlightenment naturalism. What made their maneuvering difficult was not only the greater strength of their opponents, but also the fact that all these enemies, in different ways, emphasized themes that touched on specific, immediate Catholic concerns for individual freedom, social justice, and social order. Points of contact could be, and were, appealed to by liberal, anarchist, marxist and fascist propagandists who did not share the spirit behind them, in the hope of co-opting Catholics for their own quite hostile purposes.
Four options thus lay before the Catholic Social Movement working for the Kingship of Christ under these conditions, and those options remain the same today: it could listen to the siren songs of political co-operation, allowing itself to be co-opted by one of the ideological forces noted above for the sake of some narrow, immediate practical “Catholic” gain; it could try to compete with its opponents on their own terms, turning itself into a political ideology, claiming the support of the Faith not just for its broad principles but its rational and prudential judgments as well; it could continue to squiggle and squirm, to stay viable and try to keep its integrity, with all of the nuances of a movement based on Faith and Reason, in a world not particularly to its liking; or it could give up its political mission entirely and wait for either a miracle to establish the Social Kingship of Christ or the Apocalypse to bring the need for it to an end.
The third option was really the only acceptable one, the sole that stood firmly by the full Catholic understanding of action in the public sphere. There is absolutely no way that I can take the time in this article to describe the torturous decisions that loyal Catholic activists, dedicated to achieving the Social Kingship of Christ but aware of the problems posed by the mystery of iniquity, felt called upon to make in the political and social reality forced upon believers by the unpleasant and downright evil conditions of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. To put oneself in the position of a Polish or an Hungarian Catholic forced to deal with both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, while simultaneously wondering what the victory of a Liberal Capitalist America allied with the latter would mean is to gain some sense of the dilemmas that the activist for Christ has had to face. All these decisions were subject to errors and mistakes. And all were made while facing the competition of fellow believers preaching all too easy alliance with spiritual opponents, the building of a Catholic political ideology demanding more support from the Faith than it could legitimately offer, or a social quietism permitting the strongest representative of the Status Quo to do whatever it is it wished.
Let us now turn back once again to the infernal columns of The Smear Reports. I share their love for promotion of the Social Kingship of Christ. I share their hatred for gnosticism and its perennial influence in seeking to build a unity of ultimately anti-Christian forces. But I reject as utterly irrational the two conclusions that they believe to flow logically therefrom: 1) that a rightist, racist “perennialism”, and a “traditionalist ecumenism” promoting it are “The Big Naturalist Problem” facing the Catholic Faith today; and 2) that everyone who does not share this conviction is an anti-Semite, a Communist-Nazi Hermaphrodite, or an idiot useful to the victory of the syncretist perennialist cause. Most importantly, however, I fear the influence of these conclusions because I find that they have turned the editors of The Smear Reports themselves into either agents or useful idiots of what is really The Big Naturalist Problem” for the Catholic Faith today: the Americanist/Pluralism of the New World Order. This true, immediate danger bombards them with enough esoteric perennialism to satisfy the most insatiable conspiratorialist. And it turns the hunt for the Social Kingship of Christ into a meaningless cyberspace pasttime.

That Problem with a capital “P” is not only the strongest material force in the world today. It is also the one that is most openly behind global revolutionary upheaval. On the practical level, the regime change that it favors requires acceptance of certain specific constitutional mechanisms and social policies. These “check and balance” into oblivion all rational and faith-filled attempts even to mention possible vices and crimes which prosper under such a system, much less correct them. Intellectually and spiritually, regime change involves positively promoting systemic evils through an evangelical and ever more insistent preaching of a universalist, gnostic, pseudo-religion of individualism and toleration. This is said to be mankind’s first sure-fire means of both avoiding divisiveness as well as assuring order and freedom. Americanist/Pluralist pseudo-religion has already co-opted the traditional denominations of the western world, which it has generally reduced to the level of subordinate spiritual “clubs” promoting pluralism in slightly variant Catholic, Protestant and Jewish ways. Its mission today is to bend Islam to its will in the same fashion. And, just as nineteenth century Catholic social thinkers predicted, the pseudo-religion of pluralism preaches its message in union with the State more closely and more intensely than any Faith has ever done in history.
Moreover, it is blessed, in doing so, with the help of talented and well-rewarded “snake oil salesmen”. Such snake oil salesmen are always around, ever on the hunt for the right sort of winning “pitch” to divert their victims’ attention from the criticisms of honest merchants horrified by shyster influence over a clientele that has a right to something substantive and good. The most dangerous of these junk peddlers have always been the snake oil salesmen of the Status Quo, which is forever fearful of the consequences of a message of truth, goodness and beauty for an established order which it wants to keep free from censure. From the days of the Sophists onwards, these spokesmen for acceptance of nature “as it is” have tried to discredit the work of anyone, Socratic or Christian, seriously dedicated to a profound study of all of life’s influences and institutions in order to understand how they can be used either to help or to hinder men in their efforts to grasp and then carry out the divine will. Spokesmen for the established order have sought entirely to eliminate such philosophical and theological endeavors. When they have been unable to do so, they have tried to emasculate and cheapen them. Emasculating and cheapening them involve depicting the one-dimensional, flawed and unexamined demands of the Status Quo as themselves the best, most obvious expression of divine will and reason, and unquestioning defense of such a godly, rational order as the most perfect theology and philosophy.
The chief weapon of the snake oil salesmen of the Status Quo in this soul-killing enterprise has been a repertoire of suggestive, fear-inspiring arguments designed to divert truth-seekers away from even the tiniest contemplation of possible escape from the back of Plato’s cave, much less any attempt actively to correct and transform all things natural through the supernatural work of Christ. Such concerns are identified by them as either a pathetic waste of time or dangerously revolutionary. If forced to press their case on religious terms, the snake oil salesmen will present the path to the Father of Lights as something purely inward and individual, which can only be badly distorted and led down wicked detours by concern for the outward conditions of the cave of ordinary life. The conditions of that cave--which the supposedly deluded Catholic activist sees as weighted in favor of superficial, secondary, soul-killing frivolities and materialist obsessions in need of purgation--are presented as the evident, unchangeable and even holy framework in which God wishes us to work out our salvation. In short, the weapon of the propagandists of the Status Quo is an enormous, rhetorically-charged, intellectual and spiritual wet blanket; one designed to smother all aspirations to anything other than regular schlucks of the dulling “snake oil of mindless acceptance” that they peddle. And this ensures a sickness unto death.
The snake oil salesmen of the Americanist/Pluralist Status Quo, which saw a chance to dominate the entire globe by the 1990’s, have utilized all these approaches to defend their employer, though clear difficulties have arisen due to missteps on the bloody path to the New World Order of freedom, tolerance and eternal peace. As the sores of this First Horseman of the Apocalypse have become ever more open, its survival has required a correspondingly greater emphasis on themes diverting attention away from its blatant crimes and miserable failures. This emphasis involves arousing a greater fear of the supposedly more imminent dangers posed by the three other Horsemen--all of whom happen to be anti-Pluralist in character--along with the intolerant, totalitarian hatred that they produce. These villains—Soviet Communism, Nazi Fascism and Terrorism—are indeed evil, but, at least at this particular moment in time, do not have the same seductive, destructive impact on Catholic orthodoxy and Catholic integrity as exercised by their Americanist/Pluralist comrade-in-devastation.
Lovers of the First Horseman have had to underline fresh arguments to keep the Soviet Communist theme alive, ever since the leadership of the East Bloc began to discover that the corporate and criminal freedoms guaranteed by Americanist/Pluralism gave it a much more solid chance to tighten effective grip on its populations than economically-backward Marxism ever offered. Nevertheless, the clear weakening of the usefulness of the Communist Menace demanded a greater focus upon the threat posed by the Nazi-Fascist Horseman. Hence, those daily evocations of the horrors of the Holocaust, which stir up a real sympathy for human suffering and fear of genocide in order to manipulate them for the justification of every illicit action of the anti-Nazi-Fascist “good guys”: i.e., the United States and its Israeli ally. This is supplemented by propaganda directed against the third anti-Pluralist Horseman, Terrorism-in-General, which has to be managed carefully, since it can itself easily degenerate into the racist tool condemned elsewhere. For, despite its accordion-like flexibility as a weapon for saving the Status Quo’s peeling skin, the hype on behalf of a War against Terror (which can be turned against any firmly-believed ideal) strikes an immediate, popular, macho, “us-and-them” chord, encouraging vigilante attention marking “us” as a totally different form of life from “them there wicked A-rabs”. I hear this sort of nonsense regularly: not from people who are justly concerned about the absurdity of uncontrolled immigration, but from men and women who somehow think that every single Middle Eastern or Moslem arrival in the United States possesses a peculiar gene for destruction of God’s Country and its global mission. All this, in total indifference both to a history of internal Moslem division which makes any such notion of their militant unity ridiculous as well as to the way in it serves to justify brutal Israeli oppression of Palestinians.
One would think that The Smear Reports, in their fight for the Social Kingship of Christ and against machismo and Islam would be eager to take on the “blow ‘um all up” imperialism of the Americanist Pluralist Goliath in some practical and immediate way. After all, even if one looks just to Iraq alone, its intervention there has been nothing other than a disaster for our Catholic brethren and a blessing for truly militant Islamic groups. But no. The mission has to be accomplished. And what about The Smear Reports’ desire to mobilize the faithful versus universalist religions of naturalist political import? Oh, yes, they will admit the problems for Catholicism lurking in the naturalism evident in some of the ideas motivating the New World Order, but—and this is very significant--only on the theoretical level. All practical work against that kind of obvious, open, self-proclaimed, militant naturalism seems to be viewed by them as heretical; as falling under the condemnation by St. Pius X of the work of the Sillon Movement, which, interestingly enough, shared all of the First Horseman’s concern for spreading liberal democracy. Any practical battle against the evils of the First Horseman appears to be tantamount to seeking paradise on earth. Besides, such practical work would take time away from the somehow righteous political labor of swatting at the flies of “The Great Big Rightist Racist Conspiracy” working with anti-Pluralists to seduce American traditionalists.
Allow me to examine these practical matters in greater detail by first reiterating the fact that I am fully aware of the existence of the sort of unacceptable rightist political forces disliked by The Smear Reports. They are one of the many historically-active children of the all too fertile naturalist Enlightenment. Such rightist groups do not have the answer to what ails us, because they are not rooted in Christ. While not “The Big Problem” today, they are likely to gain ever greater support insofar as at least some of the concerns that they address—such as local, national and ethnic autonomy—are shared by many of the people who suffer from the more pressing ravages of the globalism of the New World Order. Moreover, because those precise concerns intersect with a number of the serious worries of Catholic opponents of Americanist/Pluralism, they can indeed make an appeal for these potential allies’ support, and even, in theory, co-opt them. Anything is possible in a world of sin. This particular possibility has existed since the very birth of all of the different Enlightened-inspired political movements, which grew up in a Christian environment, have often fished for secular themes in supernatural Christian waters and indulged a taste for secularized Christian language to boot.
My awareness of the existence of such undesirable rightist groups is a personal one. Once, in 1989, I was invited by an Italian organization in Tuscany to discuss delivering a talk against Americanism at one of its future meetings. This preliminary dialogue revealed that association’s acceptance of a few of the ideas outlined today by The Smear Reports, although without the jazzed-up talk regarding perennialism. None of its members would even have been able to identify such a principle, much less support it. There was no effort made to “use” me. Everyone at the discussion was as up-front as he possibly could be with his respective beliefs. The rightists decided that they did not want me to speak for them when they realized just how Catholic my position was. I did not especially want to speak for them either, not only because of what their leaders seemed to be—rather embittered and power-hungry fascists—but also because their objections to Americanism turned out to be merely an objection to Americans and not to the pseudo-religious political ideology sadly misshaping my country’s destiny. All they wanted was an Italian-dominated New World Order; and one of similarly revolting character.
But let us, just for the sake of argument, say that my hosts went ahead with the invitation, and, indeed even encouraged me to come to their assembly despite my firm statements of Catholic belief. What if they assured me that I could say exactly what I wanted to say? That has also happened to me in my dealings with naturalist organizations of varied types over the years, and more than once. Would I be obliged, without any shadow of a doubt, to turn that kind of invitation down? Would I have to assume that only I, along with the Catholic cause I represented, could be co-opted and changed by the encounter? Was it not possible that this association’s audience might be seduced by me and my Faith instead? Did possession of the name “rightist” turn each and every member of that public into an absolutely predictable automaton, whose thoughts and actions were forever fixed? Or did they not still have a free will making them open to possible change? What if, per impossible, Pius XI had been invited to send a high-level representative to read and comment on Mit Brennender Sorge at a Nazi Party Conference? Or Pius XII to dispatch a legate to Moscow---not to kowtow, but to explain, in depth, his condemnation of Marxist political activity? After all, the Vatican, even in pre-conciliar days, regularly sought out that sort of possibility. Would Pius XI have been compelled to refuse and run into the arms of Communist and Liberal Democratic opponents of what appeared to be somewhat waffling Fascists? Would Pius XII have had to embrace Pluralist and Nazi enemies of Marxists whose invitation indicated the beginning of a doubt of their own beliefs? Which Catholic doctrine is it that tells me that I can have nothing to do with the sinner, even while I am given full freedom to attack his sin?
It is precisely in this practical political and social realm of the sinner who nevertheless possesses free will that Catholic activists have generally had to work. Once again, they are, to a very great degree, obliged to operate in that realm not on the basis of their Faith alone, but with respect to many rational and prudential judgments. From the earliest days of her history, the Church has proven herself to be very flexible in what she permits her active, loyal children to do in this changeable realm. If nothing else, the whole missionary experience demonstrates that truth. Was it not precisely into a world of dangerous pagan temptations and frightening Germanic rulers that St. Augustine of Canterbury and St. Boniface were sent? Did not St. Gregory the Great, in a very famous letter, instruct the missionaries in Britain to work with whatever points of contact in the pagan camp they could find, so as to permit potential converts “to rise by degrees” to acceptance of full Christian Truth? And, in fact, open discussions with pagan priests were a regular means of making inroads into the kingdoms of chieftains whose predecessors had been known to martyr missionaries just shortly before, and whose successors would sometimes do so again. One shudders to think what the history of the Middle Ages would have been had the Catholic saints who engaged in these ventures been attacked as fellow-travelers of a pagan perennialism and its political representatives; traitors, whose religious and diplomatic games with suspect barbarians would also work to subvert the Faith in the orthodox lands from which they had gone forth.
Admittedly, the same Church that allows great flexibility in the hunt for religious and political “seeds of the Logos” on which she might be able to graft the fullness of Faith in Christ, admits that mistakes can be made in this dangerous practical realm. Such mistakes have very often been made. St. Boniface, in his letters, describes in vivid detail his fears for his personal integrity in what he nevertheless notes to be necessary dealings with the corrupt and cynical leadership of the Catholic Kingdom of the Franks. Catholic activists for the Social Kingship of Christ have indeed overstepped boundaries, courting and making alliances with groups with whom agreements ought not to have been made. Hence, it is perfectly within every Catholic’s right to criticize Arthur Penty if he praised Soviet experiments in collectivization, although I am not absolutely certain that he continued such praise forever. Similarly, it is in every Catholic’s right to question whether Pius XI should have abandoned Don Sturzo’s Popular Party and Charles Maurras’ Action Française the way that he did, or given support to Mussolini’s Italy and held up Hitler (for a few months, in 1933) as the only man in Europe really doing something to oppose the Marxist menace. And, yes, Catholic activists with great freedom to offer rational and prudential solutions to modern problems have made the horrific error of claiming that their specific policies were backed by the Faith itself--making opposition to them tantamount to heresy--and sometimes painted their vision for the future in colors a bit too paradisical to be acceptable. Sad as it may be, mistakes—and sins—have been demonstrably unavoidable in the realm of practical Catholic life. But practical life cannot be abolished to prevent this reality.
Let us now toughen The Smear Reports’ argument still further. Let us say that dangerous rightist groups dedicated to a universalist perennialism have learned their lesson regarding their own potential subversion by Catholic heroes like St. Boniface. Let us say that they have now entrusted the work of liaison with our fellow believers on possible points of contact solely to their best trained and most committed, pagan, macho, racist, perennialist operatives. What then? Well, I fully admit that such operatives could find an entry into the traditionalist community. But would that entry come by their working with anti-Americanists and anti-Pluralists? Au contraire! Rather, it would come from the fact that Americanism and Pluralism, which have already deeply infiltrated the traditionalist camp, have prepared the pathway and in many respects already done the job for them.
Ockham’s Razor, which tells us to avoid esoteric explanations for effects easily proven by obvious causes, can be invoked at this juncture. Why bring in the alliance of neo-Nazi Wotan worshippers with Catholic groups noted for promoting Blessed Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors and Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum novarum to explain the growth of perennialism and political naturalism? Why do this when the powerful sociological impact of the Americanist/Pluralist environment, working twenty four hours every day on every blessed inhabitant of this land, is there to clarify it? Where else has one ever seen such a powerful, successful push for a universalist religion, and from the days of the Founders onwards? Where else has dogma-dissolving faith in the innate wisdom and energies of the self-sufficient Everyman and his pet fantasies been more professed? Where else has the conviction of living in a socio-political paradise been stronger, along with the unshakeable belief that this Garden of Eden must either spread its political and social truths everywhere or protect itself from the entry of impure Elements from the gene-damaged outside world? Where else can one note such an adulation of a “rugged individualist”, protestant-friendly existence, disdainful of all social authority and, hence, the entire urban environment that built Catholic Christendom? Open your eyes and smell the universalist, naturalist, atomist heresy, Smear Reporters! You do not need any perennialist “politically naturalist” help to teach it, other than that which played a role in Enlightenment thought in general, and worked to create Americanist/Pluralism in the first place. What you claim to dislike is the very life blood of the everyday American environment; the environment that I demand my Catholic right to be able to criticize.
And, sad to say, the influence of that environment is all too embarrassingly alive and well in the American Traditionalist Movement, some of whose members sit proudly on the First Horseman’s steed, ready to call its rampage a Catholic Crusade along with the best of them. Such sadly misled traditionalists, having declared themselves “obvious” defenders of orthodoxy, feel absolved from all further need to investigate what the full character and nuances of their Faith really involve. Such Masters of Them That Know go so far as to condemn all such investigation as the exclusive plaything of those elitist philosophers and theologians who caused the problems in the Church in recent times. This is tragic, because further investigation would prove that they have fallen--hook, line and sinker--for the most successful anti-Catholic pseudo-religion of all, the one that destroys the Faith as it pats it on the back. This pseudo-religion is proudly taught in many of the textbooks of a good number of the Catholic home school programs across the length and breadth of this land, creating a longing for a life in the Little House on the Prairie, and not one ready to welcome the glories of Catholic France, Spain, Austria and Italy. Give me a Little House on the Prairie mentality and I’ll give you a dangerous spirit of self-sufficient isolationism breeding a million perennialist problems, and with infinitely more clout than any reading of its theosophy would possess.
None of this seems to make any impact whatsoever on The Smear Reports. They, too, are among the Masters of Them That Know, absolutely certain that that which appears on their websites is Gospel Truth. For them, the real enemy is, once again, the union created by pagan perennialists, who have managed to harness the three anti-Pluralist Horsemen of the Apocalypse to work smoothly together for their nefarious cause. The power and influence attributed to this Legion of Super Heroes in its labor to seduce the Catholic world is absolutely mind-boggling. It has bamboozled a wide array of the top names in the anti-war movement to work for its ecumenical Übergod. It has constructed cells of simultaneous Communo-Nazi-Islamo-Terrorist character. It has transformed pro-urban, non-ruralist calls for Catholic Social criticism—like my own-- into back-to-the-land Distributist arguments which bear no relation to them, and all Distributist arguments into neo-Communo-Nazi propaganda five minutes away from overturning the foundations of Holy Church. It has apparently infiltrated organizations like the Roman Forum, perhaps to gain financial support for its disreputable work, maybe following the guidelines laid down by those terrorist pro-life groups which the FBI, just a few years ago, thought might be getting our money through the medium of my Gardone Seminars on Church History in Italy. Look! Up in the sky! Leaping tall buildings in a single bound! Headed for the Roman Forum bank account to milk it of the $120 profit made at our November 11th conference! It’s the Super Perennialists! And if they were as gifted as they are made out to be, I might well be tempted to hand those government-destroying greenbacks over to them--if only out of admiration for this tour de force alone. Except that I would not really know to whom to make out the check.
Speaking of that November 11th conference, the LeFloch Report, as to be expected, suggested that it would have been much more suitably directed to uncovering the machinations of traditionalist ecumenism on behalf of perennialism. Had this utterly pointless endeavor been pursued, still another occasion would have been lost to instruct people in subjects like the full consequences of the Incarnation, the history of the Catholic Social Movement and, last but definitely not least, the achievements of great fighters for Tradition of the recent past. These include men like Dietrich von Hildebrand, whom I find to be more and more neglected by new recruits to the movement who think they can do without knowledge of their experiences. But, then again, von Hildebrand, anti-Nazi though he was, worked together with Engelbert Dollfuss. And Engelbert Dollfuss held together a motley alliance of enemies of Nazism, from Pius XI to pagan Austrian nationalists. Just another group of perennialists fit for burning in The Smear Reports’ insatiable bonfires!
In the final analysis, The Smear Reports have separated the love of the Social Kingship of Christ from the work of the Catholic Social Movement. They have transformed the transformation of all things in Christ into a new form of quietism—a Social Quietism. This Social Quietism has nothing whatsoever to do with the battle against the Sillon that they constantly bring up as though it were their trump card in the War Against the Great, Naturalist, Perennialist Evil. Yes, the Sillon did promote a political naturalism that sought union with non-Catholic groups on the grounds of commitment to a common Enlightenment ideology promoting liberal democracy, which was itself baptized as the sole acceptable Catholic form of government. (Sound familiar? Perhaps Americanist? Perhaps Pluralist?) And, yes, divinization of specific political systems or programs is a temptation to which the Catholic Social Movement is subject--if it does not remember that it is composed of part Faith, part Reason and part prudential judgment; if it does not learn from the mistakes of activists throughout Church History in making decisions that can dissolve the Faith into something unacceptably broader and politically corrupt. But the answer to such temptation is not abandonment of all social and political criticism. The environment around us does not cease to become significant to the struggle to gain salvation just because we choose to make believe that this must be the case due to fear of mistakes made in dealing with it. Discussion of political and social flaws and suggestions for their correction are in no way the same thing as calls for the construction of the Earthly Jerusalem. The equation of the two is nothing other than a plea for Social Quietism.
All such Social Quietism inevitably heads towards one of two ports. On the one hand lies a flawed mystic harbor, where the Catholic life is turned into a thoughtless waiting for a strangely millenarian-minded Holy Spirit to come to work for creation of what indeed is a naturalist paradise on earth. On the other lie the docks of Catholic Never Never Land, where traditionalists can concern themselves solely with the proper celebration of the liturgy. Traditionalism, in Never Never Land, becomes a Roman Catholic High Anglicanism, with a beautiful ritual which poses no challenge to the existing Status Quo and the dogmatic Pluralism dictating how we live once the Mass has ended and the chapel doors have opened to the reality outside. Never Never Landers can indulge this hand-me-down ritualism only up until the moment they are dispatched either by their Americanist/Pluralist masters--who will disdain them no matter how much they bow and scrape--or the outraged opponents of the New World Order--who will look upon them as nothing other than fellow-travelers and whitewashers of a blatant economic and political exploitation which mocks the message of Christ.
This would be bad enough, but the problem with The Smear Reports goes further still. Abandonment of the Catholic Social Movement for the Kingship of Christ, with all of its admitted risks, does not free them from the dangers of political engagement. For their Social Quietism has turned them—perhaps gradually and totally unconsciously--into “snake oil salesmen” for the active acceptance of the demands of nature “as is”, whose practical demands upon believers cannot be questioned under pain of sin. What this means, in a world dominated by the Americanist/Pluralist Status Quo, is acceptance of its established order just “as is”. That established order’s arrogant conviction of its total infallibility, its capitalist materialism, and its imperialist desire to make the entire world over in its image to avoid divisiveness and intolerance just… “are”. They are the conditions which God has given us to live in. Failure to accept those conditions as they are, or, worse still, efforts to correct and exalt them, are blasphemous illustrations of political naturalism.
Moreover, these conditions cannot just be endured by Catholics. They must be praised, alongside the God that gave them to us. Hence, like Michael Novak, George Weigel, Father Neuhaus and many other Catholic conservatives before them, the a-political approach of The Smear Reports ends by flying the snake oil flag of the First Horseman with seeming enthusiasm, as a truly Catholic banner. This explains why its causes célébres----from the association of each pipsqueak critique of Israel foreign policy with anti-Semitic bloodlust to the notion that only a Nazi or a Communist would entertain a worry about Liberal Capitalism—“just happen” to be the same as that of the Status Quo. Real Catholics, in their minds, would appear to be those who dedicate themselves to the same causes as the other Americanist/Pluralists around them, and avoid all criticism of the system like the plague.
But such a divinization of one of the many political systems emerging from the Enlightenment; such a permission for the Status Quo to set the ground rules for what the Incarnation can and cannot affect is the essence of that Social Modernism which St. Pius X truly attacked in condemning the Sillon. LeFloch and other enemies of that movement—some of them highly active, politically, on behalf of the Action Française-- must be tossing about violently in their graves, seeing how their names have been invoked to serve purposes so alien to their own vision.
Perhaps someone will object that I am merely feeding my own idée fixe in turning Catholic attention towards the danger of Americanist/Pluralism and away from perennialism and traditionalist ecumenism. Those who would like to explore my response to such an objection more thoroughly should consult the appropriate writings on my website, For the Whole Christ, (jcrao.freeshell.org). For the moment, and just in passing, let me remind everyone that my comments regarding the New World Order’s devotion to a worldwide democratic revolution backed by a universalist religion of toleration simply repeat what its proponents have already openly and insistently stated. It is they, after all, men like George Bush, Sr. who first adopted this term “New World Order” to describe their peculiar construction project; not I. Moreover, my “obsession” with the Americanist/Pluralist threat to the world and seduction of traditionalists comes from obvious facts: not just from George W. Bush’s bombing of helpless peoples into oblivion, but also from the manifold public and private statements of fellow Catholics who have baptized the building of a Liberty Land Theme Park in Iraq, where all too familiar kinds of immoral “stuff happens”, as a glorious and holy Crusade for Christ. The real obsession indulged by The Smear Reports, on the other hand, is one based on an esoteric idea connected together with reprehensible political movements which people like myself totally reject, have lectured and written against and can be associated with only through fanciful insinuation and equivocation.
I have written this article because I am angry, and because I think that it addresses matters which must be tackled by those among my fellow believers who have been awakened to the evils of Americanist/Pluralism, before they are stung in the same way that I have been. But this article is as far as I am willing to go in debating The Smear Reports under present circumstances. I would be falling into a trap that Martin Luther describes if I went any further down this pathway. Luther noted that, while Catholics of his day were formulating intricate arguments answering one or another of his theological points, Melanchthon and he sat in a beer hall inventing new, sophistic topics that slammed the unsuspecting Roman apologists totally from out of left field. This is what generally happens in our own time in a debate between a journalist trying to do serious work and a web site with esoteric interests. While the journalist seeks to answers his opponent with in-depth arguments, the web site—whatever its sincerity might be-- can come up with new and juicy insinuations from the Twilight Zone….again and again and again and again. And which are most likely to be grasped, remembered and spread? The arguments or the insinuations?
As far as I am concerned, at least at the moment, the proper forum for further discussion of these issues is a face off, with adequate time for thorough examination of issues of theological, philosophical, historical and sociological import, as well as a chance for direct questioning and answering with the parties concerned all present. Will such a debate take place? I would encourage it, and with the widest possible publicity. Partly, I must admit, because I have no doubt what the outcome would it.

BOOK REVIEW: Ethics and the National Economy

2006-12-20T18:19:00.000-08:00

TITLE: Ethics and the National Economy (Item # 8033, Price: $13.95)

AUTHOR: Fr. Heinrich Pesch, S J.
PUBLISHER: IHS Press
REVIEWER: Dr. Peter Chojnowski
SUMMARY: Catholics! Forget Milton Friedman and supply-side economics. Shelve your Eco I textbook and leave the road to serfdom. Now is the time to put Fr. Pesch in the place of Ludwig von Mises. As you always suspected, morality really must govern economic life and Fr. Pesch's Ethics and the National Economy will tell you why.

Solidarism proposes to leave the private ownership in the means of production. But it places above the owner an authority-indifferent whether Law or its creator, the State, or conscience and its counselor, the Church - which is to see that the owner uses his property correctly.... Thus State and Church, law or conscience, become the decisive factor in society. Property.. .ceases to be the basic and ultimate element in the social order... Ownership is abolished, since the owner, in administering his property, must follow principles other than those imposed on him by his property interests....[It] wants to put other norms above them. These other norms thus become society's fundamental law.... Solidarism replaces ownership by a "Higher Law"; in other words, it abolishes it. (Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, II, III, 16, 1, 5)

In Ludwig von Mises's negative characterization of Heinrich Pesch's Solidarism, we find the deeper significance of Pesch's title Ethics and the National Economy. In stark contrast to the neo-Liberal von Mises's apparent dismissal of both a socially binding "ethics" and the very concept of a "national economy," we find a priest, philosopher, and economist asserting the real existence of both. Indeed, if we can assert anything concerning the thought of Heinrich Pesch, SJ. (1854-1926), it is that it attempts to demonstrate the necessary grounding of all economic science in the more encompassing sciences of ethics and philosophical anthropology.

This ethical and philosophical consideration is not at all meant to be a merely academic exercise. Rather it is meant to be, and indeed became, the first serious attempt to ground an economic system in the fundamental truths of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy. In his five-volume, 3,832-page text (it was the most exhaustive economics textbook ever written) Lehrbuch der Nationalokonomie, Pesch articulates just such a system. He meant it to be a model for future economic development and organization. It is a concrete, scientific alternative to the amoral and anti-social theories of the libertarian von Mises.

Ethik und Volkswirtschaft (Ethics and the National Economy), published in 1918, was intended to be a concise summary, not of the Lehrbuch, but rather, of his social and economic system, Solidarism. This work was one of several books published by noted scholars under the auspices of the Commission for Christian International Law established in Germany in 1917. It serves as a brilliant summation and application of the political and social thought produced by a whole ensemble of Catholic and Corporatist German authors and intellectuals, such as Bishop von Ketteler, Baron von Vogelsang, and Franz Hitze. Its importance to Catholic social teaching is that it served as a bridge between Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum and Pius XI's Quadragesima Anno, the first draft of which was written by Oswald von Nell-Bruening and Gustav Gundlach, both disciples of Heinrich Pesch.

The most important fact to remember when considering Pesch's text and, indeed, his entire system of Solidarism, is the specific challenge which it poses to those who would "separate" ethics from a scientific account of economic systems. Those who do separate ethics from economics-we think here of von Mises and his modern-day devotees-argue that to consider the ethical aspects of economic questions is to impose, arbitrarily, extrinsic considerations which would only obfuscate the necessary and universal economic "laws," the understanding of which is requisite for a vibrant and well-functioning economy. Economics has its own laws, argue the neo-Liberals, and these must not be transgressed by the dislocating imposition of "heteronomous" (a Kantian term meant to express any kind of extrinsic influence) considerations.

The basic purpose of Pesch's writing and apologetic was to indicate how ethics does not come into play in the field of economics in a purely extrinsic way, it is not merely "a personal ethical evaluation" of necessary and ineradicable natural laws of economic interactions between men. It is not even a sacrificing of economic prosperity to the exigencies of divinely revealed Church doctrine. Instead, Pesch's system, as articulated in his Ethics, attempts to provide the reasons for his insistence that ethics is a science prior to, and more ultimate than, economics. Man is only an "economic animal" because he is first a free animal; a being with physical needs who is required to work and to make free decisions in order to fulfill those needs. Pesch, as economist and philosopher, rightly insists that, rather than being of ancillary import, ethics, or the science of how man ought to act in order to achieve the properly human good, is the very soil from which any truly scientific consideration of economic activity ought to emerge. Unless we understand the way in which the inner life of the human soul is ordered, both in relation to its own self and in its relationship to others, we will never understand the basic economic dynamic, which is a human dynamic.

It is quite ironic to read so many Libertarians accusing Pesch of "illegitimately" imposing Church-sanctioned moral norms upon the economic freedom of individuals. According to this evaluation, it was the Austrian School of Economics, prefigured by the British Whig Adam Smith, which recognized that only by individuals "freely" seeking after their own economic self-interest would there be general economic prosperity and socio-psychological well-being. What is ironic here is that in order to assert the inviolability of human economic freedom, the Whigs and the neo-Whigs needed to reject the personal volitional indeterminacy of man. Paradoxically, man cannot be free if his free interactions necessarily lead to the best possible result. This fact strikes at the very heart of the entire Liberal/Libertarian conception of human life and civilization. Freedom would negate its own self if, in its performance, it served as part of a system whose ultimate status would be determined prior to the free actions themselves. Here, we are not considering the free action of Divine Providence, which, on the basis of God's free will, draws good out of evil so that the greatest good may be obtained. The Libertarians clearly do not wish to include a consideration of "heteronomous" Providence when seeking to ground an economic system. Besides, there is no way in which any one could substantiate a claim that God's Providence requires, of necessity, a drawing out, by God, from the sum of all free actions, the greatest possible economic good.

In upholding economic necessity, the Whigs, of the past or of our own time, circumvent and negate the very object of ethical thought, human freedom. What Heinrich Pesch does, in his anti-Liberal treatise, is to uphold the freedom that expresses itself in the moral life of man. Free choice is the subject matter of all ethical discussion; it contributes, essentially, to the determination of the destiny of each individual and of human civilization as a whole, and such choices can be good or evil, in accord with the right order of things or in opposition to the right order of things. What Pesch is saying, in Ethics and the National Economy, is that truly free activity-again, his assertion is that man is truly free-can tend towards the good or towards evil. Since men can tend towards good or evil in their personal lives, they can tend towards what is in accord with the common good of the community or act in an egotistical way that contravenes the common good of the civil community.

The anti-liberal character of Pesch's entire system becomes clear, when we take note of his assertion of the Aristotelian understanding of the origin of human society and his subsequent rejection of the liberal and revolutionary Social Contract theory concerning the origin of civil society. According to Pesch and the perennial philosophical tradition, it is man's social nature, requiring the actualization of his capacities and the satisfaction of his genuine human needs, which directs man to move beyond the life of the family and, instead, toward that more powerful and comprehensive human association, the State. It is through the existence of the State, along with the social and economic conditions which the State creates, that man can achieve all of those temporal human objectives that would be unattainable without it. In Pesch's Ethics, he remarks that, "the state is supposed to do for its members what they, by their own personal capabilities and by the capacities of lower-ranking societies within the state, cannot accomplish."¹ In contradistinction to the Libertarian-Liberal instinctive treatment of the State as an evil, even if a "necessary" one (in Catholic moral theology, no evil is ever "necessary"), Pesch writes that, "The purpose of the state consists in providing, safe-guarding, and complementing the sum of those social conditions, institutions, and structures which alone provide and preserve for all members of the state the fuller capacity to secure and maintain their temporal welfare on their own and by using their own abilities."² This delineation of the proper status and powers of the State is part of Solidarism's complete rejection of any type of Statism or Totalitarianism. Rather than exalting the State as the object of all human hopes and endeavors, Solidarism insists that the authority of the State does not exist for its own sake, but rather, for the sake of political society; it exists to safeguard the rights of the community against private interests. The State also has the right and, indeed, the obligation to promote this well being positively, without harming the personal initiative of its citizens. It and it alone can rally all the social energies to cooperate positively in establishing and fostering the public welfare.³

As Pesch explicitly states, the only ultimately efficacious check on the arbitrary and intrusive power of the State comes from absolute and unchanging moral norms. For Pesch, such norms are convertible with the Christian moral law. It is this moral law, along with the doctrinal understanding of the nature of man that underlies it, which is the only thing that can insure the status of the individual as having a destiny that transcends the confines of the social and political life created by the State. Only if we believe that nothing in the natural order can completely fulfill the desire and destiny of man, will we steel ourselves to a potential conflict with a State that overreaches its proper domain. Such a belief can only stem from a supernatural faith, more particularly, one that does not allow for compromise or doctrinal ambiguity.

In Chapter IV of the Ethics, entitled "Work and the Worker," Pesch proclaims the truth that is at the foundation of all of economic life, "Man is the lord of the World!" The brutes do not have a right to have an economy. This dominion of man, however, is only achieved by work. Without work, the raw material present in the world, as the divinely provided common resource of all mankind, would not be transformed by mind so as to become amenable to the human condition. Here we can discern the relationship Pesch draws between the nature of economics and the nature of man. The very origin of economics is the need for man to "economize." To "economize," as here understood, is to act so as to transform materials, through continuous repeated labor, in order to take advantage of the bounty of nature and to replace by other things transformed resources which have been used up. As Pesch states, "without continuous and persistent work, mankind could not sustain itself, and the largesse of our national environment with its materials could not function in the service of man."⁴

The economic centrality of labor is not a fact without theoretical importance for Solidarism. Work precedes ownership. That is because all ownership could only come into being by work. Even though Pesch does not identify work as the only title to ownership, we think of inheritance here, it is work rather than ownership of financial capital, which serves, for Solidarism, as the basis of all economic culture and society. Since a man who works, acquires the right to own, the institution of private property will be conditioned by its relationship to genuine human labor. Such a stipulation makes property something which, by its very nature, must be accessible to all those who work, regardless of whether or not they, prior to working, have available to them a significant amount of financial capital.

Here is made a point that contradicts those who would make the rights of private property absolute. As Pesch, himself, states, "the institution of private property was established by virtue of the law of nations (jus gentium) as one of the natural rights and requisites of man, of families, and of political society in all nations which progressed to a higher level of culture. However, in the Christian view of things, there is no such thing as an unconditional, free, absolute right of private property that does not involve also obligations"⁵ In the face of those, like Ludwig von Mises, who state that private property does not exist as an institution if it is regulated by considerations other than those of private interest, Pesch states that there is no such thing as a human right that would be independent of the moral order that operates in the world. Since the economic acts, including the use of property, are, more fundamentally, human acts, they fall within the domain of ethics and must, therefore, be regulated by the properly human good. It is to distort the true condition of man to insist upon the independence of the individual from the larger social and moral context of his action. Moreover, Pesch's Solidarism also provides us with a meaning for property, which Liberalism, in its capitalistic form, does not. To speak of an ultimate and objective purpose for private property would be to deny the rationality of the unlimited acquisitiveness that serves as the elan vital of Capitalism. For Pesch, and for the whole Catholic social teaching that he articulates, private ownership is not an end in itself. Rather, it is "a means to make possible in an orderly and fitting manner the well being of the individual, of the family, and of political society."⁶ Neither is it the case that the right to private property trumps all other human rights. It is, by no means, to be regarded as the highest right overall that man enjoys as he makes his way in the world of material goods. As Pesch's philosophical and analytical approach is Scholastic, by considering the most basic ontological (i.e., having to do with the principles and functions, which make up a specific being) aspects of man, he can arrive at the conclusion that the right to life and the right to the necessary means of subsistence occupy a higher position than any derived right to material property. Sam Walton cannot own Wal-Mart unless Sam Walton first exists as a living being and can sustain his life with the basic "fungibles" (i.e., those goods that are either "consumed" or which perish due to their not being "consumed") that a man needs to survive. Before the State concerns itself with securing the inviolability of the Super Store, it must ensure that the two more basic and fundamental rights are upheld within its jurisdiction. No power but the State can do that to an adequate extent. The State's very raison d'etre is to do just that. Moreover, as Pesch emphasizes, in the event of extreme need, the right to own a material thing has to give way to the right of a person to survive. In this way, "all things are common"; all things, in the material creation, are destined and intended for the preservation of the human race.

When considering this text, it is important not to forget the second part of the title. For Solidarism, and for Heinrich Pesch's entire endeavor in the area of Social Catholicism, it is necessary to remember that an economy should not exist that is not a "national economy." The State is a perfect society for the simple reason that it has the means of providing for the highest and most basic needs of its citizens. An economy that is not "national" is equivalent to global grand larceny. If an economy is global, if capital-rich seekers after minimal wages and maximal profits are allowed to roam unhindered by government across the economic expanse, property ceases to be a stabilizing factor in human affairs and, instead, serves to co-opt human work into the service of those who have the connections and the financial resources needed to translate genuine human labor into large quantities of digital dollars.

A series of critical issues are raised in Chapter VI of Ethics and the National Economy, that of the Just Price, the most debated economic issue in the Middle Ages, and that of the Just Wage. These issues are, even amongst our contemporaries, much debated since many contemporary neo-Liberals are claiming that the "late Spanish scholastics" upheld the position that the "law of supply and demand" ought be the sole regulator of prices. Since all considerations of justice, and especially the idea of a "just price, "seem to create alarm in the minds of the neo-Liberals of the von Mises type, due, no doubt, to a belief that such considerations are idealistic and subversive of the economic laws of "supply and demand," it is heartening to see Pesch carefully, and in a very realistic manner, insisting upon the fact that economic exchange is not "gift-giving," but rather, an exchange of economic values. No one intends to suffer a loss of some of his wealth in the process. This fact, however, is the only given in the economic process. Other than this, there is no "law" of exchange that can be derived from this state of affairs. This basic understanding is rejected by liberal economists who hold that prices are established directly by the interaction of supply and demand; this process then leads indirectly to the economically correct distribution of goods for satisfying the wants of all. Moreover, these same economic liberals argue that if such "free competition" is allowed, with regard to the pricing of goods, in the long run prices will fall to the lowest possible level. The entire operation, bringing about this economic "benefit" takes place automatically, mechanically, as if "by itself."⁷

In refuting these liberal capitalist doctrines on pricing, Pesch expresses the primary thesis of his text:

Behind supply there are suppliers, and behind demand there are demanders, causes which operate freely, human deliberation, human ambitions, human passions, and human power relationships. Therefore what is needed is the intervention of regulating factors and protection against speculative falsification, against artificial manipulation of the fluctuation of prices which makes it possible to earn vast amounts of money in a short time.⁸

It is breathtaking to behold the neo-Liberals of our day, both of the militant and the instinctive variety, insisting on the benefits for freedom and prosperity brought to us by our present Capitalist System. What the Liberals-Libertarians choose to ignore is that there is no business success, in the present day Capitalist System, without the leave of the bankers. One is only "free" in this System if the bankers give you the loans and the credits which will "allow" you to be successful. As Chesterton once said, " Utopia for whom?" For those who dream of the day when the world and truly free men will not have to beg "leave" of the bankers, Pesch gives cause and counsel.

Dr. Peter E. Chojnowski has an undergraduate degree in Political Science and another in Philosophy from Christendom College. He also received his master's degree and doctorate in Philosophy from Fordham University. He and his wife Kathleen, are the parents of five children. He teaches for the Society of Saint Pius X at Immaculate Conception Academy, Post Falls, ID.

1. Heinrich Pesch, Ethics and the National Economy, trans. Rupert Ederer (Norfolk, VA: I.H.S. Press, 2003) p. 50.

2. Ibid., pp. 50-51.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., pp. 64-65.

5. Ibid., p. 68.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid., pp. 81-83.

8. Ibid.,

A letter from Michal Semin

2006-11-24T12:08:00.000-08:00

Sir,
I was told about your website recently. I am shocked by the level of falsity and amount of error in your reporting. I would like you to come to Prague so we can meet in person and also that you could meet my friends Cejka, Bahnik or Dr. Maly.
You know nothing about me and them except what you read from governmental sources (very left-liberal, under the influence of the freemasonic European Union) or the radically modernist Cardinal Vlk (have you noticed that he considers extremist, neo-nazi and lefebvrite, as these are his popular terms, anyone, who has a critical stance towards the liberalization of the Church, include all pro-life movement?).
I strongly object to nazism, fascism, communism and any other modern enlightenment-based ideology as I do to islamism!!! Get someone who reads Czech so that he can translate to you my Czech written articles on these subjects and then you would have to admit you were wrong. Have you read my interview for "Narodni myslenka", in which I explain why the socially active Catholics are bound to the Catholic social doctrine and must not form alliances with neopagan "new right"? Why don´t you quote that? Well, it just does not fit into your prefigured picture, I assume.
You have decided to spend a lot of time sending around slander about other people. I am sure you are aware about the spiritual consequences of such a dire decision. You will not make me hating you even though you will most probably consider this letter as just another proof of my neo-nazi tactics. I assume I will just have to live with it. I have gone through slander, interrogations and inprisonment during Communism (when I was a teenager) and I am surprised how things didn´t change much, although the fist comes from someone else this time. Unfortunately the spirit seems to be just the same. I will pray for you that you convert from your dirty journalism to a more objective writing. Your soul is at stake, Mr. Pryor.
And behave like a man, stop hiding behind your computer and face me in person in a public debate. Either here in Prague or in USA, if, God willing, I come soon again.

Michal Semin
39 years old, father of 6 children, SSPX parishioner

This is the first in a series of responses on the part of those who have been attacked and whose reputations have been smeared by Chris Pryor and his wife Jeannette Ahern Pryor. According to Mr. Semin, the only response he received from Pryor was that the research of the "Lefloch Report" was "flawless" and there was not need to email him again. Such is the cowardice of the one who has consistently tried to destroy the reputations of traditional Catholic laymen who have contributed to the traditional movement. Mr. Semin, and others, have offered to publically debate Pryor on the issues and the accusations and they have been consistently refused. Perhaps on day I will be able to debate Jeannette Pryor who accused me of Modernism for quoting texts on Our Lady from the 1913 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia. To these vicious attacks there must be silence no more!

Review of Dr. David Allen White’s The Horn of the Unicorn

2006-11-19T13:07:00.000-08:00

By: Dr. Peter E. Chojnowski
August 24, 2006

“One word of Truth shall outweigh the whole world.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
This statement by Solzhenitsyn cannot but be considered sublime. Its profundity, however, must not distract us from asking the ultimate philosophical question, “Why?” Why is it the case that the “whole world” is normally being weighed in the balance against Truth? Why are truth and the world opposed? Why do we now expect that a man required by his circumstances and conscience to speak the truth will have the whole of the world against him? It must be that truth is the affirmation and direct identification of an aspect of the created and divinely ordained order. The fallen “world,” however, operates according to a system, which may be more or less in accordance with the divinely ordained order or it may be opposed to that order. The extent to which truth is incomprehensible within the context of that system, the greater the distance between the divine order and the human “order.” In such a situation, the truth, spoken clearly and without consideration of its ramifications for the system, points out the discrepancy between what is and what ought to be. Truth can make it clear to those who have assimilated the false ideas of a system that not only have they been lied to, but that they are living a lie. The only way of understanding Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the man whose life is portrayed so effectively in Dr. David Allen White’s biography of him, The Horn of the Unicorn, is to see him as a man who understood the full ramifications of the moral claim that truth makes upon us. In fact, Dr. White’s biography of the Archbishop can easily be divided in half, in the first half the Archbishop is working within the truth, with papal sanction, to communicate Catholic truth and its fruits to souls – in the time honored manner of the Apostles and their successors. In the second half of the text, presenting an account of the year 1962 to the Archbishop’s death in 1991, we find Marcel Lefebvre having to defend the truth against those whose predecessors had sanctioned his own efforts for some three decades.
A) Lefebvre’s Milieu (1905-1929)
Whereas in the second half of the text, the sections dealing with Vatican II and, especially, the events leading up to the 1988 episcopal consecrations, it is clear that righteous indignation is the psychological and moral spirit pervading the account, in the early sections of this text we find manifested a very delicate spirit of admiration. Whether it is in his rendition of the accomplishments of the Lefebvre and Watine (the Archbishop’s mother’s maiden name) families in the sometimes French cities of Lille and Tourcoing, or his riveting accounts of the virtues, struggles, and deaths of the Archbishop’s mother and father, Gabrielle and René Lefebvre, we find Dr. White admiring, with a certain awe, the possibilities that develop within a family, society, and educational system completely imbued with the teachings of the Catholic Church. In this regard, Dr. White writes, “Everything in the young boy’s life was Catholic and church-oriented: his family, the daily Mass, his school....young Marcel Lefebvre grew up enveloped in a Catholic world and had his life organized in a loving and well-ordered Catholic “factory” designed to turn out seamless and beautiful Catholic souls.” Here the literary scholar quotes Fyodor Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, as explaining that one good memory from childhood can help a man endure the trials and sorrows of a lifetime. Surely Marcel Lefebvre had an abundance of these.
Dr. White is a layman. Most of those reading his biography of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre will be laymen and women. Therefore, it is admirable that he should dedicate good sections of his book to an account of the life of the layman and laywoman who made the Archbishop the great churchman that he was. René Lefebvre and Gabrielle Watine were both from very devote Catholic families who, each in their turn, considered a religious vocation prior to their marriage. The marriage, happily arranged by a parish priest, was to endure through years of great joy and heroic suffering. No one can be unmoved by Dr. White’s account of the imprisonment and familial separation endured by Gabrielle Lefebvre, a Stigmatist, during the German occupation of Lille through the years of World War I, nor will anyone forget the account of her death, a death so moving and inspiring that her youngest son Michel said, “If I ever doubt, I only have to think of the radiant face of my mother on her deathbed, listening to the Magnificat being sung, I knew by her eyes she was gazing in rapture on our Blessed Mother.” Nor can we, without emotion, read the last written testament of René Lefebvre, imprisoned for his clandestine activities during World War II that were motivated by his Catholic and Monarchist convictions, “The Holy Virgin has been so kind to me....She will lovingly bless my family, who must remain consecrated to her, totally devoted to her, and seek through her the extension of the reign of her Divine Son.”Surely those who identify themselves with the Archbishop’s cause, can understand their own struggles and achievements to be fruit of the hope and confidence of this great Catholic father.
B) Catholic Priest and Missionary Bishop (1932-1959)
“You will be a priest...you must be a priest.” These were the words that the young Marcel Lefebvre heard when he went to the Trappist Abbey of Poperinge in order to speak to a holy Trappist Father, Fr. Alphonsus. The immediacy of this exclamation made it clear to the young man where his destiny lie. The only question which remained was in which manner was he to serve the Church as a priest. The traits of Marcel Lefebvre which come through clearly in Dr. White’s account of this period in the Archbishop’s life are his genuine commitment to the Church and its mission, his sense of his own unworthiness for the priestly vocation, and, also, his reliance on the voice of authority.
This reliance on authority can be seen in his decision to heed the voice of his parents and his bishop Liénart (a man who would play a very significant role in Archbishop Lefebvre’s life, moving from apparently sympathetic benefactor to an outright opponent) that he should not join the missionary Holy Ghost Fathers, as did his older brother René, but rather become a diocesan priest for his home diocese at Lille. It was this choice of the life of a parish priest and the political and economic situation created in the aftermath of World War I, which put Marcel Lefebvre in the path of the great Fr. Henri Le Floch, the priest whose teachings would prove to be determinative in the life of the Archbishop.
To understand what Archbishop Lefebvre received from Fr. Le Floch, one only has to read the published statements of the Archbishop as recounted by Dr. White. According to the Archbishop, “Fr. Le Floch and the professors [at the French Seminary in Rome] taught us how we should view currant events, exposed errors to us – liberalism, modernism, and so many others of which we were not aware – and taught us how we must search for the truth in the papal encyclicals particularly those of St. Pius X, Leo XIII, and all the popes that had preceded them.” This desire to “view events in the spirit of the sovereign pontiffs,” never left Archbishop Lefebvre – especially when it came to confronting and analyzing the Modernist and Liberal notions that rose to the surface of the Catholic Church in the 1960s. In this regard, when speaking about the dismissal of Fr. Le Floch from his professorship at the French Seminary, ultimately with the approval of Pope Pius XI, Dr. White makes a very telling statement when writing about the positive reports produced concerning the work of Fr. Le Floch and, yet, recounting the fact of his dismissal; he writes that, “higher forces were in play.” Here Dr. White broaches a topic that needs to be seriously considered, namely, how much of this infiltration of the higher reaches of the ecclesiastical organization of the Catholic Church by Modernism and Liberal/Leftism was Archbishop Lefebvre aware of during his long years as a missionary priest and bishop in French West Africa? What we do know, as Dr. White mentions, is that, during his time as bishop for Dakar, Senegal and his years as Apostolic Delegate for French West Africa under Pope Pius XII, the Archbishop spoke of the great support he received from the Roman Curia, and especially from the Pope himself, in the course of all of his many building and evangelization projects. Speaking about his annual trips back to Rome to report on the progress of his missionary work, the Archbishop writes, “So I left and went to see the Holy Father [Pope Pius XII]. He received me like a true father and I immediately felt that there was great union of thought, that we were well united in the desire to extend Our Lord’s kingdom and to live truly the Christian and priestly life....I was really touched by this visit with Pope Pius XII. We spoke together and he said that he was relying on me to develop the evangelization of the whole African territory.”As far as can be discerned, this complete papal and ecclesial support continued until the election in 1958 of Angelo Roncalli as Pope John XXIII. This election would be the turning point in the life of Archbishop Lefebvre. From that point on, The Horn of the Unicorn portrays a man who suddenly finds himself under attack for propagating doctrine, which had suddenly become unacceptable and, most importantly, “inopportune.” The false Liberal System was attempting to fully swallow the Catholic Church. It would take Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre many years to realize that it was his destiny to be the bone in the gullet of the all-consuming Liberal Beast.
C) The Archbishop and the Pastoral Take-Over of the Catholic Church (1958-1968)
“Many who knew the man throughout his life speak of his great charity and kindness, his natural politeness, his radiant serenity. Calm of soul and grace of heart radiated from him and touched all who came to know him. Those who came up against him saw another distinguishing characteristic – his backbone of steel and will of iron. When questions of faith or the good of his flock were at stake, he could prove firm, intractable, and unyielding.” These sympathetic and penetrating words of Dr. White express the spirit of the man who, in the revolutionary 1960s, would confront a situation which he could not have expected. To be fighting for Catholic truth, alone. It was in these circumstances that we see some of the “intractableness” spoken of by Dr. White.
In one of his most moving paragraphs in The Horn of the Unicorn, Dr. White speaks of the anomaly which was Marcel Lefebvre in this flattened, consumerist, egalitarian age of ours. When writing about the man who threatened to shatter the Liberal/Modernist paradigm, Dr. White states, “We do not live in an age of great men. The democratic principle is a leveling principle. As mankind flocks together, the “sheeple” collectively become fearful and mindful of comfort, no one head lifting above the white wooly plateau, no one voice bleating too loudly. Life becomes the greatest good and suffering must be avoided at all costs. These are not attitudes that give rise to greatness.” With this said, Dr. White makes a comparison between the Archbishop and another great prophet of the age, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Here he says, “And yet this era of passive and pusillanimous creatures has produced two very great men, two heroic visionaries who have stood high above the flock, raising themselves from obscurity to world-wide recognition by virtue of their courage and their truth-telling: Marcel Lefebvre and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.” We find the usual good-natured humor and humane gentleness of David Allen White being momentarily suspended when he expresses something ultimate about our own day and tells us, finally, why he chose to write a book about the great churchman. When speaking about what made the Archbishop and the anti-Communist dissident both antidotes and exemplars, he says, “True manhood consists precisely in advancing the truth and protecting and preserving the moral order – the words “virile” and “virtue” grow out of the same root. Here were real men.” When a great teacher speaks with such clarity, ultimacy, and precision, we would be well-advised to listen because something important is being said. As cited by Dr. White in his account of the activity of the Archbishop prior to the Council, Michael Davies, in his work Pope John’s Council, describes the early days of Vatican II: “Many of the Council Fathers, perhaps most, arrived in Rome for the First Session of Vatican II without any clear idea as to why they were there and without any definite plan as to what they attended to achieve.” Since the Council had not been called to counter a dominant heresy (e.g., the Council of Trent) or to deal with a great social and political crisis relating to the papacy and the Catholic Church (e.g., the First Vatican Council), this lack of orientation was, perhaps, inevitable. Archbishop Lefebvre thought the two years spent formulating the schemata that were to be presented for the consideration of the Council would ensure that there would be a Catholic statement of doctrine and principle made to the increasingly anti-Christian contemporary world system. When speaking about the work of the Preparatory Commission, all of whose sessions he attended, the Archbishop stated, “This work was done most conscientiously for presentation to the Council; these schemas conform to the doctrine of the Church, though adapted to the mentality of our generation, adapted after careful thought and with much prudence [emphasis mine].” Rather than the caricatured portrayal of the traditionalist and orthodox position, we find here a serious attempt to present Catholic truth, in its fulness, in language understandable to modern man and, yet, fully in accord with Thomistic philosophy and perennial Magisterial Teaching. I might also add that this was precisely the attempt of most of the neo-Thomistic school of philosophy since the 1930s.
Here the actions and intentions of Pope John XXIII become problematic. Did the Pope simply find himself being manipulated in 1962 as the Council entered its initial stages or was the Liberal predominance planned since the initiation of the Council? Two interesting events from the life of the Archbishop in 1962 are mentioned in The Horn of the Unicorn. First, of course, was the discarding of all the schematic texts drawn up before the Council, this was facilitated by Pope John when he, contrary to the established rules of the Council, allowed the schemas to be rejected even though 2/3 of the Council Fathers had not voted against them. As the Archbishop states, “A fortnight after the opening of the Council, not a single one of these carefully prepared schemas remained; not one. All of them had been discarded, thrown into the waste-paper basket; there remained nothing, not a single sentence. All had been discarded.” Second, there was the presence at the Council of theologians who had been under censure for their neo-Modernist orientation under Pope Pius XII. When he questioned Cardinal Ottaviani, then head of the Holy Office, about the presence of these left-leaning theologians at the early planning sessions of the Council – men like Karl Rahner, E. Schillebeeckx, Hans Kung, Yves Congar, and Joseph Ratzinger, we was told that the presence of these men had been required by Pope John XXIII himself. In later years, identified the philosophical roots of the problem with the bishops and theologians of Vatican II. The crisis in the Church would be the consequence of a rejection or a “bracketing” of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. When speaking about the reasons for the crisis in the Church, the Archbishop related, “I sincerely believe that it is the Council which is at the back of all this since many of the bishops...were people who had studied an existentialist philosophy but had never studied Thomistic philosophy and so do not know what a definition is. For them, there is no such thing as essence; nothing is defined any longer; one expresses or describes something, but never defines it. Moreover, this lack of philosophy was patent throughout the whole Council.”
This policy of ensuring the leadership positions of the neo-Modernist theologians and Rhine region bishops and marginalizing the voices of orthodox bishop like Lefebvre, Castro-Mayer, Ottaviani, and Siguad, was to continue throughout the Council under both Pope John XXIII and, his successor, Pope Paul VI. The perfect expression of the new orientation given to the Catholic Church by the popes and the official “pastoral” documents approved by the Vatican Council, happened in October 1965 when Pope Paul VI traveled to New York to address the United Nations. Here we find a pope who sought to present to the world a New Catholic Church, one fully acceptable to Modern Men and the Liberal Age. In line with his intellectual mentor, Jacques Maritain, he seems to have forgotten or put safely aside the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. From now on, Catholics would be acceptable and non-threatening. To the global organization, set up to consolidate the post-World War II geo-political system, Paul VI said, “You organize the brotherly collaboration of peoples. In this way a system of solidarity is set up, and its lofty civilized aims win the orderly and unanimous support of all the family of peoples....This aspect of the organization of the United Nations is the most beautiful; it is its most truly human aspect; it is the ideal of which mankind dreams on its pilgrimage though time; it is the world’s greatest hope [emphasis mine].” Finally, making a statement that seems to be an implicit rejection of the indirect jurisdiction of Sovereign Pontiff over the political order of men, Pope Paul VI stated that, he had “nothing to ask for, no question to raise,” but only “a desire to express and a permission to request: namely, that of serving you insofar as we can, with disinterest, with humility and love.” Disinterest? Permission?
D) A Bishop’s Duty (1968-1991)
Having been elected Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers in 1962, then the most numerous missionary order in the Catholic Church including some 5,600 priests, it is truly shocking to read of the 180° turn which this order made from 1962 to 1968. This was mirrored by the institutional Catholic Church as a whole. Having been hailed as Superior General in 1962, he found himself, in 1968, told by Msgr. Antonio Mauro, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes, to “Leave them alone and make a short trip to America.” This, in response to the complaint of the Archbishop that his beloved religious order had “departed from a faithful observance of the spirit of the order.” Indeed, during the years 1968-1969 Archbishop Lefebvre found that things had changed and that he was, less than politely, being “shown the door.”Having been replaced as Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, Archbishop Lefebvre planned for retirement since he was approaching the age of 65. Such was not to be, however. In response to the appeal of a number of seminarians that they could no longer find a seminary that they could consider truly Catholic, the Archbishop, with the full support of Swiss episcopal authority, established, in 1969, the “St. Pius X Association for Priestly Training” and was to send seminarians to Fribourg University. The Archbishop, however, was forced to seek another solution when the seminarians encountered the same Modernism that they had experienced elsewhere. With the approval of Bishop Charrière and Cardinals Wright, the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy and Antoniutti, the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Religious, the Archbishop established the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X with its own seminary at Econe, Switzerland. One must have a strong stomach and relatively calm nerves to read the account which Dr. White gives of the retraction of Rome’s approval of the Society and the seminary at Econe. It is difficult to read about the double-dealing, the illegal and peremptory procedures, and the ecclesiastical indifference to the fate of Catholic Tradition. We must endure reading it; the Archbishop had to live it. For anyone with a sense of the true mission and sanctity of the Church, along with a knowledge of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s life long dedication to the Church, it is difficult to read the statement of Msgr. Benelli who said in 1976, 4 days before the Archbishop was to ordain men for the Priesthood in the ancient manner and for the ancient reasons, that by ordaining, the Archbishop was going to be acting “contrary to ecclesial communion, and damaging...the unity and peace of the Church.” Communion and unity in what? Peace for what? If this is bad, what is good? What did he mean when Msgr. Benelli told the Archbishop, “In the name of the Catholic Church, Catholics are required to subject themselves to the Conciliar Church”? How are we to understand the statement made by Pope John Paul II in Mexico in 1979, also cited in The Horn of the Unicorn, that those who, “remain attached to the incidental aspects of the Church, aspects which were valid in the past, but which have been superseded, cannot be considered the faithful” [emphasis mine].
That something had gone wrong in the Catholic Church, seriously wrong, was made clear to Archbishop Lefebvre in 1986 with the Prayer Meeting at Assisi. Here, without question, the Vicar of Christ had called together all the leaders of world religions to pray to their own gods. Marcel Lefebvre, the pious youth, the energetic priest, the missionary father of the African people, the fearless defender of doctrine at the Vatican Council, understood this to be a watershed in the history of the Catholic Church. It was his sign that he must consecrate traditional Catholic bishops in order to preserve the Catholic priesthood in its pristine integrity and orthodoxy. Such was his “bishop’s duty.”
Our literary Virgil, Dr. David Allen White, leads us to the end of this great realm, which is the life of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Like him we do not weep over the death of the great Unicorn, the one whose single horn purifies the waters so that all may drink, for we too wonder, “What now would be the state of us, But for this unicorn?”

Pope Saint Pius X: Prophet of the Great War

2006-10-31T16:27:00.000-08:00

by Dr. Peter E. Chojnowski, Ph.D.

Pope St. Pius X, Giuseppe Melchior Sarto, stopped before the Lourdes grotto during his walk in the Vatican gardens in the spring of the year 1914. He turned to Monsignor Bressan, his confessor, and said, “I am sorry for the next Pope. I will not live to see it, but it is, alas, true that the religio depopulata is coming very soon. Religio depopulata.” The term “depopulated religion,” refers to the prophecy coming from the Irish Saint Malachy, and was to be applied to the reign of the successor on the Throne of St. Peter of Pius X himself. That St. Pius X could foresee the depopulation of Europe, especially in so far as that tragedy would affect the Catholic Church is truly one of the most salient features of the relationship between this pope and World War I (1914-1918). Many geo-political strategists and high-level observers could clearly envision some kind of altercation between two or more of the six Great Powers of Europe (i.e., Russia, Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Germany), no one foresaw the downfall of traditional Christian civilization, except for Pope St. Pius X. Even his own Secretary of State and intimate confidant, the Anglo-Spanish Cardinal Merry del Val, was at a loss to explain the Pope’s insistence that what he foresaw was not just war and blood, but the loss of the Common European Home; a loss which spelt travail for the Catholic Church and misery and loss for the preponderance of humanity.
A very similar situation, involving the Pope’s insight into a future geo-political happening, occurred during his audience with the future Austrian empress Zita in the summer of 1911. Princess Zita of the Franco-Italian royal house of Bourbon-Parma had just become engaged to the future heir to the Austrian imperial throne, Archduke Charles. Charles, in 1911, was second in line to the throne of his great-uncle Franz Josef who had reigned over the multi-national Imperium of Austria since 1848. The Pope, who along with Cardinal Merry del Val was a great supporter of the Habsburg European tradition, congratulated the Princess on her upcoming nuptials. At the end of a conversation which began with, “I am very happy with this marriage and I expect much from it for the future….Charles is a gift from Heaven for what Austria has done for the Church,” the Pope seemed wander in his thought when he referred to Zita’s future husband as the heir to the throne. When the young princess pointed out gently that her future husband was not the direct heir to the throne, first came his uncle the fated Franz Ferdinand, St. Pius X looked serious and insisted that Charles would soon be emperor. When she assured that Franz Ferdinand would certainly not abdicate on account of the fact that he was in the prime of life, the Pope looked troubled and ponderously said in a low voice, “If it is an abdication…I don’t know.”
That Pope St. Pius X should have precise presentiments concerning the two great events of the year 1914, years before those events actually in fact occurred, is simply uncanny and a manifestation of his intimacy with the Divine and his paternal concern for the daily lives of the European faithful. What these insights also reveal is the Pope’s clear appreciation of the primary European fact of his time, that Habsburg Austria was the cornerstone of Europe. In order to move the building, one had to dig up and remove the stone. World War I or the Great War was simply the uprooting of this stone. It was a war in which the political heart of Catholic Christendom was destroyed, apparently for good.
It is our thesis, that Austria was the reason for the Great War and that the most tangible outcome of the conflict was the break up of the Empire. Moreover, in later articles about the popes and their relationship to the Great Conflict, I will attempt to show how the fate of Austria had much to do with her attachment to the Papacy and how, in the most critical years of 1917-1918, Austria’s policy was in full accord with the objectives of Pope Benedict XV. That the failure of Austria-Hungary marked the exclusion of the voice of the popes from the councils of modern Europe, simply verifies the fact that, historically speaking, the prestige and influence of the altar and the throne have waxed and waned together.
A) Europe Pre-1914: The Proud Tower
When we look at the Europe of 1914, we are forced to admit one stark fact, it worked. By this, I mean that there existed a society, pillared by the same institutions that had bolstered it for more than a millennia (e.g., the rural village, the Church, the royal dynasties, the transnational aristocracies). This society was confident in itself, witness the European colonization of the world by this year. Its birth rates were very high; its kings were venerated and, even, loved. Industry, even in agrarian Russia, was expanding at a rate unknown in prior human history.
Why, in a world in which lights were finally going on, did they so suddenly go off? I am, of course, referring here to that famous statement by Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary in 1914 and, ironically, one of the men most responsible for the initiation of the bloody conflict, in which he commented upon the lights of Whitehall gradually being extinguished in the evening in August, 1914 when the British Empire and the German Empire went to war. “The lights are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”
How can it be that the lights of the “Proud Tower,” as Barbara Tuchman entitled her book on pre-war Europe, went out? How can it be that a civilization that was better fed, better housed than any in the past, one of almost universal literacy --- it has been stated by some contemporary historians that there is more illiteracy in England today then there was in 1914 – a civilization in which standards of culture and parliamentary debate were so high that, in the 1890’s, in Berlin, there was even a black market for tickets to the public galleries of the German parliament, fall into oblivion due to self-slaughter?
Here, one can give historical facts and opinions concerning back-room diplomacy, troop levels, the status of railways, and geo-political posturing, however, these things alone were only manifestations of a more fundamental disorientation in European life, one which St. Pius X identified in his inaugural encyclical E Supremi Apostolatus on October 4, 1903. Here the Pope, speaking of his own day, says, “as might be expected we find extinguished among the majority of men all respect for the Eternal God, and no regard paid in the manifestations of public and private life to the Supreme Will.”
It is, perhaps, this thought that St Pius X had in mind when, on July 28, 1914, the Austrian Ambassador appeared before Pius X to inform him that the Empire had formally declared war upon the Kingdom of Serbia. During this meeting, the ambassador asked the Pope to bless the guns of the imperial and royal army of Austria and Hungary. To this Pius X replied, “Tell the Emperor that I can bless neither war, nor those who have desired war. I bless peace.” When the ambassador then followed up with a request for a personal blessing for the emperor, Franz Josef, the Pope stated, “I can only pray that God may pardon him. The Emperor should consider himself lucky not to receive the curse of the Vicar of Christ!”
What would have been the result of a papal blessing or a papal curse will never be known. What is clear, however, is that Pope St. Pius X realized what Emperor Franz Josef and most European generals appear to have been oblivious to, by the declaration of war against Serbia, the Habsburg monarch had unleashed the dogs of a long and murderous struggle that would level all that his dynasty had built over the course of some 700 years.
What exactly was the European situation, which gave St. Pius X such concern in 1914? How did the “short war” that everyone planned for, become the Great War, which very few, except the Pope, foresaw? To understand the European situation, in a general way, as it existed in 1914, one must focus one’s attention upon two other dates, that of the French Revolution of 1789 and that of the defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of the monarchical system in 1815. The French Revolution, a resurgence of enthusiasm for two antique forms of government, that of the republic and that of democracy, had terrified the broad mass of Europeans – and Americans – by its violence, its mindless toppling of ancient institutions, and its anti-clerical godlessness and hostility to everything Christian. This envy-driven political aberration would have been smothered in 1795, by a royalist mob in Paris who were reacting to the famine, incessant war, and anti-Catholicism of the regicidal First Republic, had not a young Corsican of Italian extraction, Napoleon Bonaparte, used grape-shot on the justice-seeking mob. This intervention saved the Republic, the heritage of the Revolution, and created the conditions necessary to spread that Revolutionary fervor throughout Europe.
This is exactly what happened when Napoleon Bonaparte institutionalized the Revolution in the First Empire. Making himself the crowned Jacobin, Napoleon tried to bring the Masonic uprising to all of Europe, from Lisbon to Moscow. He failed, after a generation of warfare due to Admiral Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar and his loss to the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. After the Congress of Vienna, the European Powers of Russia, Prussia (later to become the leader of the Second German Reich), Austria, Britain, and a monarchically rehabilitated France settled down into a somewhat tense, and relatively stable, political order of multi-national empires united by loyalty to a monarch and by the common desire to avoid another outbreak of the barbarism that was experienced during the French Revolution. For, approximately, 100 years this system was the European Order, even though democratic sentiments and uprisings, French republicanism, and Masonic sects were always acting as cancerous cells ready to kill the body of that Order.
In cameo, that was the Grand European Order that found itself entering the uncertainty of the 20th century. This tightly interlocked System had one particular concern and point of instability, the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, the “Sick Man of Europe.” The Osmanli Turks, a Turk-Tartar Islamic tribe out of Central Asia, in the early Renaissance began pushing the Byzantine Greeks out of Asia Minor and, finally, crossed into Europe, where they subjugated the Bulgars, Serbs, Greeks, and Bosnians. The high-water mark of the Islamic Turkish advance was in 1683 at the Gates of Vienna, where the Polish king Jan Sobieski stopped them. From then on there was a slow, agonizing withdrawal across the Balkan Peninsula until, in the 19th century, when the Ottoman’s lost sovereignty over Serbia, Greece, and Romania. During the Balkan War of 1912-1913, the Sultan’s European holdings were reduced to Eastern Thrace or the holdings that Turkey has to this very day. Due to the ethnic and religious mix of this area, and to the vulnerability of the small kingdoms, which, like maritime rocks, emerged with the recession of the Islamic flood, the chronic instability, which characterized the region, had to be “settled” by either the multinational empires of Austria or Russia.
B) Bosnia 1914: The Power Keg Ignites
In light of the power vacuum that was developing in this highly volatile region of Europe, the Berlin Conference of European Powers awarded the former Turkish Balkan provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria-Hungary in 1878. Bosnia and Herzegovina, with their capital in Sarajevo, were difficult provinces to govern since they were populated by an ethnic and religious mixture of Orthodox Serbs, who were allied in a very informal way with the Tsar’s empire in the East, Catholic Croats, who saw themselves as a cut about the Serbs on account of their ties to Vienna and Budapest, and finally, the Moslems, who were, actually, Croats who had apostatized to Islam when the region was under the Turkish yoke. It is very possible that this diverse district could have remained peaceful had it not been for the subversive actions of Bosnian Serbs who wished to join with the Serbian kingdom to the east. After the Balkan Wars from 1912-1913, Serbia doubled in size creating an almost irresistible draw for its Bosnian brothers. Here, again, such a situation need not have developed in the way in which it did, had not Serb military commanders and agents been training and arming Bosnian Serb youth in subversive and terrorist tactics from places safely across the border in Serbia proper. The historians writing on this period do not contest the fact of this activity on the part of the Serbs. As we shall see later, Pope St. Pius X himself did not contest the fact that the Serbs were acting to subvert Austria-Hungary, nor did he object to a “disciplining” of this renegade nation by the Habsburg Monarchy.
Habsburg Austria genuinely tried to advance the level of civilization and education of the Bosnians during the years before the war. After annexing the territory formally into the lands of the Monarchy in 1908, thereby obviating any Turkish or Serbian hope of regaining the territory (the territory had been controlled by the Serbs prior to the Turkish invasions), the Austrians built 4,000 kilometers of railway, 5,000 schools (on account of which half the population became literate by 1914), and roads and public buildings throughout the capital, Sarajevo. What was most important, however, from the point of view of the Great War, is that the heir to the imperial throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was actively working to establish a three-part division of the Habsburg domains, which would entail the setting up of a South Slav kingdom, reigned over by the Habsburg monarch, which would include the Croats and the Serbs in a unified political structure that would have as much autonomy as the Kingdom of Hungary. It is thought that this serious plan was much feared by those Serbian nationalists who could not brook the idea of Serbs being incorporated into a peaceful multi-ethnic state.
The situation came to a head in June 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand (note this was prior to the days of the arm-chair “chicken-hawks”), as inspector of the army, was to view military maneuvers in Bosnia and then, with his wife the Duchess of Hohenburg, to make a courtesy visit to Sarajevo on June 28th, the day of a great Serbian holiday commemorating the battle for Kosovo. A thin military cordon was the only protection for the archduke’s car on the streets of Sarajevo. A Serb nationalist threw a bomb, however, it was not until the afternoon that the archduke and his wife, eager to visit an injured officer in their security detail, were gunned down by Serb nationalist Gavrilo Prinčip. Prinčip, after having failed to reach his target in the morning, found that due to a wrong turn down an unmaneuverable side street, the archduke’s car drove up to him, very slowly, and stopped. Prinčip fired several times before he was overpowered; the archduke and his wife were dead.
C) The Austrian Dilemma and the Papal Plea for Peace
On the night of June 28, 1914, the Pope was troubled with increasing apprehension. He called his Secretary of State. Merry del Val was frightened at the appearance of the Holy Father. Fear and worry were expressed in his drawn features, and the hand that he extended trembled. “Il guerone; the world war,” whispered Pius. “I know it is almost upon us.” “Oh, no, Holy Father,” “The political sky is cloudless. There is no danger; the diplomats are preparing to travel during vacation.” At hearing this, Pius X shook his head in disapproval, “We will not get through 1914 in peace,” moaned Pius, “Believe me, Eminence.” A rap at the door then interrupted the conversation. A dispatch was handed to Pope Pius. A glance at the sheet and his trembling hand dropped it. Excited, Merry del Val picked up the paper and read that the Austrian heir and his wife had been assassinated. Still not seeing the full implications of the event, the Cardinal tried to lessen the Holy Father’s anxiety by arguing that such an event would not devolve into continent-wide warfare. “O my Lord,” groaned the Pope. Then Pius dragged himself into his chapel and fell on his knees before the tabernacle.
What the Pope saw and what the Cardinal failed to see was that the precarious situation of entangled European alliances would not be able to simply overlook such a jarring event as the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. What the Pope seems to have realized at the time, was that Austria would be “required” to move in order to preserve her prestige in the assembly of nations and, yet, “unable” to move without mortgaging her security and sovereignty to her northern German neighbor. Even though no information has emerged concerning the specific nature of the Pope’s diplomatic activity from June 28, 1914 to August 4, 1914, the day on which the British issued an ultimatum that brought about war with Germany, it is clear from what is know that the Pope’s only desire was for the war not to happen at all. Even though he obviously appreciated the service that Austria had given to the Catholic Church against the Protestants to the North and the Schismatics to the East, from the contents of the interview between the Austrian ambassador and the Pope on July 28th, it is clear that he did not at all approve of Austria’s decision to go to war in order to resolve the Serbian problem. In fact, there have been some witnesses who say that the Pope wrote a letter to Emperor Franz Josef, imploring him to avoid a war. But, Cardinal Merry del Val himself said that he had no knowledge of this letter; there is no trace of it in the Austrian or Roman archives.
In July of 1914, the initiative lay with Germany. Since Austria’s 48 ½ divisions could not adequately deal with Serbia’s 11, especially if those 11 were supported by Russia’s 114 ½ infantry divisions and a French ally, Germany had to stand ready to support the Habsburgs if the path of war with Serbia was chosen. The German attitude towards war, the various opinions within the German leadership itself, and the sequence of events that precipitated the German invasion of Luxemburg and Belgium are not historical facts that can be easily discerned. The one German fact that has, perhaps, been the most misunderstood is that of the person of the German Emperor Wilhelm II. There seemed to be no overt hostility to Wilhelm II from St. Pius X. It is known that Wilhelm, from the House of Hohenzollern (whose senior branch is Catholic in religion), was not overtly hostile to the Catholic Church. He was the one who dismissed Otto von Bismark, the “Iron Chancellor” of the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf, he very much enjoyed trips to visit the pope in the Vatican, and was instrumental in allowing the Jesuits back into Germany after Bismark’s rule. The House of Hohenzollern, of course, allowed the Jesuits to exist in Prussia even after they were disbanded in the rest of Europe due to the Hohenzollern’s gratitude for a critical Jesuit intervention in the beginning of the 18th century, which allowed the Dukes of Prussia to receive a royal crown from the Holy Roman Emperor. As for Wilhelm’s responsibility for the outbreak of the world war, two German historians G.P. Gooch and Arthur Rosenberg investigated this question after the war. They were commissioned to do this investigation by the Socialist Republican government of Germany and, yet, these historians came up with a negative report. There is not evidence that Pius X thought the Kaiser to be primarily responsible either.
If the initiative lay with the Germans, what was their strategic thinking in the summer of 1914? In this regard, it is clear that the Germans were primarily concerned with the massive military progress of Russia in both the numbers in its standing army, its development of a Baltic naval fleet, and its building of railways across Poland to the German frontier. The German ambassador to the United States Kanitz, on July 30, 1914, indicated that German could not wait while Russia completed her plans to organize a standing army of 2.4 million men. With the French financed railway soon able to move these massive numbers to within 100 miles of Berlin, the imperial capital, the thinking of the German General Staff was that, if a war should come, it was preferable that it comes earlier rather than later. As German minister Riezler, basing his statement upon military intelligence at hand, stated, “After the completion of their [the Russian] strategic railroads in Poland our position will be untenable…The Entente knows that we are completely paralyzed.” What seems to confirm this pre-war mentality of the Germans are statements by two of the leading political and diplomatic figures in the Anglo-American world, Sir Edward Grey, Liberal British Foreign Secretary, and Colonel House, chief advisor to United States President Woodrow Wilson. According to Grey, in July 1914, “The truth is that whereas formerly the German government had aggressive intentions…they are now genuinely alarmed at the military preparations in Russia, the prospective increase in her military forces and particularly at the intended construction, at the insistence of the French government and with French money, of strategic railways to converge on the German frontier…Germany was not afraid, because she believes her army to be invulnerable but she was afraid that in a few years hence she might be afraid…Germany was afraid of the future.” Colonel House confirms this assessment in a letter he wrote to Wilson prior to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, “Whenever England consents, France and Russia will close in on Germany and Austria.”
D) The Summer Agony of the Pope and of Christian Europe
In a farewell audience on May 30, 1914, Dr. Chaves, the Brazilian ambassador who had been called home by his government, indicated to Pope St. Pius X that he had no misgivings regarding world events. In the course of their conversation, however, the Pope said, “Are you happy, Ambassador that you can return to Brazil? You will not be a witness of the war.” “Does your Holiness mean the Balkan strife?” “No, no, the Balkan trouble is but the beginning of a world conflagration which I cannot prevent.” We have seen this uncanny prophetic insight before in Pius X in the months prior to the outbreak of the Great War, what we have not seen as of yet is this understanding that he as Sovereign Pontiff was powerless, on the geo-political stage, to halt the conflict by any kind of natural means. “In ancient times the Pope with a word might have stayed the slaughter, but now I am powerless.”
Pope St. Pius X’s words were the same to a private consistory on May 25, 1914, when he said to the assembled cardinals, “More than ever does the world sigh for freedom. And yet we see how nation rises against nation, race against race, and we know how hate develops into terrible war.” Also, days before, the Pope said, “The tragedy which is coming is one which I am powerless to help men escape and which I shall not be able to halt. “I have the highest ministry of peace, and if I cannot protect the safety of so many young lives, who can – who will?” At this consistory in which his successor Giacomo della Chiesa (Pope Benedict XV) was given the red hat, the Pope was pessimistic about the chances of men of good will to avert the catastrophe to come, “unless at the same time an attempt is made to establish in the hearts of men the laws of peace and charity. The peace or the strife in civil society and the State depend less on those who govern than on the people themselves.” This pessimism regarding his ability to influence the cascading troubles inundating Europe should not be taken as a failure to appreciate the role of the Sovereign Pontiff in the world of human affairs. In fact, when we look at the Pope’s statements at the initiation of his pontificate concerning the pope’s role in political and social affairs, we can more perfectly understand his profound disappointment at being unable to affect the European situation in any way. In the first consistory of his pontificate, on Nov. 9, 1903, Pope St. Pius X emphasized the pope’s role as supreme teacher of the Moral Law and his right and duty to play an integral part in the politics of the world. Here he stated that, “It is Our program to renew all in Christ; Christ is truth, and we shall make it our first duty to preach and explain the truth in simple language that it may penetrate the souls of all and imprint itself upon their lives and conduct….We are convinced that many will resent Our intention of taking an active part in world politics, but any impartial observer will realize that the Pope, to whom the supreme office of teacher has been entrusted by God, cannot remain indifferent to political affairs or separate them from the concerns of Faith and Morals. And as the head and leader of the Church, a society of human beings, the Pope must naturally come into contact with the earthly governors of those human beings….One of the primary duties of the Apostolic Office is to disprove and condemn erroneous doctrines and to oppose civil laws which were in conflict with the Law of God and so to preserve humanity from bringing about its own destruction [emphasis added].
Simultaneous with his diplomatic efforts to avoid war, Pope Pius began to organize a Eucharistic Congress that was to meet in Lourdes from July 22-26, 1914. The Pope clearly believed that the only solution was for the faithful, in prayer, to avail themselves of the mercy of the Divine Love and the motherly solicitude of Our Lady. “We must pray. Only heaven can help --- God and the holy Virgin.” From a purely natural level, it is heart-rending to read of the child-like trust that the Pope placed in Our Lord and His Holy Mother, especially when we see his hopeful statements retrospectively from the perspective of the catastrophe of the Great War. In fact his recorded statement, “We must pray. The whole world must pray…The Lord and His Mother can avert the visitation; I want a Eucharistic Congress to be held in Lourdes. Perhaps --,” can only really be appreciated without maudlin pity, if we view this hope through the eyes of faith and with Our Lady’s apparition at Fatima in mind. I would venture to say that Our Lady’s appearance, message and miracle at Fatima are in direct response to the Pope’s prayerful petition.
The Eucharistic Congress itself was a great event, bringing together peoples from throughout the world all united in mind and prayer. There were lectures, conferences, and liturgical ceremonies. Every night there were great bonfires. All was ended with a singing of great Eucharistic hymn of praise written by St. Thomas Aquinas, the Tantum Ergo. Within days, the guns of war were heard on the frontiers. God would answer the prayers of the faithful, but in His time and in His way.
In one of the last days in July of that fateful year, Cardinal di Belmonte, Papal Delegate to the Congress, returned to Rome and told the Holy Father that, despite the rising tide of national hatreds, there was no doubt that that Pope himself was greatly loved in every land: each time the name of Pius was mentioned great enthusiasm had been shown by the crowds gathered at Lourdes. The Pope had proved himself to be what the popes were supposed to be on account of their sacred and exalted office, Father of all Christendom – a Christendom that would soon lose its claim to a visible presence in the world of men.
E) The August Passion
On July 29, 1914, only 3 days after the end of the Eucharistic Congress and one day after the declaration of war against Serbia by Austria, the Russians ordered a partial mobilization of their armed forces. This is exactly the action that threatened to find a reaction from Germany. Germany was committed to a strategic plan named after General von Schlieffen, in which mobilization by either Russia or France would be met with an immediate invasion of France and a declaration of war and, later, an eastern invasion of Russia. In order to avoid the vice of encirclement by the Entente Powers, Germany believed that she must first knock France out of the war, before turning on a slowly mobilizing Russia. Even though Emperor Nicholas II of Russia assured the Germans that this partial mobilization did not mean war, the Germans stated that, nevertheless, they would be forced to mobilize themselves. The Pan-Slavic foreign minister Sazonov and the Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Yanuskyevich were committed to full mobilization and finally cajoled Nicholas II to agree to it on July 30. Here Nicholas’ cousin, the German emperor appealed to the Russian emperor to halt mobilization or it would mean war. These appeals to the Russian monarch were futile on account of the adamant insistence upon mobilization by General Yanuskyevich. After the war, Yanuskevich testified to acting as he did due to Pan-Slavic principles (the belief that all the Slavic peoples should be joined together under Russian hegemony), sentiments that he knew the emperor, being of mixed Danish and German origin would not share. So, on the last days of July 1914, Yanushkyevich resolved to “smash my telephone and generally adopt measures which will prevent anyone [i.e., the Tsar] from finding me for the purpose of giving contrary orders which would again stop our mobilization.” If Russia continued to mobilize, the Germans insisted they had no option but to do the same. That meant, on account of the offensive/defensive von Schieffen Plan, the invasion of Belgium and France. “War by timetable” between the four continental powers commenced the moment Russia decided upon full mobilization. To put it in a straightforward way, World War I began when Yanushkyevitch, with the aid of Russian Minister of War Sukhomlinov, transformed the Austro-Serb armed conflict into a world war preparing, therefore, for the coming of Communism and the “spreading of the errors of Russia” throughout the world.
The time of religio depopulata was fast approaching. On August 2nd, the Pope directed a sharply worded warning to the whole world and asked all to pray. Pius was wearing away from grief and worry. He could only drag himself to his audiences, but he had no strength to speak to huge crowds. “My children, my children. I suffer for all who die on the battlefield.” “Oh, this war --- I feel this war is my death. But I gladly offer my life for my children and for world peace.” During the first half of August, Pius X blessed groups of pilgrims in silence, but gave no public addresses. He slept less than usual. His health, however, prior to the last five days of his life seemed fairly good and neither his doctors nor his sisters, who helped to take care of him when he took up residence at the Vatican, were unduly concerned about his health.
After giving his last audience on the Feast of the Assumption, to a group of Americans – as he had entertained at the first audience of his pontificate in 1903 – he came down with a high fever on August 19th and was completely prostrate. Now he realized the seriousness of his condition and is recorded to have said, “May God’s will be done. I think it is the end. Perhaps He in His goodness wishes to spare me the horrors Europe will undergo.” That evening, Cardinal Merry del Val, when hearing from the doctors that the Pope was threatened with pneumonia, despaired of his recovery, “He has suffered too much from the strain of public events to offer prolonged resistance to serious illness.” According to his doctor Machiafava, Pius X said, “I am offering my miserable life as a holocaust to prevent the massacre of so many of my children.” Then, in the early hours of August 20th, with the bells tolling throughout Rome indicating the Pope’s final agony, he spoke his last words, which, according to the most recent scholarship, were an act of trust. In his own Venetian dialect he said, “Gesu, Giuseppe e Maria, vi dono il cuore de l’anima mia! (Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, I give to you the heart of my soul) The Catholic, the peasant, the pontiff, and the lover of the souls of men were one at the moment of perfect and utter self-surrender.

Benedict XV and the Calamity of 1914

2006-10-31T16:25:00.000-08:00

By Peter E. Chojnowski, Ph.D.

Ma! Questa è una calamità (Oh. This is a calamity!). This sotto voce statement by Cardinal Raphael Merry del Val to one of his Cardinal-Elector colleagues at the announcement of the election, to the supreme pontificate, of Giacomo Della Chiesa, Cardinal-Archbishop of Bologna, was echoed throughout many corners of the tumultuous European scene of September 3, 1914. The Cardinal-Electors had met to elect a successor to the great initiator of the anti-Modernist crusade, Pope St. Pius X. Cardinal Raphael Merry del Val, Secretary of State to Pius X and his closest collaborator and confidant, first had confirmed for him his own fate on account of the election of Pope Benedict XV, when the Cardinal-Elector to whom he had whispered his dismay, responded, “Per Vostra Eminenza, evidentemente lo è” (For your Eminence, it clearly is!). Seeing one of the leaders of the “loyal opposition” to the policies of the pontificate of Pope St. Pius X elected to the Chair of Peter was not easy for the Spanish Cardinal who was immediately, upon the election of Benedict, demoted to the rank of archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica. The choice of office was more then tinged with irony, since it was to exactly this position which Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro had been exiled at the beginning of the reign of St. Pius X. Della Chiesa was obviously an “opposition” candidate to the curial Pius X party, he was, however, seen to be more moderate in his “anti-integralism.” He was the “Rampolla candidate,” his heir in fact. That the long-time secretary and collaborator of Cardinal Rampolla, should make 80 changes in the Vatican hierarchy on the very evening of the day on which he was elected, clearly indicated to all that a new regime was in charge of the Holy See. According to John Pollard, Benedict XV did not choose the name “Pius,” on account of the fact that he wished to keep his distance from the previous pontificate. Benedict, himself, would later claim that his choice of name was due to his respect for the founder of the monastic order and his search for peace. According to the diary of Cardinal Piffl, as published in C. Zizola’s book Il Conclave: Storia e segreto (Rome, 1993), Cardinal Della Chiesa was elected on the 10th ballot, on the third day of voting, September 3, 1914. Having been in contention throughout, his final challenger, after the 7 votes of Cardinal Merry Del Val had been slowly reduced to zero, was a Benedictine Cardinal known for his extraordinary piety, Cardinal Serafini. According to this now published report, the Benedictine Cardinal was the final choice of those 18 cardinals, amongst who were Merry Del Val, Billot, Del Lai, and Agliardi, who wished a continuation of the policies of Pope St. Pius X, especially with regard to his treatment of the Modernist crisis and his position on relations with the Third French Republic. Cardinal Serafini lost to Cardinal Della Chiesa on the 10th ballot with a final vote of 18 to 38. According to the most recent biography of Pope Benedict XV published in English, Merry Del Val did not believe that Della Chiesa was worthy of the cardinalate. This much is proved by the failure to raise him to the rank for 7 years after he became Archbishop of Bologna, one of the archiepiscopal sees invariably entitled to the honor. Prior to the conclave, the Imperial Austrian government had, also, warned the Cardinals of the Habsburg Monarchy not to vote for Della Chiesa due to his being the protégé of Cardinal Rampolla, the recently deceased Cardinal and Secretary of State of Pope Leo XIII, whose own election to the papacy had been so abruptly vetoed by Emperor Franz Josef, thus allowing for the election of Cardinal Sarto, Pope St. Pius X. According to the diary of Cardinal Piffl, the Austro-Hungarian cardinals, as a block, supported Cardinal Della Chiesa from the beginning of the voting until his actual election. This went in the face of the attempt by Cardinal Hartmann of Cologne to dissuade the Cardinal-Electors of Germany and Austria-Hungary from supporting Della Chiesa on the grounds that his election would be an insult to the memory of Pius X, he was a man of “a violent character,” and, above all, he was a supporter of Rampolla’s policies which had been anti-German and pro-French.
A) Le Pape Bosche: The French Reaction

“Whose he?” was the response of a perplexed Cardinal Gibbons when he arrived in Rome in September 1914 and found out that Cardinal Giacomo Della Chiesa had been elected pope by a conclave that had met and finished its business before his arrival by boat from America. Such confusion as to the person of the newly elected Pope Benedict XV did not exist on the part of the governments and the intellectual segments of Europe. The victory of Della Chiesa was clearly seen as a return to the policies of Pope Leo XIII and Cardinal Mariano Rampolla. An example of these policies would be the ralliement, in which Pope and Cardinal had urged French Catholics to abandon their fight for a restoration of the ancient Catholic French Monarchy and to try, instead, to leaven the loaf of the French democracy. Since Cardinal Della Chiesa had, for a generation, been the confidante and protégé of Cardinal Rampolla, the French republican government and press were initially elated by news of his election. This elation was further augmented by a prophecy made by a 17th century seer named Johannes of Strassburg. Here we must remember that by September 1st, one of the days on which the conclave met, General von Moltke, the German commander of the Western Front, had been within miles of Paris. It was in this situation that a Frenchman, who dabbled in the occult, remembered reading a 17th century prophecy about a “Pope Benedictus” whose pontificate was to occur during an especially violent war. After searching his library, the occultist discovered the prophecy in his library and it was, subsequently, published in the French press. This prophecy, appearing, as it did, at the moment when The Third French Republic appeared to be doomed, created a sensation throughout the Entente countries. The prophecy, as published in the French press in September 1914, reads as follows: “Pope Benedictus, having cursed the antichrist, will proclaim that those who combat him will be in a state of grace, and, if killed, will go right to heaven like martyrs. The bull that will proclaim these things will reverberate far and wide; it will revive courage and it will cause the death of the ally of the antichrist. One will know the antichrist by various signs. He will bear in his arms an eagle, and an eagle will be found in those of his acolyte, the other bad monarch. The latter, however, is a Christian and will die in consequence of the malediction of Pope Benedictus who will be elected at the close of the reign of antichrist.” In France, this prophecy built up morale inestimably. It seemed to place the divine sanction upon the French interpretation of the war. In French eyes, the German emperor Wilhelm II was the antichrist. According to the prophecy the Kaiser would not live long. Verification for this particular interpretation was found in the fact that both the German and the Austrian imperial coats of arms bore an eagle. The prophecy spoke of a Christian and a non-Christian emperor. Franz Josef of Austria was a Catholic and Wilhelm was a Protestant. In France, with an anti-Catholic Masonic government but with a nominally Catholic population, the invasion and the government propaganda had invested all evil in the person of Kaiser Wilhelm. Since all atrocities or reported atrocities were attributed to the person of the Kaiser, the French simply did not consider him to be a Christian.
Even though the first consistorial address, given to his cardinals two days after his coronation, repeated the constant theme of his predecessor, Pope St. Pius X, that the war itself was a great evil to be swiftly ended, the French hope that the first “bull” or encyclical of Pope Benedict XV would “cause the death of the ally of the antichrist.”
B) Ad Beatissimi and the Disappearing Prayer Cards
In such a psychological and geo-political environment, it is not surprising that the Pope’s first encyclical, the one that was meant to chart the path for his entire pontificate, was greeted with sighs of disappointment and, even, vindictive resentment. The French and British press and civilian population, as opposed to their governments, assumed that the German invasion of and alleged atrocities in Belgium was clear proof that the Germans were the unjust aggressors, who should be excoriated by the Pope. Instead of this, Ad Beatissimi extended his hand to all the combatant nations, repeating the prayer of Our Lord Jesus Christ, “Holy Father, keep them in thy name whom thou has given me” (Jn. 17:11). The Pope remarks how disappointing was the sharp disparity between his kindly thoughts and the world carnage at the time. Rather than cite the German army’s passage through neutral Belgium as worthy of condemnation, the Pope cited four main causes of the conflict, which he describes as an “unparalleled scourge, “a carnage that is without example,” “this monstrous spectacle,” and “a horrible plague.” The four causes he mentions are: 1) the lack of mutual love among men; 2) disregard for authority; 3) unjust quarrels between various classes; and 4) unbridled cupidity for perishable things.
Nowhere was there any indication that those who fought against the Germanic Powers were to be considered martyrs. Moreover, the resentment felt by the French was intensified on account of the implied condemnation of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” as French Republicanism articulated these. In the tracing the causes of the on-going conflict, Benedict states, “Paradoxically human brotherhood had never been preached more than it is preached today.” Furthermore, he points out that this type of secular “preaching” is vain because it is divorced from the Gospel. The secularist humanitarian approach is bound to end in failure. What has been the fruit of the leftist revolutionary drive for universal brotherhood, “Race hatreds are becoming almost a frenzy.” Benedict’s attachment to Cardinal Rampolla and his practical involvement in the policy of accommodation with the revolutionary government of France, did not pose an obstacle to his clear statement that it is man’s emancipation of himself from God, a disregard for authority (by this, he apparently means his own authority as Supreme Pontiff), the “unbridled spirit of independence joined with pride…which has permeated everywhere, not sparing the family or even the sanctuary,” which have caused the present societal disaster. Ultimately, “let princes and rulers of the people bear this in mind and bethink themselves whether it be wise and salutary that public authority should divorce itself from the holy religion of Jesus Christ, in which it may find so powerful a support.”
The bitterness occasioned by Benedict’s peace-advocating encyclical knew no bounds. From an English writer, we hear, “It is really difficult to believe that this was actually written in the year 1914; it sounds like the utterance of an elderly gentlewoman of about the year 1830.”
That Benedict was truly impartial and desirous of an immediate cessation of the hostilities cannot be called into question. Such a position, because it did not endorse the “obviously correct” French position, was certainly understood to be an indication of Benedict’s preference for the Central Powers of monarchial German and Austria. Georges Clemenceau, famous for his attempt to ban the Mass in France in the early years of the 20th century, expressed this view when he referred to Benedict derogatorily as le pape boche (i.e., the German pope).
We see the consequences of this reaction in the “incident of the missing prayer cards.” In 1915 the Pope, in an attempt to use the spiritual swords of prayer and trust in Divine Providence and Mercy, ordered that a prayer be circulated throughout the countries then engaged in combat. The prayer read in part, “Dismayed by the horrors of a war which is bringing ruin to peoples and nations, we turn, O Jesus, to Thy most loving Heart as to our last hope.” This prayer, printed on the back of a card which had the Pope’s picture on the front, was to be recited on the day appointed and for all of the days that the war continued. Seeing this as a subversion of the belligerent status of the Republic, French police, acting under secret orders, suddenly seized all the packets of the cards carrying the prayer. After mysteriously disappearing, the prayer cards reappeared the next day, just as mysteriously as they had disappeared. The obvious intent of the prayer did not prevent the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Amette, from mounting the pulpits at Sacre Coeur and Notre Dame on the Sunday after the prayer’s release and “interpreting” it to mean, that the Pope had a “victorious peace” in mind for France.
C) Moltke’s Assault: The Failure of the Short War
A generation after the events of World War I, Fr. Luigi Sturzo, well-known papal intimate and founder of the Italian Catholic Popular Party, in evaluating the decisions taken by Pope Benedict during the war as regards the “impartial stance” of the papacy, stated, “Benedict XV wanted to make of the Vatican not a judge of the morality of the war, but the Good Samaritan binding up the wounds, and reserving for itself, if opportunity arose, the role of peacemaker. We believe that Benedict’s act [i.e., his impartial stance] was a prudent one, the only one possible for a pope in the conditions in which he found himself. The problem of the justice of the war, rising from the depths of the human conscience, showed the ripening of the unprecedented moral crisis with insufficient means for resolving it….One of the reasons for this crisis came from the fact that the theologians and canonists of the 19th century had not brought the theory of the right of war up to date [emphasis mine].”
In the later summer of 1914, the moral claims of the various belligerent nations, whatever their respective validity, were not going to put an end to the conflict. Rather, there was a real chance that the month long forward advance of the Kaiser Wilhem’s armies, under General von Moltke, would swiftly bring a resolution to the conflict. Could it be that the conflict that would last almost 4 ½ years resulting in 9 million battlefield deaths could have been ended in a month with Christendom still standing?
From what is known now about the outbreak, the early progress, and even, what ended up being the final stage of the conflict, it appears as if the formative initiatives lie with the Germans. Aspects of the war that would justify this judgment are, the support given to the Austrians in their desire to discipline the Serbs, the tactical superiority of the German Army that almost lead to the September 1914 collapse of the Third French Republic, Moltke’s withdrawal from Paris, the U-boat campaign, Germany’s de facto defeat of Russia on the Eastern Front in 1917, Ludendorff’s shipping of Lenin to Russia from his exile in Switzerland, the failure of Ludendorff’s ill-conceived spring offensive in 1918, and, finally, the German general’s morale deflating call for an armistice in August of 1918.
With regard to the general German attitude at the beginning of the conflict in August 1914, we can say that for those “in the know” there was anxiety and consternation, whereas amongst the common people there was great enthusiasm. Writing in 1945, the famous Liberal German historian Friedrich Meinecke wrote in his Die deutsche Katastrophe, “To all who experienced it, the exaltation [Erhebung) of the August days of 1914 belongs among the most unforgettable memories of the highest sort…All the divisions within [the] German people…melted away suddenly in the face of the common danger.” This was the mood which persisted, amongst the population of average Germans, throughout the first months of the war, with trains leaving for the Front decorated with flowers, and with crowds gathering the stock exchange to celebrate the great victory against the Russian Army at Tannenberg. The naïve enthusiasm was not at all shared, however, by the German military and political elite who were not as ignorant of Germany’s geo-political situation. Bethmann, the German premier, was pessimistic. The Kaiser was more melancholic yet. Motke, the commander of the Western Front and the man in charge of implementation of the Schlieffen Plan was literally on the brink of a nervous breakdown when the German offensive was launched.
As it turned out, the first months of the war more than justified the German consternation.
As T.E. Lawrence memorably said, referring to the armies of all of the combatant nations, “the men were often gallant fighters, but their generals as often gave away in stupidity what they had gained in ignorance.” The fundamental misapprehensions which marked the first half of World War I, was reflected in two facts, the generals planned for a short war – and, therefore, terribly damaged their chances of fighting a long one – along with, failing to account, in their military strategy and tactics, for the rapid advancement in technology that had occurred since the 1890s.
According to British historian Norman Stone, all of the initial offensives, whether German, French, Russian or Austrian, came to a bad end on account of the generals’ reliance upon four factors: 1) cavalry; 2) enormous masses of infantry; 3) bombardments by shrapnel; and 4) the tactics of massed bayonet attack. It should also be mentioned that the Russian, French, and Belgian reliance upon fortresses, which were an obvious target for very heavy guns and resulted in the “pinning down” of the defensive forces, were partially responsible for the early defeats and retreats of the French, the Belgian, and Russian armies. For example, the French found that the only way of defending their armed fortress at Verdun in 1916 was to give it up and defend the fortress from a line of trenches outside, which the enemy could not spot so easily. As a result of German shelling, the Belgian fortresses collapsed resulting in the German occupation of Brussels, a mere two days after the death of Pope St. Pius X in Rome.
A 1914 war that began with cavalry-charges, individual heroism, and grand maneuvering, only eventually discovered the completely out-of-date character of such warfare. Cavalry charges were the first casualty of this war. Horses charging could, in the old days, have moved faster than guns could fire. The quick-firing revolution in artillery in the 1890s put an end to that. In 1914, a well-aimed rifle could knock out a horse a mile away. Moreover, the standard tactic, with regard to infantry, was a simple and unintelligent one: to bunch infantry together and move them forward as fast as possible. None of the main armies thought up anything else. The idea was to create a Napoleonic “lozenge,” the great square-shaped formations that Napoleon had employed. The Machine gun made this an insane policy. Rifle fire was far faster than it had been in Napoleonic days. An infantry attack could be broken up 2 or 3 miles off by well-aimed guns and in less than 2 miles by badly aimed guns. The French offensive into Alsace broke down with 500,000 casualties in a few days after August 15, 1914.
In light of this complete confusion, it might come as a surprise that the “Great War,” that left 9 million dead and lasted 4 ¼ years, could have ended within a month’s time. By September 1, 1914, the Germans were poised to take Paris. They had crossed the rivers Somme and Marne. Paris experienced a mass exodus. This began even before the first bombardment of the city on August 30th. Approximately 700,000 civilians appear to have fled Paris; this number includes the entire government and civil service, who fled to the safety of Bordeaux. This phenomenon caused the British military wit, Esner to remark, “the French are splendid but they cannot bear more than a certain amount of strain.” It was, however, in this superior position where the misapprehensions of the necessary accompaniments of modern warfare manifested their history-determining consequences. Finding themselves on the outskirts of Paris, the Germans could not obtain supplies on account of their 47 lorries having broken down in Belgium. The railway was not working and there was no telegraph that could convey the field position to Moltke. This led him to order a general withdrawal after receiving alarmist reports from his personal representative on the front, Hentsch. On September 11th, the German army withdrew, settling into the trench system and pattern of warfare that was to be fixed in place for the next 3 years. The war would have ended quickly if the German army had the technology, which was available to it in 1940 during the Second World War.
D) Benedict’s Fight for Italian Neutrality and the Gerlach Affair
On August 2, 1916, the harbor of Taranto, that city and port in SE Italy on the arch of the Italian boot, was as peaceful as at any time in its history. As the fishermen tended to their nets and the sailors and deckhands to their chores, the warship Leonardo da Vinci sat in the harbor. Suddenly there was a powerful explosion. Billows of black greasy smoke and the hissing sound of metal hitting the lapping water, testified to the fact that something awful had happened to the Leonardo. Within moments the ship, like a wounded beast, fell over on her side. 300 of the 500 crew members tumbled into the green sea. Less than 60 emerged still alive. After the initial shock had passed and the popular vilification of the Germanic enemy was well underway, investigators discovered some interesting facts. For instance, a roll call disclosed that the ship’s key officers and stokers had not been on board during the time of the explosion. Since the ship was about to embark on a sea mission, those men should have been on board supervising the final preparations. Do we fell a bit naïve when we ask, “Why weren’t they?” That something was afoot is also indicated by a very similar event that occurred in September 1915. That time it was the Italian ship Benedetto Brin, which was also at anchor off Brindisi, and which had likewise exploded in its harbor and had sunk. Its officers and stokers too had, coincidentally, been absent on a variety of “legitimate errands” at the moment of the blast.
In the Vatican, a few hours after the explosion but before the news had “officially” reached Rome from Taranto, a 30-year-old Bavarian cleric, Monsignor Rudolf Gerlach was overheard commenting to an acquaintance, “Well, a few hours ago, Italy paid the price of her treachery to Germany.” The treachery that Msgr. Gerlach was speaking of was Italy’s renunciation of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary that was meant to stabilize the Italian Kingdom after the risorgimento of 1860-1870 [this was the process of unification of Italian nations and territories that were historically separate politically from one another. The culmination of this process was the seizure of Rome from the Papacy in 1870]. That there should have been such obvious pro-German sentiment on the part of a Bavarian Vatican monsignor was not taken as unusual. In fact, the French and British clerics and diplomats who were working with or near the Vatican knew that there were strong pro-Central Powers feelings amongst the Catholic clergy both at the Vatican and throughout Italy, this was echoed in the ranks of Italian Catholic journalists.
It, really, should not be considered surprising that the Central Powers of Germany and Austria should have more influence and friends in the Vatican during World War I than the Entente Powers of Britain and France. Anglican Britain and Masonic France had no diplomatic representation to the Holy See, while the German Empire had 2 ambassadors, one from Prussia and one from Bavaria, and Austria was represented by Prince Schönberg, scion of a prestigious family that had served Church and State for centuries.
Even while maintaining his genuine desire for an immediate cessation of hostilities, no matter the losses and gains on either side, and his belief that the only possible stance for the Holy See in the dreadful politico-military situation was one of neutrality, there can be no doubt but that in the year 1915 there was a confluence of interests on the part of Pope Benedict XV and Kaiser Wilhelm II. Both wanted to keep Italy out of the war that had by then engulfed most of the rest of Europe. Their respective motivations for wanting this were, of course, different.
Even though Italy had been for 30 years a member of the Triple Alliance, the Kingdom had remained on the sidelines when war broke out in 1914. It seems as if the support of Italy depended upon which side was the higher bidder. In 1915, Italian military support was understood to be of utmost importance by the Powers who sought to break the stalemate along the uninterrupted lines of heavily fortified entrenchments, which had developed on the Western Front.
For Pope Benedict XV, there were two reasons why it was essential that Italy remain out of the war, she might be on the losing side and she might be on the winning side. The Pope and his Secretary of State, Pietro Gasparri – another protégé of Cardinal Rampolla, doubted the capacity of the Italian State to survive the political and economic tribulations of a major war. Defeat might undermine the legitimacy of the regime, create civil unrest, and ignite the flames of social revolution with consequences for Italy and the Catholic Church that no one could predict. On the other hand, an Italian victory over Austria might fatally weaken the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the principle Catholic Power in Central Europe and the traditional bastion against the encroachments of Russian Orthodoxy and Pan-Slavism.
In these prudent desires, a very dark character countered the Pope and the Cardinal. Sidney Sonnino, foreign minister of Italy, would prove to be Benedict XV’s greatest opponent throughout the course of the war. This Anglo-Italian would almost single-handedly check the Pope’s desire to keep his beloved Italy out of the war, bring the war to an end quickly through a universal armistice, and give the Papacy a voice at the “green-tables” of the Peace Conference after the war was brought to an end. The primary way in which Sonnino accomplished this anti-papal agenda was by his signing of the Treaty of London in April 1915. The nature of this treaty, which brought Italy into the war and ensured that it would not end until Italy had received all that she wanted of Austrian territory, was kept secret until the “pacifist” Communist regime of Lenin released the details of the Treaty in late 1917. Not only did this treaty promise Italian entrance into the war on the side of Britain and France, but also Clause 15 ensured that both hesitant Britain and less hesitant France would support the absolute exclusion of the Pope from the Peace Conference that would occur after the war.
During the late winter and early spring of 1915, both the German Empire and the Pope were attempting to influence the Italian cabinet to maintain its status of non-belligerency, while also seeking to satisfy the Italian War Party by trying to cajole Austria into making the necessary territorial concessions. Austria, fearing that concessions in a time of war would mean the disintegration of her multi-ethnic empire, stalled. The Italian government, already secretly committed to the Entente, had a declaration of war pushed through cabinet and parliament by the persistent and focused Sonnino.
When Msgr. Gerlach was overheard gloating over the Italian naval disaster, he was a man of some 28 years, having worked as first chamberlain and guardaroba (keeper of the wardrobe) of the Holy Father for less than a year. In fact, it is surmised that the first time Gerlach met the Giacomo Della Chiesa was when the then prefect of the Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics met the Archbishop of Bologna at the central station at Rome, a few days before Della Chiesa was, belatedly, to receive the red had from the hands of Pope St. Pius X. This debonair and sophisticated cleric, on this occasion and perhaps when Cardinal Della Chiesa came to Rome in August 1914 for the conclave that would elect him as pope, appears to have impressed the future Benedict XV greatly since it was generally taken as a shock when it was announced, on the evening of Benedict’s election, that the young Fr. Gerlach had been appointed by the new Pope “Secret Chamberlain on active duty to His Holiness.” There were only 4 such chamberlains, always serving the pope in pairs, who would appear flanking the Holy Father whenever he would make a public appearance. They would also act as personal servants during the pope’s private audiences and during his daily working hours. At his coronation on September 6, Monsignor Gerlach had been one of the chamberlains, who accompanied the Holy Father from his private apartments to the Sedia gestatoria [portable throne], by which he would be taken to his enthronement. It was obvious to all that the Pope had a special affection for the German, which made Gerlach’s ultimate betrayal of the Pope’s confidence all the more tragic. The young Msgr. Gerlach’s fine posture and erect carriage, along with his flawless manners, gave rise to the rumor that he had been a long-standing cavalry officer. That there were grave suspicions concerning Gerlach cannot be doubted since we know that during his term at the prestigious Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy there were disturbing rumors about his character and the sincerity of his vocation. A probationary appointment to the nunciature to Bavaria had been quietly set aside when the nuncio, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Andrea Früwirth, refused to have the young priest on his staff.
When Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in May of 1915, all Germans and Austrians were ordered to leave Italy. Msgr. Gerlach asked the Pope if he could stay. Due to the reliance of the shy and awkward Pope on the outgoing and suave Monsignor, Benedict was all too willing to take advantage of the Law of Guarantees of 1871, in which the Italian government had promised absolute noninterference with the personnel of the papal household. The Holy Father simply asked Gerlach to submit to the same “voluntary imprisonment” in the precincts of the Vatican that he, and all the popes since 1870, had submitted to.
It was clear from the beginning that Gerlach had not scruples about violating the promises that he had made to Benedict. Soon he was openly seen on the streets of Rome, freely visiting houses and apartments. Members of the papal household became more suspicious of Gerlach when he decorated and furnished his rooms at the Vatican in renaissance splendor at an incredibly high cost. For driving the 4 or 5 miles of roadway inside the Vatican precincts, it seems as if Msgr. Gerlach needed a Lancia, one of the premier luxury automobiles of the day. Not long after the sinking of the Leonardo da Vinci, Gerlach’s name was linked with the case. In early 1917, Benedict was presented with proof of Gerlach’s complicity in a plan to destroy the entire Italian navy. Moreover, since early 1915, he had been the conduit for money coming from the Central Powers that was to be used to subsidize the various non-interventionist newspapers that were trying to keep the Italian Nation out of the war. It appears, also, that Gerlach’s work of espionage included regular communication with German, Austrian, and Italian personnel who were more than involved in the passing of information to the governments of the Central Powers.
After several years of refusing to acknowledge the validity of the questions that had risen concerning Gerlach’s political activity, Benedict XV had no choice but to turn Gerlach over to the Italian authorities. These authorities, not wanting the complications of putting a personal chamberlain of the Pope on trial for treason, courteously placed Msgr. Gerlach on a train for the Italian-Swiss border. When Msgr. Rudolf Gerlach crossed at Lugano, a major international situation between the Holy See and the Liberal Kingdom of Italy had been avoided. What the Gerlach Affair had gravely undermined was the official posture of neutrality that Benedict had taken upon becoming Supreme Pontiff. This would greatly complicate the attempt by the Pope in 1917 to bring about a general armistice. How can Le Pape Bosche be taken seriously when trying to act as international mediator when his neutrality had been so thrown into doubt due to the actions of his intimate subordinates?
E) Gerlach and a Carmelite’s Sacrifice
One of the German representatives that Msgr. Gerlach had been dealing with in Rome was Mathias Erzberger. Erzberger was leader of the Catholic Center Party in the German Parliament and one of the men charged with trying to keep Italy out of the Entente camp. He was a man of great piety, knowledge, and experience. In Rome, Erzberger met Gerlach frequently and eventually invited him to visit his family, both in Germany and during their vacations in Switzerland. The handsome and personable Gerlach, his wide knowledge of persons and places, his sparkling conversation, his ready wit, and his fine manners made of him a special favorite of the young 13-year-old daughter of Herr Erzberger, Maria. Msgr. Gerlach came to embody for Maria everything that a priest should be.
In 1917 or early 1918, when Gerlach had been forced to leave the Vatican, a guest at the Erzberger home, paying no attention to the children in the room, began talking about Msgr. Gerlach, mentioning how he had left the Vatican, given up the priestly life, and had attempted to marry a wealthy Dutch Protestant woman. The religious and hitherto sheltered ears of Maria overheard this. Shocked she raced from the room and for the rest of the evening through herself on her knees before a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Based upon that prayer and that event, Maria made a momentous decision. She resolved upon the heroic step of offering her life for the salvation of Rudolf Gerlach’s soul. She did this by entering the Carmelite convent at Echt, Holland. Maria suffered all the normal depravations of Carmelite life, and in addition, prolonged periods of physical illness and severe spiritual trials. Her separation from her beloved father was perhaps her greatest hardship. This was added to in 1921 when she found out that her father had been murdered in cold blood while on his way to Mass. When Maria died at the age of 35, a paper, which she had concealed under her brown scapular when she made her final vows, revealed that she had offered herself for the salvation of her father and Rudolf Gerlach.
On November 14, 1946, Rudolf Gerlach died after a painful and lingering illness. As death drew nearer to him, he had called a priest. Regaining the faith of his childhood, he died with the last sacraments, begging forgiveness from all those on whom his association had cast a shadow. The heart of an apostate cosmopolitan man of affairs, who had betrayed his Pope and priesthood so many years before, was broken and healed by a Heart greater than his own.

1917: Democratic Jihad and the Pope’s Peace

2006-10-31T16:11:00.000-08:00

By Peter E. Chojnowski Ph.D.

“I think a curse should rest upon me – because I love this war. I know it’s smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can’t help it — I enjoy every second of it.” These words, spoken by Winston Churchill to Violet Asquith on February 22, 1915, suggest a soul dislodged from the fundamental attitude proper to a member of Christian civilization. This attitude towards a war that was wrecking the vestiges of Christendom is not really surprising when we consider Churchill’s well-known membership in the Order of Freemasonry (from 1895) and his also well-known, at least to historians, initiation into the Neo-Pagan Druid Order (from 1908). The existence and influence of such men as Winston Churchill are the only explanations for the blind inhuman ferocity with which World War I was pursued by the belligerents during the years 1914-1916. The theological, philosophical, and ideological positions of Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty and chief architect of the Gallipoli landings in 1915, simply exemplify the general loss of a Christian consciousness on the part of the leaders of the great Western Powers. This complete lack of adherence to even the most basic principles of traditional Just War doctrine, was simply incomprehensible to Pope Benedict XV. Why would a war be tolerated which, unlike all others up until that date in European history, seriously threatened to wipe out a vast percentage of the young men on the Continent? Why would not the leaders of Britain and France, chastened and awakened after suffering the loss of 624,000 men in the Battle of the Somme alone, enthusiastically take up consideration of any proposal for a reasonable peace? Why were most of the peace initiatives during the years 1917 and 1918, treated to bemused dismissal and scarcely hidden contempt? Pope Benedict XV, during the most critical year in contemporary history 1917, found himself confronting men who, like Churchill, appeared to have jettisoned “outdated” humane and moral concerns. That this new non-Christian understanding of conflict and war was not just to characterize the conflict of 1914-1918, is shown by Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s and President Franklin Roosevelt’s drafting and signing of a version of the Morgenthau Plan at the Second Quebec conference of 1944 in which they pledged to turn the heavily urbanized and industrial nation of Germany “into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in its character.” What we can say with certainty is that July 1914 inaugurated a generation of political and military slaughtering which was often perpetrated for the sake of “Progress.” It was the dramatic end to an unparalleled era in European history, an era of civil and, on the whole, international peace. It is quite possible that the casualties of all European wars since the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte (1815) did not exceed in number the figure for a single day’s losses in any of the great battles of 1916.
A) War 1916: Stalemate , U-Boats, and Blockades
December 1916 marked a watershed in World War I. It was a moment when the increasing futility of the military stalemate on the Western Front, induced one side of the conflict – the Central Powers – to seriously consider a negotiated peace. Contrary to a certain simplistic understanding, a desire for a cessation of hostilities and negotiations does not necessarily originate from an experienced position of vulnerability and relative inferiority. There was a definite long-range prudence and maturity revealed in the Central Powers’ (the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Turkish Ottoman Empire) efforts towards a negotiated peace late in 1916. Not all of it can be attributed to the accession of devote and eminently humane Karl I to the Austrian Imperial Throne and the Hungarian Royal Throne at the death of his great-uncle Franz Josef in November. This “maturity,” which I speak of, can be shown by the fact that these Powers were actually “winning” the war to an extent. Their military position and advantage appeared for all to see with their knocking the Entente ally, Romania out of the war and conquering Bucharest itself in the beginning of December 1916. Seeking to compensate for the British attempt at a starvation blockade of food and supplies to the Reich, the German military had ordered submarine warfare. This new kind of warfare, which targeted both enemy and neutral shipping, was roundly condemned by Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, the Papal Secretary of State, in the autumn of 1915, speaking of it as “appalling and immoral.” For the Germans, both during and after the war, this conflict on the open seas was only an attempt to offset the unrestricted blockade imposed by the Entente Powers, which was, also, contrary to established international law. The Great War thus became “as much a war of competing blockades, the surface and the submarine, as of competing armies.” B) The German Peace Offensive
The complete stalemate in the Western trenches plus the ruthless warfare at sea, serves as the backdrop of the German Peace Note of December 1916. From the evidence, it appears that Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany believed that everyone (i.e., the leaders of all of Great European Powers) secretly desired peace but that each belligerent was reluctant to be the first to admit it openly. The content of the German Note was simple and clear enough; some commentators called its tone “arrogant.” Whatever the tone, the Note stated that the war was one of unprecedented fury that threatened to destroy the material and spiritual progress which the 20th century had such a right to be proud of. The Central Empires had amply demonstrated their might and would continue to fight boldly if this peace initiative was ignored. They were, however, desirous of putting an end to the bloodshed. If the Entente Powers agreed to immediate peace negotiations, the Central Powers would guarantee existence, honor, and freedom of development, and would do everything possible to restore lasting peace for the nations then engaged in conflict. To this German Peace Note, there was no papal response. Benedict XV and Cardinal Gasparri would later, on March 7, 1917, explain, in a letter to the Cardinal-Archbishop of Cologne, that the reason for the coolness of the papal response to the peace gesture on the part of the German Kaiser was that a communication had been received from the British Government, which said that any intervention on the part of the Pope would be “ill-conceived” by Britain and France. Benedict’s view was that if he offended the Entente Powers at that time, any future efforts would be met with outright antagonism. Moreover, since the Note lacked specific mention of a proposal for the reestablishment of independence for the Kingdom of Belgium, Benedict and Gasparri were not convinced of the usefulness of the initiative. So the Kaiser’s Peace Proposal came to naught. This German peace initiative is usually forgotten by conventional accounts of World War I. What is also forgotten is the fact that it was only after the failure of this initiative that all restrictions on submarine warfare were lifted. German strategy in this war from the beginning was characterized by a great willingness to gamble. This appeared justified for the Germans at the time on account of the fact that the numbers, both in terms of man power and in terms of production capacity, were heavily skewed against them. For example, The Entente enjoyed an immense economic superiority over the Central Powers with a combined national income 60% greater. The combined Allies also had 4.5 times as men as great a population as compared to the Germans, Austrians, and the Turks with 28% more men mobilized for the war effort. The policy of the Germans prior to early 1917 and the failure of their peace venture was to sink, without warning, ships believed to be carrying war supplies to Britain. The German General Staff believed that such a gamble would bring about the defeat of Britain before the United States could make an effective military contribution to the war. This strategy was tried 3 times in 1915, when the Lusitania and Arabic were sunk. It was because of such actions that the German Empire found itself confronted with the outward, rather than just the covert, animosity of the American Republic.
C) The Pope’s First Moves Even though British and French disapproval had prevented Pope Benedict XV from taking up the peace proposal made by the German Emperor in 1916 and identical pressure had persuaded him to remain officially aloof, although privately supportive, from the clandestine effort by Blessed Emperor Karl of Austria to establish a back-channel connection to France via his brother-in-laws Prince Sixtus and Xavier of Bourbon-Parma, both Entente officers, Benedict and his Secretary of State were not inactive in pursuing what they say to be the only “solution” to the conflict, immediate peace and the restoration of the European status quo ante. In this, they were joined by a whole menagerie of political groups and individuals who were moved by various motives, ideological principles, and, likely, simple human empathy to demand an end to the suicidal European conflict. For those on the Left, this war was simply proving to be a capitalist enterprise in which the “military-industrial complex” was benefitting and capitalist nations were attempting to ruthlessly expand their markets. For the traditionalist Right, the war was proving to be just what many had, all along, feared it would be, the catalyst of European social, economic, and political breakdown. This rightist analysis seemed to be conclusively demonstrated by the February Revolution in Russia in 1917 in which the ancient Monarchy was toppled and a provisional parliamentary government put in its place. It would be this unhistorical rootless Russian parliamentary regime that the Communist coup d’etat would topple in the famous October Revolution in that same year. We can perhaps see the mental make-up of the man when we realize that Woodrow Wilson became ecstatic when he heard the news of the fall of the Russian Imperial Dynasty and then naively stated that, “Now Russia is fit for a league of honor.” The US president, of course, meant that now Russia, having shed its age-old Monarchy, would continue the War as one of the “enlightened” Democratic Powers. He, also, revealed, in this outburst, that his campaign theme of 1916 “He Kept Us Out of War,” was not to be taken as final. Within a month, the United States, also, would be in this enlightened and “liberating” League. Here, contrary to the implicit beliefs of the Democratists, it was the democratic republican government of Russia in 1917 that wanted to continue fighting the war against the Germans and Austrians. It was the Emperor Nicholas II who was of the view that peace must be concluded quickly for the survival of Russia. It was for precisely this reason that Lloyd George, the war-enthusiast “Methodist Machiavelli,” who refused to accept the Russian Imperial Family into exile in Britain since the Prime Minister viewed Nicholas as a traitor to the Entente cause. Remember, the Russian general’s phone which ought be “smashed” in order not to receive from the Emperor any order contrary to the provocative mobilization ordered by Minister of War Sukhomlinov and General Yanushkyevitch in August 1914. What was the immediate cause of a new and final papal effort to halt the slaughter was the efforts of a man who was well-known to the Vatican. The leader of the German Catholic Center Party, Matthias Erzberger was the primary agent of the Imperial Government in its efforts of 1915 to keep Germany’s former ally Italy out of the war. In this mission, Erzberger had worked closely with the Vatican and had meetings with Pope Benedict himself. Now, Erzberger, in the summer of 1917 after the US declaration of war against Germany but before significant involvement in the European theater of American troops, had been “converted” to a non-annexationist position, that is one which held that Germany should conclude a peace based upon the pre-war borders. Benedict XV believed that Germany was the key to a successful peace process. Unlike the Entente Powers, Germany and Austria were in control of large areas of occupied territory, most especially Belgium, whose restitution was for the Entente the sine qua non of any settlement. Benedict began with the premise that only the indication of willingness on Germany’s part to evacuate occupied territory would persuade the Entente to come to the negotiating table. Benedict and Cardinal Gasparri made careful preparations, in the winter and spring of 1917, for what would become their historic peace initiative. In May, in anticipation of the Peace Note, the Pope made personal contact with Blessed Emperor Karl and Empress Zita of Austria. D) The Pacelli Factor If the Germans were the key to peace, Benedict would need a trusted and skilled envoy who could fashion, in conjunction with the Germans, a plausible proposal for peace to present before the Western Allied Powers. That young cleric was Eugenio Pacelli, the priest who would occupy the Papal Throne during the 20th century’s next conflagration – a conflagration, by the way, which was almost the direct result of the failure of the Allies to accept the peace carefully crafted by Archbishop Pacelli. Msgr. Eugenio Pacelli was not a unknown factor at the Vatican in 1917. The Pacelli family had long been involved in Vatican affairs. The two year old Eugenio had been brought to the death bed of Blessed Pius IX who is reported to have said, “Teach this little son well so that one day he will serve the Holy See.” He had attended the elite Instituto Capranica, the seminary attended by Benedict himself, and Pacelli, like Benedict, had become a protégé of Cardinal Rampolla during the Cardinal’s years as Secretary of State under Leo XIII. For those who understand the importance of the Fatima message, it cannot be without significance that Eugenio Pacelli was consecrated as a bishop, and then given the honor of the pallium, on May 13, 1917 (the first day of the Fatima apparitions in Portugal) in a ceremony in the Sistine Chapel by Pope Benedict XV himself. The Pope wanted to give Msgr. Pacelli as much prestige as would be necessary in the royal courts of Germany for this most important peace venture. If it were not for the eventual contemptuous dismissal of the Pope’s Peace, Archbishop Pacelli’s mission to Germany in this critical year of the war would have been a complete success. After arriving at the royal court of Bavaria (there very much used to be such!), Archbishop Pacelli found the opportunity of making a personal overture, in the name of Benedict XV, to Kaiser Wilhelm himself. For a man who had been trained to display a complete self-control and dignified comportment, it was indicative of the Emperor’s frustration and emotion when he, with quivering lips, angrily responded to the papal letter which asked him to redouble his efforts to hasten the advent of peace even though it should be at the expense of some of the German objectives. Wilhelm said that he could not conceal his annoyance at the fact that his own peace efforts of December 1916 had been “snubbbed by Benedict XV in so unheard of a manner as not to have merited the courtesy of some reply.” While maintaining complete composure, Archbishop Pacelli stated that certain actions of Germany, for example the deportation of Belgian workers, did not give the Pope reason to attach much confidence to the peace overtures. According to Peters, “The Emperor seems to have taken this argument in good part. He admitted that although the action looked bad at first sight, it had not been against international law. He could not be forced to run the security risk of allowing civilians to remain behind German lines.” Despite the friction and voiced complaints, the meeting with Nuncio Pacelli seems to have made a very positive impression on the Kaiser. In his slim autobiography published in 1922, after his abdication and during his exile in Holland, Wilhelm II described his impression of the young Archbishop Pacelli at this critical meeting — critical for what would become Pope Benedict XV’s most important intervention in the World War. The Kaiser describes Pacelli as having, “an aristocratic, likeable, and distinguished appearance, with great intelligence and impeccable manners, the perfect model of a high prelate of the Catholic Church.” This favorable impression, and the potential within the papal appeal, led the Kaiser, within two weeks, to follow up on the issues discussed at this meeting. On July 12th, the Kaiser arranged a dinner meeting at which the German Chancellor was to present the final draft of a peace resolution which was to go to the German parliament, the Reichstag. Wilhelm was pleased with the draft since it repeated the statement that the Emperor himself had made in his Address from the Throne of August 4, 1914, in which he stated, “We are not animated by any desire for conquest.” It, also, repeated the statement that Germany had taken up arms only to preserve her independence and to keep intact her possessions. This was the basic text passed by the Reichstag, with some slight alterations made due to the increasing influence of Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff. On July 14, 1917, the revised peace resolution was laid before the Kaiser, along with a reply that was to be sent to the letter presented by Archbishop Pacelli. The Kaiser, seeing that the letter was dated August 13 – meaning the Chancellor had intended to significantly delay the German response to the Pope’s letter – said, “Vier Wochen, das ist unhöflich gegen den alten Pontifex!”(“Four weeks, that is discourteous towards the aged Pontiff!). Archbishop Pacelli was delighted with the German response to the Pope’s proposals. After meeting for two days with the German Chancellor, he returned to Rome on July 25th, with an understanding that the German government was now ready to accept papal peace proposals. Pope Benedict then used this occasion to present his very specific peace proposal to the British representative at the Vatican, Count de Salis. The Holy Father gave him several sealed envelopes. Each contained a copy of the historical Papal Peace Note of 1917. The British Government was asked to forward the note to France, Italy, and the United States whose governments were not represented at the Vatican. The die was cast. E) The Papal Peace Note of August 1917
The Papal Peace Note was very straight forward and apparently non-controversial. It does not seem possible that it could have received such a negative response from several of the warring parties. In the introductory paragraph, the Pope enumerated appeals he had previously made in general terms. He said that the time had come to propose concrete and practical propositions. The task of adjusting them and completing them he would leave to the nations themselves. The specific proposals were seven in number: 1) Substitution of Moral Force of Right for Law of Material Force; 2) A Simultaneous and Reciprocal Decrease of Armaments; 3) The Establishment of International Courts of Arbitration to Adjudicate Conflicts between Nations; 4) True Freedom and Community of the Seas; 5) Reciprocal Renunciation of War Indemnities; 6) Evacuation and Restoration of All Territories Occupied During the War; 7) Examination in a Conciliatory Spirit of Rival Territorial Claims [e.g., the question of Alsace and Lorraine].
The National Responses to the Papal Peace Proposals were as follows:
Germany: “For a long time His Majesty [Wilhelm II] with profound respect and sincere gratitude had followed the efforts of His Holiness to assuage the sufferings of war...and to hasten the end of the hostilities. The emperor sees in this most recent step of His Holiness a new proof of the noble and humanitarian sentiments, he entertains the lively hope that...success may come to the papal appeal.”
Austria-Hungary: Blessed Emperor Karl I gave an enthusiastic endorsement to the Papal Peace Note.
Bulgaria (one of the Central Powers): King Ferdinand replied to the Peace Note on September 26, 1917, in terms of reverence and loyalty.
Ottoman Empire: The Sultan of the Turkish Moslem Empire, Mohammed V, in an autographed letter on September 30, said that he was “deeply touched by the lofty thoughts of His Holiness.”
France: No direct response to the Pope’s Note. Merely a sharply worded statement issued by Foreign Minister Ribot to the British Government indicating that they (the French) did not intend to have an official statement in writing communicated to the Holy See. The British Government was asked to, “discourage any further attempt on the part of the Papal Secretary of State in the direction of an official intervention between the belligerents.”
Italy: In an address to the Italian Senate, Baron Sydney Sonnino, Italian Foreign Minister, stated that the Note was nothing but the work of Germany and that the proposals were utterly impracticable.
Britain: Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Minister (famous for the Balfour declaration), responded in a very non-committal way: “His Majesty’s Government, not having as yet been able to take the opinion of their Allies, cannnot say whether it would serve any useful purpose to offer a reply or, if so, what form such a reply should take. Although the Central Powers have admitted their guilt in regard to Belgium, they have never definitely intimated that they intend either to restore her to her former state or entire independence or to make good the damage she has suffered at their hands [emphasis mine].” F) Papal Peace Meets American Democratic Messianism: Wilson’s Intervention “What does he want to butt in for?” Here we have the unique first response from President Woodrow Wilson upon the presentation of the Pope’s Peace Note to him at the White House in August of 1917. The relations between the Roman Pontiff and the Presbyterian minister’s son from the Shenandoah Valley who sat in the White House had always been a bit tense. Contrary to pacific statements and neutralist campaign slogans, at the Vatican it was always understood that the United States, under its Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, was not actually a neutral and impartial player in the Great European Conflict. The United States was clearly helping the Entente and for what the Vatican believed were selfish reasons. It was held that the US was committed to France and Britain because of economic ties. Benedict XV, in particular, deplored the United States’ arms trade with France and Britain, especially when it was carried on the passenger vessels, thus providing a causa belli against Germany. In light of this, it was as early as April of 1915, a full two years before official US involvement in the war, that Benedict called upon the United States to enforce an arms embargo against both sides. This, of course, was never done. Included in this analysis of the American attitude towards the war, must have been a recognition that the tragedy of the sinking of the British liner RMS Lusitania, had been engineered to ease the United States’ entry into the war. This joint British-American operation had been executed at the expense of 1,198 human lives. Among the dead were 128 Americans. On April 22, 1915, a week and a half before the liner departed, an announcement was issued by the German Embassy in Washington which warned passengers that Germany was in a state of war with Great Britain and, therefore, all ships sailing under her or her allies’ flag were subject to attack and that passengers were, therefore, traveling at their own risk. For some unknown reason, newspapers did not publish the warning until the day of departure. Some 8 miles off the coast of Ireland, a German U-20 submarine fired one torpedo at the liner. After the torpedo hit there was a second explosion. Within 18 minutes the ship sank, with the passengers in general panic. As the Germans insisted at the time, and a 1960 investigation by an American John Light confirmed, the ship had been filled to the gills with contraband munitions making it a legitimate target according to international law. Included in this stock, were some 4,200,000 rounds of Remington .303 rifle cartridges. This was also confirmed by later British documents that came to light along with the ship’s manifest, which had been given to Woodrow Wilson and was only released at the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Allen Welsh Dulles, brother of the future Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, knew well of the engineering of the tragedy.
It would still be some 2 years until the United States officially entered the conflict. Perhaps, this was to get past the presidential election of 1916 in which Wilson barely, due to a narrow margin in the State of California, beat his Republican opponent Charles Evans Hughes, on a platform of neutralism and peace, “He Kept US Out of War!” It was immediately after the election that Wilson momentarily acted as the neutral observer of the horror of the European conflict. On December 20, 1916, when the peace efforts of the Central Powers were well underway, the United States issued an appeal that included the statement, “The President is not proposing peace; he is not even offering mediation. He is merely proposing that soundings be taken in order that we may learn, the neutral nations [here he apparently includes the United States] with belligerents, how near the haven of peace may be for which all mankind longs with an intense and increasing longing.” When, only 4 months after the “peace appeal,” Wilson broke off relations with the German Empire, clearly in preparation for a declaration of war, the Holy See attempted to heal the breach — seemingly due to the impression at the Vatican that the United States was merely reacting to individual acts of the German military and political authorities. Therefore, we can understand the shock experienced by the Pope when he heard the news of the United States’ declaration of war against the Central Powers in April of 1917. This was understood by Pope Benedict XV to be an unmitigated disaster. His Holiness understood, with utmost clarity, that American intervention would extend the time of the conflict since there would be absolutely no reason for the Entente Powers to consider a cease-fire or armistice. Even though it is difficult get into the mind of another man, particularly if that man is the Vicar of Christ, it appears that the Pope did not fully appreciate the extent to which the Presbyterian President viewed the war in Europe as a “crusade” for equality and democracy. This is the only explanation for the blind-siding of the Pope in this case and in Wilson’s final and conclusive rejection of Benedict’s great peace initiative of August 1, 1917. Wilson believed that this war was one of the “enlightened” Powers of parliamentary and democratic regimes, recently stripped of the “embarrassment” of Nicholas II, against the dark “holdovers.” Wilson’s throwing of America’s sword onto the scale of the Entente Powers, changed the conflict from a fratricidal conflict over Alsace-Lorraine and Flanders, to a global crusade against Monarchy and, what would show itself after the war, against Papal influence in the political affairs of the world. In other words, against historical Christendom. It would not be stretching it to say that with the rejection of Pope Benedict’s Peace Note of August 1917, Woodrow Wilson became the grave-digger of Christendom. What might not have happened had not the war continued to its tragic end – the downfall of the Russian, Austrian, and Prussia monarchies? Can we venture Communist Russia, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, World War II, the Cold War, Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine, Korea, Red China, Vietnam, the Social Revolution of the 1960s, and perhaps, Vatican II? What we can be certain of is that these things would not have happened as they did if Wilson had not, “butted in.” It is only with this anti-monarchical and anti-papal attitude in mind that we can understand the patronizing and cool response of Woodrow Wilson, through his Secretary of State Robert Lansing, to the Papal Peace Note. Robert Lansing prepared the world for Wilson’s fatal response by his own articulation of the fundamental principle of American foreign policy, both then and now: “No people can desire war, particularly an aggressive war. If the people can exercise their will, they will remain at peace. If a nation possesses democratic institutions, the popular will will be executed. Consequently, if the principle of democracy prevails in a nation, it can be counted upon to preserve peace and oppose wars...If this view is correct, then the effort should be made to make democracy universal.” In a letter dated August 27, 1917, Robert Lansing, speaking for President Wilson, responded to the Pope’s Peace Note by stating the following, “No part of this program can be carried out. The object of this war is to deliver the free peoples of the world from the menace and the actual power of a vast military establishment controlled by an irresponsible government which having planned secretly to dominate the world, proceeded to carry the plan out. This power is not the German people. It is the ruthless master of the German people. It is no business of ours how that great people came under its control. But it is out business to see that the history of the rest of the world is no longer left to its handling....They desire no reprisal upon the German people who have themselves suffered all things in this war which they did not choose. They believe that peace should rest upon the rights of the people, not the rights of governments....The word of an ambitious and intriguing government on the one hand and a group of free peoples on the other....We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guaranty of anything that is to endure, unless explicitly supported by such conclusive evidence of the will and purpose of the German people themselves.” Pope Benedict’s attempt to stop the war which would decimate 9.4 million and open the Age of Totalitarianism ended with this rejection. The Entente Powers allowed Wilson to speak for them. As the great biographer of Pope Benedict XV, Walter Peters, states, “Wilson could not endorse Benedict’s plan because the prime premises of the two men differed so radically. Wilson was motivated by an urge to punish. In Wilson’s opinion, it was absolutely necessary that the ruling dynasties of Germany and Austria be forced to abdicate.” Pope Benedict XV told one of his friends that it was the bitterest moment of his life when he heard of the rejection of the Note by Woodrow Wilson. G) 1918: Why the War Ended When considering the failure of the peace initiatives of the Holy Father and others, we can understand why the war did not end. But why did it end? Did the Germans lose? Yes and No. According to the most recent historians of the period, it was the collapse of German morale on the Western Front, which brought about the defeat of Germany and Austria in the Great War. Even after the failure of Ludendorff’s famous Michael Offensive in the Spring of 1918, the Germans and Austrians were still killing the Allies at a faster rate then they themselves were getting killed by the British and French (Note, the US Army was on the Western Front in substantial number only in the Autumn of 1918). In the last 3 months of the fighting, for example, 63,500 British soldiers were killed, while 28,000 Germans were killed. It was not the Germans who elected to continue fighting who brought about the collapse of the Central Powers, it was those Germans who elected to surrender – or desert, shirk or strike – who ended the war. This become clear, even by looking at the basic casualty count for the entire war 1914-1918: 9.4 million total casualties, 4 million dead from the Central Powers and 5.4 million dead from the Entente. Most of the surrendering occurred at the end of the war, from August 1918 when General Ludendorff first started asking for an armistice and the second week of November when Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated and went into exile in Holland. Probably the greatest chance Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy had of winning the struggle, was if Emperor Nicholas II had accepted, as early as 1915, a separate peace offer from the Germans and Austrians. The Central Monarchies might well have won the war early and Russia would almost certainly have avoided Communism. When the Russians spurned these advances, the Germans went on to inflict total defeat on them, making the triumph of Communism possible. In 1919, the Versailles Conference met without the attendance of a representative of the Holy See. Just as the Versailles Treaty was the first one since the early years of Christendom not to invoke the Holy Trinity, the Father of Christendom would have no place at the table which would profoundly rearrange the map of Europe. As Emperor Franz Josef stated at the end of his life, “Europe is dead.” It was the tragic fate of Pope Benedict XV, the man who loved her most, to weep at her tomb.

FLESH OF MY FLESH

2006-02-26T17:21:00.000-08:00

PETER CHOJNOWSKI

When writing about wives and their role in society and in familial life, it is extremely interesting to consult the account given of the creation of Eve, the first wife, in the Book of Genesis. The most particular feature of the account, in chapter 2, is the fact that Eve is created as a wife. There is no account given of any nuptial rite or action subsequent to Eve’s creation by God from the rib of Adam. Whereas, Adam is created and immediately given the task of subduing the earth, Eve is created from the primal being of Adam, the female from the male, the feminine from the masculine, as helpmate in this task of achieving mastery over the world. Here Adam has a task and calling before he cries out in his loneliness. He is alone, yet he does his work. His occupation is to achieve dominance over that which has been given to him. This drive for dominance has a two-fold aspect; it is both physical and intellectual. The first man must have herded the animals before he named them; to name them is to classify them according to type. It is to “capture” them within the boundaries of the concept; it is to open them up with an intellectual incision that reveals the essential content of each. Adam, the first male, achieves these conquests, mimicking the Creator’s facile mastery over the non-order, rather than the disorder, of nothingness, with a certain self-sufficiency that is characteristic of the male mind.

The Genesis account of the creation of Eve portrays a being of quite a different character. Here, there is no such self-sufficiency on the part of the first female. After finishing his work, Adam is lonely, and that is why Eve is created. From her beginning, Eve’s role was derivative. It is Adam, who had not as yet lost the fullness of rational clarity, who recognizes in his wife the derivative character of both her being and her temporal occupation. In chapter 2, we read, ”And Adam said: ‘This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.’” It is, thus, the first man who defines the essential feminine character of the first woman. Eve achieves full self-understanding only after Adam has revealed his own reasoning to her through the spoken word.

It is interesting, that in trying to bring about the fall of man from his state of primal innocence and grace, Satan should attempt to seduce the understanding of Eve rather than that of Adam. How he goes about doing it is even more interesting and enlightening. Rather than merely relying upon arguments that gave the appearance of rationality, Satan seduces Eve’s reason by provoking her imagination, hoping that Eve’s sensation and imagination would soon have her reason following in train. By manipulating the feminine tendency to apply general statements to themselves with an immediacy which goes well beyond the intent of the statement itself, Satan uses a word as part of his seduction which can easily be both personalized and materialized, it was the word “eyes.”

It is in chapter 3 of Genesis, that we read, “And the serpent said to the woman: No, you shall not die the death. For God doeth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.” By focusing her attention on what she saw, rather than on what she knew, Satan achieves his objective. In what follows, we read, “And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold: and she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat.” The individual condemnations and curses leveled by God upon both Adam and Eve for their respective acts of rebellion are also indicative of the respective roles which both were meant to play and would play in the history of mankind. Eve’s punishments are leveled on her life as wife and mother, “in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee.” Adam, however, being condemned because he “harkened to the voice of thy wife,” is punished through God rendering more difficult his task of mastering the world about him: “ cursed is the earth in thy work; with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. . . . In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken.”

Woman as Wife-Man

In this age of triumphant Feminism, which has as its most irritating aspect the drive for the use of “inclusive” language, the etymological roots of the term “woman” cannot be very comforting to those bent on eradicating from a feminine nature any intrinsic orientation towards those with a masculine nature. The word itself is a contraction of the words for “wife-man” in the old Anglo-Saxon tongue. If the Feminists, who, in the word Ms., have given us an abbreviation for an, as yet, unknown title, seek comfort from the “chauvinism” of the English tongue, they will surely find none in Latin (mulier), French (femme), German (Frau), or Spanish (mujer) all of whose words used to designate a “woman,” can be used, unaltered, to designate a “wife.” Most of the Feminists, of course, realize this, hence their proclivity to employ the generic term “person.” There is a certain irony present even in their use of this term, however, since the word has its etymological origin in the Etruscan word phersu that was their word for “mask,” or that, which hides one’s true identity! Hence, “chairperson”! Their constant use, in their writings, of s/he is, seemingly, counterproductive.

So a mature woman has, both biblically and linguistically, been conceptualized as a “wife,” as one who has given herself to a man for the primary and express purpose of bringing into being and, moreover, into perfect being (i.e., educating) human offspring. An interesting point to consider here is the profound meaning of the biblical designation of Eve as a “help-mate” of Adam. To be a “help-mate” is to have a cooperative, yet secondary, role. The seemingly pejorative implications of the designation “secondary” can be tempered if we look at the relation in a more philosophical way, rather than relying upon the commonly understood meanings of words.

The way we might bring the respective masculine and feminine roles in the spousal union to the philosophical level is by understanding the husband to be the active agent in the relationship, while the wife can be seen as the passive receptor of the action initiated by the active partner. The husband’s initiating role exists as such in the physical, psychological, economic, and social domains. Just as it was the male’s place to work to establish the nascent relationship by indicating interest and by struggling to win the affections of the female, who should only reciprocate interest if he struggles in a manly way to gain her attention, so too must he be the one, if the social and economic ventures of the family are to succeed, who injects his ideas, talents, labors into both family life and the civic order. This power of transmission belongs, or ought to belong, to the husband. From the male come the seeds of life and insight.

The passivity of the wife and of the feminine nature in general does not, in any way, entail the inactivity or the “nonbeing” of the female. What it does entail is the receptive quality of the feminine character and constitution. Here I appeal to a Thomistic philosophical principle: potency in itself does not exist without its proper act. It will be my contention that women have their being as women actualized only through their relationship with men. Women need men in order to be truly women. Men, however, do not need women in order to be truly men. The military, the monastery, and the seminary confirm this. Every convent has its father confessor and the Eucharistic Bridegroom.

As has been stated above, the “passive” nature of a woman does not at all entail her inactivity or any sort of lack of substantiality. Rather, the term is used to emphasize the dependence that a woman has upon the formative and actualizing potential of the male mind. Whether the Feminists like it or not, a woman’s relationship with her father and/or her husband is formative, it impresses a fixed stamp or character on her existence which she can never efface. This fixity which is given to a woman’s character and her situation in life by her husband is a further manifestation of the biblical teaching that while God created the male in His own image, the female was created according to the image of the male. She, whether in her primal or in her personal being, bears his image and determinative likeness.

The form, impressed by the husband upon his wife’s life and, consequently, the life of the family, is not something that is stagnant. Rather, the life of the family, which is given its basic character by the father, is developed and enfleshed by the mother. This is how the wife fully participates in the life transmission and engenderment initiated by her husband. She must keep alive what he has made to live. She must nurture in a way only she can, that which he has willed.

In his Symposium, Plato states that man naturally seeks after one or both of two forms of temporal immortality. The first, is accomplished by the teacher who, by placing the seed of truth into the mind of his disciple, ensures that his ideas will continue to live long after he himself is dead. The second form of temporal immortality, which is sought after by the great majority of men, is physical immortality that is had through the engendering of children. It is no small thing that a wife’s call to be the “help-mate” of her husband, includes, as its most noble and sublime aspect, the guaranteeing of immortality. Of course, in a spousal union in which the bond is of a sacramental nature, there are three forms of “immortality” which are the fruit of the cooperative efforts of the spouses. First, the physical “immortality” which perpetuates in time both the paternal and the maternal line. Second, the immortality possessed by a human soul that comes into being through the activity of God and the material cooperation of the father and the mother. Third, the supernatural immortality which is the consequence of the sacramental life which is cultivated in the child, through the agency of the priest, on account of the efforts of both spouses. Even though in Heaven there is no marriage or giving in marriage, the achievement of matrimony is immortality. It is no small thing.

A Mother’s Duty

The etymological rendering of “matrimony” as matris munium or “a mother’s duty,” gives us an insight into one of the fundamental necessities of the successful marriage. This necessity is the strict separation of the husband and wife’s respective roles. The rationality of this separation and the separation’s simplification of the roles of each is not only grounded in the natural position of the husband and wife in the context of the family, but it is, moreover, rooted in the essentially active nature of males and the essentially passive nature of females which we have discussed above. When considering the fitting and natural division of these various roles, we must, also, never forget that the greatest formative task, other than physical procreation, which the husband has is to impress his own rationality, itself informed by objective truth, upon all the various aspects of a family’s life, both its internal life and its collective actions within the community. It is a husband’s uniquely masculine calling to “stamp” the life of the family with his intellectual image, thereby giving to the family its own form and character. After stamping his rational image on all of these realms of activity, the husband and father is charged with ensuring that the entire family conforms to this form. It is thus the father’s task, as a necessary part of his patriarchal office, to enforce discipline within the family.

In tandem with this impression of his own rational understanding of the true nature of things upon family life, a husband is called to attempt to impress, successfully, his own stamp on some, no matter how obscure, aspect of the outside world. This attempt by the male to impress his own rational image on some aspect of the outside world, we will call his “project.” Every man must have a “project.” A “project” is much more than a mere “job.” It is a desire to transform and change for the better. That all men, intentionally or unintentionally, have such a “project” is something that a woman and wife must appreciate if they are to adequately understand how they are to be the “help-mates” of their own spouses.

Rather than resenting such a due separation of roles within the context of the family, a woman should find it a great consolation. First, it is the most obvious and effective means of avoiding the conflicts that, normally, are the clash of wills over a projected course of action. If a wife clearly appreciates the realms over which she has delegated jurisdiction and those over which she, normally, has no jurisdiction, over the course of time there will be an inevitable lessening of conflicts between she and her husband.

It seems to be a characteristic of our post-1960’s era, that, whether in “good” marriages or outside of good marriages, woman are having to deal with a stark fact. Most men either do not know what their proper role is in family life or they simply refuse to fulfill their proper role. On account of this, a woman’s natural desire to trust in the power and prudence of her husband is frustrated; her reaction to this situation is to usurp her husband’s authority, along with directly challenging the legitimacy of that authority. If we are ever to restore peace to the feminine soul, Feminism being the most obvious manifestation of a lack of such peace, women must be able to trust that a man, her man, specifically, both understands his obligations and will put all of his power into fulfilling them. For women to be women, men must be men.

Mistress of Man’s Soul

Since a man must “conquer” in the civil sphere if he is to maintain the domestic realm in which his family can grow and prosper, a wife’s duty to help her husband must extend beyond tending to the daily needs of his children. It must include an attempt to facilitate, both psychologically and materially, her husband’s “project.” Before a wife can, truly, render such help, she must overcome any resentment she may feel at having to “share” her husband with his project. This is extremely difficult, since the male’s placing of his project on an equal, if not higher, level than his concern for the maintenance of personal relationships is foreign to the feminine mentality. Often it appears to her to be more than slightly absurd! What a wife must realize is that it is a reality nonetheless. It is beneath a woman’s dignity to compete with her husband’s project. Rather than compete with it, she must support him in it and then she will unite the domestic and the civil aspects of her husband’s life and win his undying affection. A man must conquer and a woman with him!

Of course, a wife and mother has a right and a duty to remind her husband that his marriage and his family are “projects” which he has willfully started and must, therefore, attend to. One does not attend to a wife and family like one attends to a business. It is in helping her husband focus on the personal dimension of his various “projects,” that a wife can most profitably enter into her husband’s psychological life and, subsequently, contribute to its augmentation. Here we find a task for wives that few fully appreciate. It is to rectify a tendency to objectivize and instrumentalize normal social and professional relationships. Since a man is normally immersed in his struggle to render docile the particular difficulties he has taken on, there is a real tendency to view other men as mere “cooperators” in his task and not as men.

Just as the feminine psychological preoccupation with individual persons, their needs, their affectivity, and their personal circumstances, makes a woman better qualified than a man to tend to the daily needs of children, so too this psychological occupation with persons, rather than projects, can allow a wife to help her husband develop the personal aspects of his social and professional life. Of course, for this to happen, a woman must, to the degree that she can, understand and genuinely appreciate the work of her husband, its implications and its long-term importance.

What, also, must be understood is why this work is important for her husband. What ideal motivates him? For I would maintain that all men are motivated by an ideal, whether that ideal is true or false. If they are not, they are not truly men. More. If they are not motivated by a true ideal (i.e., an ideal founded in the Mind of God), they have not actualized their potential for true masculinity. Women, look for a man who has his eyes to the heavens, yet his feet firmly planted on the ground!

Real Wives in an Androgynous Age

In our own time, wives or woman looking to be wives, are faced with a problem not encountered by their female ancestors, the ideal of masculinity, which was the thing, other than religion, true or false, most cultivated by all significant civilizations, has been mugged and absconded from the cultural scene by the minions of the Revolution.

This official exiling of the masculine ideal is best manifested in the incessant discussion concerning the ever-growing list of human “rights.” As the enforcement of these “rights” expands, the available sphere of truly masculine action decreases. A “right” is a prohibition against the masculine enforcement of truth! A husband’s constitutional helplessness in the face of his wife’s desire to abort their unborn child is one of the gravest manifestations of this legal and social castration.

The most obvious temptation of the woman who experiences a patriarchal “power-vacuum” in her own family is to try to fill the office and exercise the functions meant to be exercised by the husband. To attempt to “wear the pants” in the family, whether metaphorically or literally, will not solve the woman’s problem. A woman, even a strong woman, cannot truly take the place of a husband and father. It is unnatural and contrary to the divinely appointed ordering of things. The children will, moreover, fail to learn the proper distinctions between the role of the father and mother, the husband and the wife. This will ensure that the failure of patriarchy and true masculinity will continue and, most likely, will become even more exaggerated in the coming generations. A woman while doing her duty as wife and mother and, therefore, as a woman, must always let it be known to her children that the office of father is necessary and ought be respected, even if there is no or, at least, not a fit occupant of that office.

Woman, in our own androgynous age, must refuse to usurp the natural place of the husband and father. Rather, they must learn to encourage their husbands and husbands-to-be to exercise the office of prudent governor, which is rightfully his. This can be done by a woman calling upon her husband to make the decisions which are rightfully his to make, while, also, indicating to him that he must enforce those decisions. If a man feels, no matter how “subconsciously,” that his family is a republic rather than a monarchy, he will not boldly and virilly exercise his patriarchal office. He will feel no need to. Since money is one of the levers of power, a family that has come to “depend” on the wife’s income, is almost sure to end up as a republic. In that case, the traditional model of the family will have been laid aside and trouble is, undoubtedly, ahead.

In our own day, when, contrary to all the previous ages of mankind’s history, normative models of true femininity and womanhood have been lost, we must return to the reality of the bride in order to uncover a woman’s most abiding nature. In the bride, who is only a bride on the day of her wedding, we find the virtues that must be reflected in the female soul. These are the virtues of faith, of abiding hope, and of selfless charity, with the fortifying virtue of courage to protect the others. A bride has faith, because she, more so than the bridegroom, takes a “risk” when she offers her entire self, and she always offers her entire self, in love and in submission to her spouse. A bride has trust, that the one she offers herself to will bear her up, providentially, she and hers. A bride has love, a love that knows no conflict, which knows no other, which cannot be without. It is in these virtues that a wife best resembles the Spouse of the Lord, Holy Mother Church. For like Her, after the nuptials have been consummated, faith will turn into knowledge and understanding, hope will turn into possession, and love, love will always be love.

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Pilate’s Silver: Josephus’ Account of the Passion

2005-11-13T04:32:00.000-08:00

February 5, 2005

By: Dr. Peter E. Chojnowski

This is the account, given by the 1^st century A.D. Jewish Roman historian Flavius Josephus in his book The Jewish War, according to the Old Slavonic rendition of the Greek original, of the Life, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, known here as “the Wonderworker”:

First, the statements about the ministry of Jesus and His miracles:

“At that time there appeared a man, if it is permissible to call him a man. His nature and form were human, but his appearance was something more that that of a man; notwithstanding his works were divine. He worked miracles wonderful and mighty. Therefore it is impossible for me to call him a man; but again, if I look at the nature, which he shared with all, I will not call him an angel. And everything whatsoever he wrought through an invisible power, he wrought by word and command. Some said of him, ‘Our first lawgiver [Christ] is risen from the dead and hath performed many healings and arts, while others thought that he was sent from God. Howbeit in many things he disobeyed the Law and kept not the Sabbath according to our fathers’ customs. Yet, on the other hand, he did nothing shameful; nor did he do anything with the aid of hands, but by word alone did he provide everything.”^¹

Second, the statements concerning His Trial Before Pilate and His Passion:

“And there assembled unto him of ministers one hundred and fifty, and a multitude of the people. Now when they saw his power, that he accomplished whatsoever he would by a word, and when they had made known to him their will, that he should enter into the city and cut down the Roman troops and Pilate and rule over us, [but he took no notice]. And when therefore knowledge of it came to the Jewish leaders, they assembled together with the high priest and spake: ‘We are powerless and too weak to withstand the Romans. Seeming moreover that the bow is bent, we will go and communicate to Pilate what we have heard, and we shall be clear of trouble. . . . ‘ And he [Pilate] had that Wonderworker brought up, and after instituting an inquiry concerning him, he pronounced judgement: ‘He is a benefactor, not a malefactor, nor a rebel, nor covetous of kingship’. And he let him go; for he had healed his dying wife. And he went to his wonted place and did his wonted works. And when more people again assembled round him, he glorified himself through his actions more than all. The teachers of the Law were overcome with envy, and gave thirty talents to Pilate, in order that he should put him to death. And he took it and gave them liberty to execute their will themselves. And they laid hands on him and crucified him contrary to the law of their fathers.”^²

Third, the statements concerning the aftermath of the Passion of Jesus Christ:

“This curtain [of the Temple] was before this generation entire, because the people were pious; but now it was grievous to see, for it was suddenly rent from the top to the bottom, when they through bribery delivered to death the benefactor of men and him who from his actions was no man. And many other fearful signs might one tell, which happened then. And it is said that he, after being killed and after being laid in the grave, was not found. Some indeed profess that he had risen, others that he was stolen away by his friends. But for my part I know not which speak more correctly. For one that is dead cannot rise of himself, though he may do so with the help of the prayer of another righteous man, unless he be an angel or another of the heavenly powers, or unless God himself appears as a man and accomplishes what he will, and walks with men and falls and lies down and rises again, as pleases his will. But others said that it was not possible to steal him away, because they set watchmen around his tomb, 30 Romans and 1,000 Jews.”^³

A) Independent Verification: Why Josephus Matters

If we were to attempt to find an extra-biblical historical source to confirm the happenings described in the Gospels, there is certainly none better than that of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37 – 100 AD). There are two reasons why Josephus (who later, due to the patronage of Vespasian, took the family name of the emperor as his own) is such an outstanding historical source. First, he has no “interest” in testifying to and confirming the events as described in the Gospels – as far as we know, he never was a Christian. Second, his contacts with the Jews of the Mediterranean world, including the Jews of Jerusalem, were extensive. He himself was from Palestine and returned there, after a stay in Rome, prior to the Fall of the City in 70 AD. His contacts were far-reaching and of the highest quality, being a commander of the Jewish forces fighting the Romans prior to 70 AD, a friend and interpreter for Titus the Roman besieger of the City, and, later, a confidant and client of the Roman emperors. To this extensive practical experience, we can add his high social status as the son of a priest and a man who, at the age of nineteen, decided to join the Pharisees.^⁴ What we cannot help but recognize here is the fact that Josephus would have access to a wealth of personal accounts and high-level information, which would not even be available to most Christians of the period. What we find in the Old Slavonic (Old Russian) manuscript is, precisely, language which indicates that Josephus was an unbiased historian of events in the Life of Jesus Christ, who had access to accounts coming, ultimately, from well-placed first-hand observers of those events.

Although it is clear that Josephus was a patriotic Jew, he quickly became impressed with the grandeur and power of the Roman Empire. This deep impression, which the Empire made on him, was the reason for his efforts to prevent violent conflict between his nation and Rome. In 66, being unable to prevent the outbreak of hostility between the two sides in Palestine, Josephus reluctantly joined the rebellion and, even, assumed a command in Galilee where he fortified a number of cities. His eventual surrender to overwhelming Roman power led to his imprisonment in 67. It was during this imprisonment that he was to form a lasting friendship with the Roman general Vespasian. When Vespasian became emperor in 69, Josephus was officially freed. ^⁵

Josephus shows himself to be a man caught in the very nexus of the most important events of the time-period, when we find him returning to Jerusalem with the son of Vespasian, the general and future emperor, Titus. Knowing of Roman power and Jewish weakness, Josephus tried to convince the Jews holding the city to surrender and thus save it. He was unsuccessful. After the destruction of Jerusalem, Josephus returned to Rome and accepted an imperial pension – even gaining Roman citizenship and adopting the name of the imperial family.^⁶

It was upon his return to Rome, after the destruction of the Temple, that Josephus began his literary endeavors. His first work, the one that attracts our interest, was The Jewish War. It was written as a general history of the wars from the time of the Maccabees to the Great War with Rome, which resulted in the demise of the nation of Israel. Josephus’ eyewitness account of the last years of resistance and the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, are invaluable contributions to our understanding of the social, political, and religious milieu of the New Testament period.^⁷ Basically, if Josephus did not know what was going on amidst the Romans and the Jews of the period, who would? It is, of course, within these two groups that we must search for a more perfect understanding of the events surrounding the Passion of Jesus Christ.

B) The Passion: A Conspiracy Unreported?

The implications of the passage cited above are clear. In what appears to be a text coming from the hand of a skeptical, puzzled, unbeliever, we find confirmation of the Gospel’s explicit statements concerning the ministry and the miracles of Jesus Christ. In passages resembling those found in his later work, The Antiquities of the Jews XVIII, 63f, Josephus testifies to the unique nature of the mission of Christ and the marvelous phenomenon, which even impressed this Jewish priest and Roman collaborator. His simple statement that, “he did nothing shameful; nor did he do anything with the aid of his hands, but by word alone did he provide everything,” is evocative of many of the incidents reported in the Gospels (e.g., the healing of the servant of the Centurion) in which a simple word from Christ worked miraculous cures at a distance. This same point, that “he accomplished whatsoever he would by a word,” is mentioned again in the section of text which discusses the desire, on the part of the “multitude of the people,” that he should enter into the city (Jerusalem) and “cut down the Roman troops and Pilate and rule over us.”

The “Wonderworker,” “angel,” and man whose “appearance was something more than that of a man,” is identified as a man who both violated certain “customs” concerning the Sabbath and “did nothing shameful.” He, apparently, from the account given by Josephus, became a grave “problem” for the leaders of the Jewish people, when His miracles incited the people to believe that He had the divinely given power necessary to overthrow the oppressors of Israel and restore the Davidic kingdom. Here we find a slight variation of the account given in the Gospels, which would indicate that its author either did not know the content of the Gospel accounts (which appears likely) or had access to information about the political intrigue between Jewish and Roman leaders that was not available to, or did not concern, the Evangelists. According to Josephus, the Jewish leaders, worried about their own situation, reported the events surrounding Christ to Pilate. Pilate, after engaging in what appears to be a very violent form of crowd control, brought Christ before him and judged him to be innocent of all charges of insurrection. After Jesus’ dismissal, the marvels increased, again causing the Jewish leaders to come to Pilate.

It is in this second attempt to implicate Jesus that the Jewish leaders revealed their true motivation and intention. With regard to this section of the text, either it is a complete “interpolation” (a word very popular with the scholars who wish to dismiss the statements made in the Old Slavonic text) or it provides us with “inside” information that shed an entirely new light upon the Trial and Passion of Jesus Christ. There are no other possibilities. If we look at two different translations of the same text, we find that there is still no ambiguity as to the meaning of the passage. Thackeray renders the passage, “the teachers of the Law were overcome with envy, and gave 30 talents to Pilate, in order that he should put him to death. And he took it and gave them liberty to execute their will themselves. And they laid hands on him and crucified him contrary to the law of their fathers.”^⁸ In a translation of the same passage by the scholar, G.A. Williamson who upholds the authenticity of the Old Slavonic “additions,” we find the following: “The exponents of the Law were mad with jealousy, and gave Pilate 30 talents to have him executed. Accepting the bribe, he gave them permission to carry out their wishes themselves. So they seized him and crucified him in defiance of all Jewish tradition.”^⁹ With regard to the meaning of the text, the differences present in the translations are insignificant. Pilate has gone from an active role, one in which he judges according to his own understanding that Jesus is not a malefactor, to a passive role on account of a bribe. “And he took it and gave them liberty to execute their will themselves.” The final sentence of this section indicates that they (“they” here clearly refers to the “teachers of the Law” – if not, the whole passage would make no sense) executed their desires when “they laid hands on him and crucified him contrary to the law of their father.”

If we truly think about these passages, rather than just dismissing them arbitrarily as “interpolations,” we find that this identification of the “teachers of the Law” and native Jews in general as the proximate (i.e., immediate or “closest”) cause of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, many aspects of the whole situation, along with numerous Scriptural references and a tradition within Christianity, become more intelligible. That Josephus should mention this singularly unique event should not at all surprise us; it would surprise us if he did not mention it in his first work on the Jews. References to Christ, as worker of wonders and as a man who purportedly rose from the dead, appear in his later book entitled, The Antiquities of the Jews. Such renowned twentieth century scholars as Thackeray, von Harnack, and Burkitt have affirmed the references to Christ there as authentic.^¹⁰

All the points mentioned here, the bribery of Pilate, the fact that the Jewish leaders “laid hands” on Christ and “crucified him contrary to the law of their father,” along with the judicious and balanced historian’s horror at the injustice of the actions taken by his fellow Jews, clearly make this an historical event which could not be passed over in silence. I would challenge any scholar to cite a case in which the leaders of the Jewish people are known to have turned over one of their own countrymen to the Romans and demanded from the Romans that the man be executed by way of crucifixion. I know of no other historical example of such an event. Moreover, something has to explain Gospel passages such as the one in the Gospel of St. John. First, St. John, the only known apostolic witness to the actual events themselves, gives an account of the profoundly shocking statement of the leaders of the Sanhedrin who denied their Messiah (“whomever” he might be) and their very norm of governmental legitimacy by responding to Pilate’s acknowledgement of the kingship of Christ (“Behold your king”) with the statement, “We have no king but Caesar.” After this verbal coup d’etat, on the part of the chief priests, the Gospel of St. John states exactly what we find in Josephus, “Then therefore he delivered him to them to be crucified. And they took Jesus and led him forth.”^¹¹ In this regard, something like the political situation portrayed by Josephus must have taken place or else the attribution of guilt to the leaders of the Jewish people by St. Peter, St. Paul, and, even, in such early Christian writers as St. Justin would lack force for the people of the time.^¹² I have never read anything in Scripture, coming from the Evangelists or from the other Apostles, in which the Romans as a group were condemned for bringing about the death of Jesus Christ.

C) The Torn Curtain and the Temple Inscription

Included in the Slavonic “Additions” (i.e., material included in the Old Slavonic translation of The Jewish War which is not included in the extant Greek text) are passages concerning the aftermath of the Crucifixion, which confirm the “bribery” statement, contained in the earlier citation, along with providing additional information that is extremely intriguing. Although classified by the Jewish scholar Robert Eisler as “clearly a Christian interpolation,” the text reads like one written by a habitual skeptic and not as one written by a devote believer. Either there is much fakery going on or this is a text by a Jew of pagan Greco-Roman culture who has definite and exact information concerning the events surrounding the one, which he calls the “wonderworker.” He either saw the sight himself or has second or third hand accounts of the sight. Confirming the Gospels here in every detail, Josephus writes that, “This curtain [of the Temple] was before this generation entire, because the people were pious; but now it was grievous to see, for it was suddenly rent from the top to the bottom, when they through bribery delivered to death the benefactor of men and him who from his actions was no man [emphasis mine].” How consonant with the passage in The Antiquities of the Jews that speaks of Christ as “a wise man, if indeed he should be called a man. For he was a doer of marvelous deeds.”^¹³ Why would the first part be an “interpolation” and the second part of the same sentence perfectly in accord with what Josephus said in other works?

This text clearly identifies the Death of Christ as being the point in time when the curtain of the Temple was rent “from the top to the bottom.” We, also, have the singular fact presented that the curtain of the Temple, after being rent at the time of the Passion, was left hanging for a considerable period of time. Such would be quite an odd fact to make up if one were looking to skew the text in any way.

Josephus goes on to speak about the reports of the Resurrection. He treats them here not as facts, but simply as reports. “But for my part I know not which speak more correctly” (i.e., those who say the body of Christ was stolen away or those who say that He rose from the dead). At this point, he presents another singular fact that appears to be too particular to be an “interpolation.” Josephus, in regards to those arguing that the Resurrection had indeed taken place, says, “But others said that it was not possible to steal him away, because they set watchmen around his tomb, 30 Romans and 1,000 Jews.” This purported fact, unreported in the Gospels, would be a perfectly understandable consequence of the intense concern, on the part of the leaders of the people, that Jesus’ prophecy that he would raise His body up after 3 days, would not be fulfilled. The enormous Jewish presence at the tomb and the miniscule Roman one would reflect their respective “interest” in the case of Jesus of Nazareth. The Jewish leaders were so adamant that they were willing to renounce their loyalty to the House of David, while Pilate was so, seemingly, indifferent that he was even willing to put forward as a king one that did not have the sanction of Caesar. Moreover, if this information about the strength of the guard at the tomb is true, then there is no possible way that the body could have been “stolen away.” That there is no mention of these kinds of numbers in any other source but that of Josephus indicates that the “silver” must have flowed quite freely in the aftermath of this incident.

Finally, in a part of the text for which I have no explanation, but which is included immediately before the section which discusses the renting of the curtain, we read of the “equal pillars” present in the post-Resurrection Temple, “and upon them titles in Greek and Latin and Jewish characters,” giving warning that no foreigner should enter within; the text goes on to say, “And above these titles was hung a fourth title in the same characters, announcing that Jesus the king did not reign, but was crucified by the Jews, because he prophesied the destruction of the city and the devastation of the temple” [emphasis mine].^¹⁴ The point of interest here is that Eisler does not speak of this section as a “Christian interpolation.”

D) The Scholarship

The question of the status of the Old Slavonic text of The Jewish War has been a contention amongst scholars since knowledge of the text arose in the Western world due to the translation of the Old Slavonic texts relating to St. John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, and the early Church into German by Alexander Berendts. Berendts tried to translate the entire text of The Jewish War but his efforts were cut short by his death. The text that was translated was not, apparently, a mere translation of the extant Greek text since it contains both material not present in the existing Greek text and omits material present in the Greek. The Jewish scholar, Robert Eisler’s work on the question of the authenticity of the text, and G.A. Williamson’s Penguin translation of it, which included the key passages as part of the appendix, popularized the idea that the Old Slavonic text was a translation of an early addition of the Greek text. That there were two editions is mentioned in the preface to the extant Greek text itself.

The German scholar who was at the forefront of the research in this area of the Old Slavonic “additions,” was Johannes Frey of the University of Dorpat. After producing a thoroughgoing study of the history of the Passion, in 1908 he published a substantial volume in which he treated the subject of Josephus’ “Christian” passages in much minute detail. In this regard, Frey called attention to the fact that the general characteristics of these passages was very different from those of all other ancient Christian “forgeries” known to the scholarly world. Frey’s main contention, after all of his extensive research and explication of the text, was that the author must be held to be a Jew and not a Christian. To substantiate his claim, he pointed out that there is no evidence of direct dependence on early canonical Christian literature, nor any sign of an acquaintance with the precision of the written tradition or of the inner oral traditions of the Christians themselves. In so far as there is an agreement with the Gospels or the Acts of the Apostles, it is only in the form of generalities; it is as if someone is speaking from the “outside.”

The question then arises, where did the author of the text get his information. As Frey asserts, he did not get it from merely fabricating it in his imagination. He has traditional material of some sort to go on. He is clearly setting forth what he has heard people say. The testimony appears to, often, trouble him exceedingly. And, yet, he does not come off as a hostile critic. In fact, he generally appears to be sympathetic. He clearly believes that Jesus was an outstanding figure who was unjustly done to death. Frey’s main contention is that the writer of the text worked on Jewish general popular oral sources; he had at his disposal oral traditions proximate to the occurrences. He therefore is the greatest external source, from the first century, to confirm the accounts of the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

1 Josephus, Vol. III, The Jewish War (Books IV—VII) in The Loeb Classical Library, trans. H. St. J. Thackeray (London: William Heinemann LTD, n.d.), pp. 648-649.

2 Ibid., p. 650.

3 Ibid., p. 658.

4 The Works of Josephus, trans. William Whiston (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1987), p. ix.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid., p. 650.

9 Josephus, The Jewish War, trans. G.A. Williamson (London, 1970), pp. 398-400.

10 Cf. H. St. John Thackeray, Josephus, The Man and the Historian (New York, 1929), pp. 136-137.

11 Taken from the Douay-Rheims Bible, St. John 19:14-16.

12 For example, we read in The First Apology of St. Justin, the Martyr, “But Jesus Christ stretched out his hands when he was crucified by the Jews, who contradicted him and denied that he was Christ.” Also, in the same work, St. Justin writes, “Not withstanding this, the Jews who are in possession of the books of the prophets did not recognize Christ even when he had come, and they hate us who declare that he has come and show that he was crucified by them as had been predicted” [emphasis mine]. Cf. Early Christian Fathers, translator and editor Cyril C. Richardson (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1970), pp. 264-265.

13 Josephus, Antiquities, XVIII, 63.

14 Josephus, War, p. 657.

John Dewey: Philosopher of the American Mental Deconstruction

2005-10-06T15:44:00.000-07:00

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John Dewey: Philosopher of the American Mental Deconstruction

“I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand. I believe that our personality is a cosmic ganglion [i.e., a focus of strength and energy], just as when certain rays go on after the meeting as they did before, so, when certain other streams of energy cross at a meeting point, the cosmic ganglion can frame a syllogism or wag its tail.”1 That we should find such a cavalier statement of nihilistic fancy being voiced by a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., should not be surprising for any one who has considered the most recent examples of American judicial nihilism as this is express in Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Casey v. Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania. All of these decisions, which have embedded the Nihilistic principle that there is no intrinsic, God-ordained worth given to things independent of a citizen’s evaluation of those things deep in the American constitutional order, have been simply the latest and most egregious examples of a legal, political, and educational outlook that traces its genealogy to 19th century Liberalism. That this idea that man is free to evaluate the world around him, and so bind the State with his evaluations as expressed in the collective will of the majority of voting citizens, continued to shape American jurisprudence well after the 19th century cannot be doubted. An example of this judicial nihilism, can even be found quite manifestly in an opinion handed down by Supreme Court Justice Vinson in 1951, “Nothing is more certain in modern society than the principle that there are no absolutes, that a name, a phrase, a standard has meaning only when associated with the considerations which give birth to nomenclature. To those who would paralyze our Government in the face of impending threat by encasing it in a semantic straightjacket [i.e., Truth?], we must reply that all concepts are relative.”2
This relativism and legal positivism (i.e., the conception that law has no more ultimate grounding than the intent and decision of the established lawmakers in a particular country during a particular time period), did not merely cut American Jurisprudence off from any explicit grounding in Natural or Divine Positive Law (“Positive” law is that which is explicitly promulgated by the law giver, rather than contained implicitly in his intentions. The 10 Commandments are the prime instance of the Divine Positive Law). Rather, such thinking began to permeate American society at large by first shaping American educational theory and practice.
It is an old adage that “a fish rots first from its head,” in this case, the “head” that was rotted by this destructive philosophical Nihilism, was the teaching profession and those philosophers of the early 20th century who tried to engender and propagate this position. The point of origin from which these notions permeated American education was, during the early decades of the 20th century, Teachers College, Columbia University. Here two professors, John Dewey and Edward Lee Thorndike, adapted Darwinistic Naturalism and a Relativism born of Atheism to educational theory. That such a destructive set of ideas would be applied to education is to be expected, and, yet, it is most insidious since the very essence and intent of education is to lead young minds to a participation in the true by introducing them to the unchanging structures and underlying principles and laws of existence. This appreciation of the true is supposed to lead to a more fetching appraisal of the good and, finally, a savoring of the form and fittingness of the moral good, which is the beautiful. To reject outright the very objective existence of a truth involving conformity to real stable being, of a good serving as the end of rational action, and of a beautiful that reveals the superabundant generosity of the Divine Creator, is to circumvent the very rationale of the educational process. That the intended victims of such an educational overthrow, for “victims” they truly are, should be the most naturally credulous and malleable segment of our civic body, is to be expected from those who have as their ultimate objective revolutionary transformation of all which has hitherto been considered most human and most abiding. As we will find when considering the philosophical thought of John Dewey, such purveyors of Militant Absurdity take a certain delight in proclaiming the inherent meaninglessness of man’s hitherto greatest aims, his sweetest consolations, and his confident regard for the One Who made him. Such is the cruelty of men who have willed their own will, in spite of God.
That such anthropological and theological cruelty should be inspired by Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species and its dynamic for competitive destruction of that which is other, is not surprising.3 Such a foundation for the American educational nihilism and relativism can be clearly discerned in the following statements of Professors Thorndike and Dewey. When speaking of the moral relativism that forms part of his theory of human nature, Thorndike writes, “Man’s traits, insofar as they are a part of his inheritance, owe their origin and biological meaning to their survival value. All natural traits and impulses of human beings must therefore be fundamentally good, if we consider the good as the biologically useful. Cruelty, selfishness, lust, cowardice, and deceit are normal ingredients of human nature, which have their useful role in the struggle for existence. Intrinsically they are all virtues. It is only their excess or their exercise under the wrong conditions that justly incur our moral disapproval.”4 The evocation of Rousseau’s Noble Savage and Nietzsche’s “Blond Beast” are obvious. The Natural Man who is good, not on account of the conformity of his actions to reason or their suffusion with grace, but rather, because of his “authenticity” with regard to his display of “raw nature.” If Thorndike holds that a Good God did not create Nature, is cannot be surprising that he dismisses the idea that Nature inclines towards achievement of the good. Professor Dewey writes in a similar vein when he states the following, “Modern science made it clear that nature has no preference for good things over bad things; its mills turn out any kind of grist indifferently.”5 That such brutish and destabilizing ideas were the products of lonely, alienated eccentrics can be easily dismissed, when we consider the statements of two prominent men in American academia. Dean Seashore of the University of Iowa stated that, “No school is uninfluenced and no humanistic science is unaffected by Thorndike’s [and concomitantly, Dewey’s] labor.”6 Also, Dean James E. Russell insisted that, “in developing the subject of educational psychology and in making it fit study for students in all departments, Professor Thorndike has shaped the character of the college [i.e., Dewey’s Teachers College, Columbia University] in its youth as no one else has done and as no one will ever have the opportunity of doing.”7 Since the Teachers College at Columbia University, New York City exercised the greatest influence on the educational psychology and methodology of the American primary, secondary, and university educational system, a study of the philosopher who embodied and developed the Empirical Naturalism of this institution, John Dewey (1859-1952), is of critical import.
A) Dewey and American Naturalism
To understand John Dewey and the climate that he has created in the American public education system, we must first understand that intellectual movement of which he was a part. It was Dewey himself who gave this emerging movement, of the first half of the 20th century, the name of “Empirical Naturalism.” Both terms in this appellation are critical to understanding the presuppositions that are present in this philosophical system. The system of thought is “empirical,” on account of the fact that no form of intellectual inquiry is acknowledged as efficacious, which departs from or in any way “transcends” the methods of inquiry that characterize the modern empirical sciences. For Dewey and others in the school of American Naturalism, such as John Randall, Jr., there is no knowable or cognitively experienceable reality that escapes the scope of this method.8 All those sciences that so occupied the concerns of thinkers in the past, most particularly theology and metaphysics, are deemed to be illusory: “The holy jungle of transcendental metaphysics” as the Naturalists dismissively state.9 The human mind’s way to God through a contemplation of the workings of Nature is, therefore, cut off since no such movement of the mind can pass “empirical muster.”
It is, ultimately, inconsequential that the sciences that were considered the highest ones in the civilization built by the Catholic Church and the one’s affirmed as such by the ancient sages, Plato and Aristotle, should be dismissed outright as barren of truly significant insight. The reason for this is on account of the second postulate of “Empirical Naturalism,” “Nature,” as a self-subsistent web of interacting material events, is equatible with Being itself. As P. Romanell, in his Toward a Critical Naturalism claimed, “Nature is not itself a problem for the naturalistic philosopher; rather, nature constitutes the subject matter of all genuine problems. Here, the grand (indemonstrable) assumption underlying any naturalistic position, is: Nature is all there is.” Such obvious “reductionism,” or the limitation of the scope of true being to that which is but one region of real beings, is very close to, if not identical with, Karl Marx’s arbitrary and, as they themselves admit, indemonstrable equation of reality with matter. For those not drawn to this position, it looks like an arbitrary exclusion of that which transcends the empirical.
If nothing can be inferred about the world other than its materiality and if nothing can even be postulated which transcends the empirical realm of quantifiable objects, than the two great realities, which both theology and philosophy have dealt with for the past twenty-five centuries, God and personal immortality, become “impossible” and “meaningless.” Indeed, the most cohesive stand among American Naturalists was their rejection of God and personal immortality. Their rationale and justification for rejecting even the possibility that God and the immortal soul could exist, was the Positivism of Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857). Comte’s Positivism rested on the postulate that nothing can transcend the universe of sense events and their laws; that the only absolute is this finite world of ours.10 Such a restriction of both cognitive and scientific inquiry was used to justify the atheism of Dewey and the other American Naturalists.
That these Naturalists, Dewey included, would not allow the mind to search for a Cause beyond the finite relations of material interactions, created a situation in which the very reality of God, His majesty and power as revealed in and through His Creation, was treated as a mere idea, which happened to exist in the mind of primitive and superstitious men in the past. By reducing the reality of God to that of a constructed human idea, Dewey follows in the wake of a host of other modern philosophers, beginning with Descartes, whose only “use” for God, assuming that they had a “use” for Him, was to serve as a logical step in a methodological unfolding of their philosophic systems. In so many ways, John Dewey, especially with regard to his position on God, the soul, and objective morality – even with regard to his position on the topic of objective being – can be referred to as the American Nietzsche, a man who sought to “liberate” modern man from his suffocation under the idea of an omnipotent and omniscient God.
Dewey’s antagonism to the idea of God should not be underestimated. In fact, we can consider Dewey’s antagonism to the Christian God as being his most particular intellectual characteristic. Since Dewey, on account of his positivistic and empiricist method, cannot argue on the metaphysical level against the traditional arguments for the existence of God, what he is going to do in his writings is to ask why was it that man first formulated the idea of God and what effect that idea had on the subsequent development of civilization.
John Dewey’s answer to the “why” of the human “creation” of the idea of God is almost identical to the philosopher of the Ubermensch, the Nihilistic Superman, Friedrich Nietzsche. The believing mind is lacking in nerve. It is an example of a biological life form, and, indeed, the Darwinist professor can speak of no other form of life, which is shaken and unnerved by change, contingency, and the relativity found in our universe. In order to “escape” this sense of abandonment to the finite and the fluctuating, the believing mind yearns for an ideal sphere of immutable, necessary, absolute being where man can be safe from the dangers of worldly existence. The believer than deludes himself by converting this transcendental goal into an actuality, by mistaking an eventual ideal for an independently existing divine being.11
When we consider Dewey’s objections to the belief in God, we must remember that in many ways he is merely presenting a “straw man” argument, and insuring the persuasiveness of the Naturalist (i.e., anti-supernaturalist) position by excluding from consideration the overwhelming intuition, and, here, we must remember that St. Thomas Aquinas says that the existence of God is on the very edge of being completely self-evident, that God exists and that we can know this certainly by considering the complexity of creatures and the movement towards rational and fulfilling ends by those same creatures. In considering whether Dewey’s unique form of atheism has cogent arguments behind it, we must keep in mind his methodological exclusion of the act of the mind by which man recognizes his utter dependency, even for his very act of existence, on God. It is this act of existence, possessed by all things that stand outside of nothingness, which stands as the most obvious obstacle in the anti-supernaturalist attempt to dismiss as “meaningless,” the sustaining presence of God to His entire creation.
After relegating God to the status of an idea, and tracing that idea anthropologically to man’s supposed fear of change and desire for the stable, Dewey than presents 5 reasons why it must be the case that philosophically, politically, socially, and educationally, we must dismiss the traditional understanding of God from our considerations. These 5 reasons will broach the whole topic of Dewey’s pragmatist and instrumentalist theories concerning the very extent and character of reality, which we will consider in the coming sections of this article.
First, the idea of God causes there to be a “breach” in the continuity of Nature. No longer can reality itself be equated with nature. This most basic “problem” with the “idea” of God, and notice here that we are only considering the idea of God in a pragmatic way, how “useful” for man’s development is the idea, produces several fundamental methodological problems. First, there is a sharp “devaluation” by the mind of the believer of everything finite, contingent, and changing. This leads to the believer withdrawing his energies from the everyday world and its urgent practical tasks. This withdrawal of the mind from practical tasks and inquiries that ensure the progressive development of human civilization, “destroys the continuity of scientific method” by allowing for a form of knowledge, in this case restful contemplation of the Created Order and the silent acknowledgement on the part of the mind of the bountifulness of the Creator, which departs from the normal procedures and modes of knowing employed in the empirical sciences. Hence we have John Dewey’s chief “contribution” to American philosophical thought, his insistence upon the dual threat of God to Nature and to Scientific Method.12
B) Being as Event: Dewey’s Metaphysics
In order to understand the standpoint that Dewey advocates, as the only one compatible with the discoveries of modern empirical science and post-revolutionary socio-political ideas, it is important to think of the place where Rene Descartes (1594-1650) left philosophy after he challenged the intellectual synthesis of philosophical wisdom and theological doctrine as worked out by St. Thomas Aquinas and the other Catholic Scholastics. In this regard, we must recall that it was Descartes’ throwing into doubt of the information provided by his senses that brought him to his own “thinking self” as the only indubitable touchstone of existence. It was from this foundational res cogitans or “thinking self” that the ideas of God as an infinite “thinking self,” who was also the creator of the cogito, along with the idea of Nature, understood to be mere res extensa or “an extended thing” capable of being analyzed by mathematical methods, emerged in Descartes’ philosophical system. Descartes rationalistic analysis, reducing reality to those elements of it capable of having significance for mathematical reasoning, had the effect of bifurcating reality into “that which thinks” (i.e., God and the finite thinking self) and “that which is extended in space” (i.e., the material world). This “splitting” of reality into three substances (i.e., an infinite thinking self [God], a finite thinking self [Man, or at least Descartes!], and an infinitely extended thing [namely, material Nature]) that had little to do with one another, caused a fissure in reality, as philosophically understood, totally unknown to healthy, realist Thomistic philosophy. Much, if not most, of modern philosophy after Descartes, was specifically an attempt to “put together” what Descartes had so completely broke apart. Generally, modern philosophers, who dissent from the tradition of the perennial philosophy as exemplified by St. Thomas Aquinas, will attempt to unify reality by “collapsing” it into one of Descartes’ three substances. George Friedrich Hegel and Benedict Spinoza will collapse all of reality, ultimately, into God (thus becoming pantheists), Kant and the Idealists will include it all within Mind, and Marx and Nietzsche will exalt material Nature as the whole of being (Thus agreeing with the Ludwig Feurbach’s maxim: Der Mensch ist was er isst. Man is what he eats!). Dewey will agree with the latter thinkers who speak of Nature as the only reality. He will, however, speak of Nature, not as a realm of substantial and stable beings, but rather, as a network of real, but passing, “events.”
When John Dewey criticized “dualism,” as the greatest of philosophical mistakes, he was not only criticizing this, relatively recent, Cartesian innovation in philosophy; rather, he directs his bitterest words and his most dismissive statements at the ancient Greeks who exalted the life of leisured philosophical contemplation as being the ideal human life. Since Dewey, as a typical representative of a certain “activist” and “if it works, it is” American mentality, refuses to allow for a purely receptive “moment” of intellectual, contemplative insight into the fixed structure of the real, he will try to analyze the Greek love for and striving after the contemplative “moment” in terms of some historical socio-psychological situation which “produced” the “idea” of contemplation. The two historical situations that he speaks of are the Greek failure to achieve technological progress, the exaltation of the speculative being then mere psychological compensation, and the social division between men of leisure and slaves. According to Dewey, in his 1925 book entitled Experience and Nature, the exaltation of the contemplative life, which attempts to make the mind “mirror” the established cosmic order and, hence, attain to philosophical wisdom, was a power drive designed to justify and perpetuate the radical social divisions between leisured aristocrats and slaves dedicated to manual labor. This instinctive dislike of class divisions and inequality, on the part of Dewey, causes him to reject the very Thomistic conception of society and, particularly, the practical affairs of society, as having, as their ultimate raison d’etre, the achievement of a state of contemplative knowledge of truth, both in this life and the next.
Dewey, however, is not only going to reject ”dualism” when he believes he finds it in the distinction between a spiritual world of unchanging perfect being and a constantly changing world of imperfect and contingent being, which is reflected, at least in Dewey’s mind in the Christian distinction between Nature and Supernature. He, also, sought to overcome the “dualism” that he finds within the philosophical understanding of mind and its relationship to its objects. It is in his attempt to “overcome” this separation and alienation of mind from its objects, as this was brought about by Descartes, that Dewey presents to us his most radical reevaluation of the very structure of both the mind and the world that the mind perceives.
We have seen how Dewey rejected the most fundamental idea that was had by the great philosophical tradition of the Classical/Christian world, that the mind is fundamentally passive in the face of a natural structure which is perceived, not fashioned by the mind. The mind is only actualized as a knowing power when it comes into contact with that which is already actual, something that is real and of a very specific character. According to the view of the perennial philosophical tradition, only the Divine Mind creates and sustains in its very act of knowing.
From this rejection of all speculative knowledge, he moves on to advance the tendency of modern science to reject the idea of substance as proof that such an idea is out of date and to be rejected as retrograde and meaningless. According to Dewey, modern quantitative physics, as exemplified by Galileo and Descartes, having rejected any knowability of formal and final causality (i.e., the formal cause being that which makes a thing be a certain type of substance and the final cause being that which orients a thing towards its own particular type of fulfillment.), “desubstantialized” nature, pulverizing it into “events,” which are never “things,” but which may have similar properties to other events. In attempting to explain the universally held recognition that substances exist – that there are real things that make up our world, Dewey again gives a psychological explanation, citing the “traditional philosophical preference for unity, permanence, universals, over plurality, change and particulars.”13 Man cannot take the instability and evanescence of existence, so he posits for himself a world of “things” that allows him to gain a false and enervating sense of security.
If Dewey insists that the idea of stable substances is a fabrication of the Greek mind, which sought the unchanging and permanent, how does he describe the “events” that he claims are the sole content of the real? What are they in general and, most especially, what is the nature of that “event” referred to as “human mind”? Is human consciousness just one event amongst many such natural events?
“It is sometimes contended, for example, that since experience is a late comer in the history of our solar system and planet, and since these occupy a trivial place in the wide areas of celestial space, experience is at most a slight and insignificant incident in nature.”14 When this comes from one who has criticized the “dualism” of traditional and modern philosophy, which has created a separation between mind and an independently existing world of quantifiable and substantial beings, you would expect his answer to be, “No, the event of human conscious experience is not fundamentally different from any other event in the whole web of natural occurrences.” Indeed, Dewey states, “These commonplaces prove that experience is of as well as in nature. Things interacting in certain ways are experience; they are what is experienced.”15 When, however, we know that Dewey indicated that the highest and most fruitful incidents of experience are those in which events possess within themselves an intentional direction towards a practical achievement, hence when an event becomes an instrument gaining its own significance, not from its antecedent causes, but rather, from its consequences, we see that it is only conscious experience that is of primary interest and significance for the pragmatist philosophy of John Dewey. That he should focus on the human mind as being the “event” that most perfectly portrays the essential instrumentalist character of Nature is indicative of his own profound indebtedness to Hegel’s Idealism. For Hegel too, human consciousness is going to serve as the primary means by which the one being, the Absolute, achieves its fulfillment and realizes its own unique character. We have seen above how Dewey, and all the other American Naturalists, have appropriated for their own anti-supernaturalist thesis, two basic assumptions of Hegel, first, that there is a single unitary whole of being and second, that this whole is knowable through a single method of inquiry.16 Dewey felt that the common-sense description of personal subjective mind, encountering through sensation and thought, that which is organized, existing, and substantial, and “other” than the mind itself, presents insoluble problems for philosophy, in that a description of the relationship between two distinct substantial realities needs be given.
Empirical Naturalism, according to Dewey, understands “integrated unity” to be the starting point of philosophic thought. Such “integrated unity” contrasts with “this conception of experience as the equivalent of subjective private consciousness set over against nature, which consists wholly of physical objects.”17 Such a “dualistic” articulation of the mind’s relationship to the world presents problems such as, “How an outer world can affect an inner mind; how the acts of mind can reach out and lay hold of objects defined in antithesis to them. Naturally it is at a loss for an answer, since its premises make the fact of knowledge both unnatural and unempirical.”18 Dewey insists that this view of human consciousness that he has is “empirical,” primarily because he loses himself completely in the “moment” of experience, intentionally placing outside the boundaries of inquiry the idea of a substantial mind which is doing the thinking and of the thing which is being thought. He speaks of experience as being “double-barreled” in that it includes act and material, subject and object in one unanalyzed totality. This integrated unity of all relevant elements in a single, utterly unique moment is “the smelling of a rose,” rather than “nose meets rose.” What is real is the moment, the instant event, and the unrepeatable synthesis of natural causal threads. When we think of Dewey’s “event,” especially the “event” of human conscious experience, we could think of it as a stitch or, to quote Oliver Wendell Holmes, a “cosmic ganglion,” which brings together diverse threads and stitches them together into one momentary “experience.” The problem with attempting to employ this analogy is that, since Dewey denies the reality of the cause and effect connection and any idea of a First Cause, we have a stitch without a knitter, without knitting needles, and, since these events are momentary, without a resultant warming blanket. Such seems to be the consequence of Dewey’s categorical denial of formal, final, material, and efficient causality, along with his instinctive aversion to any mention of a transcendent Being who is actually doing the knitting.
C) Selective Emphasis: Choice as Ultimate Reality
Human consciousness is, then, according to Dewey, a nexus of natural “lines of action,” which, because of its complexity, in some way, “includes” more of Nature than any other type of event. Here we must avoid thinking that Dewey intends a portrayal of the human mind like that of St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas, of course, by emphasizing the fundamentally passive character of human mind, “passive” because receptive, also speaks of the human mind as a microcosm, as being open to all that exists. Wisdom, which is the highest of the intellectual virtues, according to St. Thomas, “includes” within itself, in some real way, the whole of being, since it, in one apprehending glance, “connects” the whole of experienced empirical, aesthetic, and moral reality with the source and creator of all that reality. Instead of this objective cosmic orientation of the human mind, which culminates in the virtue of wisdom and used to be the goal of the ancient tradition of education in the Western world, Dewey presents a totally distinct and contrary vision of the state and purpose of human thought and consciousness. In his portrayal, we can discern how easily an atheistic assumption leads, inexorably, to a pantheistic characterization of the universe.
We find these subtle pantheistic undertones in the instrumentalist philosophy of Dewey, even though he goes out of his way to portray human thought as not in any way qualitatively distinct from other, less complex, natural events. This, along with his persistent denial of the existence of substances or “things,” causes him to make the following statement concerning the complete identity of human thought with gross nature: “It [Empirical Naturalism] thus notes that thinking is not different in kind from the use of natural materials and energies, say fire and tools, to refine, reorder, and shape other natural matters, say ore. In both cases, they are matters, which as they stand, are satisfactory and there are also adequate agencies for dealing with them and connecting them. At no point or place is there any jump outside empirical, natural objects and their relations. Thought and reason are not specific powers.”19
And, yet, how could it be that the “event” of human consciousness can “choose” instrumentalities that are intended to advance the particular end which the mind intends at the moment that it chooses. Brute matter cannot free itself from its own identity so as to consciously “reach towards” that which is other than itself and which is “used” so as to advance a preconceived project. Does not the mind “stand above” its tool? Here, Aristotle’s portrayal of an instrumental cause, a tool used by the mind to achieve a particular finite end and to facilitate a mental and physical operation, would perfectly account for the reality which Dewey is attempting to portray. This Aristotelian solution, however, cannot be accepted because it would incline us to understand the mind to be a substance or, at least, a faculty of a substance.
Dewey’s pragmatism and instrumentalism, along with his critique of all the philosophical systems that came before him, cannot be understood without consideration being given to his principle of selective emphasis. Dewey states, “Selective emphasis, with the accompanying omission and rejection, is the heart-beat of mental life. To object to the operation is to discard all thinking.”20 “Selective-emphasis” than portrays the very essence of cosmic and psychic life. To reject or ignore this operation is to lose sight of what thought is all about. According to Dewey, “selective emphasis” is “the favoring of cognitive objects and their characteristics at the expense of [other] traits.” The principle of selective emphasis introduces “partiality and partisanship into philosophy.”21 The mind in this selective process emphasizes and utilizes those aspects of its experience that it feels to be of use in advancing its own existence. The mind then creates its own experience, as an artist would fashion a painting or a sculpture. What is experienced and what becomes “real,” in the experience, is what is felt to be useful by consciousness. What Dewey does not make clear is whether or not the mind knows it is doing this choosing of aspects of potential experience. Does the mind know that it is, necessarily, fashioning a world for itself in the moment of its experience of a, seemingly, objective world of things? As with so many philosophers, Dewey appears to suggest that it is only by grasping his philosophy that we can hope to understand the very nature of what man has been doing since his beginning. If we understood and accepted “empirical naturalism,” we would recognize the inherently individual, instrumentalist, and relativistic nature of all human thought. How this view of things can be portrayed by Dewey as objective, and not merely as relating to HIS OWN subjective project, is an insoluble problem for all relativistic thinkers. Why should his philosophy transcend the enchainment of the mind to personal and biologically determined choices? What does “biologically determined choices” mean? Doesn’t choice depend on spirit’s “standing above” the material domain in some real and ontological way?
It is not that Dewey is in any way rejecting mind’s fabrication for itself of a reality in the experienced event. All conscious and unconscious instances of Nature do exactly this. It is also perfectly natural, says Dewey, to attribute the title “reality” or “higher being” or
“superior value” to that which we choose as useful for our own existence. Such is in the very nature of things, says Dewey. What past philosophical systems have done, and Dewey refers to this, as the “fallacy of selective emphasis,” is to forget this act of mental selection and emphasis and, instead, christen as “the highest instance of being,” what THEY choose as useful ideas for their own existence. They forget that all minds simply grab hold of ideas as useful instrumentalities to advance THEIR OWN LIVES, speaking, instead, as if they were simply giving an account of what reality is like IN ITSELF.22 Rather than acknowledging that their own particular view of life and being itself, is artistically fashioned in a way which augments personal, collective, and biological life, these “absolutists” of both philosophy, ideology, and religion, simply speak as if they are articulating the right, divinely-ordained, fixed order of things as fashioned by the Divine Artist. With this rejection of such “absolutism” in mind, Dewey will speak of the role of philosophy in the new age as a “critique of prejudices”;23 “prejudices,” in this instance, being the belief that there is an objective system existing in the world, of intrinsically meaningful and valuable beings, which exists independently of all human intentions and projects. Such absolutism, especially the absolutism of the Christian Religion, is the greatest threat to Dewey’s anthropocentric world.
D) Education as Socialization
We have seen, in our consideration of Dewey’s instrumentalist philosophical system, a denial of all the major doctrines and insights of Aristotelian/Thomistic philosophy. He has rejected the spirituality of the soul, the speculative intellect, the immortality of the human soul, the act of contemplation, any form of life after death, all of Aristotle’s 4 causes, the concurrent causality of God’s creative and sustaining power, the very existence of a transcendent God, and the universal human understanding that education has as its purpose the mental appropriation of the structure of the objective order. This act of educational and intellectual deconstruction is surely a worry for those who understand Dewey’s critical influence on the American public education system, which “educates” an estimated 75% of the nation’s youth. If Dewey does not see education as a way of introducing the young mind to objective values and principles that will expand their appreciation for all that they experience throughout their lives, what exactly does Dewey understand education to be about?
In this regard, we must not be fooled by his advancement of the individual, his/her own interests and valuations, since this individualism seems to be upheld only when it serves to fragment and undermine the traditional forms of social and religious cohesion in American society. Indeed, in speaking about the entire educational and disciplinary regimen of the past, really the ENTIRE past, Dewy states, “The individual characteristics of mind were regarded as deviations from the normal, and as dangers against which society had to protect itself. Hence the long rule of custom, the rigid conservatism, and the still existing conformity and intellectual standardization.”24 Such “rigidity” is brought about by a false notion of value and meaning, according to Dewey. Value and meaning are continually changing qualities, which depend upon the “project” of a particular political or social system. To speak of the right of eternal values and norms to “shape” our actions, would be to hinder the free choice of man. Since there are no eternal values and principles to locate and to uphold, since there is no intrinsic and eternal meaning present in things, all knowledge must be experimental, “To be intelligently experimental is but to be conscious of this intersection of natural conditions so as to profit by it instead of being at its mercy.”25 Human action comes down to, “Administering the unfinished process of existence.”26 Such a process of human action, which has no eternal or even guaranteed natural reward affixed to it, simply “contributes” to “a world which is not finished and which has not consistently made up its mind where it is going and what it is doing.”27
Such a profoundly nihilistic conception of the universe in general, and human action in particular, fits in perfectly with the democratic construction of meaning and value that Dewey would advance as his new “progressive” social ideal commensurate with his instrumentalist philosophy. The mind does not merely order itself, but it is itself fashioned by social intercourse and communication. “Truth” is, then, what the community has understood to be useful for itself and commensurate with its own agreed upon tasks. To be an “educated” individual, then, is not to grasp the principles of a particular science so as to individually know the truth of things, but to be a cooperator in the democratic creation of meaning, value, and useful instruments.
To refute and, ultimately, counter-act the American Naturalism of John Dewey, we must deny and challenge his first principles, his arbitrary exclusions, his distortive portrayal of our philosophical tradition, and, finally, we must take seriously our own Catholic intellectual heritage so that the very process of education, dislodged and maligned by the likes of Dewey, will not be forgotten but will continue to cultivate the young minds which cry to their Creator, and subsequently to us, for their “rational milk.”
1 Richard Hertz, Chance and Symbol (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 107.
2 See, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism Revisted: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot (Washignton, D.C: Regnery Gateway, 1990), p. 188. Cf. Felix Morley, in Barron’s Magazine, June 18, 1951.
3 Cf. Stanley Jaki, The Road of Science and the Ways to God: The Gifford Lectures, 1974-1976 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1978), p. 440. As an indication of Dewey’s intellectual debt to Darwin and his materialist theory of Natural Selection and naturalistic Monism, M. Grene wrote, “The firmest lesson of Darwinism for metaphysics. . . is of course the lesson of our own animal nature, our demotion from supernatural support to a place in nature comparable to that of any other living thing. . . . certainly the attempt to overcome Cartesian dualism, which still remains, alas, the major philosophic task of the waning 20th century, found its first massive support in the Darwinian theory” (The Understanding of Nature: Essays in the Philosophy of Biology [Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1975], p. 195).
4 Cf. The New York Times, June 28, 1939, cited by Thomas F. Woodlock in his column, “Thinking it Over,” the Wall Street Journal, December 22, 1939.
5 John Dewey, Experience and Nature (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1958), p. 110.
6 Cf. note 4.
7 Kuehnelt-Leddihn, p. 408, note 579. Cf. Teachers College Record, vol. 27, no. 6. (February 1926).
8 James Collins, God in Modern Philosophy (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1959), p. 271.
9 Ibid., p. 272.
10 Ibid., p. 269.
11 Ibid., p. 272.
12 Ibid., p. 272. Cf. F. Smith, O.P. “A Thomistic Appraisal of the Philosophy of John Dewey,” The Thomist, 18 (1955), pp. 127-185.
13 Dewey, Nature, p. xi.
14 Ibid., p. 3a.
15 Ibid., p. 4a.
16 Collins, p. 270.
17 Dewey, Nature, p. 11.
18 Ibid., p. 10.
19Ibid., pp. 66-67.
20 Ibid., pp. 24-25.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid., pp. 36-37.
24 Ibid., xiv.
25 Ibid., p. 70.
26 Ibid., p. 76.
27 Ibid.