On Politics

Father Leonardo Castellani on Politics

From Esencia del Liberalismo, by Father Leonardo Castellani, S.J., (1899 - 1981)

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

"Mimicking Monsignor Franceschi, who used to say that the worst Chamber (Cámara) is better than the best clique (camarilla), it turns out that we have come to the point where we have the worst Chamber along with the worst clique. Damned be the Lesser Evil and him who invented the idea. I will never more vote for the Lesser Evil, and I will never more vote if it is not for a Total Good.

As far as I´m concerned, not only do I not believe in this farce but I consider it illicit for anyone to associate himself with it, from which it follows that to the end of my life I will vote ― because not to do so is fined ― with an empty envelope. And if all nationalists were to do the same...

I have already noted, in the beginning, the error of Nationalism: To put their eyes in short-term power instead of putting them in long-term Truth. To believe that the ultimate end of politics is to attain power or to take it away from others is an error and a stupidity: It is the error of Machiavelli and the stupidity of the cheap and puerile politicians who are pestering and losing us. You cannot ask a politician, let's say Francisco Sánchez Sorondo, to aspire to defeat and to suffering (that is, Martyrdom); that is proper of the religious man, not of the ethical man; and a good politician is an ethical man; you cannot ask the nationalists not to aspire to Victory, but it is necessary to ask them not to place Victory in the attaining of power ― an embassy, for instance ― but in the triumphant propagation of their ideas ― assuming they have any. In other words, that they be able to say, as did the nationalist hero I just mentioned to his murderers: 'I know what I die for, but you do not know what you kill me for' and he could have added '¡but I die so that you can know!' "