The Christian Constitution of the States

The Christian Constitution of the States

A review of Miguel Ayuso's 'Constitución Cristiana de los Estados'

by JuanFernando Segovia

Taken from: http://almenablog.com.ar/libro2.html

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

What sense is there in wondering about the Christian constitution of the States when the pontifical magisterium seems to have abandoned the doctrine for half a century already; when Catholic philosophers and jurists consider it antiquated vis-a-vis the incontrovertible benefits of liberal democracy? Is this doctrine a relic of the past, a museum piece, outdated, sterile, inoperative? To the apparent «yes» that a hurried reader would readily blurt out, we respond with a firm «no.» Not because we may be collectors of antiques, or have a taste for the exotic, but because the problem has unquestionable validity and actuality: the Catholic religion is now seen by many as a threat to democratic pluralism and to the secular State, and this is why a «healthy laicism», the separation of Church and State, religious pluralism and the fundamentalist base of religions are debated unendingly. A case in point is the Habermas-Ratzinger dialogue, the echoes of which still rumble.

Miguel Ayuso's book is welcome for reviving the question and for presenting it in the proper terms for current discussion. Because what is at play is the eternal link between «Religion and society» (chapter 1) and the anti-Christian intentions of the revolution, with the systematic de-Christianization of societies, just as the magisterium had denounced it all throughout the nineteenth century and later up to Pius XII. But these convictions — the mandate to build a Christian society and the historical coming about of the anti-Christian revolution — have been called into question by the post-conciliar teaching, so that it is necessary to ask ourselves again. «Does a Catholic political doctrine exist?» (chapter 2), that is, shall we go back to the foundations of the social and political doctrine of the Church and observe their evolution, to re-found the doctrine, re-establish it on its bases, which are no other than those of the Christian political order. Which is tantamount to recalling the jurisdictional rights of the Church on political matters, the natural and Catholic rights (pages 48-49), sustained on the general principles of the natural order which affirm the necessary cooperation between the Church and the State (pages 51-53) and the Catholic impossibility of grounding societies on vanities or heresies.

On reviewing the traditionally maintained foundations which support a Catholic doctrine of the State, and contrasting them with the post-conciliar teaching of the Church, another question strikes us: «Has the Catholic political doctrine changed?» (chapter 3). Penetrating inquisitively in a disturbing terrain, full of unease for the tradition and its faithful, because of that firmness and obligatoriness which Pius XII had preached (page 55) little has been left. Ayuso reconstructs the history, concurrently with the appearance of the so-called «sociological Christianity» and the militant advance of laicism which, in order to save its faith in the society of masses — if you wish to put it that way — reneges of Christian civilization, detaching the moral solution from the political solution (page 62). How can there be a Christian society without a Christian State? how can the separation of the Church and the State on the one hand, from Christianity and society on the other be avoided? Such are the inconveniences which Ayuso finds in the doctrine of the Church after Vatican Council II, with its primacy of the pastoral (the prudential), the tactics and strategies, over the principles; which produces a confusion of the thesis with the hypothesis of the Catholic State, of the doctrine with the practice; all that dressed up in a new demo-liberal language which lets Maritain's influence shine through, and is confirmed by the loss or renunciation of the pontifical power to correct and penalize the error.

This is how «The problem of the Catholic State, today» (chapter 4) would seem not to be a real problem, rather, it is presented to us as a political and intellectual anachronism; Catholic unity has been liquidated, as modernists had intended to do, as Maritain proposed; and instead of a Christian society we ended up with a «counter- Christendom», term coined by Marcel Clement (page 86). To rescue the foundations of the Catholic political doctrine is the task undertaken next by Ayuso: theologically, founded on the tendency to unity, which is the hope of the Church, and is contained in the theology of Christ the King; philosophically, as the liberal (and democratic) interpretation of religious liberty is in contradiction with the need of a public orthodoxy to affirm the pillars of any society; and sociologically, as it is necessary to establish the social conditions that allow men to live the faith; that is, without a Christian society a Christian nation is impossible: From any of these arguments, the moral and religious pluralism contradicts the traditional Catholic teaching, which affirms an «invariable morality of the political order», that is, the moral law and its religious dimension as «internal constituent of civil society» (pages 100-101).

Particularly painful is the breakdown of the Catholic State tradition in Spain (chapter 5); that Christianitas minor  which gave America the Faith as a unique distinction of evangelization, and the constitution of a political community. The struggles of the nineteenth century and the civil war of the twentieth failed to deprive Spain of its unique Catholic profession, until the 1978 constitution, as Ayuso demonstrates, liquidated this heritage, introduced religious pluralism, and with it democratic immanentism and consensualism. The case of Spain now shows what Europe exemplified since 1789, that religious breakdown leads to moral disarming and, after this, to the dissolution of the common good and the dismantling of any kind of communal living (page 115).

To conclude the book, Ayuso adds a chapter to analyze the passage «from laicism to secularism»; that is, the image, the sensation, the ideological impression that the era of aggressiveness against the Church has passed, and that we, in post-modern times, have entered a benign, respectful, ecumenical, tolerant, picturesquely agnostic laicism: what we call secularism. The problem provides the occasion to recall that, beyond the swerves and massaging of the modern State, popular sovereignty and democracy are nothing other than «casting the original sin into the plural» as per Jean Madiran's brilliant expression (page 121), and then ratify that the social doctrine of the Church, above a merely worldly doctrine, is a response to the modern world, which reacts or replies as it affirms «the Kingdom of Christ over human societies as the single condition for its just ordering and its progressing and pacific life», as Ayuso affirms (page 122). If the Church seems not to recognize this truth of the magisterium, it is because it is part of the problem, not of the solution; that is, secularism has taken a hold in the Church itself, as is demonstrated in the 2005 letter from John Paul II to the French bishops, which completely subverts the doctrine expressed in the Encyclical Vehemente nos of Saint Pius X, very near the centenary of its issuance.

After this quick reading, passing from chapter to chapter, the opening question returns at each moment, almost confirmed in one answer: the doctrine of the Catholic state is pretended to be antiquated and irremediably moth-eaten. Its sociological necessity and its philosophical truth have yielded to the demands of the present time, to the point that the Church no longer sustains it, and John Paul II erased it from his Compendium. Why, then, insist upon it? Well, for the same reason. Because it has been forgotten, and, on erasing it from memory, societies and the Church itself have gone astray. And ultimately, which is no small matter, because it has been mandated by Our Lord; because it is inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Old and the New Testament affirm the kingship of Christ, it is a truth of faith to which we cannot renounce.

El Nacimiento del Marxismo Cultural

El Nacimiento del Marxismo Cultural

 Cómo la Escuela de Frankfort Cambió a los Estados Unidos 

Por Tyler Durden

Tomado de:http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-12/birth-cultural-marxism-how-frankfurt-school-changed-america

Traducido del inglés por Roberto Hope

Los años 1950's fueron un época simple, romántica y dorada en los Estados Unidos.

Las playas de California, los suburbios y el estilo. Se publicó La Rebelión del Atlas, se formó la NASA y Elvis zarandeaba a la nación. Cada año, de 1950 a 1959 vio nacer 4 millones de bebés. La nación estaba en la cima del mundo en todos los campos.

Fue una era de gran posperidad económica en la Tierra de los Hombres Libres.

Entonces, pues ¿que pasó con los rasgos americanos de confianza, orgullo y responsabilidad?

Las raíces de la decadencia de la cultura occidental son muy profundas, habiendo germinado por primera vez hace un siglo. Comenzó con un clan abigarrado de ideólogos dentro del movimiento comunista de Europa. Ahora se le conoce como la Escuela de Frankfort, y sus ideas han prevertido a la sociedad norteamericana.

Cuando los Resultados Fracasan, Sólo Cambia la Teoría

Antes de la Primera Guerra Mundial, la teoría marxista sostenía que si la guerra se desencadenaba en Europa, las clases trabajadoras se levantarían nuevamente contra la burguesía y crearían una revolución comunista.

Bueno, como es el caso con mucho de la teoría marxista, las cosas no salieron tan bien. Cuando la guerra se desató en 1914, en vez de iniciar una revolución, el proletariado se puso sus uniformes y se marchó a la guerra.

Luego de la guerra, los teóricos marxistas comenzaron a preguntarse "¿Qué fue lo que falló?

Dos muy prominentes pensadores marxistas de la época eran Antonio Gramsci y Georg Lukács. Cada uno de los dos, por su parte, concluyeron que las clases trabajadoras de Europa se habían cegado por el éxito de la democracia y el capitalismo de Occidente. Razonaron que hasta que ambos fueran destruídos, una revolución comunista no sería posible.

Ambos, Gramsci y Lukács estaban activos en el partido comunista, pero sus vidas siguieron caminos muy distintos.

Gramsci fue encarcelado en Italia por Mussolini, y murió en la cárcel por su mala salud.

En 1918, Lukács fue nombrado ministro de cultura de la Hungía bolchevique. En esa época, Lukács se percató de que si la unidad familiar y la moral sexual se erosionaran, la sociedad podría ser fragmentada.

Lukács puso en marcha una política que intituló "terrotismo cultural," que se enfocó a estos dos objetivos. Una parte principal de la política era enfilarse hacia las mentes de los niños mediante lecciones que los animara a ridiculizar y rechazar la ética cristiana.

En esas lecciones se presentaba a los niños material sexual gráfico y se les enseñaba una conducta sexual libertina.

Aquí, nuevamente, la teoría marxista no pudo afianzarse en el mundo real. El pueblo se enfureció con el programa de Lukács, y él tuvo que huir de Hungría cuando Rumania la invadió en 1919.

El Nacimiento del Marxismo Cultural

Todo permaneció quieto en el frente marxista hasta 1923, en que el terrorista cultural se presentó a una "Semana de Estudio Marxista" en Frankfort, Alemania, Allí Lukács conoció a un rico marxista llamado Felix Weil.

Hasta que Lukács se presentó, la teoría marxista clásica estaba basada únicamente en los cambios económicos necesarios para derrocar el conflicto de clases. Weil se entusiasmó con el ángulo cultural de Lukács sobre el marxismo.

El interés de Weil lo llevó a financiar un nuevo centro de estudios marxista — el Instituto de Investigación Social. Posteriormente habría de ser conocido simplemente como la Escuela de Frankfort.

En 1930, la Escuela viró el curso bajo su nuevo director, Max Horkheimer. El equipo comenzó a mezclar las ideas de Sigmund Freud con las de Marx, con lo que nació el marxismo cultural.

En el marxismo clásico, los trabajadores del mundo estaban oprimidos por las clases gobernantes. La nueva teoría era que todo mundo en la sociedad estaba oprimido psicológicamente por las instituciones de la cultura occidental. La escuela concluyó que este nuevo enfoque necesitaría de nuevas vanguardias para provocar un cambio. Los trabajadores no eran capaces de levantarse por ellos mismos.

Como lo habría de querer el destino, los Nacional-socialistas llegaron al poder en Alemania en 1933. Era un mal momento y lugar para ser judío y marxista, como lo era la mayor parte del profesorado de la Escuela. Entonces, la Escuela se mudó a la Ciudad de Nueva York, bastión de la cultura occidental en esa época.

Viniendo a América

En 1934, la escuela resucitó en la Universidad de Columbia. Sus miembros comenzaron a ejercitar sus ideas en la cultura norteamericana.

Fue en la Universidad de Columbia donde la Escuela afiló la herramienta que habría de utilizar para destruir la cultura occidental: la palabra impresa.

La escuela publicó mucho material popular. El primero de éstos fue Teoría Crítica.

La Teoría Crítica es un juego de semántica. La teoría era simple: criticar cada pilar de la cultura occidental — familia, democracia, derecho natural, libertad de expresión y otros. La esperanza era que cada uno de estos pilares se desmoronara bajo presión

Después siguió un libro del que Theodor Adorno fue co-autor, La Personalidad Autoritaria. Re-definía las perspectivas tradicionales americanas sobre el papel de los sexos y la moral social como "prejuicio." Adorno las comparó con las tradiciones que llevaron a que el fascismo surgiera en Europa.

¿Será sólo una coincidencia que el insulto al que recurren los políticamente correctos en nuestros días es "fascista"?

La escuela promovió su viraje fuera de la economía y hacia Freud, publicando obras sobre la represión psicológica.

Sus obras desgajaron a la sociedad en dos grupos principales: los opresores y las víctimas. Argumentaban que la historia y la realidad eran moldeadas por aquellos grupos que controlaban las instituciones tradicionales. En esa época eso en cifra significaba varones de ascendencia europea.

De ahí, arguyeron que los roles sociales de los hombres y las mujeres eran debidos a diferencias de género definidas por los "opresores." En otras palabras, el género no existe en la realidad sino es meramente una "construcción social"

Una Coalición de Víctimas

Adorno y Horkheimer regresaron a Alemania cuando acabó la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Herbert Marcuse, otro miembro de la Escuela, permaneció en América. En 1955 publicó Eros y Civilización

En su libro, Marcuse argumentaba que la cultura occidental era inherentemente represiva, porque renunciaba a la felicidad por alcanzar el progreso social.

El libro proponía la "perversidad polimorfa," concepto elaborado por Freud. Planteaba la idea del placer sexual fuera de las normas tradicionales. Eros y Civilización se tornaría muy influyente en dar forma a la revolución sexual de los 1960's.

Marcuse habría de ser quien contestaría la pregunta de Horkheimer de los años 1930s: ¿Quién sustituiría a la clase trabajadora como la nueva vanguardia de la revolución marxista?

Marcuse pensaba que habría de ser una coalición de minorías — negros, mujeres y homosexuales.

Los movimientos sociales de los 1960s — 'black power,' feminismo, derechos de los homosexuales, liberación sexual — le dieron a Marcuse un vehículo singular para diseminar las ideas del marxismo cultural entre el público general.

Marcuse publicó posteriormente Tolerancia Represiva en 1965, cuando los movimientos sociales en América estaban en su apogeo. En él argumentaba que la tolerancia de todos los valores e ideas implicaba la represión de las ideas "correctas."

Fue aquí que Marcuse acuñó la frase "tolerancia liberadora." Llamaba a la tolerancia de todas las ideas que provinieran de la izquierda pero intolerancia con aquéllas de la derecha. Uno de los temas dominantes de la Escuela de Frankfurt era la intolerancia total de todo punto de vista que no fuera el suyo. Ese es el razgo básico de todos los creyentes en la corrección política hoy en día.

Para citar a Max Horkheimer, "La lógica no es independiente del contenido"

Recordando las palabras de Winston (No ése)

La Escuela de Frankfort ha tenido un impacto profundo en la cultura americana, Ha remoldeado a la homogénea Norteamérica de los 1950s en la actual nación dividida, plagada de resentimientos.

Esto, a su vez, ha contribuido a la innegable descomposición de la unidad familiar así como a la política de identidad, feminismo radical y polarización racial en los Estados Unidos.

Es difícil decidir si la cultura actual es más como la del 1984 de Orwell o la del Mundo feliz de Huxley.

Jamás uno que detenga una tendencia populista, el 'establishment' político de los Estados Unidos ha abrazado por completo las ideas de la Escuela de Frankfort y las ha impuesto sobre la sociedad norteamericana a través de la des-educación pública.

Barack Obama y Hillary Clinton, los baluartes del progresismo, son ambos discípulos de Saul Alinsky, un marxista cultural dedicado.

Y es así como vivimos ahora en una sociedad hipersensitiva en la cual los memes sociales y los sentimientos han rebasado a la realidad objetiva y biológica como determinantes principales del bien y del mal.

La corrección política es una guerra contra la lógica y la razón.

Para citar a Winston, el protagonista de la distopia de Orwell, "Libertad es la libertad de decir que 2+2 = 4"

Hoy en día, Norteamérica ya no es libre.

Song of Fatherland Love

Song of Fatherland Love

by Paul Verlaine

Translated by Roberto Hope from a Spanish version made 
from the French original by Father Leonardo Castellani.

To love the homeland is the first of loves,
and it is the last one after God;
if it is crucified and unfeigned,
becomes a single love, not two anymore.

To love the fatherland, even to risk one's life
in the pursuit of the homeland´s common good,
withstanding the upwellings and the furious winds:
Such is inscribed to the credit of God.

God who cannot be seen, the inscrutable God;
of everything that's good, obscure abyss,
perceptible through Faith alone 
blind as blind may be.

Cannot love, despite how much of Him he speaks,
he who from the bottom of his icy self
is unable to love what he can´t see.

Systematic Principles of Humanist Theology

Systematic Principles of Humanist Theology

by Cándido Pozo

Taken from InfoCaótica

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

The systematic framework of humanist theology can be reduced to three principles. Perhaps its exposition may, at first sight, result too abstract, We will look, however, at the extensive range of its vital consequences.

1. The starting point is formulated by stating that «God is not an object». Naturally, the phrase would be acceptable if what was intended to convey is that God is not a thing, but a personal being. But in the humanist theology milieu, «God is not an object» means that God cannot be the direct object of our acts because God is «the wholly other». It is interesting to note that the German translation of Robinson's «Honest to God» was titled «Gott is anders» (God is something different). This implies that, when we conceive God and think of Him, we actually construct an idol. Our intent to address God directly, upon presupposing the previous structuring of this «idol», entirely different from God, would lead us to a kind of idolatry. The topic of idolatry in this sense has been promoted extensively by humanist theologians. In this manner, however, they ignore the distinction between imperfect knowledge and false knowledge. Saint Paul has insisted on the possibility of knowing God from its creatures (Rom. 1, 20). Undoubtedly, this knowledge is imperfect, but not false. Let us not forget the doctrine of analogy: because my knowledge of God is analogical, God is always greater than my representation of Him. but such representation affirms something which is true. When I attain the face to face vision, my previous knowledge will be enhanced, but not in a manner radically discontinuous, but as a step which was necessary for my ascension.«Deus semper maior» is the title of a well-known work by Przywara; yes, God is always greater than what my knowledge tells me of Him, But let us not talk of God as the wholly other, since, if this assertion were to be taken seriously, it would lead us to relegate God to the realm of the unknown.

2. But, going back to the principles of Humanist theology, it is clear that, if human capacity's horizon is limited by what is human, and God lies beyond that horizon; only the incarnation gives us the possibility of loving God. The direct intent of loving Him had led us to love an idol. But in the incarnation, the first possibility is given us of loving God by loving a man, man Jesus, with human love — the only kind of love man is capable of giving — then we can start loving God, who has identified Himself to be in personal union with Him.

3. Since then, this human attitude before Christ — human love at bottom — is turned into the fundamental Christian act. Humanist love, human love of neighbor, would be the central attitude of Christianity.

Consequences of these principles

In these fundamental principles the essence of humanist theology can be synthesized, The consequences of the system are grave. We shall limit ourselves to enumerate them briefly.

1st. Logically, the specifically religious act, to the extent it is directed to God Himself, loses its primacy. Actually, its very possibility is blurred regarding a God which always lies beyond our categories and our efforts. Maybe this disappearance of the value of the specifically religious act has some relationship with the current tendency to replace formal prayer with a virtual one: to abandon prayer directed to God and substitute it with service of neighbor.

2nd. This first step having been taken, demystification becomes a program. Why continue cultivating a world of the sacred, when our intents will turn into something of an idolatry, that is, the cult of the idol which our categories construct? God would be wholly other and wholly different from that idol. One may wonder if there is not some relationship between this mentality and a certain anti-sacramentalism which has begun to invade us. The demystification postulate has become programmatically so radical, that it reaches liturgy itself, in which man starts to be of greater interest than the worship of God [...]

3rd, Upon God's disappearance from our horizon, a temporalist translation is made of Christianity. It is clear that the Christian who takes his faith seriously is conscious of a series of obligations in the social and political realms. But one thing is this, and quite another is to present these sociopolitical activities as if they held in Christianity the first plane or were specific to it. However, it is evident that, once the plane referring to God is placed in parenthesis and substituted by a humanist love of man and by procuring its human welfare, the sociopolitical comes first because it is so among merely human concerns. It can be understood in this perspective that a theologian of secularization such as Harvey Cox can get to utter the opinion that «theology is, before anything, political». Without getting to emulate Cox, among Catholic humanist theology theoreticians, it is an unswerving conviction to attribute the effort of building the earthly city a value of direct influence in the preparation of the kingdom of God, in spite of the New Testament´s insistence upon the idea of the rupture between the present and the future world. and the description in Apoc. 21, 1 ss. of the New Jerusalem as a gift of God which comes from above, and not as a reality prepared directly by the earthly accomplishments in a more humanized world.

4th, On becoming primary in Christianity the concern for the edification of the earthly city. the idea of priesthood enters in crisis. Why receive the holy orders if the fundamental mission of Christianity can be equally accomplished becoming ordained or not? I would say that it can be accomplished better without becoming ordained. The cleric who insists on working in the sociopolitical field can easily come in conflict with the hierarchical structures; without doubt, much more easily than the layman [...]

5th. On the other hand, the «God wholly other» would never be expressed by our categories. Our dogmatic formulas would thus become terribly relative. This relativity of the dogmatic formulas assumed and, being moreover human love the essence of Christianity according to humanist theology, to it the ecumenical problem is set forth in entirely novel terms. What sense would the inter-confessional differences of doctrine have? Its solution would be simple, let's unite in love and dispense with doctrine [...]

6th. But the logic of the System goes further. If the essence of Christianity is the authentic human love, wherever that love takes place, true Christianity is there. The theory of the anonymous Christians then arises. That theory does not deal with what is the common doctrine of the Catholic Church only. Certainly, no Catholic theologian questions that God may save the infidels of good will by ways unknown to us, leading them to that minimum of faith which is required to be saved. The way the matter is set up by humanist theology is different, it consists in assuming that any pagan who loves his neighbors in a humanistic way is for that fact an anonymous Christian. Pagans, massively considered, which means in their immense generality, would already be Christians without knowing it. It is not possible to convert them but from anonymous Christians into reflecting Christians. One may wonder whether, conceiving missions such a manner, it is worth making the effort of doing missionary work, with all the sacrifices it entails of abandoning family and homeland. Or is it intended to go on mission not to take there anything specifically Christian, but to work in the development of the peoples? Will then be there a hope that our mission should interest as such, and not for what it has in common with all of the humanitarian movements? That pagans of good will can be saved is one thing, but quite another is the fact that the fullness of the salvation means can only be found in the Catholic Church; both propositions need to be maintained for a right understanding of the concept of mission [...]

7th. If the good act does not touch God, neither will the evil act. The humanist theology will have to revise the concept of sin that way, which it can no longer conceive as an offense to God.

8th. But revising the concept of sin induces a reduction of the field of morals. Only what causes damage to someone else may be considered a sin. The amputation by this means of great sections of the field of morals can easily be perceived. It is interesting to recall in this context that the prophetic preaching in the Old Testament is directed very primarily to a sin which causes no damage to our neighbor: idolatry. even in the case where no scandal is caused on someone else.

I believe it is difficult to deny that most of these criteria are present in the current atmosphere and, by the way, widely disseminated. They are found frequently in persons who are entirely ignorant of the theoretical principles from which they derive. But this should not surprise us. The phenomenon is quite normal. How many Germans, even those who vibrated with the Nazi ideals, had read Nietzsche, whose works, however, were the philosophical support of National Socialism? How many Communists have read so voluminous a work as Karl Marx's Capital? In all of these cases, what in the theoretical works are abstract principles is disseminated by means of slogans. Likewise, many of the enumerated criteria, which are a consequence of the principles of a humanist theology, bear the structure and form of slogans. And the slogans have by themselves an efficacy much beyond the principles from which they proceed and in which they may be grounded; even on separating themselves from those principles, the criteria lose their nuance and become more rigid and radical.

Taken from

Teología humanista y crisis actual en la Iglesia (Humanist theology and the current crisis in the Church). In: Daniélou-Pozo, Iglesia y secularización (Church and secularization), 2ª ed., BAC, Madrid, 1973, pp. 61 y ss.