El Papa León XIII sobre la Verdadera Libertad

El Papa León XIII sobre la verdadera libertad

Un gran pontífice condena un error moderno

por Michael Davies

Traducido del inglés por Roberto Hope

En su carta encíclica Libertas, el Papa León XIII advierte que hay ciertas así llamadas libertades que la sociedad moderna da por hecho que todo hombre posee como derecho. Éstas son las libertades "que tan afanosamente propugnan y proclaman los seguidores del liberalismo"

La esencia del liberalismo es que el ser humano individual tiene el derecho de decidir por sí mismo las normas por las cuales ha de regular su vida. Tiene el derecho de ser su propio árbitro sobre lo que es bueno y sobre lo que es malo, está bajo ninguna obligación de someterse a autoridad eterna alguna. En un sentido liberal, libertad de conciencia es el derecho de un individuo a pensar y creer lo que le venga en gana, aun en cuestiones de religión y de moral, y de expresar públicamente sus puntos de vista, y de persuadir a otros a adoptarlos, haciéndolo de boca en boca, mediante la prensa pública o de cualquier otro modo. Tiene el derecho de elegir cualquier religión o de no profesar religión alguna. La única limitación que se le impone es que debe abstenerse de causar una violación del orden público. Hasta el liberal más extremo difícilmente aceptaría que a alguien que creyera que los hombres de ojos azules debieran ser ejecutados se le debiera permitir poner esa creencia en práctica. Pero el Papa León XIII distingue entre el simple orden público y el bien común o bien público. Una obra de teatro blasfema u obscena pudiera no provocar una revuelta, pero difícilmente podría suponerse que el permitirla habría de promover el bien público.

El Papa León XIII enseña que "muchos se aferran obstinadamente a su propia opinión en esta cuestión, al grado de imaginar estas modernas libertades, por corruptas que sean, como la gloria más grande de nuestra era, y la verdadera base de la vida civil, sin la cual no puede concebirse un gobierno perfecto." 

Tristemente, debe reconocerse que desde que el Papa León escribió estas palabras en 1988, los errores que él condenaba se han vuelto tan generalmente aceptados dentro del ethos dominado por los liberales en la sociedad occidental, que la mayoría de los católicos los consideran aceptables o aun admirables. Sería difícil encontrar un obispo en el mundo de habla inglesa en nuestros días, que diera su apoyo incondicional a las enseñanzas de Libertas.

Santo Tomás de Aquino explica:
Dios dejó al hombre en manos de su propio consejo, no como si fuera legítimo para él hacer lo que le venga en gana, sino porque, a diferencia de las criaturas irracionales, no está por la necesidad natural compelido a hacer lo que debe hacer, sino que se le deja a él la libre elección que proceda de su propio consejo.

De manera semejante, el Papa León enseña que:
En tanto que otras criaturas animadas siguen sus sentidos, buscando el bien y evitando el mal solamente con su instinto, el hombre goza de la razón para guiarle en todos y cada uno de los actos de su vida.

El Papa demuestra que la libertad puede ejercitarse sólo por aquéllos que tienen el don de la razón — o sea los ángeles y los hombres. Define la razón como "la facultad de elegir los medios adecuados para el fin que se propone, pues es amo de sus actos quien puede elegir una cosa de entre muchas."

Luego explica que "la libertad de elección es una propiedad de la voluntad, o mejor dicho es idéntica a la voluntad en cuanto a que en su acción tiene la facultad de elegir."

La voluntad siempre elige lo que considera bueno o útil. El acto de la voluntad, la elección, se basa en un juicio hecho por el intelecto, o sea, en un acto de la razón. Juicio es "un acto de la razón, no de la voluntad". Con frecuencia carecemos de la fuerza de voluntad para llevar a cabo lo que nuestro juicio nos dice que es el curso de acción correcto.

La libertad se ejerce legítimamente sólo cuando el hombre conforma su voluntad con la de Dios. No tiene un derecho natural de preferir su propio consejo al de su Creador, aun cuando física y psicológicamente pueda hacerlo. Debe hacerse aquí una distinción crucial al tratar la naturaleza de la libre voluntad. Ésta es la distinción entre el ser física y psicológicamente capaz (libre) de elegir el mal, y el tener un derecho natural de elegir el mal. En el lenguaje del liberalismo: decir que el hombre es libre de hacer algo significa que tiene el derecho de hacerlo, sujeto a los requisitos del orden público.

Nada más absurdo puede ser expresado o concebido, enseña el Papa León, "que la noción de que por ser el hombre libre por naturaleza, está por lo tanto exento de cumplir la ley."

"La ley primaria a la cual el hombre tiene el deber de someterse es la ley eterna o natural, la ley de la naturaleza implantada en nuestros corazones por nuestro Creador, como parte de la naturaleza humana. Esta ley natural, explica el Papa, "está escrita o grabada en la mente de todo hombre; y eso no es otra cosa que nuestra razón, ordenándonos a hacer el bien y prohibiéndonos pecar... La ley de la naturaleza es la misma cosa que la ley eterna, implantada en las criaturas racionales, e inclinándolas hacia su correcta actuación y recto fin, y no puede ser otra cosa que la razón eterna de Dios, Creador y Rector de todo el mundo."

Lo que aplica al individuo aplica en no menos grado a la sociedad civil. Aquéllos que están investidos con el poder de gobernar derivan su autoridad no de la gente que los eligió, en el caso de una democracia, sino de Dios. Los legisladores no tienen derecho de promulgar leyes civiles que estén en conflicto con la ley natural, aun cuando la mayoría de la gente desee que lo hagan. Toda autoridad en la Iglesia, el Estado y la familia, deriva de Dios, como Nuestro Señor se lo señaló a Poncio Pilato. El Papa León condena "la doctrina de la supremacía del mayor número, donde todo derecho y todo deber residen en la mayoría." Así pues, la Iglesia acepta la democracia si por ese término se entiende que aquéllos que gobiernan son seleccionados por un voto basado en un sufragio limitado o universal. La Iglesia condena la democracia en el sentido de que aquéllos que gobiernan lo hacen no como delegados de Dios, sino de delegados de la gente que los eligió, y que están obligados a legislar de acuerdo con los deseos de la mayoría. "No es en sí mismo incorrecto preferir una forma de gobierno democrática," escribe el Papa León, "si sólo la doctrina católica se mantiene en cuanto al origen y el ejercicio del poder." Bajo ninguna circunstancia puede un gobierno civil tener el derecho de permitir abominaciones tales como el aborto, que es manifiestamente contrario a la ley eterna de Dios. La enseñanza del Papa está muy clara en este punto, y agrega que donde un gobierno dicta legislación que se contrapone con la ley natural, estamos obligados a desobedecerla. 

Es manifiesto que la ley eterna de Dios es la única norma y regla de la libertad humana, no solamente en cada hombre individual, sino también en la comunidad y en la sociedad civil que los hombres constituyen cuando se unen. Por lo tanto, la verdadera libertad de la sociedad humana no consiste en que cada hombre haga lo que le plazca, pues esto simplemente acabaría en agitamiento y confusión, y traería consigo el derrocamiento del estado; sino más bien en esto, que por los ordenamientos de la ley civil sea más fácil conformarse con lo que manda la ley eterna... La fuerza obligatoria de las leyes humanas está en esto, que deben ser consideradas como aplicantes de la ley eterna, e incapaces de sancionar nada que no esté contenido en la ley eterna como principio de toda ley... Cuando se promulga una ley contraria a la razón, a la ley eterna o a alguna ordenanza de Dios, el obedecerla es ilegítimo, no sea que al obedecer al hombre se desobedezca a Dios.

Las facultades de la razón no son perfectas[1]. El Papa León observa que "es posible, como se ve con frecuencia, que la razón proponga algo que no es realmente bueno, pero que tiene la apariencia de bueno, y que la voluntad haya de elegir en consecuencia." Ésta es una distinción de lo más importante. El hombre puede errar de manera culposa o inculposa. Cuando la razón erra y conduce a la voluntad a hacer una elección equivocada, lo que ha elegido es simplemente un espejismo, la apariencia de un bien. La elección del error es prueba de la existencia de la libre voluntad, pero no es un ejercicio válido de la voluntad. Es una corrupción o un abuso. Escribe el Papa León:

La búsqueda de lo que tiene la falsa apariencia de bueno, aun cuando sea prueba de nuestra libertad, de la misma manera en que una enfermedad es prueba de nuestra vitalidad, implica un defecto de la libertad humana... Abusa de su libertad de elección y corrompe su misma esencia.

Un hombre que elige lo que es objetivamente malo se está haciendo no libre sino esclavo del pecado (Juan 8:34). La consecuencia final de la elección culposa del mal puede ser su condenación eterna. El Papa León apercibe:

La forma en que se ejerce tal dignidad es de la mayor importancia, en la medida en que del uso que se haga de la libertad depende igualmente el mayor bien o el mayor mal. El hombre, ciertamente, es libre de obedecer a su razón, de buscar el bien moral y de luchar inquebrantablemente por alcanzar su destino final. Sin embargo, también es libre de voltearse hacia otras cosas y, buscando la vacía semblanza de bien, de alterar el recto orden y de caer en la destrucción que ha elegido voluntariamente.

El hombre está obligado a hacer todo lo que esté a su alcance para ejercer correctamente la facultad de la razón, a ejercer su juicio de acuerdo con la recta razón, teniendo en mente que, en cuestiones morales y religiosas, sus decisiones habrán de afectar su último fin. El Papa León explica:

La razón ordena a la voluntad lo que debiera buscar o evitar, con el fin de alcanzar alguna vez el último fin del hombre, por bien del cual debe conducir todas sus acciones. Este ordenamiento de la razón se llama ley. En la libre voluntad del hombre, o sea en la necesidad moral de que nuestros actos voluntarios se conformen con la razón, radica el fundamento mismo de la necesidad de la ley.

Cuando un hombre ejercita su libertad de acuerdo con la ley de Dios, rinde a su Creador el homenaje que le es debido en estricta justicia, y sigue el único camino por el cual puede ser salvado. Él no abdica a su dignidad, sino la afirma. Cuando elige el mal, abusa de su más sagrada posesión y la profana. El Salmo 118, Beati Inmaculati, proporciona un comentario del ejercicio correcto de la libertad humana.

Innecesario es decirlo, sin asistencia alguna, la razón humana jamás podría garantizar que su salvación esté asegurada. Mantener esta postura es caer en la herejía del pelagianismo. Es con la ayuda de la gracia de Dios como el individuo queda posibilitado para ejercer su libertad de conformidad con la ley de Dios y así de alcanzar su salvación. Los efectos del pecado original descartan la posibilidad de que la razón humana desasistida guíe al hombre hacia su salvación sin la ayuda de la gracia. En su alocución Singulari Quadram (1854) el Papa Pío IX advirtió que:

Esos parroquianos, o más bien devotos, de la razón humana, que la establecen como su maestra infalible, y se prometen toda clase de éxitos bajo su guía, seguramente han olvidado qué tan severa y profunda herida fue infligida en la naturaleza humana por el pecado de nuestros primeros padres; pues la obscuridad ha nublado la mente, y la voluntad se ha vuelto propensa al mal.... Puesto que es cierto que la ley de la razón ha sido atenuada y que la raza humana ha caído miserablemente de su anterior estado de justicia e inocencia por el pecado original, que es comunicado a todos los descendientes de Adán ¿puede alguien pensar que la razón por sí misma es suficiente para alcanzar la verdad? Si uno ha de evitar desbarrar y caer en medio de esos peligros y ante tales debilidades ¿se atrevería a negar que la Divina religión y la gracia celestial son necesarias para la salvación?

El Papa León hace hincapié en el papel de la gracia como el auxilio más importante para el uso correcto de la razón y de la voluntad:

El primero y más excelente de estos auxilios es el poder de su Divina gracia, por la cual la mente puede iluminarse y la voluntad vigorizarse y moverse hacia la búsqueda constante del bien moral, a manera de que nuestra libertad innata se torne de una vez menos difícil y menos peligrosa.

A fin de promover libertad de conciencia en su sentido correcto, el Papa León enseña que el Estado no debiera garantizar que "todos puedan, según lo elijan, adorar o no adorar a Dios, sino que todo hombre en el Estado pueda seguir la voluntad de Dios y que, de una conciencia del deber, y libre de todo obstáculo, obedezca Sus mandamientos. Ésta, ciertamente, es la verdadera libertad, una libertad digna de los hijos de Dios, que noblemente mantiene la dignidad del hombre y que es más fuerte que la violencia y el mal — una libertad que la iglesia siempre ha mantenido y considerado de lo más valiosa."

La libertad de conciencia no es, pues, un derecho natural si se toma como algo que signifique que el hombre tiene derecho de elegir el error. Pero aun cuando un individuo no tenga el derecho natural de elegir el error, él posee un derecho de no ser coercionado a elegir la verdad en el fuero interno de su vida privada. El Papa León XIII enseñó en su encíclica Immortale Dei:

La Iglesia suele prestar atención seria a que nadie deba ser forzado a abrazar la fe católica contra su propia voluntad, pues, como sabiamente nos lo recuerda San Agustín, 'El hombre no puede creer más que por su propia libre voluntad.'

La aplicación de este principio en la práctica se muestra de la mejor manera con la tolerancia y la protección dada por los papas a los judíos.[2] Debe admitirse con franqueza que durante la historia de la Iglesia, este principio algunas veces ha sido violado, pero cuando cualquier intento de forzar a los individuos a aceptar la fe católica ha ocurrido, ha sido en violación de la verdadera enseñanza católica.

La justicia, por lo tanto, prohíbe, y la misma razón también prohíbe que el Estado sea ateo; o que adopte un curso de acción que pudiera terminar en el ateísmo — específicamente, tratar a la diversas religiones (como se les llama) por igual, y otorgarles derechos y privilegios promiscuamente iguales.

Pero en un estado católico, el gobierno tiene el derecho de evitar la propagación de la herejía en la vida pública. Debe hacerse una distinción entre coercionar a un hombre para que profese la verdad, y evitarle que socave el bien común esparciendo el error en público y minando la fe de los ciudadanos católicos. Así, en estados católicos tales como España o Malta antes del Concilio Vaticano II, aun cuando sectas tales como los Testigos de Jehová estaban libres de practicar su religión en privado, por ley se les prohibía ir de puerta en puerta tratando de persuadir a los católicos de que abandonaran su religión verdadera.

Dado que la profesión de una religión es necesaria en el Estado, debe profesarse aquella religión que es la única religión verdadera, y que puede ser reconocida sin dificultad, especialmente en los estados católicos, porque las marcas de la verdad están, por decirlo así, grabadas en ella. 

El consenso de la enseñanza papal durante los últimos tres siglos es que el Estado católico tiene el derecho de restringir la expresión externa de la herejía. Pero los papas enseñan también que un Estado católico no está obligado a invocar este derecho. El bien común pudiera ser dañado más, tratando de reprimir la herejía pública, que permitiéndola. Cuando la represión de la herejía pública pudiera dañar el bien común, causando, por ejemplo, un extendido agitamiento civil (lo que pasó cuando se suprimió el protestantismo en Francia), entonces tolerancia es la mejor política. El Papa León escribe:

Por esta razón, aun sin conceder derecho alguno a nada excepto por lo que es verdadero y honesto, ella (la Iglesia) no prohíbe a la autoridad pública lo que esté en desacuerdo con la verdad y la justicia por evitar un mal mayor, o de obtener o preservar un mal mayor.

Según el Concilio Vaticano II, todos tienen el derecho de expresar su opinión religiosa en público mientras eso no cause un rompimiento del orden público. Parece imposible reconciliar esta enseñanza con la de los papas de los anteriores trescientos años, porque lo que el ser humano profesa como derecho no puede ser objeto de tolerancia. Los papas nunca enseñaron que lo que los judíos y los herejes creían, y la forma en que adoraban en privado pudiera ser tolerado. Aceptaban que en el fuero interno estar libre de coacción es un derecho. Pero en el fuero externo, la expresión pública de herejía dentro de un estado predominantemente católico podía ser solamente objeto de tolerancia, No podía, por lo tanto, ser un derecho.

El propio Papa León XIII resume la enseñanza de esta profunda encíclica, Libertas:

Y ahora, por razón de claridad, para reducir todo lo que ha sido expuesto con sus conclusiones inmediatas, a los principales encabezados, el resumen es, brevemente, éste: que el hombre, por necesidad de su naturaleza, está sujeto enteramente al más fiel y perdurable poder de Dios; y que, como consecuencia, toda libertad, excepto aquélla que consista en sumisión a Dios y en sujetamiento a Su voluntad, es ininteligible. Negar la existencia de esta autoridad de Dios, o rehusar a someterse a ella, significa actuar no como hombre libre, sino como uno que traidoramente abusa de su libertad, y en tal disposición mental, existe esencialmente el principal y mortal vicio del liberalismo.

[1] Siempre que haya una elección que hacer, el intelecto o la razón hace un juicio basado en la información que tiene a la mano, y la voluntad luego elige actuar o no actuar basada en este juicio. Ése es el caso con cualquier elección, entrañe o no entrañe dimensión moral alguna. As pues, un médico veterinario puede informar al propietario de un perro que el animal está sufriendo de una enfermedad que le causa una molestia considerable, y aconsejarle que el animal sea destruido. El juicio del dueño puede concurrir con el del veterinario, pero la elección que tome su voluntad pudiera ser haciendo caso omiso del consejo del veterinario, por no poder soportar separarse de su mascota. En este caso, la voluntad no estará actuando debidamente con base en el juicio sensato de la facultad de razonamiento.

Frecuentemente la voluntad actúa sobre lo que cree ser un juicio correcto de la razón, pero el intelecto o la razón lleva a la voluntad al error, por estar basada en información incorrecta, insuficiente, o interpretada incorrectamente — por ejemplo, muchos protestantes sinceros rechazan la Iglesia Católica porque honestamente creen que su enseñanza es contraria al Evangelio.
En el primer ejemplo, la voluntad fue la que falló, en el segundo, el intelecto o la razón fue responsable de llevar a la voluntad a hacer la elección incorrecta

[2] este punto puede ser estudiado en el artículo sobre tolerancia en la Catholic Encyclopedia.

About Christian Progressivism. 3

About Christian Progressivism

 Part 3

By Father Julio Meinvielle

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

Milestones in Christian Progressivism

We have seen how the idea of continuous progress accompanies the entire unfolding of the modern civilization since the Renaissance to our time, constitutes the false foundation on which Christian progressivism stands.

In modern civilization, there is no progress in that which is essential, in that which is fundamentally human. Certain progress in some aspects may have occurred, especially in the technological one. But technology is outside of man. Man's properly human and moral aspect, which constitutes itself by his closeness to God, does not progress by virtue of progress in technology. Man can progress and actually achieves immense progress in the erection of a powerful production apparatus, and at the same time, he can become worse, with which such production apparatus becomes his ruin and destruction.

Modern civilization in man's properly human aspect has been moving backward since four centuries ago. It has been regressing by the progressive degradation to which man subjects himself. Properly modern society becomes ever more materialistic. After having rejected God, it has rejected the properly human values end even man's animal values, to turn man into a simple nut in the great Materialist and collectivist machinery.

The French Revolution marks the decisive point in this civilization as regards its materialistic aspect. With the French Revolution man definitely rejects the authentic spiritual values deposited in the Church, supernatural society, and assumes a decisively materialistic behavior.

An anguishing question for the Catholic is posed here. What does the Catholic do in this society which rejects God, Christ, the Church, and which proclaims materialistic liberty as the supreme value of man? It is either one of two, either the Christian assumes a frankly hostile attitude towards such a society, and so stays at its margin and becomes exposed to his inability of making the Christian Message be felt in such society, or he yields to such society and pacts with it; but then he exposes himself to alter the purity and integrity of the Christian Message. This was the anguishing situation that presented itself to Christians after the French Revolution. And it was Lammenais the first Catholic who in the stated alternative opted to pact with the new civilization, with liberalism which had taken up everything, and so Lammenais resolved to shape Catholic liberalism.

Lammenais' progressivism.

Lammanais is the key character of modern Catholicism. Born in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, he was formed with the ideas and the mentality or Rousseau and of the liberal philosophers. He then converted to Catholicism to profess a suspect ultramontanism first, and then a liberalism, which he developed in the L'Avenir daily during the period from 1830 to 1831.

There is a logic in the Lamennaisian conception which is presided by the idea of historical progress. History progresses and therefore modern times represent progress over olden times. Lammenais justifies the idea of the historical progress with that of Divine Providence leading history towards ends only God knows. In a very important article of July 28, 1831, Lammanais expounds on these concepts. To Lammennais, progress in history takes place not by greater attainment of moral virtue, or closeness to God through goodness and virtue, but by the acquisition of greater degrees of liberty, which is what makes peoples grow towards their age of majority.

Lammenais, in consequence, justifies modern liberalism as the attainment of progress in humanity. Before Lammenais, no other civilization or other authentic progress in man but in the recognition of the supernatural supremacy of the Church. Civilization had never proposed liberty, but rather goodness and truth, as the proper end of citizens. Within Truth, liberty represents a certain good, but never can liberty be adopted as an independent end that would surpass the rights of Truth. But in the French Revolution, the Church ceases to be recognized by the public power as the only true religion and is relegated to just one of many cults which citizens may practice. This situation could be accepted as a fact, but never as a right. Lammenais was the first Catholic who dared accept it as a right. Because, for him, modern liberties were rights of man which should be considered as achievements of the progress in history.

Lamennais was the first one to profess Christian progressivism, which was not known by that name at the time but by that of Catholic liberalism.  By representing nineteenth-century liberalism as progress with respect to the previous society which called itself Christian and which professed the recognition of the Church as a supernatural society, so Catholic liberalism imported true progress. As is known, Lamennais was condemned by Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos. Since then, the entire nineteenth century witnessed a tremendous strife between liberals and non-liberals within the bosom of the Church. On the side of the liberals were figures such as Lacordaire, Montalembert, Dupanloup. On the side of the anti-liberals stood out the great figure of Cardinal Pie and of publicist Louis Veuillot. Pius XI strongly condemned catholic liberalism in a series of documents, the fundamental propositions of which were later picked up in the famous Syllabus. But the strife did not calm down. On the contrary, it was re-born in Leo XIII's pontificate with the emerging of democratist clerics such as Naudet, Lemire and Dabry.

In his famous encyclicals, Leo XIII worked out a complex program of how Christian civilization, the Catholic city, should be within the modern style of life. Such program criticized catholic liberalism harshly. But Leo XIII's thought was systematically adulterated by the liberals extant within the Church. At that time a strongly liberal, democratist, and socialist movement surged inside the Church. It was the Le Sillon movement. But the firm action of Saint Pius X condemning the modernism which was then spreading in the Catholic domain, and condemning the democratism of Le Sillon put an end to the intentions of the Christian progressivists within the Church.

All Christian progressivism disappeared from the scene during the years 1910 to 1930. The Pascendi and the Le Sillon condemnatory letter were able to clean up these scourges from the realm of the Church.

Maritain's progressivism

Maritain will be the one who begins Christian progressivism again. That is, the post-1930 Maritain, because the previous Maritain distinguished himself in the combat against all sorts of liberalism and progressivism. In his first epoch, he writes Antimoderne, Trois Reformateurs, Théonas, Primauté du Espirituel, in which he rejects the idea of progress and expounds the authentic doctrine of the Church on the plane of the Christian civilization. But in 1930 he begins a series of books end especially Humanisme Intégral in which, under the guise of a philosophy of culture, a liberal problematic would emerge which would coincide point by point with the errors of Lammennais'.

Maritain, who had rejected the idea of progress in his Antimoderne, now defends an ambiguous concept, namely that of the ambivalent progress of history, to later, already in the Second World War after the year 1940, take up the defense of the idea of progress. This idea of progress will cling strongly in Maritain as it had clung in Lammenais. In two books written during the Second World War, he is to make these ideas explicit. In Christianisme et Democratie and in Droits de l'Homme et la Loi Naturelle he is to defend the notion of progress, noting that on this point he would coincide with Teilhard de Chardin. There, he says textually “I have had the pleasure of finding explained from the scientific point of view of their author, similar conceptions in a conference delivered in Pekin by the celebrated paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, who says there: «ancient though prehistory may make it seem to our eyes, humanity is still very young, and shows that the evolution of humanity ought to be faced as the continuation of an integrated life, where progress signifies the ascension of conscience and where the ascension of conscience is linked to a superior degree of organization. If progress is to continue, it will not be by itself alone. Evolution by the mechanism of its synthesis is ever more charged with liberty».

Maritain, as a consequence, will base the progress of man not on goodness, not on greater virtue, not on greater closeness to God, to Christ, to the Church, but on man's greater liberty. He will coincide point by point with Lamennais. He will consider Medieval Christianity odious, and with that, the authentic concept of Christian civilization, so as to defend a society founded on liberty as its primary and dominant idea. This is how Lamennais' Catholic liberalism declined finally into socialism; so also in Maritain, his liberalism of the new Christendom would follow a declining path towards a socialist society, where the aspirations of the historical function of the proletariat were to be satisfied.

(to be continued)
Go to Part 2
Go to Part 4

Father Leonardo Castellani comments on the Neo-Encyclical Caritas in Veritati

Father Leonardo Castellani comments on the Neo-Encyclical Caritas in Veritati

Compiled by Fabián Vázquez

Taken from: https://radiocristiandad.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/el-padre-castellani-comenta-la-neo-enciclica-caritas-in-veritate/

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

(Translator's note: Of course, you should not take the above title literally, as Father Leonardo Castellani died almost thirty years before Benedict's encyclical was published. It just means to say that this collection of Castellani's thoughts touch on the same topics covered by Benedict, but they do it in a deeper, more transcendental, traditional, God-oriented manner, whereas Benedict XIV's Encyclical is rather man-oriented.  Read them both and judge for yourselves.)

We have reached this absurd state: scarcity in the midst of plenty, poverty in the midst of opulence, hunger in the midst of food over-production. Artificial, and criminal, scarcity... the so much talked about Social Question.

The most important political and social problem in our times is the existence of a proletariat.

Proletarian is the man who depends on a tight salary for his living, which, to make things worse, he may lose at any moment.

It is degrading for the human soul to have his thoughts, necessary for him to rise higher, all tied up in the grind for his daily sustenance, and in fear of the future, of old age, of sad events and of misery.

What troubles the current proletariat is, perhaps, insecurity, more than the lack of money itself. Poverty is a blessing because it is a Purgatory, but misery is hell.

This state of millions of men depends on an economic situation that promotes concentration of the means of production in a few hands, which is called Capitalism.

Of such great importance is this problem, that the greatest war which the centuries have ever seen has turned around it... and will continue to turn around it…

Capitalism was an unstable order which should necessarily have disappeared, because it is impossible for man to live in such terrible condition, among world wars, civil wars, class struggles and solution attempts such as Fascism and Communism.

The illusory “liberties” of Liberalism have been wiped out by the “economy”.

At the heart of Capitalism is usury, said Leo XIII; and at the heart of Communism is vengeance and resentment.

And the universe is now threatened by an immense war between the bad rich and the bad poor or, what is the same, between those which in their hearts, the ones as much as the others, “serve wealth”, as Jesus Christ said.

Avarice and covetousness are to blame for those that now starve to death. Avarice and covetousness have organized themselves in the West in a fierce economic and political system and has been replaced by a worse system in the East.

All of us are aware of the bad effects of Capitalism since we are the ones who suffer them; from the inefficacy of our  Governments, chained by the power of money, to the great modern wars.

But not everyone sees the causes of such evils nor are they easy to see. They have been studied in the social Encyclicals of the Popes, of which the first, Leo XIII's “Rerum novarum”, is still the best, the briefest and most elegant of them all. In a single paragraph, he enumerates the evils of Capitalism, without using this word which Pius XI did use later, but everything is there:

— what Capitalism brought about, namely the destruction of the ancient guilds, the laicization of the States, the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, the ruin of the small industry and trade to give way to monopolies.

— and afterward, he points to the bottom of this fierce organization, which is usury; not just the superficial usury of those we contemptuously call loan sharks, but the in-depth usury of those we respectfully call “financiers”.

This in-depth usury we can summarize in three principal operations:

First, making Money pass for a producer when it is just an instrument of labor.

Indeed, Money is an instrument with which machinery and raw materials are purchased; but without labor, it cannot produce anything.

A pear tree produces pears and a cow produces calves, but coins do not give birth to new coins: labor is the one that produces.

Capitalism inverted this relationship: it made the worker an instrument and Capital the producer, allocating all gains to the latter and giving the worker just what is necessary for him to survive; and nowadays, that the workers have organized themselves, just what is necessary for them to keep quiet; but they no longer keep quiet, as many of them are bad paupers.

Second, converting both Labor and Money into merchandise, and trading not only in Money but in credit, which is the shadow of Money

This process has a long history, a lot more complex than what I say, but the substance is this.

After it attained buying Labor, Capitalism began selling money, because money is now a living thing that engenders money. And what is worse yet, to sell the shadow of money, Credit: that is, to sell money that in fact does not exist.

All those deceits and scams, which we do not understand, started to appear: cornering the markets, destabilizing the markets, manipulating securities, speculating, and so on, in the charge of Exchanges, Banks and Large Lenders and Entrepreneurs; accompanied by political crimes which can be condensed in a single word: bribery.

One is awed by the number of hidden crimes covered by that shiny curtain called “Big Business”

Third, take over the levers of public power, underhandedly or not, in order to keep the iron armor standing.

And so, war necessarily comes: a class struggle between employers and employees; struggles between the employers themselves, competitions between the great monopolies and the great banks, and then the wars among nations or, better said, among entire continents, which we all know.

True, in these world wars other factors take part, as they are also “religious”, ideological, heretical wars, but at the bottom is that miserable vice of avarice and covetousness of money.

Worldly solicitude, going through the Capitalist System and the Banking System, has led us to this absurd state of scarcity in the midst of plenty... the much talked about Social Question.

The Social Question is difficult, precisely because it is “social” in plenitude, it does not concern only employers and employees, but all of society, including the clergy.

Who can solve all this? Only Christ and His Church can solve it... or the Anti-Christ, but by means of a false solution.

The Social Question brought about by Capitalism has only one solution, the traditional, the Catholic one. The demon offers two subterfuges: the socialist and the statist.

The socialist revolution considers private property an evil in itself and proposes to convert all or almost all of it into “Public Property”, that is, to put the means of production (land and capital) in the hands of politicians which administer them to the benefit of all.

The traditional solution considers private property a good thing, and its infinitesimal pulverization an evil, just as evil is its hoarding in the hands of a minority of millionaires or a minority of irresponsible and antisocial monopolies.

This solution tends to break the infernal wheel of the proletarianization by the emergence of a nation of owners. There once was a long time when that existed and the world has never been happier. From that time comes all of our civilization.

A third proposal exists which is in the course of acting by itself alone or by the force of circumstances, which consists in providing the proletariat security at the expense of liberty, without touching latifundial private property; that is, in getting closer in a latent form to the Servile State or the slavery-supporting state in which the world had remained for thousands of years before the emerging of Christianity, and for quite a number of years after it emerged.

Current society has been becoming pagan, and consequently, the crude conflicts of paganism revisit it in all orders of things.

Pagans resolved the social question by means of slavery, and modern society advances again towards slavery; towards a veiled slavery called 'The Servile State' by Belloc.

The modern world has heard Christ's words in excess but has not heeded them, and from this failure come the slums, the favelas, or the shantytowns in the modern cities, something that the ancient cities never knew. From there come many disasters and ruin.

The old Christian economic order was destroyed, and the economy, blown up by avarice, went mad, and politics lost its marbles.

The world began agonizing in universal and apocalyptic conflicts. It is well said that “the ruin was tremendous.”

Indeed, two economic systems, which are also religious (meaning to say anti-religious), Capitalism and Communism, fought with all kinds of arms during decades to try to impose their systems upon the world; both of which are deformed, because one is based on the abuse of private property and the other on its elimination.

Between the two, a third system has emerged, “Yankee neo-capitalism” which is a tricked combination of both.

This neo-capitalism pretends that with their acquisition of shares in factories, workers become owners, and its standard of living is the highest in the world, surpassing Capitalism and Communism at the same time.

The answer is at hand: workers become proprietors with no effective vote, or rather become non-owners since property owners are those who can control their property, have command over what is theirs; and the high standard of living in the US has been achieved at the expense of the low standards of living of other nations; Yankeeland's inflation nowadays exceeds that of other dumb nations.

What is called Neo-Capitalism is a curious phenomenon, a mixture produced by the pressure of the other two systems, the result of which we will (crudely) call a Paternalistic Servileization of the poor.

With that, the industrial worker starts being reduced to the “servile state” or of the slave of pagan times in a refined and veiled form: he acquires security at the expense of liberty.

It is as though the Master would say “You shall have sustenance your entire life; hospital, dentist, and movies, but you will work for me and not for anyone else during your entire life. My Parliaments will prepare for you a marvel of Laws Protective of the Worker and my wife will become a member of the Society of Capitalist Women Protectors of the Workers' Children”

Just this was the condition of the ancient slave, who was generally not ill-treated, on the contrary, he was cared for as a thing of value, like an ox or a horse.

It is a state in which workers (even the intellectual ones) are assured of their subsistence in exchange for their liberty, in other words, forced to work their entire life for the benefit of their masters

This is the state of things, the “servile condition”, towards which the modern world is advancing.

In summary, the consequence of the liquidation of Capitalism should necessarily lead to one of these three things: Communism, Property or Slavery, This means, in historical terms, that the world had no other courses than to return to Paganism, return to Christianity or advance to a New Society, currently in an experimental stage, which for a believer cannot be other than the Society of the Anti-Christ.

The state of legal slavery has already begun in the world without being noticed except by the most perceptive minds, of course, not with the name of slavery, which revolts our Christian atavisms, but with the nice names of Social Reform or Labor Legislation.

The situation of today's worker is headed to become worse than that of the ancient slave who used to work for his entire life to the benefit of someone else, in exchange for subsistence and the possibility of his emancipation. The modern worker, in contrast, lacks these two advantages. The political liberty pretended to have been given to him is entirely illusory: there is no true political liberty, nor is there any human dignity without any form of property.

These principles enable judging with certainty the pretended social reforms brought to light as great innovations by practical men specialized in social welfare.

It is not too difficult: If they lead to the redistribution of property and the multiplication of property owners, they are good; if they do not lead to that, they are not.

Salary raises, social security, pension funds, compulsory arbitration, minimum wage, compulsory clinics, free dentists, employment agencies, etc, hardly even touch the proletariat's problem, and if they do touch it at the expense of their liberty, then they are harmful and not beneficial since they are directed to the worst of all solutions, which is the legal and veiled re-establishment of ancient slavery.

We have to tell workers, then, what they already instinctively perceive; namely: that pensions are a swindle, social security systems are a farce, salary raises are a hoax.

True social progress is achieved along the lines of freedom of contract, freedom of trade association and the right to go on strike, along with moral education which makes the masses capable of enjoying their liberty without misusing it.

Christian solution to the social question.

If Christ can solve the Social Question, why does He not solve it? Christ already solved it by coming to this world, preaching his doctrine, and dying for it.

During the ten centuries of European Christendom, people would not starve to death, there was no unemployment, there was no squalor, each one was contented in his place, the peasant would not envy the king, rather the saintly kings would envy the peasants.

If there was misery or hunger, it was due to accidental causes, a plague, an invasion of barbarians setting fields on fire, destroying or preying, but at the end, they would be defeated, but there was no misery and hunger by virtue of the social structures themselves as there is today: there are a continuous plague and a constant fire nowadays.

And, will Christ not solve it again? It may be, I don’t know. It depends on us, it depends in great part on the conversion of Europe to Christ.

Renan has said “Christ gave no solutions to the social question because his entire concern was to save individual souls and not to reform society nor do politics at all; since His idyllic individual mores of a Galilean peasant could not perceive the social conditioning nor the collective problems. (Vie de Jésus)

This opinion is erroneous. In the doctrine Jesus taught by way of the Parable of the birds and the lilies, is the solution to the extensively thought-out “social question”. The social problem of the class struggle for money would disappear when society could tell its members the words of Jesus Christ; “Don't be anxious for your life, what you will eat, or for your body, what you will dress: the community cares about that. Serve your Country freely as knights, and your Country will take care of you as a mother…

It seems here we have a vicious circle, as neither society nor the individual can take the first step safely. If to stop worrying the individual has to wait until society becomes perfect...; and Society cannot be perfect if its members are not first...it seems we are in full idyllic Utopia.

But Christ broke that circle up, He invited the most fervent, spiritual and courageous of his followers to make the leap, to bravely renounce to everything, to imitate Him, without prior security against its risks and dangers, other than that of God's Providence, “to embark in careened canoes” as Kierkegaard says.

Jesus Christ sent off a small phalanx of heroes to open the way with their life of poor volunteers: 1) they prove that it is possible to “live like the birds in the sky and the lilies of the field”; 2) with their example they incite others to renunciation and confidence; 3) living with the minimum, they give the rest away to others, they leave a greater margin of temporal goods to humankind in general, since paradoxically, nobody gives away more than he who has little, and he who leaves everything gives away much,

To these two points (the commandment to flee solicitude, mother of fear, avarice, and exploitation of the work of others, and the advice for voluntary poverty) one must add the “Vœ vobis divitibus”, that is, Christ's tremendous anathemas on riches and the rich.

Making superfluous riches suspect and dangerous, to their tremendous natural appeal Christ opposes the religious counterbalance, facilitating their fair distribution, to the extent it is possible in the damaged human nature.

These three formidable levers slowly created in Christendom what is now called “Social justice”, first in the practice than in the theory, and aroused strong estates or institutions which little by little went approximating the ideal of a society which takes care of its members.

If nowadays, when the State is becoming one of the greatest exploiters, this appears to be pure fantasy, the blame falls not on Jesus Christ, and the catastrophes we have seen and those who menace us, have left all his words intact and valid.

The traditional solution is extremely difficult to implement in the modern, wayward world, for the simple reason that the other two are on the line of least resistance and are easier, for the same reason that they are false: to righten someone who fell in the ditch it is necessary to brace him; to sink him fully, pushing a bit is enough.

That solution is impossible without a prior or simultaneous resurrection of the Faith, with a re-establishment of the Church, given that what enabled the coming of Capitalism is the loss of faith, and afterward, its orientation towards the imminent Servile State.

For the theologian all these so complicated sociological questions are very simple, he resolves them with a plain text: “Nobody can serve two masters. Therefore, you cannot serve God and Riches”

The alternative which Christ put to the service of God, was the slavery to Riches. He did not say lust, ambition, laziness...; the other Master, fatal and necessary, is Pluto.

  

The kingdom of Christ

Thus, Christendom ceased serving God and fell under the yoke of avarice, of usury, of dividends, of the Bad Rich of the Gospel.

Some nations today have simply liquidated God and have quietly accepted Money as their master, that is, the blood of the poor, the Blood of the Poor among the Poor, sold for thirty pieces of silver, and what is terrible is that, up to now, they have done quite well in the business.

Other nations, in comparison, are still oscillating between the two masters, which you ought not to believe is a much better condition than the others. Because Monsignor Claudius was right when, before dying, talking about liberal Catholics, he repeated: “He who lights a candle to the Devil, lights a candle to the Devil. But he who lights one candle to God and another one to the Devil lights three candles to the Devil.”

It is curious that when the states became virtually atheistic and said: “Religion is a private matter”, irreligion turned into a public matter, and when kings began to tell their subjects that they had no reason to think about the salvation of their souls, they had to start thinking about how to save their crowned heads.

The pale smile with which Christ ascended into Heaven (plain in those words: “even you still do not believe?”) has been fading in the course of the centuries, on seeing that the world fails ever more as it follows His teachings ever less, And if He left is with a sad smile, He will not come back but with a thunder,

Theoretical Capitalism (that of Adam Smith or Bentham) pretended to convert the world into an Eden by means of plenty achieved by overproduction. And it cannot be denied that it is the best means to attain the greatest amount of production, which is not the same as the greatest amount of collective human happiness.

Capitalism failed, as two world wars, a latent international war (the Cold War), and a hot one which is being prepared and terrorizes the world, and the permanent civil war of the “class struggle”, have belied it with a slap in the face.

In the years 1950-1988, the dominant political event in the world was a diplomatic arm-wrestling between Russia and the United States, with the menace of an enormous war; the belligerent defiance between Capitalism and Communism, those two great world movements, Well, it was Liberalism fighting with its own offspring, Communism.

Modernism coalesces them, it fuses them to the religious flux. It was foreseeable, and even probable, at least to a well-thinking philosopher, that Communism would not convert but would fuse together with Liberalism and Modernism, to form the braid of the Anti-Christ.

Walther Rathenau, who occupied Germany's foreign affairs ministry in 1922, and some time later was assassinated by two Marine officers who held him as the most conspicuous German expression of the understanding between Big Money and Communism, had written in 1909: “Three hundred men, all known to each other, direct the economic destinies of the Continent and seek successors among those who surround them.” And when the Versailles talks were taking place, at the end of the First World War, expressed, without going around the bushes, what was the nature of the Order that Big Money wants to establish: “Nations, borders, armies have ended...Inheritance, wealth, class differences are over, Fatherlands, Power, and Culture are done... Nations have to transform themselves into corporations, the essential object of which will be to «satisfy plentifully the needs of individuals», corporations in which property will be entirely de-personalized, in which human collectivities will obey an authority higher and more powerful than all of the executive powers since it will have the world's economic administration at its disposal.”

This plan cannot be achieved without the help of a spurious Universal Religion. The Apocalypse (18, 9-24) shows that a great city, sumptuous and prostituted, will dominate the world by virtue of the power of Money and of a falsified religion; let us say without fear, of an adulterated Christianity.

The apocalyptic Great Babylon has the features proper of Capitalism: the principality of the merchants, which are the ones who actually rule nowadays, stealthily and by deceit; the charms of luxury, pleasure, and comfort that dazzle the masses; and at the end, which is when God strikes, homicide, war, and persecution as a means for it to remain standing.

The Great Babylon will go to its own perdition when its iniquity has ascended to the throne of God; that is to say when it has falsified the Religion at its service.

Money is nowadays the owner of the world... But when it is Money what commands in a society, it is a signal that the Devil has taken possession of Money ... “All this is mine, and I will give it to you, if prostrated you adore me.”

Saint John's revelation in the Apocalypse offers to us the consummation of the mystery of the political Babylon. After Satan has been thrown upon the earth and begins there the great tribulation, knowing that he has very little time left, Saint John sees a Beast rising out of the sea with ten horns and four heads, like a leopard, with the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion: the Anti-Christ.

According to what Saint John reveals to us, the mystery of the Anti-Christ is the spirit of the apostasy of those who had previously been in the Faith and deny the coming of Christ in the flesh, be it in the past or in the future.

The spirit of apostasy, held by many, will culminate in the person of the Anti-Christ. In it will concentrate and consummate the mystery of Babylon, in its religious aspect, as well as in its political aspect, since its apostate reign will be supported by a political empire that will comprise the entire world.

This mystery of an allegorical Babylon appears to be the culmination of the mystery of iniquity revealed by Saint Paul in II Tess. 2:7, referring perhaps to some power installed there as the capital of worldliness, and perhaps with the appearance of piety as of the False Prophet.

With great clarity in the Apocalypse, a great political power, and a great financial power, in the person of the Great Whore are portrayed which signify the adulterated religion.

The political power is signified by the reddish Beast, with its seven heads and ten horns, which represent a pagan and satanic empire: it is the beast that rose from the sea.

The financial power is represented not only by the gold and gems covering the Whore but especially by the sobbing of all merchants in the world when she is destroyed. It is, thus, a capitalist financial town: the empire and center of world capitalism.

The Great Whore represents three concrete things which will be, and have already begun to be; one and the same, and they mutually implicate themselves: 1) the last heresy, 2) the city where that heresy will have its head, 3) the empire which that city will rule, phoenicianism.

The fornication signifies the idolatrous religion of the State, which will later become the sacrilegious religion of the Anti-Christ. The words fornication, adulteress, prostitute, whore and other similar ones, are found about 100 times in the ancient Prophets, with the signification of idolatry and applied only to Jerusalem, never to Ninive, Babel, Memphis. Israel is the Bride of or Engaged with, God.

¿Which city will this finally be? We don't know: its notes do not all match with the current major cities. The notes drawn by Saint John are: 1) a capitalist city with world power; 2) a seaport; 3) head or center of a falsified, idolatrous or political religion.

The Woman crushes the Beast and does not propitiate it, but the ten horns (or kinglets) destroy it in one day and put all their power to the service of the Beast.

They will themselves abhor the Whore who had been the object of their passion and whose fall they will later deplore. We thus see how admirably God makes use of his own enemies to carry out His plans and extract an immense good, as will be the fall of Babylon, out of so many evils.

In this way, that Anti-Christian power in the spiritual order will perish at the hands of another Anti-Christian force in the political order, which, in turn, with all the kings coalesced to her will be finally destroyed by Christ.

“After this, I saw another Angel descend from heaven, who had great power, and the earth became illumined with his glory. He cried out with a great voice saying: «It fell, the Great Babylon fell! It has turned into a dwelling of demons, into a refuge of all kinds of filthy spirits, into the hideout of all kinds of foul and abhorrent birds. Because of the wine of its furious fornication, all nations have drunk, and the kings of the earth have fornicated with her, and the merchants of the earth have enriched themselves with its unbridled luxury.

The Kingdom is still in the future; and the “day of the Lord”, that is to say, the Kingdom of Christ, will not come without first the apostasy is discovered in the earth and the son of perdition is manifested, who, getting to seat in the Holy Place, will proclaim himself to be God, making himself adored by all of the inhabitants on earth whose names are not inscribed in the Book of Life.

And then, and only then, will Jesus come as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and will kill the iniquitous with the breath of his mouth.

This sudden apparition of Christ in that night of fearful apostasy and desolation will be like the rock seen by Daniel, which unexpectedly detaches from the sky, injuring the feet of the statue, that is to say, the ten kings of the Apocalypse,

The destruction of the Anti-Christ will mark the triumph of the  Church and the beginning of the manifestation of the Children of God in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.


Bibliography:
DECIAMOS AYER — Editorial Sudestada, 1968
El Estado Servil, página 379.
EL EVANGELIO DE JESUCRISTO — Ediciones Teoría, 1963
Domingo Decimocuarto después de Pentecostés, página 302.
DOMINGUERAS PREDICAS — Ediciones Jauja, 1997
Domingo de Septuagésima, página 51.
DOMINGUERAS PREDICAS II — Ediciones Jauja, 1998
Domingo Decimocuarto después de Pentecostés, página 253.
LAS PARABOLAS DE CRISTO — Itinerarium, 1960
Los Pájaros y los Lirios, página 76.
Los Patrones Prudentes, página 117.