Natural Law and Theology

Natural Law and Theology

 A Classical Perspective 

By Juan Antonio Widow 

Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez de Viña del Mar (Chile) 

Taken from: Cuestiones Fundamentales de Derecho Natural

Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, Publisher

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

This essay is the paper presented by the author at the III Jornadas Hispánicas de Derecho Natural, held in Guadalajara, México on November 26-28, 2008.

1. Revelation and Nature

It is clear that natural law is not a proper object of the faith. Its condition of being natural is itself proof that we are not dealing with a revealed dogma, to which one can only access with the supernatural aid of theological faith. The truths related to natural law are not imposed on assent in the same way as, for instance, the truths of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord or of the forgiveness of sins are imposed. Which would lead us to hold that the topic of natural law is not a properly theological subject. To this exclusion should be arrived if it is considered that the foundation of theology is what God has revealed; that is, what constitutes the object of the faith, and that theological knowledge would have to confine itself to the formal and express contents of Revelation.

However, the matter is not that simple. It is not that Divine Revelation makes present to us a particular set of truths for us to believe, and that our knowledge, founded upon the faith, should confine itself strictly to that set of truths, without transcending their particularity. It is not a knowledge which should resolve itself only in the personal salvation of he who upholds it. While it is true that Revelation indicates what someone should do to save his soul and that, besides, God, through the Church, gives him the efficacious means for achieving that end, faith in Divine Revelation does not mainly consist of this; that is, it does not reduce itself to presenting particular solutions to solve particular problems.

Theological faith is knowledge. While being it knowledge of certain truths, these, as far as they are truths, are in essential communication with all other truths. If intellectual knowledge were to confine itself to recording the fact or the mere singular act, it would not be properly knowledge, it would be a frustrated kind of knowledge, like someone standing at the door without intending to go in. It would be a knowledge which, because of its sensitive nature, would inevitably degenerate into sentiment or into a strictly subjective phenomenon. Understanding attains its complete form when it opens itself to the universality of its object. This also applies to the knowledge of the faith. and not only to natural reason. In the object of the faith, the Divine Revelation, all truth is implicitly present. To make it explicit is the purpose of theology.

Intellectual knowledge is then, in itself, universal; that is, the perfection to which it naturally tends is to know everything to the extent possible. From its object are not excluded, consequently, any specific realities. However, there is an order in the intellectual knowledge which corresponds to its own essence. There are things the intelligibility of which is dependent on others; for which reason, what is pertinent is that knowledge have, as its main purpose, that which is the source of intelligibility for everything else. For the philosopher, these are the first causes: he is guided to his discovery by the principles of natural reason. In contrast, for the believer, placed in the same attitude of searching for perfect knowledge, that source is also the first causes but already identified with the God of Revelation. It is the faith the one that delivers the key. And in this way, if wisdom, the principles of which are those of natural reason, is the end and perfection of man, by an analogous and higher reason, it is also that knowledge of which the faith is the principle, in which what philosophy knows is known, accepting its concepts, its language, and its argumentations, but introducing itself in the divine intimacy of the first cause, as it is revealed by God Himself. Philosophy, in its principal form, which is metaphysics, and theology are the maximally universal sciences: they know everything in its principle. There is nothing, consequently, which can be excluded from this, which Thomas Aquinas calls the sacred doctrine. In his Summa theologiae, for example, he points out what are the means to mitigate sadness, and he mentions, among others, sleep and bathing; well, this is, materialiter, good psychological perception, but formaliter, is theology, since it touches the topic in what relates to the order by which man, redeemed creature, is disposed with respect to his Creator and Redeemer. 

2. The theological perspective's contribution to natural law.

Thus, both the notion and the reality of natural law have been studied, dealt with and taught by ancient theologians, not as a marginal question, object of some accidental impulse of curiosity as could have been the study of the crab's digestive system or that of the formulas of alchemy. In spite of this, as said before, we would not be able to reject these as entirely foreign topics, since the inquirer in metaphysics considers everything, even the fly that tickles his nose, inasmuch as it is a being, and the theologian also considers that fly inasmuch as it is a creature of God. This could be considered a justification, perhaps, for lovers of persnickety, which, this notwithstanding does not take truth away from what we have said. There will always be some difference between the study of the crab's digestion and of that which is naturally just in man's conduct; this difference lies in the transcendence and universality of the latter topic as compared to the former. It must be presumed, certainly, what is common to both, which is their partaking in the mystery of being. At least the latter and not the former is normally included as part of that set of topics which are covered in a work of universa theologia.

In this manner, then, it can be understood that there have been notable theologians which engaged themselves in the problems related to natural law and that they have addressed them not for reason of them being particular problems, but to the extent that they are part of that whole which is the object of theological sapience. As a source of authority, it behooves us to keep in mind the names of theologians who have dealt with the theoretical and practical problems of natural law: suffice it to mention Thomas Aquinas, Francisco de Vitoria, and Domingo Soto. Thomas, in whom we mainly put our attention in the course of this presentation, deals with questions referring to natural law in works of theology and with theological intention.

Theology has as its formal object, according to what the term expresses, God's being itself, and to that object, human understanding has access through faith; that is, by means of a supernatural assent to what God reveals. However, through Revelation, we know only some, not all, universal truths. They are those, the knowledge of which is necessary for men's eternal salvation. It is not necessary indeed, for the salvation of souls, that God reveal, for instance, the reason for a physical law or of what consists the difference, in essence, between angels and archangels. Now, it has been seen that divine truth is the source and principle of all truth. All truth can, for the same reason, be known inasmuch as it partakes of that source or principle, since, inasmuch as it is truth, it is participation in divine truth. This is why, its knowledge, while not formally of faith, can be a theological knowledge if its truth is recognized as divine truth to the extent it is participated by the creature. This may perhaps be not of immediate interest to homo viator, for whom what is most important are the truths which refer to eternal salvation, but it is to him to the extent he aspires to wisdom; that is, inasmuch as he is a theologian.

But it is necessary to be more precise. Among the truths that can be known through natural reason, it is in philosophical truths where a greater closeness exists to the truths of the faith, due to their universality and to the fact that their object is the first causes, which is to say, the divine truths themselves, even though they are not philosophically known as divine. The existence of a Revelation, though limited to the truths necessary for salvation, shows that divine truth can be revealed and that in such condition, in that of revealable divine truth, all truth is comprised. The divinely revealable and intelligible characters are merged into a single one. Thus, Thomas writes that "what is covered by the diverse philosophical sciences, the sacred doctrine, which is one, can consider under a single reason, that is, of being divinely revealable, so that the sacred doctrine be like an impression of the divine science, which, being one and simple, extends to everything" (Saint Thomas accustoms to say in two lines — sometimes uncomfortably to us, his disciples — and with perfect clarity, what one has tried to explain laboredly and awkwardly in several pages.)

Every revelation, as it is obvious, is ordered to the knowledge of those to whom it is revealed, it is a making known. If the communications medium is not knowable to the intended recipient of the revelation, then the latter simply does not exist. Faith is knowledge and as such resides in man's intelligence: there it is supernaturally infused in such a way that said intelligence is elevated and in that manner accesses the Truth, the knowledge of which exceeds man's natural capability. In no respect does the faith nullify or overwhelm natural intelligence; on the contrary, it is the created intelligence the one which is elevated to the knowledge of the increated Truth. Human intelligence attains its perfection this way, that is, supernaturally, but in accordance with its proper order or in accordance with its nature: it is its perfection as intelligence what is thusly achieved, which is to say, as far as it can attain its proper object, the knowledge of being.

Divine Revelation, consequently, to be revelation, it necessarily has to be given to men in human language; its object, divine truth, cannot manifest itself to us if not by means of notions, judgments, and analogies which are expressed by means of the same language of everyday communication, of the sciences and of philosophy; that is, by means of the language, the only natural bridge between the intelligence of humans which can penetrate the truth of things. If man cannot comprehend what is communicated to him, there is no revelation. Which certainly, as pertains to divine Revelation, it does not exclude mystery, since to comprehend is not the same as to understand. It must be insisted upon, that what is made known to the believer, he understands. An act of faith is an act of understanding since theological virtue is the supernatural partaking in the knowledge through which God is known.

The divine science, which is infused in man by grace, has an infinite reach inasmuch as it is divine, but inasmuch as it is partaken, it necessarily has its limits. If we pay attention to the most incomprehensible doctrines of Christian dogma, we can note that their incomprehensibility makes itself manifest to us precisely in the measure that we understand what understandable is in them. It is not casual that notions so deeply linked to philosophy, such as essence, nature, substance, hypostasis, person, will, etcetera, should have been developed and required in the history of thought precisely inasmuch as they can explain what understood can be of the trinitarian dogma or that of the Incarnation of the Word. It is necessary to understand what these terms mean, to penetrate the mystery. Without this understanding, the mystery is not manifested as a mystery. 

Cardinal Siri, when he was archbishop of Genoa in 1961, published a famous pastoral letter in which he taught that "the terms of language and of thought used in Revelation reflect an objective human philosophy and establish a value relationship in the former, since, if Revelation were to lack such value, it would not be able to serve to express divine things validly. In sum, the use of expressive terms in Revelation presumes a relationship between these, with their own value, and human thought, also with its own value. If it were not that way, if the terms used in Revelation were not to lead to an objective and true knowledge of divine things (even when only in an analogous sense), then God would have not revealed anything, Revelation would have not existed, we would not have attended but to the presentation of an interesting cartoon film without any consistency."

The object of the faith, consequently, is in itself perfectly intelligible, even when it not be perfectly quoad nos. That of faith is in us a knowledge secundum non visum, which is to say, necessarily obscure: it is the assenting to that which someone else, God, knows and reveals. We do not apprehend its object directly, we see it, Saint Paul says, "as in a mirror and in an enigma." But this object is intelligible, and not with any particular intelligibility since it always remits to the source of all intelligibility. This is why the certainty of this knowledge, in spite of the limitation the faith suffers regarding the way of knowing, indirect and obscure, is greater and more perfect than that of any evidence in the order of natural reason.

Because of this, theology, inasmuch as it is the science of divine truth, possesses, as we have seen, the universality which corresponds to the divine science; all truth is divine in its source or origin. This means that all knowledge of natural reason is eminently theological, and it can be converted to formally theological if it is considered under the light of divine truth. For this reason, theology is the perfection of natural or human sciences, since it knows the same as these but by virtue of a different formal motivating object or intellectual light, which allows it to know the natural realities more deeply, given that it knows them in their more proper being, inasmuch as they partake in God's being.

On the other hand, it is also necessary to take into account that some truths of the natural order are reaffirmed by divine Revelation. Those truths, without prejudice to their natural cognoscibility and to their being the object of common sciences, are also revealed. The reason why God reveals to men what they already know or can know is the imbecillitas (weakness, frailty) of human intellect. Revelation of these truths reaffirms a certainty which man's intelligence already has in a natural way, but which, due to his inveterate pusillanimity, he can become separated from them, or doubt them, or not know how to apply them to the practical order, or simply refuse to recognize them. Thus, the precepts of the Decalogue, for example, are all a matter of natural law, but their revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai give them a degree of certainty and a power which they lacked as mere precepts of the natural order. The situation to which man's imbecillitas can lead is pointed out very expressively by Saint Paul at the beginning of his letter to the Romans: "And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God handed them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper. They are filled with every form of wickedness, evil, greed, and malice; full of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and spite. They are gossips and scandalmongers and they hate God. They are insolent, haughty, boastful, ingenious in their wickedness, and rebellious toward their parents, they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless." This is a collection of epithets which provides a schematic exposition of the consequences of original sin.

There are, accordingly, three features of theology which are essential to it and which have to be taken into account in discussing its relationship with natural law. These are: the kind of language it uses, the universality of its object, and its certainty. In the first place, the language of theology cannot be other than that of philosophy, and not of just any so-called philosophical thought, but that of the philosophy of being, the philosophy of things, of what can be contemplated by intelligence; it is the language proper of human understanding. In the second place, the universality of its object is, precisely, the one expressed in such language: that object is not some particular message, some fact, or sign, or some kerygma, but the essences: that of God in the first place and then of those that can be or are participated in by the creatures. The universal is what is intelligible, and in this way, theology is connected with all human knowledge; for instance, with law, and with the philosophy of law. Universality is that which corresponds to what it is, the object of contemplation. And certainty is that which derives from the act of faith, which it has inasmuch as it is a participation in the certainty which is proper of the divine science itself. Even when it is a certainty in the knowledge of the principles ― the dogmas of faith ― and not of its conclusions, these receive, though in a derivative form, some of that supernatural light thanks to its union with the light of reason. In this fecund light is theology conceived.

Natural law has been expressly reaffirmed in many of its determinations, by Revelation, which has undoubtedly given to it, in the course of the history of Christendom, a recognition and a power that explain its practical validity for centuries. That validity has had as its efficient cause the fear of God. But besides, natural law has been a permanent object of study, in a way such that its reflexive knowledge has allowed to build up criteria and discover its applicability to new fields and circumstances. Now, such study has been developed to the extent that the topics of natural law have been accepted to be an inseparable part of wisdom, or of contemplation of the truth; that is, of the philosophy which has become fecund as theology.

3. The decadence of reason and its negative influence on natural law.

The same way as the theological perspective has given vitality to the study and the practical validity of natural law, its decadence has also influenced negatively on it. To the certainty which faith gives to understanding has followed a doubt, which initially has not been expressed as such, nor has it, probably, been conscious, but which has been manifested as a lack of confidence in intelligence itself in that it is a means of reaching theological conclusions. Following this is a change in the notion of faith itself and with it a reduction of its object to a strictly personal and private sphere. With this, what keeps calling itself theology is transferred to a field proper of autonomous subjectivity, that of sentiment or of personal enlightenment, in which faith ceases to be knowledge to transform itself into purely subjective security about the salvation of self.

All this, obviously, has decisive repercussions in what continues to be called natural law. The disappearance of faith in the order of intelligence of what is real, leads to seek a replacement for the certainty which it used to contribute, and it is thought to be found, for instance, in mathematical axioms. The disappearance of the universal essences, of human nature in its universal reality, gives rise to the inevitable individualism proper of the primacy of the purely subjective rights.

It is necessary, then, to note now, even if with the brevity demanded by this presentation, what has been the itinerary traveled by theology or by what has kept this name, and in what manner it has caused a change in the definition of natural law itself. The degradation of theology due to the reduction of its object to the singular events of a supposedly supernatural kind has its origin in the nominalism which, spreading through the schools of theology in universities since the middle of the fourteenth century, took root in the minds of many pious and well-instructed men. Among them were Peter D'Ailly and Gabriel Biel, men of universally recognized authority, on which works Martin Luther based himself for his lectures in Erfurt and in Wittenberg.

According to the principle that "what is real is only the singular," what is universal is reduced to the purely logical framework which our intelligence erects in the act of understanding. What is real is thus limited to that which the senses perceive and which the intellect would know by means of some intuition, the similarity of which with the sensitive perception induces to uphold its identification. William of Ockham himself, father of nominalism, claims: "the singular which is primarily perceived by the senses ― he writes ― is the same, and under the same reason, as what the intellect firstly understands in an intuitive way (...) Consequently ― he insists ― that same thing which is firstly perceived by the senses will be understood by the intellect and under the same reason." What intuition contributes ― the only properly cognoscitive act of the intellect — is organized by the mind by means of logical relationships of universality which lack all foundation or actual correlations.

This way, the great speculative theology suffers a noticeable detriment, and so, what is known as scholastic theology of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries is, as it appears in Erasmus' Folly, the subtle play of multiple distinctions and abstractions which are processed in an intellect from which all kinds of contemplative activity has been amputated. 

Luther declares to belong to "Ockham's faction." Although sometimes he tones down this adhesion with references to Saint Augustine, it is clear that nominalism and its exclusion of the reality of the universal, marks his conception of the faith and of what could be understood as a theology. Reason cannot take part in the knowledge of what God reveals, since judging on that would be the same as making a judgment on God; it also lacks any faculty to determine what are the duties of a Christian. Reason is "blind, deaf, foolish, impious, and sacrilegious." Consequently, the relation of man with God cannot take place by means of knowledge; and what Luther calls faith does not correspond to theological faith nor can it be expressed in human language for that reason. What he understands by faith is an act of confidence, or rather, of internal security about the salvific result of the action which God carries out in an absolutely arbitrary manner on each of the elected.

Neither the faith nor the theology so conceived by the monk of Wittenberg can substantiate a natural law. This is ratified by the radical exclusion of works ― that is, of moral conduct ― as regards causes or conditions for salvation. If works are not determined by their moral character, then any norm of conduct lacks, because of this, its reason of being. When Luther explains what he understands by liberty for the Christian, he says that this consists of the complete independence from laws or precepts, including the commandments of the Decalogue. Any intent of justification of man which seeks its cause in objective moral or juridical justifications is not only rejected by doctor Martin but also branded as blasphemy. From Lutheran thinking, the notion of nature is not absent, but even making abstraction of the absolute uselessness of works, it is impossible that such nature, as it is conceived, and due to the intrinsic state of corruption in which original sin has left it, should constitute itself in a norm in some way. "For although God did not make sin, ― he writes ― yet He does not cease to form and multiply that nature, which from the Spirit being withdrawn, is vitiated by sin, just as if an artisan were to make statues out of rotten wood." Saint Paul, when he enumerated the vices which are the product of original sin, was referring to the fallen nature, but one which conserves its integrity and can, because of that, be redeemed and restored in its perfection; this is not the irremediably rotten nature to which Luther refers.

With Luther, each one's subjectivity gets consecrated as the source of determination of what is morally good or just: "these two formulas ― he writes in De servo arbitrio ― are true: 'good and just works do not ever make a man good and just, but a good and just man makes good works'. 'Bad works do not make a man wicked but a wicked man does bad works' which means that a person must always be first good and just before carrying out any good deed, and the good deeds will follow and come from a just and good person." With this, a primacy  ― a subjectivity which imposes itself ― of power over reason is established, of force over what is objectively just. The invectives hurled by the reformer against the "murderous hordes" of German peasants and his call to the noblemen to crush them, is a concrete example of the outcome which can reach such primacy of power over reason.

It is known that Calvin does not modify the main theses of Luther; as him, he holds that salvation is through the faith and not through the works, that there is no free will in man, that predestination to hell or to Beatitude is an irrevocable divine predetermination, that the works of the elected are necessarily good and those of the ones destined for reprobation are necessarily bad, and so forth. In contrast to Calvin, in Lutheranism one could still find, nevertheless, some spirit of piety; this disappears in the reformer from Geneva, in whom the community or assembly of the elected is put ahead of personal piety. Apart from that, as could be seen in the organization which the reformer gave to Genevan society, there is for him no difference between such assembly of the saints or of the elected and civil society. To belong to such assembly gives persons security in their condition of elected, since there is an external confirmation of the condition of elected on the part of the rest. The society or church of the saints needs, as does any society, visible and concrete links, without which it cannot subsist. As all rites or liturgical actions have been excluded from the reformed religion, such links are certain common forms of morality, which are to be signified to the rest by means of conventional words, gestures, dress, etcetera, which, in the absence of other sacred signs acquire, however, the necessary character. In such manner, by means of the observance of such conventional forms, the saint acquires the conviction of his own salvation.

God, for the Calvinists, is a severe being, arbitrary, terrible, implacable. There can be no law that can have as its foundation God's arbitrariness. "(He) has decreed once and for all ― he writes ― in his eternal and immutable counsel, those He has willed to take for salvation and those he has willed to send to perdition." Before this terrible distance from God is man, whose nature is radically corrupted and who cannot even aspire, not even by grace, to an intimate union with God, partaking of divine life, as is taught by Catholic theology. "Children themselves ― Calvin does not skimp on ways to inspire the horror proper of predestination ― are included in this condemnation (...) Their nature is a seed of sin; for which reason it cannot be other than repugnant and abominable to God."

God's presence among the elected would seem to contradict that insurmountable distance of man from God, or at least that it remedies or mitigates it. Not so, however, it is not that God makes Himself present in the elected and sanctifies him by communicating His own life to him. God does not reveal Himself to man nor does He make Himself be loved by man. What makes itself present in the elected is his sole character of elected, but it is not God. Knowing himself to be elected is certainly a determining psychological factor which will stamp its own character on the saints and on the assembly which congregates them. In this interior conviction, which is the self reaffirmation of being saved, all personal relation of man with God is comprised. "God not only offers salvation ― writes Calvin ― but He also assigns such certitude, that the effect of the offering cannot be left in suspense or in doubt."

Human destinies are thus resolved at the same time in the remoteness of a God which does not know compassion for human misery, and in the immediate closeness of a subjectivity in which the presence of the divine cannot be distinguished from an interior state marked by the conviction of having been saved (reprobates are uncapable of any true conviction.) Because of this, that double cause is reduced to a single one, to the one which is immediate and subjective, to which the divine character is granted after it has acted. The determining factor is always that interior state of the subject, state which is reinforced and reaffirmed as it is manifested externally and coincides with those of the rest in the same exterior forms, the which would be the unequivocal signs of the sanctity of the members of the assembly,

For Calvinism, and for the postures that have derived from it, law is solely what the will of the elected determine to be such. This power of the elected is more defined than in Luther, for whom it was identified simply with the subjectivity of the Christian. In contrast, in Calvinism, such power is that of the assembly, in which it is exercised of course over its members, in the form of a collective will superior to the particular wills. This idea of the collective will ― or general or sovereign, as it will be called afterwards ― autonomous and free, has been the archetype of the ideologies upon which modern revolutions have been inspired.

In the social philosophy which developed, mainly in England, in the seventeenth century, the presence of a secularized Calvinism is clear. Clarification: the secularized qualifier is redundant, since, as we have seen, Calvinism in itself consists in the secularization of some of the most outstanding ideas of the Reformation. The multiple sects which have derived from Calvinism share, as a common trait, the constitution of an assembly of their members, the saints or elected, that is the exemplary form of the civil society. This assembly, the covenant, its sanctity guaranteed by the divine election, and presided by the eldest or of greatest dignity of the members, the presbiter, possesses a collective will which always represents in a trustworthy way the individual wills of the members. It is that will, that of the assenbly of saints, the one which rules the life of the community. There is no transcendent norm, not of the eternal law, not of natural law, not of reason. There being no transcendent norm, there being no naturally just, the principle of conduct has to be necessarily immanent, since it does not leave nor is it possible to leave the closed sphere of a subjectivity which extends itself collectively, It is not surprising that, in the absence of a theology in the proper sense of the term, geometry should appear as an exemplary cause in the determination of the law. To it resort, and with this purpose, Grotius and Hobbes.

There is a character in whose thought and in whose works, the currents that stem from nominalism and from the Reformation, secularized by Calvinism, are concentrated. We refer to John Locke. In him, a skepticism, natural consequence of these currents, elevated to the category of dogma and principle of morality, can be found. In his Letter Concerning Toleration, his explanation of the significance of such dogma can be found. It says "toleration is the chief characteristic mark of the true church. Whatever profession of faith we make, ― he adds ― to whatever outward worship we conform, if we are not fully satisfied in our own mind that the one is true and the other well pleasing unto God, such profession and such practice, far from being any furtherance, are indeed great obstacles to our salvation."

Tolerance constituted in principle cannot be applied, by the way, to those who are intolerant; that is, cohabitation with any creed or religion can be admitted on condition that it does not claim to be the only true one: this is why Locke rejects the possibility of admitting the Catholic Church in this cohabitation of religions. The matter is that he who professes a religion may believe that it is the only true one as long as he believes it only for himself. If he tries to have others share in his belief because his religion is the only true one, he is committing the worst of sins, which is that of intolerance. Truth is only for oneself. The practical and theoretical consequences of a complete subjectivism are evidenced here quite clearly. Thus, it turns out that tolerance is the object of the faith, which can also be expressed by saying that the faith is valid on condition that it has no object; in other words, there is no truth which one has to believe in just because it is true. In connection with the accusation of intolerance made of Catholics, Locke writes that: "These accusations would cease very soon if the law of tolerance would be framed so that it would require all churches to proclaim that tolerance is the foundation of their own liberty, and to teach that liberty of conscience is a natural right of man."

Here we have, in the words of Locke himself, the enunciation of the principle which all subsequent currents that accept the liberal qualifier for themselves draw from: liberty does not consist of free will — the existence of which would have to be denied — but of the absolute independence of man with respect to any principle transcending his sujectivity and in the name of which some  type of obedience could be demanded of him; this is the liberty of conscience which supposes — as can be seen already in Luther — that something is good and true because I judge it to be so, that is, because to me it is good and true but not because in itself it is so. If tolerance is the proper object of the faith — and only in that sense could the faith be considered to be common — it is because the faith in divine Revelation and in theology no longer exists. And if natural law boils down to liberty of conscience, it is also because it no longer exists.

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.

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.

Chronicle of a Plot against the Church

Chronicle of a Plot against the Church

by Sofronio

Taken from https://materinmaculata.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/cronica-de-un-complot-contra-la-iglesia/

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

This article is related to a previous one titled Viduy, teschuva y tikkun, which I recommend to readers interested in understanding the Synagogue's modern strategy against the Church better.

In contrast with other magisterial texts of the Church, the document known as Nostra Aetate of the Second Vatican Council (hereinafter VC2), issued on October 26, 1965, never quotes any of the writings of prior councils or of the popes who preceded the pope who issued it: Paul VI. The practice of quoting, whether in the text itself or in marginal notes, references to preceding magisterium has the purpose of showing, as is well known, continuity in Church doctrine and tradition. Now then, in the declaration on the Jews there is no reference to any positive precedent, be it councils, popes, Church Fathers, or ecclesiastical writers. It was, then, a compromise text which for the first time presented a daring positive image of the perfidious Jews, in flagrant rupture with the doctrine of the Church of almost two thousand years.

It was a compromise text following a terrible unprecedented doctrinal fighting that took place in the preceding years. Involved in this war were members of the influential Curia and Conciliar Fathers. Numerous libels were not lacking to defend the salvation theology taught by the Church for two thousand years against assault attempts and infiltration by Satan's Synagogue against the bride of Christ. In words of André Chouraqui, " the Church, having been afflicted with a, more or less total, amnesia for over two thousand years, suddenly reinstates the primogeniture in the context of the family of the People of God. In addition, the Church categorically rejects all forms of proselytism with respect to them, proscribing what previously had been admitted." Even considering that instead of "the Church" Chouraqui should have written "the men of the Church, We will try to respond to this question." it is perfectly understood that the Jews have realized that those men of the Church have proscribed the previous doctrine and betrayed the mission that Christ gave to his disciples. The seed of the chaff had been planted and it has been growing fast. But how was this novel doctrine reached? How was such Trojan horse introduced in our fortress? We will try to answer this question.

We will limit ourselves to show what refers to the Twentieth Century on this topic, assuming that the reader knows it was the infidel Jews, those who cried for the death of our Lord Jesus Christ and let His blood fall on their heads and those of their children. We likewise assume it is well known that the Synagogue has been behind all of the persecutions of the Church; since Saint Stephan's martyrdom to Nero´s persecution, passing by the Reformation, the liberal Revolution of 1789, the Bolshevik Revolution, in which the greatest portion of its leaders were Jews, and that of the "cape and tiara" begun by the Carbonari in the Nineteenth Century and continued by the modernism which triumphed in VC2.

Upon the end of the Second World War, the Jews resumed the defiance of the Church, demanding that she revise her teaching on this perfidious race.

1946. A conference took place in Oxford under the auspices of powerful British and American Jewish organizations; among those who attended were representatives of the Catholic Church and Protestants.

1946. Sixty participants of that conference met in Seelisberg, Switzerland, to discuss the topic of antisemitism. Father Journet was among the Catholics who attended. Jaques Maritain had been invited and though he was unable to participate, he sent a message of encouragement. The central personage was Jew Jules Isaac. It concludes with a ten-point agreement of which the following one stands out: "Christians need to diligently revise and purify their own language, as a not always innocent routine filtered absurd expressions as deicide race, or a more racist than Christian manner in which the history of the Passion was narrated...

1948. Jules Isaac founds the Judaeo-Christian Friendship, the object of which is to "rectify Christian teaching". Many liberal Catholics take part in their meetings, disseminating the ten points of the Seelisberg Conference around all places.

1948. Liberal Catholics convince Jules Isaac to request being received by Pius XII.

1949. On October 16, Jules Isaac is received by Pius XII to whom he exposes the ten points of Seelisberg. The outcome of the meeting is short of satisfactory. It is necessary to wait while the spider net keeps weaving.

1959. The founders of the Center for the Study of the Current Problems, organization linked to the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, right-hand of the Jewish masonic organization B'nai B'rith, meet with Jules Isaac to speak of the possibility of contact with John XXIII. Jules approves the proposal.

Let us recall that a few months earlier, John XXIII had spoken about the possibility of convoking a council. Also, that cardinals had advised Pius XI against a similar convocation in 1923. Cardinal Billot had warned the pope: "Ought we not fear that the council is manipulated by the worst enemies of the Church, the modernists, who as reports demonstrate with evidence, are getting prepared to take advantage of the States-General of the Church (this is to say, a council - translator's note) and carry out a revolution, a new 1978?" (quoted by Mons. Mallerais). However, a counter-council was being prepared which should supplant the first when the time came. The proof of this coup against the initial schema of the council is overwhelmingly abundant in The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber by Ralph Witgen.

1960. Monsignor Julien advises Jules Isaac to go to Cardinal Augustine Bea, a German Jesuit. After his interview with the Cardinal, Jules admits: "I found in him great support". "What the evil tongues used to say about Cardinal Bea: that he was a Jew at heart, is true". Isaac succeeded in getting an audience with John XXIII in June of that same year. At the meeting, he delivered to John XXIII a memorandum titled Need of reform of Christian teaching with respect to Israel. Isaac recalls: "I asked John XXIII if I could have some hope", to which the Bishop of Rome responded that he (Isaac) had the right to have something more than hope, but that he (John XIII) was not an absolute monarch. After the interview, John XXIII wanted to make the Curia know that he expected a condemnation of antisemitism from the Council. From that moment on, many encounters took place between the commissions of the Council and the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish masonry of the B'nai B'rith.

As Joseph Roddy narrates in his article titled How the Jews Changed Catholic Thinking, these Jewish organizations were able to make their voice be listened to in Rome quite frequently. But Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel, who for over thirty years had heard about the Jewish heart of Bea, by then already a cardinal, worked hard in favor of the Synagogue. The two, meeting in Rome, talked about certain documents prepared by the American Jewish Committee. One dealt with the image of the Jews in Catholic teaching, the other with the anti-Jewish elements in the Catholic Liturgy. Heschel declared afterward that he expected a declaration from the Council saying that in no way should the Jews be exhorted to convert to Christianity. Likewise, Dr. Goldman, head of the World Conference of Jewish Organizations, let his desire be known by John XXIII, while the B'nai B´rith exerted pressure for the Catholics to reform their liturgy and suppress all expressions unfavorable to the Jews from it. Much could be said about the years of preparation of the Council, men, nets, plans, friendships, enmities, but let´s go on.

1962. Monsignor John Osterreicher and Father Baum, front men for Cardinal Bea prepared the text on Judaism with consent from the World Jewish Congress (WJC), declaration of which was to be presented in the first session of the Council, and which acquitted the Jews from the accusation of deicide. The WJC expressed its satisfaction and sent Dr. Cain Y. Ward to the Council as an unofficial observer. But the reaction of the Arab countries in face of the privilege intended to be granted to the Jews was swift. The numerous protests made the Vatican's Secretary of State remove the project from the Council´s agenda. In face of this treason to Christ, exculpating the Jews from deicide, a group had a 900-page book titled Plot against the Church and written under the pseudonym Maurice Pinay delivered to 2,200 cardinals and bishops. The book tried to warn the Council Fathers that the Jews, who had always tried to infiltrate the Church to change its teaching, were about the achieve their goal.

1963. This fiasco did not discourage Cardinal Bea. On March 31, under maximum secrecy, he met with heads of the American Jewish Congress at the Hotel Plaza in New York, who pressured for the bishops to change the Church teaching on the History of Salvation. Before the Committee Cardinal Bea refuted the traditional accusations of deicide of infidel Jews. and calmed the rabbis. The Jewish pressure was in crescendo. A short time afterward, Rolf Hochhut's film, the Vicar, casting slanders against Pius XII for his actions during the Second World War, was released with the intention of influencing the Conciliar assembly.

1963. Autumn. The Council Fathers received the declaration on the Jews as Chapter IV on ecumenism for it to pass unnoticed. The declaration on the Jews and the matter of religious liberty were subjects of very heated debates. At stake was the Church´s renunciation to the monopoly on the only truth. The oriental patriarchs defended courageously the Church´s traditional teaching. We do not quote any of them because they were many, but they stood out ahead of the westerners. Likewise, other representatives of the Catholic Orthodoxy distributed several volumes of the work entitled The Jews through the Scripture and Tradition with the purpose of alerting on the manipulations of the enemy. The text had to be withdrawn.

1964. The Jewish interventions multiply themselves before Paul VI, standing out the meetings he had with Joseph Lichten of Anti Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, Zachariah Schuster and Leonard Sperry of the American Jewish Committee, US Cardinal Spellman, Arthur J. Goldberg, US Supreme Court Justice and rabbi Heschel According to Roddy's revelations, "before the Third Session, six members of the American Jewish Congress were received by Paul VI. The Holy Father manifested to his visitors his approval of Cardinal Spellman's declarations about the Jews' lack of culpability." Further on, he underlines that "Heschel interviewed Paul VI in the company of Schuster, energetically speechifying about the deicide and the culpability requesting the Pontiff to exert pressure so as to obtain a declaration prohibiting Catholics from any kind of proselytism with respect to the Jews". On November 20, bishops and cardinals voted on a provisional schema dealing with the position of the Church vis a vis Judaism. 99 conciliar fathers voted against it, 1650 for it, and 242 with reservations. The Catholic forces began to give in. The Oriental fathers voted in block against any kind of conciliar declaration on the Jews. The final scrutiny would take place in 1965. The last warning about the change in the doctrine which was being attempted to be imposed came from the hand of Leon de Poncins in a pamphlet titled The Problem of the Jews at the Vatican Council. Poncins warns that "among a portion of the Conciliar Fathers there is a deep ignorance of the essence of Judaism". But the document only produced the effect of deepening the arguments against the schema and substitute the paragraphs which most directly attacked Christian teaching.

1965. Finally, the definite text of Nostra Aetate, a compromise text was voted on the fourth session on October 28. 2,221 voted in favor and 88 against. With Nostra Aetate, the bishops of the Catholic Church for the first time in history presented a positive and daring image of the perfidious Jews. "The discussions following the taking of conscience of VC2 were preparing the Christian world, little y little, to assume a new theology about the relations of the Church with Judaism. The purpose of the Vatican's and the episcopates' guidelines in the last fifty years was directed to transform the mentality by means of a great education effort of the peoples of the Christian space" (Michel Laurigan). This effort tends to

• Recall the perpetuity of the first Alliance (anathematized affirmation)
• Inculcate an appreciation for the infidel Jewish people, "sacerdotal people" (which cannot be saved if they do not believe in Christ)
• Renounce to the conversion of the Jews (against Christ, Saint Peter and all of the Apostles)
• Familiarize constantly with Jewish cooperation (pure Pelagianism)
• Prepare the road for the Noahide religion (deprive Christ of His divinity)

The rest, what we suffer today of the false shepherds, is the rotten fruit of having betrayed Christ. Let us recall a few among thousands of nauseating products of this gigantic treason; in an almost telegraphic manner:

• Heretical text of the French Commission for the Relations with Judaism of Easter 1973, which states that the first alliance was not abrogated by Christ's new one (a declaration which falls under the anathema of the Catholic Church)
• Text titled Reflections on the Alliance and the Mission, of the American episcopate, of August 2002, in which they conclude that actions directed to convert Jews to Catholicism are no longer theologically acceptable in the Catholic Church (this is tantamount to apostasy from the Mission ordered by Christ)
• Successive visits to synagogues by Roman bishops, joint prayers, forgiveness requests from Jews, participation in Talmudic liturgies, suppression of prayers in the Catholic liturgy, as that of Holy Friday.

Here is but one example of the rupture which has taken place:

Holy Friday's prayer of the Missal of Saint Pius V:

Let us pray also for the faithless Jews, that Almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Oh almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from Thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness, hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that, acknowledging the light of Thy truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

New Holy Friday prayer:

Let us pray for the Jews, to which God spoke first so that they progress in the love of His name and fidelity of their alliance.

Once the 'catholic church' by means of that great educational effort, following the Jewish plan, gets to reform its vision of the deicide people, preach only a human Christ which comes to bring happiness moral to all men, that is, renounces to confess His divinity, and reinterprets the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the 'catholic church' will be, in the words of the Jew Benamozegh, the one in charge of propagating noahism. Judaism believes all people are obligated to observe a universal law. This universal law will be Noah's seven commandments:

1. Establish courts of justice so that the law rule society
2. Prohibition of blasphemy
3. Prohibition of idolatry; Adoration of Christ, and the Trinity being considered idolatry.
4. Prohibition of incest
5. Prohibition of the shedding of blood
6. Prohibition of theft
7. Prohibition to eat the flesh of certain animals

The new mission assigned to the church would consist of evangelizing the peoples in that Noahide humanism and propitiate their unification. The primacy of Rome would be facilitated to achieve the unity of the Christians, for the reunited church to preach a religion of natural morality without Christ, by means of which its adepts could be saved. Remember that the seven commandments of Noah are the minimum common of the three religions of the Book. The non-Jews should not try to convert to the religion of the Talmud, reserved to the elected, the racial Jews.

Here, then, in synthesis, since the Nostra Aetate declaration of VC2 , we walk the road contrary to that of Saul, who became Saint Paul; our shepherds lead us back to Damascus, to the Supreme Priest, to ask him for a charter to end the resistance of the true Christians who confess only one Lord, Jesus Christ, one God whose substance is Trinitarian. Persecution will be directed against us. The enormous Jewish finances, the fruit of the gravest sin, of usury against the poor, which cries heaven for justice, will undertake to brighten up the few reluctant men to stoop to the intentions of Satan´s Synagogue. Oh, City of the Seven Hills who has permitted the dirty and usurious hands of the deicide Jews to fall in your squalid purse! You have relinquished your liberty for the salvation of the souls to your worst enemy. Only one hope remains because Christ never abandons His Church.

Note: The content of this article is a modified summary of Michel Laurigan´s text titled 'The Myth of the Substitution to the Noahide Religion', with a mixture of his numerous notes.