It would be a mistake to presume that Maurras “cynically” used the church for political ends. As a positivist, he would have rejected the theological and metaphysical explanations of the Church’s origin and mission, considering it instead a brute fact. As such, he saw Catholicism as continuing the Greek/Roman classical tradition—which he loved—and as being the authentic religion historically of the French nation. He therefore loved Catholicism as a strictly natural manifestation, especially since it embodied the sociological laws: “All my favourite ideas—order, tradition, discipline, hierarchy, authority, continuity, unity, work, family, corporation, decentralisation, autonomy, organisation of workers—had been preserved and perfected by Catholicism.” He seemed to accept Catholicism’s moral teachings (as did Comte) and even the socio-economic teaching (“corporativism”) of the recent popes of his time.

The absurd notion that the United States is a propositional state, to which you allude to and disagree with, contradicts the Constitution. You do not delve deeply. The Preamble says it all, “...To ourselves and our posterity.” By definition we are a tribal nation. The government exists for us and our children. Ideas are not the driving force. People, a defined group. are. The concept of a propositional nation is a smokescreen invented to advance the betrayal of Americans for the benefit of another tribe.

As a graduate of UChicago who learned a great deal of my political science at the Committee on Social Thought, I think this is a very learned and impressive essay on the relationship between Straussians and neoconservatives, not to mention Maurras, a figure the latter would view with complete disdain.  Mr. Gottfried’s recognition that Straussian thought is either oblivious or hostile to the ethnic unity of European nations partly explains the neoconservative enthusiasm for the EU project that seeks to do away with them, perhaps as penance for past wrongs.  Certainly, and correctly, the memory of WWII is central to Strauss’s philosophizing.  The reduction of all politics to a battle of abstract ideas is the first thing that turned me away from Strauss and toward Burke and Scruton.  The second giveaway is the deafening silence on the role of Christianity in the development of European civilization.  Strauss’s topography moves from “ancient thought” (Greece, Rome never happened) to Machiavelli, a figure he uproots from the Italian countryside and turns into some kind of devil personally responsible for introducing the “realism” that led, through Hegel of course, to the collapse of Weimar.  As much as Straussians complain about dumb journalists drawing a connection between them and Bush’s foreign policy, the fact is that the hostility to “realism” is well embedded in their thought and forms the cornerstone of their critique of modernity.  Strauss taught the limits of the ideal in his impressive theory of natural right, but his students have placed all emphasis on the Platonic ideal guiding the real, in part to counteract the “low horizons” Machiavelli introduced to modern politics.  Thus is born an enthusiasm for grand political projects that is anything but conservative.  One way or another, Plato’s Republic is taken partly as proscription. (Those interested should compare Strauss with Hegel’s brilliant analysis in the Phenomenology of the struggle between Creon and Antigone and the subsequent discussion of The Republic.)

By the way, the main classroom at UChicago’s Foster Hall, ground zero for all this, had a bookcase with every issue of Commentary since its inception.  On the other hand, Francoise Furet, the great late historian of revolutionary France who did so much to rescue his discipline from Marxist orthodoxy and reintroduce Tocqueville, was also present, and that was a real boom.

But I’m rambling.  Really enjoyed the essay.

Offtopic

@Mr. Gottfried

Good essay. Did you ever write something similar on his predecessor De Maistre? I’m just reading his book “considerations on France”.

@ felipeb,

Wow, where do I begin?

First, the USA IS a “propositional state”, (a “nation” is something else) and so was the USSR.  But that doesn’t mean that I think propositional states are a good thing - nor does it mean that I approve of nation-states. 

Second, as a prophylactic against ad hominem attacks or other jumps to conclusions about what I believe in and where my loyalties are, my identities in order of importance are:

1.  Christian
1.a Ambivalently somewhere between Catholic and high church Protestant, but at least I’m not hypocritical about my heresies from Roman Catholic doctrine (and that’s why I continue to refrain from taking Roman Catholic sacraments)

2.  The civilisation of European Christendom

3.  Anglophone (and my ancestors CREATED the English language, and it does make a difference between the way I use it versus, say, ethnically German Americans who buggered the American language with cumbersome habits like attaching prepositions to simple verbs, eg, “went out”, “took up” (prep. “aufgenehmen"), the crude Germanised-American dialect of Hemingway et al...not to mention how the Russian Jews who created the Hollywood dialect ruined American phonemes with their ghastly palatalised sounds of the shtetls..."iyhhh, nyehhhh”, those sounds came from the Jewish ghettos of the Russian empire, imported to Hollywood and New York and now spread like a virus throughout America...)

4.  Son, or grandson, of England and Scotland and of the 5,000 year old heritage of civilisation in Britain (AND that other nasty little island nearby ;-) Ireland, from which my grandmother’s people came) - I acknowledge being partly Irish with as much embarrassment as I would acknowledge being partly descended from Fijian cannibals - no shame in it, but no glory either.  (Alright, I’m being a BIT tongue-in-cheek there, but my
half-Irish father used to say, “an Irishman is just a n-gger turned inside out”, and he had a good point!)

5.  Heir of much that was good in Virginia and Pennsylvania and the USA
when my various ancestors lived there from the 1600s until I left in 1994.
By the way, I’m directly descended from Joseph Ball, the Virginian grandfather of George Washington.  (His son, my ancestor Joseph Ball, the uncle of George Washington, moved back to England in the 1700s.) So, no latecomer to America
am I.  My roots in America run far deeper than those of, say, Father Coughlin or Joe McCarthy.

6.  Citizen of the USA (and I will change that, as a matter of honour, as soon as the Commonwealth of Australia permits me to become an Australian citizen, soon.)

7.  Lover of cats, dogs, Indian and Indonesian cuisine, good beer, beautiful women, and good cartoons.

8.  Amateur, semi-professional cartoonist.

9.  Lawyer.  (I’m more proud of being a good cartoonist than of being a lawyer.)

10-99, 89 other personal qualities and identities, and then finally,

100.  “White”, whatever that means.

So, felipeb, tell me, WHERE (if anywhere)
do I fit in your conception of America as a “tribal nation”? 

If you define it according to the predominant ethnicity and religion of its founders, then I’m more truly “American”
than, well than Taki, or our Irish-American colleague Mr Foy, or Paul Gottfried.  I reiterate:  I descend directly from George Washington’s grandfather, and my paternal line have been purely English ever since our Viking ancestors conquered Northern England.  Oh, but wait!  That means I’m NOT PURELY ENGLISH!  Follow my paternal line for a thousand years, and my fathers were pagan Danes invading the Christian Kingdom of Alfred the Great.

Hmmm.  So just WHO IS the “tribe” of the American “nation”?  Do you mean the “tribe” of America’s mostly English-Scottish-Welsh, and very anti-Catholic and anti-Irish, founders?  (And they weren’t too fond of Germans either - remember the Battle of Trenton, and all those Krauts who fought as mercenaries for George III.  Many British officers refused to fight against Americans - because of an old rule of Honour which said a British soldier is not required to fight against his own countrymen - so old Farmer George (King George III, who was actually a pretty good King for the most part) had to hire German mercenaries to kill the American rebels.  The majority of the “British” Army in the American War of Independence, were either Germans or native-born Americans.  Most native-born Brits wanted nothing to do with killing their American cousins.  But the German mercenaries just leapt at the opportunity - oh, and so did many Irish.  (And then in the 1930s and 1940s, the IRA and their sympathisers in America did lots of “good” service in collaboration with the Nazis.  German intelligence worked cheek-by-jowl with the IRA scum.)

SO, felipeb, just what kind of American “tribe” are you talking about?

If you mean people whose ancestry most closely resembles that of the high-church
English Protestants, like my first-cousin
(several generations removed) George Washington, then THAT tribe of Americans bears very little resemblance to Taki (who is one of my personal heroes), or to
Paul Gottfried (not my hero, but I do admire him) or to 90 percent or more of Americans today.

So, you wanna talk about “tribes”?  You wanna define the American “nation” as a “tribe”?  If so, then I am one of a handful of remnants of its exemplars.
And the majority of America’s self-defined “paleoconservatives” are not
- mind you, ESPECIALLY the American paleocons who are Catholics!  Or even “worse”, those who are of Irish descent!
(As I am, 25 percent.) If there was any original American “tribe” at its founding, then it was a tribe of Protestant and/or otherwise anti-Catholic
descendants of Britain.  And that “tribe” would exclude Joe McCarthy, and Charles Lindbergh, and Taki and the (to me, overwhelmingly intelligent AND decent and honourable) Professor Gottfried, and the majority of the writers and commenters on this blog.

So I say, to hell with “tribes”.  My tribe is the tribe of decent, civilised men - and I’m confident in saying, so is Taki’s.  Taki, like me, is a student of Japanese and Chinese martial arts, and of
the kind of chivalry and honour which transcends all “tribes.”

Now, all that said, “filipeb”, I intend no personal insult to you.  I’m just offering some food for thought.  What say you in response, filipeb, among friends?  :-)

The “United States”, as originally conceived, were a union of states. As such, it was not a tribal nation, the state was one’s tribe. A man was a Virginian, or a New Yorker, never a United Statesian. Back in the day, that was how a citizen experienced his identity. Speaking of changes in the language, at what point did the proper noun “United States” become singular when it used to be plural?

Excellent essay on a much and undeservedly maligned
man.

Charles Maurras did find his way into the Church as a
fervent believer, as French historian/author Lucien
Thomas details. It was throught the Carmelite Nuns of
Lisieux and the special intercession of St. Thesese.
And the condemnations of L’Action Francaise
were lifted completely in July of 1939. By then, however,
the damage to the French Right had been done.

@Charles

Whatever other virtues Maurras had, and how many points
of contact with the Catholic Church, his relationship
with it was a marriage of convenience, and as such,
not likely to last when the convenience changed.

I cannot blame the Church for sloughing off someone who
could talk of the Virgin’s Magnificat as “poisonous”.

Another one for the files.  Finally someone is bring Maurras to public attention in the Anglophone world.  Thank you, Paul Gottfried!  I’ve said it before:  Let’s get some of his stuff – preferably free of his Judeophobia – into an English translation, called the Charles Maurras Reader, or translate some of the works Paul Gottfried mentions.  Let’s include some of his aesthetic work as well.  Thanks also for at least mentioning Luigi Sturzo, the man who coined the phrase “clerical Fascist”.  Frankly, I find myself torn between the appeal of Sturzo and that of Maurras.  I’m someone who is a regionalist and a Leo XIII Catholic and opposed to all nationalism and to “propositional” nations (at least secular propositions).

Short observations. I was disappointed only when the essay began to drift from Maurras to Strauss, though perhaps this is the more timely concern . Teutonophobia is indeed a problem, not just among Neocons, but in the Anglophone world; I wonder if it has died out in France.  John Lukacs is certainly correct that Maurras was not ant-Semitic (a racial concept) as he was Judeophobic (a religious and cultural one); Paul Gottfried seems to following this view.  Lukacs and Gottfried are also quiet correct that Maurras was not a Fascist, correcting Ernst Nolte’s error.  And I know of no racialist tendencies in Maurras thought; like a Real Conservative, he knew that history made people who they are. I continue to fuss that “Left” and “Right” are meaningless, utterly meaningless, concepts, – not even useful but rather distorting.  Where I fault Maurras is from a Personalist perspective: The person is never a part of a whole, a means to an end, or someone who is not sui juris; Maurras was not alone in making this error in promoting a group, sect, class, or national cohesion.  I also fault him for seeing the West exclusively as the achievement of Athens, and ignoring Jerusalem.

Questions
i. Is John Lukacs correct that Maurras is more of a Conservative (“extremist conservative”) than a Nationalist?

ii.  As a League of the South member, I’d like to know, Is he more of a regionalist than a central-statist Nationalist, such as Clemenceau and T. Roosevelt?

iii. I was surprised to hear of neopagan tendencies.  Wasn’t he simply an atheist?  What did he really mean be calling himself “the Catholic atheist”?  Just a cultural admiration?

iv. Who his the greater influence upon him, de Maistre, Taine, or Comte?

v.  Isn’t the Croix de Feu better called a Fascist organization that “right republican”?  Roger Griffin thought so. 

vi.  If Maurras was so anti-German and anti-Nazi (not the same thing, by the way) – and I don’t doubt this – what did he mean by saying the events of June 1940 were a “divine surprise”?

I’ll have a question for Christians later in the day.

Indeed, Maurras’ relationship with the Church was one
of convenience, at least for the first portion of his
life. But he did finally find his way into the Church
as a believer, and his last writings illustrate this
with great eloquence.

Maurras was wont to use extreme comparisons and daring
language to make a point; it is only in that sense and
in that context that one should view his use of the
word “poisonous” in relation to the Magnificat. On other
occasions, somewhat like Henry Adams, he expressed
admiration for the image of the Blessed Virgin, in
her innocence and holiness. I think we should be very
careful to take things out of context....

For the gentleman who asked about whether I had
written about Maistre and other European
counterrevolutionaries, the answer is “yes.” My first
book and many of my early essays treat these estimable
political thinkers. When I claim in my latest book that
the post-WWII conservative movement was not
significantly based on the European conservative
experience, I was not putting down the Europeans. I
was merely stating a fact. PG

Great article, Dr. Gottfried. 

It has been well over a decade since I last read any editions of Action Francaise, but in the 1990s, while living in France, I because interested in the historical significance of the publication and was able to get my hands on some articles from it.  I also was particularly interested in trying to get an original copy of a T.S. Eliot article from the publication (which I did not acquire).

Gottfried:  “it does not seem to me that these printed opinions show the depth of thought or elegance of Maurras’s political writing. (Even Maurras’s worst ravings are far better crafted than the denunciations of Islamofascism or European anti-Semitism that regularly appear in the neocon press.) Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind reads like a civics textbook designed for New Deal Democrats.”

Priceless.

Gottfried: “Why are Jews, it might be asked, allowed to be an ethnic people—but according to the Zionists and Straussians, American Christians must see themselves as belonging to a propositional “universal nation”?”

Here you are hitting the nail on the head.  Action Francaise argued for a traditional type of patriotism, one rooted in blood and soil, kith and kin.  While neocons may allow such devotion to Israel, it certainly is denied to all Christians and Western countries. 

Gottfried:  “most neoconservatives disguise their Jewish nationalism by identifying it with global, nonsectarian democracy.”

This is the danger and genius of neocons.  They essentially Israeli blood and soil nationalists, but they disguise it by simultaneously being globalists.  They support policies (e.g. open borders, unbridled free trade, propositionalism, military overstretch) that are destroying Western nations and Western man.

Gottfried: “Unlike most of the Straussians and all of the neoconservatives, Maurras was not a leftist but a man of the Right. Nothing more need be said on this matter. “
*Nothing Said*

Sebastion:  “ Mr. Gottfried’s recognition that Straussian thought is either oblivious or hostile to the ethnic unity of European nations partly explains the neoconservative enthusiasm for the EU project that seeks to do away with them.”

Neocons are not just reporting on the decline of Europe, they are cheering it.  They truly hate Europe and the idea of the U.S. being a European nation..  Just look at the writings of Strauss, which are nothing more than a wallpapering over the real West with liberal abstractions.

Bede
http://www.conservativetimes.org

@Ancient Combattant

He may have been extreme in his comments on the Magnificat,
but he, unlike those who get sentimental about the Virgin
Mary, like Henry Adams, went after the content, the
ideological underpinings of it.

In other words he was quite willing to cut and paste
Catholic doctrine to fit his own ideology. Which makes
him dangerous company.

@John:

I cannot understand your venom against the Irish. One
would think that Ireland had invaded England, slaughtered
their population, taken their best land, made serfs of
them in the estates they carved, and then left them to
die of starvation, the way you go about it.

Unfortunately, the Irish do not have anti-English
prejudices, they have postjudices.

In response to a few of your questions: Maurras was
indeed an impassioned regionalist, who allied
himself with leftist felibriges (provencaux writers)
in promoting greater autonomy for Provence and other
French regions. He was also highly critical of Franco
for trying to crush Catalan regionalism, which Maurras
defended in his tracts. Lukacs was correct to stress
his conservatism rather than his very eccentric
nationalism. The term integral nationalism,
contrary to what the book I reviewed suggests,came
not from Maurras but from Maurice Barres, who was an
anti-dreyfusard Republican. Croix de Feu was was never
fascist nor pro-Nazi. It was a rassemblement des
anciens combattants, an organization of WWI vets,
which objected to the corruption of the Third
Republic.

To try once again to clear up a misconception—I’m not defending Maurras, just explaining him. In an earlier post I deliberately referred to “Catholicism”, not the Church. As a socio-historical fact, Catholicism formed the French consciousness --- for Maurras, this was not a matter of convenience, but a matter of fact. In his positivist phase, he denied any theological or metaphysical sanction to the Church’s existence. Of course, the Church disagreed ... there was an irreconcilable difference in point of view, but not a cynical use. In any case, Catholicism embodied all those versions enumerated previously.

As for Maurras’ “atheism”, this is what he had to say: “I am neither an atheist nor irreligious as innumerable imbeciles has said and believed” [1937]. See: http://maurrassianna.free.fr/maurrassianna/maurrassianna.002.20070100.htm

I thank Paul Gottfried for his answers.  Maurras thus becomes an even more is an engrossing figure to me, however much I despise his Judeophobia (I suspect he knew full well Dreyfus to be innocent). I thank Paul Gottfried for his information on the Croix-de-Feu, about which I have tried to better inform myself today. 

I would ask Charles—and I’m just curious, not picking a fight—if the Maurras of 1937 was the Maurras of 1900 or 1925 with respect to atheism.  Also, could someone make available via a link to the Church documents regarding the ban in 1925 and then the lifting of this ban in the late 30s?

@ Mr. Cundiff:
All the documents about the placing of L’Action Francaise on the Index
in 1926 and then the lifting of the bans in July of 1939 are available
in the volume cited by Lucien Thomas--I believe the title is: L’ACTION
FRANCAISE DEVANT L’EGLISE (Editions Latines, Paris). I think the volume
is avaible still (I think via ABE Books). I am uncertaine of a website.

Re: Mr. Ball’s missing of the point.

You give yourself as an example with a varied background, though mainly old UK. The American tribe is much greater than that, though mostly that. With 300 million souls we are not limited to people with a singular characteristic, such as a Hapsburg Lip. But we are not all of humanity with duties to such as the concept of a propositional nation implies. We are limited to “Ourselves and our posterity.”

As a lawyer you surely understand that the phrase was inserted as a limitation. By analogy a warranty for three years is not inserted to give the customer anything. It is put in a contract to keep him from coming back after three years.

My use of the word tribal, which may not be the most exact term, is meant to say that our government has no obligation to anyone other than its own citizenry which is offered to outsiders on terms. We are not the world’s policeman, judge, jury, teacher, exemplar or provisioner. Our duties are to our own very diverse, and you detail that, tribe, i.e., fellow Americans.

I hope you enjoy your new life Down Under. A most heartfelt and sincere, “Adios.”

Adriana is quite correct that marriages of convenience are bad ones.  Pius X and his successors had good reasons to “divorce” or “annul” the “marriage” of Legitimists, Assumptionists, and other conservative Catholics on one side, and Maurras on the other. Charles Péguy, despite his socialism, would have been the better man to follow.  Maritain, an early Maurras follower, left Maurras by the early 1920s and wrote a book about it Une opinion sur Charles Maurras et le devoir des catholiques, (1926), which made it into his </i>Integral Humanism</i> .

I have waited until this evening to go the next step:  This consideration of “marriage” prompts the question for Christians who follow Catholic Social Teaching (including Christian Democrats), With whom do such Christians work (in rapprochement or coalition)?:
1) Racial-Nationalists? [most certainly not]
2) Fascists (in Mussolini’s sense, and thus becoming “Clerical Fascists”)? [most certainly not]
3) Classic Marxists? [most certainly not]
4) Cultural Marxists? [most certainly not]
5) Nationalists? [probably not]
6) Bonapartists and Junta-ists?  [probably not]
7) Little Miss Ayn-ists? [probably not]
8) Socialists (of the class struggle type)? [probably not]
9) Whigs of the Michael Novak and John Neuhaus type?
10) Social Democrats?
11) Greens (at least those free of materialist, pantheist, and neopagan tendencies)?
12) Liberal Democrats (in the European sense) and libertarians?
13) other confessional parties?
14) Continental conservatives?
15) Burken-Kirkan-Scrutonian conservatives?
16) none of the above?

“Strauss’s channeling of religious energies for Jewish national ends does not mean from a Jewish perspective what it did for Pius X when he responded to French nationalist Catholics.”
Hate to be a pedant, but I’m not sure if I’m missing something. Shouldn’t that be Pius XI?

A few points, which I raise with some uncertainty as it has been some time since I have read about these things. So I am open to correction. As I remember, the condemnation was written under St.Pius X, but he explicitly refused to sign it because, although he obviously saw problems with Action Française, he was more sympathetic to its good points and thought that a condemnation would not be good for the Church in France. Pius XI however was much more sympathetic to Democratic ideas and for this reason was glad to sign it. Pius XII, who was Secretary of State under Pius XI and with whom he often disagreed, lifted the condemnation very soon after he was elected. The great Jesuit theologian Cardinal Louis Billot turned in his red hat in protest to the condemnation, and Bernanos (Diary of a Country Priest) went without the sacraments during the whole time of the condemnation until it was lifted. The point of all this is that there was more to the condemnation then worry over the faith of French Catholics. It involved a larger battle of ideas within the Church as to how She should respond to the Democratic ideals of modernity.
Regarding Our Lady and her Magnificat, as I remember what Maurras specifically reacted to was what he perceived as a subversive reversal of natural authority as expressed in the line, “He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree.” It cannot be denied that he was reacting to the crux of the Christian Thing and that many before and after him, esp. on the Right, have stumbled on the same hard saying. Yet in the end he was great or rather small enough and was given the grace to hear these hard words and convert.

Jacques Maritain did not break with Charles Maurras until the very
late 1920s. Maritain wrote three very fine books prior to that rupture:
ANTIMODERNE, THEONAS and his more well-known TROIS REFORMATEURS (1929).
I believe they have been translated into English. Maritain actually
attacked the Sillonistes both in ANTIMODERNE (implicitly) and in other
writings prior to the break. What is more, Maritain began to question
much of his Christian Democratic philosophy late in his life. Indeed,
his testamentary LE PAYSANNE DE LA GARONNE reads almost as a recantation,
in part, of his romance with la democratie chretien.

There are several excellent contemporary critiques of Maritain and Christian
Democracy that I would recommend as a corrective:
First, Leopoldo Palacios. EL MITO DE LA NUEVA CRISTIANDAD (Ediciones
RIALP, Madrid);
Jules Meinvielle. DE LAMENNAIS A MARITAIN (Ed. Theoria, Buenos Aires,
1967);
Robert Havard de la Montagne. HISTORIA DE LA DEMOCRACIA CRISTIANA (Editorial
Tradicionalista, Madrid, 1950; translated from the French edition);
and several works by Prof. Charles De Koninck (who, if I am not mistaken,
once taught at Laval or Quebec?). All of these are written from a
traditionalist and Catholic point of view. Finally, I would recommend
the works of Jean Ousset and the old La Cite Catholique, who published
in French a number of studies on the topic.

Finally, it is true, St. Pius X was presented with a document in the
1910s that would have done essentially what the Congregation of the
Holy Office did in 1926, putting L’Action Francaise on the Index.
However. he refused to sign it, although admitting the problematic and
even neo-pagan nature of some of the elements in Action Francaise.
Rather, he issued his very broad and strong condemnation of Christian
Democracy, NOTRE CHARGE APOSTOLIQUE, instead, in which Marc Sangnier and
his <<Le Sillon>> movement were condemned.

It was the <depuration> of certain texts of Maurras and the willingness
of Action Francaise to submit to Rome, and Rome’s re-evaluation of
Action Francaise, that prompted the Vatican to lift all condemnations
and bans in July of 1939. M. Lucien Thomas, in his magisterial L’ACTION
FRANCAISE DEVANT L’EGLISE, reproduces all of the correspondence exchanges,
all the documents and agreements in full. As a result, the Church
rescinded the prohibitions of 1926.

There was also, I would venture, the intervention of Grace, as one can
read in the correspondence reproduced by M. Thomas, for the Soeurs of
the Carmel of Lisieux played an important role not only in the full
rapprochement, but also in the eventual and fervent personal conversion
of Maurras to the Church.

Thank you Ancien combattant for the information and clarifications. Most of Fr. Julio Meinvielle’s work is available in pdf. online, including “De Lamennais a Maritain.” http://www.juliomeinvielle.org

Charles De Koninck taught at Laval. His article “The Primacy of the Common Good Against the Personalists” (The Personalists in question being Maritain and Yves Simon.) along with the articles of the whole controvery it generated, was translated and published about ten years ago in a number of “The Aquinas Review”, the journal of Thomas Aquinas College in CA.

This is an excellent article! One connection between Maurras and Strauss is that Strauss asked Carl Schmitt for a letter of introduction to Maurras.

Louis Cardinal Billot, one of the foremost Catholic theologians, strongly supported Maurras. After the papal condemnation, he resigned from the College of Cardinals.

Paul, I wonder if you could develop one detail of your article to a longer treatment?  You note that there is a hostility toward Germans among the neocons.  Yet, the point I found most intriguing in Bloom’s book was his observation that the flood of refugees which arrived in US around WW II came mostly from Germany, and that those immigrants brought massive German influence to US intelligentsia and academia.  Strauss in an excellent example of this trend—keep in mind his connection to Carl Schmitt.

Could it be that, even though they are hostile to Germany (and I have no doubts about this hostility being honest), the neoconservatives themselves are still an example of the German mentality taking over the US?  After all, there are the same attitudes of “might is right,” and “I am a superman and thus above all rules and capable of overcoming all opposition.” These ideas differ starkly from the traditional American fear of government power, small government and a cautious, isolationistic foreign policy.  (Think Ron Paul)

How about developing Bloom’s observation into a piece on how the raise of the neocons can be described as the Germanization of the US?

Charles de Koninck did teach at Laval University for many years.
His volume, THE PRIMACY OF THE COMMON GOOD AGAINST PERSONALISM
(which exists I know in both French and Spanish editions). It is a
very pointed critique, indirectly, of the foundations of Christian
Democracy.

Archbishop Lefebvre, though never a member of Action francaise, has a different take on the condemnation. He sees Pius XI capitulating to the modernist French bishops and the anti-Catholic republican government for some concessions. The French bishops used the condemnation to purge conservatives from their posts such as Fr. Le Floch from the seminary; Msg. Billot did not resign willingly as a Cardinal, he was forced out.

The same unfounded accusations were hurled at AF—they were nazis, they were fascists ... sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it? In this view, Pius XI was the cynical politician, not Maurras. For more, see:

http://www.fsspx.org/fran/archives/MgrLefebvre/conf/1982-Montreal-Modernisme.htm

@Dr. Gottfried

Thank you for your reply, I will order your first book or look for some of your essays on De Maistre on the net. (Well, ordering, if that’s possible from continental Europe..)

The Dutch politician Abraham Kuyper should also be of your interest, but I’m pretty sure you’ll know his work. He started the Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP) and dubbed the concept of ‘sphere souvereignity’, which is quite similar to the concept of regionalism. (However, this concept focuses more on religious group, mainly catholics and protestants.)

Ah, found it.  Here is John Lukacs on the evolution of American nationalism, and on the tendency of later, non-British immigrants to be more nationalistic than the original British-American stock; from chapter four of “A New Republic” (formerly published as “Outgrowing Democracy"):

“One of the results (of the new, non-British immigration post circa 1820)
was the transformation of American patriotism into nationalism of a newer kind....The words “national” or “nation” are not to be found in the Constitution...during the century of mass immigration, from 1820 to 1920, the currency of this word increased....During the second Red Scare, many of the most strident nationalists WERE second-generation immigrants.  There was
Joe McCarthy (Irish-German) whose equation of anti-communism with American nationalism(’s) purpose was not merely the nailing down of disloyal Communists but the HUMILIATION OF AMERICANS OF AN OLDER, ANGLO-SAXON STOCK, of people of more mellow and liberal persuasions.  (Emphasis supplied.) In 1949 I was amused to read that an American Legion post in Philadelphia accused the directors of the Philadelphia chapter of United World Federalists (an innocuous group of liberals) of un-Americanism.
The names of the accused were, without exception, English, Welsh, or Scottish;
their accusers’ names were Ukrainian, Italian, and Slovak.”

1. Which Personalism? The French School, or the German-Polish school?  Among the latter is included a Polish philosopher, by name Wojtyła. 

2.  Clerical Fascists will never forgive Pius XI for Mit Brennender Sorge. Those among them who are Teutonoophobes will also never forgive the Christdemokraten for giving Germany a sound constitution, peace and friendship with France, and prosperity, something no other political color did. 

3. Kari Konkola, while making some good observations, regrettably continues Woodrow Wilson’s view of Mitteleuropa.  It is also the Neocon view. Repeatedly in their journals they try to equate their “World War IV”, with the Cold War against Communism; with the 2nd World War against Racialist Nationalism, Fascism, and Japanese expansion; and the First against putative “Prussian Militarism”, as if France, Germany, and even the US were not doing the same; as if the 2nd Reich were a junta; as if the Allied Powers were not holding empires of coolies. Truth be told, the German and Austrian Empires were superior places making the superior contributions to the West from 1770 until 1933 than the United States, the United Kingdom, and the French Republic(s).

Truth be told, the culture of Mitteleuropa was superlative at everything it did and in all areas of human achievement, save politics.  After 1945, the Christdemokraten had a great achievement here also. Gringos of course know nothing about this culture. Of Ludwig Windthorst, Bishop Kettler, Blessed Clemens August Graf von Galen, or of the German connection to Leo XIII certain people would have us know nothing.  Also among the products of this culture, and its defenders, are Benedict XVI, John Paul II, John Lukacs, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and our own Paul Gottfried—one reason he’s a treasure.

I fault Maurras for his Teutonophobia, whatever his other virtues. The equation of Jews with Germany, as old as the Dreyfus affair, was another of his vices, and one that persists. I fear that we’ll have our own Dreyfus affair once the Iraq War is clearly perceived as lost.

Thank you Dr Gottfried for a very interesting essay. Most of what I know of Maurras come from Eugen Weber and few classes I’ve taken on European nationalism.

No doubt about it! European inter-war political history is a fascinating toppic dominated, by the left-right slugfest which consumed Spain between 1934-39.

That struggle was essentially a reproduction of 1789-93 France, with one diffeerence, i.e. the “good guys” won!

I DO know where Accion Francaise stood on this struggle!

And here Maurras was correct and Maritain and VII’s Ostpolitik
precursors “out to lunch”!

Reading their posts on this topic and others dealing with this period, I
notice that Sid Cundiff and Ariana are constantly tossing the term
“brown” or “fascist” at anyone who supported militant anti-communism
in the European inter-war theater.

While, this no doubt contains some truth. My question to them is:

In lieu of the fact that Versailles had swept away the monarchist
regimes which guaranteed a form of stability, coupled with the virulent
anti-clericalism of “democratic” political entities, what political
systems would they have put together to deal with the period’s untamed
Bolsehvism?

For the record: St. Pius X’s Notre Charge Apostolique against the Sillon movement is not be found on the official Vatican website for Pius X, suggesting that it may have been has been repudiated or deemphasized.  It appears that the Pius X’s concern was more about Sillon’s seeming embrace of Socialism – a movement which was at that time anti-Catholic and mostly Marxist.  Pius X was good against the Modernists and good about liturgical music.  Catholic social teaching and politics were not his strong suit.  Leo XIII did better, and his social teaching is tradition is the Church’s today, much to the alarm of Clerical Fascists.

Christian Democracy in France was largely swallowed by the Gaullist hegemony, not because of any Church repudiation.  Other countries fared better.

In lieu of the fact that Versailles had swept away the monarchist
regimes which guaranteed a form of stability [some did, some didn’t], coupled with the virulent
anti-clericalism of “democratic” political entities [not the Christian Democrats], what political
systems would they have put together to deal with the period’s untamed
Bolsehvism?

I have said before that the numerous reports of atrocities coming out of the Soviet Union in the period made some Catholics and some Conservatives so blind in the Right eye that they thought, foolishly, that they had no enemies on the Right.  Fascism, in all its forms, takes advantage of the fears in “old elites” of Church, titled nobility, the bourgeoisie, the army, democratic nationalists, and the “yellow” movement among the proletariat.

To their credit, some members of these old elites—Pius XI, Otto Archduke von Habsburg, Count von Stauffenberg, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Thomas Mann, Blessed Clemmons August von Galen, The Rev. Luigi Sturzo, Konrad Adenauer, Alcide De Gasperi, Robert Schuman, Georges-Augustin Bidault, and a young seminarian put to slave labor busting rocks in occupied Poland, by name Wojtyla— were not so blinded, and called Fascism (and fascism and Clerical Fascism) what it was.  Some of them put together “political systems” that more than adequately combated Fascism and Communism and made for prosperity at home.  So should Mr. Tom Buggeln should also join them in so calling.

Well said. Maurras did share a neo-con premise; faith is useful for
providing social cohesion and order. For him it was utility. not Truth
that drove his interest in the Church.

Needless to say, neocons use religion as bot a wedge and
coalition-building device, much like Maurras.

Hmmm!

“Blinded” by atrocity stories from
Bolshevik lands or illuminated?

Again, Sid (and Adriana) what would you have
done in a position of power to thwart Bolshevism
in Europe? Especially circa Spain 1934-9. We know the
paths taken by Moussolini and Hitler. This was a tangible
conflict minus the abstract b.s. In short, Sid the “rubber
hit the road”.

What would the Sillonist position have been. I DO know that Jose Maria
Gil Robles, the precursor of the Christian Democratic movement in
Spain hauled his butt to exile and left the fighting and defense of
the Church to those “reactionary” Carlists and unfashionable “blues”!

As a matter of fact, with the exception of post War Germany, the track
record of Christian Democracy,(see Chile, Italy (after Pius XII) the
French “Worker-Priest” movement is rather “spotty” at best in
combatting the Left.

It’s hard to combat a movement when a good part of your intellect is in
sympathy with it!

One can draw a pretty direct line from “Sillon” to “Ostpolitik”. In fact
a few characters lasted long enough to have participated in both
misconceived efforts!

As to Churchill & company, while making sport of Chamberlain’s alleged
weakness at Munich, they did a fantastic job of goveling at Uncle Joe’s
feet at Tehran and Yalta.

For someone who entered the political arena to save the British Empire,
his policies ensured its destruction and left Central and Eastern Europe
in a far worse situation than existed prior to the war!

At least the old boy had the common sense to confess to Anthony Eden that
“We’ve killed the wrong pig"in 1946. From some of the posts I’ve read
here, that fact still hasn’t dawned on the writers.

Interesting.

France equated Germany with Jews.

Did:

Germany equate Poland with Jews?

Poland equate Russia/USSR with Jews?

Does Russia today equate the USA with Jews?

Before the world is finished, will the USA equate Britain with Jews?

After that, will Britain equate France with Jews?

Will then, in full circle, France equate Germany with Jews?

Meanwhile, where does the rest of Asia, America, Africa, and Europe fit
into all of this?

Hey, it’s fun to think about!

US ‘must break Iran and Syria regimes’

By Toby Harnden in Washington

Last Updated: 2:09am BST 05/10/2007

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/05/wiran105.xml

America should seize every opportunity to force regime change in Syria and Iran, a former senior adviser to the White House has urged.
We need to do everything possible to destabilise the Syrian regime and exploit every single moment they strategically overstep,” said David Wurmser, who recently resigned after four years as Vice President Dick Cheney’s Middle East adviser.

“That would include the willingness to escalate as far as we need to go to topple the regime if necessary.” He said that an end to Baathist rule in Damascus could trigger a domino effect that would then bring down the Teheran regime.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the first since he left government, he argued that the United States had to be prepared to attack both Syria and Iran to prevent the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and nuclear proliferation in the Middle East that could result in a much wider war.

Mr Wurmser, 46, a leading neo-conservative who has played a pivotal role in the Bush administration since the September 11th attacks, said that diplomacy would fail to stop Iran becoming a nuclear power. Overthrowing Teheran’s theocratic regime should therefore be a top US priority.
Iran was using Syria as its proxy against Israel and among Sunni Arabs and both regimes had to be overthrown, he insisted.

“It has to be, because who they are is now defined around provoking a wider clash of civilisations with the West. It is precisely to avoid this that we need to win now.”

Both countries were part of a “proliferation consortium”, possibly in league with North Korea, that is helping Teheran to acquire a nuclear bomb, he said.

If Iran was seen to be powerless to prevent regime change in Syria, Mr Wurmser claimed, Teheran’s prestige would be undermined just as the Soviet Union’s was when it failed to come to the aid of Syrian forces during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Regime change was possible because Syria was “weak and rattled” while Iran had adopted a “go-for-broke strategy” of stirring up regional tensions to overcome the reality that “the foundations of the regime in Teheran are fragile”.

A situation such as last year’s attack on Israel by Hezbollah, which was backed by Iran and Syria, could provide an opportunity for US intervention.

Although Mr Wurmser’s recommendations have not yet become US policy, his hard-line stances on regime change in Iran and Syria are understood to have formed the basis of policy documents approved by Mr Cheney, an uncompromising hawk who is deeply sceptical about the effectiveness of diplomatic pressure on Teheran.

Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State and an advocate of multilateral diplomacy, currently holds sway within the Bush administration but Iran’s intransigence on the nuclear issue and its role in the Iraq insurgency could well shift the balance back towards Mr Cheney.

Limited strikes against Iranian nuclear targets would be useless, Mr Wurmser said. “Only if what we do is placed in the framework of a fundamental assault on the survival of the regime will it have a pick-up among ordinary Iranians.
“If we start shooting, we must be prepared to fire the last shot. Don’t shoot a bear if you’re not going to kill it.”

Mr Wurmser emphatically denied recent allegations he told a small group that Mr Cheney intended to press Israel to launch strikes against Iran in order to provoke a retaliation that the US would then respond to.

It was “fantastical” to suggest that he or Mr Cheney would “try to cause a war that the president expressly doesn’t want”, he said. “Everything that was done was to execute the policies of the president and not to subvert them.”
Mr Wurmser, an outspoken proponent of removing Saddam Hussein in the years before the 2003 invasion, was highly critical of British forces in southern Iraq. “Being in Basra, the British had a major role to play and they didn’t really play it very well.

“Under British presence, the Iranians extended their power considerably. British troops are still there but Iraqis see them as dead men walking.... everybody’s looking towards who is the real power that fills the vacuum and that then translates into an Iranian-American confrontation in that area.”
British withdrawal, he said, could be a plus for the US. “It frees our hand to deal aggressively with their [Iran’s] structures. Once we have responsibility for that area, we’ll have to do what we need to do and that could well mean troops on the ground.”

Although he conceded many mistakes had been made by the US in Iraq, Mr Wurmser said there were now reasons for optimism. “While Iraq became more violent, it also became in some ways the international bug-zapper of terrorists.

“It was the light that attracted all the terrorists of the world. And that became the battleground, and this is a decisive battle. I think the battle is turning in our favour now, and this is a defeat that it will take the al-Qaeda world a long time to recover from.”
In the meantime, the US still had the power to deal with Iran militarily. “If we decided from no preparation to doing something in Iran, while it would cause a lot of heartburn among many people in the Pentagon, we could do it.

“I would never underestimate the raw capability of the United States in any off-the-shelf situation. If that’s what we decided to do, things can be done.”

@Tom Buggelm

You want to know what political tendency would you have put
to fight bolchevism in Europe in the Thirties?

Whatever it was, it should not be one who allied itself
with Russia to tear un a Catholic nation.

It is funny how many people who equate the Axis with
anticommunism manage to forget Poland.

You can bet that a former seminarist named Lolek did not
forget it.

It is difficult to know how to respond to you, Mr. Cundiff, or even whether or not to respond. Your tone seems preemptive and smug, but perhaps a more charitable and accurate characterization would be battle-worn: you write like someone determined to blurt out his piece before the next blow falls. I wonder which school of personalism you follow. Is there any that doesn’t value dialogue as a fundamental to what it means to be a person? (One thinks for example of the personalist classic “I and Thou” by the Austrian Jew Martin Buber or the work of Fr.Auguste Brunner on interpersonal dialogue, two thinkers that you might include in what you call the “German-Polish school.”) Does the style of your posts encourage reasoned dialogue?
Charles De Koninck wrote against the personalism of Maritain and Simon. There are certainly many different doctrines that go by the name of “personalism”, just as there are many different doctrines that go by the name of “Thomism”, and it is a matter for reasoned debate as to what the virtues or defects of each school may be. In Western philosophy, merely invoking a name, such as “Wojtyła”, does not qualify as such debate. If philosophical debate were won by such means one could just as easily invoke the name of “Sarto.” (An interesting, reasonable, and favorable examination of the personalism of Pope John Paul II and position of Charles De Koninck on the common good can be found here: http://iti.ac.at/publications/pdfs/Waldstein_common_good.pdf)

The sophomoric, pontificating tone you adopt towards St. Pius X and the encyclical Notre Charge Apostolique would be shameful if it were not so ludicrous. One would think you were a petty, ideological Fascist the way you elide over difficulties to save your prized idea. There may be many reasons why this encyclical does not appear on the Vatican website, but if the reason is, as you say, that has been “repudiated or deemphasized” such a thing is shameful for whomever is responsible, and is a fine example the “hermeneutic of discontinuity” that Benedict XVI has spoken against. But you seem to have no problem employing such a hermeneutic when it serves your argument.
Finally, whom exactly are you referring to by the loaded term “Clerical Fascists?” It is easy to set up such faceless straw men whom it is impossible to defend. Many brand Pius XII a fascist, (I am not implying you do.) yet it is well known that he authored “Mit Brennender Sorge.”

About the positions of different popes such as Pius X, XI,
and XII, I would like to remind some of the correspondents
that a pope is infallible only ex cathedra and in matters
of doctrine, and when it comes to the affairs of the world,
they can be as fallible as anyone else.

For example, Popes fought to conserve their temporal holdings
in Italy, thinking it a blow to their authority to be
deprived of them. Yet time would show that the prestige of
the Church could only go up when it was no longer seen
quarreling over territory like the temporal states.

John Lukacs makes the point that the justified danger of
bolchevism led Pius XII to overlook the more pervasive
danger of nationalism. That would be one instnace in which
a Pope was wrong in a situation in which he claimed on
infallibility.

As for the Action Francaise, the placing in the Index was
extreme, but there was a danger for Catholics in binding
themselves too closely to a group that looked upon catholic
doctrine as a useful tool to achieve their own ends, and not
as an end in itself. Perhaps if French Catholics had learned
to keep some emotional distance from a pagan-infused
philosophy, there would have no need for a shock treatment
to bring them to their senes.

Are we STILL Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards???

It seems so…

abello’s whining can be quickly summarized. I present argument and evidence, or through questions ask for such.  All that Abello can say, presenting no argument, is that I’m “unreasonable” and “sophomoric” .  His whine is that I’m such a baaaaaaaaaaad man. 

What out for people who have only adjectives and adverbs, not nouns and verbs.

On topic and last comment: Let’s get some Maurras in English for folk.

That should be “What out for people who have only adjectives and adverbs, not nouns and verbs.”

It’s too early in the morning.

Mr. Cundiff,
I do not think that you are a bad man, but a poor representative of the personalism you espouse because any personalism worthy of the name values communication between persons and your posts often do not encourage such communication.
I ask you plainly: Whom do you refer to with the term “Clerical Fascists”?

Mr. Cundiff:
The following statements (in brackets) that you authored earlier are
nonsense(I mean nothing personal here, please):

<<For the record: St. Pius X’s Notre Charge Apostolique against the
Sillon movement is not be found on the official Vatican website for
Pius X, suggesting that it may have been has been repudiated or
deemphasized.>>

COMMENT: The document appears in most major compendia of papal political
teaching, including the very authoritative DOCTRINA PONTIFICIA (vol II),
(B.A.C., 1958), and numerous other compendia. That it does not appear
on the Vatican website proves nothing. That you, who strike me as an
intelligent Catholic layman, could suggest that it has been repudiated,
sadly, indicates that you have a faulty comprehension of Catholic doctrine
and how Catholic doctrine develops over the centuries. Indeed, St. Pius X’s
NOTRE CHARGE APOSTOLIQUE is very firmly in the tradition that includes
Leo XIII’s condemnation of aspects of Christian Democracy (GRAVES DE
COMMUNI) and that pope’s very lucid instruction regarding authority and
rights. St. Pius X reflects profoundly those teachings in his condemnation
of Le Sillon and Christian Democracy. Go back, if you will, and read
Leo XIII’s DIUTURNUM on the transmission of authority. While the Church
does not officially endorse any particular FORM of government (although
the Angelic Doctor finds a “tempered” or mixed Monarchy preferable), she
does teach, and consistently, that authority never resides in the people,
and that the people do NOT confer authority on the sovereign. Authority
comes directly from God. In a republic (or mixed monarchy) the citizens
or electors may, through a representational process (whether voting
directly or through corporative bodies) designate who receives that
authority, but they do not confer that authority, which comes from God.
Most modern Christian Democracies, even if paying lip service to that
constant teaching of the Church, never posited that principle. Rather,
they accepted, either implicitly or explicitly, in the case of modern
Christian Democratic Germany, the formally condemned princples of
Lamennnais.

<<It appears that the Pius X’s concern was more about Sillon’s seeming
embrace of Socialism – a movement which was at the Pius X’s concern was
more about Sillon’s seeming embrace of Socialism – a movement which was
at that time anti-Catholic and mostly Marxist.>>

COMMENT: St. Pius X does indeed cite the dangers posed by the socialist
temptation, but his major concern is the acceptance by Le Sillon of the
democratist idea, earlier stated by Lamennais, in which authority now
would reside in the people, and in which the society becomes, essentially,
neutral towards the Church and its teachings. This is completely
unacceptable in Catholic doctrine. Only in special cases, where the
faithful are a minority or suffer extreme persecution, does either
Leo XIII or St. Pius X even permit, and ONLY in practice (never in
doctrine) what would become known as the “hypothesis” (as opposed to the
“thesis” where the teachings of the Church find their way fully into
the laws and public regulations of the nation/state).

<>

COMMENT: You do set yourself up on a mighty high pedestal, M. Cundiff,
to judge this saint, do you not? Indeed, St.Pius X’s acute understanding
of the political sphere is quite remarkable and accurate, as witness the
total unravelling of what was once know in Europe as Christian Democracy
post-World War II. From hopeful beginnings with Gasperri and Adenauer,
Italy and Germany moved steadily left, and mostly abetted by the very
Christian Democrats you praise. Indeed, the post-war constitutions of
those nations, since they do not include sufficient safeguards, inclined
those nations almost immediately towards the Left and secularism. The
results of Christian Democracy in Europe are the disastrous EU products
we see now, with persons like Chancellor Merkel (a proud CDU leader)
leading the charge....but she could not have succeeded without the
earlier CDU leaders and their disastrous policies (e.g. Kiesinger, etc.)

<<Leo XIII did better, and his social teaching is tradition is the Church’s today, much to the alarm of Clerical Fascists.>>

COMMENT: Anytime you disagree with a Catholic traditionalist, M. Cundiff,
you use your ad hominem argument; you call them names, like “clerical
fascist.” This enables you to escape inconvenient arguments that do
not fit into you preconceived scheme of things, and really remind me,
strikingly, of just how the neo-conservatives operate.

One last point, you posit that the chief goal in society is ecomonic
prosperity, and that democratic capitalism (thank you, Irving Kristol!)
is so much superior in satisfying this goal. Yet, surely you must know
that the primary goal of a Catholic society is the salvation of souls.
Your error here is the classic error of the 19th century liberals, who
were condemned by all popes from Gregory XVI to Pius XII, to suggest
materialism as the chief object of society. They were dead wrong.

Thank you Ancien combattant for a superb post: a clear, well-reasoned, to-the-point expostition of the Church’s teaching on Democracy and Authority, and a charitable response to Mr. Cundiff’s confusions.

I wish my opponent could quote a papal or magisterial document written after 1958. Readers should note that he never does. Including ones about enough prosperity for living and supporting a family.  Materialism indeed!  To suggest that I’m arguing for materialism is equivalent that to someone saying that my opponent is arguing for destitution.  To suggest that I’m arguing that the Voice of the People is the Voice of God is equivalent to someone saying that my opponent is arguing for the divine right of Kings.  At least I don’t make up arguments and put them into my opponent’s mouth, or pull up Red Herrings.

Wow!  Germany really suffered under the Christian Democrats, huh?  How their success must anger the Clerical Fascists—who never miss a chance to denigrate human rights, civil rights, civil liberty, or democracy.  So Europe is too secular?  Far, far better than what it was under ol’ Adi and Benito - to say noting of Monsignor Josef Tiso and the Hlinka Guard in Slovakia, Archbishop Stepinac and Ustase in Croatia (note well, you Serbian Nationalists!), The Arrow Cross in Hungary, Codreanu and Iron Guard in Romania, Vichy France, and that dictator and thug, Englebert Dollfuß—all people Clerical Fascists don’t want you to know about.  Deny this Christian Democrat superiority to these men and you approach Clerical Fascism.

Plus note the Semi-Pelagian Heresy slipping in: that the faith might be coerced or forced—be it by Louis XIV, be it by Cromwell, be it by Pius IV of odious memory, be it by Clerical Fascists.  Faith is a free gift of Grace, not something that anyone, Church or State, may demand or enforce, or punish when absent; its reception, with the help of Cooperating Grace, is also Free. Anything else was condemned by the Council of Orange as Semi-Pelagianism.  Where the Church or the State can force no one, there Catholic teaching is honored. Such are Liberal Democracy, Social Democracy, and Christian Democracy. Some other regimes also honor this principle.  Ironic isn’t it?  I’m accused of dishonoring a Saint because it was a poor politician and worse economist.  Those who would force the faith dishonor the very Word of God. To say nothing of helping Hitchens & Co. make their case.  (Granted it took Inquisitionists in the Church a while to live up to the Church’s own teaching about freedom.)

By the way, the Clerical Fascists will be grinding their teeth in fury on Friday, 26 November at 10 a.m., when in the cathedral of Linz, Austria, will take place beatification of Servant of God Franz Jagerstatter. John Lukacs, on the other hand, will be beaming with joy, as will I!  Jagerstatter, not dictators and thugs, is the man the Church would honor.

Note well that I’m not calling my opponent a Clerical Fascist or heretic. He’s mentioned documents that I’ll peruse.  I thank him.  There are other documents, including “Au milieu des sollicitudes” and “Lumen gentium”—both, by the way, on the Vatican Website.

I forgot John Courtney Murray.  I forgot “Dignitatis humanae”.  But that document was after 1958, wasn’t it? Peruse it, y’all.  It’s on the Vatican Website too.  Go to the Wiki, q.v. “Digitatis humanae”, and click the link. Sounds like to me if folks wanna be secular, then that’s their right by Church Teaching.  Christian Democrats follow Church Teaching. Clerical Fascists don’t.

“But I’m not sure who in the neocon or Straussian fold resembles Maurras as a seducer of once faithful Christians?” - Professor Gottfried

First of all, Professor Gottfried, my sincere thanks for this interesting essay and for your most recent book, which I have just finished reading.  It is my observation that Christian Zionism and other aspects of fundamentalist Protestantism as well as neo-conservatism are seducing once faithful Christians.  In the case of Christian Zionism and other Protestant heresies, it is mainly a process of cultural osmosis combined to a certain extent with a “guilt trip” reaction to anti-Semitism which leads to the oft said but untrue statement among Catholics - “We don’t convert Jews any more”.

But in the case of neo-conservatism, we do indeed have our Maurrasians - George Weigel and his colleagues Fr. Richard Neuhaus and Michael Novak, among others.  Weigel has proposed changing the just war theology to include as a just cause a possible future threat to the commonwealth.  He also criticizes the bishops for stating that there should be a presumption in favor of peace.  Weigel clearly presumes in favor of war.  His is court theology for the Bush regime and the neo-cons.  His influence is such that many Catholics think that just war theology has already changed - because of 9/11.

The bishops have failed to stand up to this particular heresy because they have been discredited and are now shell-shocked by the reaction to the sex abuse scandal.  This has been pointed out by Catholic military analyst Andrew Bacevich in his book The New American Militarism.  With the bishops in full CYA mode, the neo-cons are the only ones who speak with authority, however spurious.

Mr. Cundiff,
You are guilty of a number of egregious fallacies in your arguments.
First, it is definitely NOT semi-Pelagianism for a nation to
create the environment where the faith may be fully and publicly expressed
and to do so through legislation and publicly-sanctioned observances.
This nonsense is very simply a poor red-herring tossed out on your part.

The Church has always insisted that NO ONE may be forced to believe the
faith; faith is a gift to be freely accepted. But the Church has also
ALWAYS taught, and taught in an unbroken tradition, that the State has
an obligation to support the conditions where people may believe (of
course, of their own free will). Indeed, the state should protect the
unborn innocents, protect the young against pornography, interdict
vicious attacks on religious piety, defend the institution of matrimony,
etc. The position you take, which is very frankly the one of 19th
century liberalism, to deny that the State should enact legislation
favorable to the teaching by the Church, may I remind you, has been
condemned by virtually all the popes since the Reformation. Worse, it
implicitly denies that Our Lord is also Lord of civil society and
should also rule in society socially in its institutions. The view you
apparently espouse and accept is very dangerous to the faith and leads
to heresy. I recommend that you read the very illuminating encyclical,
Quas primas, by Pius XI, dealing with the “social reign of Christ the
King.” Your insistence, implicitly, on denying this is very grave indeed.

Secondly, the declaration Dignitatis humanae (1965) was a pastoral
declaration of the Vatican Council II. In many ways it epitomizes
modernism in the contemporary Church.  In Section I of that document
one reads the following: “[the Council]...leaves untouched traditional
Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true
religion and toward the one Church of Christ.” [St. Paul edition, p. 398]
Now, later in that same document, in Sections 2 and 6, the declaration says
almost the exact opposite, asking that the expression of any and all
views, including those that are objectively evil and harmful, be accorded
civil rights in society.  As Cardinal Yves Congar O.P. (one of the
periti at the Council) admitted: “The declaration [in the latter
portion] is almost a word-for-word formal contradiction of the
previous teaching of the Church.” Indeed, in most theological manuals,
including most notably that of Choupin (VALEURS) and Fernand Mourret,
the Blessed Pius IX’s teaching formally condemning this indifferentism
and “equality of all religions” and “lay state” (in Quanta cura), is
considered infallible--infallible due to the suject matter treated,
the fact that the pope was speaking from the Papal Throne, that he
referenced unbroken papal teaching on the subject, that he was
addressing all mankind, and that he was stating in the most formal of
language the intention to bind the faithful in conscience and in action.
Thus, to deny it is to deny an infallible doctrine of our faith.

The late peritus Victorino Rodriguez O.P. was considered by many to
be the leading theological authority on Dignitatis humanae. He left
behind a three part, 350 page study on the evolution of the schema,
describing the process of amendment (at the Council) and the various
compromises that the document experienced before it saw the light of day.
Even as he attempts to defend the document, he admits that it contains
serious contradictions: in section I it re-affirms the unbroken (and
infallible) teaching on the subject; but then asserts the desirability,
save for the exigencies of the common good, to establish religious
indifferentism as a new norm. Father Rodriquez believes that the
“common good” may be invoked as a means to prevent the worst
excesses that the document implies...but he leaves it to future popes
and theologians to make sorely needed corrections (and hopefully Benedict
XVI is now recognizing the problematic nature of the document and the
absolutely disastrous results it has aided and abetted, in Europe and
elsewhere).

The English writer/historian, Michael Davies, has done perhaps the most
detailed study of Dignitatis humanae, demonstrating beyond doubt that
it is a contradictory document, and one that has had negative consequences
for Catholicim around the world.

Despite the evil that the implementation of this document has helped
unleash on the world, still, one may give thanks that it is, by
theological category, a pastoral declaration and that since it exemplifies
the modernist approach, it contains BOTH falsehood AND truth. As such,
an honest and faithful Catholic must, if confronted by it, make a
choice: either he will accept the unbroken teachings of the popes and
Church (including in recent times, Gregory XVI, Bl Pius IX, Leo XIII,
St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XIII)on the necessity that
Christ be King both in the hearts and minds of men, but also in the
institutions of our societies and that error cannot have, objectively,
rights; OR, he may accede to a laic, 19th century liberalism, condemned
repeatedly and formally by all of the cited popes, and condemned both
implicitly and explicitly by the Fathers of the Church, and by Our Lord
Himself. There is no middle course, and the equivocal modernism and
contradictory language in Dignitatis humanae will in no way assist you.

Lastly, Mr. Cundiff, you continue to label and label and label---anyone
on the Traditional Catholic Right who disagrees with you (and against
whom your arguments fall flat) “thug” or a “clerical fascist” [very
obviously you get all you information from wikipedia, which is no
substitute for serious research and thought]. The only thug that is
apparent in these discussion is the “intellectual thuggery” that you
have foisted upon those dreary eyed readers who have followed this
thread thus far....You should be ashamed.

On another subject entirely - I have a certain rule of thumb to decide if a term is being used for honest description or just as a smear.  Are there any people who call themselves by the term?  Is there any group or even a single individual who has ever called himself a clerical fascist?  Or is this just standard Marxist smear tactics by which any group opposed to Marxism (or deemed insufficiently Marxist) is labelled fascist with appropriate modifiers - i.e. social democrat = social fascist, militant Moslem = Islamofascist?  I speak as one who has been labelled a fascist and a terrorist for more years than I can remember due to my opposition to Communism, abortion and the US government in general - especially its war policies.

After bandying about the term “clerical fascist” but refusing to define it, the coy Mr. Cundiff has finally given us a few examples of what he is talking about.  And what a disappointing anti-climax.  Here is a group whom he has claimed in comments under another topic is a menace to the Church on a level with cultural Marxists and sodomites, but all of his examples are from the 30s and 40s. 

And let’s take a closer look at his examples.  The only one who could qualify as a “clerical fascist” (or perhaps clerical Nazi or clerical extreme nationalist) is Msgr. Tiso.  The Blessed Stepinac (beatified by Pope John Paul II) valiantly (and mostly vainly)interceded with the Ustasha government of Croatia on behalf of Jews and gypsies and provided Serbs with certificates of conversion to save their lives while acknowledging that after the war they would return to their normal churches.  Of course he desired the independence of his own country - is this so grevious a sin?

And then we have the Nazi Arrow Cross in Hungary - not clerical, not even really fascist, but just Nazi puppets.  And Codreaunu in Romania - not clerical, not even Catholic, so how would he fit into any group which internally threatens the Catholic Church.  And Vichy, France neither clerical nor fascist, but an unfortunate puppet regime where the puppets convinced themselves that they were just biding their time to strike back at their masters - even while doing their master’s will.  And Engelbert Dolfuss, neither clerical nor fascist, martyred by the Nazis, but forgiving his killers with his dying breath.  I’m surprised Mr. Cundiff did not mention Dolfuss’s predecessor and mentor Ignatz Seipel.  Msgr. Seipel wasn’t a fascist either, but at least he was a cleric.

I’m a great admirer of Franz Jagerstatter, a saint ahead of his time, leading the Church and me into a much needed Christian pacifism.  I don’t think he would have a very good opinion of casting mud on the name of his fellow beatus the Blessed Stepinac or his compatriot and fellow martyr Engelbert Dolfuss.

Finally, I strongly favor the ruling of Pope John Paul II that priests should no longer hold political office under any circumstances.  That establishes that any priest who holds such office is no longer in good standing with the Church and should relieve any concerns about clerical fascism or clerical any other kind of political ideology.

Well stated, Kurt Higdon. Thank you for your good and well-informed remarks, which offer additional clarification on this topic. Basically, we know that Sid Cundiff calls anyone on the Catholic Right who dissents from his views a “clerical
fascist” or worse. We also know that he is a liberal democrat. Interesting isn’t it, that the neo-conservatives also bandy about with liberality the term “fascism” and that they also advocate a form of “global liberal democracy.” An interesting convergence I would say....

Always changing his name (maybe to avoid Adriana’s own accusation of Clerical Fascism with respect to Argentine history?), my first opponent, gives away his hand and shows his cards, apparently without being aware of his Miranda rights:

the declaration Dignitatis humanae (1965) was a pastoral declaration of the Vatican Council II. In many ways it epitomizes modernism [sic] in the contemporary Church..

A Document of a Church Council with full and ordinary Magisterial authority is accused, falsely, of the Modernist heresy.  Thus my first opponent shows himself to be heretic, openly opposing a clear Church teaching. We’re not dealing here with a Catholic, folks.  Not only does he hate everything the Church teaches after 1958; he hates everything she has said after 1878.  He holds also to the view that Catholics hold everything a pope says as infallible, exactly the libel that the Ultra-Orange say about Catholics. We can now dismiss him as an impostor, a faux Catholic, or simply of another religion, and waste no further time on him.

As for my other, and better reasoning, opponent Kirt Higdon (whose last paragraph I warmly endorse): And then we have the Nazi Arrow Cross in Hungary - not clerical, not even really fascist, but just Nazi puppets. A contradiction in terms and false distinction.  Nazi is fascist (lower case). Codreaunu in Romania - not clerical, not even Catholic An Eastern Orthodox fascist.  And “Clerical Fascist” can refer to laymen.  “Clerical Fascists” are churchmen who support Fascist, fascist, Nazi, Extremist Nationalist, Racialist, juntas, Bonapartist, and thugish regimes.  One just got what he deserved in Argentina.  So they are still with us.  By the way, a puppet is a poor metaphor.  The “puppets” in question had free will, and thus moral responsibility, and thus guilt.  See Hannah Arendt’s devastating rejoined to such an Eichmann defense.

With Stepinac, I thought at the time that John Paul II had been poorly advised.  (Benedict has been well advised on Jagerstetter.) I’ve read, in an unauthoritative source, “In 1946, in a verdict that polarised opinion both in Yugoslavia and beyond, a Belgrade court found [Stepinac] guilty of collaborating with the Ustaše and complicity in allowing the forced conversion of Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism”.  I cannot comment to the truth of this verdict.  John Paul, overlooking his activity during the Nazi occupation, chose to emphasize his being persecuted and martyred by Communism – a matter the Pope personally knew something about.  And such a martyrdom may have washed him clean of former sins. Martyred saints aren’t judged by their entire lives but how they ended their lives. Jews in Croatia said that Stepinac helped them.  I have no way of knowing the truth of this.  The Simon Wiesenthal Center urged the Vatican to wait until Stepinac could be further investigated.

“Windthorst” is spelled with a T.  And the real man, the founder of Christian Democracy in Germany, would have laughed at the name-calling done by this impostor. Readers know who my Presidential candidate is.

Another note from from my first opponent’s earlier writeback.  Leo XIII of happy memory did indeed say that the Church should be indifferent to forms of the State.  But he did not say this to support French Royalism, as my opponent implies.  Just the opposite.  He said this to encourage Catholics in France to support THE THIRD REPUBLIC!  A DEMOCRACY!.  Let’s pause briefly before we continue to roll on the floor in laughter. . .

. . . after laughter comes regrets.  My first opponent could have offered much to the reader about Maurras.  He comes from a Legitimist-Carlist-Jacobite school.  He could have told us a comparison and contrast between Legitimist royalism and Maurras’ Orleanist view.  He could have told about Maurras regionalist conception of the royalist state and the Carlist conception of Fueros.  He could have told us how, when in 1688 the British King become the creation of Parliament, the good mixed constitution of England began to unravel, with the effective end of the Royal Assent, with the first Prime Minister, with the effective end of the House of Lords, and finally with the Westminster system ending up an elected dictatorship.  He could have told us in detail Maurras’ royalist views.  He could have told us about the reception of Maurras in Spain. He could have told us all these things, and the reader would have been well served.  Instead we get an impostor posing as a Catholic, the quixotic defense of a church that never existed except in the minds of heretic Catholics and Protestant extremists, the misrepresentation of Church documents, and a Johnnie Cochran defense attorney for Clerical Fascists. 

And now this blog is too old to have readers.  Well, maybe next time.

“And “Clerical Fascist” can refer to laymen.  “Clerical Fascists” are churchmen who support Fascist, fascist, Nazi, Extremist Nationalist, Racialist, juntas, Bonapartist, and thugish regimes.” - Sin Cundiff

Huh???  So a clerical fascist is a churchman unless he is a layman and supports a fascist regime unless he supports some other type of regime that Mr. Cundiff doesn’t like - for example a thuggish regime.  This does indeed cast a pretty wide net.  No wonder clerical fascists are such a menace - they’re everywhere.  Why using Mr. Cundiff’s criteria, I could refer to my own betes noirs George Weigel, Fr. Richard Neuhaus, and Michael Novak as clerical fascists.

@Mr. Cundiff:
As I have stated, Dignitatis humanae, because it is a mixture of both
what is truthful and confirmatory of Catholic teaching, and also of
what is not true and opposed to the constant and consistent teaching of the
Church, is a product of a modernist mentality. It was issued specifically
as a “pastoral” declaration, intended as the Council fathers specified,
to affect praxis in Catholic nations. To state that it contains various
contradictory statements you say is “heresy?” Balderdash nonsense...you have
no idea about what you speak. Although you profess to “know” Catholic
history and doctrine, your knowledge of Catholic theology is half-baked
and you chery-pick what supports your arguments.

It is not,may I remind you, “heresy” to believe firmly what the Church has always
taught, magisterially, on this topic for centuries. You are the one who
now declares that you oppose the infallible teaching of the Blessed
Pius XI (in Quanta Cura) as well as Pius XI (in Quas Primas).

So, what we are left with is this:
1) Mr. Cundiff warmly endorses the liberal democratic errors of the 19th
century, which the Church repeatedly condemned in strongest terms.
2) Mr. Cundiff smears his opponents as “thugs,” “muderers,” or--drum
roll, please--"clerical fascists” (he does know his wiki, does he not?)
when he cannot or will not answer their arguments.Mr. Cundiff’s tactic,
much like the praxis of the