Originally published by: Círculo Sacerdotal Cura Santa Cruz March 19, 2021
In these times when ears are inclined to fables, the political price of saying that which they don’t want to hear is very high. As long as what pleases is written or preached, even if it is demagogic, they raise the writer aloft to the clouds, up to the horns of the moon; but, as opportune et importune is preached, hearts close and entrails stir, burying the preacher under a thousand mountains.
Applying the maxim of Horace castigatat ridendo mores, I invite you to take a walk through a gallery of portraits of individualism that is familiar to us. May the concise contemplation of the ridiculousness that it entails encourage us to mind our defects in order to better multiply our talents. Because, although ridicule does not kill, it does much damage. May reading it help us to discern how «he who divides» carries out his work in us, and may we decide to fight against him, in order to acquire a greater sense of belonging, thus strengthening the Communion that makes us a community.
Let us mute the spirit of contradiction, the individualistic egoism in its different manifestations: practical protestations, gossips of perpetual complaint, lazy and unredeemed by harsh criticism; sour from bitter zeal, corrosive acids from the bonds of blood and spirit; of frivolous, multiple and scattered initiatives.
The complainers, who demand everything and give nothing; bloodsucking leeches of vitality and energy. Professional blackmailers with an air of offence and spiteful attitudes. Masters of themselves, bold ignoramuses, always sanctimonious, those who dare everything. They never obey and always command.
In perpetual depression we have those with a sulking air, turning off enthusiasm, self-absorbed, sunk in the depths of the well of their navel. Eternally wronged by stale grudges. The phlegmatic with tepid blood that, if their brother asks them to walk one mile with him, they will never do two, because they were born tired.
Those of the capricious anger of spoiled contrarians. Frantic activists who, like a millstone, stir the winds, but go nowhere. Impetuous, agitated, since all that concerns them is urgent. As long as all their demands are answered with a yes, they are a darling, but as soon as they receive a no they are an obstacle, they transform into a panther, a cat. Those with an exalted ego and exorbitant self-esteem, lacking in humility and reluctant to humiliation, unreceptive to correction.
Those who are sublimely vain, the ridiculous eccentrics, persuaded to be original, without taking into account that those who are truly original will be those who are faithful and loyal to their origins. A kitty groomed in portrait pose. Narcissists fascinated with their own image, delighted to see themselves, unscathed by any criticism against individuality. Given the itch to be in with the youth of our time and to be fashionable, we must not forget that we are eternal beings.
Vampires who, with morbid delight, sink their fangs into innocent blood. Wrapped in shadows, they flee from the light, which they hate. They hate her because she illuminates, dazzles and bewilders them. Those of the obscene and lewd insult. Mediocre and resentful, they are of an indefatigable envy and restless rancor towards those who bring the light from out of the bushel basket and shine with a light of their own.
Little chapels full of blesseds with an ecstatic look, effeminate in demeanor, praying in ruffles and rococo lace. Exterior devotees of well-polished boots. Proselytes dazzled by the pageantry of archaic paraphernalia of initiation ceremonies. Paraclerics, with more smoke than a thurible.
They do not distinguish the Eucharist from the daily bread, but they approach Communion with an enraptured countenance: on their knees, standing and even holding out their hands, they claim to be in Communion with the Most High without being at peace with their brother. Living in a communion of charity is a precept, an eternal and new mandate, in order to practice the love that we profess to the Invisible, giving a hand of forgiveness and support to those around us.
Tavern strategists, entrenched behind the bar, who, with a couple of drinks, mourn defeats and celebrate victories. Stretched out on the sofa, with a whiskey in hand and from behind the smoke from their cigar, they confabulate about the past, rave about the present and prophesy the future. They give great importance to the number of distillates that the liquid in their glasses may have, but when it comes to quenching the thirst for truth of their intelligence, they drink from murky streams and contaminated sources.
Unfaithful administrators, gamblers of marked cards, kiss-on-the-cheek and back-stabbing traitors, whose loyalty fluctuates and oscillates to the rhythm of the Stock Market. Less loyal than a cat. Invertebrate mollusks, without principles, duties or obligations. They admire philosophy from afar and have the whim of reaching the third degree of abstraction; but, since they have their hearts where their treasure is, they are anchored in the second; they are mathematical calculators, since things are only valued if they have a price, even if it is thirty pieces of silver.
Song-filled mornings that avoid the company of wise men and elders and, in the continuity of the chain of Tradition, they are unhooked links from that which immediately precedes them. Macho men, celluloid thugs, with fine and soft skin, who, when bitten by a mosquito, cry three days and nights. Those with a lot of gunpowder and very little fuse, those who always promise and never deliver, are firecrackers that don’t even explode on New Year’s Eve.
Candle killers extinguishing intelligences, either mitred or with a cap, they go on quenching the smoking flax and breaking the bruised reeds, since they are so weak that they cannot handle the whole ones. The sectarian spirits that strain out the gnat and swallow the camel, those that are looking for the speck in the other’s eye and, what about the beam? –I’m fine, thanks.
Finished products of our consumer society are those that greedily devour the most holy, sublime and sacred products; eternal customers whose individualism leads them to consider Communion as a market. Such as these are not convinced by reason, but the marketing seduces them. Fluctuating vanes, always pointing to their own interest. Unfaithful and fickle, those who in the final judgment will see with astonishment how they will be judged by harlots and publicans, who, although in reprehensible trades, felt shame.
Pantomime patriots, citizens of an embalmed fatherland, dead but whole, without the Christian soul of Catholic Unity, who in a Christian fatherland grant the concubine the same status as the legitimate wife, to Hagar the same rights as Sara. With much noise, they vociferate proclamations against the children of Agar, but at the moment of truth for Catholics, nothing.
Vermin of the shadows, myopic as moles, nocturnal as owls, elusive as rats, suspicious of light, they flee from the truth and prowl through the darkness of ignorance. «The Light came unto them, but they received it not». Nautas among the mists of history, with a compass pegged to the north, to that mecca of individualism: «Yankeelandia». Providence has opened the windows to horizons of greatness, intellectual and moral, but they close them tightly, in order to continue napping in the shadows.
Pessimists, defeatists, sellouts, and fatalists, who, without even wearing the hijab, have an Islamized spirit. Before the Samum blows, they are already waiting for it to arrive to bury them alive. Looking towards Mecca, they are already prostrate. Oppas and Don Julianes (a reference to Oppas, who was a member of the Visigothic elite in the city of Toledo who fled as the Arabs took the city, and to Julian, Count of Ceuta, who had an important role in the Umayyad conquest of Hispania), so far from the Numantians who gave up their blood before the keys. Given this panorama, we should not be surprised to find ourselves invaded.
It is a legend that ostriches, faced with danger, bury their heads in the sand; but, for communitarian Catholics, it is a reality. They say that in order to be good, they need privacy. Privacy? When we are meant to be «a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men!» They cut themselves off, isolate and sectarianize because they want to live peacefully like Christians in a bubble. I think it would be better to start preparing to die as brave Catholics.
Apocalyptic catastrophists who are multiplying their sorrows and dividing our joys. Lazy and selfish, longing for whims, who do not give a penny or lift a finger. Already in the times of Carlos VII they were called «wishful-thinkers».
Cybernetic misanthropes, of atrophied empathy. Elusive runaways from a dark past and gloomy future. Opaque personalities who go through life behind tinted windows. Suspicious and distant, perhaps rightly so, they don’t even trust themselves, inevitably condemned as mistrustful. Sullen and taciturn, who, from so much searching for one another, end up finding each other; but then, disappointed, they remain very sad, because they are incapable of laughing at themselves.
The paradox of the individualist is that, always thinking of himself, reading these lines, making frequent rash judgments, he now thinks of others.
As long as the harvest time does not arrive, we still cannot separate the wheat from the tares, which the enemy took care to blend. We must be patient and know how to wait. The time will come when the Reaper will keep the wheat in his barn and will order all the tares to be burned.
Each one will know which foot is limping and where the shoe pinches, and he who drops the glove, let him pick it up (from the Spanish phrase «al que le caiga el guante que se lo chante» with the underlying meaning: «the culprit is conscious of his own guilt»). May the Holy Spirit help us to know ourselves and to find our place within the harmony wanted by the Creator, founded on humility; identify our defect, that, although to err is human, to persevere is diabolic. May He help us to a greater denial of «self», in order to participate in the construction of the City of God.
(To be continued)
Rev. Fr. José Ramón García Gallardo, Chaplain of the Traditionalist Youth. Royal Chaplain.
Translation by Alférez Matthew Scullin, Círculo Carlista Camino Real de Tejas.
