Originally published by: LA ESPERANZA January 19, 2023
There is a metaphysical delusion behind all culpable moral disorder, whether personal or social. It is not an involuntary error, such as one that does not destroy good will, but an evil obfuscation, which proceeds from original pride, and is an offense against the order of being. It is the most primal error of all.
We refer to that vain pretension of second causes by which they claim to be able to act as first causes: they want to be gods, they want to be the absolute source of their own goods, they want to be light and criterion of their own limits, they want to be the rule and measure of their own goods. It is the error of negative freedom, which Danilo Castellano rightly places at the heart of Modernity. Being like gods is the founding dream of modern man. It is the metaphysical deception par excellence: the created being wants to be a self-creator.
It is time, however, that the second causes, personal and political, private and public, are disabused of this. We must abandon this false pretense of deification, to admit that we totally depend on God; that we only act on our own when we are moved by Him, naturally or supernaturally. For only He is omnipotent, only He knows how to move the rational creature in a way adjusted to his free nature, so that he works as he can and should work.
Is there any kind of hope for a society that believes it can be the first cause of its goods? No, because he can only rely on his vain pretensions of absolute autonomy, disguised as popular support; and in impossible chimeras: because neither rational creatures, nor their communities, can act as primary agents.
It is necessary to become disabused of this. The fatherland, by itself, is not a fatherland. It is the fatherland, by itself, with the help of the First Cause, which pulls the strings of its providence to in order reward the humility of its creatures with temporal and eternal goods. These, like the ants in the anthill, only contribute to the common good of the whole when they act as second causes, not when they pretend to be first causes.
The evils begin when, following the allegory of Don Juan de Borja in his Moral Enterprises, the ants grow wings and try to live on their own. They become disintegrated from the causal order of the anthill, eagerly seeking their particular good and not the common good, as if they could be the primary mover of their own lives, placing themselves at the mercy of the winds of misfortune.
It is then that the wings are, for this industrious insect, its fatal downfall, and from a fruitful member of the community, it becomes the factor of evils and disorders. Now he only aspires, at the height of contradiction, to claim and counterclaim his sovereignty, as if the State could give it to him. Is the Anthill the first cause? Only God is the main source of goods, only God is First Cause, only in God is there hope for second causes. The more goods they receive from the Prime Mover, the more free they become. These must heroically act upon these goods with fear and trembling ordered towards the common good, but not as if they were self-sufficient divinities. The creature is not the Creator.
The traditionalist banner, therefore, is a defender of metaphysical truths, it fights the battle for the essential, it fights the good fight for the order of being. Because he has learned from his elders, hardened in wars and sacrifices, that God must be trusted before man.
David Mª González Cea, Cádiz
Translated by Alférez Matthew Scullin, Círculo Carlista Camino Real de Tejas
