La versión original del artículo puede consultarse aquí.
***
The Church Militant must erect Christendom on this Earth and in this life, a public expression of the Reign of Christ, which is not a preference or an alternative but an unrenounceable vocation that for centuries she was able to fulfill. During the last few centuries, however, the opposite has happened: not only has it become incapable of fulfilling it, but, exposed to multiple tribulations and the temptation to reach a compromise with its enemies, it has sought pretexts to justify its omission.
The life of the Church Militant without Christendom, to a degree, is such an anomaly that the entire Social Doctrine of the Church since the 19th century, to give an example, has had no other purpose than the difficult matter of guiding the navigation of the faithful through hostile waters: those of the post-Christian, indeed anti-Christian, order. Make no mistake: this is the fundamental question of our time.
And the natural reason is easy to glimpse. If man is a naturally social being – naturally political – then the faithful who grow up in an environment that is not compatible with the dictates of a conscience oriented toward Truth will hardly develop the virtues as he should, and will never be fully integrated into the community in which he lives, no matter how much his soul is bombarded with nationalist sentimentalism, memorizes national anthems, sleeps with a copy of the Constitution under his pillow, and makes public boasts of adherence to the prevailing regime. There will always remain something that does not quite add up. And since man is inclined not to “opposing realities in tension” but to congruence, he will seek to overcome these elements of dissonance. He might, for example, renounce his faith. This is how this crisis is usually resolved.
In recent decades, the idea of a return to “primitive Christianity” has become fashionable among the clergy, with the hidden intention of reversing the reforms of the Council of Trent, gradually replacing Thomistic theology with sources “more faithful to the origins”, and above all justifying a political position that renounces Christendom in order to seek a supposed “independence” from temporal power, but whose real effect is the gradual subordination of the Church to non-Christian patronage.
But what is Christendom? Can it be distinguished from Christianity itself? It differs from it as the effect differs from its cause. If Christianity can be defined as the doctrine of the followers of Christ – although this is a simplification, because it is certainly more than a doctrine – Christendom is the consequence of a society that, as a society, lives in congruence with that doctrine: in its laws, in its customs and in its political regime. That is, in its public orthodoxy.
Thus, if in a country where Christianity is openly persecuted – as in some Communist countries and, increasingly, in liberal democracies – there is a redoubt of the faithful who practice the Faith clandestinely, then it certainly cannot be said of that republic that its laws reflect the spirit of the Gospel. That is to say, there is no Christendom there. But it could well be said that there is Christianity, albeit clandestine and reduced to a mere private practice. Well then, the great chimera of our time, of Protestant origin but already hegemonic Catholic absorption, is to believe that Christianity can be lived without aspiring to its communitarian fruit, which is Christendom.
To contribute to the reconstruction of Christendom is the primary vocation of every lay person. And when a cleric denies it, depriving his faithful of the possibility of such a great vocation, he immediately reduces them to sacristy mice, trembling before the ungodly temporal order, but eagerly ready for the slanders and clerical squabbles that are henceforth their obsession.
Of course, there are those who justify such an approach by claiming that those who aspire to Christendom are seeking a utopia, and instead offer compromises whose liberalism is more or less explicit: this partial initiative, that activism in defense of a questionable right, or some new type of conservatism… all solutions that are as unoriginal as they are false. Christendom, on the other hand, if we consider that it began with the conversion of the kings of Armenia and Abyssinia (4th century A.D.) and ended with the rise of the revolutionary republics between the 18th and 20th centuries, has had 1,500 years of concrete and tangible existence. With this in mind, tell us once again which is the utopian and which is the realistic approach.
This is, naturally, a dilemma that is difficult to resolve in our times, because dedicating oneself to the reconstruction of Christendom means accepting legitimacies – the Two Swords – that today not even the clergy dares to proclaim. And it also means renouncing the spirit of caudillismo or ideological protagonism that so easily takes hold of us because of our vanity, especially in democratic times, and instead recognizing our condition as subjects. This is, of course, an interior dilemma whose implications cannot be exhausted here.
For now, consider the following. For those who worry about “going back to the roots” and imagine the “primitive Christians” as a kind of Quaker oatmeal cookie-makers, completely disconnected from Christendom as an objective, it may be useful to recall a terminological detail of the time: paganus (from pagus, village) was the rural dweller who, for military purposes, was synonymous with “civilian” because, as an agricultural laborer, he was not recruited for the legions; a usage that passed into Christianity to designate the irenist Christian – the pacifist, conciliator, or extreme compromiser – who did not contribute to the extension of the Kingdom of Christ and therefore did not count among the Miles Christi. And with the passage of time, a new extension of the term took place, applying it to the infidels, a curious coincidence according to which the irenist Christian and the infidel are considered indistinguishable for practical purposes, just as in our time the Catholic who does not contribute to the restoration of Christendom, because he has political projects of his own, and the outright liberal think, act and influence, in practice, with identical effects.
Rodrigo Fernández Diez, Círculo Tradicionalista Celedonio de Jarauta de Méjico.
Translated by the Gremio San Jerónimo
Deje el primer comentario