--- Catholic and Fascist always --- From Deus Vult France

"It is a fact: there were anti-fascist Catholics, and anti-Catholic fascists. And if the latter were in large numbers anti-Catholic, it was precisely because the former were, for many, apparently hostile to fascism.

However, it is also a proven fact that some Catholics, who are also great men - for some clerics, for other simple practitioners - chose fascism.

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But first we need to clarify what we mean by this word "fascism", because it seems to compete with the most equivocal terms.

Following Joseph Mérel (doctor, associate professor of philosophy, specialist in political questions), we will readily define fascism, as a historical phenomenon, as "a European attempt, personalized by the genius of the nations which tried to promote it. , to re-found the Order of the Old Regime - that is to say the European Order before the Revolution of 1789, - but avoiding reproducing the shortcomings which precipitated its fall ”(cf: Fascism and Monarchy , Essay of conciliation from a Catholic point of view); as attached to the Order, the fascist movement was counter-revolutionary; as aspiring to genuine progress - and not to a backtracking more nostalgic than rational - he was anti-reactionary (we will think here of the SA motto: "Against the Reds and the Reaction").

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Also fascism, understood as a doctrine, is characterized in its essence by four main notes: mono-archism, corporatism, nationalism, organicism; he is a mono-archist and a corporatist, because he is essentially linked to the Order of the Old Regime; and at the same time he is nationalist and organicist, because he understands that a regime is only lasting if it meets these two requirements, and that the Old Regime collapsed precisely because of its lack of national spirit and its lack of organicity. And these four notes are indeed those which emerge from the Doctrine of Fascism (1932) by Duce Benito Mussolini.

♦ Fascism is mono-archist, that is to say, it is favorable to the government of one (be it a king or an emperor, a prime minister or 'a dictator, a "Leader" or a "Guide").

He is a mono-archist, because he wants to be authoritarian: the authority of a community having for purpose to give unity to the members of this community, and a being able to give only what he has, he is of the nature of the authority to be one. He is authoritarian because he aspires to the Common Good, which, as the finality of the City - whose substance is that of an orderly whole, - consists essentially in the unity of its members - here friendship political, - unity that only authority can give.

Finally, because it is authoritarian, and the authority of a political community is the state, fascism is statist; so that, for him, it is normal that the State takes care of all that concerns the City, starting with the education of the children, as soon as they have reached a rational age, thus the age of take part in the life of the City.

And, of this state, fascism has a philosophically realistic conception: it makes it the principle of the existence in action of the nation, of the people.

"It is not the nation that creates the state, as in the old naturalist conception, which served as the basis for the studies of the publicists of the national states of the nineteenth century. On the contrary, the nation is created by the state, which gives to the people, aware of their own moral unity, a will, and consequently an effective existence. "

(Mussolini, Doctrine of fascism, Chapter 1: political and social doctrine, 10. Concept of the State).

The State being analogously to the nation (understood as people) what form is to matter, it is indeed the State which gives existence to the nation and not the reverse, since it is form which acts on the matter.

And as a mono-archist and authoritarian, fascism is radically opposed to the liberal ideas of the "Age of Enlightenment" (which Mussolini will not cease to denounce), as well as to any kind of democracy, including the "Christian democracy" which is only a by-product (and the failure of which stems from its intestinal contradiction, namely its desire to marry the Gospel and the Revolution).

♦ Fascism is moreover corporatist, that is to say, it is favorable to the state organization of bodies assembling workers and bosses, with the aim of subordinating their particular interests to the general interest of the enterprise in which they work, general interest itself ordered to the Common Good of the State.

"Fascism opposes socialism […]; and likewise it is against trade unionism. But it wants the real demands that gave rise to the socialist and trade union movement to be recognized in the orbit of the state; and he asserts them in the corporate system, where his interests agree with those of the state. "

(Ibid, Chapter One, 8. Antisocialism and Corporatism)

Thus fascism is clearly opposed to both the liberal capitalism inherited from the French Revolution (whose first task was, by the Le Chapelier law, to destroy the corporations that protected workers in their work, in the name of the abolition of privileges); but also to the resulting Marxist trade unionism in the next century, to this theory of the "class struggle" which is certainly one of the worst inventions of mankind, because the most destructive of its unity - unity which is its greatest well.

But fascism doesn’t stop there, otherwise it would be reactionary; he is also a nationalist and an organicist.

♦ He is a nationalist, that is, he regards the Nation - “Unity of Destiny in the Universal” to use Primo de Rivera’s phrase - as the material substratum of political society. He therefore approves of the (accidentally revolutionary) principle that every nation must correspond to a state, and every state must correspond to a nation, since the nation is to the state what matter is to form ( no one would imagine a body with several souls, nor a soul with several bodies).

"The right to independence of a Nation is based […] on an active conscience, on an active political will, and ready to dismantle its right: that is, on a kind of state in fieri. "

(Ibid, Chapter One, 10. Conception of the State)

If it is true, then, that "it is not the nation that creates the state," but "the nation that is created by the state," as Mussolini himself puts it, it must be asserted that there can be no state without Nation in potentia; for, the Nation being to the State what matter is to form, and matter being the subject of form, the Nation is the necessary substrate of the State, which, though not caused by it, is however educated.

In this, fascism differs from reactionary and passéist legitimacy, which considers the Nation to be only a meaningless notion, essentially revolutionary and invented for antimonarchical, or anti-imperialist, and pro-independence purposes.

♦ But fascism is also, and above all, organicist; that is to say, it promotes an organic, living society, a society in which each member - as a member - takes an active part in the pursuit of the Common Good of the Totality, as the members of a body take part. naturally part in the proper functioning of this same body (if the stomach goes on strike, the heart weakens, and the stomach itself is affected).

In this, the fascist state is effectively "totalitarian", not in the sense of a tyrannical state, but of a state realizing a real "totalitarianism of the Common Good" (to use the expression of Abbot Meinvielle), the common good being understood both as the good of the Whole and as the best good of each of its parts.

And this corresponds to a certain conception of life; to a conception of Life as Action.

"Fascism wants man to be active and engaged in Action with all his energies, manly aware of real difficulties and ready to brave them. It conceives of Life as a struggle […]. And this is true for it. individual himself, for the Nation and for humanity. "

(Ibid, Chapter 1, 3. Positive conception of Life as Struggle)

And as an organicist, fascism is anti-conservative and anti-bourgeois. Organicity is what specifically differentiates the fascist state from other states of a nationalist but non-fascist genre, such as, for example, the paternalistic regime of Franco - which, although we owe it to have saved Spain of a communist dictatorship, never established the organic state that Primo de Rivera called for, played into the hands of capitalism and the henchmen of Opus Dei, and took his regime with him to his grave; the founder of the Phalange had moreover predicted it: "this movement (speaking of Francoism) will not lead to the establishment of the national-unionist state [...], but to restore a bourgeois, conservative, and bordered mediocrity, like supreme mockery, by the choreographic accompaniment of our blue shirts. »(Circular of June 24, 1936).

Paternalistic regimes, in which only the "father" of the nation is active, logically collapsed upon the death of this father (the Vichy regime also falls within this framework).

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For fascism, on the contrary, the City must be really alive: the Leader must never stop reforming - not that reform is an end in itself, but, on this Earth, it is always possible to do better than before, to achieve a greater good -; the elites must be regularly renewed, to avoid the gradual establishment of a caste of decadent privileged people; finally, all citizens must take part, each at their own level, in the life of the City, which consists in the active pursuit of the common good.

As noted by Chesterton, who we believe had some ideas of fascism, though he never explicitly claimed to be, “the inherent corruption of things is not just the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument for not being conservative "(Orthodoxy, 7. - The Eternal Revolution).

A house which, once built, would be neglected, or even simply kept in order, without actually being maintained or regularly renovated, such a house would necessarily end up falling into disrepair. And, if this is true for all natural substances, it is a fortiori for living substances, and in particular for man who, wounded by original sin, regresses when he is in immobility. And, for this precise reason, fascism is a philosophy of Becoming - which does not exclude the fact that it is a philosophy of Being, for Becoming is the very Being of reality.

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Finally, we must add that fascism, while it is true that it is nationalist, is at the same time pro-European and universalist.

He is politically pro-European, in the sense that he is a partisan of a Greater Europe, of a united Europe of Nations - of an Empire in the broad sense of the term, - founded on the values ​​of Greco-Roman civilization, of the white race and the Catholic religion.

In this, it is indeed distinguished from nominalist Maurassianism, thereby excessively nationalist (almost idolatrous of the Goddess France), thus heir - in this respect - of the French Revolution.

"In the doctrine of fascism, empire is not fundamentally a territorial, military or commercial expansion, but spiritual and moral. One can conceive of an empire, that is to say a nation which, directly or indirectly, guides other nations, without the need to conquer a square kilometer of land. "

(Mussolini, Doctrine of Fascism, Chapter two: fundamental ideas, 13. Empire and discipline)

Today's European Union is but a monstrous caricature of what Europe should have given birth to in the middle of the 20th century. But the regimes which tried to promote such a Europe were liquidated by the "Allies"; the USSR, the United States and the United Kingdom had fully understood that the existence of such an Empire would be far from serving their own interests ...

And it is because fascism wants to be the defender of the Christian West that it is anti-Semitic: it understands that “Jewish rot” (to use the expression of Abbot Julio Meinvielle) is the radical enemy so much of Christianity than of civilization.

Finally, fascism is philosophically universalist; That is to say, it wants to be, as a political philosophy, a political doctrine that goes beyond the - contingent - circumstances of place and time.

To speak in Aristotelian terms, we will say that fascism is a universal form of state, or political regime, called to be individualized by each nation - understood as the material substratum of the state.

And it is therefore well and truly distinct, once again, from agnostic Maurassianism (especially in religious matters), moreover relativist, thus again heir, in this respect, of the Revolution.

"Like any healthy political conception, fascism associates thought with action. It is action animated by a doctrine. This doctrine arises from a given system of historical forces, to which it remains intimately linked and which receives from it has its interior impulse. It therefore has a form corresponding to the contingencies of place and time; but at the same time it has an ideal content which elevates it to the rank of higher truth in the history of thought. "

(Ibid, Chapter 1, 1. Fascism as Philosophy)

The current globalization is also only the ignoble caricature of the civilizing hold that the white world was called to have - by means of a healthy colonization - on the rest of the world, not for its own interest, but for the sake of it. contrary for the happiness of Nations. It should be noted, moreover, that this healthy fascist universalism joins Catholic universalism; and the Catholic and Roman Church would certainly have had a much easier time fulfilling its mission of evangelization in such an imperial world.

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But there you have it: in the 1930s, the period of the Fascism Crusade, Catholics were either Christian Democrats - if not simply Democrats - or Royalists or else - in France - won over to Maurasian ideas. It is therefore understandable that the reconciliation between Catholicism and Fascism has been, historically, delicate.

When a good declines in its goodness and gives way to an evil, there are four possible attitudes. The first consists, by ideology or by pragmatism, in espousing evil in its totality. The second, by a nostalgic and more or less sentimental idealism, to be attached at all costs to the past good, but without seeking to understand the reasons for its fall, and even less to draw lessons from it. The third, by a false realism, to try to reconcile the good and the bad by marrying a part of the latter, thus to make a kind of "synthesis" of it. The last attitude, animated by an authentic realism and a healthy idealism - that is to say, a rational idealism - consists in disapproving of evil while assuming its bits of goodness, its captive truths (because neither evil, nor error, are never absolute), thus restoring the past good while going beyond it, giving birth to its Aufhebung, its ultimate completion.

The first attitude is that of modernists in religious matters, of rationalists in philosophical matters, of revolutionaries who are acquainted with democratic ideas in political matters, whether they are liberal or Marxist.

The second is that of the "traditionalists", fans of Thomist psittacism, and reactionaries Legitimists.

The third is that of the soft, supporters of "the hermeneutics of reform in continuity" and other specialists in intellectual scheming, neo-Thomists in Maritain sauce, Christian Democrats (who combine the Gospel with the Revolution), Orleanists and even, to a certain extent, Maurrassians (who combine Reaction with agnosticism).

Finally, the last attitude is that of Catholics faithful to Tradition, but seeking to resolve the real problems to which Vatican II provided bad answers; that of philosophers loyal to realism, but wishing to integrate into the corpus of Aquinas the captive truths of the rationalism of Descartes, Malebranche or Leibniz; that, finally, of the men genuinely of the Right, partisans of a mono-archic and corporatist State, but who is at the same time concerned about its national reality and its organicity, and which, far from any relativism, is in adequacy with the the natural political order, the sound realistic philosophy and the supernatural vocation of man; that is to say, in short, that of the fascists, ours.

At first glance, we may be able to confuse the third and the fourth attitude; but, on closer inspection, we will see that the third is quite opposed to the fourth, that it is the reverse position.

Neither Christian democracy nor Maurasian royalism could thus agree with fascism; and, in fact, they did not agree with him.

Moorish Catholics and Liberal Democrats are fed up with the fact that the Church has never approved of fascism.

But should the former be reminded that St. Pius X condemned the very foundations of this Christian democracy which they call out of their vows in his Letter on the Furrow (1913)?

Should the latter also be reminded that Pius XI disapproved of Maurras’s agnostic doctrine in his Decree of Condemnation of French Action (1926)?

As for fascist doctrine as such, if the Holy See did not approve it, it never condemned it.

Two encyclicals are often invoked by our opponents: Non Abbiamo Bisogno, and Mit Brennender Sorge; the former would have condemned fascism; the second, National Socialism. Obviously, there are a lot of people who don't read, or who can't read.

Non Abbiamo Bisogno speaks of the real tensions that existed between the Church and the Italian state (especially in the field of education - a "mixed" field and therefore often subject to dispute), but does not speak at all of fascism as such, and does not condemn him.

Mit Brennender Sorge, on the other hand, has as its object "the situation of the Catholic Church in the German Empire", but not, once again, National Socialism taken in its essence, although it criticizes it. drifts (especially its racialism, that is, its overly materialistic perception of race — something in itself "necessary and honorable" as Pius XI himself acknowledges).

No possible comparison between these two encyclicals and Divini Redemptoris, the object of which is explicitly atheist communism, rightly described as an “intrinsically evil” system.

However, it must be admitted that these two encyclicals amaze us: why did Pius XI attack the fascist regime and the National Socialist regime, even though these two regimes had been asked to sign a agreed with him?

These concordats, however, were to the advantage of the Church: thus, the Lateran Agreements, signed in 1929 between the Holy See and the Italian state, put an end to this famous "Roman question" which had lasted for almost fifty years. and which despaired the Popes, and further established that the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion was the only religion of the fascist state.

As for the Concordat signed in 1933 between the Vatican and the German Reich, it was, in the words of Pius XI, an "unexpected and unexpected" agreement (Mr. Agostino). Moreover, there were never as many churches built in Germany (2,500) as under the German Reich (which, let us remember, then included more than a third of Catholics); never so many full churches in Italy - since its unification in 1870 - as under the fascist state.

So why did Pius XI take on two regimes that objectively favored the Church? And why did he take special pains on them? Was the Catholic Church better off in schismatic England, in the United States of Freemason Roosevelt (certainly Pius XII’s “great friend”…), or even in the Popular Front France?

But it is true that under the fascist state the prelates could not quietly indulge in their deceptions. It is true, too, that men were manly educated, which certainly displeased the number, already important at that time, of emasculated Catholics.

Finally, it is true that in such states the citizens had a duty to order themselves to the City as the party to the whole, which did not please the clerics generally imbued with personalism - personalism being this harmful doctrine according to which, if the individual is ordained to the City, the person on the other hand transcends it; which, on the one hand, is a metaphysically absurd division and, on the other hand, ultimately leads to the absolutization of freedom of conscience, to liberalism. "

Deus Vult †