Posted on by Bonald

The Southern Baptist condemnation of “Alt Right” “racism” has made me grateful that Pope Francis has thrown the Catholic Church into complete doctrinal confusion. If John Paul II were alive today, we might be witnessing an infallible declaration that borders are immoral. It seems as if God, in His wisdom, has allowed the Church to fall into a sort of protective intellectual hibernation. Because we cannot yet think clearly, it is better if we speak only in postmodern gibberish. The Magisterium is to be humiliated but preserved, and a final victory over this present egalitarian madness–if there is to be any–is to be the work and the glory of Him alone.

One hundred years ago, a movement similar to today’s Alternative Right existed in Charles Maurras’s movement Action francaise. Like today’s Alt Right, Action francaise was a movement led by intellectuals (based on a journal, there not yet being an internet) on the principles of particularism/nationalism and rejection of democracy. Like today’s neoreaction, its founding thinker was a nonbeliever, but the movement was friendly to the Church as an institution and so managed to gain many Catholic adherents, especially among the young, intellectual, and right-wing.

The Church was presented with a dilemma. On the one hand, this new movement was attacking liberalism–the prime heresy of the age and primary enemy of the Church–and defending without apology the ancient regime Catholicism had built. On the other hand, although Catholics associated with the movement such as La Tour du Pin and Maritain seemed to remain loyal sons of the Church, there was the danger that Catholics under Maurras’s sway would adopt his consequentialism and instrumentalist view of the Church.

The Church chose to condemn–Cardinal Andrieu’s statement being a mix of name-calling, attribution of Maurras’s private beliefs to the whole organization, and outright lies–and in doing so dealt a terrible blow to French monarchism and made a great gift to anti-clerical republicanism. Eventually, Action francaise submitted, but only after being reduced to a fraction of its former self. Such has long been the status of the Church that it has power only to harm its friends. Pius XI wrote a whole encyclical against communism, and this did nothing to check the horrors of godless socialism.

From Volume 9 of Henri Daniel-Rops’ History of the Church of Christ:

Criticism had long been directed against Action francaise or, more exactly, against the principles on which Charles Maurras claimed to base his political doctrine…the French bishops asked that Maurras’s works be placed on the Index. On 26th January 1914 the consultors announced that seven of those works stood condemned; and their decision was confirmed by the General Congregation, which added the paper Action francaise. Pius X, however, delayed publication of the verdict. When it was reported to him on 29th January, by the secretary of the Congregation, he replied that the works in question were certainly prohibited, that the condemnation would be promulgated from that date, but that the decree was not published until such time as he personally thought fit. ‘Maurras’, he declared, ‘is a good champion of the Church and of the Holy See.’ Other reasons for this clemency were his unwillingness to disturb Catholicism in France on the eve of a war which he regarded as certain, and his anxiety not to offend the many distinguished Frenchmen, religious and secular, who had begged him to deal gently with the culprit. Benedict XV adopted the same attitude: in 1915, after careful consideration, he decided that if the decree were published during the war, “political passions would prevent a fair assessment of such an act on the part of the Holy See”. So there the matter lay, as expressed by Pius X: Damnabilis sed non damnandus–condemnable but not to be condemned. The affair took a new turn after the accession of Pius XI in 1922… Pius was still studying the works of Maurras, Daudet and Bainville, as well as the pages of Action francaise itself, when alarming reports reached the Vatican of the movement’s rapid progress among Catholic youth. A quarter, if not one-third, of French seminarists were adherents of Maurras, while A.C.J.F. complained that Action francaise was drawing off the most active elements of right-wing Catholic youth. The Camelots du Roi, a royalist organization for propaganda used by Action francaise for public demonstrations and acts of violence, particularly struck Pius XI. In May 1925 the Cahiers de la Jeunesse catholique belge organized a referendum on this question: ‘Among writers of the past twenty-five years, whom do you consider as your masters?’ Maurras headed the list with 174 votes; Cardinal Mercier came last with six. The Belgian episcopate took fright; a group of distinguished Belgian Catholics published a warning, and Pius XI resolved to stand no more nonsense. … The Pope, however, refrained from immediate recourse to stern measures. The Action francaise movement included so many excellent Catholics who did not share all Maurras’s philosophical ideas–although they were more or less contaminated by the ‘pernicious atmosphere’ of positivist naturalism–that he thought it more useful to enlighten them before striking a final blow. After vain approaches to various members of the French hierarchy, he delegated this task to the aged Cardinal Andrieu, Archbishop of Bordeaux. On 27th October 1926 there appeared in Aquitaine, the diocesan bulletin, a declaration by that prelate. Having had to reply to a group of young Catholics ‘on the subject of Action francaise and the attitude they should adopt toward it’, he advised them to break away from it as quickly as possible. The wording of the archiepiscopal declaration was extremely harsh, describing the directors of the movement all together as ‘atheists or agnostics’, as ‘Catholics by profession but not by conviction’, as ‘amoralists’, and so on. The document, however, made the whole problem absolutely clear by denouncing in the plainest terms the Maurrasian heresy. Its only faults were a lack of serenity, the attribution to Action francaise as a whole the philosophical ideas of its leader, and even the attribution to Maurras himself of opinions he had never taught, e.g. the need to re-introduce slavery. The stroke was therefore excessive and not very skillful; but it was an important warning , exceeding in importance that of the tired old man who had delivered it. There could be no more room for doubt when, on 5th September, a letter from Pius XI to Cardinal Andrieu was published, congratulating him upon having denounced ‘a rebirth of paganism.’ It may be that Pius XI thought that sufficient, that the Catholics of Action francaise would listen to his appeal and abandon the movement. There appears, however, to have been some hesitation in the ranks of Action francaise as to what attitude should be adopted. Some, e.g. Jacques Maritain, believed it would be possible for Catholics to remain within the political movement while eschewing doctrinal errors. Others protested that the papal condemnation was only a political and even a police measure inspired by politicians of the Briand type, and that if they had to choose between their two loyalties they would prefer Action francaise. Many ecclesiastical authorities, with Cardinal Maurin, Archbishop of Lyons, at their head, advised a course of ‘wait and see’. Whid did the directors of the monarchist movement suddenly favor a more stubborn attitude? On 15th December, in reply to various notes in Osservatore Romano and under the title ‘Rome et la France‘, Charles Maurras’s journal published an article of astounding vehemence, accusing a ‘small gang of simoniacal agents’ of insulting good Frenchmen ‘in their conscience as believers and in their honour as men’. Five days afterward, in Consistory, Pius XI retorted by expressly forbidding all Catholics to belong to the undertakings, to remain in the school or to read the journal ‘of men whose writings set aside our dogma and our morality’….Rome replied on 29th December 1926 by publishing the decree of the Holy Office as drawn up in 1914. To it was added an explicit condemnation of the journal Action francaise. …Pius was coldly resolved upon victory. At his request 116 French bishops signed a manifesto approving and explaining the condemnation; those who believed they ought not to sign paid dearly for their refusal. Cardinal Billot was obliged to resign and retired as a simple Jesuit to a house of the Society. Several religious also, some of them notorious, were punished…Meanwhile the Sacred Penitentiary decreed that any priest who gave absolution to supporters of Action francaise would be suspended from hearing confessions, that seminarians faithful to the movement would be dismissed, and that the faithful who remained stubborn in rebellion would be regarded as public sinners and refused the sacraments. France became at once a tragic stage upon which friendships were destroyed and families divided among themselves, as in the days of the Dreyfus affair. Good Catholics were seen carried to a civil grave because of their allegiance to Action francaise; priests censured for having taken the last sacraments to fathers who stood condemned; marriages and baptisms performed as in the worst days of the Terror. [Fast forward a decade to 1937] After a visit to Paris by Mgr. Ottaviani, assessor of the Holy Office, a new letter was sent to Rome, in which the [governing] committee [of Action francaise] expressed its ‘sincere grief’ for what had been ‘disrespectful, offensive and even unjust’ in their attitude, and rejected ‘every principle and every theory opposed to the teachings of the Church’. The Holy Office replied on 5th July by lifting the condemnation of Action francaise, but without mentioning that of Pius X against Maurras’s philosophy.

To be clear, Catholics did have a duty to disassociate from Action francaise while it was condemned, because the Pope did have the authority to command it. The virtue of obedience is never clearer than when the command is foolish. Still, no one has the authority to keep us from recognizing it as foolish. Someday, the Church will ready to pronounce on the questions posed by European nationalism, but not until her current fever has passed. When it does, will there still be any European nations?

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