Breves - 11

- Hoje somos todos franceses: a Constituição Europeia, jacobina e laicista, foi rejeitada em referendo realizado na pátria dos "imortais princípios de 1789". Deus, com o seu subtil sentido de humor, trocou uma vez mais as voltas a muito boa gente.

- Retomando a ideia-chave de Chesterton de que a propriedade privada é indispensável à felicidade (possível) do homem, ainda mais inadmissível se torna a velha e abusiva prática socialista, já adoptada pelo triste governo socrático, de fazer responder solidária e ilimitadamente, pelos erros de gestão da coisa pública em exclusivo imputáveis àqueles que detêm o controlo do aparelho administrativo estatal, o património pessoal (a começar pelos respectivos rendimentos do trabalho) da globalidade dos membros da comunidade nacional, os quais nenhuma responsabilidade tiveram ou têm nos ditos erros.

- Uma situação bizarra e bem sintomática do quotidiano autárquico luso, comum a boa parte dos concelhos do nosso País, independentemente da coloração partidária dos executivos camarários que os administram: por estes dias, em rotunda com não mais de cinco metros de diâmetro, localizada numa das saídas de Leiria, oito jardineiros - oito - cuidavam com afã do relvado nela plantado…

- Extraordinário artigo do Rebatet sobre o radicalismo niilista do Bloco de Esquerda, e a natureza intrinsecamente perversa que tal agremiação política esconde sob a sua capa de radicalismo chique de esquerda bom género. Leitura altamente recomendada.

- O Clark59, admirador do Papa Paulo VI, provavelmente o pior Papa de toda a História da Igreja - pior que Libério, Honório, João XXII, Inocêncio VIII ou Alexandre VI -, das "reformas" do Concílio Vaticano II, e votante do Partido Comunista - sim, eu sei que foi um voto de protesto… -, manifestou o seu descontentamento por nesta "Casa" se encontrar ligado e isolado no espaço dedicado aos esquerdistas. Ora, porque não sou insensível à amizade sincera que o Clark59 sempre nutriu por este espaço, altera-se situação tão melindrosa, pois a ninguém agrada ser chamado de esquerdista: assim sendo, passa a estar disponível na secção de "Heterodoxos".

- Pergunta final para o Rafael e o Corcunda: já leram alguma obra do Professor Jaroslav Pelikan? Se sim, o que acharam?

JSarto

Chesterton's distributism and happiness

Como anunciamos el otro día, tengo el gusto de presentarles a Vds. a una joven estudiante de la Universidad de Washington, en San Luis (Missouri): Lucía de Erausquin. Lucía de Erausquin escribió esta pieza sobre el distributismo para uno de sus trabajos de carrera, pero los comentarios que nos habían llegado de este artículo es que era uno muy bueno para servir a nuestros lectores como introducción al tema del distributismo, del que ya hemos resumido los artículos previos del Profesor Peter Chojnowski y del abogado Christopher Ferrara.

Por más que pueda parecer que este tema está siendo reiterativo resulta difícil encontrar ninguna otra teoría económica tan íntimamente ligada al pensamiento de la Doctrina Social de la Iglesia como es el distributismo.

Sin más, les dejo con esta espontánea colaboración.

Rafael Castela Santos

The theory of Distributism, as presented by Gilbert Keith Chesterton, especially in his book The Outline of Sanity, highlights the importance of widely distributed private property to a flourishing and happy society. It also shows the necessity of a system that will protect private property and ensure that as many people as possible are able to possess capital, or the means of production. This paper will analyze the reasons Chesterton gives for this necessity, and for the capacity of Distributism to fulfill it, by firstly defining the terms necessary for the discussion and then setting forth and analyzing the arguments one by one. Granted the theory that private property is essential for happiness and happiness is more important than the wealth of a nation, Distributism becomes a very attractive and practical system. It would greatly improve the quality of all primary and secondary goods, because the people who made them would be working for themselves and would consequently be encouraged to do their best work on every item. Also, work would be more interesting, since people would usually do many things one after the other instead of the same thing over and over in an assembly line. There would be fewer things produced at a time, but if every village provided its own that would not matter. Finally, Distributism would protect private property for all the people, and through it their happiness and liberty.

Distributism is an economic system that attempts to secure financial freedom for the mass of the people by means of the wide distribution of small property. It was first proposed in the years just before and after World War I by a small group of English writers, chief among them Chesterton, who, although at first more interested in literary, philosophical, and theological questions than in historic and political ones, became the best-known spokesman for the new theory. McCarthy, the author of a book about Hilaire Belloc (a friend of Chesterton’s who was also a writer), says that these ideas actually came from Belloc, who was more interested in history and economics, but he agrees that Chesterton “should be regarded more as the articulate disciple on these matters” (McCarthy 95). The basic tenets of Distributism are

- That as many people as possible should own capital, defined as the means necessary for the function of their trade (tools and the price of wood for a carpenter, land and farm implements for a farmer, etc.)

- That, as a corollary to this, most people should be self-employed, and small businesses should abound (other reasons for this will be explained later).

Chesterton’s definitions of the two main existing economic systems to which Distributism is in opposition are particularly clear and precise: he defines Capitalism as “that economic condition in which there is a class of capitalists, roughly recognizable and relatively small, in whose possession so much of the capital is concentrated as to necessitate a very large proportion of the citizens serving those capitalists for a wage,” and Socialism as “a system which makes the corporate unity of society responsible for all its economic processes, or all those affecting life and essential living” (Chesterton, The Outline of Sanity 2-3).

Chesterton’s arguments for Distributism are based most importantly on the idea of the goodness of private property, its necessity for a naturally happy life. Property is necessary because it is the art of the poor man; giving him a field for expressing his creativity. He can choose what to do with his own property and how to administer it; it becomes a reflection of his own personality. In speaking of peasants—people who are poor but own the land they live and work on—Chesterton says that what makes them, ordinarily, a contented group is the satisfaction of their creative instinct (Chesterton, The Outline of Sanity 48). Besides, property confers a certain amount of independence; a person who owns the tools of his trade, or land to farm, or the capital to run a small shop need not fear losing his job, and he can change the way he works as he sees fit. His independence gives his life a flexibility and potential variety unknown to those who are employed by others. Finally, man likes to work within the limits of private property. Art must be limited, it must involve choice, and the only way the ordinary person can express his creativity is through and in his own private property.

This fundamental human need of private property automatically excludes Socialism as a desirable system. However, judged on the same criteria, Capitalism is just as bad. It tries to defend private property by giving it to a few people, who concentrate it more and more, while the rest have to work for wages, deprived of all the benefits of ownership. While Socialism tries to affirm men’s independence from each other by making them all property-less and dependent on the state, Capitalism keeps property, but only for a few people and at the expense of the others’ freedom. Chesterton also argues that Capitalism should really be called Proletarianism, since it actually denies capital to the majority, who are forced to be employees dependent on wages.

Although Hilaire Belloc was an important influence on Chesterton in his ideas on Distributism, they disagreed on the end towards which Capitalism tended. Belloc, in The Servile State, contends that because so many people in the Capitalist system are dependent on wages, it will eventually evolve into a servile state, in which the many poor are compelled by law to work for the few rich in return for a minimum wage—in effect legal slavery (Belloc 39-40). He believed this because, although at that time labor unions existed and could (and did) organize strikes, he thought that the necessity to keep England’s industrial system going and the poverty of the workers themselves would soon lead to their becoming useless and to the implementation of laws requiring laborers to work if offered a certain minimum wage [1].

Chesterton’s view of Capitalism is just as negative, but he thought that it would either lead to Socialism or to its own destruction. As evidence for the first possibility, which Belloc agreed was possible (and even superficially probable) but not likely, he said that Capitalism tended by nature to a greater concentration of property in the hands of a few individuals, and that this would make a step to its concentration in the hands of the state seem natural to most people, and even preferable since one of the stated aims of socialism is defending the poor from oppression. As for the second, Chesterton contended that the perfection of Capitalism is its own destruction; that when an entire state became capitalist the system would automatically fail. It depends on competition between the few capitalists and the many wage earners. However, when the system is complete, all those who are not one are the other, and thus the wage-earners are also the consumers. The capitalists wish to increase profits by paying the employees as little as possible and/or making their goods as expensive as possible. Their employees, naturally, can only spend what they earn, so the capitalists will only earn as much money as they spend in paying wages. Thus, the moment Capitalism becomes most successful will be the moment of its destruction as a system. This deduction is perfectly logical and valid; so much so that (in a paradox Chesterton himself might have made) it is likely that Belloc’s theory will come true first. It seems improbable that the capitalists (or proletarians to use Chesterton’s phrase) would not foresee this end rather before its happening and enact laws bringing on the “Servile State”. In fact, it begins to seem that Chesterton’s ideas were the same as Belloc’s, but being a philosopher rather than a historian (as Belloc was) he took Capitalism to its logical, and Belloc to its probable historical, conclusion. Moreover, the validity Chesterton’s theory is being proved even today: already the most successful capitalists are employing people in third world countries in preference to local workers in an attempt to lower the cost of production. However, this expedient can only prostpone the crisis until everyone, not only in one country but in the whole world, is either a capitalist or a wage earner.

Having explained “What is Wrong” with the existing systems, Chesterton proceeds to explain his ideal. In What’s Wrong with the World, he says that the ideal is a home with land for every family, “three acres and a cow" as a popular phrase of his time went (Canovan 88). Although he does not intend all the citizens of a distributist state to be farmers, the phrase expresses well enough what he wanted: the minimum of property necessary for economic independence. Herbert Shove was co-author of a booklet on the Catholic Land Movement, which had Distributist ideals with the additional motives of following Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical on the conditions of labor, and removing from the many temptations of the modern city. In the booklet, he says that the farmer must be free form dependence on the rise and fall of a market and system of exchange over which he has no control, but on the other hand neither an individual nor a family can be really self-sufficient without experiencing as many difficulties as Robinson Crusoe, but with no necessity. Therefore, there should be local markets where people can exchange their surplus of one product for someone else’s handiwork or surplus of some other product. Because the markets would be local, they would depend on the local conditions and be more suited to the needs and circumstances of the people trading in it than those controlled by a separate group of businessmen (McNabb and Shove 24). In her book G. K. Chesterton: Radical Populist, Margaret Canovan expresses Chesterton’s Distributist ideal, “a free family in a safe home” (p. 51).

In capitalist societies, declares Chesterton, the means—work and property—are often mistaken for the end[2]. This results in the idea that the more work that is done, the better, whereas in reality work is only necessary and good in so far as it contributes to the true end of happiness for someone, whether the worker or someone else. This disorientation of capitalism is shown by the fact that the countryside and small farms are considered an appendage or dependency of the industrial cities, although naturally industry exists to make life easier for people who work for their food. It might be objected that people in cities are also working for their food, which is true, but the basic jobs are those that provide basic necessities; the others are secondary, though of course they make life much more comfortable. The trouble, simply stated, is that too often the primary industries (if they can be called so) are considered to be servants to the secondary ones, existing only to provide the necessities of life for the secondary workers. In a distributist economy, most people would provide most of their own primary goods, and a few secondary workers would provide secondary goods to make life easier for everyone, receiving in return the primary goods they needed. In this way, once everyone had all the goods that they needed, there would be leisure, time to enjoy what they had produced, instead of the ceaseless and pointless production of more and more secondary goods that results in an industrially centered society. To quote Fr. McNabb, “a return to land work and hand work would give all men the chance, and unselfish men the inducement, to the ideal—Poverty [economy] of Work in Production—Poverty of Thrift in Consumption.”

Many people accused the Distributists of being opposed to the advance of technology. These people said, to put it baldly, that a distributist society would inhibit the development of better and better machines and that therefore, the idea must be given up. In The Outline of Sanity, Chesterton answered that machines were invented to make things easier for man and not harder, and that if keeping them interfered with an otherwise good thing, then they and not the good thing would have to go. At any rate, some machines, especially those invented to make many unnecessary consumer goods quickly, would no longer be needed if the ideal of poverty or economy was followed. Chesterton, however, had no quarrel with industrial machines as such. He was perfectly willing to have them in a distributist society, as long as they could be owned by the people who operated them either individually or cooperatively, by a system of shares, and if they helped to make people happier.

In his own books, Chesterton makes his points so wittily and entertainingly that even the most hostile reader cannot put the books down. Additionally, his arguments are logically structured and valid, as can be seen from the summaries given above. However, it is important to realize that many of them, for example the main argument toward property, are not really economic arguments. He is not trying to prove that Distributism will make people rich, but that it will make them happy. If anyone reads them from a standpoint of economic gain, it will be obvious that the very poor, at least, will be better off if they have their own land, but the country as a whole may perhaps be poorer. This did not worry Chesterton, though, for as he himself once said,

“Men talked as if there could be one essential economic good, not only more practical, but even more primary, than the good that is recognized by the soul…A man hoards in his pocket; he digests with his stomach; but he is happy with his soul. And the cheap materialism of the small economists may be turned upside-down by saying, “Would you like to be well paid, to be well fed and to be unhappy?[3]”

Chesterton gave more than theories on Distributism in his books. He also gave certain practical measures for implementing it. He suggested buying from small, independent shops and farmers when possible, and called for laws to be passed favoring them. He also suggested that groups of families buy small plots of land close together and begin to found self-sufficient Distributist villages. Since this is rather more difficult nowadays than it was in his day, a more recent magazine article suggested that the land be bought near a town or city, so that the Distributists can also have part-time or full-time jobs to supply what cannot be grown or made (Two Pigs and a Cow). Chesterton also suggested funds or subsidies from various sources to help interested poor people to buy property in the country. Thus, although in the second chapter of What’s Wrong with the World, “Wanted, an Unpractical Man”, he defends theory and acting logically on first principles, he does not neglect to give some ideas for putting his theories into practice, this indeed being what ideas are for.

Bernard Shaw was one of the foremost opponents of the theory of Distributism, claiming that it was impossible because all small property is bound sooner or later to trickle towards large concentrations of it. Chesterton answered that this generalization was founded on situations in which a large amount of property had already been concentrated in the hands of a few individuals. He agreed that small property tends to go towards large concentrations of it, but denied that, if all property was divided into small (not necessarily equal) parcels, a pull must necessarily exist. A man with one acre might be forced to sell to a man with one hundred, but there is no reason why someone with thirty acres should sell to someone with forty. Another argument he used was that, even as Shaw condemned small property as ephemeral, he disparaged it for being old-fashioned. Evidently these are contradictory criticisms; a thing that “will never last” cannot live long enough to become antiquated! Shaw’s very argument that Distributism is backward proves that it must have existed for some time[4]. In fact, Chesterton pointed out that it still existed in his time, in parts of France and Germany, for instance.

In summary, Chesterton believed three things about Distributism: that it was truly needed, that it would work, and that it was a good thing both for individuals and for society as a whole. It seems that now, eighty years after his time, it is needed more than ever before. All sorts of people, not only philosophers, are now complaining about the wastefulness of industrial society, with the added reason of the harm done to the environment and the waste of natural resources; all men, not only “unpractical” ones, are concerned with the growing amount of unemployment; everyone, rich and poor, complains about the stressfulness of life in this capitalist society. No one doubts that property and leisure to enjoy it (and leaving it enjoyable for our descendants) are good things, or that a system that could truly make it easy for all to have them would be an excellent one. Enough arguments have been given already in support of Distributism’s ability to provide these things; there remains only the question of possibility. Chesterton’s reply to this is unanswerable: a Distributist society has been founded and has lasted. Not, certainly, in an industrialized and thoroughly capitalist society like this one, but by perfectly ordinary people no different from those of today. Thus Distrubutism is evidently both worth while and possible, and should be considered at least an important alternative to better known systems, and hopefully, a solution to the problems of wastefulness, unemployment, and confusion of our present society.

[1] All information about Belloc’s ideas on Capitalism is from The Servile State.

[2] From Chesterton’s introduction to The Catholic Land Movement.

[3] From Chesterton’s introduction to The Catholic Land Movement.

[4] This is a summary of Chesterton’s argument in The Outline of Sanity 5.

Ocho ministros españoles son masones

Y esto lo ha reconocido, ¡nada menos!, que el mismísimo Presidente de la Gran Logia de España.
Si a esto se añade, según señaló pensabem.com, que la mayoría de los europarlamentarios son también hijos de la Viuda resulta claro quién nos gobierna y en las manos que estamos.
Un estudio tan sucinto como suculento de las sucesivas condenas papales a la Masonería, de sus actividades anticristianas y de sus “hazañas” históricas puede encontrarse aquí.

Rafael Castela Santos

Reflexiones religiosas sobre España y Portugal (y Estados Unidos)

En España, hoy día 22 de Mayo, 52 Obispos españoles han reconsagrado España al Inmaculado Corazón de María, repitiendo la Consagración hecha en 1954. Hace ya muchos siglos que la Santa Madre Iglesia concedió el título de “Tierra de María” a la nación española por la filial devoción de los españoles a la Madre de Dios. España tiene el singular privilegio de haber acogido en su seno la primera aparición de la Virgen en la historia de la humanidad de la que hay constancia, que fue en Zaragoza y que es conmemorada en la Basílica del Pilar.
Hoy día España ha caído en un grado de abyección religiosa, moral y política como en pocos momentos de la historia. Los Obispos españoles, tan dados a menudo al uso de las herramientas políticas y humanas, han tomado la decisión de reconsagrar España, que es una gran idea.
Pido, por favor, a todos nuestros lectores creyentes que vengan a A Casa de Sarto que recen siquiera una oración por España en este momento tan trágico de su historia (aborto prácticamente libre, gaymonio, burla de la muerte de los inocentes y apoyo de sus verdugos –las negociaciones con ETA-, tremenda injusticia social … todos ellos pecados que claman venganza al Cielo). Pidan, por favor, para que los españoles retornen a su Fe y sean fieles en estos momentos terribles de tribulación que España atraviesa y en los que, aún peores, ya se ven en la lontananza.

Hablando del aborto es de todo punto encomiable la actitud de los médicos portugueses, resistiéndose al crimen mayúsculo de matar al inocente e indefenso. La actuación de la Orden de Médicos portuguesa ha sido tal que ha dificultado enormemente tal crimen, y por lo que debe ser elogiada. De este particular se hacen eco en el Semanario Alba en su edición del 19/05/05.
De todas maneras ya menciona Alba de las tensiones existentes entre el actual poder político portugués, que claramente quiere implantar el aborto, y el sentir general de los médicos portugueses. Con todo hay 60 diputados socialistas portugueses que no ven con buenos ojos el aborto en Portugal. ¡Qué Dios les permita y ayude a seguir así!

Mientras escribo estas líneas estoy escuchando una radio católica a través del internet, realmente encomiable por sus programas y que si tienen buen dominio del inglés les recomiendo fehacientemente. Escucho a un Sacerdote hablar sobre el caso de Terri Schiavo, del que ya habíamos hablado en A Casa de Sarto. Me resisto a no compartir con Vds. algunos detalles que acabo de escuchar. Por ejemplo, que el Estado puso policías y ¡hasta francotiradores! para evitar que nadie le llevase alimentos ni agua. Recordemos a Terri Schiavo, que no estaba inconsciente ni nada de esto, se le condenó a morir de sed, lo que no se hace ni a los peores criminales. Por ejemplo que un niño de 10 años que intentó poner dos cubitos de hielo en los labios de Terri Schiavo fue detenido, esposado, encarcelado y él (o sus padres) serán juzgados por la “felonía”. Por ejemplo está siendo durísimo escuchar al Sacerdote que la asistió durante los últimos dos días de su vida los detalles acerca del distrés enorme con que la pobre Terri Schiavo murió, porque no es nada agradable morir de sed, ciertamente.
Así vivimos en los EE.UU., con los criminales en la calle y matando a los inocentes “cuya vida no vale”, como la de Terri Schiavo, o a niños por millones. Aquí en los Estados Unidos el Gulag más peligroso es el vientre materno.

¿Hasta cuándo, Señor?

Rafael Castela Santos

Educação, instrução e perversão sexual

Sobre a polémica despoletada a propósito do conteúdo do inqualificável programa da disciplina de educação sexual a ser leccionada nas escolas portuguesas, o fundamental já foi dito na blogosfera, com destaque para este sítio. Relembro, a quem ainda não o haja feito, que deve assinar esta petição, como forma de protesto contra tal estado de coisas. Por mim, assinei-a logo no primeiro dia em que esteve disponível em linha.

Acrescento que não incumbe ao Estado interferir em matéria de exclusiva competência da Família - sociedade natural que o antecede, e com direitos naturais próprios decorrentes dessa factualidade -, muitos menos para impor uma suposta educação sexual que se reduz afinal a mera instrução sexual, ou até a autêntica perversão sexual, ministrada por professores com um espírito, mais do que não-cristão, anticristão.

É inadmissível que tais aulas constituam mais uma frente aberta pela esquerda radical que controla burocraticamente o aparelho educativo estatal, na guerra cultural de aniquilação que a mesma declarou aos valores espirituais básicos da nossa civilização, e à religião cristã que lhes dá fundamento. A haver aulas de educação sexual nas escolas públicas, têm estas de respeitar escrupulosamente os valores religiosos e morais dos pais e das famílias, educando os alunos para a prática de uma sexualidade consciente e responsável, nas quais se relevem os fins desta realidade - a transmissão da vida humana e a manifestação da afectividade entre os cônjuges no seio do casamento, tudo entendido numa perspectiva moral tradicional cristã. O que sair deste plano, só pode ser firmemente reprovado e rejeitado sem quaisquer hesitações.

JSarto

Desmontando a von Mises

Para volver sobre el tema del distributismo, como anunciamos a nuestros lectores, traemos ahora a Cristopher Ferrara, un abogado estadounidense que ha descollado en la defensa de los principios católicos, tanto dentro de su práctica legal, como con la pluma.
Ferrara ataca aquí a Mises y Rothbard, dos de los más grandes proponentes del liberalismo contemporáneao que algunos han dado en llamar, no sin cierta razón, “anarco-capitalismo”. Christopher Ferrara señala las contradicciones entre la doctrina católica y el liberalismo económico pregonado por Ludwig von Mises y cómo este último desemboca, inexorablemente, en un sistema injusto.
El texto completo se puede encontrar aquí.

Rafael Castela Santos


Opposing the Austrian heresy

Christopher A. Ferrara

…
A Cult of Laissez Faire
I do not use the phrase "swelling ambitions" or the word "cult" lightly. The Mises Institute, founded to preach a gospel of social and economic "liberty" to the world, boasts of the movement's success in near-messianic terms. As the Institute—headed by a Catholic, Lew Rockwell—recently declared:
We have been remarkably effective in building a global movement for liberty and its intellectual foundation. Today Austrians and libertarians form a cohesive movement the world over, united on principles, publishing as never before, and teaching the multitudes through every means available. For this reason, the Austrian School has been called the most coherent and active international intellectual movement since Marxism.
…
What Kind of Thomist Is This?
Rothbard befriended a number of prominent Catholics during his life, but evidently was converted by none of them. He professed to be a "neo-Thomist" because of his peculiar secularized notion of "natural rights" detached from any divine endowment. Rothbard (and other Austrians) attempted to pass off his version of natural rights as likewise sanctioned by the Spanish Scholastics, but of course no Scholastic philosopher ever held that there could be natural rights without a divine Obligor to give them the force of natural law, which is man's innate participation in the eternal law. There can be no rights without an obligor, nor law without a lawgiver. And if there is no divine Creator who endowed man with a fixed nature, what sense does it make to speak of human "nature" and "natural" rights in the first place? Rothbard's "scholarship" attributing to St. Thomas and Suarez the "absolute independence of natural law from the question of the existence of God…" was not only shoddy; it was nonsensical on its face.
Rothbard's natural-right theory was limited to the (non-existent) "ownership" of one's own body and the ownership of private property attaching on first appropriation of unused resources. Since these were the only two natural rights Rothbard recognized as universally binding, he (like the strict utilitarian Mises) would limit the power of government to the protection of those rights only. Thus, he defined "freedom" as "the absence of invasion [his emphasis] by another man of any man's person or property."
Based on his concepts of natural rights and freedom, whose deviance from Catholic teaching needs no demonstration, "dear Murray" advocated not only the legal right to abortion but also the right to sell one's children (i.e., to sell the ownership of parental rights), or, if one prefers, to let one's children starve to death. The latter "right," wrote Rothbard, "allows us to solve such vexing questions as: should a parent allow a deformed baby to die (e.g., by not feeding it)? The answer is, of course, yes…." Rothbard was certain, however, that "in a libertarian society, the existence of a free baby market will bring such 'neglect' down to a minimum." These views of "dear Murray" are enunciated in his Ethics of Liberty, which Mr. Rockwell promotes as part of "the core" and one of the ten "must haves" of Austrian literature.

Freeing Prices and Wages from Morality
In demonstrating that the Austrians have not accurately presented the Scholastic teaching on the just wage and the just price, Dr. Chojnowski has done much more than to make an academic point. As he points out, Mises (and, even more so, Rothbard) advocated a social order that negate[s] Christendom and every social, economic, and moral teaching of the Catholic Church [and] also renders "inoperative" the entire Classical moral and philosophical tradition.
Dr. Chojnowski is here referring to a fundamental truth of human existence affirmed by Western man from the time of the pagan philosophers to the great anti-liberal popes of the 19th and early 20th centuries: i.e., that man is ordered by his very nature to life in society under a common ruler and set of laws, and that this arrangement, called the State, is necessary not only for the maintenance of peace but also for the achievement of virtue, which means "becoming as like to God as it is possible for man to become." As Pope Leo XIII declared in Libertas, his monumental encyclical on the nature of human liberty:
Even the heathen philosophers clearly recognized this truth, especially they who held that the wise man alone is free; and by the term 'wise man' was meant, as is well known, the man trained to live in accordance with his nature, that is, in justice and virtue.
The Misesian-Rothbardian system, going even beyond the French Revolutionaries and The Declaration of the Rights of Man, utterly rejects this concept of the State. As Rothbard wrote in Ethics of Liberty:
[T]he great failing of natural-law theory—from Plato and Aristotle to the Thomists and down to Leo Strauss and his followers in the present day—is to have been profoundly statist rather than individualist.
That is, the entire Western tradition is wrong and "dear Murray" is right. Following Rothbard, many (if not most) contemporary Austrians would not only limit the power of the State to the mere prevention of violence and theft (a la Mises), but would abolish the State altogether in favor of a Utopian "anarcho-capitalist" polity in which social order is maintained entirely by insurance companies and other private contractual agencies. As the libertarian scholar Ralph Raico explains:
Contemporary Austrian economists, following in Mises's footsteps, have by and large adopted a more radical form of liberalism. At least one of them, Murray N. Rothbard…has gone even further in his anti-statism. It is to a large degree due to Rothbard's "libertarian scholarship and advocacy"…that Austrianism is associated in the minds of many with a defense of the free market and private property to the point of the very abolition of the state, and thus of the total triumph of civil society.
Thus, Marxist and Austrian alike envision a withering away of the State, although they arrive at their dreamland from opposite sides: the one by way of abolishing private property, the other by exalting it to the summum bonum of politics (even if, as Rothbard allowed, "personal ethics" might have a higher aim in view).
Seen against this background, the Austrians' attempt to cast the Spanish Scholastics as proto-Austrians, an undertaking begun by Rothbard, is highly significant. The aim here is to persuade us that it is perfectly Catholic to believe that "the market price is the just price" without further moral inquiry, and that this is true always and everywhere, both as to wages and commodities. Of course, to accept this dictum is to reject the teaching of seven consecutive popes, both pre- and post-conciliar, who hold quite to the contrary on the question of just wages: Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II have all insisted on precisely the point that the "market wage" and the just wage are not morally equivalent, as an employer is bound in justice to pay, whenever conditions allow, a living wage sufficient for the ordinary support of a dependent worker and his family, no matter what "the market" supposedly dictates. As Pope Leo declared in Rerum Novarum (§63):
[T]here underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim offeree and injustice….
As the Austrians would have it, the Spanish Scholastics shared their theory that prices and wages arise from the sum total of subjective utility assessments by parties to exchanges (i.e., what each party thinks the good or service to be acquired or given up is worth in terms of serving needs or wants on his personal scale of values), rather than by such objective factors as cost plus reasonable profit, what is needed to maintain one's station in life, or the commonly estimated intrinsic value of a good. As Dr. Chojnowski shows, however, the Austrians' own writings admit (or at least inadvertently reveal) that the Scholastics did not teach this absolutist view. Rather, as the renowned traditional Catholic economist Heinrich Pesch, S.J., pointed out in Volume V of his encyclopedic treatise on economics, Lehrbuch der Nationalokonomie, the Scholastic teaching on the just price involved "a combination of 'subjective' and 'objective' factors, as these exert decisive influence on the price formation." These factors included not just subjective utility but also "the qualitative capacity of the goods for satisfying human wants," the "work and costs involved in producing and making the goods available," and, most damaging to the Austrian claim, "the general [objective] value estimation and the officially set price" in keeping with the common legal practice in medieval times of ceiling prices fixed by the prince, especially as to the necessities of life. Indeed, even on the question of wages the Spanish Scholastics were in general agreement with the later papal view that in the labor market "compulsion was possible due to disadvantage in bargaining power held by either employee or employer" and that "[c]ollusion associated with labor market combinations might require an impartial observer to establish the just wage, properly reinforced by legal rule" —not exactly music to Austrian ears.
Why the Austrian insistence on an exclusive subjective utility theory and the resulting "free agreement" as the only criterion of justice in prices and wages? Why do the Austrians seriously defend Scrooge and the practice of price-gouging desperate consumers during emergencies, when the voice of conscience in every reasonable man cries "outrageous" and "unfair"? The answer is that if there is no objective standard of a just price or wage, and if the just price or wage is—in every case, always and everywhere—simply the market price, then the market becomes totally "self-regulating" and thus immune from moral correction of its abuses by either the Church or public authority. If the just price is nothing more than the market price, then, conveniently enough, the market never fails to achieve justice so defined. This means that the market's marvelous "self-regulating" capacity can then be cited in favor of an entire "free market society" based on "the market principle," wherein human action in general is free from any "external" norm of justice imposed by law, save that which governs economic exchange: i.e., the absence of violence or theft. As Rothbard argued in a passage full of loaded terminology:
Every time a free, peaceful unit-act of exchange occurs, the market principle has been put into operation; every time a man coerces an exchange by the threat of violence [i.e., the force of law enforced by public authority], the hegemonic principle has been put to work. All the shadings of society are mixtures of these two primary elements. The more the market principle prevails in a society, therefore, the greater will be that society's freedom and its prosperity. The more the hegemonic principle abounds, the greater will be the extent of slavery and poverty….

The Austrian Heresy
The effort to "baptize" what has rightly been called (in a broad, non-canonical sense) "the Austrian heresy" would lead us only to a "purified" form of the same social order condemned by every pope from Pius VI through Pius XII. As faithful Catholics understand, however, Murray Rothbard had no idea what "freedom" means, nor any authority to teach the world about the nature of social liberty. The whole truth about social liberty is to be found only in the teaching of the Magisterium, a single paragraph of which contains more wisdom than the entire bloated corpus of Austrian political philosophy. As Pope Leo taught in Libertas Praestantissimum:
[T]he eternal law of God is the sole standard and rule of human liberty, not only in each individual man, but also in the community and civil society which men constitute when united. Therefore, the true liberty of human society does not consist in every man doing what he pleases, for this would simply end in turmoil and confusion, and bring on the overthrow of the State; but rather in this, that through the injunctions of the civil law all may more easily conform to the prescriptions of the eternal law….What has been said of the liberty of individuals is no less applicable to them when considered as bound together in civil society. For, what reason and the natural law do for individuals, human law, promulgated for their good, does for the citizens of States.
Pope Leo here describes with marvelous concision the only concept of social liberty to which Catholics can adhere. Nor should we entertain the argument by certain Catholic Austrians that the Church's concept of social liberty is out of the question today, and that we must settle for an expedient compromise with "the facts." Speaking of precisely this sort of liberal Catholic, Pius XI declared:
Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country…on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV. There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism.
Finally, we can reply to these social modernists, who call for a compromise of the Catholic ideal, by citing against them Rothbard's own exhortation never to forsake a "radical idealism":
The free-market economist F. A. Hayek, himself in no sense an extremist, has written eloquently of the vital importance for the success of liberty of holding the pure and "extreme" ideology aloft as a never-to-be-forgotten creed. Hayek has written that one of the great attractions of socialism has always been the continuing stress on its "ideal" goal, an ideal that permeates, informs, and guides the actions of all those striving to attain it….Hayek is here highlighting an important truth, and an important reason for stressing the ultimate goal: the excitement and enthusiasm that a logically consistent system can inspire.
Catholics can certainly subscribe to Rothbard's sentiment in "holding aloft" their own "never-to-be-forgotten creed" concerning true liberty. The Catholic creed of liberty is to be found in the doctrine handed down to them, not by liberal Jewish thinkers, but by the Church that God Incarnate founded to make disciples of all nations. We can only thank Dr. Chojnowski for standing in opposition to those, including misguided Catholics, who would advance another ideal of human society.

Actitud de los musulmanes hacia la Biblia

La noticia fue dada por World Daily News. No sólo los musulmanes que se “refugiaron en el templo cristiano de Belén”, en Tierra Santa, se dedicaron a cometer sacrilegios por doquier (desecración de un templo consagrado, utilización sacrílega de la Biblia, robos de objetos sagrados, etc.). Estos musulmanes armados se apropiaron de la comida negándosela a los muchos fieles que se encontraban dentro de la iglesia. Uno puede decir que no sólo no hubo ninguna hospitalidad, por proverbial que esta digan que sea, sino que comieron, literalmente, como cerdos. Nótese que no hay aquí conflicto racial alguno, puesto que la mayor parte de los cristianos de Palestina son árabes de raza; pero sí es un conflicto de religión.
En Arabia Saudita confiscan y destruyen las Biblias a los extranjeros y turistas que visitan dicho país islámico. ¿Se imaginan si un país occidental hiciera lo mismo con ellos y con sus libros sagrados?
Estas cosas no tienen eco en los media oficiales, tan preocupados como están por fomentar el cosmopolitismo y el mundialismo. Que se sepa que entre la Cristiandad y el Islam no hay acuerdo posible. La naturaleza agresiva del Islam contra la Cristiandad es permanente y tenemos que mentalizarnos que ante ellos siempre tendremos que defendernos (¡y defendernos activamente!), como hemos hecho en el pasado. La Reconquista y las Cruzadas fueron guerras defensivas contra territorios otrora cristianos y entonces invadidos.
Esto es lo que necesitamos, una Fe como la de aquellos antepasados de españoles y portugueses que echaron al invasor islámico de la Península. Sin esa Fe acabamos por cesar de ser nosotros mismos y acabaremos por aceptar (o por sernos impuesto) lo que nos llega de fuera, como el Islam. Sería, empero, el justo castigo a una apostasía.
Entretanto, la persecución a los cristianos en Tierra Santa (tanto por judíos como por musulmanes), continúa …
Es la actualización del Calvario y la Cruz.

Rafael Castela Santos

Julio Fleichman ha muerto

Es con dolor que recibimos ayer mismo la noticia de la muerte de Julio Fleichman. Ya en A Casa de Sarto nos habíamos hecho eco hace tiempo de este insigne pensador y habíamos reproducido una entrevista realizada a él.
Julio Fleichman (1928-2005) ha sido un bastión impresionante de la Tradición en Brasil. Judío converso al catolicismo por influencia de Gustavo Corçao, se distinguió siempre por la solidez de su trabajo. En todos ellos (en su propio trabajo, en su labor al frente de la editorial Permanencia, en su defensa de la Tradición, etc.) permaneció siempre fiel. Sin él la Tradición no hubiera sido posible en la Patria hermana brasileña.
A modo de un mínimo testimonio personal tuvimos un intercambio epistolar hace unos años. No hacía mucho que había leído su libro O Itinerário Espiritual da Igreja Católica y me contestó con una gran amabilidad enviándome su libro de memorias, ya agotado. Sus cartas, manuscritas, destilaban una amabilidad fuera de lo común y su caligrafía era ya la de alguien herido por la edad. Luego, debido a su ya precario estado de salud, era su hijo, Dom Lourenço Fleichman, OSB, quien me contestaba en nombre de su padre. En el primer libro que menciono Julio Fleichman hacía un conciso pero profundísimo análisis de la historia eclesiástica a vista de águila. Acostumbrado a leer libros de historia de la Iglesia tan antropocéntricos su perspectiva teocéntrica, confieso, me maravilló. Invito a nuestros lectores a que se hagan con un ejemplar de este libro, que bien merece la pena ser leído.
Cuando la Misa Tridentina prácticamente cesó en Brasil, una nación afligida por la teología de la liberación como pocas, Julio Fleichman llegó a instalar una Capilla en Río de Janeiro en su propia casa. Su voluntad constante de preservar la Misa de siempre fue patente.
Descanse en paz este hombre que luchó el buen combate.
Dios, a quien nadie gana en generosidad, dará el ciento por uno a quien ya dio mucho en esta vida.
Desde A Casa de Sarto enviamos nuestro más sentido pésame a Dom Lourenço Fleichman y al resto de la familia Fleichman y sus amigos y allegados.
Que el ejemplo y la lección vital de Julio Fleichman sea un motivo de inspiración para todos nosotros.
[Nota: un obituario más extenso puede encontrarse aquí]

Rafael Castela Santos

Os Pecados Capitais

Pe. Emmanuel-André


Prometemos lançar um olhar detalhado sobre as chagas da natureza. Teremos como guia São Gregório Magno e nos bastará escutar o incomparável doutor.
Explicando as palavras de Jó: «Ele sente de longe o odor da guerra, a arenga dos capitães, o ulular do exército» (Jó,XXXIX,25)ele diz:
«Entre os vícios que combatem invisivelmente contra nós, sob o império do orgulho, há alguns que marcham na frente como capitães, outros que seguem como simples sodados. Porque os pecados não dominam o coração da mesma maneira. Quando os pecados principais, que são em menor número, se apoderam de uma alma que se descuida, os menores, que são em número infinito, caem sobre ela em tropel. Quando o rei dos vícios, que é o orgulho, se apodera inteiramente de um coração vencido, ele o entrega, imediatamente, à devastação dos sete vícios capitais, como se fossem capitães às suas ordens. Esses são seguidos de um grande exército porque é deles que nascem todos os outros vícios. Explicaremos isso mais claramente, fazendo uma enumeração detalhada desses chefes e de seu exército.
A raiz de todo o mal é o orgulho, do qual está escrito: O começo de todo pecado é o orgulho (Ecl.X,15). Suas primeiras produções são os sete pecados capitais que nascem dessa raiz empesteada, a saber: a vã glória, a inveja, a cólera, a tristeza, a avareza, a gula e a luxúria. (1).
Cada um desses vícios tem contra nós seus exércitos. A vã glória é seguida pela desobediência, a jactância, a hipocrisia, as discussões, a teimosia, as discórdias e a curiosidade pelas novidades.
A inveja é seguida do ódio, da maledicência secreta, da difamação pública, do contentamento com os males do próximo, da raiva por sua prosperidade.
A cólera engendra as rixas, a inchação do espírito, as injúrias, os clamores, a indignação, as blasfêmias.
A tristeza é seguida da malícia, do rancor, da timidez, do desespero, da tibieza diante dos mandamentos divinos e do extravio do espírito na direção das coisas ilícitas.
A avareza engendra a traição, a mentira, a falsidade, o perjúrio, a inquietação, a viiolência, o endurecimento do coração contra a misericordia.
A gula é seguida dos prazeres loucos, das bufonarias, do impudor, da tagarelice, do embrutecimento intelectual.
A luxuria engendra a cegueira da alma, o alheamento, a inconstância, a precipitação, o amor de si mesmo, o ódio de Deus, a afeição pelo mundo presente e a aversão ou o desespero pelo mundo futuro.
E esses sete vícios capitais são ligados entre si por tão grande afinidade que se engendram uns aos outros. Assim, a primeira produção do orgulho, que é a vã glória, mal comunicou sua corrupção à alma, logo engendra a inveja, por que aquele que aspira ao poder ou a dignidade é atormentado pelo medo de que algum outro o obtenha antes dele. Por seu lado, a inveja engendra a cólera: quanto mais a alma é interiormente roída pela inveja, mais ela perde a doçura e a tranqüilidade, ela só se alimenta com o desgosto nascido de sua perturbação. A tristeza degenera também em avareza, poque o coração, caído na confusão e tendo perdido o dom da alegria interior, vai procurar fora com que se consolar, e sai atrás dos bens exteriores com tanto mais ardor quanto menos tenha em si mesmo motivos de alegria a que possa recorrer. Depois desses restam os dois vícios da carne, a saber a gula e a luxúria, e ninguém ignora que a gula engendra a luxúria...» (1)
São Gregório nota que, dos sete pecados capitais, há cinco que são vícios do espírito e dois são vícios da carne. E segundo ele, pode-se reduzi-los a dois: o orgulho e a impureza. O que é o orgulho senão a impureza do espírito? E o que é a impureza senão o orgulho da carne?
«Esses dois vícios – diz ainda São Gregório – exercem um duro domínio sobre todos os homens.
O orgulho rebela o espírito, a luxúria corrompe a carne: o antigo inimigo oprime a natureza humana ou pelo orgulho ou pela impureza, submetendo o homem condenado ao jugo de sua tirania pela vã elevação do espírito ou pela corrupção da carne. Há mesmo alguns a quem ele possui por esses dois vícios ao mesmo tempo». (2)
Estando a natureza, depois da queda original, no estado que conhecemos, o naturalismo chega e anuncia seu grande princípio: A natureza se basta! Nós o veremos pondo-se à obra e cedo ele pretenderá nos ensinar a moral.

Texto original.

(RCS)

Introducción al distributismo

Me invita JSarto a través de la correspondencia privada a que escriba sobre el distributismo. No me siento capaz de hacerlo de mi puño y letra ahora, pero sí que quisiera presentar aquí una síntesis de esta corriente del pensamiento económico (y político). Para ello traigo a colación una selección de textos extraída de Peter Chojnowski, cuyo texto completo se puede leer aquí.
Peter Chojnowski es profesor de Filosofía en Estados Unidos, tomista, tradicionalista y católico. Su formidable conocimiento de la Summa Theologica y su habilidad para poner los conceptos tomistas al alcance del hombre de la calle y de juzgar con criterios de filosofía católica y escolástica los problemas modernos a que nos enfrentamos hacen de él un autor que a partir de ahora vamos a ir trayendo de vez en cuando a A Casa de Sarto.
No va a ser el primero ni el último sobre distributismo. En este momento estamos en contacto con una jovencísima y más que brillante estudiante de Clásicas de la Washington University en San Luis, EE.UU., quien escribió un conciso ensayo sobre este mismo particular para que nos lo deje publicar en A Casa de Sarto. Esperamos poder colgar este otro artículo próximamente.

Rafael Castela Santos



Distributism: Economics as if People Mattered

…
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were a group of scholars, theologians, philosopher, social critics, and poets, who predicted the inevitable demise of the capitalist economic system which was just developing in Continental Europe, but had been operative for 100 years in England […] one is struck by the fact that their analyzes are more valid today than they were 70 or 80 years ago, their predictions more likely to be imminently fulfilled …
In the case of Belloc, in his book The Servile State, it was predicted that capitalism would soon transform itself into an economic and social system which resembled the slave economies of the pre-Christian and early Christian eras. Why did they predict such a collapse or inevitable transformation? In their writings, many reasons are given, however, we can narrow them down to three. The first, they referred to as the "capitalist paradox." The paradox is a consequence of capitalism being an economic system which, in the long run, "prevents people from obtaining the wealth produced and prevents the owner of the wealth from finding a market." Since the capitalist strives both for ever greater levels of production and lower wages, eventually "the laborer who actually produces say, boots cannot afford to buy a sufficient amount of the boots which he himself has made." This leads to the "absurd position of men making more goods than they need, and yet having less of those goods available for themselves than they need."
…
The capitalist system, by its very nature, places the preponderance of wealth in the hands of a small minority. This monopoly on the money supply by banking and financial concerns, becomes more absolute as the capital-needing consumer must go to the banks to borrow money. Usury, now called "interest," insures that those who first possesses the money for loan, will end up with a greater portion of the money supply than they possessed before the loan was issued. As wages stagnate and interest payments become increasingly impossible to make, massive numbers of defaults will inevitably produce a crisis for the entire financial system. When entire nations default on loans, there will be a crisis throughout the entire international financial system. Demise is, therefore, built into the very structure of the capitalistic system in which capital (i.e., all kinds of wealth whatsoever which man uses with the object of producing further wealth, and without which the further wealth could not be produced. It is a reserve without which the process of production is impossible) is primarily in the hands of the few. As G.K. Chesterton rightly stated, the problem with capitalism is that it produces too few capitalists! The third fact concerning capitalism which the Distributists thought would inevitably bring down the system or lead to its fundamental transformation, was the general instability and personal insecurity which marks a full-blown capitalist economy. What accounts for this general feeling of insecurity and instability, which characterizes both the individual "wage-earner" and the society living under capitalism, is the always present fear of unemployment and, hence, of destitution and the fact that a laborer's real wages leave him with only enough money to cover the expenses of the day. Saving, so as to provide an economic hedge against the misfortune of unemployment or personal crisis, becomes almost impossible.
…
The social consequences of the majority being unable to afford real property, the decline and, eventual, disappearance of the trade guilds and vocational corporations, the "necessity" of wives and mothers entering the "work force," the end of small-scale family -owned businesses and farms, the decline of the apprentice system were all indictments of capitalism in the mind of those who sought to chart out a "third way" between capitalism, which is simply liberalism in the economic sphere, and socialism.
…
The institution of usury, always an necessary adjunct of economic liberalism, has caused in recent years more bankruptcies and personal debt than ever before in history. Nations, such as Indonesia, are tottering on the brink of social, economic, and political chaos because of their inability to pay the interest on their hundreds of billions of dollars in bank debt. If such a nation should go into default, it could threaten to throw a whole variety of nations into recession, depression, or worse.
It is not proper to say that the predictions of the imminent demise of capitalism were totally without fulfillment. The 1920s, 30s, and 40s witnessed reaction after reaction to the radical individualism which is the fundamental idea of liberal capitalism. Truly, the market is the institutionalization of individualism and non-responsibility. Neither buyer nor seller is responsible for anything but himself. The idea that if every man simply seeks after his own economic interest, all will be provided for and prosper, was almost universally rejected during these decades. We see strong reactions to economic liberalism in Russian Communism, German National Socialism, Italian Fascism, Austrian, Portuguese, and Spanish Corporatism, British Fabian Socialism, along with the American "New Deal" leftism. Thus, in the 1930s and 1940s, most of the world was ordered by ideologies which explicitly rejected the premises of economic liberalism. We must, also, not forget the international economic crash of the late 20s and early 30s, which produced economic depression, totalitarian regimes, and, finally, world war.
There is one fact which separates our day from the days of the 30s and 40s, however. The concentration of wealth and capital, the inadequacy of a man's pay to provide the basics of life and to provide for savings for the future, the lack of real property generously and broadly distributed, is masked by the reality of easy credit. Easy credit, which is not ultimately "easy" at all on the borrower, anesthetizes the populace to the grim facts of capitalist monopoly. Since we seem to be able to get all the things that we want, the reality of real money being increasingly unavailable to the average man is lost in the delusionary state of the consumerist utopia. Only when the "benefit" of usurious credit is cut off, do we realize the full extent of the problem. The greatest problem with liberal capitalism, however, is not the concentration of wealth or real property, the greatest "existential" problem created by capitalism is the problem of the very meaning and reality of work. To work is essential to what it means to be a human being. Next to the family, it is work and the relationships established by work that are the true foundations of society. In modern capitalism, however, it is productivity and profit which are the basic aims, not the providing of satisfying work. Moreover, since "labor saving" devices are the proudest accomplishments of industrial capitalism, labor itself is stamped with the mark of undesirability. But what is undesirable cannot confer dignity.
It is not merely that industrial capitalism has produced forms of work, both manual and white-collared, which are "utterly uninteresting and meaningless. Mechanical, artificial, divorced from nature, utilizing only the smallest part of man's potential capacities, [sentencing] the great majority of workers to spending their working lives in a way which contains no worthy challenge, no stimulus to self-perfection, no chance of development, no element of Beauty, Truth, Goodness." Rather, capitalism has so fundamentally alienated man from his own work, that he no longer considers it his own. It is those with the financial monopoly who determine what forms of work are to exist and which are "valuable" (i.e., useful for rendering profits to the owners of money). Since man spends most of his days working, his entire existence becomes hollowed out, serving a purpose which is not of his own choosing nor in accord with his final end.
In regard to the entire question of a "final end," if we are to consider capitalism from a truly philosophical perspective, we must ask of it the most philosophical of questions, why? What is the purpose for which all else is sacrificed, what is the purpose of continuous growth? Is it growth for growth's sake? With capitalism, there is no "saturation point," no condition in which the masters of the system say that the continuous growth of corporate profits and the development of technological devices has ceased to serve the ultimate, or even the proximate, ends of mankind. Perhaps, the most damning indictment of economic liberalism, indeed, of any form of liberalism, is its inability to answer the question "why."

Corporatism: The Catholic Response
…
The institutions which were being defended in Corporatist thought were the ancient "estates" or "guilds" which had been the pillars of Christian Germany for centuries. These corporate bodies, grouping together all the men of a particular occupation or social function, were an institutional opposition to the revolutionary doctrines of individualism and human equality. One early rightist thinker, Adam Muller, upheld the traditional idea of social stratification based upon an organic hierarchy of estates or guilds (Berufstandische). Such a system was necessary on account of the essential dissimilarity of men. Moreover, such a system would prevent the "atomization" of society so much desired by the revolutionaries who wished to remake in a new form that which had been pulverized by liberalism.
…
It was, however, a German nobleman and prelate, Wilhelm Emmanuel, Baron von Ketteler (1811-1877), Bishop of Mainz, who directed Corporatism into new avenues and forced it to address new concerns. […] As Pope Leo XIII himself admitted on several occasions, it was the thought of Bishop von Ketteler which helped shape his own encyclical letter on Catholic economic teaching Rerum Novarum (1891). The "new things" His Holiness was addressing were capitalism and socialism. Both meet with his condemnation, although capitalism is condemned with strong language as an abuse of property, a deprivation of the many by the few, while socialism is dismissed outright as being contrary to man's inherent right to own property.
Von Ketteler, also, in his book Die Arbeiterfrage und das Christenthum (Christianity and the Labor Problem), attacks the supremacy of capital and the reign of economic liberalism as the two main roots of the evils of modern society. Both represented the growing ascendancy of individualism and materialism, twin forces that were operating to "bring about the dissolution of all that unites men organically, spiritually, intellectually, morally, and socially." Economic liberalism was nothing but an application of materialism to society." The working class are to be reduced to atoms and then mechanically reassembled. This is the fundamental generative principle of modern political economy." What Ketteler sought to remedy was "This pulverization method, this chemical solution of humanity into individuals, into grains of dust equal in value, into particles which a puff of wind may scatter in all directions." Bishop von Ketteler's solution to this problem of the pulverization of the work force and the ensuing injustice which this would inevitably breed, was to propose an idea which was the central concept of medieval and post-medieval economic life, the guild system. When responding to a letter from a group of Catholic workers who had submitted the question "Can a Catholic Workingman be a member of the Socialist Worker's Party?," Bishop von Ketteler outlined the basic structure of these vocational guilds or Berufstandische: First, "The desired organizations must be of natural growth; that is, they must grow out of the nature of things, out of the character of the people and its faith, as did the guilds of the Middle Ages." Second, "They must have an economic purpose and must not be subservient to the intrigues and idle dreams of politicians nor to the fanaticism of the enemies of religion." Third, "They must have a moral basis, that is, a consciousness of corporative honor, corporative responsibility, etc. Fourth, "They must include all the individuals of the same vocational estates." Fifth, "Self-government and control must be combined in due proportion."
The guilds … would regulate all aspects of their particular trade, including wages, prices for products, quality control, along with certifying that all apprentices has the requisite skills to adequately perform the guild's particular art.
Following the intellectual path charted by von Ketteler, another German Catholic, Franz Hitze (1851-1921), wrote of the social, psychological, and, even, spiritual purposes which would be served by the vocational corporations or guilds. Claiming that "economic freedom" was only a myth serving to disguise the fact that capital actually ordered things completely with a single eye to its own advantage, Hitze saw no alternative to the economic and social control traditionally exercised by the guilds. It would be such organizations which overcame the antagonism between capital and labor which fed Marxist propaganda. In his book Kapital und Arbeit und die Reorganisation der Gesellschaft (Capital and Labor and the Reorganization of Society), Hitze states that such organizations would also end the fierce competition which is totally inconsistent with the idea of the Common Good and social solidarity. This idea that an economy can be ordered on the basis of "mutuality" and the identification of the interests of employer and employee, is difficult for those who assume that an economic system must be powered by competition and self-interest. It must be remembered, however, that such was the economic system of Christendom until the guilds were destroyed by the advent of the French Revolution.
What these traditional vocational groups were able to foster during the ages in which they ordered the life of the craftsman, was a decentralization both of property and of economic power. They, also, enabled the average craftsman to have a real say in the workings of his trade. Such economic "federalism" or decentralization prevented the development of financial monopolies. As Hilaire Belloc states, "Above all, most jealously did the guild safeguard the division of property, so that there should be formed within its ranks no proletariat upon the one side, and no monopolizing capitalist upon the other."

Chesterbelloc and Distributism
…
Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton … expressed not the socialist idea of the confiscation of all private property, but rather, the wide-spread distribution of land, real-property, the means of production, and of financial capital, amongst the greater part of the families of a nation. Such a concept, along with their encouragement of the guild system, of a return to the agrarian life, and of their condemnation of the taking of interest on non-productive loans, formed the core of this "new" economic model.
In his book Economics for Helen, Belloc identifies the nature of the Distributist State by distinguishing this type of state and social and economic system from that of the Servile State and the Capitalist State. The Servile State is the one of classical antiquity, in which vast masses of the people work as slaves for the small class of owners. In this way, the economic state of antiquity is very similar to the economic system of our own time, insofar as a very small minority possess real property, land, the means of production, and financial capital, while the great mass of the population does not possess these goods to any significant degree. How does Belloc distinguish the Servile State from that of the Capitalist State, in which he counts the Britain of his own time? The difference is that, whereas the Servile State is based on coercion to force the greater part of the population, which does not possess property, to work for those who do, the Capitalist State employs "free" laborers who can choose to sign a work contract with one employer or another. In the liberal Capitalist State, one is "free" to choose to apply for work or accept work from one of the various owners of the means of production. In return for this work, the laborer receives a wage which is a small portion of the wealth that he produces.
What distinguishes the Distributist State from the two States mentioned above, is that instead of a small minority of men owning the means of production, there is a wide distribution of property. In this regard, Belloc defines property as "the control of wealth by someone." Property must, then, be controlled by someone, since wealth which is not kept or used up by someone would perish and cease to be wealth.
…

Small is Beautiful
There can be no doubt as to the most general form of family ownership foreseen and advocated by Belloc and Chesterton. For them, the most humane and stable economic system was one in which a majority of families farmed land which they themselves owned, doing it with tools which were also their own. Here he was following the lead of Pope Leo XIII, who in Rerum Novarum, advocates a similar aim: "We have seen therefore that this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership and its policy should be to induce as many as possible to obtain a share in the land, the gulf between vast wealth and sheer poverty will be bridged... A further consequence will be the greater abundance of the fruits of the earth. Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that which belongs to them; nay, and those that are dear to them. . . men would cling to the country of their birth, for no one would exchange his country for a foreign land if his own afforded him the means of living a decent and happy life."
…
Ownership of the land by the families who themselves worked the land would also mean financial stability, no fear of unemployment, a family enterprise which could engage, in some measure, all members, an ability to put aside food and supplies to create a hedge against destitution, a way of providing not only for one's children but for one's children's children, along with creating an economic structure which is not oriented towards corporate profits but towards providing for familial subsistence and a local market. Belloc speaks of this type of Distributist economy as the one most general throughout the history of mankind, with the possible exception of the slave economy. Capitalism and Socialism are certainly recent interlopers on the human economic scene.

Peter Chojnowski

Semblanza de José António

A argentina La Editorial Virtual, depois de uma "Semblanza de Leonardo Castellani", avança agora com uma "Semblanza de José António". À atenção deste amigo.

JSarto

As leituras do leitor-comentador Pimenta

Aceitando o repto que lhe lancei, aqui ficam as respostas do meu amigo Pimenta ao inquérito que tem andado a percorrer a blogosfera, e que agora já saltou para o lado de lá do Atlântico, a caminho do País irmão:

1. Não podendo sair do Fahrenheit 451, que livro quererias ser?

Seguindo os passos da personagem que se imola com os seus livros que tanto deixou perplexo o bombeiro Montag, vi Leopoldo, o esposo d'A Mulher Pobre (Clotilde Marechal), romance de Leon Bloy, que se atira as chamas do incêndio para salvar anônimos desconhecidos. A descrição é impressionante!
Como diria A Mulher Pobre: "Há só uma tristeza: a de não sermos Santos".

2. Já alguma vez ficaste apanhado por uma personagem de ficção?

Duas vezes: a primeira com o [Diário de um] Pároco de Aldeia, de Georges Bernanos; na segunda foi Marie-Joseph Cain Marchenoir d'O Desesperado, de Leon Bloy. Cada um, ao seu modo, me sacudiu a alma.

3. Qual foi o último livro que compraste?

Doze Tipos, de G. K. Chesterton. Descrição sui generis de várias personagens históricas com o estilo inconfundível de Chesterton.

4. Qual o último que leste?

Um livro com alguns contos detetivescos do Pe. Brown, de Chesterton.

5. Que livros estás a ler?

Não tenho capacidade de ler mais de um por vez. No momento estou a ler Paideia, de Werner Jaeger. Estou tentando resgatar a minha dívida com os clássicos.

6. Que 5 livros levarias para uma ilha deserta?

Manual De Sobrevivência Em Uma Ilha Deserta; Como Escapar De Uma Ilha Deserta: manual de costrução de Barcos; Bíblia; Suma Contra Os Gentios e Suma Teológica (Sto Tomás de Aquino); Dois Amores/Duas Cidades e O Século Do Nada (esses dois de Gustavo Corção. Ops... foram 7. Posso cometer esse excesso?

7. A que 3 pessoas vais passar este testemunho?

Ao meu amigo Ruy Maia Freitas, ao meu amigo Caturo e ao meu amigo Marcel.

JSarto

Mojones para repensar

En el mundo musulmán se ha desencadenado una reacción en cadena por la profanación del Corán en la base norteamericana de Guantánamo. Los americanos no parecen aprender de sus previos errores y de las pésimas consecuencias de su desprecio al Islam. El Islam se está probando un feroz enemigo, un enemigo declarado de Occidente en todos los sentidos y –más allá de lo inmediato- es y va a ser un instrumento con que Dios castigue la apostasía de las naciones cristianas, entre las que Portugal y España se encuentran en primera línea. La Cristiandad tiene todo el derecho a la legítima defensa frente al Islam pero uno no puede por menos de admirar el verdadero celo y religiosidad con que los musulmanes se comportan. Son, sin duda, enemigos formidables. Y en cierto sentido están salvando el honor del mundo, de un mundo que parece haber hecho del materialismo y del hedonismo su norte.

El Presidente de España, Rodríguez Zapatero, es masón según el prestigioso historiador Ricardo de la Cierva. Así lo ha afirmado en unas explosivas declaraciones al prestigioso (y muy recomendable) semanario católico Alba. Tamañas declaraciones, que serían suficientes para llevar a Ricardo de la Cierva a prisión, no han sido denunciadas ni contestadas por la Presidencia del Gobierno. E insinúa el historiador, experto en el tema de la Masonería, que hay otros ministros también hermanos tres puntos. Quizás esto explique en buena parte el sectarismo anticatólico que azota la otrora católica España. También esto puede ayudar a explicar otras muchas cosas, como el antipatriotismo y el aberrosexualismo del Presidente de mandil, escuadra y compás.

A neo-Constituição só serve para limitar a liberdade de todos. Europa converte-se asim em um instrumento de perseguiçao dos catolicos. E imprescindível lir a tradução do estudo italiano realizada por pensabem. A neo-Constituição é basada na erosão das Patrias e na criminalização ilimitada dos individuos.

Rafael Castela Santos

Laicismo ou Ateísmo Radical?

O magistério tradicional da Igreja sempre condenou o laicismo. Por exemplo, o "Syllabus", do Papa Pio IX, reprova expressamente as seguintes proposições, sob os seus números 55 e 56: "A Igreja deve ser separada do Estado, e o Estado da Igreja"; e "As leis morais não carecem de sanção divina, e não é necessário que as leis humanas sejam conformes ao direito natural e recebam de Deus a sua força vinculativa".

Posto isto, sem se sufragar a pretensão laica, em Portugal assiste-se ao ressurgir agressivo de uma corrente doutrinária que, sob a aparência da defesa da neutralidade do Estado em matéria religiosa, mais não pretende do que impor uma política prática de ateísmo radical, com a finalidade de banir do espaço público toda e qualquer manifestação de religiosidade. Ora, a propósito desta notícia de que dá conta o Manuel Azinhal no seu blogue, realce-se que uma coisa é o Estado ser indiferente a nível religioso - facto que em si mesmo já é mau, porque negador da Realeza Social de Jesus Cristo -, e outra bem distinta é esse dito Estado fazer tábua-rasa das crenças religiosas dos seus cidadãos, e ter a pretensão de remetê-las para um espaço estritamente privado. Destarte, um laicismo que tenha por objectivo tais desideratos, não passa afinal de uma pouco subtil forma de perseguição religiosa, de uma intolerante agressão à verdadeira liberdade de religião.

No caso concreto dos crucifixos nas salas de aulas, que acaba por se reconduzir ao tema mais amplo do ensino escolar da religião, é meu entendimento de que os primeiros devem ser mantidos nos locais onde estão, e a segunda continuar a fazer parte dos programas escolares. Quais os motivos desta posição?

Primeiramente, porque não existindo em Portugal uma verdadeira liberdade de ensinar e aprender, na medida em que muitos pais não podem escolher livremente o estabelecimento de ensino que os seus filhos frequentam por estritos condicionalismos de ordem económica, e não fazendo o Estado nada para inverter esta tendência, antes continuando a forçar os pais a entregarem-lhe os filhos, deve esse Estado em tais circunstâncias facultar aos seus alunos uma educação integral, tal como seria vontade dos respectivos progenitores, e que há-de compreender necessariamente a religião.

De seguida, e retornando à manutenção dos crucifixos nas salas de aulas, porque estes simbolizam os valores espirituais mais profundos da maioria da população portuguesa, mesmo daquela que já não é praticante religiosa em sentido estrito, ou o é deficientemente, a qual, nem por isso, deixa de ter o Decálogo como referência basilar de acção e convivência social.

Finalmente, porque a pretensa protecção dos direitos das minorias não pode passar pelo espezinhamento e desconsideração dos direitos da maioria: se a esta não é lícito impor as suas convicções religiosas àquelas, sob tal perspectiva, é ainda mais ilegítima a tentativa oposta.

JSarto

Bento XVI e os católicos tradicionais

Agora que a tempestade mediática à volta da eleição de Bento XVI amainou, surge a altura propícia para se reflectir pausadamente acerca daquilo que se pode esperar do seu pontificado, sob um ponto de vista católico tradicional, bem como sobre os primeiros sinais que o mesmo começa a dar.

À consideração dos leitores deste espaço, aqui ficam três artigos, não convergentes entre si, mas que espelham o modo como a acção de Bento XVI pode ser encarada pelos defensores da tradição: com ponderada esperança, mas sem ingenuidades desnecessárias.

- "Pray for the conversion of Benedict XVI", de Michael Cain, editor do "Daily Catholic";

- "An open letter to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI", de Michael Matt e Christopher Ferrara, editores do "The Remnant";

- "O novo Papa Bento XVI", de Dom Lourenço Fleichman, O.S.B., superior do Mosteiro da Santa Cruz.

JSarto

Deshumanización a través de la música

Es increíble la degeneración que uno palpa en la música moderna. Si ya el rock marca una caída, especialmente algunas variedades del mismo íntimamente ligadas a satanismo de uno u otro cuño (véanse ejemplos como los AC/DC o los Ret Hot Chili Peppers), el acid (vinculado a una defensa de estilos de vida tales como la sodomía en muchos casos) u otros, el rap –un fenómeno completamente implantado en la juventud norteamericana, se mire por donde se mire- degrada la mujer a objeto sexual y poco más. Si alguien quiere leer más de esto último puede hacerlo aquí. En este artículo hasta los liberales del Acton Institute reconocen los graves daños al bien común que un sistema sin moral, como es el liberalismo económico, acarrea.

Rafael Castela Santos

Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. é correntemente um dos mais destacados autores católicos tradicionais norte-americanos, senhor de uma produção ensaística verdadeiramente notável quanto à quantidade, como à qualidade. Nos dois últimos anos, brindou os seus leitores sucessivamente com as seguintes obras: "The Great Façade", onde analisa as ruinosas consequências do Concílio Vaticano II para a Igreja; "The Church Confronts Modernity", em que dá conta do combate travado pela Igreja Católica, no começo do século XX, nos Estados Unidos, contra a heresia modernista; "The Church and Market", na qual defende a economia de mercado sob um ponto de vista católico; enfim, "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization", onde examina o contributo fundamental da Igreja Católica para a criação daquilo a que chamamos hoje a Civilização Ocidental. Sobre este último livro, aconselho vivamente a leitura do artigo do próprio autor, publicado no LewRockwell.com.

JSarto

A Missa de rito latino-gregoriano explicada

Interessantíssimo e muito recomendável sítio que explica, com recurso a abundante quantidade de fotografias, todo o desenrolar da celebração de uma Missa de rito latino-gregoriano ou tridentina. Um espaço merecedor da visita daqueles que pretendam aprofundar o seu conhecimento, ou até satisfazer a simples curiosidade, sobre o rito tradicional da Igreja Católica no Ocidente, declarado irrevogável e perpetuamente válido pelo Papa São Pio V.

JSarto

"Viajando" pela Ásia

- Dei comigo a pensar se existirão católicos na Coreia do Norte. Parece que sim, que os há, mais precisamente uns milhares de abnegados resistentes que enfrentam as terríveis dificuldades que se imaginam. Porém, dos cerca de sessenta padres que o país ainda tinha no princípio dos anos 50, por altura da cessação das hostilidades que o opuseram à Coreia do Sul, nem um só escapou à implacável perseguição e eliminação que foi promovida pelo tirânico regime comunista no poder. Do último Bispo de Pyongiang, D. Francis Hong Yong-Ho, nada se sabe desde… 1962. Supõe-se que terá desaparecido no "gulag" de Kim Il Sung...

- Quem serão os corajosos católicos fiéis da tradição, no Vietname?

- É bom saber que a Missa de rito latino-gregoriano, a única que santos como São Francisco Xavier ou São João de Brito conheceram e veneraram, continua a ser celebrada diariamente na Roma do Oriente. E com a prestimosa colaboração do clero local.

- A terminar, uma perspectiva tradicionalista da situação da Igreja Católica em Timor-Leste. O retrato parece-me verídico, ainda que duro para com os cooperantes portugueses que demandam aquelas paragens. Colateralmente, merece também destaque a referência ao modo subtil e insidioso como o modernismo se manifesta, sob um disfarce conservador, no Catolicismo do sul da Europa.

JSarto

Lecturas para días con fiebre y tiempo

El Gobierno español, apoyado por los nacionalistas y comunistas catalanes, quiere retirar la asignatura de Religión de las escuelas, a pesar de que la mayor parte de los españoles siguen prefiriendo la enseñanza religiosa para sus hijos. Los socialistas pretenden sustituir la Religión por una asignatura de rancio sabor jacobino titulada “educación para la ciudadanía”. Véase aquí.

Se articula una manifestación en contra del “matrimonio” homosexual el 18 de Junio próximo (sic repárese en el origen etimológico de la palabra, vinculada a la palabra madre). Hay contestación por parte de la sociedad española, no toda la deseable, pero algo hay.

Más sobre el mismo tema: Bispos espanhóis promovem a objeção de consciência ante o «matrimônio» homosexual. Está sacado de Zenit, en portugués, y el código es el ZP05050602. O episcopado considera que esta lei, se for aprovada, «careceria propriamente do caráter de uma verdadeira lei, posto que se encontraria em contradição com a reta razão e com a norma moral. A função da lei civil é certamente mais limitada que a da lei moral, mas não pode entrar em contradição com a reta razão sem perder a força de obrigar em consciência». Así sea. En España la persecución contra los católicos ya ha comenzado.

El bajo mundo del aborto. No hay nada que no sea crimen en él. Es muy duro leer estas cosas.

Sigue, lenta e imperceptiblemente, el acoso al Valle de los Caídos. La verdadera naturaleza de los radicales y los socialistas es derribar todo lo que signifique Dios.

Mi amiga Sabine Barnhart, que se ha convertido en una de las plumas más frescas de LewRockwell, sigue buceando en su pasado de la Alemania católica que ella conoció para encontrar la solución a muchos problemas. Como la de cierta indisciplina de los adolescentes. Ella, que vive ahora en Texas, contrasta el modo en que son educados los chicos acá en los Estados Unidos versus la manera que ella experimentó en Alemania no hace tanto tiempo. Está claro que en la Alemania rural de los años 60 sobraban muchos psicólogos, muchos pedagogos y muchos oportunistas del Estado que depriva a cada uno de la autoridad que le corresponde. Como a los padres o los abuelos, por ejemplo. Lean a Sabine Barnhart. Merece la pena.

Rafael Castela Santos

A Psicologia da Apostasia

A Psicologia da Apostasia

Original

Dom Lourenço Fleichman OSB


"Foi incansável na tentativa de levar às almas a verdade, tanto natural quanto sobrenatural, o Pe. Leonel Franca, que ilustra o pensamento brasileiro com livros dignos de um mestre. Entre seus escritos, encontra-se um pequeno livro, A Psicologia da Fé, onde o grande jesuíta analisa os detalhes do ato de fé, aquilo que leva o homem a agir pela Fé, o que falta na atitude daqueles que não têm Fé.
Inspirado neste trabalho, e assistindo já há alguns anos a tantas almas, perguntei-me o que levava os homens ao abandono da fé. Qual a mola interior que conduz a alma humana a passar de uma atitude de docilidade diante da verdade revelada à oposição total e perda dos atos relativos à fé: oração, confissão freqüente, comunhão, e vida cristã.
Não analiso aqui a atitude dos que não têm Fé, mas sim a atitude e a dinâmica da perda da Fé.
A alma que vive da fé
Consideremos, então, uma alma posta no sossego da fé: ela crê em Deus e em sua Igreja, ela obedece aos mandamentos, ela reza todos os dias e no domingo prepara a si e aos seus para assistir a Santa Missa. No dia a dia, esbarrando em tantas ocasiões de pecado, em tantas tentações, ela usa os critérios que a Igreja nos propõe para não se deixar levar, para não cair no pecado: fuga das ocasiões, atos de fé, aconselhamento com o sacerdote, e oração freqüente. Assim combate a alma cristã, assim busca a perfeição quem vive da graça. É claro que em diversas ocasiões virão lhe propor atitudes que são contrárias à sua fé. Ela, porém, saberá esquivar-se com prudência de todos os ataques. Aqui com gentilezas, ali com a força do combate, mas sempre protegendo o maior tesouro que recebeu. Saberá ter compaixão para com tantas amizades, tantos parentes que não vivem da Fé e se deixam levar pelas facilidades da vida. Saberá calar e rezar no silêncio do seu quarto, sem no entanto dar a entender que apóia os erros dos seus mais próximos amigos e parentes. As coisas relativas à vida da Igreja serão sempre, para tal alma, motivo de alegria, de estudos, de oração. E se acontecer que uma atitude lhe seja pesada, rapidamente se inclinará à confiança em Deus, no auxílio divino para resistir ao erro. Viverá na Esperança teologal. E como uma vida assim não existe sem que a alma esteja unida à Deus, sem que a alma ame a Deus e ao próximo, a Caridade será a coroa de sua existência. Vivendo, então, da Fé, da Esperança e da Caridade, a alma verdadeiramente católica busca a perfeição na prática de todas as virtudes.
Um olhar que se esquiva da luz
O meio corrompe, gostava de repetir um companheiro meu de faculdade. De tanto conviver com o erro, a alma vai se sentindo só. Afinal de contas, hoje em dia, é cada vez mais raro encontrar quem assim viva. E o convívio com o mal vai trazendo para dentro dela as raízes de um monstro terrível. Algo, então, acontece, que leva a alma a abaixar a guarda. Não que ela recuse a sua fé. De jeito algum. Ela continua firmemente católica, ela defende com unhas e dentes sua Igreja, ela reza, ela quer a perfeição. Continua freqüentando os sacramentos e sente-se mal se um domingo passa sem missa. Mas desviou o seu olhar da luz da fé. Interessou-se pelas coisas lá de fora. Pode ser qualquer coisa. Para uns, o que atrai a curiosidade e faz cócegas é a Igreja oficial, para outros, as leituras de filósofos e pensadores não católicos. Outros ainda já não se incomodam com o ambiente de imoralidades de filmes, novelas, de roupas e praias.
Em cada tipo de tentação, em cada espécie de caminho, haverá sempre um ponto em comum: a inclinação do olhar para o mundo sem exigências, para o mundo da maioria, para o mundo fácil. Esta é a característica principal deste estágio da psicologia da perda da Fé, a facilidade do lado de lá. Isso é soprado nos nossos ouvidos pelo demônio. Esse é o ponto que atrai a tantos e os levam à perdição. Esta é a hora dramática onde tudo se decide: é tão fácil, é tão mais fácil...Se não houver, da parte da alma católica, nesta hora terrível, um grito de combate, uma espada puxada para atingir mortalmente o inimigo, ela estará correndo um perigo enorme de cair para sempre.
É assim que, tendo sido seduzida pela língua dúbia, a língua da serpente, de que fala São Paulo à Timóteo, a alma católica, pretendendo manter sua Fé, achando que nunca renunciará ao essencial da vida católica, se encanta com pequenos detalhes que lhe parecem menores, achando-se bastante madura para se aproximar do veneno do mundo, como se os espinhos não espetassem adultos e crianças, olha com simpatia para aquilo que alegra a vida dos homens, ou que os insere dentro da tranqüila vida oficial, ou que faz com que eles se amem segundo o que dizem ser a natureza das coisas, a natureza do organismo humano.
Tempestades
Começa, então, para a alma, um período de grandes confusões, de angústias, de medos, de contradições. Afirmando para si mesma que quer agradar a Deus, que as coisas novas que a atraem são coisas boas, que todos fazem, que todos usam, ou que é impossível que tantas almas estejam no erro, a alma vai se embrenhando no caminho da perdição. Este período é talvez o mais longo, pode durar muitos anos. As confusões que esta atitude gera levam muitas almas a fugir dos padres, pois eles já não lhe servem mais. Os padres modernistas lhe dirão o que ela não quer ouvir; já os padres tradicionais lhe dirão o que ela não quer fazer. Os primeiros lhe dirão que ela faz muito bem em mudar seus hábitos, sua freqüentação; ou que ela faz muito bem em aceitar a missa nova, ou em querer obedecer a um bispo progressista; que é tudo muito lindo, que tudo é amor; mas ela não crê nisso, ela acha que eles exageram. Os últimos lhe mostrarão que ela corre perigo, que deve se afastar de certas pessoas, que deve ler bons livros, que deve ter atitudes mais coerentes com sua fé: ela sabe que ele tem razão, mas não quer fazer isso. Vivendo este combate interior, a alma entra em depressão, foge do seu ambiente católico, vive tensa e agressiva.
Asfixia e inanição
Muitas vezes acontece que, fugindo do seu ambiente, ela receba a influência de pessoas estranhas ao seu mundo católico, que vão incentivar suas atitudes de aceitação da vida fácil, da obediência servil às imposições do mundo, e a alma não consegue se desvencilhar desse novelo de lã. O peso começa a ser insuportável e causa um processo de diminuição das fontes da graça. A oração começa a incomodar, pois ela já não suporta mais com tanta facilidade a presença de Deus. A missa do domingo é mantida por causa da obrigação, mas é um peso, um momento de grandes confusões. Ela já não se confessa mais, e a comunhão desaparece de sua vida. A Fé entra em processo de inanição, pois perde todo o alimento espiritual. Isso não acontece sempre de estalo, vem aos poucos, com altos e baixos. Muitas vezes uma confissão levanta a alma. Isso significa que Deus não quer perde-la. Ela ouve um sermão, ela lê alguma coisa que a comove, que bate no fundo do seu coração, e a Fé ressurge das cinzas, ganha força, ateia mesmo o fogo da Caridade, e ela busca o confessionário. Quisera eu que isso fosse sempre determinante na volta à normalidade. Mas o que acontece em geral é que as situações que causaram a queda continuarão existindo. Ela sairá do confessionário ou da missa sabendo o que precisa ser feito. Mas seu liberalismo já arraigado, imediatamente voltará a gritar, a forçar, a tentar. Se ela toma resoluções fortes em sua vida, movida pela graça, ela pode escapar da rede; mas se ela não tiver forças, docilidade à graça, e fizer as coisas pela metade, não poderá durar muito tempo. E, em geral, é o que acontece.
O fato é que, com retomadas da graça ou sem elas, a alma entrou dentro de um processo de confusão interior tal, que não conseguirá guardar para si esta confusão. Manifestará, então, aquilo que a confunde. Vivendo ainda num ambiente católico, ouvirá muitas vezes um conselho, uma comentário, que dará origem a uma resposta ríspida, a uma revolta interior. De modo geral as pessoas católicas que emitem juízos sobre a vida da Fé, sobre o combate pela Igreja, sobre a busca de perfeição, começarão a ser vistas como um obstáculo ao seu caminho. E serão rechaçadas. A Fé, que já sofria de inanição, será asfixiada por estrangulamento. É o liberalismo instalado na alma. Este liberalismo se manifesta, como já disse, sob formas diversas que, muitas vezes, acabam se encontrando, nesta fase de asfixia da alma católica. É assim que, passo a passo, a alma adotará os costumes do mundo, a alegria que os homens sentem de não serem constrangidos por regras, por mandamentos, por Igreja Católica, buscarão a missa da paróquia mais próxima, pois ali o padre não faz questão de muita coisa, ou assistirão à missa tradicional, mas sem ouvir o que o padre tem a lhes falar, para a salvação de suas almas; farão questão de se acostumarem com qualquer ambiente, e dirão para si que são todos pessoas normais. E assim viverão, já com uma casca morta de Fé, com certos costumes sociais de missa dominical, alguma oração, aqui ou ali, mas sem que o amor de Deus seja a razão de ser de tudo isso. "Fabricarão mestres segundo suas paixões", e formarão uma consciência nova sobre bases já não mais católicas, que lhes deixarão felizes, enganando-se a si mesmos, achando que, de modo algum, estão ofendendo a Deus.
Rompeu o fiozinho
Alguns ficarão presos por algum laço tênue, algum fiozinho quase invisível que os prenderá ainda um pouco, que não deixará que se afastem muito. Mas o fiozinho, um dia, se romperá, e a última barreira estará aberta.
A Fé, assim morta, já sem nada que a possa fazer ressurgir, acabará cedendo lugar às especulações da razão naturalista e liberal. A Caridade, que é o amor de Deus, pelas coisas de Deus, acima de tudo, deixará lugar ao amor-próprio, que é o amor desordenado de si mesmo. Os interesses pessoais, as fraquezas da alma, a miragem da busca da facilidade que inicia todo este processo, termina assim na perda total da fé, na terrível apostasia, que é a chama que anima o inferno.
Quantas almas se perdem por caminhos como estes, num processo de envenenamento progressivo que, por seguir etapas distintas, vão como que destilando gota à gota a destruição do edifício espiritual da alma. Um drama assistido de fora, sem que muita coisa possa ser feita, pois a pessoa que segue este caminho não aceita conselhos ou não tem força para pô-los em prática. Só a nossa oração pode conter este processo de destruição. Se víssemos uma pessoa amiga sofrendo uma destruição gradativa de sua vida corporal, agiríamos de alguma forma, mesmo que só pela oração diária, se não tivéssemos como conter o mal, como é o caso dos alcoólatras. Quanto mais devemos trabalhar todos os dias quando vemos o orgulho e a cegueira levarem as almas católicas, almas que não têm desculpas, a seguir o caminho do inferno.
O Catolicismo é uma religião exigente, pois só ela pretende restaurar o homem no seu todo. Mas, diferente de todas as outras, só o Catolicismo nos dá a fonte da graça, neste trabalho de restauração. Nós sabemos que é assim, pois essa é nossa Fé: Deus nos leva pela mão, Deus nos transforma interiormente. De modo que é preciso ter forças, agir com as graças de batizados e de crismados, que somos, para vencer esta avalanche que vai levando, cada dia mais almas para as trevas do inferno. Ao abraçar a graça, desaparece de nossa frente os obstáculos, as vergonhas, o orgulho. Passamos a nos deixar conduzir pela mão de Deus, e daí vem toda a nossa força. É preciso que as almas compreendam isso, que vivam desta graça, que é a única fonte de verdadeira liberdade, de verdadeira alegria, de paz duradoura e total."

(RCS)