CHAPTER
XIV: THE DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN OF 1789
S. You spoke in an earlier chapter of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man." I should like, however, to have a clearer idea of its significance in modern history.
T. I shall be very glad to return to the point and to emphasize the Rights of God. "About the 'Rights of Man,' as they are called, the people have heard enough; it is time they should hear of the Rights of God" (Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIII on Christ our Redeemer [Tametsi], Nov. 1, 1900).
Our Lord Jesus Christ is the sole mediator of redeemed humanity. It is only by submission to His rule that all men and all nations can receive back the Divine Life of Grace by which human life can be lived in order. "Never to have known Jesus Christ in any way is the greatest of misfortunes, but it involves no perversity or ingratitude. But after having known, to reject or forget Him is such a horrible and mad crime as to be scarcely credible. For He is the origin and source of all good and just as mankind could not be freed from slavery but by the sacrifice of Christ, so neither can it be preserved but by His power " (same Encyclical Letter, Tametsi, 1900). When a people which has grasped the truth of the Divine Plan turns against our Lord. by leaving Him out of account and by passing over in silence the rights of the Head of the Mystical Body, it commits apostasy and initiates the most frightful disorder. Having rejected the dependence of mankind on the Sacred Humanity of Jesus, man must necessarily put himself and his own natural life in the place of God. Now it is precisely in this that Rationalism consists and this is exactly what we find in the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" of 1789. We behold, on the one hand, social apostasy and the rejection of our Lord Jesus Christ, on the other, the substitution of man for God or the worship of humanity. [1]
The preamble to this infamous document runs as follows: "The representatives of the French people met together in a national assembly, considering that the ignorance, forgetfulness or contempt of the rights of man are the sole causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments, have decided to set forth, in a solemn Declaration, the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of man, so that this Declaration, being ever before the eyes of all the members of society, may unceasingly remind them of their rights and duties ...
"Consequently, the National Assembly recognises and declares, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the, following rights of man and the citizen.
"Art. I. Men are born free and equal in rights and continue so. Social distinctions can be founded only on public utility. ...
"Art. III. The source of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No society, no individual, can exercise an authority which does not emanate from it expressly.
"Art. IV. Liberty is the power of doing what we will, so long as it does not injure another: the only limits of each man's natural rights are such as secure the same rights to others; these limits are determinable only by law.
"Art. VI. The law is the expression of the general will ...
"Art. X. No one can be molested for his opinions, even for his religious opinions, provided their manifestation does not trouble the public order established by law.
"Art. XI. The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man; therefore every citizen is allowed freedom of speech, of writing, and of printing, but will have to answer for any abuse of that liberty in cases determined by law.
Only a few of the articles of the Declaration are quoted. They will, however, be quite sufficient to illustrate the Rousseauist- Masonic doctrine of the immanent divinity of man which underlies the whole document. Of course there is a certain vagueness about some of the formulae. This is a well-known Masonic trick to deceive the unwary. For example, the uninitiated interpret the first article as follows: Men are free, that is, they can do what the law does not forbid: they may even profess the religion which pleases them; men are equal in rights, that is, all are equal before the law, all are eligible for public offices, all are subject to public duties, to taxes, etc. But the real meaning, the one behind which is the whole driving force of masonry and secret societies generally, is that each man in the state of nature, to which we must return to be happy is free and independent like God. All are equally God. Man is born free; that is, unrestrained license is an absolute exigency of human nature; any kind of submission to any man is contrary to nature. As all are equally God, nature demands that the strictest equality should be realised amongst men, and that, therefore, everyone should have a vote. Accordingly, in a State correctly formed, an absolute social equality should counterbalance natural inequalities. Needless to say the logical consequence is Communism. For if all men are equal, why are some rich and others poor? The right of private property is the greatest cause of social inequality, so it must be abolished. Other distinctions must disappear as well. If all men are equal, the classifications' of superiors and inferiors, parents and children, husbands and wives must be eliminated.
The State may, of course, allow the family and private property to exist, so long as it judges them necessary for the common good of society, but as soon as it finds that the public welfare demands such modifications the State can "emancipate woman" and bring together all private fortunes into one common capital. [2] It is strange that professing Catholics do not see the absurdity of proclaiming, in their oratorical efforts, that all men are equal. They ought to realise whither they are being led.
Men are born free and equal but they make themselves citizens. By nature, they are untrammelled by any social bond, but by an arbitrary contract, called the Social Contract, they create a society. Human reason, before the social fact, was absolutely mistress and completely autonomous in each man; now under the name of State it has, of course, the same independence and autonomy, only more enlightened. The general will is the expression of the will of the immanent God. The rule of the majority is the rule of the pantheistic multitude-God. The State is God. The will of the State is not limited by natural or supernatural law. The people can do no wrong. [3]
Of course most of those who proclaim the Sovereignty of the People are far from being aware of the full significance of the Rousseauist-Masonic dogma. Catholics may think that in proclaiming it, they are only rejecting the arbitrary power of absolute monarchs and holding that the nation has the right to choose its rulers and to determine the form of authority. Those, however, who enter into the inner meaning of those formulae know that the phrase, the People is sovereign, means that the popular will is the supreme and final law, superior to all natural and supernatural law, always legitimate and sacred. The will of the people, in the minds of those who accept the principles of 1789, is, "the exclusive judge of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, no account being taken of God" (Prop. III condemned in the Syllabus). For them also "the State is the source and fountain of every right; its own rights are unrestricted" (Prop. XXXIX of the Syllabus). [4]
On the one hand, then, the State is sovereign. Accordingly, whatever the State decrees or does is holy and sacred. The way is thus open for the most awful despotism. As, according to Article III, "no society, no individual can exercise an authority which does not emanate from the State," the authority of the Pope and the Bishops is illegitimate and, if not suppressed, must be put in its place. This idea of the unlimited sovereignty of the Stare is the source of the phraseology which "guarantees religious liberty to every citizen." The State is above the Mystical Body of Christ and puts it alongside and on the same level with the religions invented by men. On the other hand, the people is sovereign, even with regard to the State. The people, therefore, can overthrow the government when they will. Of course what happens is this: when the moral sense of the people and their respect for authority have been weakened by the decay of religion and every form of propaganda, an organised minority, prepared by the agents of secret societies, will seize power and impose an iron yoke upon the people, in the name of the People (with a capital letter).
We have only to turn to some of the official documents of the new Masonic Republic in Spain (1931) to see those principles being actualized. The Procurator General of the Republic took the following oath: " I swear and I promise on my honour to consecrate myself to the carrying out of all the laws emanating from the sovereign will of the people, now represented by the Provisional Government of the Republic." The Commandant Franco, head of the Air Service, addressed the following proclamation to his subordinates: "The holy rebellion of 15th December last, begun at Jaca and Quatrovientos and continued in all the Spanish provinces, has brought about in a few months the re-establishment of the Spanish Democratic Republic. Our rebellion was not seditious, on the contrary, conscious as, we all were of the republican sentiments of the Spanish people, we had to overthrow the traditional obstacles which stood in the way of the empire of. the sovereignty of the People."
Needless to say, Article 1 of the Constitution of the Spanish Republic of 9th December, 193., states that all the powers of the Republic emanate from the people. Article 2 affirms "that all Spaniards are equal before the law," while Article 3 carries on the work of turning mankind against order by proclaiming that the "Spanish State has no official religion." Of course, having declared against the Mystical Body of Christ explicitly by dissolving the Society of Jesus, because of "its vow of obedience to an authority distinct. from the legitimate authority of the State," the latest Rousseauist-Masonic Republic talks as usual about liberty of conscience. The divinity immanent in the man of 1789 always attacks the Divine Life of Grace that comes from Jesus Christ, in a Rousseauist-Masonic Republic by laws, in a Communist Republic by violence. The result aimed at in both cases is the same, for the immanent deity cannot brook any other gods in his presence. Of course Satan will direct his agents, in the first place, against the religious Orders, because they make profession of living perfectly that Divine Life which he rejected. In the new Spanish Constitution we read that "the religious orders (other than the Society of Jesus) shall be subject to a special law voted by the Cortes and drawn up according to the following principles: (I) Those religious orders which, by their activity constitute a menace to the security of the State, shall be dissolved" ...
Finally, as woman is God equally with man---unfortunately for her she is a weaker divinity endowed with less brute force---marriage in the new Spanish Constitution gets practically the same treatment as in Soviet Russia, where the principles of 1789 have been pushed to their full logical conclusion. Article 43 affirms that "marriage is founded upon equality of rights for the two sexes: it may be dissolved by mutual consent or on the demand of one or other of the parties, provided, in the latter case, a sufficient motive be advanced." Of marriage as a sacrament and of the Divine life conferred thereby, the new divinity of 1789 will not hear.
Returning now to the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," we see that by Article 11 each individual, being God, has the right of printing and publishIng and saying whatever he wills. As all he says and does is divine, it is evident that his rights are unlimited, except the law, the expression of the general will, is in opposition. For the general will is the will of the immanent social divinity of the pantheistic State based on the principles of 1789. The Common Ego of the majority is more myself than myself, therefore the citizen subject to a law against which he has voted and which hampers him in some of his "divinely inspired" actions, obeys only himself. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose ideas are so extolled by Masonry and Communism, points out that the people vote, not for the sake of giving their opinions, but in order that, by the sum of their votes, an expression of the general will, a pronouncement of the immanent deity, may be obtained. A vote on the part of a member of the minority proves that he has mistaken what the social divinity wanted. The will of the majority does not need to be just or in conformity with supernatural natural order. In fact, there is no such order. The will of the majority is the will of God---in a new sense---and the individual must bow to it. When the new divinity is once in power, it is frightful to see with what savagery he demands for himself that obedience which he refused to the True God and to Christ the King. Of course, he must do so, for the rejection of God and of the Divine Life that comes from the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Crucified leads to the dehumanisation of man. "The tyranny to which the Bolshevik doctrine of salvation leads ... is far more comprehensive and therefore more intolerable than a tyranny of the normal sort." [5]
S. You seem to imply that both Masonry and Communism are working for the same end: the installation of humanity or the collectivity as God and the rejection of the Divine Life of our Lord and of His Mystical Body, the Catholic Church.
T. Yes. Both are based on the pantheistic deification of man. When man lost hold on the ordered relation between God and himself and rejected our Lord, naturalism inevitably led to Pantheism. Pope Leo XIII points this out in his Encyclical Letters on The Study of Scholastic Philosophy and on Freemasonry. In the latter Encyclical he points out: "This change and overthrow (of all things) is deliberately planned and put forward by many associations of Communists and Socialists; and to their undertakings the sect of Freemasons is not hostile, but greatly favours their designs, and holds in common with them their chief opinions. And if these men do not at once and everywhere endeavour to carry out their extreme views, it is not to be attributed to their teaching and their will, but to the virtue of that Divine religion which cannot be destroyed; and also, because the sounder part of men, refusing to be enslaved to secret societies, vigorously resists their insane attempts." It would be well for Catholics everywhere to bear in mind that the universal republic aimed at by both Masons and Communists, is to be based on the rejection of the Kingship of Christ. Irish Catholics, divided about secondary matters, should remember that all must be royalists and monarchists where the allegiance of Ireland to Christ the King is at stake. And the rule of Christ the King cannot be separated from the rule of His representatives, the Heads of His Mystical Body here below, the Pope and the Bishops.
S. But is man, then, for society or society for man?
T. Man is for society and society is for man. Both statements are true. The Thomistic distinction between Personality and Individuality will help you to grasp accurately man's relation to society.
Man is both a person and an individual. Personality is based upon the possession of an immortal soul, which is a spiritual whole ordained immediately and directly to God. Thus, man resembles the Angels. The Liberalism which was so impatient of State interference with economic competition exaggerated this resemblance. Individuality has its origin in the matter of which human bodies are composed with its demand for quantity and divisibility. Thus, man resembles the animals. Communism exaggerates this resemblance. As an individual, man is part of the whole called society and as such is for the State. As a person, on the contrary, the State is for him and is the subject of its subjects.
In the state of nature, as described by Rousseauist-Masonic revolutionary oratory, man is exclusively a person; his individuality, by which he is a member of a society, constituted by God with definite duties, is left out of account. The first of these duties is, needless to say, to take up one's cross as a member of Christ and deny oneself. On the other hand, in the society set up by the Social Contract of Rousseau and by the Communism of Karl Marx, man is merely an individual. His personality is denied and the whole being of man, soul and body, is placed at the mercy of the political wire-pullers and of the International financial forces which, in the last resort, manreuvre them. Thus, one-sided Liberalism, issuing from Judaeo-Protestant Capitalism and Masonry, winds up in the same tyranny as the Judaeo-Masonic Communism of Karl Marx.
1. The Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1791 and of 1793, made explicit certain points implicitly contained in that of 1789.
2. Cf. Encyclical Letter, Graves de Communi, of Pope Leo XIII. It may be said, in opposition to what is here advanced, that Article XVII of the Declaration safeguards private property, of which, "no one can be deprived except public necessity evidently demands it, and then only on condition of just indemnity being given to the owner." This is only another example of the vague and contradictory character of these formulae. The Communists, who push the doctrine of the immanent divinity of man to its logical conclusions, interpret Article XVII in either of two ways. Some say that this Article is opposed to Art. I and demand the suppression of private property in the name of equality. Others admit this article, but say that, of course, public necessity demands the immediate suppression of private property. The proprietors will be compensated, they affirm, by a share in the common revenues. In both cases the result is the same. (Cf. Les Erreurs modernes, by Dom P. Benoit, vol. i. p. 491.)
3. "The will of the people or popular suffrage is of such authority of itself (Per se) that it needs no reason to validate its acts." This proposition was submitted to the Bishops who came to Rome in 1862, and was declared heretical by the Theological Commission. (Cf. Les Erreurs modernes, by Dom P. Benoit, vol. i. p. 425.)
4. Cf. Les Erreurs modernes, by Dom P. Benoit,, vol. i. pp. 421-436. "The source of all civic rights and duties is either in the people or in the public authority, constituted according to the new principles" (Encyclical Letter, Humanum Genus, of Leo XIII, on Freemasonry.)
5. Bolshevism: Theory and Practice, by Waldermar Gurian, p. 245. This splendid work has just been published by Sheed and Ward, London.
S. You spoke in an earlier chapter of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man." I should like, however, to have a clearer idea of its significance in modern history.
T. I shall be very glad to return to the point and to emphasize the Rights of God. "About the 'Rights of Man,' as they are called, the people have heard enough; it is time they should hear of the Rights of God" (Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIII on Christ our Redeemer [Tametsi], Nov. 1, 1900).
Our Lord Jesus Christ is the sole mediator of redeemed humanity. It is only by submission to His rule that all men and all nations can receive back the Divine Life of Grace by which human life can be lived in order. "Never to have known Jesus Christ in any way is the greatest of misfortunes, but it involves no perversity or ingratitude. But after having known, to reject or forget Him is such a horrible and mad crime as to be scarcely credible. For He is the origin and source of all good and just as mankind could not be freed from slavery but by the sacrifice of Christ, so neither can it be preserved but by His power " (same Encyclical Letter, Tametsi, 1900). When a people which has grasped the truth of the Divine Plan turns against our Lord. by leaving Him out of account and by passing over in silence the rights of the Head of the Mystical Body, it commits apostasy and initiates the most frightful disorder. Having rejected the dependence of mankind on the Sacred Humanity of Jesus, man must necessarily put himself and his own natural life in the place of God. Now it is precisely in this that Rationalism consists and this is exactly what we find in the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" of 1789. We behold, on the one hand, social apostasy and the rejection of our Lord Jesus Christ, on the other, the substitution of man for God or the worship of humanity. [1]
The preamble to this infamous document runs as follows: "The representatives of the French people met together in a national assembly, considering that the ignorance, forgetfulness or contempt of the rights of man are the sole causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments, have decided to set forth, in a solemn Declaration, the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of man, so that this Declaration, being ever before the eyes of all the members of society, may unceasingly remind them of their rights and duties ...
"Consequently, the National Assembly recognises and declares, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the, following rights of man and the citizen.
"Art. I. Men are born free and equal in rights and continue so. Social distinctions can be founded only on public utility. ...
"Art. III. The source of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No society, no individual, can exercise an authority which does not emanate from it expressly.
"Art. IV. Liberty is the power of doing what we will, so long as it does not injure another: the only limits of each man's natural rights are such as secure the same rights to others; these limits are determinable only by law.
"Art. VI. The law is the expression of the general will ...
"Art. X. No one can be molested for his opinions, even for his religious opinions, provided their manifestation does not trouble the public order established by law.
"Art. XI. The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man; therefore every citizen is allowed freedom of speech, of writing, and of printing, but will have to answer for any abuse of that liberty in cases determined by law.
Only a few of the articles of the Declaration are quoted. They will, however, be quite sufficient to illustrate the Rousseauist- Masonic doctrine of the immanent divinity of man which underlies the whole document. Of course there is a certain vagueness about some of the formulae. This is a well-known Masonic trick to deceive the unwary. For example, the uninitiated interpret the first article as follows: Men are free, that is, they can do what the law does not forbid: they may even profess the religion which pleases them; men are equal in rights, that is, all are equal before the law, all are eligible for public offices, all are subject to public duties, to taxes, etc. But the real meaning, the one behind which is the whole driving force of masonry and secret societies generally, is that each man in the state of nature, to which we must return to be happy is free and independent like God. All are equally God. Man is born free; that is, unrestrained license is an absolute exigency of human nature; any kind of submission to any man is contrary to nature. As all are equally God, nature demands that the strictest equality should be realised amongst men, and that, therefore, everyone should have a vote. Accordingly, in a State correctly formed, an absolute social equality should counterbalance natural inequalities. Needless to say the logical consequence is Communism. For if all men are equal, why are some rich and others poor? The right of private property is the greatest cause of social inequality, so it must be abolished. Other distinctions must disappear as well. If all men are equal, the classifications' of superiors and inferiors, parents and children, husbands and wives must be eliminated.
The State may, of course, allow the family and private property to exist, so long as it judges them necessary for the common good of society, but as soon as it finds that the public welfare demands such modifications the State can "emancipate woman" and bring together all private fortunes into one common capital. [2] It is strange that professing Catholics do not see the absurdity of proclaiming, in their oratorical efforts, that all men are equal. They ought to realise whither they are being led.
Men are born free and equal but they make themselves citizens. By nature, they are untrammelled by any social bond, but by an arbitrary contract, called the Social Contract, they create a society. Human reason, before the social fact, was absolutely mistress and completely autonomous in each man; now under the name of State it has, of course, the same independence and autonomy, only more enlightened. The general will is the expression of the will of the immanent God. The rule of the majority is the rule of the pantheistic multitude-God. The State is God. The will of the State is not limited by natural or supernatural law. The people can do no wrong. [3]
Of course most of those who proclaim the Sovereignty of the People are far from being aware of the full significance of the Rousseauist-Masonic dogma. Catholics may think that in proclaiming it, they are only rejecting the arbitrary power of absolute monarchs and holding that the nation has the right to choose its rulers and to determine the form of authority. Those, however, who enter into the inner meaning of those formulae know that the phrase, the People is sovereign, means that the popular will is the supreme and final law, superior to all natural and supernatural law, always legitimate and sacred. The will of the people, in the minds of those who accept the principles of 1789, is, "the exclusive judge of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, no account being taken of God" (Prop. III condemned in the Syllabus). For them also "the State is the source and fountain of every right; its own rights are unrestricted" (Prop. XXXIX of the Syllabus). [4]
On the one hand, then, the State is sovereign. Accordingly, whatever the State decrees or does is holy and sacred. The way is thus open for the most awful despotism. As, according to Article III, "no society, no individual can exercise an authority which does not emanate from the State," the authority of the Pope and the Bishops is illegitimate and, if not suppressed, must be put in its place. This idea of the unlimited sovereignty of the Stare is the source of the phraseology which "guarantees religious liberty to every citizen." The State is above the Mystical Body of Christ and puts it alongside and on the same level with the religions invented by men. On the other hand, the people is sovereign, even with regard to the State. The people, therefore, can overthrow the government when they will. Of course what happens is this: when the moral sense of the people and their respect for authority have been weakened by the decay of religion and every form of propaganda, an organised minority, prepared by the agents of secret societies, will seize power and impose an iron yoke upon the people, in the name of the People (with a capital letter).
We have only to turn to some of the official documents of the new Masonic Republic in Spain (1931) to see those principles being actualized. The Procurator General of the Republic took the following oath: " I swear and I promise on my honour to consecrate myself to the carrying out of all the laws emanating from the sovereign will of the people, now represented by the Provisional Government of the Republic." The Commandant Franco, head of the Air Service, addressed the following proclamation to his subordinates: "The holy rebellion of 15th December last, begun at Jaca and Quatrovientos and continued in all the Spanish provinces, has brought about in a few months the re-establishment of the Spanish Democratic Republic. Our rebellion was not seditious, on the contrary, conscious as, we all were of the republican sentiments of the Spanish people, we had to overthrow the traditional obstacles which stood in the way of the empire of. the sovereignty of the People."
Needless to say, Article 1 of the Constitution of the Spanish Republic of 9th December, 193., states that all the powers of the Republic emanate from the people. Article 2 affirms "that all Spaniards are equal before the law," while Article 3 carries on the work of turning mankind against order by proclaiming that the "Spanish State has no official religion." Of course, having declared against the Mystical Body of Christ explicitly by dissolving the Society of Jesus, because of "its vow of obedience to an authority distinct. from the legitimate authority of the State," the latest Rousseauist-Masonic Republic talks as usual about liberty of conscience. The divinity immanent in the man of 1789 always attacks the Divine Life of Grace that comes from Jesus Christ, in a Rousseauist-Masonic Republic by laws, in a Communist Republic by violence. The result aimed at in both cases is the same, for the immanent deity cannot brook any other gods in his presence. Of course Satan will direct his agents, in the first place, against the religious Orders, because they make profession of living perfectly that Divine Life which he rejected. In the new Spanish Constitution we read that "the religious orders (other than the Society of Jesus) shall be subject to a special law voted by the Cortes and drawn up according to the following principles: (I) Those religious orders which, by their activity constitute a menace to the security of the State, shall be dissolved" ...
Finally, as woman is God equally with man---unfortunately for her she is a weaker divinity endowed with less brute force---marriage in the new Spanish Constitution gets practically the same treatment as in Soviet Russia, where the principles of 1789 have been pushed to their full logical conclusion. Article 43 affirms that "marriage is founded upon equality of rights for the two sexes: it may be dissolved by mutual consent or on the demand of one or other of the parties, provided, in the latter case, a sufficient motive be advanced." Of marriage as a sacrament and of the Divine life conferred thereby, the new divinity of 1789 will not hear.
Returning now to the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," we see that by Article 11 each individual, being God, has the right of printing and publishIng and saying whatever he wills. As all he says and does is divine, it is evident that his rights are unlimited, except the law, the expression of the general will, is in opposition. For the general will is the will of the immanent social divinity of the pantheistic State based on the principles of 1789. The Common Ego of the majority is more myself than myself, therefore the citizen subject to a law against which he has voted and which hampers him in some of his "divinely inspired" actions, obeys only himself. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose ideas are so extolled by Masonry and Communism, points out that the people vote, not for the sake of giving their opinions, but in order that, by the sum of their votes, an expression of the general will, a pronouncement of the immanent deity, may be obtained. A vote on the part of a member of the minority proves that he has mistaken what the social divinity wanted. The will of the majority does not need to be just or in conformity with supernatural natural order. In fact, there is no such order. The will of the majority is the will of God---in a new sense---and the individual must bow to it. When the new divinity is once in power, it is frightful to see with what savagery he demands for himself that obedience which he refused to the True God and to Christ the King. Of course, he must do so, for the rejection of God and of the Divine Life that comes from the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Crucified leads to the dehumanisation of man. "The tyranny to which the Bolshevik doctrine of salvation leads ... is far more comprehensive and therefore more intolerable than a tyranny of the normal sort." [5]
S. You seem to imply that both Masonry and Communism are working for the same end: the installation of humanity or the collectivity as God and the rejection of the Divine Life of our Lord and of His Mystical Body, the Catholic Church.
T. Yes. Both are based on the pantheistic deification of man. When man lost hold on the ordered relation between God and himself and rejected our Lord, naturalism inevitably led to Pantheism. Pope Leo XIII points this out in his Encyclical Letters on The Study of Scholastic Philosophy and on Freemasonry. In the latter Encyclical he points out: "This change and overthrow (of all things) is deliberately planned and put forward by many associations of Communists and Socialists; and to their undertakings the sect of Freemasons is not hostile, but greatly favours their designs, and holds in common with them their chief opinions. And if these men do not at once and everywhere endeavour to carry out their extreme views, it is not to be attributed to their teaching and their will, but to the virtue of that Divine religion which cannot be destroyed; and also, because the sounder part of men, refusing to be enslaved to secret societies, vigorously resists their insane attempts." It would be well for Catholics everywhere to bear in mind that the universal republic aimed at by both Masons and Communists, is to be based on the rejection of the Kingship of Christ. Irish Catholics, divided about secondary matters, should remember that all must be royalists and monarchists where the allegiance of Ireland to Christ the King is at stake. And the rule of Christ the King cannot be separated from the rule of His representatives, the Heads of His Mystical Body here below, the Pope and the Bishops.
S. But is man, then, for society or society for man?
T. Man is for society and society is for man. Both statements are true. The Thomistic distinction between Personality and Individuality will help you to grasp accurately man's relation to society.
Man is both a person and an individual. Personality is based upon the possession of an immortal soul, which is a spiritual whole ordained immediately and directly to God. Thus, man resembles the Angels. The Liberalism which was so impatient of State interference with economic competition exaggerated this resemblance. Individuality has its origin in the matter of which human bodies are composed with its demand for quantity and divisibility. Thus, man resembles the animals. Communism exaggerates this resemblance. As an individual, man is part of the whole called society and as such is for the State. As a person, on the contrary, the State is for him and is the subject of its subjects.
In the state of nature, as described by Rousseauist-Masonic revolutionary oratory, man is exclusively a person; his individuality, by which he is a member of a society, constituted by God with definite duties, is left out of account. The first of these duties is, needless to say, to take up one's cross as a member of Christ and deny oneself. On the other hand, in the society set up by the Social Contract of Rousseau and by the Communism of Karl Marx, man is merely an individual. His personality is denied and the whole being of man, soul and body, is placed at the mercy of the political wire-pullers and of the International financial forces which, in the last resort, manreuvre them. Thus, one-sided Liberalism, issuing from Judaeo-Protestant Capitalism and Masonry, winds up in the same tyranny as the Judaeo-Masonic Communism of Karl Marx.
1. The Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1791 and of 1793, made explicit certain points implicitly contained in that of 1789.
2. Cf. Encyclical Letter, Graves de Communi, of Pope Leo XIII. It may be said, in opposition to what is here advanced, that Article XVII of the Declaration safeguards private property, of which, "no one can be deprived except public necessity evidently demands it, and then only on condition of just indemnity being given to the owner." This is only another example of the vague and contradictory character of these formulae. The Communists, who push the doctrine of the immanent divinity of man to its logical conclusions, interpret Article XVII in either of two ways. Some say that this Article is opposed to Art. I and demand the suppression of private property in the name of equality. Others admit this article, but say that, of course, public necessity demands the immediate suppression of private property. The proprietors will be compensated, they affirm, by a share in the common revenues. In both cases the result is the same. (Cf. Les Erreurs modernes, by Dom P. Benoit, vol. i. p. 491.)
3. "The will of the people or popular suffrage is of such authority of itself (Per se) that it needs no reason to validate its acts." This proposition was submitted to the Bishops who came to Rome in 1862, and was declared heretical by the Theological Commission. (Cf. Les Erreurs modernes, by Dom P. Benoit, vol. i. p. 425.)
4. Cf. Les Erreurs modernes, by Dom P. Benoit,, vol. i. pp. 421-436. "The source of all civic rights and duties is either in the people or in the public authority, constituted according to the new principles" (Encyclical Letter, Humanum Genus, of Leo XIII, on Freemasonry.)
5. Bolshevism: Theory and Practice, by Waldermar Gurian, p. 245. This splendid work has just been published by Sheed and Ward, London.
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