1. The silent death of Christianity
Whether liberalism is compatible with Christianity is a non-trivial question of no secondary importance in the Europe of recent centuries, that is, since liberal ideas became established power and dominant ideology in what was (long time ago) the continent of Christianity.
Starting from the English Revolution of 1688 and then from the French Revolution of 1789, liberalism became the ideological hallmark of the new Europe. The United States was born liberal from the beginning. The revolutions that lead Latin America to break down Hispanic unity and establish itself as a plurality of secular republics are liberal.
It will be the 19th century that will see the new liberal Europe almost completely supplant the old Europe, it will be the Napoleonic troops that will bring the new verb everywhere and then the Restoration will largely preserve it[1]… and then the liberal revolutions that set 19th century Europe on fire will consolidate the liberal hegemony on the continent. The most famous and paradigmatic case was the Italian one, without forgetting Spain’s liberal turn with Isabella II.
The two World Wars represent the last stage of the great liberal revolution. The First marks the end of the last empires of the old regime (tsarist empire, Habsburg empire, Ottoman empire) and of the Prussian-Germanic state, expression of an alternative political modernity, with the affirmation of the liberal Powers (England, France, United States… and Italy[2]). The Second is the triumph (in the West) of the single liberal democratic model. The process of reshaping Europe in a liberal sense was so intense that today it is difficult to even conceive a European identity other than liberal democracy and this often makes us forget that in order to impose itself, liberalism had to overthrow with revolutions the old Europe or the thousand-year-old Christianity born in 380 with Theodosius and which reached, a little bruised and short of breath but still alive, up to the ancien régime. The identity of the old Europe did not peacefully transfer into the new, Christianity did not flow spontaneously into Liberal Democracy, it took the revolution to overthrow the old Europe and impose the new. It was a violent transition and not at all natural.
In historical terms it must therefore be recognized that Christianity (at least in its cultural and political expression of Christianity) and liberalism faced each other in a duel to the death. The victory of liberalism marked the end of Christianity as a political regime and as a civilization. And in front of the corpse of the societas christiana we are all witnesses and a bit of gravediggers.
If we consider that the regime of Christianity is not simply a political-cultural expression of Christianity but the only organically complete political-cultural expression of Christianity, the only civilization born from Christianity[3], or that the only Christian civilization that has been realized in history is Christianity, the legitimate doubt arises that the battle between Christianity and liberalism was not the struggle of liberal ideas against a contingent and relative questionable expression of Christianity but rather the revolutionary struggle of liberalism against Christianity in its historical but not at all relative social-political-cultural realization. This is how the liberal revolution was experienced by the Catholic Church, as evidenced by the acts of the Magisterium and the words of the popes of the years from 1789 to the early 1900s, from Pius VI to Pius X and beyond. There was in those Pastors the awareness that the conflict was total and without the possibility of any compromise, at least on a doctrinal level, and that the very survival of Christian civilization was at stake.
That liberalism was the executioner of Christianity certainly says a historical truth, namely the radical break made by the liberal revolutions with respect to Christian civilization, but it still does not answer the initial question, whether liberalism is compatible with Christianity. Even if the historical responsibility (fault or merit) of liberalism in the end of Christianity is admitted, it is possible to hypothesize that this conflict had an accidental, contingent and non-essential nature, and therefore that coexistence and even an understanding between liberalism and Christianity is possible. This was the idea of nineteenth-century liberal Catholics and their heirs up to us, an idea always condemned by the Church at least until the Second Vatican Council.
The question cannot be resolved on the level of historical empiricism but must be posed at the level of doctrine where, however, things become complicated. In fact, before being able to proceed with the synopsis of the doctrines it is necessary to identify them and this is less easy than one might superficially think.
What is liberalism? What is the doctrine? Are we talking about classical liberalism? Of twentieth-century liberal democracy? Of the idealistic liberalism of Benedetto Croce? Of radical liberalism? Of American liberal thought? Of Friedrich von Hayek’s liberalism? Popper’s open society? Of libertarianism? Of the liberal-socialism of Leonard Hobhouse or Carlo Rosselli or Piero Gobetti? Of anarcho-liberalism? Or what other variant, expression or school?
Even if we wanted to stick only to classical liberalism, it would not be correct to affirm its doctrinal univocality, in fact the political philosophy of Locke is one thing, the political program of the philosophes of Paris is another thing, the English Whig party is one thing, the Girondin club in revolutionary France is one thing, the liberalism of the Napoleonic Code is one thing and that of the politics of King Louis Philippe of Orléans is another thing, the liberalism of George Washington and the Founding Fathers is another thing. Without considering Grévy’s secular-republican liberalism and the liberalism of the Italian Revolution. Was the Count of Cavour a liberal? And Mazzini? Both?
Things are no less complicated on the Christian side if we place ourselves in a purely historical perspective that does not previously define the dogmatic boundary. In fact, doctrinally, an abyss separates, also in relation to social and political morality, Catholicism from Protestantism and the different Protestantisms between them. And don’t be fooled today by anyone who thinks they can resolve the matter by narrowing the field to sociologically understood Catholicism alone. On that level, what Catholicism is doctrinally today is not easy to say given the theological chaos that reigns within the Church of Rome[4].
Should we then reformulate the question with the double plural by talking about liberalisms and Christianities? The question will then be which liberalisms are compatible with which Christianities?
Such a solution, opening up to a virtually indefinite relativism, would certainly allow us to identify one or more possible (or even already achieved de facto) agreements between Christianity and liberalism but would leave the question of principle completely unanswered. One could easily recognize, for example, that the Calvinist Protestant Christianity of the Pilgrim Fathers had no problem with the classical liberal idea, indeed it cultivated it. One could also recognize in English Puritanism the religious ground of liberalism first and then of liberal democracy in Great Britain. One could even go so far as to say that liberalism is a product of Protestantism, in particular of Calvinism (French Huguenot, Swiss, Dutch but above all British and, consequently, North American). Which has more than one reason both on a historical and a theological-philosophical level.
Obviously, saying this still says nothing in purely dogmatic terms. That Protestantism can be said to be expressive of Christian Truth and not a pestilential heresy destructive of Christian Truth is a question that mere historical consideration cannot resolve. Historically we can affirm that the liberal revolution was born and found easy agreement in the Protestant world, especially of Calvinist origin, while the clash with Catholicism was very violent.
The last two pontificates, that of Benedict XVI and the ongoing one of Francis, are most expressive of this liberal conversion of Catholicism in the indefiniteness of what liberalism is today. Far from each other in many aspects, even in being liberal they are in different ways, Ratzinger-Benedict XVI in the Lockean sense[5], Bergoglio-Francis in the liberal and at times radical sense, certainly liberal-socialist. Different but both liberal. It now seems that being Catholic implies being liberal (at least lato sensu) and one cannot be Catholic without being liberal.
2. The liberal turn of the Church
But is it really so? Has the conflict between Catholicism and liberalism really been resolved through doctrinal means, which is to say by proving philosophically and theologically the compatibility of liberalism with Christianity, or rather the Christian necessity of liberalism? Who accomplished this great work?
The liberal turn of the Church is one of those revolutions that happen because they are posited and not because they are demonstrated. No one has seriously attempted to prove the compatibility of liberalism with (traditional) Catholic doctrine; it has simply been decided to forget traditional Catholic political doctrine and to reformulate Catholicism in a liberal sense. This is, more or less, what has happened with the intra-ecclesial revolution that has taken place in the last 60 years and that has profoundly changed Catholicism to the point of making it, at times, unrecognizable when compared to how it was before this revolution. It was the Belgian Cardinal Léon-Joseph Suenens who truly said: “The Council is the 1789 in the Church.” And it truly was if, as Joseph Ratzinger has also repeatedly stated, the problem of the Council was that of assimilating the values of two centuries of liberal culture[6], precisely that which the Church had been condemning for two centuries.
In this, the “progressive” Suenens and the “conservative” Ratzinger think alike: the Second Vatican Council represented the liberal “conversion” of the Church[7] and this was necessary. The concept is well expressed by Ratzinger in Theologische Prinzipienlehre: Bausteine zur Fundamentaltheologie of 1982 where he openly says that the constitution Gaudium et spes constitutes a sort of counter-Syllabus, the Syllabus of Pius IX being the Church’s declaration of war on liberalism while Vatican II wanted to embrace precisely the liberalism previously condemned[8].
If we would believe in uncritically accepting the conciliar and post-conciliar liberal conversion, the question of the compatibility between Christianity (Catholicism) and liberalism is resolved before it is even posed, since one of the two dialectical poles recognizes itself in the other as in an equation: (political) Catholicism today is liberal, it converts into liberalism. If anything, it will only be a question of continually verifying the conversion with respect to the parameter given by current liberalism … and here lies the dissatisfaction of Cardinal Martini for a conversion judged incomplete and the commitment of Pope Francis to complete it. From this point of view, it would no longer even make sense to speak of a Catholic political doctrine, but rather of what the Christian (Catholic) faith can give, as religious-moral support and as spiritual enrichment, to Liberal Democracy. It seems to me that this is today the only perspective taken into consideration and cultivated by the Hierarchies and by official “Catholic thought”. But such a liberal conversion openly and unequivocally contradicts not only the Magisterium of the anti-modern popes, but the uninterrupted millennial teaching of the Church in the juridical-political field[9], as well as the essence of the only historically established Christian civilization, Christianity.
The question is the one that raises the theme of the Second Vatican Council and more generally the revolution that took place in Catholicism in the second half of the 20th century. The question goes far beyond the confines of this essay and the competence of the writer, so I will limit myself to pointing out the theme and indicating it as a problem that is still unresolved[10].
To address the suicide of the West that is taking place before our eyes is to say, at least implicitly, the suicide of liberalism (of liberal democracy) and of Christianity (Euro-Western), and this makes any naive apologia for the historical embrace between Christianity and liberalism impracticable.
Witnesses of this double suicide, we have the duty to ask ourselves whether that outcome has not been led to precisely by what the anti-modern popes condemned. Were Leo XII, Gregory XVI, Blessed Pius IX, Leo XIII, Saint Pius X and with them the legitimist, intransigent, fundamentalist, anti-modernist Catholic intellectuals right? Were they perhaps prophetic in foreseeing that deadly outcome that then seemed to liberals to be the jinx of defeated clerics and today is a reality before our eyes?
A (political) Catholicism that dissolves without residue into liberal democracy is simply useless for the intelligent man, even if he is liberal and of sincere secular sentiments, who wants to understand the causes of the current painful state of the West and also wants to try to remedy it. This modernized Catholicism, which in other years might have been useful in bringing the water of the Catholic masses to liberal democracy (the usefulness of the useful idiot), now has only the inevitability of a suicide[11], precisely the same as that of the liberal democratic West. Wouldn’t the true content of traditional (political) Catholic doctrine, the one that animated Christianity and that was distilled into magisterial teaching by Leo XIII[12] and, after him, by Pius X[13] and Pius XI[14], then be much more appreciable, even if not easy to digest?
3. The Catholic political doctrine
Traditional Catholic political doctrine would require many volumes to be presented in detail, but in the limited space of this essay I will try to present it in its essential features and with extreme synthesis.
The starting point is the natural political nature of man – zoon politikon says Aristotle – that Catholic doctrine recognizes and from which it deduces the naturalness of the political community. The political community is not a conventional reality but a natural reality, as natural is the family and the sociality of man.
Let us clarify. Nature is the essence as a principle of operation. Human nature will therefore be the essence of man (that for which man is man) understood as the principle of human action of man. This nature does not only say how man is but also how man must be because nature expresses the logos, the ratio, the order impressed by the Creator. Nature is therefore also law: lex naturalis. Nothing to do with the state of nature fantasized by all contractualist mythology, hence the irreconcilable distance between classical-Christian natural law and the natural rights of contractualists (including liberals). The former presupposes epistemological-metaphysical realism and is understood as founded in the essence of man contemplatively known which refers to the Eternal Wisdom of God the Creator, the latter presuppose the myth of the state of nature and the social contract.
Monaldo Leopardi writes, making himself the voice of traditional Catholic doctrine:
When did society, that is, living together and in association with men, begin? It began at the beginning of the world. For God, having just created man, said that he should not be alone and without companions, non est bonum esse hominem solum, and on the same day he created woman, assigning her as a companion and helper to man, faciamus ei adiutorium simile sibi. Thus society began immediately. The children of this man and this woman were born naturally and necessarily in the society of their parents and found themselves in society with their brothers, the same happening to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and society expanded according to the multiplication of the race of men. […] Have men therefore always lived in society and have never found themselves in the state of nature or in the state of an isolated and wild life? No, my son; and this wild state is a fantastic imagination of the poets […] Modern philosophers, however, for their perverse ends have stopped believing that the first men lived in that state and have called it a state of nature, when in truth it should be called a state contrary and repugnant to nature. […] So it is not true that men were reduced to living together by virtue of an agreement and a voluntary convention called the social contract? The society of the first man and the first woman was established immediately by God who made it necessary to their nature […] The children and grandchildren of these first living beings were all born into the society already established by God and this society was for them an absolute natural necessity […] Therefore, considering it under all aspects, society was born and is preserved by the will of God, who made it inseparable from the nature of man; and the social contract is a phantom imagined by the delirium and malice of modern philosophy[15].
In Catholic doctrine the so-called “Hume’s law” is denied at its root without falling into any naturalistic fallacy for the simple reason that nature is not placed on a merely descriptive level and even less on the merely factual but tells the order impressed by God the Creator. Nature is divine law!
Obviously, such a natural law necessarily presupposes the epistemological-metaphysical realism proper to the philosophy of being, that is, the knowability-knowledge of Reality by man, which in turn presupposes that there is a Reality (in an ontologically strong sense) and that this Reality is knowable-known by man. No compromise is possible between Catholic doctrine and those philosophies that deny the Real or its knowability. Catholicism is inseparable from metaphysical realism for the simple reason that God is the Creator and created Reality is an order in action willed by God that man must know and respect. Precisely starting from the created Reality known by man, man knows God, his existence and his attributes: this is what the First Vatican Council infallibly teaches with the dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius promulgated by Blessed Pius IX on 24 April 1870.
The consequence of this teaching is that the divine order of the Creator provides for man the family, society and political community: man is by law of nature a family, social and political being. It follows that family, society and political community, being provided for by the natural order, whose legislator is God the Creator, are not left to the arbitrariness of the human will but are defined in their essence by nature itself (or by God who is the author of nature) so that what family is (must be), what human society is (must be), what political community is (must be) is already said by the natural order impressed by God the Creator.
The family is the society constituted by a man and a woman united in marriage (a pact of natural law, heterosexual, monogamous, indissoluble, aimed at the procreation and education of offspring) and by their children, possibly extended to descendants, ascendants and collaterals; the political community is the organic community of all families and intermediate societies (the village that Aristotle speaks of) that constitutes a people[16], aimed at the pursuit of the common good. Which is nothing other than the good of man as man himself, or the good corresponding to human nature.
Here then is that nature understood normatively is the criterion of politics, the reason for which the political community is given, the end that political authority must pursue. Politics, according to traditional Catholic doctrine, is the science and art of the common good. Science because it must know the natural (normative) order impressed by the Creator, the lex naturalis; art because it must prudentially apply (royal prudence) this divine law to the contingencies it finds itself governing.
Here it is clear that we are at the opposite end of the theorization of the primacy of democracy over philosophy proposed by Richard Rorty[17], as well as of any Kelsenian Reine Rechtslehre or not. For the (traditional) Catholic political doctrine, democracy (like any other historical form of government) is a mere factual contingency, good or bad depending on whether it is given in conformity or not to the natural order of justice. The primacy of philosophy-theology – whose task in politics is to recognize and know the natural-divine order – is total over democracy, as well as over any form of government, over any legal formalism and over any procedural criterion. The Catholic political doctrine radically excludes any legal positivism and, even more, the very idea of (popular) sovereignty, considering political authority not sovereign but ministerial and delegated, whose only purpose is not given by a legislative will but by the natural-divine order of justice to which it must adhere and which it must apply prudentially.
The natural-divine order of justice, just as it determines the nature and purpose of the political community, also determines the nature and purposes of the family and of intermediate natural societies. Furthermore, this perennial and immutable order carries within itself what is classically called ius naturale, that is, the set of norms, domains, powers, libertates and subjective faculties not established by the human legislator but natural.
Here then is that the political authority, precisely because it is founded on and bound to this natural-divine order, must necessarily, under penalty of falling into illegitimacy ex parte exercitii, recognize and protect the family in its natural constitution and purpose, intermediate societies in their natural constitution and purpose, the various powers, domains, liberties and subjective faculties of natural law. Just as it must give effective force to the norms of justice of natural law.
It is not understood what the res publica christiana is (was) if one does not understand the metaphysical-finalistic idea of the natural-divine order. Everything, in the traditional Catholic political-juridical-moral conception, rests on the idea of the natural-divine order[18]. Christianity will certainly have manifested over the centuries many imperfections and even real aberrations due to human fallacy, the earthly Paradise after Adam’s sin was no longer given and every historical reality is by definition imperfect and marked by sin, however Christianity is characterized precisely by having its own criterion in the natural-divine order. For this reason, naturalism is a capital error (which was never of the Christian centuries, but rather of modernity), that is, conceiving law and politics starting from the artifice of pure nature. This would allow a self-sufficient natural law, etsi Deus non daretur, or a supposed secularized natural law completely indifferent to the religio vera.
Catholic political doctrine could not be further from such a perspective: the lex naturalis, as we have seen, is understood as participation in man of the same Eternal Divine Wisdom, the natural order of justice that governs everything is a natural-divine order, furthermore pure nature is denied without any possibility. Man has never lived in the state of pure nature, which does not exist, has never existed and will never exist. Man was created by God in a state of grace (Edenic state or pre-lapsarian supernatural), original sin made him an enemy of God, made him lose grace and wounded his nature (state of sin), until the Redemption of Christ restores man to friendship with God, gives back grace and heals nature (post-lapsarian state of grace). Man, according to Catholic doctrine, can never be simply man in a merely natural sense: either he is in grace or he is in sin, either he is supernaturalized or he is wounded in his very nature. When man is deprived of grace, when he is not supernaturalized, he is not in a state of pure nature but, rather, he is wounded and fallen. The hypothetical man in pure nature would simply be a monstrum. Man is created for supernatural life, he has a radical need for God and, after sin, he has an absolute need for the Redeemer. Only in Christ, in the divine life in Him, it is possible to establish-restore the natural-divine order of justice. Without Christ there is no pure natural order but the disorder of sin.
Here then is the deepest reason for Christianity: in order to live the natural-divine order of justice it is necessary to instaurare omnia in Christo, it is necessary for Christ to reign over individual men as well as over families, societies, peoples and States. The social Kingship of Christ is the heart and pivot of Christianity: Christ is the supreme summit of every human reality and every human authority is subordinate to Him and is His vicarious agent in its own order. The pope as the emperor, the bishop as the king, the magistrate as the pater familias: all, in the regime of Christianity, are understood as exercising an authority delegated by God – «non est enim potestas nisi a Deo: quae autem sunt, a Deo ordinae sunt» (Rm 13, 1) – and subordinate to that of Christ the Lord.
Political authority does not have the task of providing the means of grace or of providing for the salvation of souls, which is the task of the Church, but the political community, under Christianity, benefits from the state of grace given to men by Christ through the sacraments administered by the Church and from the light of Divine Revelation guarded and taught by the Church. Political authority will therefore do everything in its power to protect the Church, support it, promote its work of evangelization and the care of souls. Political authority, that is, will be actively concerned in the defense-propagation of the religio vera and this because it is aware that without the religio vera it is not even possible to live the natural-divine order of justice that is the foundation of everything. Political authority has the duty to recognize the religio vera and to offer it the sword. Furthermore, the political community, guided by the temporal authority, fulfills its duties of justice towards God by recognizing His Lordship and rendering Him public worship, so that one can speak in the full sense of religio publica and of a theocentric dimension of the res publica.
That mutual harmony between Priesthood and Empire that received so much praise from Leo XIII, must not be understood in an extrinsic but intrinsic way. Priesthood and Empire, Church and res publica, auctoritas sacrata pontificum and regalis potestas are distinct but never separate realities, they are intrinsically united in the common derivation from God, in the common subjection to Christ the Lord, in the common divine order that they implement on different levels.
To understand the unity of Christianity, despite the distinction between the ecclesial and the temporal, it is enough to remember the coronation formula of the popes[19] and the ecclesiastical roles of the emperor[20], the king of France[21] and the king of Spain[22], as well as the Ottonian privilege or the ius exclusivae of the Catholic monarchs relating to the papal election. One could then recall the ius patronatus exercised, for example, by the kings of Spain over the Church of their dominions, the doge[23] of Venice as the highest ecclesiastical authority in the Serenissima Republic with the prerogatives of a bishop despite being a layman and much more. It is enough to remember that the coronation is a liturgical act and the royal anointing is a sacramental of the Church. The oaths that emperors[24] and kings[25] had to solemnly pronounce before the coronation clearly illustrate their being ministers in temporalibus of the Church without any separation between Ecclesia and res publica.
If we then turn our gaze to Byzantine Christianity, as well as Ethiopian Christianity, the union between Ecclesia and res publica is even stronger with the Basileus[26] (or for Ethiopia the Negus) who is a hierocratic monarch, vicar of God on earth, head of both the empire and the Church according to a unitary and cosmic idea of authority such that the administration of justice and the Divine Liturgy, good temporal government and the orthodoxy of the faith, public works (roads, bridges, aqueducts, etc.) and sacred buildings that house relics and icons, the weapons of the army and the prayers of the monks – everything is necessary for the human order to be according to the divine Order and all this is the duty of the monarch to ensure.
What scandalizes our modern secular-liberal mentality in truth testifies to nothing other than the millenary unity of Christianity, with all its historical imperfections, in which a civilization recognized itself under Christ the Lord and coherently developed itself with this principle of unity such that what was distinct was not however separate but rather interconnected and interpenetrated to form an organic body that was both temporal and spiritual at the same time.
In Christianity there is no interference of the State in the Church or of the Church in the State for the simple fact that there is no State separate from the Church, there is no État in the modern sense, just as there is no Church separate from the res publica. There is temporal authority distinct from spiritual authority in the ecclesial-cultural-political unity of Christianity. A single human community is ecclesial and political at the same time, with distinct but never separate functions: distinct by reason of the purpose (the temporal common good for the political community, the salus animarum for the Church), not separated by reason of the common origin (from God), of the common Lord (Jesus Christ King and High Priest) and of the identical human community.
This majestic temporal-spiritual, cultural-juridical-political, philosophical-theological edifice born from the providential synthesis of philosophy, law and Divine Revelation, capable of crossing the centuries making Europe Christianity, this millenary civilization that was able to hold together Plato and Aristotle, the Stoic and Middle Platonism, Cicero and Seneca, the ius romanum and the Holy Scripture producing wonderful syntheses and grandiose flourishes, this millenary edifice was bombarded and demolished by the liberal revolution. How was it possible that such a civilization could be demolished so easily? In truth, the liberal revolution overwhelms a Christianity that already appears battered and at its lowest ebb. To understand this, it is necessary to broaden the angle of vision and go back in time adopting a reading key that I derive from Ernst Nolte: the European civil war.
4. The Great European civil war
In accordance with the sense in which Nolte speaks of a European civil war from 1917 to 1945[27], I believe that we can and must speak, above all else, of a great European civil war, fundamental, crucial, disastrous, which goes from 1521 to 1945, between Christianity and Modernity, the outcome of which marks the end of the first and the imposition of the second.
Europe-Christianity experiences the rupture of itself, of its own Weltanschauung only in the sixteenth century with the explosion of the Protestant schism that claims to redefine Christianity from its foundations and undermines the classical-Christian conception of man, of the world, of morality and politics by rejecting epistemological-metaphysical realism and the idea of a natural-divine order with respect to which faith and reason are in harmonious unity. But the schism goes beyond religion. With Luther, the primacy of the subjective over the objective, of interpretation over data, of freedom as absolute self-determination of the subject, of irrationalistic fideism, of will over intellect, of power over reason, bursts into Europe. Nothing similar had happened before. Luther was not limited to being one of the many heretics who arose in the history of the Church but was the inspirer of a true ecclesial-ideological-political revolution in the heart of Europe.
Let us take 1521 and not 1517 as the starting date of the great European civil war because we can only speak of civil war when the Lutheran heresy becomes a political and military phenomenon, otherwise the 95 theses would have been quickly forgotten as “a squabble between friars”, as Pope Leo X scornfully said. With 1521, however, we have the consummation of the ideological-political rift within the Holy Roman Empire, Lutheranism becomes a political option in the hands of Frederick III of Saxony and the other princes who espoused the cause of the Reformation. And where this occurred, the Lutheran revolution was not only a religious revolution but also a social, juridical, economic and political revolution with the expropriation of ecclesiastical property, the end of monasticism and religious life, the elimination of the canonical order and the privilege of court for clerics, the removal of civil authorities from the control of ecclesiastical authority, the rejection of the supremacy of the Pope, schools and universities no longer ecclesiastical but civil institutions and finally the secularisation of culture with what followed.
After Luther and Germany, it was Calvin and Zwingli, Switzerland and France … and then Thomas Cranmer’s England. Europe-Christianity no longer existed in the 16th century. The Thirty Years’ War was the bloody outcome of this first phase of the great European civil war. Since then, since 1521, Christianity has been consumed, wounded, maimed. Europe, as a continent-civilization, is experiencing a very long civil war where opposing worldviews conflict mortally.
The Peace of Augsburg (1555) decreed the death of Christianity in Germany, definitively removing the primacy of religion, understood as the ultimate truth that is not debatable and judges the world, to assign it to sovereign arbitrariness. By now the disease had gone beyond the borders of the empire. It will be the centuries-old clash between Protestant England and Catholic Spain, it will be the Eighty Years’ War to wrest the Netherlands from Spain and make it a center of religious and political-cultural revolution, it will be the wars between Catholics and Huguenots in France. It will be, as Francisco Elias de Tejada writes, the birth of a Europe other and hostile to Christianity (understood as an organic civilization, as res publica christiana)[28].
This is the profound meaning of the historical process that stretches from 1521 to 1945, the affirmation of a Europe other (radically other) than Christianity. In 1521, Europe begins to no longer be res publica christiana even though Luther and his followers were convinced that they were much more Christian than the Pope, the Emperor and the theologians of the Sorbonne. In truth, they lay the foundations for the nihilistic Europe of today[29]. It will be precisely this first phase of the great European civil war between the 16th and 17th centuries that will deliver to history the idea of the modern State, Hobbes’s Leviathan, Bodin’s Sovereign, the confessional State (cuius regio, eius religio) of Westphalia. A monster, the modern State, that could never have even been conceived in the philosophical-theological horizon of Christianity. The Westphalian state, the Leviathan, the modern sovereign state is the perfect antithesis of the (traditional) Catholic idea of politics, of the res publica, of temporal authority, of law and of the sacred bond of the community with God in the religio vera.
Liberal friends will point out to me that the liberal idea, which demands freedom and guarantees and places limits on the arbitrariness of power, opposes the Leviathan, the absolutism of the Sovereign, the confessional State. It is very true and I have no problem recognizing it, so that the starting point for building an understanding between Catholic doctrine and liberalism seems to have been found. It seems that in the common hostility to the Leviathan it can be established the compatibility of liberalism and Christianity.
It would seem so. But it is not so because the liberal revolution places itself in evolutionary continuity with the political modernity of Bodin, Hobbes, Westphalia, just as it is in continuity with the modernity of Luther and Calvin. It certainly surpasses them and also contradicts them and fights them but contains them. The liberal revolution presupposes the modern sovereign State, presupposes contractualism and, ultimately, also presupposes confessionalism as the power of the State to “give itself” a religion. The freedom and guarantees that the liberal revolution claims are claimed in the (modern) State conceived in the light of the contractualist myth, that is, understanding society, res publica and authority as conventional human artifices. The very secularity of the State is nothing other than a possible exercise of the power to “give itself” a religion. If the State has the power to “give itself” a religion, it can also not give itself one at all or choose to give itself the Crocean “religion of freedom” as a religion. The secular state does not depart from the paradigm of confessionalism inaugurated in Westphalia, it is a declination of it.
The second phase of the great European civil war that saw the liberal revolution oppose the absolutism of the Leviathan would be a civil war within the civil war, or rather a civil war within the modern camp alone (in short, it would be a clash between two phases of the revolution, the old one of Hobbes and the new one of Locke, the old one of Bodin and the new one of the philosophes) if it were not for the fact that the liberal revolution, rather than overthrowing the Leviathan, ended up overthrowing what remained of Christianity, what remained of the Christian Middle Ages. The same Hispanic Christianitas minor, which had resisted the Protestant revolution and the new idea of the State, was overwhelmed by the liberal revolution, in Madrid, with Isabella II and the defeat of the Carlists, in America and the Philippines, with the liberal-independence revolutions and the birth of the secular republics (in the Philippines the republic was crushed by the USA which made the country its own colony).
At the end of the 19th century, Christianity was nothing but relics surrounded by another world, that of modern Europe, and intolerant towards that thousand-year-old past that they wanted to erase: the Habsburg Empire (for Catholic Latinity), the Tsarist Empire (for Slavic Orthodoxy). Two emperors and two empires, both heirs of Rome through the Holy Roman Empire, one, and the Byzantine Empire, the other, two sacred Caesars at the head of two Christianities, will be swept away by that stage of the great European civil war that was the First World War.
With the victory of the liberal Powers (and the revolution in Russia) Christianity completely disappears from history. The Second World War will only sanction this state by decreeing liberal democracy as the only model (in the West) declined according to the American way of life. Liberal democracy after 1945 coincides with (Western) Europe and the West, there is nothing left in the West that can be called, even partially or by analogy, Christianity. The Catholic Church itself ended up converting to liberal democracy. Everything in the West today is liberal, the right is liberal and the left is liberal, the Protestants are liberal and the Pope is liberal as are the unbelievers, the monarchs are liberal and the revolutionaries are liberal, high culture is liberal and mass culture is liberal, even the Gospel is liberal according to up-to-date prelates and theologians. Western Europe is no longer Christianity. Today we can say with absolute certainty that a new Weltanschauung has taken the place of Christianity in Europe: liberal democracy….
5.The suicide of liberal Christianity
Let us return to the initial question: is liberalism compatible with Christianity? With Christian civilization and traditional Catholic doctrine[30], certainly not. But the question must be asked not with regard to liberalism alone, but rather with regard to the entire philosophical-political modernity of which liberalism (and liberal democracy) is an expression. The question is complex and would require detailed treatment. Here, by way of summary, I will limit myself to stating the essentials, referring for demonstrations and further information to those who have addressed it better and before me[31].
Christianity presupposes, requires and brings with it the philosophy of being, that is, epistemological-metaphysical realism, the hierarchy of being from God to the smallest inanimate atom passing through angels, men, beasts and plants in an ordered scale of “natural inequalities”, a universe ordered according to the Divine Logos, nature as a knowable and normative essence (lex naturalis), metaphysical finalism and the transcendent end of man. Christianity is faith in God who is the Ipsum esse subsistens (Ex 3:14) and who is Logos (Jn 1:1). Christianity is supremely metaphysical and logical, hierarchical and transcendent yet corporeal and practical. It is faith in God Incarnate, Jesus Christ dead, resurrected and ascended to the right hand of the Father, who is Lord, Judge, universal and eternal King. All this is absolutely incompatible with philosophical modernity and political modernity, as the “anti-modern” Popes had well understood. Either Christianity or modernity[32]!
Modernity has won, historically it has won. Liberal democracy has triumphed, it has no rivals … and yet here we are talking about the suicide of the West. In truth, the one who is committing suicide is Europe-West as Liberal Democracy (or rather as Modernity-Postmodernity), not Europe-West as Christianity which has long since been swept away from history precisely by the liberal revolution.
The great European civil war has only one winner: liberal democracy. It won in 1945, it even won by a landslide in 1989-1991. But the winner is committing suicide. Only those who do not know the dynamics of the Revolution[33] can be surprised by such an outcome that, instead, is decidedly obvious. The Revolution, every revolution, begins to die precisely when it asserts itself. The strength of the Revolution is its capacity to dissolve, but when the old order ceases to exist and the Revolution should find within itself sufficient reasons for the pars construens, the problems begin.
With the Christian order dissolved, the liberal revolution triumphed, but precisely in its triumph Liberal Democracy began to show itself as incapable of self-sustaining; it is the dissolution of Western Europe that we are witnessing.
Could Christianity be the answer, as Pera suggests and Ratzinger himself suggested, capable of re-animating Europe-West-Liberal Democracy?
Even before my modest voice of dissent that recalls the condemnation of liberalism and modern democracy by the Magisterium, it is the force of reality that responds negatively: the dissolving power of the ideological acid of modernity in general and of liberal democracy in particular is such that when an attempt is made to unite it with Christianity, Christianity does not at all revive the dying but rather becomes itself in solidarity with the suicidal outcome.
If the West is committing suicide, liberal-democratic-modernist Catholicism does not do otherwise, as liberal Protestantism had done before. The death by suicide of Europe-West-Liberal Democracy (and of post-conciliar Catholicism that has become liberal and democratic) is, in my opinion, inevitable. Only with the dissolution of the Revolution that commits suicide by being accomplished[34] will it be possible to pick up where we left off, not to propose the past in its relative and sometimes debatable contingencies but to start again from the solid ground of Truth that is perennial and immutable or simply is not. Metaphysical and religious, rational and supernatural, philosophical and divinely revealed Truth.
A civilization can only exist on the solid rock of metaphysics and religion. After the dissolution (which we are experiencing and which cannot be healed) I see only two possible scenarios for Europe: either the restoration of Christianity (and of the Church according to Tradition) or to let ourselves be absorbed by the Umma. For Liberal Democracy, on the other hand, I see no future at all.
Don Samuele Cecotti
[1] The Restoration restores the old dynasties on the thrones but does not at all restore the ancien régime, i.e. the pre-revolutionary regime of Christianity, rather consolidates the “new law” and the “new statehood” as well as the social order now different from that of the societas christiana. Perhaps the only partial exceptions were the Habsburg Empire, the Tsarist Empire and the Papal States which even in the 19th century could be called res publica christiana.
[2] It is correct to speak of the Italian Revolution rather than the Risorgimento (rhetorical-propaganda term) to indicate the ideological nature of the process (secular-liberal ideology of Masonic origin), subversive with respect to the pre-unification order and the religious-political-juridical-social-cultural tradition of Catholic Italy: «In the two years, between 1859 and 1861, the various parts of the new State were welded together with a real revolution» (B. Croce, Storia d’Italia dal 1871 al 1915, Laterza, Bari 1928, p. 30); see P. K. O’Clery, La Rivoluzione italiana. Come fu fatta l’unità della nazione, Ares, Milano 2000; M. Viglione (a cura di), La Rivoluzione italiana. Storia critica del Risorgimento, Il Minotauro, Roma 2001. Fr Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio writes in 1860 in La Civiltà Cattolica: «the revolution that is fighting today with the visor raised in Italy is a universal revolution» (L. Taparelli d’Azeglio, La libertà tirannia, in La Civiltà Cattolica, serie IV, vol. 8, 16 novembre 1860, p. 561).
[3] This applies first and foremost to the Greco-Latin experience which, from the Catholic Christian empire of Theodosius onwards, has marked almost a millennium and a half of European history in all the different forms of Western and Eastern res publica christiana, from the late ancient age of the Eastern and Western Roman Empire to the Roman-barbarian Catholic kingdoms of the Franks in Gaul, the Visigoths in Spain and the Lombards in Italy, from the Carolingian Empire to the Byzantine Empire, from the Germanic Holy Roman Empire to the Christian kingdoms and principalities of the Middle Ages, from the Rus’ of Saint Vladimir to the Bulgaria of Saint Boris I Michael, passing through the Rome of the Popes and medieval Switzerland, through Genoa and Venice, through the Prussia of the Teutonic Order and the Crusader Overseas Lands up to the Baroque Europe of the Counter-Reformation and the Hispanic, French, Habsburg-imperial, Tsarist, etc. ancien régime. But even outside the borders of the Roman ecumene, the populations who converted to Christ generated Christianities entirely analogous to those of Europe, one need only think of Armenia and Georgia in the Caucasus, Ethiopia in East Africa, Kongo dya Ntotila in West Africa.
Distant in time and space, in geography and in form of government, in language and ethnicity, these regimes and societies, although very different from each other, are united by the fact that they are Christianity, societas christiana, res publica christiana, that is, societies and political regimes in which there is no separation between the Church, civil society and temporal power, where all authority is traced back to God, where Christianity represents the all-encompassing Weltanschauung and where the legal system (public law and private law) refers to the perennial order impressed by God the Creator.
[4] The crisis certainly did not begin with the pontificate of Francis. “Bergoglism” exacerbates and amplifies an ancient crisis, see: J. Madiran, L’hérésie du XX siècle, Nouvelles Editiones Latines, Paris 1968; M. de Corte, La grande eresia, Volpe, Roma 1970; J. Meinvielle, De la cábala al progresismo, Editora Calchaquì, Salta 1970; C. Fabro, La svolta antropologica di Karl Rahner, Rusconi, Milano 1974; Id, L’avventura della teologia progressista, Rusconi, Milano 1974; G. Siri, Getsemani. Riflessioni sul movimento teologico contemporaneo, Fraternità della Santissima Vergine Maria, Roma 1980; R. Amerio. Iota Unum. Studio delle variazioni della Chiesa Cattolica nel secolo XX, Ricciardi, Milano-Napoli 1985; M. Lefebvre, Ils l’ont découronné: du libéralisme à l’apostasie, la tragédie conciliaire, Fideliter, Broût-Vernet 1989. Ultimately, to understand the crisis of the Church today, the most useful text to read remains the encyclical of Saint Pius X Pascendi Dominici gregis of 1907.
[5] For exemple see J. Ratzinger, Svolta per l’Europa?, Edizioni Paoline, Cinisello Balsamo 1991, p. 42 and Id, Lettera a Marcello Pera datata 4 settembre 2008, in M. Pera, Perché dobbiamo dirci cristiani, Mondadori, Milano 2008.
[6] The same two centuries that, instead, for Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini the Church has not yet assimilated, remaining behind: «The Church is two hundred years behind» so Martini in his last interview given to Father Georg Sporschill and Federica Radice for the Corriere della Sera on the 8th of August 2012 and published on the Corriere della Sera on the 1st of September of 2012 (https://www.corriere.it/cronache/12_settembre_02/le-parole-ultima-intervista_cdb2993e-f50b-11e1-9f30-3ee01883d8dd.shtml).
[7] Vincenzo Gioberti, in the first half of the 19th century, dreamed of “the liberal reform of the Papacy” Machiavellianism” (V. Gioberti, Del rinnovamento civile d’Italia, curated by F. Nicolini, rist. anastatica, Laterza, Bari 1968, voll. III, p. 252) to be achieved with what he called “holy Machiavellianism”: “The art of Catholic reform is to reform the Church with the Church, working within it […] We must reform Rome with Rome; make sure that the reform passes through the hands of those who must be reformed. This is holy (V. Gioberti, Riforma cattolica, Vallecchi, Firenze 1924, pp. 193-194).
[8] See J. Ratzinger, Theologische Prinzipienlehre: Bausteine zur Fundamentaltheologie, E. Wewel, München 1982, p. 398. Ratzinger openly affirms that the text of Gaudium et spes «spielt die Rolle eines Gegensyllabus und insofern den Versuch einer offiziellen Versöhnung der Kirche mit der seit 1789 gewordenen neuen Zeit darstellt [It plays the role of a counter-syllabus and in this sense represents an attempt to officially reconcile the Church with the new era that emerged from 1789]» (ivi, p. 399).
[9] See F. Sardá y Salvany, El liberalismo es pecado. Cuestiones candentes, Libreria y Tipografia Católica, Barcelona 1884. Sardá y Salvany defined liberalism as a sin against faith and liberal Catholicism as a heresy, arguing all this in the famous volume, praised by Pope Leo XIII through a note from the Sacred Congregation of the Index.
[10] Unresolved also, or rather perhaps above all, after the famous speech of Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005 in which the Pope indicated the hermeneutic path as the key to resolving the question of continuity between pre-conciliar and post-conciliar Catholicism. Reading the Second Vatican Council in continuity with what the Church has previously taught is a hermeneutic effort that can be said to be generous in Benedict XVI but historically failed. The most serious and honest theological response to the hermeneutics of reform in continuity indicated in 2005 by Benedict XVI was certainly the courageous one of the ecclesiologist Monsignor Brunero Gherardini, former dean of the Faculty of Theology at the Pontifical Lateran University and the last illustrious exponent of the Roman Theological School, which can be summed up in one sentence: continuity is not enough to assert, it must be demonstrated! On this particular point see by Gherardini: B. Gherardini, Concilio Vaticano II. Un discorso da fare, Casa Mariana Editrice, Frigento 2009; Id, Concilio Vaticano II. Il discorso mancato, Lindau, Torino 2011; Id, Il Vaticano II. Alle radici di un equivoco, Lindau, Torino 2012. And demonstrating continuity, for example, between traditional Catholic political doctrine and the conciliar-post-conciliar one is an impossible task even for the most acrobatic interpreter.
[11] Gramsci wrote on L’Ordine Nuovo of novembre 1st 1919 commenting the founding of the Popular Party: «Catholicism thus enters into competition not with liberalism, not with the secular state; it enters into competition with socialism […] Democratic Catholicism does what socialism could not: it amalgamates, orders, vivifies and commits suicide.» (A. Gramsci, I popolari, in L’Ordine Nuovo, 1 novembre 1919). Sturzo’s Popular Party is the most evident example of the conversion of Catholicism to liberal democracy, and for this reason it was harshly condemned by Cardinal Tommaso Pio Boggiani, Archbishop of Genoa, (T. P. Boggiani, L’Azione Cattolica e il Partito Popolare Italiano. Lettera al Clero e al Laicato dell’Arcidiocesi, Tipografia arcivescovile, Genova 25 luglio 1920) and by the founders of the Catholic Uniiversity of Milan Fr Agostino Gemelli e monsignor Francesco Olgiati (A. Gemelli – F. Olgiati, Il programma del Partito Popolare Italiano come non è e come dovrebbe essere, Società Editrice Vita e pensiero, Milano 1919).
[12] The Leonine corpus constitutes a sort of summa of Catholic political doctrine, in addition to inaugurating the Social Doctrine of the Church which is much more than the only workers’ question addressed by the Rerum novarum (1891). See in particular the encyclicals Quod apostolici muneris (1878), Diuturnum illud (1881), Immortale Dei (1885), Libertas (1888), Tametsi futura (1900) e Graves de communi (1901), without forgetting the two – Humanum genus (1884) e Dall’alto dell’Apostolico Seggio (1890) – where Leo XIII indicates Freemasonry as the great enemy of the Church, the inspirer of revolutions. The entire doctrinal system of Leo rests on that metaphysical realism which has Thomas Aquinas as its master. The encyclical Aeterni Patris (1878) with which Leo XIII indicates Thomas Aquinas as the master of theology and philosophy, is therefore fully part, indeed it is the premise, of Leo’s political doctrine.
[13] In particular see the encyclicals E Supremi (1903), Vehementer Nos (1906), Gravissimo officii munere (1906), Une fois encore (1907) and Iamdudum (1911) as well as the apostolic letter Notre charge apostolique (1910).
[14] In particular see the encyclicals Ubi Arcano (1922), Quas primas (1925) and Quadragesimo anno (1931).
[15] M. Leopardi, Catechismo filosofico, in Id, Catechismo filosofico e Catechismo sulle rivoluzioni, Fede & Cultura, Verona 2006, pp.123-125.
[16] People in Catholic political doctrine is not at all equivalent to the sum of the citizens of the State in a positivistic sense, nor to a mystical-romantic concept, but rather to a precise juridical reality of natural law «populus est coetus multitudinis iuris consensu et utilitatis communione sociatus» (S. th. I-II, 105, 2) as already Cicero taught: «Populus autem non omnis hominum coetus quoquo modo congregatus, sed coetus multitudinis iuris consensu et utilitatis communione sociatus.Eius autem prima causa coeundi est non tam inbecillitas quam naturalis quaedam hominum quasi congregatio» (De re publica I, 25, 39). See D. Castellano, Il “popolo” tra realtà e definizioni. Appunti per una riflessione su una questione politico-giuridica attuale, in Id, Politica. Parole chiare, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Napoli 2019, pp. 23-39.
[17] See R. Rorty, The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy., in Id, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Cambridge University Press, London 1990, pp. 175-196.
[18] St. Thomas Aquinas is also a master in this when he defines the lex naturalis as a participation of the eternal law, or of Divine Wisdom itself, in the rational creature: see S.th. I-II, q. 91, a. 1, 2 e 3; qq. 93, 94, 95, 96, 97. As can be seen from the words of Aquinas, the lex naturalis has nothing biologistic, naturalistic or, even less, merely factual-descriptive. The lex naturalis, knowable rationally, refers to the Eternal Wisdom of God of which the natural order is a reflection.
[19] The Popes were crowned with the tiara which was placed on their heads by the Cardinal Protodeacon with the formula: «Accipe thiaram tribus coronis ornatam, et scias te esse Patrem Principum et Regum, Rectorem Orbis, in terra Vicarium Salvatoris Nostri Jesu Christi, cui est honor et gloria in sæcula sæculorum». The last crowned Pope was Paul VI.
[20] The Holy Roman Emperor was crowned by the Pope (until Charles V) after being crowned and consecrated by the Archbishop of Cologne, ordained a deacon, wore the liturgical vestments (the dalmatic) and exercised the office (for example on Christmas night proclaiming the Gospel). He was also a canon of the Papal Basilica of St. Peter, in addition to having the mandate of advocatus Ecclesiae.
[21] The Most Christian King of France was crowned and consecrated by the Archbishop of Reims, ordained subdeacon, wore his liturgical vestments (the tunic) and exercised his office. He was also a canon of the Papal Archbasilica of St. John Lateran.
[22] The Most Catholic King of Spain was (and still is, even if only in an honorary capacity) canon of the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore as well as Patronus of all the Churches in his dominions.
[23] The Doge swore on the Gospels at the high altar of St. Mark’s Basilica «statum et honorem Ecclesiae Sancti Marci bona fide, et sine fraude conservare».
[24] The Holy Roman Emperor used to swear on the altar of the Palatine Chapel in Aachen to defend the holy faith, to defend the Holy Church, to be duly subject and to show reverent faith «to the Father and most holy Lord in Christ, to the Roman Pontiff and to the holy Roman Church».
[25] The King of France used to swear to protect the Church and its assets, to bring peace to the Church and the Christian people, and to fight heretics.
[26] It should be remembered that all the Ecumenical Councils of the first Christian millennium were convened and presided over not by the Pope but by the Emperor (of Constantinople); from the Council of Nicaea convened and presided over by the Emperor Constantine to the Fourth Council of Constantinople convened and presided over by the Emperor Basil. Only after the Eastern Schism of 1054 were the Ecumenical Councils convened and presided over by the Pope. However, even in the Latin Church the ancient idea of the Council convened and presided over by the Emperor was preserved, so it was precisely the (elected) Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg who conceived and presided over the Council of Constance (1414-1418) which put an end to the Western Schism.
[27] See E. Nolte, Der Europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917-1945,ediz. it., BUR, Milano 2018; Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus, Propyläen Verlag, Berlin 1987, ediz. it. Rizzoli, Milano 1996.
[28] «Christianity dies, so that Europe can be born, when this perfect organism is struck from 1517 to 1648 by five successive ruptures, five hours of birth and birth of Europe, five stabs in the historical flesh of Christianity. […] From 1517 to 1648 Europe is born and grows and, as Europe is born and grows, Christianity weakens and dies. […] While medieval Christianity before Luther was, despite the divergences, a political edifice based on the unity of faith, starting with Luther such unity will be impossible. After Luther, saving the unity of faith, the organic spirituality of Christianity collapses, to be replaced by Europe, a mechanistic balance between different beliefs that coexist. Direct consequence of the establishment of free examination […] instead of the organic body of the Church, which served as the backbone of medieval Christianity» (F. Elías de Tejada, La monarchia tradizionale, Controcorrente, Napoli 2001, p. 44).
[29] To understand Luther’s role as the root of the modern revolution up to today’s nihilistic outcome, see, for example, J. Maritain, Trois réformateurs: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau, avec six portraits, Plon, Paris 1925; D. Castellano, Martin Lutero. Il canto del gallo della Modernità, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Napoli 2016, M. Ayuso (a cura di), Consecuencias político-jurídicas del protestantismo. A los 500 años de Lutero, Marcial Pons, Madrid 2016; J. Rao (a cura di), Luther and His Progeny: 500 Years of Protestantism and Its Consequences for Church, State, and Society, Angelico Press, New York 2017.
[30] Let the encyclicals Mirari vos by Gregory XVI, Quanta cura by Pius IX and Libertas by Leo XIII be sufficient proof. Locke was right, given his premises, to exclude Catholics even from tolerance because Catholics, to the extent that they are truly Catholic, are absolutely non-integrable into the liberal State. The opposition between liberalism and Catholicism is “religious”, it is «the prototype or pure form of all other oppositions and, at the same time, that which, with its irremissible hatred, highlights the religious character, the religious rivalry of liberalism» because Catholicism is «the most direct and logical negation of the liberal idea» (B. Croce, Storia d’Europa nel secolo decimonono, Laterza, Bari 1932, pp. 27.
[31] J. Maritain, Antimoderne, Édition de la Revue des Jeunes, Paris 1922; C. Fabro, Introduzione all’ateismo moderno, Studium, Roma 1964; M. de Corte, L’intelligence en péril de mort , Club de la Culture française, Paris 1969.
[32] To be understood in an axiological and not chronological sense, in a philosophical and political (ideological) sense and not in a sense of material-technological progress.
[33] See J. J. Gaume, La Révolution, recherches historiques sur l’origine et la propagation du mal en Europe, depuis la Renaissance jusqu’à nos jours, 12 voll., Gaume frères et J. Duprey libraires-éditeurs, Paris 1856-1859; L. G. de Ségur, La Révolution, Tolra et Haton, Paris 1861; P. Corrȇa de Oliveira, Rivoluzione e Contro-Rivoluzione, (Edizione del cinquantenario 1959-2009), Sugarco, Milano 2009.
[34] Del Noce wrote, thinking of the Gramscian roots of ’68: «It is, however, a revolution that turns into dissolution: the name of this revolution that turns into dissolution is recent: “contestation”» (A. Del Noce, Il suicidio della rivoluzione, Aragno, Torino 2004, p. 114). Del Noci’s thesis of the suicide of Gramscian revolution can, in my opinion, be extended to the liberal revolution and, in general, to the Revolution understood as the soul of Modernity. The dissolution and suicide of philosophical-political modernity are pre-contained in the anti-metaphysical premises of modernity itself. On philosophical modernity, see the unsurpassed analysis that Cornelio Fabro makes in C. Fabro, Introduzione all’ateismo moderno, cit.
