A Letter to the Comte de Crolles
Penned by Dr Jean-Louis de Valois, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the Catholic University of Rheims.
University of Rheims Press Archive
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On the occasion of the reprint of the 1912 manifesto of the septembrists I wish to respond by making certain clarifications regarding Catholic doctrine, the relationship between the Holy See and the Catholic Church and the moralist movement and liberalism in response to the prefatory remarks of the Comte de Crolles.
To begin, I applaud the greater understanding of Catholic doctrine than is sometimes displayed by liberal and proletarist authors in the prefatory remarks in the reprint, despite other disagreements as to its content. The clear understanding that the doctrine of Papal Infallibility applies solely to dogmatic matters of faith and morals proclaimed ex cathedra is praiseworthy in as much as it rejects the myths and falsehoods advocated in certain quarters by adversaries of the Church. I also must express my applause in the acceptance of the Churchs dogmatic and infallible (for Church dogma by divine guarantee is free from error) teachings regarding morality and the nature of truth, something that the proletarists and more fundamentalist liberals reject and which the Church have strenuously opposed.
With regards to papal opposition to liberalism, it is important here for the Comte to recall certain ontological realities fundamentally opposed to the Catholic Faith within liberalism. Although of course certain particulars of policy under septembrist governments have proven praiseworthy and in accord with Paul VIs teaching (for liberalism despite its other errors borrows much from Catholic social teaching, although you may say he reinvented the wheel what he was truly doing was merely re-proposing that timeless teaching to a world in which many have forgot them), liberalism in generals ontology is what makes it fundamentally anathema to the Catholic religion. Its concept of freedom, and here I do not of course mean genuine liberty, those rights inherent to nature, but rather that conception of freedom which proceeds from radical individualism and undermines the foundational principles of the common good and the social contract, ultimately rejects the concept of obedience to legitimate authority and a duty to anything beyond the self. The homocentric nature of this Freedom leads men to privilege solely the passions and desires of individuals without reference society or community. This in the Churchs view only serves to promote vice and a conception that man has a right to do anything he wants, so long as it does not overtly and obviously harm anyone else as the prefatory remarks to the reprint exclaimed. This, in addition to being fallacious in the sense that an individual is not an atomistic agent but rather completely bound into the community he resides in (for everything he does affects other people without exception) also greatly concerns the Church because if man is the arbiter of what is right and what is not, and considers himself free to indulge every whim of his imagination without reference to duty to truth, or obedience to authority, he inevitably travels down a road of godlessness. Afterall, if man has no duty to fellow men and exists only to serve his own interests and defend his own rights, than why should he bow in obedience and duty to God and to the moral law? The answer of course is that he will reject religion, with man himself becoming his own deity and point of reference, actions and policy therefore would become oriented not by whether they are objectively right according to Gods decree, but by whether they make man free, be it the praiseworthy freedom from tyranny, the freedom from the interference of society undertaken in the interests of the good of the collective, or freedom from the sovereign rule of the Lord, a rule which itself liberates man and makes him truly free (for to reject God is to take up the chains of the devil and trap oneself in sin). Liberalisms ontology thus contains the seeds of atheism, a fundamental rejection of the Churchs teaching (and of religion in general) and a potential for great social degradation and indeed almost paradoxically tyranny itself, the specifics of which are known through papal encyclicals on the matter.
Considering this, Pope Paul VI felt the need (particularly with regards to the extreme liberals, and the proletarists who reject the basic truths which the Christian world generally accepts and which are in some quarters wrongly attributed to liberals) to reassert stringently Catholic teaching and the necessity for a God centred view of life, that sees everything as being references to mans purpose, and to the good of the whole. This is why His Holiness indeed wrote the Doctrina Moralitas in Vita Politica in order that the newly rising ideology of moralism which attested (And attests) to be based in Christian principles did not philosophically divert from the timeless Christian teaching the Church has always proposed.
This brings us to the Churchs relationship with the moralist movement. I must stress here that the Church is not moralist, and neither is moralism a product of the Church. This should be self-evident. Moralism is historically an indigenous movement of South American politics that bases itself in Catholic teaching, and which the Church has chosen to support as part of the fight against the forces of radical liberalism and proletarism on that continent, which would see religion marginalised. With regards to the former statement, that the Church is not moralist, this is true in the sense that one neednt be moralist to be Catholic, merely accept and uphold with divine and Catholic faith all that the Church dogmatically teaches. Indeed I would note here that certain moralist doctrines, namely teetotalism and a total prohibition on gambling are not Church teaching. I would also note merely as a matter of correction that religious strife has occurred in societies where moralism is present only in Argentina and Paraguay. The former case is clearly a product of the moral and social license supported by the Argentine state in opposition to Christian morality which has inflamed pre-existing tensions between the Catholic and Protestant populations. The latter was an example of nationalistic anti-argentine sectarianism, a product of the doctrine of nationalism which both Septembrism and the Catholic Church condemn. Elsewhere, such as in Brazil, Uruguay, Venezuela and Colombia no sectarian violence of a similar nature has arisen.
Finally, with regards to the Comte, we would urge him to make known what in his assessment is unfounded nonsense and retrograde. For although he rightly has supported the truth of the Churchs social teaching on a good number of matters (and erroneously proposed that liberalism is necessary to achieve the policy points inherent within that social teaching) he has not precisely outlined what he disapproves of beyond the rejection of absolute freedom of religion as a right (a topic addressed elsewhere). How afterall can the scholars within the plural world of Catholic (or indeed secular) philosophy (be it moralism, traditionalism, conservatism or so forth) reference the Comtes statements beyond a vague disapproval of moralism and an assertion of liberalism? We conclude therefore by saying that Septembrism in general needs to clarify what precisely it is opposed to in the moralist movement and deepen its philosophical proposition to reference precisely why it upholds the doctrines it does, and explain why, in its own assessment, absolute freedom as it proclaims is philosophically reasonable as compared to the Catholic teaching of truth as an ultimate imperative which all men are morally bound to adhere too. Before the moderate strains of liberalism (such as septembrism) which do accept some aspects of Christian teaching produce a sound philosophical foundation for the views they hold which do not stand in accord with Christian teaching, there is no basis on which they can truly criticise what the Church has proclaims (and indeed what moralism, which is distinct and separate proclaims) regarding its teachings since they have no basis on which to defend their own other than a rationally indefensible sentimentality.
May, 1931
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ooc: In spoilers
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(I may be able to rattle them out with fair rapidity, but like everyone I have RL stuff to do as well)
