When a train is ready to leave, normal procedure requires both engineer and passengers to be in their proper places, and the conductor to signal for departure. Only then can the train begin to roll.
(Louis IX meeting Pope Innocent IV at Cluny.)
So also, at the outset of an intellectual work it is customary to set forth preliminary principles and explain, if need be, the logical criteria that justify them. Only then may the author pass on to the doctrinal part.
However, if a number of readers are suspicious of the subject to be dealt with, or even have deep-rooted prejudices against it, the situation is like that of an engineer who notices that although the passengers are already seated, the tracks ahead are blocked.
The trip cannot begin without the removal of the obstructions.
In a similar way, the obstacles the present work will encounter—the prejudices that fill the minds of numerous readers regarding the nobility and analogous traditional elites—are so great that the topic can only be treated after their removal.
This explains the unusual title and content of this first chapter.
1. Without Detriment to a Just and Ample Action on Behalf of the Working Class, an Opportune Action in Favor of Elites
Much is said today regarding the demands to meet the social needs of workers. In principle, this solicitude is highly commendable and deserves the support of every upright soul.
However, to favor only the working class while neglecting the problems and needs of other classes, often just as harshly affected by the great contemporary crisis, is tantamount to forgetting that society includes not just manual laborers but various classes, each with its specific functions, rights, and duties. The formation of a global classless society is a utopia that has been the unvarying theme of the successive egalitarian movements arising in Christian Europe since the fifteenth century. In our day, this utopia is heralded mainly by socialists, communists, and anarchists.[5]
The TFPs and TFP Bureaus throughout Europe, the Americas, Oceania, Asia, and Africa support all just improvements for the working class. But they cannot accept the notion that these improvements imply the eradication of other classes or such reduction of their specific status, duties, rights, and functions as would lead to their virtual extinction in the name of the common good. Trying to solve social questions by leveling all classes for the apparent benefit of one class is to provoke genuine class struggle. To suppress all classes for the exclusive benefit of one, the working class, leaves the others no alternative but legitimate self-defense or death.
The TFPs cannot endorse this process of social leveling. In contradistinction to the proponents of class struggle, and in cooperation with the multiple initiatives underway today in favor of social peace through a just and needed advancement of the workers, all conscientious contemporaries must develop an action in favor of social order, opposing the socialist and communist action, which aims to create social friction and, ultimately, unleash class warfare.
The survival of social order requires that the right of each class to what it needs to live in dignity be recognized and that each class be able to fulfill its obligations to the common good.
In other words, action in favor of the workers must be coupled with a complementary action in favor of the elites.
The Church's interest in social questions does not stem from an exclusive love of the working class. The Church is not a labor party. She loves justice and charity more than She loves any specific class, and She strives to establish these virtues among men. For this reason, She loves all social classes, including the nobility, so besieged by egalitarian demagogues.[6]
These reflections naturally lead the reader to the subject of this book. On the one hand, it is evident that Pius XII recognizes that the nobility has a significant and specific mission in contemporary society, a mission shared in considerable measure by the other social elites, as will be discussed later.
This concept is taught in the Sovereign Pontiff's fourteen masterful allocutions delivered in audiences granted the Roman Patriciate and Nobility[7] on the occasion of their New Years' greetings from 1940 through 1952 and again in 1958.[8]
On the other hand, no one can ignore the vast and multifaceted offensive underway in today's world to abase and eradicate the nobility and other elites. One need only consider the overpowering, relentless, and pervasive pressures to ignore, contest, or diminish their roles.
In this light, action on behalf of the nobility and the elites is more opportune than ever. Thus we affirm, with serene courage, that in our day and age, when the preferential option for the poor has become so necessary, a preferential option for the nobility has become indispensable as well. Of course, we include in this expression other traditional elites, which are worthy of support and in danger of disappearing.
This affirmation may seem absurd since in theory the worker's condition is closer to poverty than is the noble's, and since, as is commonly known, many nobles possess large fortunes.
Large fortunes, yes. But these are generally eroded by crushing taxes, giving rise to the distressing spectacle of lords compelled to transform substantial parts of their manors and mansions into hotels or inns, while they occupy only a fraction of the family home; or, into manors where the lord serves as curator and guide, if not bartender, while his spouse feverishly applies herself to often menial chores to keep their ancestral home clean and presentable.
This persecution advances by other means as well, such as the extinction of the rights of primogeniture and the compulsory division of inheritances. Is not a preferential option for the nobility required to counteract this offensive?
If the nobility is regarded as an inherently parasitic class of profligates, the answer is no. However, Pius XII rejected this caricature of the nobility, which is part of the black legend spread by the French Revolution and those that followed it in Europe and the world. While clearly stating that abuses and excesses deserving history's censure have occurred in noble circles, he nevertheless affirms, in moving terms, the existence of a harmony between the nobility's mission and the natural order instituted by God Himself, as well as the elevated and beneficial character of this mission.[9]
2. Nobility: A Species Within the Genus "Traditional Elites"
The expression "traditional elites" appears frequently throughout this work. We use this term to designate a socioeconomic reality that may be described as follows:
According to the pontifical texts discussed hereafter, the nobility is an elite from every point of view. It is the highest elite, not the sole elite. It is a species within the genus "elites."
Some elites derive their status from sharing in the specific functions and features of the nobility. Others, although engaged in other functions, also enjoy a special dignity. There are elites, then, that are neither noble nor hereditary ex natura propria.
For example, a university professorship in itself introduces its holder into what can be called the nation's elite. The same holds true for a military commission, a diplomatic office, and comparable positions.
While the exercise of these activities is not a privilege of the nobility today, the number of nobles engaged in them is not small. Obviously these nobles do not relinquish their status by doing so. On the contrary, they bring to these activities the excellence of the attributes specific to the nobility.[10]
When enumerating elites one should not overlook those that give impulse to the nation's economy through industry and commerce. These activities are not only legitimate and dignified, but manifestly useful. Their immediate and specific goal, however, is the enrichment of those who practice them. In other words, it is by enriching themselves that these individuals, in a collateral way, enrich the nation. In itself, this is not sufficient to confer nobiliary character. Only a special dedication to the common good—particularly to its most precious element, the Christian character of civilization—can confer nobiliary splendor on an elite.
Nevertheless, this splendor will shine in industrialists or merchants who, in the pursuit of their activities, render noteworthy services to the common good with significant sacrifice of their legitimate personal interests.
Moreover, should the interplay of circumstances enable a non-noble family to render such services for several generations, this alone may well be considered sufficient to elevate that lineage to noble status.
Something of this sort occurred with the Venetian nobility, which was largely made up of merchants. This class governed the Most Serene Republic and, consequently, held in its hands the common good of the State, which it raised to the rank of an international power. It is not surprising, therefore, that these merchants attained the status of nobles. They did this so effectively and authentically that they assimilated the elevated cultural tone and manners of the best military and feudal nobility.
There are, on the other hand, traditional elites based from their onset upon aptitudes and virtues transmitted through genetic continuity, or through the family environment and education.[11]
A traditional elite arises when this transmission bears fruit and, consequently, families—and not rarely large groups of families—distinguish themselves from generation to generation through signal services to the common good. The precious attribute of traditionality is in this way added to the status of this elite. Frequently these elites do not formally constitute a noble class merely because the law in many countries, in accordance with the doctrines of the French Revolution, forbids the granting of noble titles by public authority. This is the case not only in certain European countries, but also in the Americas.
Nonetheless, pontifical teachings on the nobility are largely applicable to these traditional elites by virtue of their analogous roles. For this reason these teachings are both important and timely for those who bear authentic and lofty family traditions, even when not adorned by a title. They have a noble mission in favor of the common good and Christian civilization in their respective countries.
The same can be said, mutatis mutandis, of the nontraditional elites as they become traditional.
3. Objections to the Nobility Imbued with the Egalitarian Spirit of the French Revolution
Nobility, elites. Why does this book only deal with them? Such will be, no doubt, the objection raised by egalitarian readers, who are ipso facto hostile to the nobility.
Contemporary society is saturated with radically egalitarian prejudices. Sometimes these are consciously or unconsciously harbored even by people belonging to sectors of opinion where one would expect to find unanimity in the opposite vein. Such is the case with members of the clergy who are enthusiasts of the revolutionary trilogy, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, heedless of the fact that it was originally interpreted in a sense frontally opposed to Catholic doctrine.[12]
If such egalitarian dissonance is found in clerical circles, one should not be surprised that it also occurs among nobles and members of other traditional elites. With the recent bicentennial of the French Revolution fresh in our memories, these reflections readily recall the revolutionary noble par excellence, Philippe Egalité, Duke of Orleans. To this day, his example has not ceased to inspire emulators in more than one illustrious lineage.
In 1891, when Leo XIII published his famous encyclical Rerum novarum on the condition of the working class, certain capitalist circles objected that relations between capital and labor, being a specifically economic matter, were no concern of the Roman Pontiff. They suggested that his encyclical encroached on their domain.
Today, some readers might wonder why a Pope should concern himself with the nobility and elites, traditional or otherwise. Their mere survival in our changed times might seem to these readers an archaic and useless outgrowth of the feudal era. From this perspective, the nobility and contemporary elites are nothing more than the embodiment of certain ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that man can no longer appreciate or even comprehend.
These readers deem that the few who still value elites are inspired by empty aesthetic or romantic sentiments, and that the people who pride themselves on being part of the elites have succumbed to arrogance and vanity. These readers, convinced that nothing will prevent the inevitable march of history from eradicating such obsolete malignancies from the face of the earth, conclude that if Pius XII would not foster the march of history thus understood, at least he ought not put obstacles in its way.
Why, then, did Pius XII address this subject so extensively and in a way so agreeable to Counter-revolutionary minds, such as that of this author, who has assembled these teachings, annotated them, and now offers them to the public? Would it not have been better for the Pontiff to have remained silent?
The answer to such egalitarian objections imbued with the spirit of 1789 is simple. People who wish to know the answer can do no better than to hear it from the authoritative lips of Pius XII himself. In his allocutions to the Roman Patriciate and Nobility, Pius XII points out, with an extraordinary gift for synthesis, the profound moral significance of his intervention in the matter, as we shall see.[13] He also highlights the legitimate role of the nobility according to social doctrine inspired by Natural Law and Revelation. At the same time, he describes the richness of soul that became their hallmark in the Christian past. Confirming their continued guardianship of that treasure, the Pontiff proclaims their lofty mission of affirming and radiating this rich legacy throughout the contemporary world. This remains the case despite the devastating effects of the ideological revolutions, world wars, and socioeconomic crises that have reduced many nobles to modest circumstances. Repeatedly the Pontiff reminds them that, much to their honor, their situation is similar to that of Saint Joseph, at once a Prince of the House of David, a simple carpenter, and, above all, the legal father of the Word Incarnate and chaste spouse of the Queen of all Angels and Saints.[14]
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