A
Subversive Mentality
It
is clear that, by rejecting the essential
goods that give meaning to human existence,
we humans automatically revert to a primitive
and instinctual animal existence. All the
police in the world will have great difficulty
in preventing or repressing the consequences
of such a transformation. The prisons are
already filling up with the young people
we have put out of balance. We should have
understood that the human being is always
tempted by the path of least resistance
and by the satisfaction of his own passions.
These eminently subversive foundations render
the mediations of everyday life unbearable:
natural law, the family, work, the most
legitimate institutions come to be seen
as so many useless, constraining and harmful
barriers. Accordingly all manifestations
of hostility towards them are permitted.
Collective
Blindness
Every
form of egocentric behavior provokes a kind
of mental myopia which, becoming more and
more widespread, degenerates into collective
blindness. We become ridiculous when, despite
our smallness in the immensity of the universe,
we confer on ourselves a patent of absolute
sovereignty over matter and spirit, over
the present and the future. We even impose
on the past, in accordance with our interests,
the veil of oblivion or the obligation of
memory!
This
delirious pretense is not without hypocrisy,
since man plays at imitating the divine
without daring to come to grips with it.
He asks only that the divine not intervene
in his own affairs, which is a deceitful
way of denying it. Man thus decides motu
proprio that temporal goods and their
immediate’use belong to himself alone, without
limits or constraints. The divine is conceded
a paradise that everyone imagines in his
own way, according to his own personal theism;
some are inclined to see this paradise as
open to everyone, others imagine it uninhabited,
like hell itself.
A
Corrupt and Corrupting Social Climate
It
is a slippery slope from folly to sacrilege.
It is hinted that it would be enough for
the irony of the heavens to simply leave
man, the “thinking reed,” in the power of
his raving fancy, since he tends to bind
himself in chains of his own making: anarchy
alternating with totalitarianism, the unscrupulous
use of mass media and technology for the
sake of domination, etc.
The
contemporary conjunction of secularism with
erroneous beliefs can lead to nothing else.
We perceive that a social climate of a new
kind is gradually installing itself. This
climate combines, in an apparently inextricable
but doubtless intentional manner, counter-truths,
subversive aims, and alluring prospects
for the future. Each new generation receives
its own obligatory dose of skillful manipulation.
The masters of the game take care to solidify
their position by obtaining the indispensable
consent of the majority through the well-tested
means that are habitually employed in this
kind of undertaking: corruption, fear, dissimulated
co-optation. The passivity of the moderates
and the alignment of the ambitious do the
rest.
The
Role of Individuals in the Great Dramas
of History
History
in its broad outlines is made by the holders
of power and by the intermittent outbursts
of the masses. We cannot easily forget the
hecatombs of the last century. But individuals
taken in isolation also have their role
to play in this drama of grand proportions.
This means that individuals cannot be considered
entirely innocent. We are so fragile in
difficult situations, where fear makes even
the haughtiest among us cowardly and silent!
Fortunately
the concessions of the majority are redeemed-as
a counterpoise-by the often unexpected heroism
of those who, in terrible situations where
their liberty is stifled, find the greatness
of soul that enables them to emerge from
desperate circumstances.
We
should add, however, that exceptional suffering
requires exceptional assistance. Only divine
grace confers a supernatural and saving
power of unlimited application in time and
space.
Our
incredulous moderns, often defiled by a
voluntarism which serves as their supreme
ideal, depreciate the attitude of the broken
man who has recourse to God. He is accused
of cowardice, and God Himself is thought
vindictive. This accusation is doubly offensive:
offensive to one’s neighbor who suffers,
and offensive to Him who, even from the
cross, pardons “those who know not what
they do.” It is difficult for human excess
to “kick against the goad” and deplore the
consequences of its own continuous collusion
with lies, injustice, or error.
A
“Tremendous Mystery”
On
this higher level we know that the essential
abides whatever tribulations may come. Surrounded
by disbelievers and nowadays rejected by
so-called believers for “lack of fidelity,”
we have at our disposal the infinite treasures
of the Redemption. In the midst of world
war our Mother in Heaven, in her apparition
at Fatima on August 13, 1917, encouraged
coming to the aid of souls in danger of
being lost. The venerated Pope Pius XII,
the unforgettable pastor angelicus of
our youth, recalled this invitation with
auspicious clarity in his encyclical Mystici
Corporis:
