A decline in morality – both in terms of individual conduct and on a social scale – is the constant legacy of all totalitarian regimes.
The Disastrous Effect of “Totalitarian Democracy”
The renowned 19th-century thinker and ardent critic of the French Revolution, Joseph de Maistre, used to say that “in any revolution the worst is not what it destroys but what it creates.” In the case of France, it created a generation gap because during almost the thirty years that spanned the Revolution and Napoleon’s rule a new generation grew for whom the Catholic religion, and the culture and morals it engendered, were absolutely alien. In this context, the words of St. Jean-Marie Vianney told it all. When taking up the position of parish priest of Ars, in the years immediately following the fall of Napoleon, he compared his parishioners to “creatures who differ from animals solely by baptism.”
A decline in morality – both in terms of individual conduct and on a social scale – is a constant legacy of all totalitarian systems. It was no different in the case of France, the first country in Europe that fell victim to “totalitarian democracy” (Jacob Talmon). It “raised” a new generation of Frenchmen, guided by the maxim delivered during the Revolution by Marquis Donatien de Sade, a morally degenerate aristocrat and a fervent supporter of the anti-Christian policies after 1789. He called upon his colleagues in the Jacobin Club: “Frenchmen, deal only the first blows [to Catholicism – G.K.], the rest will be done by public education.”
Education, as conceived by revolutionary “totalitarian democracy”, was not about transferring knowledge and forming characters, which any decent school should do. Instead, a new approach to education was spelled out by Georges Danton – one of the Revolutionary leaders – speaking in parliament with arrogance, characteristic of all totalitarians: “Children belong first to the Republic and only later to their parents.” He continued: “Who can ensure me that children moulded by their selfhood-ridden fathers will not become dangerous to the Republic?”
This is the very essence of a totalitarian conception of politics: subordination of everything to the state while violating natural (family) social ties. All this is done in the name of a revolutionary ideology that is anti-Christian to the core. As the Jacobin Minister of War, Jean-Baptiste Bouchotte, said: “Young people fit better for service to the Revolution than those who have grown old under the rule of old customs.” His colleague in the Jacobin Club, deputy Alexandre Deleyre, in his pamphlet Ideas on National Education wrote: “Laws have been enacted for the use by the nation; now it is about creating a nation [emphasis G.K.] for the use of these laws by means of public education.”
“Created” in this way, the French nation was to be completely cut off from its former Christian (Catholic) heritage. Republican education was to be helped by other instruments developed by the “totalitarian democracy”. One of such instruments was to be a new republican calendar that replaced the Christian calendar with the birth of Christ at its centre. The new calendar was to be based on the foundation of the republic in France – 1792. As one of the chief promotors of this “reform” of the calendar, Phillippe Fabre d’Églantine, explained: “The long habit of using the Gregorian calendar has filled the memory of the people with a large number of ideas which were respected for a long time and which even today are a source of their religious errors. It is thus necessary to replace these ignorant ideas with the reality of reason, to replace the priestly office with the truth of nature.”
After almost thirty years of such (anti-Christian) education the situation was dramatic. It was aggravated by the extermination of Catholic clergy by the Revolutionary regime, leaving many French parishes without a priest. Suffice it to say that when Napoleon took power in 1799 and a decade and a half later, when monarchy was restored to France in 1815, there were dioceses where only one-fourth of the parishes were served by priests.
A report sent to the Holy See by the papal nuncio in Paris in 1826 reads: “More than a half of the French nation is completely ignorant of its Christian duties and is religiously indifferent. The question may be asked: Are there in the capital alone, ten thousand people who follow religious observances?”
The Ars parish was granted God’s remarkable grace of having Saint Jean Marie Vianney as its parish priest at the time when the papal diplomat was writing these words. It took his great spiritual courage and long hours spent in the confessional to make his parishioners finally differ from animals not only by baptism. However, there were hundreds of parishes in France and not every parish priest was as much of a saint as the one from Ars.
Pleasant Slogans and Harsh Reality
Blessed Card. Stefan Wyszyński on many occasions pointed to the disastrous effects of “the programmed frigidity towards God,” implemented by the Communist authorities in Poland after 1945. The Communists invoked the principles of secularity, which in 19th-century Europe started a series of anti-Catholic cultural wars (kulturkampfs), under the banner of the “separation of Church and State.” As the Blessed Primate of the Millennium noted, the banner was downright false. “The slogan of the ‘separation of Church and State’ invoked now is an attempt to draw a line: here is the Church, there is the State – that is the Nation. Try to do it, test if you will succeed. This will be the most mindless work, one like trying to divide a living human being and say: this is the soul and that is the body.Why, the soul is everywhere and the body is everywhere … What is integrated in a human being, spirit and body, must be reflected on other planes: family, Nation, State, social, occupational, cultural life – ultimate aspects of man, living in a great international family.” (Jasna Góra, November 27, 1966)
Equally misleading is the slogan saying that morality is a “private matter” coined by the liberal secularizers of the 19th century, and taken over by the Communists in Poland after World War II, and used to fight Christian morality. Blessed Primate Wyszyński underscored instead that “our individual lives must be reflected in social life; personal morality is not only of individual significance. Actually, morality is not a private matter but a public one. I do care who is the person who interacts with me because the lifestyle of this person, which includes the spiritual, moral and personal values of that person, can be felt.” (Warsaw, April 21, 1966)
In a similar way, Blessed Card. Stefan Wyszyński refuted the arguments of the 19th-century (liberal) secularizers and their 20th-century Communist successors, who claimed that not only morality, but also religion was a “private matter.” “You can sometimes hear people say: my religion is a private matter. No, my friend. This is the greatest mistake! You are not a private person at all. Even what is going on inside you is not a private matter because it concerns each and every one of us. I am personally interested in what is going on inside you, and you are interested in what is going on in me and who I am.” (Warsaw, August 2, 1966)
“Masonic Fishing Rod”
It must be noted that the Blessed Primate of the Millennium was absolutely right (consistent with historical knowledge) in describing the historical background of anti-Catholic kulturkampfs that was waged by the 19th-century secularizers. In one of his Holy Cross sermons he said: “In the times when some were worried too much by the advantage the Church had over the State, various ideas emerged, as for instance: ‘A free Church in a free State’ or ‘Let’s leave the Church alone and may the Church leave us alone.’ However, already at the turn of the 19th century, it was noticed that the so-called absolute freedom of the Church in the State helped the Church too much in its growth. For this reason, something else was invented, namely, the so-called separation of Church and State.” (Warsaw, January 25, 1976)
This short description tells it all: hiding behind seemingly innocuously sounding slogans, liberal movements and Freemasonry, working behind the scenes, aimed through successive secularization campaigns at drastically curtailing the fundamental rights of the citizens that were serious about their faith in Christ and who belonged to the Church he founded. The slogan mentioned by the Blessed Card. Stefan Wyszyński: ‘A free Church in a free State’ (sounds nice, doesn’t it?) was coined by the Italian liberal politician and high-ranking Mason, Camillo Cavour (1810– 1861). In the early 1850s, the policies he pursued as the prime minister of Piedmont were directly aimed at subduing the Church: by confiscating its properties that had kept it financially independent, driving out the Church from the school system, and closing down a number of religious houses.
Elsewhere, Blessed Card. Stefan Wyszyński called secularity “fishing for souls with a Masonic fishing rod.” (Jasna Góra, August 30,1961) This opinion, too, is fully consistent with facts found in historical sources. In all the countries where anti-Catholic cultural wars were waged in the 19th century (Piedmont, France, Prussia, Portugal), it was Masonic lodges that initiated and provided organizational support for implementing the secularizing policy of “separation of Church and State”. The Freemasonry did not conceal this then or in our times. When in 2005, liberal circles celebrated with pomp the 100th anniversary of the enactment of the Act on the Separation of Church and State in France (a model solution for all successive secularizers in Portugal, Mexico or the Soviet Union), in the Paris seat of the Grand Orient de France – the largest Masonic lodge in the country – an exhibition was mounted, devoted to the origins and significance of the Act. It was represented as a “great achievement of the republican ethos” which could not be made without the involvement of the Freemasonry. In practice, however, such slogans as “A free Church in a free State” meant an attempt to subdue the believers with restrictive legislation, while under the banner of the “Separation of Church and State”, the policy of “ridding the believing citizens of any religious, Catholic elements,” was followed, “ignoring any moral principles,” Blessed Card. Stefan Wyszyński said. (Warsaw, January 27, 1974)
