But the ally of Pontiffs [— the Christian Roman Emperor —] would possess a dignity touching upon the heavenly; for such are the sacred interests whereof he would assume the filial guardianship. Without in the least encroaching on the domain of other kings, his compeers in other respects, or derogating from their independence, he must hold it his right, as accredited protector of his mother, the Church, to carry the sword, whithersoever the spiritual authority is aggrieved or requires his concurrence, in the accomplishment of the divine mission of teaching and saving souls. In this sense, his power must be universal, because the mission of Holy Church is universal. So real this power, so distinct from every other, that to express it a new diadem must needs be added to the regal crown already his by inheritance; and a fresh anointing, different from the usual royal unction, must manifest in his person, superiority over all other kings, chieftainship of the Holy Empire, of the Roman Empire renewed, ennobled and limitless, as the earthly dominion assigned to Jesus Christ by the Eternal Father.
—Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, “St. Leo III.”
I HAVE to admit that I do not keep close tabs on the various feuds and battles agitating American Conservatism. Partly it is because I am lazy; but it is also because my own views are so marginal that I have as little interest in what passes for the mainstream as it has for me. I am all too aware that I am likely to be attacked from several sides when saying or writing what I believe to be true; but I cannot really blame those who do so because my opinions are so idiosyncratic (although I pray they are not also idiotic). So it is that I have been called anti-Semitic, pro-Zionist, racist, black lover, and much else.
The Modern Conservative Conundrum
Recently, however, while prowling Twitter, I came across young Nick Fuentes defending himself against Tucker Carlson’s charge that he was a “weird young gay man living in his parents’ basement,” and countercharging that he himself is a much better representative of marginalised young white men than Carlson, seeing as he is one, and Mr. Carlson is both older and wealthy; Candace Owens also came up, though my brief glance did not reveal what part she played in the whole thing.
To be honest, I don’t know enough about the members of the trio to have a real opinion about any of them. I know Mr. Fuentes has a large following among the youth (the so-called “Groypers”), some of whom read or watch my stuff; apparently many of the things he says outrage various people, but this clip was all that I have ever seen. I know Tucker Carlson by reputation, but all I have seen of his product was the interview with Putin, wherein the Russian President declared that he did not see the hand of God in world affairs; he thusly showed himself as much a holder of the Western mindset as any other current ruler. Candace Owens I know even less about, save that she is a Black Conservative who converted to Catholicism.
Apart from denying Mr. Carlson’s comments on his residence status and sexuality (anyone who knows my work knows I hate ad hominems anyway), Mr. Fuentes launched an impassioned defence of his role as a representative of disaffected young white American males. His narration inspired a Tweet on my part, directed generally rather than to him or his: “I am not a disaffected young white American male; neither do I speak for them nor even claim the right to say who does. But if my fellow boomers find them annoying and uneducated, we made them that way. And are continuing to so mould their younger brothers. One young man replied: “I am all of the aforementioned. Disaffected politically, not from the RC Church, nor my family. I find Boomers/X are, with few exceptions, miseducated on nearly all matters of substance. Young men today are self-taught, w/wildly differing results, but all are very far right-wing.” To that I responded, “Pretty much what I see. They deserve whatever one can give, rather than scorn.” It is not just that we poorly taught or mistaught them; rightly or wrongly a great many of them have the perception we did not care enough about them to even try to give them the truth. So, to be honest, I am prepared to tolerate a great deal from younger commentators that I would find offensive in my peers; the young have my sympathy if not always my agreement.
But the question of who speaks for young white males takes us on to the ultimately more important question of the inherent value or lack thereof of whiteness. As far as our friends on the Woke side are concerned, it is sheer evil; the mindless repetition of this mantra in the face of the historical realities of white male achievement have created the situation we are examining. Not surprisingly, said wokery has led to the birth of various strands of “White Christian Nationalism,” some of which have bled off into MAGA. In the Anglosphere, this has melded with all sorts of pre-existing ideas, such as American “Conservatism,” Anglo-Israel, Christian Fundamentalism, American Exceptionalism, British Imperialism, opposition to the excesses of the Civil rights Movement, The Lost Cause of the Confederacy, Nordic Neopaganism, and on and on. This is not to equate all of these ideas in either truth or value; nor does it mean that holding one means you hold all of the others. Each has varying amounts of reality to it. But what they can all agree upon is the special value of the White race, now universally attacked. Many Conservative Catholic Americans are affected by some of this stew of ideas. In this, as in so much else, they are ignorant of the authentic Catholic stance on these things, which encompasses what is true about it all, but condemns what is false.
From the Fall of Man to the Rise of Christendom
So where do we start in trying to pick through this farrago of truth and falsehood? At the beginning, with the Fall of Man. Our first parents — and I’m willing to risk a guess, and presume that Y-chromosomal Adam and mitochondrial Eve were the couple so named in Genesis — fell, and gave us all our current fallen condition. After the Flood and the — let’s sound sophisticated here — the “Babel Event,” the human race divided into various tribes and peoples, and has remained so divided ever since. The original revelation given Mankind, was, under the influence of the devil and human folly, corrupted in various ways according to each people’s own tastes. The one exception was among the Jews, the Chosen People. God promised them that from their number — each successive covenant narrowing down the origins further until it was revealed that it would be from the Royal Family of David — would come the Messiah, who would redeem Humanity from their fallen state.
In the meantime, the Greeks developed philosophy, and they were, in turn, swallowed up in the Roman Empire. The Romans excelled in law and administration, and conquered many peoples who nevertheless retained their identities. This imperial polity allowed the Jews to settle from Palestine to Western Europe; it allowed Greek philosophy to be learned throughout the Empire; and it made it possible to travel safely from Syria to Britain. In this Providential setting, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity became Incarnate of the senior female representative of the House of David, who had been taken as legal spouse by its senior male. God became Man in Palestine, Judaism was fulfilled, and that fulfilment, explained via Greek philosophy and organised with Roman law. Thus was brought down to earth the sacramental reality of the Church, which mystically extends the Incarnation in time and space among men called out from the mass of humanity into a new race, if you will: redeemed humanity, with Christ as its Mystical Head. Starting in the 300s, as Armenia, Georgia, Ethiopia, and at last the Roman Empire as a whole converted, this Church became itself incarnate, so to speak, in the various peoples who accepted the Salvation the Church brought. As the barbarians settled down on Imperial territory and converted, and then sent missionaries to convert other peoples living beyond the former Imperial frontiers, the European nations we know emerged.
Each was quite different from, although related to, the others. Each had its own history and culture, and its own Divine vocation — to defend the Faith (most spectacularly from the Muslims and various Eastern pagan invaders) and then to bring it in a very particular way to very particular places. In a word, the Christian Nation, the Res Publica Christiana, the Sacrum Imperium, Christendom, Abendland, the Occident — the vast majority of whose inhabitants were Whites of one sort or another — was the vessel chosen by God to incubate His One True Religion, and then to export it throughout the world, that all nations might be saved in due time. By 1500, the time had come for this process to begin, and Catholic Portugal, Spain, France, and England had already or were about to send explorers out to set down foundations for this new effort.
But the devil always seeks to destroy God’s wheat; just at this propitious occasion, he sowed tares in the form of the Protestant revolt. Not only did that revolt result in countless battles, murders, and martyrdoms, and tear Europe apart in what was really a civil war — it exported that conflict with European expansion across the globe. This greatly hampered, but did not stop, the passing of the Faith on to many lands that had known nothing but idolatry and Hell.
Many of the new peoples converted in whole or in part. Given the difficulty in getting settlers in Catholic countries to forsake their beloved and comfortable homes for these new frontiers, intermarriage with the locals was encouraged. To this day, Metis, Mestizos, Eurasians, Eurafricans, or whatever they might be called, are often the bedrock of the Church in many locales across the globe. At the same time, many natives sought the freedom brought by Baptism — and were rewarded as were the Catholics of the first centuries by local oppressors. The results were the many martyrs of China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Oceania, Uganda, and on and on.
Patriotism vs. Nationalism: A Hierarchy of Loves
In the meantime, the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries were the age of revolution — not just political, but industrial, scientific, economic, and cultural. As this period wore on, not only did many Europeans and their cousins in the various settler countries abandon the Faith that had made them, they invented new and more or less evil ideologies and exported these alongside technical advances to the colonial world. At the same time, in old Europe, Nationalism arose, and in many countries became a religion of its own that often competed with or supplanted the True Faith.
Now, at this point, it is important to distinguish between Patriotism and Nationalism. Patriotism is in fact a religious duty — it is love of country. Not the greatest of loves, but an important one. There is in fact a hierarchy of loves on the natural level — first of self, particularly as regards one’s own last end and general wellbeing; love of family; love of friends; love of place — be it in town or country; love of province or equivalent; and love of country. Erich von Kuehnhelt-Leddihn in his Leftism Revisited well distinguished between Patriotism and the sort of Nationalism we have been discussing: “Patriotism, not nationalism, should inspire the citizen. The ethnic nationalist who wants a linguistically and culturally uniform nation is akin to the racist who is intolerant toward those who look (and behave) differently. The patriot is a ‘diversitarian’; he is pleased, indeed proud of the variety within the borders of his country; he looks for loyalty from all citizens. And he looks up and down, not left and right.” In a word, Patriotism is based upon love of one’s own; Nationalism, in this sense, on the hatred of the other.
Dom Gueranger lived in the 19th century, and saw first-hand what Nationalism did to Europe in the 1848 rebellions, the wars of German and Italian Unification, and the Franco-Prussian War. He remained very much a French patriot, as reading his accounts of the various French Saints in his Liturgical Year clearly shows. But, as his coverage of the Saints of other nations also shows, he loved them all — but at their best, which is to say, he loved them in their saints and in their Catholicity. He loved Spain — but Catholic Spain; he loved Germany — but Catholic Germany; he loved Poland — but Catholic Poland; and so on through every nation in the world, including Russia. He loved Europe as the then greatest manifestation of the Faith — yes, even then. Thus, he wrote, “The Christian People (in which both prince and beggar are equally subjects) is superior to every other, in intellectual and moral worth. It carries civilisation with it wheresoever it goes, for it carries with it the true notion of God and of the supernatural end of man. Barbarism recedes; pagan institutions, how ancient soever they may be, are forced to give way. Even Greece and Rome laid down their own to adopt the laws of the Christian Code—the Code which was based on the Gospel. So, too, in our own times, the mere sight of a Christian army, though composed of but a few thousand men, struck terror into the heart of an immense Empire of the East: its Ruler who counts four hundred million subjects and calls himself the ‘Son of the Celestial Empire,’ was so overcome by fear that, without offering the slightest resistance, he fled from his palaces and Capital. Yes—this is the superiority given by Baptism to Christian Nations; for it would be absurd to attribute this superiority to our civilisation, seeing that civilisation itself is but a consequence of Baptism.”
A Prophecy of Ruin: The Consequences of Lost Faith
Dom Gueranger was spared from seeing Nationalism destroy Europe in the Two World Wars, and then divided between American and Soviet Satrapies. But, much as he was aware of Europe’s superiority, he was also aware that it depended upon the European nations retaining the loyalty to the Saviour that had built them — and he prophesied what would happen if that were lost: “And we, the western nations, if we return not to the Lord our God, shall we be spared? Shall the flood-gates of heaven’s vengeance, the torrent of fresh Vandals, ever menacing to burst upon us, yet never come? Where is the country of our own Europe, that has not corrupted its way, as in the days of Noah? That has not made conventions against the Lord and against His Christ? That has not clamored out that old cry of revolt: Let us break their bonds asunder, let us cast away their yoke from us? Well may we fear lest the time is at hand, when, despite our haughty confidence in our means of defence, Christ our Lord, to whom all nations have been given by the Father, shall rule us with a rod of iron, and break us in ‘pieces like a potter’s vessel.’”
Ponder current events, dear reader, from the heights of this intensely supernatural and historically informed perspective. This is a Catholic outlook on geopolitics and history that exceeds and transcends the best of what modern commentators have to offer. As such, it is part of a Catholic Grand Narrative that should form our outlook on reality.
Which brings us to where we are. Having given up the Faith, Western leadership has built a culture of death marked by barrenness, infanticide, euthanasia, and immorality — which ethos has trickled down into the hearts and minds of perhaps a majority. Into this milieu of self-suicide they have introduced, especially in Europe (America is fortunate in having Christian nations to her South) a number of Muslims who, apart from those — like the Harkis in France — who really appreciate the alien civilisation in which they have settled, wish to destroy any remnants of Christianity in their new homes. When large numbers of the European natives instinctively react to this scenario (without rejecting those parts of their masters’ death worship that make things more convenient), the leadership attack those who react — which radicalizes them further, especially since it is often done in extralegal ways. So it is that the Nationalism that has in large part put us where we are has made a comeback among the understandably disaffected.
Beyond Blood and Soil: A Call for Pan-Catholicism
But the answer to this dilemma is not White Nationalism, be it “Christian,” Neopagan, Anglo-Israelite, or “Cultural Christianity.” In Jean Raspail’s masterful novel, The Camp of the Saints, Hamadura, the ethnic Indian former representative to the French Parliament for Pondicherry, memorably declares, “Being white, in my opinion, is not a skin colour. But a state of mind.” More importantly, it is a state of soul. Baptismal water is thicker than blood. When the White race was the vehicle of the Faith, it acquired a moral and spiritual superiority that it lost when it ceased to be such. In various parts of India, Africa, the Near East, and elsewhere, Catholics and other Christians are being murdered for their Faith. To me, these people are far more my brethren than those who govern me, or a great many of my fellow White citizens.
I do not know Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, or Nicholas Fuentes. I have nothing against them, and indeed wish them all well. But it seems to me that they, like so many of us, have been sent off on various wild goose chases that lead us nowhere save to try to wring each other’s necks. I would humbly suggest that each of them try to rediscover that sort of “Pan-Catholicism” that Dom Gueranger embodied, but which has very specifically been left out of the Catholic American ethos for at least a century and a half — certainly since the War with Spain in 1898. This is a suggestion, or even a challenge, if you will, that I particularly aim at the younger generation of which Mr. Fuentes is a member; us old dogs are not adept at new tricks. Obviously, I cannot expect a trio of far greater prominence than myself to notice my words — and I take no offence if they don’t; why should they? But I do hope “that we may merrily meet in Heaven.”
