THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CRUSADE
By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
(*)
In the Middle Ages the
Crusaders shed their blood to free the Sepulcher of
Our Lord Jesus Christ from the hands of the infidels and to establish a
Christian kingdom in the
Today the blood of the sons of the Church again flows
in
That is what I will attempt to define through the
explanation of the principles presented here, as a preliminary outline of our
activities.
The
The Catholic Church was founded by Our Lord Jesus
Christ to perpetuate the benefits of Redemption among men. Thus, its ultimate
end is identical with that of Redemption itself: to atone for the sins of
mankind through the infinitely precious merits of the God-made-man; to restore
to God the external glory that sin had bereft Him of, and to open the gates of
Heaven to mankind. This purpose is entirely achieved on the supernatural level,
aiming at eternal life. It transcends absolutely whatever is merely natural,
earthly, perishable. That is what Our Lord Jesus Christ
affirmed when he said to Pontius Pilate, “My Kingdom is not from hence” (John
Earthly life differs thus and thoroughly from eternal
life, but these two lives do not constitute two planes absolutely isolated one
from the other. In the designs of
Just as the military school is the way to the military
profession, or the novitiate is the definitive way to enter a religious order,
so is this earth the way to Heaven.
We have an immortal soul created in God’s image and
likeness. This soul is created with a treasure of natural aptitudes for good
and enriched by Baptism with the invaluable gift of the supernatural life of
grace. During our lives we have to develop to their fullness these aptitudes
for good. Therewith our likeness to God, still to a certain extent incomplete
and potential, becomes full and actual.
Likeness is the source of love. By becoming fully
similar to God, we become capable of loving Him fully and of calling down upon
us the fullness of His love. Consequently, we are prepared to contemplate God
face to face in Heaven for that eternal, totally blissful act of love for which
we are called.
Earthly life is therefore a novitiate wherein we
prepare our souls for their real destiny, that is, to see God face to face and
to love Him for the whole of eternity.
If we present the same truth in other words, we can
say that God is infinitely pure, infinitely just, infinitely powerful, infinitely good. In order to love Him, we must love purity,
justice, fortitude, goodness. If we do not love virtue, how can we love God who
is preeminently Goodness? On the other hand, if God
is the Supreme Good, how can He love evil? Likeness being the source of love,
how can He love one who is entirely unlike Him, who is voluntarily unjust,
cowardly, impure, bad?
God must be adored and served above all in spirit and
in truth (John
Yet, earthly life is more than the way to eternal
bliss. What are we going to do in Heaven? We shall contemplate God face to
face, in the light of glory that is the achievement of grace and we shall love
Him fully and forever. Man, however, is already possessed of supernatural life
here on earth through Baptism. Faith is a seed of the beatific vision. The love
of God man exercises by progressing in virtue and avoiding evil is already that
supernatural love with which he will adore God in Heaven.
The
The Holy Catholic Church in this world is already an
image of Heaven, and more than that, a real anticipation of Heaven. Everything,
therefore, that the Holy Gospels tell us about the
This is the meaning of the Feast of Christ the King.
He is Heavenly King above all, but a King whose rule is already exercised in
this world, and a King Who possesses by right full and
supreme authority. A king legislates, rules, and judges. His royalty becomes
effective when his subjects recognize his rights and obey his laws. Now, Jesus
Christ has all rights over us. He promulgates laws, rules the world, and will
judge mankind. It falls to us to make His Reign effective by obeying His laws.
This reign is an individual fact insofar as every
faithful soul obeys Our Lord Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, Christ’s Reign
is exerted on our souls; therefore, the soul of each of us is a part of Christ
the King’s scope of jurisdiction. The Reign of Christ will become a social fact
if human societies bear Him obedience.
It can thus be said that the Reign of Christ becomes
effective on earth, in its individual and social meaning, when men both in the
depths of their souls and in their actions, and when societies in their
institutions, laws, customs, cultural, and artistic manifestations comply with
Christ’s Law.
However actual, brilliant, and tangible it be, the
earthly reality of Christ’s Reign is nothing but a preparation and a prologue.
In its fullness the
Order,
harmony, peace, perfection
Order, peace, and harmony are essential
characteristics of every well-formed soul, of every well-constituted human
society. In a sense, these are values that merge with the very notion of
perfection.
Every being has its own end and a nature appropriate
to obtaining this end. Thus a part of a watch is intended for a special purpose
and is suited by its shape and composition to serve that purpose.
Order is the arrangement of things according to their
nature. A watch is in order when all of its parts are arranged according to the
nature and the end peculiar to them. It is said there is order in the sidereal
universe because all celestial bodies are arranged according to their nature
and their end.
There is harmony between two beings when their
relations agree with the nature and the end of each of them. Harmony is the
working of things in relation one to another according to order.
Order generates tranquility.
The tranquility of order is peace. Not any tranquility deserves to be called peace, but only the one
resulting from order. Peace of conscience is the tranquility
of the righteous conscience; it must not be mistaken for the lethargy of the
benumbed conscience. Organic well-being produces a feeling of peace that cannot
be mistaken for the torpor of a coma.
When something is entirely disposed according to its
nature, it is in the state of perfection. Someone with a great ability to
study, a great desire to study, when placed in a university where all resources
exist for the studies he wants, will be in a perfect position in regard to
studies.
When activities of a being are entirely true to its
nature and are wholly directed towards its purpose, these activities are in
some way perfect. Thus the trajectory of the stars is perfect because it agrees
fully with the nature and the end of each one.
When the
conditions in which a being finds itself are perfect, its operations also are
perfect and it will necessarily tend towards its end with maximum firmness, vigor, and skill. Thus if a man is in the condition to
walk, that is to say, can, may, and wants to walk, he will walk impeccably.
The real knowledge of what perfection is for man and societies depends on an exact notion of man’s nature and
end. The righteousness, the fruitfulness, and the splendor
of human actions, either individual or social, also depend on the knowledge of
our nature and of our end.
In short, the possession of religious truth is the
essential condition for order, harmony, peace, and perfection.
Christian
perfection
The Gospel shows us the ideal of perfection: “Be ye
therefore perfect as also your heavenly Father is perfect (Matt.
Our Lord, His virtues, His teachings, His actions, are
the defined ideal of the perfection to which man must strive.
The rules of this perfection are found in the Law of
God, which Our Lord Jesus Christ did not come “to destroy but to fulfill” (Matt.
This is what the Saints did. Heroically exercising the
virtues the Church teaches, they achieved the perfect imitation of Our Lord
Jesus Christ and of the heavenly Father. It is so true that the Saints attained
the highest moral perfection that the enemies of the Church themselves, when
not blinded by the fury of impiety, proclaim it. For instance, regarding
God is the author of our nature and therefore of all
aptitudes and excellences found in it. In us, what does not come from God are
the defects, the fruit of original sin and actual sins.
The Decalogue could not be contrary to the nature He
himself created in us. Since He is God and perfect, there can be no
contradiction in His works. Therefore, the Decalogue prescribes actions for us
that our own reason shows us to be in agreement with nature, such as honoring our father and mother, and forbids actions that we
understand to be contrary to the natural order, such as lying. Therein
consists, on the natural level, the intrinsic perfection of the Law and the
personal perfection we acquire by complying with it, since all operations
consonant with one’s nature are good.
As a result of original sin, man has a propensity for
acts contrary to his nature, rightly understood. He is subject to error in his
intelligence and to wrongdoing regarding his will. This propensity is so strong
that without the aid of grace it would not be possible for man to know or to
practice the precepts of the natural order consistently and completely. God
repaired this insufficiency of ours by revealing these precepts on
Grace is a supernatural aid intended to fortify the
intelligence and will of men so that he can practice perfection. God does not
refuse His grace to anyone, so perfection is accessible to all.
Can an infidel know the Law of God and comply with it?
Does he receive God’s grace? A distinction must be made. In principle, all men
in contact with the Church receive sufficient grace to know that She is the true church, to enter Her, and to obey the
Commandments. So if someone remains voluntarily outside the Church, if he is an
infidel because he refuses the grace of conversion, he closes the gates of
salvation against himself. The grace of conversion is the starting point of all
other graces. On the other hand, if someone has no means of knowing the
It must be
noted here that if fidelity to the Law sometimes demands heroic sacrifices from
Catholics themselves who live in the bosom of the Church, bathed in the
superabundance of grace and of all means of sanctification, the difficulty is
much greater for those who live far from the Church and without this
superabundance. This explains why pagans practicing the Law are so rare,
indeed, exceptional.
The
Christian ideal of social perfection
If we suppose that most of the individuals in a
certain population practice the Law of God, what result can we expect thereof
for the society? This is the same as asking if in a watch each part works
according to its nature and its purpose, what result may we expect from the watch? Or if each part of a whole if perfect, what must be
said of the whole?
It is always risky to resort to mechanical examples
for human cases. Let us stick to the image of a society where all members are
good Catholics, as described by Saint Augustine: Let us imagine “an army
composed of soldiers as Jesus Christ’s doctrine forms them, of governors,
husbands, spouses, parents, children, teachers, servants, kings, judges,
taxpayers, tax collectors as the Christian teaching require them to be! And let
them (the heathen) still dare to say that this teaching is contrary to the interests
of the State! On the contrary, they have to admit
unhesitatingly that it is a safeguard for the State when faithfully followed” (Epist. CXXXVIII, al. 5, ad Marcellum,
Cap. II, n. 15).
In another of his writings the holy Doctor, addressing
himself to the Catholic Church, exclaims: “Thou leadest
and teachest children with tenderness, young people
with vigor, old people with calm as not only their
body but also their soul requires. Thou submittest
the wives to their husbands, for a faithful and chaste obedience, not to
gratify passion but for the propagation of the species and the constitution of
the family. Thou givest authority to the husbands
over their wives, not in order to abuse the fragility of their sex, but to
follow the laws of a sincere love. Thou subordinatest
the children to their parents for a kind authority. Thou unitest, not only in a society but in a kind of
brotherhood, citizens to citizens, nations to nations, and men one to another
through the memory of their first parents. Thou teachest
kings to care for their people and thou ordainest the
people to obey the kings. Thou teachest solicitously
to whom honor is due, to whom affection, to whom
respect, to whom fear, to whom comfort, to whom rebuke, to whom encouragement,
to whom a scolding, to whom a reprimand, to whom a punishment; and thou tellest in what way, if everything is not due to everyone,
charity is due to everybody, injustice to nobody” (De Moribus
Ecclesiae, Cap. XXX, n. 63).
It would be impossible to describe better the ideal of
a totally Christian society. Could order, peace, harmony, perfection be brought
to a higher level in a community? A short remark will be enough for us to
conclude the matter. If nowadays all men were practicing the Law of God, would
not all political, social, and economic problems that beset us be quickly
solved? What solution can we hope for them, however, while men live in the
usual non-observance of the Law of God?
Did human society once achieve this ideal of
perfection? Undoubtedly. The Immortal Pope Leo XIII
tells us so: once the Redemption was accomplished and the Church founded, “man,
as if he were awakening from an old, long, and mortal lethargy, saw the light
of the truth he had looked and longed for during so many centuries; above all
he recognized that he was born for much higher and much more magnificent
possessions than the fragile and perishable things attained by the senses and
to which he had until then limited his thoughts and his concerns. He understood
that the whole constitution of human life, the supreme law, and the end to
which everything must submit is that, coming from God, we must return to Him
one day.
“From this beginning and on this foundation
consciousness of human dignity was restored and lived again; the sense of a
common brotherhood took possession of men’s hearts. In consequence, their
rights and duties were perfected or established anew, and virtues beyond the
conception of ancient philosophy were revived. So men’s purposes, tenor of
life, and characters were changed, and the knowledge of the Redeemer having
spread far and wide and His power having penetrated into the very life-blood of
the nations, expelling their ignorance and ancient vices, a marvelous
transformation took place, which, originating in Christian civilization,
utterly changed the face of the earth” (Leo XIII, encyclical Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus).
Christian
civilization, Christian culture
This splendid reality, an order and a
perfection more supernatural and heavenly than natural and earthly, has
been called Christian civilization, the product of Christian culture and in its
turn daughter of the Catholic Church.
By culture of the spirit we may understand the fact
that a soul is not committed to the unruly and spontaneous play of the
operations of its faculties – intelligence, will, sensibility. On the contrary,
by an orderly effort and in agreement with sound reason, it has somewhat
enriched these three faculties. So, just as it not the cultivated field that
causes all the seeds, chaotically brought by the wind, to bear fruit, but the
one who through the right work of man produces something useful and good.
In this sense, Catholic culture is the cultivation of
the intelligence, the will, and the sensibility according to the norms of
morality taught by the Church. We have already seen that it identifies itself
with the very perfection of the soul. If it exists in most
members of a human society (though in degrees and ways proper to the social
condition and age of each one), it will be a social and collective fact.
Moreover, it will constitute an element – the most important one – of social
perfection itself.
Civilization is the condition of a human society that
possesses a culture and that has created, according to the basic principles of
this culture, a whole set of its own customs, laws, institutions, and literary
and artistic systems.
A civilization will be Catholic if it is the faithful
product of a Catholic culture and if, therefore, the spirit of the Church is
the normative and vital principle of its customs, laws, institutions, and
literary and artistic systems.
Since Jesus Christ is the true ideal of human
perfection and since a society that puts into practice all His laws has to be a
perfect society, the culture and the civilization born from the
It can be inferred from this with crystalline
conspicuousness that there is no true civilization except as the result and
fruit of the true Religion.
The Church
and Christian civilization
One would be singularly mistaken who thinks that the
Church’s action upon men is merely individual and that She
forms only persons, not peoples, nor cultures, nor civilizations.
As a matter of fact, God created man naturally
sociable and meant for men to work for the sanctification of one another in
society. That is also why He created them receptive to influence. This can be
said about the relations between individuals and between individuals and
society. Our surroundings, our laws, our institutions, all exert an influence
on us; they have a pedagogical action upon us.
To entirely resist these surroundings, whose
ideological action penetrates us even, as it were, by osmosis, through the
skin, is an achievement of high and strenuous virtue. Thus it is that the first
Christians were not more admirable when facing the wild animals in the Colosseum than when maintaining their Catholic spirit
living in a heathen society.
Thus culture and civilization are very strong means of
acting on souls – for their ruin when the culture and civilization are heathen;
for their edification and salvation when Christian.
How therefore can the Church not take interest in
producing a culture and a civilization, remaining satisfied merely with acting
upon each soul individually?
In fact, every soul on which the Church acts and which
responds generously to such action is as a center or
a seed of that civilization, which She actively and vigorously spreads around.
Virtue shines through and penetrates. By penetrating, it spreads itself. By
acting and spreading itself, it has a tendency to transform itself into a
Catholic culture and civilization.
As we have seen, the distinctive feature of the Church
is to produce a Christian culture and civilization, and to produce all Her fruits in a fully Catholic social atmosphere. A Catholic
must long for a Christian civilization just as a man imprisoned in a dungeon
wants open air and a caged bird yearns after the infinite expanses of the sky.
This is our purpose, our great ideal. We move towards
the Christian civilization that may arise from the ruins of today’s world, as
the civilization of the Middle Ages were born from the ruins of the Roman
world. We move towards the conquest of this ideal with the courage, the
perseverance, the will to face and overcome all obstacles with which the crusaders
marched towards
(*)
This essay was first published in Catolicismo in
January 1951. First English translation
published in Crusade for a Christian Civilization, Vol. 1, no. 1, 1971. Revised, Nov. 1998. Republished as “The
Twentieth Century Crusade” in Crusade, Jan.-Feb. 2001, pp. 13-19.