At Crisis there is an interesting suggestion today that applies not just to the secular order but… you read it and tell me what you think… perhaps also to the ecclesial order.
The Meaning of Viktor Orbán by Declan Leary (associate editor of The American Conservative).
Leary opens with a thumbnail pairing account of the unsuccessful attempts by Bl. Karl of Austria to reclaim his throne of Hungary.
He goes on to describe the cultural and political scene in these USA, which is increasingly dominated by the Left, as it is in the Church. Any resistance to their socialism is met with hysteria, accusations of “racism” and “fascism”. In the Church, they throw a spittle-fleck nutty and accusations of “schism”.
Have a look at this:
Though our situation is perhaps a little less black-and-white, and there is disagreement on exactly when we turned our backs on the Christian social order that built the West (put me down for 1688!), it is hard to deny in 2021 that such a break occurred. We, too, find ourselves subject to a tyrannical ordering of the market that destroys the bonds of place. We, too, find ourselves subject to a domineering social philosophy that finds no room for the family in the future. We, too, face a gnostic fanaticism that hates history and truth as much as it hates us.
We should not overburden the comparison. Politics are particularistic. Our problems are not identical to Hungary’s; nor will our solutions be. Our revolution has been slower, more prolonged, and less dramatic than theirs; so, too, will our recovery be. But the general principle applies: the response to the destruction of the West is not to sit back and “let the market figure it out,” nor to reconcile ourselves to the pressures of secular, technological, and liberal modernity. What post-Christian societies need is a deliberate effort to restore social order, to reassert the prerogatives of Church and family in the face of hostile forces.
The writer goes on to make an interesting proposal, and this is what you might offer your thoughts about.
On the one hand, we can let it run its course. We can pay the price in deaths of despair, family destruction, deracination from place, the death of tradition, and a million other untold miseries. On the other, we can do something. We can do something. … You can fight fire with fire, or you can fight fire with water, but you cannot fight fire with sitting still and saying, “Well, now, I really think if you stopped to consider it, you’d realize that your unrelenting attempts to turn me to ash and smoke violate the implicit principles of the Declaration in these important ways…”
American conservatives have spent a century standing athwart history yelling Stop, and we’ve wound up with nothing but bootprints on our faces. It might be time to stand up, dust ourselves off, and finally realize that Blessed Charles had the right idea in marching to Budapest.
A “march to Budapest”.
BTW… Bl. Karl died young in 1922. He caught a cold, which developed into pneumonia. Let us pray to Bl. Karl for the miraculous healing of Card. Burke. He God hear his intercessory prayers and give Card. Burk a sudden, complete and lasting healing.
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Fr. Z,
you should meet the TFP.
They are doing great job already.
They are fighting a good fight already.
And most importantly, they are doing that under patronage of Our Heavely Mother and all what they are doing is AMDG!
If you are looking for the real crusaders you’ll find them there. That’s for sure.
“It might be time to stand up, dust ourselves off, and finally realize that Blessed Charles had the right idea in marching to Budapest.”
It might be time, after a 100 years, to realize that monarchs in Germany, Austro-Hungary, and to an extent Russia started WW I and unleashed a series of bloody and tragic events, the consequences of which still afflict the world today.
When Mr. Leary refers to “Viktor Orbán, whatever his faults” he does not mention what any of the latter are, or arguably might be.
By contrast, David McLoone’s 8 July LifeSiteNews article, “Hungary rebukes EU demand to change anti-pedophilia law”, ends with this paragraph:
“Meanwhile, Orbán has been pushing the COVID-19 vaccine scheme in Hungary, extending the program to 12–16-year-olds in June. The prime minister also promised that those who had taken their first shot of the vaccine, but missed the second, would have all privileges associated with vaccinating stripped from them, and their COVID immunity certificate revoked.”
In other words, he has been been emphatically interfering in the lives of Hungarian children and families in particular, and all Hungarian citizens and residents in general, in a hair-raisingly ill-considered and indeed tyrannical way. Not a DeSantis of the Danube, alas.
Mr. Carson asked him nothing about any of this in his recent interview – what a missed opportunity!
Mr. Leary refers to “the deliberate and generous government support given to family formation” by the Fidesz government. But part of this, according to, e.g., Katalin Novák, Hungary’s Minister for Family Affairs, is “the Hungarian IVF regulation that provides free treatment” (or so I have seen her quoted). But I have had no success discovering the terms of this “regulation”. Does Hungary practice IVF in the strictest possible least abusive way, where current embryonic human beings are concerned? But, is a prior question whether it can be licitly practiced at all? And, what of its murderously abusive history with respect to its development, in this context? Have I merely ineptly missed Hungarian and international pro-life attention to these matters?
Another subject worth discussion is what seems Hungary’s too-little-critical relations with the Chinese Communists. For example, I have seen quotations from an article in early June in The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, including “On May 27, Hungary inaugurated the country’s largest solar power plant, the 100-megawatt (MW) photovoltaic power plant project built by China National Machinery Import and Export Corporation (CMC) near the southwestern city of Kaposvar […] As a key project in the cooperation between China and Hungary under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and a representative of a great number of BRI projects, the Kaposvar solar power plant has fully demonstrated the philosophy of peaceful cooperation and win-win results upheld by the BRI.” Pseudo-‘green’ energy and the CCP – “win-win”?
Perhaps not a little marching to try to bring Mr. Orbán more fully to his senses should be a high priority.
Blushing fruits of belated proofreading!:
Carson>Carlson
Semper G. : I hear what you say, sicut nunc dicitur, but to what extent were the monarchs actually in control? Were they puppets of the social forces building up behind them, all over the continent, or real movers? Yes, movers in one sense, but much more puppets, I think. I mean by social forces the unbridled, possibly insane, nationalism – expressed in the case of France (not a monarchy but an overtly freemasonic “republic”) with its desire to reclaim what was “stolen” after 1870, and in the case of the German Empire with its massive inferiority complex and throwing its considerable weight around. (What changes?).
Austria-Hungary was just – different, going back to the settlement with Hungary after 1848, and was a seething hotbed of botched imperialism with a desperate desire to survive at the big table. By 1914, Wilhelm II wasn’t really in control, no more than Franz Joseph could control Field Marshal von Hotzendorf who was responsible for the (disastrous, as it turned out) first attack on Serbia. The Tsar was just a tragic case, who hadn’t the power to stand up and say “no”.
I think, in each case, the monarchs weren’t really such, in the true sense, but figureheads for the explosive hatreds fuelled by nationalistic hubris, which was the real cause. Nevertheless, they allowed themselves to be lead and so are contemptible. Guilty? Yes, but only insofar as they allowed themselves to be lead along. They weren’t really in control.
Blessed Karl was different. Taking over a crumbling “empire” far too late, he realised the situation and made sincere overtures to Benedict XV to end the madness, and out of a genuine sense of compassion, not just self-interest. Franz Joseph never did that, although a sincere enough Catholic himself. If the (much underrated) Pope had been listened to it might have been different. But, no. What a shame Karl hadn’t been crowned before June 1914. It just could have ended up better. As it also might if Franz Ferdinand had survived – he had interesting federal ideas for the “empire”. Which were hated by the movers and shakers in Vienna.
Toxic nationalism, on all sides. But I’d give the Monarchs, or the idea of monarchy going back to Charlemagne of which they were the unworthy successors (who wouldn’t be?), a bit of a break. They weren’t totally responsible in themselves.
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Maybe time to remember that the Allied powers the USA and France were not monarchies
Democratic Republics actually
Semper Gumby says: It might be time, after a 100 years, to realize that monarchs in Germany, Austro-Hungary, and to an extent Russia started WW I and unleashed a series of bloody and tragic events, the consequences of which still afflict the world today.
Actually, what launched the series of bloody and tragic events were the revolutionaries who worked to undermine and topple thrones and altars all over Europe, until the said monarchs lost control of events. What has contributed to the continuing flow of tragedies has been the continued dethronement of the royals, and the eclipse of the Catholic Church. As for Blessed Kaiser Karl in particular, his premature and miserable death was a great tragedy for the world, brought about in no small part by the victorious allies of World War I — including us — cutting off all his financial support and thereby depriving him of proper medical care. Kaiser Karl died offering his sufferings and death to God as a sacrifice that his peoples might one day be reunited, a think we’d be hard-pressed to imagine very many presidents or prime ministers doing. Anyone who thinks he was a warmonger is out of his mind.
Winston Churchill said that if the allies had not viewed the post-war sweeping away of long-established dynasties as a form of progress, and if a Hohenzollern, a Habsburg and a Wittelsbach had been allowed to return to their thrones, there would have been no Hitler.
I’m still waiting for the “new right” to develop the intellectual maturity to make arguments, rather than simply hurl epithets in the style of the progressives they seem so intent on aping. I doubt they will ever develop this capacity though, because they seem to be simply progressives with different social values rather than true intellectuals formed in the Western intellectual tradition (I particularly have Ahmari, Vermuele and Pappin in mind here).
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And I’m am waiting for someone to get the point I was making.
Is the point that we should all be heading to Rome in late October?
Fr. Z: You wrote: “The writer goes on to make an interesting proposal, and this is what you might offer your thoughts about.”
You then write today: “And I’m waiting for someone to get the point I was making.”
Please clarify “proposal” and “point”- I have my own thoughts about this. Kindly note that my brief comment addresses the problem of monarchy which is clearly important both to the author and the two paragraphs you highlighted. That said, there is much more to say about this article when time permits.
jaykay, Anita Moore: Good comments, but we’ll have to agree to disagree. I’ll reply later.
VSL, thomistking: Good comments, I’ll reply later.
Declan Leary wrote:
“You can fight fire with fire, or you can fight fire with water,”
There’s an abstract relevancy to that, but it oversimplifies a complex problem involving many human beings with many agendas over many generations.
“…but you cannot fight fire with sitting still and saying, “Well, now, I really think if you stopped to consider it, you’d realize that your unrelenting attempts to turn me to ash and smoke violate the implicit principles of the Declaration in these important ways…””
Presumably, he is referring to the Declaration of Independence- he is reminded that there is a Constitution. Who, precisely, is “sitting still”? Leary should clarify whether or not he thinks the “Declaration” and the Constitution are relevant or not. If not relevant, then Leary is part of the problem.
I’m reading the comments, scratching my head at the epistles on monarchy and who started WWI, and then laughed out loud at Fr. Z’s, “And I’m waiting for someone to get to the point I was making.” Fr. Z, maybe you should revise the reminder to “Preview and THINK before posting” and add “First, read the blog before commenting….”
I’m game for a proactive march to Rome, if it is in support of the TLM and the Magisterium.
Declan Leary wrote:
“But the general principle applies: the response to the destruction of the West is not to sit back and “let the market figure it out,””
Fine, but provide specific examples of those who hold that position, and be aware that that sentiment is often an indicator that the author is a crypto-socialist.
“…nor to reconcile ourselves to the pressures of secular, technological, and liberal modernity.”
Vague. Clarify “reconcile ourselves” and “pressures.” As for “technological modernity” perhaps Leary should “not reconcile” himself to automobiles, electricity, the internet and air conditioning.
“What post-Christian societies need is a deliberate effort to restore social order, to reassert the prerogatives of Church and family in the face of hostile forces.”
Vague. Expand on “deliberate” and detail the “prerogatives of Church.” One could presume out of charity that Leary intends a methodical effort over time to, among other things, improve education, catechesis, the cultivation of the virtues, civic duty and the awareness that obligations accompany rights.
On the other hand, Leary also wrote: “It might be time to stand up, dust ourselves off, and finally realize that Blessed Charles had the right idea in marching to Budapest.”
There is a contradiction here between the Great Commission and raising an army to march on a capital city to install yet another monarch.
Alan Breedlove wrote: “I’m reading the comments, scratching my head at the epistles on monarchy and who started WWI…”
You can relieve yourself of your bewilderment by reading the article and comments again. Notice the relevance. Such reading will also dispose of your snide remark against the commenters here.
“I’m game for a proactive march to Rome, if it is in support of the TLM and the Magisterium.”
Then let’s see your detailed plan regarding leadership, funding, logistics and specific goals.
Semper: Perhaps you thought I suggested that we should march on Budapest or Vienna to claim the throne for Simeon von Habsburg? No. I’m not talking about secular order, as entwined as it once was with the Church.
I wrote: “At Crisis there is an interesting suggestion today that applies not just to the secular order but… you read it and tell me what you think… perhaps also to the ecclesial order.”
“He goes on to describe the cultural and political scene in these USA, which is increasingly dominated by the Left, as it is in the Church.”
Sadly I think American society is so divided – in the Civil War days it was gernally speaking territorial. Sure, states like Kentucky and TN were split but split along county lines more or less. Now though, its truely neighbor against neighbor. And one can see with the last election, the powers that be wont let there be change and all effort would be a waste in the end. Country would need a cataclysm like another WWI to to unite the masses.
concerning the history, tidbit from my family history, my mom’s family was Hungarian, and of the Hungarian Reformed religion, but they are all gone now. Loving history I would ask the old timers questions and they never once had anything good to say about the Habsburgs. Like Turks though, two of my cousins married (secular) Turkish men. On my Ukrainian side, they had nice things to say about the old monarchy, that they were alright.
Fr. Z: Thanks.
jaykay: The case for “monarchs were puppets of social forces” and “Wilhelm II was not really in control” does not hold water. Actual monarchs decided to continue toward war, and actual monarchs chose to go to war. Briefly, the problematic Wilhelm II was the commander of the German armed forces and responsible for foreign policy. For several decades prior to August 1914: the Wilhelmine New Course, the Naval Race with Britain, the First and Second Moroccan Crisis, the Bosnian Crisis, and the Balkan Wars.
Blessed Karl, for all his merits, blundered badly, after the carnage of WW I, by raising an army and attempting to install himself on a throne. He failed to understand the situation (also recall the Austro-Hungarian Ultimatum of July 1914 that alarmed governments and diplomats: “C’est la guerre europeenne”).
As for the excellent Charlemagne, what is relevant here is that most of his male offspring for several generations were weak or incompetent and his Empire collapsed- a cautionary tale about monarchs and bloodlines.
Anita Moore: The case for “revolutionaries who toppled thrones and monarchs losing control of events” does not hold water. Revolutionaries we’re at it throughout the 19th century and early 20th century without triggering a World War. Yes, the assassination in Sarajevo June 1914 caused yet another European crisis, but there was ample opportunity to avoid World War- unfortunately, the monarchs of Germany, Austro-Hungary and to an extent Russia persisted. The first military assault by Wilhelm II was not against France, but against neutral Luxembourg and Belgium. That’s an indicator of Wilhelm’s ambitions. Furthermore, as history has proven over the centuries, non-consensual governments are not sustainable.
VSL: Orban has his positive qualities, but thanks for the additional context.
thomistking: Good point regarding the lack of intellectual maturity of power-seekers such as Vermeule, Ahmari and Pappin- they resemble Leftist revolutionaries quite a bit (after all, they’re more Integralists than “New Right”). Their personality cult differs in that it is Vatican-based (thus their approval of the abandonment of Chinese Christians by the Vatican).
So, there’s nothing wrong with Declan Leary ginning up an idea, and there’s nothing wrong with pointing out flaws and providing additional context.
You can fight fire with fire, or you can fight fire with water, but you cannot fight fire with sitting still and saying, “Well, now, I really think if you stopped to consider it,
Leary is erecting a pretty significant obfuscation here. It must be clear that there are NOT only two options here, (1) sitting on your hands doing nothing; or (2) nuclear war.
Rome spent in excess of 200 years very forcefully assaulting Christianity. Christians “fought back” – not by sitting on their hands, and not by picking up spears – but by going gaily to their deaths singing and forgiving their persecutors. The Christians won that war. (Well, God did, of course.) Rome was “baptized” less than 300 years after Christ died.
In some cases, God intends a person to pick up a weapon and fight for the right cause by force of arms. But for most persons in most situations, His will is that we “fight” for the right by other tools and in other senses. We Catholics who have been raising large families, homeschooling, and sending our sons into the (rare) GOOD seminaries, are indeed fighting against the forces of darkness and liberalism. We are not sitting on our hands. We Catholics who have rejected the horrific modernist liberal “catholic” universities and started (new, small) Catholic colleges are indeed fighting for God’s cause against darkness and evil. We are not sitting on our hands. We Catholics who are insisting on going to the TLM to develop a Catholic sense of worship and the sacred, who go to confession on Saturdays, are indeed fighting, just not with swords or guns. We are helping to re-form a Catholic culture that is subversive of liberalism and can (if God wills it) suck the wind out of the sails of modernism – in time. Yes, that Catholic culture is “merely” the size of a family…then extended family…then several interconnected families…then schools and colleges and small firms…
Somewhere, at some time, there may indeed be a place where taking up guns is EXACTLY the right move to push forward the cause of Catholic culture, and defeat the armies of liberal modernism by physical force. But there is no obvious way to know how and where but in the particular; the apparent fact that it hasn’t been the “right time” for the last 100 years DOES NOT MEAN that the upright Christian fighters have been taking the wrong tack. The martyrs took the right tack going to their deaths for 200+ years. The courage and fortitude of a soldier includes the steadfastness of sticking to the right course even if it is difficult, even if it persists for a long time, even if I cannot clearly see how success can be achieved, even if it means that I will die long before success comes to our cause.
Please forgive me for my ignorance but are there army forces in the states that are not under the command of Biden? I wish they did not have to listen to him.
TonyO: Outstanding.
Father,
Marches seem often in order ( I am glad to have joined the pro-life ones I have, as well as following up with legislator-lobbying) – by way of testimony with or without persuasion – though there is the question of prudence, and the readiness for something like ‘confessor’ status if not/but also red martyrdom.
Austrian tangent: there are scans of various copies of Fritz Kreisler’s vivid and interesting memoir, Four Weeks in the Trenches: The War Story of a Violinist (1915) in the Internet Archive – and even an audiobook at LibriVox (lasting all of an hour and sixteen minutes). Meanwhile, someone has uploaded an instrument version of his ‘O Sanctissima’ freely adapted from a melody by Arcangelo Corelli, as played by himself and his brother Hugo, on YouTube.
A Churchill quote is referred to above. It appears to be this:
“If the Allies at the peace table at Versailles had allowed a Hohenzollern, a Wittelsbach and a Habsburg to return to their thrones, there would have been no Hitler.”
God bless Winston Churchill, but he was biased in favor of monarchy- that quote is merely sentiment, not thoughtfulness.
The Versailles Peace Conference was held during early 1919 and the treaty signed in June. Before then, the belligerent and at times xenophobic Wilhelm II had abdicated (two days before the armistice on November 9, 1918). Wilhelm II fled the next day to the neutral Netherlands.
In October 1918 Hungary declared independence from Austria, quickly followed by several other countries. Here is an excerpt from Blessed Karl’s (Karl did not succeed to the throne until the end of 1916) Proclamation of Nov. 11, 1918:
“I have not hesitated to restore constitutional life and have opened the way for peoples to develop their own state independently.
…
“I recognize in advance the decision that German Austria will make regarding its future form of government.
“The people took over the government through their representatives. I waive any share in state affairs.
“At the same time, I am releasing My Austrian Government from office.”
Karl did not use the word “abdicate” on November 11 but that was irrelevant.
After monarchs started the carnage of WW I it would have been more reasonable for the Allies to prosecute these monarchs at something similar to a Nuremberg Trial than to reinstall these problematic individuals on their thrones.
Churchill’s mention of Hitler is poignant, but erroneous. In 1919 Germany was experiencing socialist and revolutionary violence by groups such as the anarchists, Bolsheviks and Freikorps. Additionally, specific elements of national socialism (such as the Volkisch movement, the German occult revival, the Wandervogel, anti-Semitism, the Armanenschaft and Germanic Theosophy) were not only present but active in society.
In January 1919 the DAP (German Worker’s Party- the precursor to Hitler’s National Socialist DAP) was founded and Hitler joined in late summer. The reason Hitler joined the DAP had nothing to do with the Versailles Conference. Hitler was assigned by his military intelligence unit to infiltrate the DAP and observe their activities. Hitler recognized an opportunity to take leadership and soon transformed the DAP into the NSDAP, relying on his mentor Dietrich Eckart. Eckart improved Hitler’s writing, sensationalized his public speaking style, taught him table manners, and bought him a trench coat and a suit.
One can easily disagree with Churchill here.
Declan Leary wrote: “The regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, had sworn fealty to the Habsburg king three years before [1918] at Schönbrunn Palace. Now [1921], under foreign and domestic pressure, he refused to keep his word.”
In November 1918 a Hungarian revolutionary named Bela Kun, a Bolshevik who fought in Russia and a personal friend of Lenin, returned to Hungary.
In March 1919 he led a successful coup against Hungary’s President Mihaly Karolyi and founded the Hungarian Soviet Republic, taking orders from Lenin via shortwave radio and telegraph. This “dictatorship of the proletariat” lasted until August, having spent its time battling anarchists in the streets, resisting a counter-coup, and fighting a war with Romania. Kun then fled to the Soviet Union.
Horthy, at the invitation of Hungary’s Parliament, became regent in March 1920- but not the “regent of the ruling house” rather the “regent of the governor.” In 1921 the Hungarian opposition to Blessed Karl’s return was led by nationalist politician Gyula Gombos.