Legionário, April 4, 1943, No. 556, p. 2
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
A friend of Legionário, talking to me a few days ago, informed me that it is once again becoming necessary to clarify Catholic opinion on the connection between political, social, and economic problems and Catholic doctrine. In reality, I think there is no subject more debated among Catholics than this one. However, I understand my friend’s observation. The modern environment is so permeated with the idea that religion constitutes in the lives of individuals and peoples a watertight compartment, without contact with activities other than the mere celebration of acts of worship and—at most—the practice of the duties that the Law of God and the Church imposes on each individual, that from time to time it is convenient to renew the true Catholic notion on the subject. And for the Legionary, this is a simply vital necessity.
In fact, I do not know what judgment a Catholic should make of our newspaper, for whom the activities of the Church cease at the limits of the temples and the sacristy, are enclosed within the walls of material assistance to the destitute, and, at most, extend only to the narrow sphere of the individual life of each one of us. Within such a conception of Catholic life, the religious weekly should focus its publications on matters of piety, spiritual formation, news of facts and events of a strictly ecclesiastical nature, and, if it wanted to be excellent and truly go beyond what is necessary, it would publish some short serialized novel, essentially innocuous, of course, whose pleasant reading would compensate the reader for the tedium of reading about other subjects.
Thank God, we are far from being among those who speak lightly of the “limits of the sacristy” as limits of things that are extremely insipid, sterile, and uninteresting. The whole life of Catholic social works lies in the supernatural life of those who direct them and those who work for them. Woe to the efforts that never enter the sacristy! They are doomed to fail, because the sacristy, the Church, are the sources from which everything that wants to live the supernatural life of Catholicism must drink.
However, there is a truth parallel to this, which should not be forgotten either. Things that are born in the Church or in the sacristy and do not cross the thresholds of either are not fully born. The Church and the sacristy are sources. And when water springs from a fertile source, it does not just form a small pool around it: it flows into a river that runs towards the ocean. In other words, true pious life necessarily expands. And if it does not expand, it is not true.
We understand from this that if a pious newspaper manages to form truly pious readers, devoured by true zeal for the House of God, this zeal will soon produce works, radiate influence, and seek to mold institutions and customs according to the Christian spirit. And if the Catholic newspaper wants to keep up with the surge of devotion and apostolate of its readers, it will be forced to broaden its own scope, ceasing to be exclusively pious.
Therefore, the alternative is clear: except for newspapers or magazines specializing in piety, either the Catholic press forms a pious audience that will draw it into fields other than piety, or the Catholic newspaper, even if it deals only with piety, is not really pious.
* * *
The error in judgment of certain readers stems from reasoning based on simplistic premises. Given that the apostolate is a work for the salvation of souls, and given that the Church is only interested in the worship of God and the salvation of souls, one wonders: what does politics have to do with it? What does the salvation of souls have to do with a general election in England, a newspaper article written in Switzerland about the expansion of Japanese influence in Indochina, the problem of trade union unity, or the Atlantic Charter? Would it not be preferable to abandon this barren field, full of poisonous quarrels, wounded ambitions, disappointments, and resentments?
Would it not be more generous and noble to concern ourselves exclusively with the pious and moral formation of the faithful?
To this question, we will answer: “mainly,” yes; “exclusively,” no, and never. We will see the reason for this in another article.
(*) Compiler’s note: Politics is understood with a capital “P” and not in the sense of “party politics,” in the low sense of the term.