“Irridebit” – Folha de S. Paulo, January 16, 1978

 

by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

 

Once upon a time, intelligent and strong people lived in a beautiful region. Everything would have made their lives easy, leading them toward a glorious future, had it not been for the countless centuries of barbarism that weighed upon them. With barbarism came primitive and crude beliefs, pagan customs, and the vice of living at the expense of their neighbors through wars of plunder.

All this was around the year 1000. Astonished by its age, the civilized world imagined itself old. Some extravagant people even thought it was coming to an end.

However, the world—and more precisely, the West—was being born into all the glories of civilization that soon shone upon it.

Almost everywhere, men of valor began leading their peoples along paths toward prosperity and greatness.

Among these men were many saints. The prominent men of that era agreed that, in essence, a man’s highest value lies in being a saint. A warrior, a sage, a monarch, or a pope would reach their full potential only when their wisdom, heroism, and ability to govern souls or nations were brought to their zenith by the unparalleled driving force of holiness.

We are approaching the year 2000. The world was in the year 1000 then! How everything has changed! Where are the men today, at the forefront of great human endeavors, full of Christian zeal, who were lifting the world in the year 1000?

But—someone will object—how much greater the progress of the world in this expectation of the year 2000! I will not dwell on this soft and prolix question, as those who see clearly need no explanations. For those who do not see clearly, explanations are useless.

 

Statue of Saint Stephen in Budapest

In that distant year 1000, the Church was fortunate to be governed by a great pope: Sylvester II. His earnest pastoral care encompassed the entire civilized world and extended into the barbarian world, seeking to convert souls. Thus, amid those barbarian peoples, he saw a true flower emerging from the nights of barbarism. It was the young Duke Stephen who asked the Church to grant him the title of king and to bestow on his recently converted land, Hungary, the grace to establish an ecclesiastical hierarchy.

Sylvester II sent to the banks of the Danube, with his father’s acquiescence, a masterpiece that could not have been better crafted by the goldsmiths of the time. It was a royal crown set with sparkling pearls and precious stones of various colors, all set in gold. The young king donned the crown with the firm resolve to fulfill the pope’s hopes, and no king of Hungary has been greater than him from the year 1000 to the present. The Church canonized him and established a feast day for him in its calendar. Since then, the same plea has risen from the hearts of the faithful on that feast day throughout the world: “Saint Stephen, pray for us.”

Over the past thousand years, the Hungarian people have accepted, without interruption, the crown of Saint Stephen as a symbol of the country’s sovereignty. Only those who possessed it were recognized as the country’s authentic head.

And this has remained the same to this day.

Crown of Saint Stephen

Having said all this, let us move on, or rather plunge, from the illuminated panorama of St. Stephen’s Hungary to the nightmarish panorama of János Kádár’s Hungary. On the one hand, you have Saint Stephen under the august and paternal influence of Sylvester II; on the other, János Kádár, the communist ruler remotely controlled by Brezhnev. Could the fall be any more dizzying?

Communists around the world claim that with the Soviet invasion of Hungary in late 1944 and the establishment of an atheistic communist regime in the country, the people were freed from the yoke of their traditional structures. And with true freedom—that is, communism—they came to know the true light, that is, atheism. Since 1945, the Hungarian communist regime has done nothing but restrict religious freedom and employ all forms of psychological and police pressure to eradicate from the national spirit everything the crown had symbolized.

However, the facts show that these rulers’ efforts have been largely ineffective.

Thus, the Hungarian government kept Cardinal Joszef Mindszenty, Primate of Hungary, confined for years in the US Embassy in Budapest. This old prelate, isolated and shrouded in the heaviest silence in the land of St. Stephen, disturbed the rulers’ sleep, even as they relied on all the power of their cannons, censorship, and police. They did not rest until they got Paul VI to invoke Obedience—the only force before which the great anticommunist cardinal bowed—to remove him from Hungary.

That was not enough. Once again, with the Holy See’s support, the communist government compelled all Hungarian bishops to swear allegiance to it. Kadar’s Hungary, or rather Kadar’s pseudo-Hungary, relied on the remnants or the appearance of St. Stephen’s Hungary to try to survive.

The last move in this policy has just been taken.

Everyone knows that, on the eve of the rise of the communist regime in Hungary, Hungarians whose names were not published in the newspapers prevented the very symbol of the legitimacy of all power in Hungary, namely the crown of St. Stephen, from falling into the clutches of the invader. It was thus entrusted to an earthly power, the greatest and richest in history.

Meanwhile, Brezhnev’s proconsuls in Budapest continued to sleep uneasily. The people of Hungary stubbornly refused to recognize the authority of these adventurers, whose foreheads were not crowned with St. Stephen’s crown.

How could they, with their little cannons, intimidate the American superguns into extorting the incomparable relic from them?

It is uncertain whether Brezhnev was consulted about it. If he was, he indeed smiled and said, “Come on, cannons! Is there anything older and more useless in this era of détente, Ostpolitik, Carter, and Paul VI? Smooth talk will easily obtain from them the concessions they so desire to make to us.”

Here are the facts. To help the Hungarian communists stay in power, the highest potentate of the most powerful democracy in the West hands Kadar the crown, the relic that had been entrusted to the American nation as a deposit of honor. Carter orders Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to deliver it in a lavish ceremony to the very man who is the opposite of the evangelizing king: the materialistic despot.

On this subject, a Vatican spokesman issued a comment that amounted to an ambiguous whisper, perhaps even a slightly embarrassed one. To demonstrate to all Hungarians that the Church approved the delivery of the relic to the communist and atheist dictator, Cardinal László Lékai, Archbishop of Esztergom—the successor — “horresco referens” — of Cardinal Mindszenty—was present at the ceremony.

Both Vance and Leckai seemed to be shouting to the Hungarians, in the eyes of God, the world, and history: “The Church and the United States support the crushing of your baptized heads by the atheist communists, Moscow’s proconsuls, and, with them, your glories as a sovereign and Christian people.”

We are sure that countless Hungarians, both inside and outside Hungary, responded to this cry with tears of indignation, saying, “Saint Stephen, pray for us.”

Deep in their souls, countless Brazilians—some numbed by the apathy spreading through the healthiest sectors of public opinion—say the same thing.

This plea will not have risen to Heaven in vain. By introducing the relic into Hungary, Kadar created a precious opportunity for St. Stephen’s intercession to be even more ardent on behalf of his people. With the inadvertent help of Carter and Paul VI, the symbolic relic crown has entered Hungary. Its presence might attract legions of Angels and rivers of grace to the country, so that the Hungarian people may shake off the yoke under which they lie.

As my thoughts turn to the architects of the crown’s return, a phrase comes to my lips: “Qui habitat in coelis irridebit eos,” as Scripture says (Ps. 2:4): “God will laugh at them.”

“Irridebit”: that is the word!