Legionário, January 28, 1940, No. 385
Pacifism
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
I believe that there has never been a more opportune time for a digression on pacifism than in these days of war that we are experiencing. Because, in reality, pacifism has never seemed to have contributed so much to diverting consciences, softening wills, and disarming the most just and imperious resistance. And, above all, it has never sought to hide itself as insistently as it does today under the skin of a lamb, pretending to be very Catholic.
I therefore believe that readers of Legionário will benefit from spending a little time reflecting on the subject.
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One of the characteristic features of Catholic morality is that it not only recommends love of good, but teaches that each virtue, considered directly, must be loved within certain limits, lest it become a defect.
What are these limits? Those that are imposed by other higher virtues. As long as our love for a particular virtue is not motivated by very true and very pure reasons, it easily degenerates into passion, and with this, it becomes a defect. Hence the appearance of so many virtues that are nothing more than a caricature of true virtue, and undermine deeply, among the masses, the accurate conception of authentic moral perfection.
It would be preferable to give examples. The Church has always preached patriotism as a sacred duty. The bonds that nature has established between men of the same country, such as community of blood, language, character, traditions, customs, aptitudes, etc., create special emotional ties that oblige us to a particular charity towards our compatriots.
To this is added the series of obligations we owe to the State, as a necessary consequence of the benefits we receive from it. In general, these circumstances, which are inseparable from human nature and were therefore willed by God, the author of nature, oblige us to a special solidarity with our country.
However, when these natural feelings are distorted and transformed into mere expressions of selfishness and passion, patriotism becomes corrupted into criminal imperialism or perfectly pagan statolatry.
How many times have the most monstrous violations of international law been explained as heroic outbursts of patriotism by an aggressor nation! How many times, on the other hand, have the most sacred rights of individuals, families, or corporations been trampled underfoot on the pretext that the interests of the Fatherland demanded it!
Look through history, and it will show that, in the name of authentic patriotism, the most heroic actions were carried out, but that under the pretext of false patriotism, the most repugnant crimes were also committed.
Why is this?
Can it be said that the perpetrators of such crimes exaggerated the virtue of patriotism? No. Taken literally, a virtue can never be exaggerated, for however intense it may be, it always remains a virtue, which at its zenith reaches the heroic degree peculiar to holiness. Virtue does not exaggerate, just as it is not possible to exaggerate health. Virtue is the health of the soul, and the healthier the soul, the better and more perfect it is.
But virtue can be distorted, misunderstood, and misapplied. This is not a matter of increased intensity, but of deformation. It is not the virtue of patriotism taken to its maximum intensity that produces warlike and criminal imperialism. It is the deformation of patriotism that leads to such a result. The perfection of patriotism forms heroes. Its deformation gives rise to bandits.
Exactly the same can be said of kindness. There is no virtue more misunderstood than this. It is generally believed that man must be a kind of cretin, incapable of diligently perceiving the plots of others and guarding against them, of energetically investing against error and vice, or of fighting manfully in defense of his rights.
Hence certain commonly used phrases: “Poor thing! He was so good that he ended up in misery with his family.” This is not generally kindness, but a caricature of kindness. The Catholic, said Our Lord, must combine the prudence of the serpent with the innocence of the dove. In general, the failures, the deceptions, the ridiculous blunders to which many people considered “very good” are exposed come not from the innocence of the dove, but from the absence of the cunning of the serpent.
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This is exactly the case with pacifism. No one more than the Church laments wars and strives to avoid them. But the Church is far from understanding that, for this reason, war is the greatest of catastrophes. The Church values human life enough to lament and avoid war as much as possible. However, she understands well that there are things of much greater value than earthly life.
In this regard, St. Augustine makes a serious observation. The great Doctor shows that the greatest evil of war does not lie in the destruction of human lives, which sooner or later will be swallowed up by death on this earth, nor in the mutilation of bodies, which sooner or later will be mutilated by the corruption of the grave. The greatest evil of war is the offense done to God by the sin of the aggressor, because an offense against God is much more to be lamented than the disappearance of hundreds or thousands of lives.
If the atonement for the sins of man had as its price the life of the Man-God, how can we not admit the gravity of sin and the doctrine of the great Bishop of Hippo?
What values take precedence over earthly life?
First and foremost, eternal life. What good is it for a man, asks St. Paul, to gain the whole world if he loses his own soul? Likewise, what good is it to live more than a century in this world if hell then welcomes him for all eternity? Thus, placed between apostasy and death, we must prefer the latter.
This is the meaning of the heroic resistance of the martyrs and the holy wars that, trampling underfoot any morbid pacifism, Christianity developed in the past to preserve itself from the attacks of the Moors, Albigensians, and Protestants. This is also the meaning of those who, with arms in hand, oppose in our century the spread of doctrines hostile to those of Our Lord Jesus Christ, doctrines which, embodied in heresiarchs, have conquered power and dispose of the immense military resources of entire nations. Secondly, there is dignity and territorial integrity.
The brevity of a newspaper article does not allow us to examine the multiple hypotheses of licit war, recognized by the Angelic Doctor [St. Thomas Aquinas]. However, it suffices for this purpose to emphasize that there are cases in which he considers war a duty. And this is enough to prove that peace at all costs cannot constitute a program worthy of the Catholic spirit.
This, in fact, is what His Holiness Pius XII affirmed in an irrefutably clear manner in his recent letter to President Roosevelt. The Holy Father says that he notes with increasing clarity the growing difficulty that international circles oppose to a “just and sound peace”. He adds that he formally desires an authentic peace, in accordance with international justice, and not in accordance with ephemeral diplomatic combinations that would sooner or later cause the collapse of a peace “built on sand”.
Such peace, adds the Pope, can only be assured by statesmen who have “a sufficiently clear understanding of the needs of humanity and a deep respect for the commandments of the Gospel, for only they are on the right and just path. Only they will be given the power to create peace, to compensate for the enormous sacrifices of this war, and to facilitate the means by which a more balanced, but confident and fruitful understanding between nations will be found.”
It seems impossible to state more clearly that attempts at peace with any head of state who is a proponent of anti-Catholic civilization will collapse like a house of cards.
How, then, can one be a pacifist at all costs?