The Roots of Leftis in Christendom; E von Kuehnnelt-Leddihn

However, we are here primarily concerned with the strange phe nomenon of Christians of the Dr. Kuehnelt-Leddihn is a European scholar, linguist, world traveler, and lecturer. Of his many published works, the best known in America is his book, Liberty or Equality? Left, especially Catholics who rep resent such a large share of the Christian world. Left and Right In our Western civilization, originally inspired by Christianity, "left" has a pejorative implication. "Left" and "wrong" are the op posites of "right." Already in an tiquity the left implied misfortune. The New Testament says that on Judgment Day the Just will be on the right, the Damned on the left of the Lord. In French gauche (like linkisch in German) means clumsy, awkward (for which the French have another word : mala droit-bad-to-the-right). In Ital ian, sinistro means left, dark, and also mishap, accident. Damnation seems to fascinate the Left. "Rise Ye, Damned of the Earth" are the opening words of the "Interna90 THE FREEMAN February tional." "Right," on the other hand, has a positive connotation everywhere. It also stands for the Latin ius, for rightness, rectitude, justice, honesty, correctness - in German, Recht, Rechtlichkeit, Ger echtigkeit, Redlichkeit, Richtig keit.

In politics the Left was first identified with the opposition but later, in ideological parlance, it assumed a more definite meaning. In our highly confused civiliza tion the semantic chaos has pro duced such statements as: "We re ject communism and Nazism which are very much alike. Extreme right and extreme left are almost identical. No wonder - extremes always meet." Communism and Nazism are indeed very much alike but only becG\use they both belong to the extreme Left. Extremes, needless to say, never meet. Hot and cold, big and small obviously never meet, nor do they become alike or identical. The Rightist ideal postulates that everybody has his own proper rights, Ulpian's suum cuique which does not imply equality, or sameness or identity, but plurality and diversity. The true Right stands for freedom, personality, decentralization, local rights, the principle of subsidiarity, free en terprise, spirituality, mixed gov ernment; the Left for centraliza tion, equality and identity, collectivism, state omnipotence, social ism, materialism, and absolutism, whether of a democratic or mo narchic order. (Absolute mon archy, as Ludwig von Gerlach said, is "the revolution from above.") Leftism, Chronolatry, and Manichaeism How, then, did it happen that Leftism made such deep inroads into Christian thinking, be it pri vate or official? Is it not obvious at first glance that Leftism and Christianity are poles apart? Yet, the unfortunate and seemingly impossible synthesis has occurred and this for good reasons. Lead ing among these is chronolatry, the worship of the spirit of the times, the desire to be "up to date"

and thus also to take the wind out of the sails of the enemies of Christianity. Yet, the end can never sanctify the means (a prin ciple the Jesuits never promulgat ed) and the task of Christianity (or the Church) is certainly not to assimilate herself to trends and fashions but, rather, to inspire and to form them. This is surely the reason why the term aggior namento (updating) has been quietly dropped by Rome in favor of rinovamento (renewal) and res SOU1~cement (going back to the sources). "If you can't lick them, join them" may be a maxim ap propriate for rough-and-tumble 1968 THE ROOTS OF LEFTISM IN CHRISTENDOM 91 politics but not for the Church the Lord has founded on the Rock to last through the ages. Chronolatry, however, is not the only explanation for the Leftist escalation inside the Church. Very definite misinterpretations and misreadings of the New Testament are at work, theories using errors for very specific purposes, wrong and distorted views concerning the entire development of Christian ity and, finally, the curious phe nomenon I have called nwnasticism (as an "ism"), the dangerous sec ularization of the monastic con cept. (See my essay "EI Monasti cismo" in Revista de Occ,idente, Madrid, November, 1965.) Some of these notions can be traced in early church history, but most of them are of a more recent date; they are Medieval or even modern.

Ancient Christianity was men aced by Manichaeism, a dualistic concept of pagan origin which con sidered only the spiritual world as God's creation and the material one as the Devil's. This heresy had not only temporary but also last ing effects. Through the Bogo miles and Patarines it fathered the Albigensian heresy, one of the most terrifying aberrations of Christianity, and reappeared, strongly modified, as Jansenism. It constitutes, perhaps, a permanent intellectual temptation for Chris tianity (by no means for the Catholic Church only) and favors asceticism for all, not only for a select few with a specific vocation. The idea that wealth (or power) automatically enslaves is definitely Manichaean. The fact that a rich man can attain inner freedom from his riches (and be a pauper in spirit), while a poor man might desperately crave and even im morally try to acquire property, is hardly envisaged.

Who Was Christ? In the early Middle Ages much was made of the concept of Christ the King though his feast was only decreed by Pius XI. Repre sentations of Christ on the Cross, tri umphant and wearing a royal crown, disappeared ,vith the High Middle Ages and the rise of the new mendicant orders (Francis cans and Dominicans). rivaling the Benedictines and Augustinians. At that time a low-class and low brow image of the origins of Christiani ty became popular . Yet, Christ ,vas definitely not the son of a humble carpenter, his disci ples not naive and uneducated fish erman, nor did he found a religion for the slaves and outcasts of the decaying Roman Empire. This ver sion, however, became more and more widespread as time \vent on, and reached its climax in our age. As a matter of fact, one finds it, with minor adaptations, in the 92 THE FREEMAN February Bolshaya Sovyetskaya Entsiklo pediya. It would be interesting to know just when the final break through of this imagery occurred, but it is not yet to be found (in such a concrete manner) in either the Renaissance or Baroque pe riod.

The hard facts are quite differ ent. In the eyes of the Jews Christ was a natural pretender to the Judaic throne since he was of royal blood, a descendant of King David. Joseph is addressed as "Son of David" by the Angel Ga briel and the prominence given to the pedigree of Jesus underlines this fact. Hence, also, the repeated emphasis on the part of Christ that his kingdom was not of this world; hence, also, the not so iron ical inscription "King of the Jews" on the Cross which appar ently had terminated the drama. From Biblical accounts it is also evident that his mother belonged, at least partly, to a priestly (Aaronite) family since Elizabeth was her cousin or aunt. Thus, Christ's family background is highly aristocratic; and whether Joseph was a carpenter is a very moot question. Techn6n could just as well be translated as "archi tect" or "building contractor." Christ's birth in a stable was ac cidental (a Prince, too, could be born in a gas station). And when the Magi came to worship the Child Jesus, they found him not in a stable -as art will have it but "in the house of Joseph" who must have owned real estate in Bethlehem; otherwise, he would not have been compelled to return from Nazareth to David's town.

(Whether the family was poor or not is sociologically an unimportant question; wealth and "nobil ity," especially in the Holy Land, were, and still are, separate at tributes.) Christ moved much among the wealthy; he brought no message for a new social order (he exhort ed us to be charitable, not to en gage in social engineering). His disciples were by no means "hum ble folk," but minor entrepreneurs like Peter, or first-rate intellectu als like John. One need only study the names and backgrounds of the Saints in the Roman Missal to dis cover that a very large percentage (a majority even) belonged to the higher and highest ranks of Ro man society. Neither were the early Church Fathers "proletar ians" or mental simpletons; they were people of certain means and, above all, original thinkers. Chris tianity came to the Roman Empire through the Jewish communities 'who had socially superior con tacts, largely with the world of commerce and politics. There is nothing to indicate that the urban proletariate was particularly 1968 THE ROOTS OF LEFTISM IN CHRISTENDOM 93 drawn to Christianity; we know for certain that the peasantry op posed it assiduously.

/I Monasticism" The rise of the mendicant or ders in the Middle Ages put pov erty, so to say, into the limelight. Nevertheless, we have to bear in mind that this new trend had nothing to do with the modern cry for "social justice" which certain ly does not praise indigence but wants to abolish it by expropriat ing the wealthy. Still, monasti cism, gaining ground in the High Middle Ages, had interesting and lasting psychological effects. The observation of St. Thomas that "corruption of good is the worst evil" can indeed be applied to the "image" of the monastery. Now, it must be borne in mind that the monastery consists of men or women with a very special and rather rare vocation. They make a true sacrifice of their God-given liberty to their Creator whom they are willing to serve in an exclu si ve way. The vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity, which in Catholic theology figure as Coun sels of Perfection (or Evangelical Counsels), are the very premises of monastic life. At all times there have been people who, though not themselves members of an order, have envied the monks and nuns their "secure and peaceful existence" while, on the other hand, men and women in orders have preached the monastic way of life to those "in the world."

It should not be overlooked either that, quite accidentally, of course, the monastery is the pre figuration of several "modern" in stitutions: the boarding school, the barracks, the factory, and, in a sense, the hospital. The monas tery stands for discipline, collec tive work, identical clothing, strict sched ules (a keen sense of time), subordination of the personality to the community, all, however, on the basis of a voluntary decision. An element of coercion, on the other hand, dominates all secular, pseudo monasteries. The monk is relieved of all material anxieties and worries to give him the free dom he needs for his spiritual ad venture. Material security within an order, however, is never an end in itself. We all have heard the following quip: "Where can a man be sure of his daily bread, a roof over his head, employment, spirit ual and mental care, peace from the other sex, and a decent funer al? In a monastery or in jail!"

The difference between the two, however, lies primarily in the presence or absence of free choice. And this di.fference is all-impor tant. Bef ore we go one step further, we ought to recall that the medi94 THE FREEMAN February eval monastery had a strong and far-reaching radiation. The monk, Joachim de Floris, originally a Cistercian, developed a socialist, utopian, visionary theory accord ing to which all men and women would finally become monks and nuns. He was the harbinger of more radical and voluntary collec tivistic ideologies to come. But at an even earlier stage the Irish monks, swarming all over the Con tinent, had begun to inject monas tic ideals into the Catholic Church at large. (One can read more about this in A. Mirgeler's Ruckblick auf das Abendliindische Christentum, Mainz, 1961.) Their rigorism left its imprint on the Catholic Church which adopted many monastic ideas and institutions for the laity and the secular clergy. Celi bacy for the priesthood was one of these.

Effects of the Reformation The Reformation, initiated by Martin Luther, a friar of the Or der of Augustinian Hermits, re sulted in what Alexander Rlistow called "the socialization of the mon astery." The ex-Dominican Sebas tian Franck remarked in the early sixteenth century that it would be wrong to assume that he had escaped the monastery; in fact, monastic ideas were spreading in every direction. And though Max Weber's thesis about the Calvinistic roots of capitalism still stands (especially after the publication of Alfred Mtiller-Armack's work on the subject), it is equally true that the Reformation - in its es sence a revolt against Humanism and the hedonism of the Renais sance - ushered in an age of· so briety, team spirit, puritanism, state omnipotence, and punctual ity. (The foundations of the Swiss watch industry were laid by Hu guenot refugees from France.) In the meantime, the Catholic \vorld (to this day far more in debted to Renaissance and Ba roque than to the Middle Ages) developed nonmonastic orders: the Jesuits, the Salesians, the Re demptorists. To devout followers of Reformed doctrines, Catholic no tions appeared individualistic and heathenish. Yet, all through the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seven teenth centuries in the northwest of Europe, untold radical sects arose which combined distorted Christian doctrines with notions of extreme social reform. Equal ity, collectivism, the enforced sharing of earthly goods, an iron discipline, and totalitarian meas ures provided them with the dy namics of aggression. The Tabor ites, Adamites, Anabaptists, Dig gers, and Levellers are the best known among them.

At a later period the utopian socialists in France as well as in 1968 THE ROOTS OF LEFTISM IN CHRISTENDOM 95 England and the United States established communities of a dis tinctly monastic character. And wherever Marxian socialism was transformed into a living reality, monastic forms inevitably made their appearance. When, during my last stay in the Soviet Union, I was asked about my reactions, I used to reply that this creation of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin seemed to me essentially a "godless mon astery" upon whose population the Counsels of Perfection were imposed: poverty, obedience, and, though not chastity, at least a puritanical life. It is certainly no coincidence that communist par ties proliferated in countries where monastic ideals and tradi tions are well rooted: Russia, China, Italy, France, and Greece. The Procommunist Nostalgia Christian ethical ideals are con stantly proclaimed, taught, and propagandized by the Soviets. As a matter of fact, from billboards, television screens, loudspeakers, magazine covers, and newspapers the people are subjected to a con stant barrage of Christian moral izing. They are exhorted to be have like Christians, but not to adhere to Christian religions - all of which creates a dichotomy of mind not sufficiently realized by Western analysts of the USSR.

All this dull preaching without a higher appeal naturally cannot stop or diminish the enormous crime rate of the Soviet Union. Conversely, one encounters dedi cated Christians who, though in a very theoretical manner, have a moral admiration for the Soviet System. They are apt to remark that "if the communists only were to admit religion and let their sys tem be baptized - it would be per fect; it would be ideaL" Needless to say that people arguing in these terms are an easy target for So viet propaganda. They only need to be persuaded (and usually they are subconsciously happy to hear and to accept the Glad Message) that there is no religious persecu tion in the USSR and, therefore, opposition against the system is really baseless. ("After all, the Soviets only apply the American principle of separation of State and Church! Just a little further liberalization and everything will be all right!") Such reasoning, however, is en tirely wrong. The "godless mon astery" with a tyrannical, atheis tic abbot is a bad enough carica ture of the original Christian in stitution; but a religious commu nism - in other words, a coercive monastery with vocationless (in many cases married) monks and nuns, born into it - would be ut terly diabolic. At the bottom of all these erroneous and perverted 96 THE FREEMAN February vistas lies a great deal of Rous seau'·s optimism. From Calvin's pessimism people have switched blindly to Rousseau's optimism concerning human nature. This truly "Genevan" tragedy, affect ing all Western civilization, re minds one of Pascal's word that man is neither beast nor angel and that he who wants to make him forcibly an angel will turn him into a beast. And while we are quoting, we might also recall that Romano Guardini (in Das Ende der N euzeit, Wiirzburg, 1950) said that while the Chris tian is bound, he must be bound in freedom.

It is precisely the "monastic heresy" w'ithin the Catholic Church during such a large part of her second millennium that fostered the spirit of coercion. It has now decidedly come to an end ecclesiastically at least. But we can see Catholics (and other Christians) who have transferred their monastic fixations to worldly ideologies. And here lies a truly internal, psychological root of Christian leftism which derives false inspirations either from real monasticism or from its "sociali zation" in the Reformation period. Under Calvin and Farrell the city of Geneva (so well described by Kampschulte) was no less a mon astery than was Massachusetts at the time of the Puritan settlement and, though in an entirely secu lar way, the many communist ex perimental communities in nine teenth century America. None of ,vhich means, however, that the original, manifestly religious mon astery does not have its legitimate place in Christendom, not only in the Catholic and Eastern Ortho dox, but also in the Anglican and Reformed context, as illustrated by the tremendous success of the Presbyterian monastery of Taize in France.

Christian Masochism Certainly not all "drives" to ward Leftism within Christianity are due to purely endogenous forces and internal misinterpreta tions. .Very often we encounter combined errors-extraneous ideas being given "religious" backing, a natural result of the desire to be "in the swim," to ride the wave of the future. Little is it realized that these notions earn not the admiration but the utter contempt of the secular world, above all of the Marxist forces to whom these often desperate efforts to agree with or borrow shamelessly from their ideologies are nothing but confirmations of their own theories. (We are also apt to ap plaud prematurely the smallest indication of an apparent readi ness to compromise in the course of the Soviet Union's opportun1968 THE ROOTS OF LEFTISM IN CHRISTENDOM 97 istic policies, Lenin's zigzagnaya politika.) Christendom is in the grip of a terrible fear that we might have missed the bus - as, indeed, we usually do. In trying desperately to keep up with the times, to run after them, we Christians shall always resemble the dog who barks up a tree after the cat is gone. We then have made fools of ourselves and pay the fine for hav ing disregarded Chesterton's warn ing: "The Church is the only thing which protects us from the de grading servitude of becoming a Child of our Times." To take up immediately every modern fad, would destroy Christianity in no time at all.

Leftist ideas trying to "tie in" with genuinely Christian thought have thus plagued us for some time: Why did the Church not give her full support to the French Revolution? Why not to democ racy? Why not to socialism? Why has the Church always· sided with the rich? Are not all men equal at least in the eyes of God? Is it not understandable that the Church has lost the working class? When the Church was powerful, she used the secular arm to im pose her will on the poor and the exploited. Would she not be wise to ally herself with the "rising powers," to "ride the wave of the future" by allying herself with trade unions, UN Secretaries, specific psychiatric schools, "emerging nations" and their "na tional-socialist" bosses? In these questions and state ments we perceive a whole maze of misunderstandings, old, die-hard legends and basic misconceptions, most of them originating with the critics of Christianity. As "wrong but clear ideas," they have succeeded in worrying ecclesias tics of all denominations to the point where they meekly accepted them and now they are deeply influencing even top leaders in their policymaking.

Cliches Examined Let us have a closer look at these items. The Church's par tiality for the rich is an already petrified legend securely em bedded in the modern mind to the extent that it is hardly discussed. If one demanded supporting evi dence, this would cause surprise and indignation - followed by en raged silence. True, there are a few rich countries where the Church is, let us say, at ease fi nancially (though usually up to her ears in debt). Given her enor mous commitments, however, the Church nowhere can be called really rich, and in many countries she is incredibly indigent. Most contributions come from middle income and poor people. (The very 98 THE FREEMAN February wealthy, plagued by a bad con science, more often than not maso chistically support leftist causes.) The priesthood is rarely recruited from the ranks of the well-to-do; in fact, three of the last six Popes had lower-class backgrounds.

In the ministry of the Reforma tion Churches, too, men who can claim an upper crust origin are exceedingly rare. In most coun tries contacts between the clergy on one side and high finance or big business .on the other are al most nonexistent. Still, we are haunted by this ubiq uitous pseudo commonplace which has never been properly examined, never confirmed, and yet creates needless nightmares in the minds of churchmen, high and low, some good theologians, some amateur sociologists, but in most cases men of an abysmal ignorance about the laws of economics. To talk eco nomics without moral principles and soundly based psychology is as disastrous as the claptrap of theologians without economic training who pontificate vocifer ously on economic matters and thereby unwittingly become dema gogues bombinantes in vacuo. Col laboration between the theologians and biologists leaves much to be desired, but even rarer is the in tellectual exchange between theo logians and economists, the result being "Social Romanticism."

In a number of countries a fierce competition in social demagoguery is raging between Marxists and Christians, a strange battle in which the opponents keep quoting each other. A brilliant, unsigned article in the (London) Catholic weekly, The Tablet (July 23, 1966), pointed out that the old, now so heavily condemned triumphalism in the Catholic Church has been replaced by a new mood based on the Social Gospel. But the Church, being a newcomer at this game, will hardly score. The New Mythology There may be remote and back ward areas where social reform is utterly necessary and would really raise the general level of living. In an address to the Vienna Katholikentag in 1952 Pius XII called "deproletarization" through social reforms a closed matter ex cept in isolated retarded regions. Contrary to a popular belief, Latin America is not one of these; the problem there is the lack of a work ethos (what the Spaniards call La gana de trabajar) , as Pro fessor Frederick B. Pike (Notre Dame) clearly proved in his essay in the July, 1964, issue of the Review of Politics. (This excellent article presents in a new light the dangers, the suicidal consequences of a political commitment to the Left on the part of the Church.) 1968 THE ROOTS OF LEFTISM IN CHRISTENDOM 99 In Latin America the social pyra mid has a very broad base but shrinks suddenly, ending in a thin needle. (See also my Latein amerika - Geschichte eines Schei terns? Osnabriick, 1967). The cu bic content of this needle is so small that its "redistribution,"

while doing away with envy, would not improve the lot of the indi gent but hardly laborious masses. Their natural virtues, as Profes sor Pike points out, were never sufficiently cultivated by the Cath olic .Church. In Germany even, where the social pyramid is far better equilibrated, an income ceiling of 1,000 DM (250 dollars) per month and an equal distri bution of the "jackpot" would, in 1956, have yielded an extra 3.5 cents a day for each poor citizen. Similar experiments in Peru or Bolivia would be even less en couraging. It is significant, however, that the churches today very rarely preach against envy which, after all, has been the dynamic force in every totalitarian movement for the last 200 years. By 1917 large landownership in Russia had dwindled (partly thanks to P. Stolypin's reforms) to a pro visional 22 per cent of the arable land, yet in the civil war the peasants largely supported the Red Army. In Germany anti-Sem itism would never have become a political factor if the Jews had remained as poor as the gypsies.

(Who cared in 1933 whether the Jews had been collectively guilty of the Crucifixion?) There are theologians who know very well that radical social engineering (in Latin America, for instance) would be "for the birds," yet they are ready to advocate it be cause it might eliminate or at least diminish envy. And envy is bad, very bad. To one of these men I replied with a parable: Isabel and Heloise are sisters, Isabel is a beauty, Heloise an ugly duckling who cries into her pillow every night. Should one take a knife and disfigure Isabel? The good theologian raised his hands in horror. Looking back at the questions we asked earlier, it certainly seems that the Church could hardly have sided with the French Revolution, ,vith de Sade, Danton, Robes pierre, Marat, and Saint-Just amidst the forest of guillotines. Nor with democracy, a regime of numbers, of equality and majority rule, whereas justice and equity might well be on the side of un popular minorities. Nor should Christianity's rejection of Marx ism be construed as partiality to ward the rich; Marxism made a frontal attack on all religions since it stands for materialism and against spirituality. The 100 THE FREEMAN February Church had no choice whatsoever.

l\1:arxism, moreover, advocated the dictatorship of the proletariat in an omnipotent state. Every Church instinctively dislikes the omnip otent State (regardless of what a few ecclesiastic opportunists might have said in public). The Church never used the State but was always - especially during the Middle Ages - overshadowed by it. Her "power" was always a "lunar" derivative from a "solar" government. Canossa? It ended with Pope Gregory's bitter death in exile, to be followed much later by the Babylonian captivity in Avignon. The Church was always "poor and without means." (St. Augustine). And did she really lose the workers or was not, rather, the working class a brand new element crystallizing outside her orbit? Are not the 2,000 years of church history a continued, desperate, yet miraculously not fatal battle for survival? The New Temptation Today Leftism is the great tempter approaching the Church from the outside while various errors are proliferating inside her. In our strictly nonpluralistic age, menaced by the Great Leftist Conformities, sameness and equal ity are the favorite battlecries.

Yet, people are unequal not only physically and intellectually. They are also spiritually unequal. Ac cording to Christian doctrine there is no equality either on earth or in Heaven. (Possibly it exists in Hell, though.) Liberty, freedom, figures in the New Test ament, equality never. Here we clearly observe an intrusion of political thought into theology. Weare not equal in the eyes of God. If Judas Iscariot and St. John were equals, the Church could close shop. The trick of in troducing adverbial equality will not do either. We have equally immortal souls as we might equally have bank accounts, but they are certainly not alike. Of course, who is superior to whom, God only knows. One of Christianity's main prob lems is to maintain an equilibrium between the temporal and the spiritual. A pure, otherworldly spirituality might lead to great difficulties and make us lose touch with everyday life. Christianity as a geocentric faith devoted to chronolatry and the quest for popularity would altogether cease to be Christianity. This particular temptation of our times, the gros sest and at the same time subtlest of them all, has not presented it self quite so directly since the day when Satan offered to Christ all the treasures and kingdoms of this earth. ~ Reprints available, 1 O~ each.