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christendom, Civilization, Country, G.K. Chesterton, Nation, Nationalism, Patriotism, Pius XI, Pius XII, Thearchic Nationalism, Virtue
The Church is now bringing together what that tower had sundered. Of one tongue there were made many; marvel not: this was the doing of pride. Of many tongues there is made one; marvel not: this was the doing of charity. For although the sounds of tongues are various, in the heart one God is invoked, one peace preserved.
-St. Augustine, Commentary on the Gospel of St. John
In my wanderings in this valley of tears, I have always tried to uphold the virtue of Patriotism, the love of my country, the land and its peoples. I have written in the past about the perversion of Nationalism which daily undermines the true Common Good of the countries it infects. Yet as with all philosophical errors it returns under different forms in different ages. As it was invoked against the Universal Church in the Sacred Ages, now the Nationalists dare even to invoke God for their defense in this Age of Godlessness.
This is the Thearchic Nationalism to which I refer in this article’s title. Often disguised in the guise of Patriotism, this ideology in its essence proclaims that, “genuine Christians must stand firm against the sinful, satanic error of opposing nationalism. Nationalism is God’s way. Nationalism is God’s plan and purpose for the nations.” Such an ideology, ignorant not only of Divine Revelation, but of reason and of history, cannot succeed as coherent worldview. In all the history of the world, there has been no country historically constituted that contained only inhabitants of one strict linguistic-cultural nation. Nor is it possible, despite all the attempts of Nationalism for the pure nation-state to exist. The last few centuries have shown that the only logical outcome of disordered loyalty to one nation over the country is nothing but mass spilling of the blood of innocents.
This is not to say that one should abandon all loyalty to one’s country, rather as the Venerable Pope Pius XII wrote in his encyclical Summi Pontificatus, “Nor is there any fear lest the consciousness of universal brotherhood aroused by the teaching of Christianity, and the spirit which it inspires, be in contrast with love of traditions or the glories of one’s fatherland, or impede the progress of prosperity or legitimate interests.” And in the writings of his predecessor Pius XI, “ Patriotism – the stimulus of so many virtues and of so many noble acts of heroism when kept within the bounds of the law of Christ – becomes merely an occasion, an added incentive to grave injustice when true love of country is debased to the condition of an extreme nationalism, when we forget that all men are our brothers and members of the same great human family, that other nations have an equal right with us both to life and to prosperity, that it is never lawful nor even wise, to dissociate morality from the affairs of practical life, that, in the last analysis, it is ‘justice which exalteth a people: but sin maketh the populace miserable.’” Why then does the Magisterium of the Holy Church place its emphasis on the country in which lives and not the nation to which one culturally belongs?
The answer is in the fact that the Country, rightly ordered, has its end and purpose in the Common Good of all those within its jurisdictional bounds. One’s Nation on the other hand, whether ethnic or cultural-linguistic, while good is not primarily ordered towards the Good. Belonging to it may rightly awaken natural affections, yet Man is ordered to moral Good (and ultimately to God), and so his first loyalties are to the Good, not to emotions or affections. Then too, while the Country itself exists for the sake of men, the men within have stewardship of its land, and this care and affection for the land is equally as natural (proper to Man’s God given Nature, not his fallen nature), if not more so, as his affection for those of similar culture and language (or descent) as he himself is. As the great Catholic author G.K. Chesterton writes in The Catholic Church and Conversion,
That religious culture does indeed encourage him to fight to the last for his country, as for his family. But that is because the religious culture is generous and imaginative and humane and knows that men must have intimate and individual ties. But those secondary loyalties are secondary in time and logic to the law of universal morality which justifies them. ¹
The love of the Patriot is a virtue because it is the love of Good, and willingness to serve the Good of All in a community of others willing so to serve. The disordered “love” of the Nationalist is the sinful pride of one who sees only his egotistical self reflected in the identitarian mass, at the heart of which is only fear. Thus those who invoke God against the Universal Law of Charity for which He sent His Son into the world, those who attempt to justify with tradition and morality that which is contrary to both, undermine their position. Those who claim to support the traditional understanding of the world, and yet are really only subscribing to a heresy as old as the Fall of Man and stemming from the same Heresiarch, all invoke the history of the world and the very Name of God in vain. For when the Patriot, the lover of virtue and of the Good, stands alone against the Nations, and against his own country that has taken the road of sin and destruction, calling out in the wilderness with the voice of Reason and of Faith, God stands with him and is well-pleased.
And if the patriot is such a fool as to force the issue against that universal tradition from which his own patriotism descends, if he presses his claim to priority over the primitive law of the whole earth–then he will have brought it on himself if he is answered with the pulverising plainness of the Book of Job. As God said to the man, “Where were you when the foundations of the world were laid?” We might well say to the nation, “Where were you when the foundations of the Church were laid?” And the nation will not know in the least what to answer…¹
¹G.K. Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion, The Obvious Blunders
The War for Christendom 
One very interesting thing is how the Austrian empire treated the variety of cultures and nations that inhered within it.
The Hungarians, Czechs, Croats and Austrians were all clearly different people, with clearly different culturues, customs and languages; yet they all lived together in a multicultural Catholic empire.
While the Austrian monarchy condemned nationalism, they did not want to destroy the cultures of the peoples that lived in the Empire. In fact, the Austrian monarchy clearly respected the different cultures of the Empire, and unlike modern multiculturalists, even set clear border areas where each nationality inhabited it’s own territory.
It seems to me that traditionalist position is neither nationalist nor globalist. It condemns nationalism for it’s prideful and seperationist tendencies, but also condemns globalism for failing to respect and protect the various cultures and nations that exist.
It clearly went against the idea of one’s own nationality being worthy of country status, but also went against the idea that all cultures are the same and protecting one’s own culture and nation from complete extinction was xenophobic.
Especially because nationalism and globalism are in fact not different in kind, but only in degree.
Nationalism presupposes the equality of all people within a certain category (i.e. nation), while stating that this certain group of people in this category is not the same as that other group of people, and inequality, as well as nationalism, simply follows.
However, modern liberal globalism is simply the natural development of this thesis of equality. It rejects the idea of national inequality in favor of a global equality amongst all people on Earth.
Both nationalism and globalism are Left-wing, they just differ in degree.
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While I agree with most of what you said here, I feel I should point out that the internal borders of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy were historical and dynastic in nature (Kingdom of Bohemia, Archduchy of Austria, County of Tyrol, etc.), not national. Nevertheless the historical and cultural connection between a given nation and the lands primarily inhabited by it was respected and observed, unlike the modern “multiculturalists”. Anyone of any nation could and often (if they were in the Common Army) did live in and love any land of the Empire, and yet still have a unique connection with the Heimat, the ancestral Homeland. One could be a Czech and live in Vienna, and love the lands of the Crown of Saint Wenceslaus as his national homeland. Only in the radical nationalist would this love become a sense of exclusive ownership and hatred of any other nation that dare occupy the same area. Indeed the nations have equal right to the land, but very unique and nonequivalent connections, histories, and traditions with it.
One of the greatest services of the Imperial and Royal Common Army was that by bringing its soldiers throughout the lands of the Monarchy it strengthen their devotion to the common cause greater than themselves while at the same time confirming them in their unique nationality and local patriotism.
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Another very important thing to consider is cultural integration. It seems to me a reasonable thing to expect Syrian refugees with a vastly different culture to integrate into the culture of their new host society by speaking the new language, adopting local customs and basically adopting the sorrounding culture as their own. An analogy could be made with letting a homeless person into your house as a guest to care for him but still expecting him to behave well and adapt to the climate of the particular family he has entered into.
Is this something compatible with traditionalism, or is it too nationalist for your taste?
Another thing that I’m curious about is the preservation of cultures within the Austrian monarchy as regards immigration from other parts of the empire. The Czechs had the Sudetenland, the Hungarians had Translyvania and Vojvodina and parts of Slovakia. These regions on one hand were heterogenous and had different nations living together, but on the other hand the immigration of other peoples into these nations was always limited within reason and never threatened the majority nationality that inhabited these lands. You even had regions like Croatia, Slovenia and Austria which were mostly homogenous, even though they had people from all over the Empire move in in small amounts to settle there.
It seems that there was an implicit principle that every nation, though having equal rights to settle everywhere they wanted, was inherently valuable and should not be erased from existence by immigration or any other factor.
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Yes some amount of cultural integration is reasonable and under ideal conditions would occur organically. An appropriate example would be the Armenians throughout the lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They often adopted the local languages and customs while preserving their own language and many of their unique national customs. Some of these customs were even absorbed into the larger community of nations in the areas in which they settled. So for instance, those Syrians who successfully integrate in the Country of Bohemia could become Czech Syrians, or Moraváci Syrians, keeping those aspects of their personal culture that do not conflict with the greater Civilization which they reside within.
Immigration should always be limited within reason, not only by demographic but also economic concerns. These should be weighed by the individual communities on the local level against the crisis facing the migrants, and the decision (either to accept or reject them) should not be forced on the locals by distant authorities except in the case of utmost emergency.
Another important aspect to note is that under the peaceful conditions of a rightly ordered government relatively homogenous nations occupying a larger region will differentiate into local nationalities and dialects (the historic difference between Tyroleans and Bavarians for instance), these varying further into subgroupings (i.e. Alemannics being subdivided among the Swiss, Vorarlbergers, Alsatians, etc.). This process has been ruthlessly terminated by the “progressive” education of many nationalist governments, thus leading to the exponential multiplication of nationalist separatist movements.
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What are your thoughts on moderate nationalism?
Namely, the type of nationalism that states that ethnic countries should tolerate minorities, not seek any type of superiority over them and / or even accept them as refugees, but provided that this is kept in check so that only around 15% of the population is allowed to be of origin not of the majority ethnicity, so that the majority still remains to make the country’s demographics stable.
This seems more reasonable than so-called ultranationalism which wants absolute national purity to exist and is directly hostile to any other nations residing within it, which is what you go against.
Now, one thing about this moderate nationaism that might be objectionable from your point of view would be the idea that a certain nation has exclusive ownership over the lands it inhabits, even if this ownership does allow a certain percentage of other nationalities to freely live in it.
But so far it seems to me that this ownership can be reduced to the observation that a certain nation has the authority to control it’s borders and the amount of other people in it for the simple sake of demographic survival.
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