Tag Archives: christendom

Abendland: A Post-Nationalist Vision of Europe

03 Saturday Aug 2019

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The “Abendlanders” proposed the creation of a unified Europe, but they imagined it as an organic unity based on its shared Christian heritage, an association of “fatherlands”, reminiscent of the social order willed by God that was destroyed by the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the emergence of nation-states, and the nationalism that had resulted in the First World War. Their Europe was not merely a political and economic association but rather an ordered society giving way to “eine neue Lebensform des europäischen Menschen” (“a new way of life for European people”) and the restoration, even a genuine rebirth, of Christendom: a deep unity of Empire [Reich] and Church.” The “Abendlanders” initially saw the ancient Carolingian empire or the Holy Roman Empire as their model, but they also imagined a connection with Classical Rome (Virgil) and early Christianity.

-John Carter Wood, Christianity and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Europe

The Vice of Illiberalism

05 Tuesday Mar 2019

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The root is liber (“free”). The term liberalis (and liberalitas) implies generosity in intellectual and material matters. The sentence “he gave liberally” means that the person in question gave with both hands. In this sense liberality is an “aristocratic” virtue. An illiberal person is avaricious, petty-minded, tight-fisted, self-centered. Up to the beginning of the Nineteenth century the word “liberal” figured neither in politics nor really in economics.

-Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism

It has become very popular among the new wave of Integralists and other counter-cultural political groups to speak of a “post-liberal” world or order in politics. This conception of history presupposes a vast triumph of so-called Liberalism in the general World Order which has created such dissatisfaction that it is on the brink of collapse. It identifies the main problem of Modernity as political and economic “Liberalism”, the collapse of which has opened many opportunities for those of a Catholic political orientation to exploit the “Liberal” state for their own ends. Abandon the hopeless task fighting the centralizing administration and embrace it, has become the new rallying cry. On the surface this all seems very appealing, name the enemy and use his own weapons and successes against him. While some might question the efficacy of using the very tactics of the Liberal State, very few realize the fundamental problem; that the Liberal World Order that is now supposedly collapsing never actually existed in the first place.

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The War Against Europe

14 Thursday Feb 2019

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Indeed, I think that we should not speak of two world wars, but rather of two stages of one single world war, if we want to understand this war according its specific characteristics, instead of simply listing as one species within the genus war. Its distinctive feature is that it was set up from the start as a war-revolution against what was left in Europe of the “Middle Ages,” the vestiges of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church.

-Augusto Del Noce, The Crisis of Modernity 

Christmas at Eckartsau

26 Wednesday Dec 2018

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In the snow bound halls of the Imperial Hunting Lodge at Eckartsau, a family of exiles celebrated the last Christmas of the old world. The war that had racked that world for the past four years was finally over, and with it many things good and evil. In a year of world turmoil as the steadfast empire at the heart of Europe faded, the father of his peoples watched as his children exchanged small gifts under a glowing Christmas tree. The presents, as Gordon Brook-Shepherd relates in Uncrowned Emperor, were gifts from every land and nation of the Empire, lands now stirring with revolution and terror. Yet this night, this holy and silent night, all was as still as the new fallen snow. The Christ Child had come in the night, it was Christmas.  Continue reading →

A Requiem for Old Austria: 100 Years Later

12 Monday Nov 2018

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I have had no country since November 1918… That was the time when Austria was literally carved into pieces. Mangled. Quartered. One shred they held up in sheer mockery and called it Austria. That’s what you children have been taught to call Austria… Heaven my young man, is like Austria, the old, real Austria…

-Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Black Banners

One hundred years ago today the last bastion of Catholicism and patriotism was brutally torn apart by famine, revolution, and military force. And just yesterday, this very year, a major world leader proclaimed that in fact that very Patriotism was right all along, and that the nationalism which replaced it was the betrayal of all nations. One hundred years ago the symbol of the ideal of government which served the universal Common Good was lowered from the flagstaff for the last time. How many hundred years more must we wait before it is raised again? Now when we fear the loss of our civilization more than ever, the very embodiment of the West lies forgotten and mourned only by a few. And we few who mourn cannot seem to find her memorial anywhere on this earth, and as the shadows lengthen around us, we seem to hear as if a far-off whisper, “Why seek you the living among the dead?”

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The Legacy of Blessed Karl 100 Years Later: A Call to Act

21 Sunday Oct 2018

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From the beginning, the Emperor Charles conceived of his office as a holy service to his people. His chief concern was to follow the Christian vocation to holiness also in his political actions.

-St. John Paul II, Homily for the Beatification of Blessed Karl

In a time of war and destruction, when all the safety and comfort of society was collapsing, a noble man gave his life for his peoples. For two long years he pleaded with his enemies to find some way to bring peace to his war-torn country. He began a wave of reform which swept away the corruption and decay which the war had brought to light. But he was alone, his enemies were relentless and his allies unwilling to give up on the phantom of total victory. In the end he died alone, exiled on an island far from his homeland. Yet his son took upon himself his father’s burden, and lived to see the evils his father had struggled so fiercely against utterly destroyed.

This story sounds so much like a myth, a fairy-tale to inspire children. But this is only because fairy-tales are the closest to true history of all stories we tell. You may well ask in this age of corrupt politicians and mob mentality, is it even possible that one man could stand against the world of his time, and so courageously that his impact on it remained long after his death? My answer to you is yes, that this man lived, and that his name was Karl von Habsburg-Lothringen, by the grace of God, Emperor and King. And most surprisingly of all, the time he lived in was much worse than our own.

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The Unity of Christendom

20 Sunday May 2018

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For after the flood certain proud men, as if endeavoring to fortify themselves against God, as if anything were high for God, or anything could give security to pride, raised a tower, apparently that they might not be destroyed by a flood, should there come one thereafter. For they had heard and considered that all iniquity was swept away by a flood; to abstain from iniquity they would not; they sought the height of a tower as a defense against a flood; they built a lofty tower. “God saw their pride, and frustrated their purpose by causing that they should not understand one another’s speech, and thus tongues became diverse through pride.” If pride caused diversities of tongues, Christ’s humility has united these diversities in one. 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.

-Saint Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John

Integralism Resurgent

21 Saturday Apr 2018

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Theology without praxis is the theology of demons

—Attributed to St. Maximos the Confessor

This short yet poignant sentence has been adopted as the motto of the new and growing movement, the Tradistae. Taking their inspiration from Integralists of the old guard, Pater Edmund von Waldstein of Sancrucensis and the writers of The Josias, their goal is the same: to bring about a civilization ordered to the Common Good and cooperation of the Spiritual and the Temporal. And their means of bringing it about is very simple and yet profound: to practice the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy.

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The Greatest Title in Christendom

26 Friday Jan 2018

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The empire of the Middle Ages had never been a territorial entity in the sense of being a sovereign state, as the term was understood in the eighteenth and even the nineteenth centuries. Naturally for practical purposes the emperor had to have his own estates but his authority was not derived from such personal property, but from the transcendental, almost religious respect in which the crown was held, which endowed him with the temporal imperium of all Christendom. It was only at the close of the Middle Ages, when the empire was shaken by internal strife, that the emperor felt the need for more tangible support, for without a territorial base, that is without family domains, he ran the risk of becoming merely a puppet in the hands of the ambitious Prince-Electors.

Already by Maximilian I’s time the true import of the crown of Charlemagne was gradually being forgotten as two new concepts infected Europe – the idea of a territorial sovereign state and a growing sense of nationalism. Nevertheless, the title and dignity of emperor were still regarded as preeminent. Even during the time of its decline, when the empire was divested of almost all authority, powerful European monarchs such as Louis XIV still tried to secure for themselves what they considered to be the greatest title in Christendom.

-Archduke Otto von Habsburg, Charles V Empire, State, and Nation

Insignis Austriaca Gens

09 Thursday Nov 2017

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While reviewing my recently acquired copy of The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor, I came across quite an interesting footnote, citing a quote from Nicolaus Vernulaeus’ Virtutum Augustissimae Gentis Austriacae Libri Tres:

Ut sit, illustris et omni pietate insignis Austriaca Gens hæreditarium inde à Conditore suo Eucharistiæ cultum accepit…

The succeeding part of the sentence, et modo Christianum orbem maximâ parte moderator, is for some reason omitted.

It seems most fitting that this simple act of adoration of the Real Presence of God, and not an act of violence or prowess in battle. Of course what was won by Divine blessing was to be preserved through victory on the Marchfeld at Dürnkrut, and in many battles thereafter, yet the goal of this battles was never further war and conquest. Rather it was the return of right order and peace, dramatically symbolized in the act of submission to the Crucifix required of the Princes of the Empire by Rudolf of Hapsburg at his coronation.

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