Tag Archives: christendom

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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The Queen and the Emperor: 1917

21 Saturday Oct 2017

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In a world of broken promises, the Mother of God had kept her promise. It remained to be seen how many, even yet, would hear and heed her words and help her by their prayers, and by lives more pleasing to God, to change the course of history…

Charles [of Austria] explained that he sought peace not only because of a “military condition”- the strain and losses of war- but above all “as his solemn duty before God, towards the peoples of his Empire and all belligerents.” In a tempestuous ocean of aggressive and intolerant nationalism, here at last a concern for all Christendom from someone other than the Pope- most fitting in the heir to the Holy Roman Emperors who had been responsible for the temporal welfare of Christendom as a whole…

Generally condemned in consequence of these actions[¹] as a disturber of the peace, Charles- the only sovereign of the powers engaged in the First World War who had conscientiously sought peace- was banished to the Portuguese island of Madeira,  without a source of income… Madeira was Portuguese territory, Fátima not so very far away. Had Charles and Zita heard of Our Lady’s coming there? 

-Warren H. Carroll, 1917: Red Banners, White Mantle 

On the 12th of April in 1918, the last chance of a peaceful resolution to the First World  War was destroyed by French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. Nearly a year before on the 13th of May in 1917, Our Lady appeared to three shepherd children at Fátima in Portugal, calling upon all who would listen to pray the Holy Rosary for the end of the war and the return of peace, which the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XV, had been advocating since the start of the war. No one among the great powers would heed the Pope’s call to peace, save for one devout son of Our Lady, the Most Catholic Emperor whose peace offers the Entente would utterly reject, Karl of Austria.

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Europe is the Empire: Contra the False “Christendom” of The Paris Statement

11 Wednesday Oct 2017

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Nationalism is also present wherever the nation is ranked above communities of even higher value, such as larger communities of people or mankind as a whole… The horrible heresy of nationalism not only destroys the unity of the West, but also corrodes each individual nation from within.

-Dietrich von Hildebrand, Austria and Nationalism

The authors of the so-called Paris Statement or “A Europe We Can Believe In” seem to believe that the true meaning of Europe is incompatible with “political empire” and that “resistance to empire” is part of invaluable heritage which Europe is losing to the “faux Christendom of universal human rights”. The authors admit that the “allure of the imperial form endured,” but that “the nation-state prevailed, the political form that joins peoplehood with sovereignty.” Yet is this really true? Is the nation-state “the hallmark of European civilization” that this manifesto claims it to be?

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Lipka Tatars: Forgotten Heroes of the Battle of Vienna

12 Tuesday Sep 2017

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Our Tatars are entertaining themselves with falcons they have brought with them; they are guarding the prisoners, and are proving to be loyal and trustworthy.

-Jan III Sobieski, Letters to Marysieńka

Justly renowned as the saviors of Christendom, many remember King Jan Sobieski of Poland and his army, particularly the Wing Hussars, as the heroes of the Battle of Vienna of 1683, and rightly so. However, the heroic Polish warriors were only part of a much larger force which it seems popular history has forgotten. Some of the battles participants have been marginalized (such as Duke Charles of Lorraine), others such as Emperor Leopold I have been demonized with nationalistic vehemence. Still others have been simply forgotten by the popular imagination, as is the case of the Lipka Tatars.

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Shadows of the Double-Headed Eagle

07 Monday Aug 2017

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A recent interesting article by Gerald J. Russello published on First Things, recalls the Pan-European vision of Stefan Zweig and its origins in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Though it goes deep into the problem of European Identity and Nationalism, it can only provide the shadows of hints of the solution. Like Zweig himself the article is “pessimistic about the future, but… equally convinced that the European idea remained possible.” Yet as to what the idea truly is, it remains silent. True the last concrete links to the Sacrétemporal Order have been severed, many of them centuries ago. Still the intangible remains, those who have killed the body have not killed the soul of Catholic Civilization. Indeed, the article itself asserts;

no single cultural force has been able to substitute for empire, language, or faith.

These are the three foundations of European Civilization, the Universal Catholic Faith, the Universal Language of Reason and Philosophy, and the Universal Holy Roman Empire. No cultural secularism or nationalism can replace the unity that they bring to the West, and those that have tried have only succeed in bringing wanton bloodshed and tragedy.