C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien on Christian Parties

C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien on Christian Parties · I get a curious feeling about some right wing French ... · No, Racialism is not Catholic, Not Even Right Wing Catholic

As some may be aware, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien supported the Franco side in the Spanish war.

As maybe fewer are, Clive Stapes Lewis did not. Part of the disagreement is, CSL believed reports on Franco cruelties and JRRT didn't, or when he did, excused the behaviour by pleading trauma from Left Wing cruelties. On this issue, I am fairly much on JRRT's side: the Left was so cruel, even if Franco was sometimes cruel, he released, at least for the moment, Spain from unnecessary cruelty. Maybe it did not stay that way, maybe Carlists would like to say something on Franco after 1.IV.1939.

But there is another motive which CSL had, which I will be dealing with here:

Here are a few quotes really from C. S. Lewis:

“Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the “cause”, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism … Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours – and the more “religious” (on those terms) the more securely ours.”
from The Screwtape Letters (# 7)

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“We learn of a growing desire for a Christian ‘party,’ a Christian ‘front,’ or a Christian ‘platform’ in politics….Whatever it calls itself, it will represent, not Christendom, but a part of Christendom. The principle which unites it to its political allies will not be theological….There will be a real and most disastrous novelty. It will be not simply a part of Christendom, but a part claiming to be the whole. By the mere act of calling itself the Christian Party it implicitly accuses all Christians who do not join it of apostasy and betrayal. It will be exposed, in an aggravated degree, to that temptation which the Devil spares none of us at any time−the temptation of claiming for our favourite opinions that kind and degree of certainty and authority which really belongs only to our faith.”
from Meditation on the Third Commandment (in God in the Dock)

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“But do not let us mistake necessary evils for good. The mistake is easily made. Fruit has to be tinned if it is to be transported, and has to lose thereby some of its good qualities. But one meets people who have learned actually to prefer the tinned fruit to the fresh. A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion: to ignore the subject may be fatal cowardice for the one as for the other. But if either comes to regard it as the natural food of the mind–if either forgets that we think of such things only in order to be able to think of something else–then what was undertaken for the sake of health has become itself a new and deadly disease.”
from Membership (in The Weight of Glory)

In response to a fake quote from The Screwtape Letters. Shared by William OFlaherty:

Essential C.S. Lewis : (CCSLQ-32) – Fixated on Politics
February 4, 2017 William OFlaherty Confirming Quotations, Not Quite Lewis
http://essentialcslewis.com/2017/02/04/ccslq-32-fixated-on-politics/

It is with regret that I find that, some Traditional French Catholics, bent in theory on bringing back Christendom, which would be a good thing, have fallen prey to this danger.

What do I mean by this?

• Many of them are supporters of Action française.
• Action française was founded by a Positivist. A non-Christian. It always had non-Christian members.
• They therefore seek agreements with such people, provided they agree on some tenets by action française.
• AND they go on to find disagreement with Christians who, whatever sympathies they might have with Action française, do in fact disagree with some of its less than perfectly Christian tenets.

Would Action française welcome collaboration with grand-lodge type freemasonry? I suppose this would be the case, as long as these were close enough to Joseph de Maistre.

Anyway, they love Putin, and under Putin, this freemasonry is again legal in Russia. He seems to have no problem with them. Much of what he stands for could be considered as this kind of freemasonry in action. Much of what they since recently stand for can be seen that way too.

Back when I joined the faithful of FSSPX (at a distance, since Sweden has no St. Nicolas du Chardonnet and did not have even a regular presence at the time*), we took pride in calling ourselves "integrists" - standing for the integrity of the Catholic faith. When I came to St. Nicolas du Chardonnet as homeless** I found friends who said "integrists" didn't really describe them. Or, shall I call them acquaintances, perhaps.

We would have considered Ecumenism a fairly bad thing back in those days just after Monseigneur Lefèbvre died, but some French conservatives (I think they go to Latin Mass) have since then gone out of their way to say Lutheran and Anglican High Church are OK. Well, if you say socially acceptable, I'd agree. But if you said it were OK for me to get back to that, no way.

We would have considered Islamisation of France a bad thing - but so we would with Massonic or Communist advances. I have gone out of my way to defend Muslims, not against Catholic liberties or even restoration, but against a series of measures I consider Communist and Massonic in nature. They have responded by doubting the sincerity of my Catholicism.

We would have considered reading and agreeing with St. Thomas Aquinas a good thing, but when I agree on six literal days, Christ born 5199 after Creation (yes, St. Thomas had sworn to uphold Historia scholastica which contains that date), Geocentrism, angelic movers of celestial bodies, returning to a lower age as minimal for marriage, I get responses like I were some kind of Protestant, Talmudic Jew*** or Muslim, or simply provocateur. Or getting my view on Genesis from JW:s, despite them agreeing with Sulpician priest Fulcran Vigoroux and my not doing so.

It is perhaps politcally needed to avoid things that are socially seen as bad (or, less honestly, hiding them). This can come handy for a political party or movement, but in certain cases, it can betray the Christian life.

Yes, FSSPX did have some infiltrators° who were journalists, and these journalists did write a réportage describing the environment of integrism, and yes, people in St. Nicolas du Chardonnet were sometimes as a result suffering. But as Christians, we need to be able to take that suffering ... it seems these guys are telling me, I can have it on my own, they want no share in the opprobrium of defending teen marriages (even if this would make some abortions less tempting) or of proposing the Sun moves around Earth (even if this is clearly useful for Distant Starlight problem, as well as part of a Church decision of 1633), getting seen as "normal" primes over fidelity to the faith.

I have not been to school, either as a pupil, nor as a teacher, nor as a parent to pupils of Dies Irae. It is very possible that the pupils had no incitation from school to proposals deemed racialist, which I don't know which ones they are. But if so, they had it from parents. Now, some proposals about Islam would be fairly correct, but again, some would not be so.

These days, a right wing group has admitted (or bragged) to forming 25 000 in a movement that is specially trained to see early signs of Islamic radicalisation and get them reported. Now, if stating repeatedly one wants to go to Syria is involved, well, I think most might report it without such a group. But if we speak of saying "homosexuals merit death" or "Salman Rushdie is an apostate" or "Charlie Hebdo blasphemed" or "I don't believe in evolution", I don't see any sense in basically founding a Komsomol to help survey another group, unless one is Communist rather than Christian. As said, I don't want a Muslim takeover of France, but neither a Communist one.

Now, these guys would arguably not see themselves as Communists. But the fact is, they are behaving like Christians were behaved to by Komsomol. And if today they target Muslims, tomorrow it could be Christians. I have spoken to a Russian, one Sergey, who defended targetting JW:s (the Watchtower sect) and house Churches with some right wing nonsense hysteria about the ones being funded by Rotschilds, the others being spies. How does he think Christians were targetted in the Soviet era?

JW:s may accept some funding from Rothschild donors, Sergey might be able to prove it, but this does not mean all and any JW:s are Rothschild's agents to undermine Russian security.

This targetting of JW:s in Russia comes fairly close to my being targetted over Young Earth Creationism, while JW:s are Old Earth Creationist, as if this meant I was influenced by JW:s. If there is a hysteria about them, people not involved with them will get targetted by that hysteria.

Now, that CSL was right about the danger does not mean he was necessarily universally right about the recipe. He was writing this before his death in 1963, in England, a country already widely de-Christianised by World War I (in which he was an officer with a decoration). He was not providing an opinion for the US or for France. No, not even for the US, the essay deals with conditions in England. He did not say it was OK to engage in positively anti-Christian parties (none of the main ones in England came off as such then). He did not foresee that the lack of Christian politics would come to mean in 1967 the abortion act (by which date he had been dead since nearly four years), or later, recent years, the targetting of schools not dedicated to the Evolution belief.

Meanwhile, Tolkien had a point about Franco, as far as the War from 1936 to 1939 is concerned. Like the holy martyrs of Salesian order in Madrid, 18th and 23rd November of 1636. Too bad C. S. Lewis didn't see it. But the point about Franco in war time is not exactly a point favouring hysteria in what at least purports and pretends to be peace time.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Seven Holy Founders of the Servites
12.II.2021

PS. I think you may wonder what I talk of. I talk of UNI, with Olivier Vial. He states:°°

Mais c'est aussi grâce à notre force militante unique, composée de 25 000 lycéens et étudiants, que nous pouvons agir. ... Nous avons tenu à les formers dès les premiers attentats pour qu'ils comprennent les mécanismes de la propagande islamiste et qu'ils soient en mesure de décrypter les signes afin d'alerter l'administration de leur établissement si nécessaire.

They have 25 000 high school and university students, and these are formed to "understand the mechanisms of Islamist propaganda and be capable of decoding the signs and alert the administrations of their establishments, if necessary./HGL

PPS. Rivarol stated (70 years' jubilee issue) that they were in 1958 seeing it was a bad idea for a people in need of a saviour to chose de Gaulle because he pretended to be one. I wish they and Présent were as lucid about Putin. I wish UNI were as lucid about Putin as Rivarol back then about de Gaulle. Because, I think the first attentates we speak of, that's after Putin started to have a presence in the French right ... this kind of training thousands of young people to "decode" certain "signs" in certain manners and altert authorities, I think this comes from the collaboration of Komsomol with KGB .../HGL

PPPS. Jean Madiran stated that Rivarol was not just for Action française, that unlike Action française, they were defending all victims of the infamous Épuration. Back in that day, it was a noble thing to do, but after 70 years, it may have become a requirement to hate all they hate and defend all they defend to have any standing with them ... while it is consistent over time, it is less consistent with the claim to actively oppose bolshevik sectarianism./HGL

* I was baptised sub conditione by an FSSPX priest in 1993, since I had misinterpreted sensory data recalled from my Swedish Church baptism at 15 as "showing" the water only touched my hair. ** Definitely active 2009 to 2010, probably on and off into 2011 too or even into 2012. *** I have already admitted to being partly Jewish in ancestry. ° See: Les Infiltrés (émission de télévision) °° In a missive called Enquête nationale contre la radicalisation islamiste, Paris, February 3:rd 2021.