Shouting a Word
Father Parsons says:
“There is
confusion of mind.”
When there is
confusion of mind
someone has only
to shout a word
and people flock.
When Mussolini
shouted discipline
people flocked.
When Hitler
shouted restoration
people flocked.
The Right Word
Mussolini’s word is
discipline.
Hitler’s word is
restoration,
My word is
tradition.
I am a radical
of the right.
I go right to the right
because I know
it is the only way
not to get left.
Sound principles
are not new,
they’re very old;
they are as old
as eternity.
The thing to do
is to restate
the never new
and never old principles
in the vernacular
of the man of the street.
Then the man of the street will do
what the intellectual
has failed to do;
that is to say,
“do something about it.”
Philosophy and Sophistry
Mortimer Adler says:
“Modern philosophers
have not found
anything new
since Aristotle,”
Modern philosophers
are not philosophers;
they are sophists.
Aristotle
had to deal
with sophists
in his day and age.
What Aristotle said
to the sophists
of his own day
could be read
with profit
by modern philosophers.
The City of God
Jacques Maritain says:
“There is more in man
than man.”
Man was created
in the image of God;
therefore
there is the image of God
in man.
There is more to life
than life
this side of the grave;
there is life
the other side of the grave.
Science leads to biology,
biology to psychology,
psychology to philosophy,
philosophy to theology.
Philosophy
is the handmaid
of theology.
To build up the City of God,
that is to say,
to express the spiritual
in the material
through the use
of pure means,
such is the task
of professing Christians
in this day and age.
Integral Humanism
Through the influence
of Maxim Gorki
the Marxists
have come to the conclusion
that Marxist writers
should be more
than proletarian writers;
that they should he
cultural writers.
Waldo Frank thinks
that the cultural tradition
must be brought
to the proletarian masses,
who will appreciate it
much more
than the acquisitive classes.
What the Marxists
call culture
Maritain calls
Socialist Humanism.
But Socialist Humanism
is not all Humanism,
according to Maritain.
In a book entitled
“L’Humanisme integral”
Jacques Maritain points out
what differentiates
Integral Humanism
from Social Humanism.
Thought and Action
Integral Humanism
is the Humanism
of the Radicals of the Right.
The Radicals of the Left
are now talking about
Cultural Tradition.
The bourgeois idea is
that culture
is related to leisure.
Eric Gill maintains
that culture
is related to work,
not to leisure.
Man is saved through faith
and through works,
and what one does
has a lot to do
with what one is.
Thought and action
must be combined.
When thought
is separated from action,
it becomes academic.
When thought
is related to action
it becomes dynamic.