2. WHAT IS TO BE INNOVATED
However, by force of the historical law according to which immobility does not
exist in temporal things, the order born of the Counter-Revolution must have
its own characteristics that will make it different from the order that existed
before the Revolution. Of course, this affirmation does not refer to principles
but to accidents. These accidents are, nevertheless, of such importance that
they deserve to be mentioned.
Since
it is impossible for us to go into this matter at length, we will merely note
that, in general, when a fracture or a laceration occurs in an organism, the
zone of mending or healing is marked by special safeguards. It is the loving
care of Providence acting through secondary causes against the possibilities of
a new disaster. This can be observed in the case of broken bones, whose mend
forms as a reinforcement in the very zone of the fracture, or in the case of scar
tissue. This is a material image of an analogous fact that takes place in the
spiritual order. As a general rule, the sinner who truly amends has a greater
horror for sin than he had in the best years before his fall. Such is the
history of the penitent saints. So, also, after each trial, the Church emerges
specially armed against the evil that tried to prostate her. A typical example
of this is the Counter-Reformation.
By
virtue of this law, the order born of the Counter-Revolution will have to shine
even more than that of the Middle Ages in the three principal points in which
the latter was wounded by the Revolution:
· A profound respect
for the rights of the Church and of the Papacy, and the sacralization, to the
utmost possible extent, of the values of temporal life, all of this out of
opposition to secularism, interconfessionalism, atheism, and pantheism, as well
as their respective consequences.
· A spirit of
hierarchy marking all aspects of society and State, of culture and life, out of
opposition to the egalitarian metaphysics of the Revolution.
· A diligence in
detecting and combating evil in its embryonic or veiled forms, in fulminating
it with execration and a note of infamy, and in punishing it with unbreakable
firmness in all its manifestations, particularly in those that offend against
orthodoxy and purity of customs, in opposition to the liberal metaphysics of
the Revolution and its tendency to give free rein and protection to evil.
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