Table of Contents | Words: Alphabetical - Frequency - Inverse - Length - Statistics | Help | IntraText Library |
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira Double Game of French Socialism IntraText CT - Text |
|
|
2. Religion and religions in the Program
The self-managing society does not confine itself to eliminating or restricting the individual's liberties but, as we have seen, it even seeks to form his very conscience. These considerations naturally prompt one to ascertain to what extent the Program mutilates the rights of Religion: a) One could say that every word, every letter of the Program is laicist. There is no thought of God in it. For it, the source of all rights is not God but man, society. The Program entirely ignores the next life, Revelation, and the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ." b) Religion, or rather, religions - as far as the Program is concerned, since it does not recognize the supernatural character of any of them - are merely social realities which have always existed and still exist. They are realities extrinsic to the self-managing society that clash head-on with its laicism. This leads one to foresee that the self-managing society, which tends to destroy everything extrinsic and contradictory to it, will work to extinguish religions "gradualistically." True, the Program guarantees freedom of worship. But this freedom is restricted to a bare minimum in a world opposed to the Church in everything that society conceives and implements regarding the economy, social organization, political totalitarianism, perpetuation of the human species, the family, and even man himself. 39 The Program implies such a global vision of society that it necessarily pre supposes - although not explicitly - a global vision of the Universe. For the Universe is, in a certain way, the context of society. A global, laicist and self-sufficient society corresponds to an analogously global, laicist and self-sufficient universe. In turn, a vision of the Universe implies either an affirmation or a denial of God, a denial perfectly real even though expressed by silence. 40 The Program is therefore "a-theist," without God, atheist. It is licit to ask whether or not the Program's silence about God is merely a "gradualist" stage leading to some kind of a plausibly evolutionist pantheism. This reference to a possible pantheism is made because the Program attributes a kind of redemptive function to society as a whole. There the individual is rescued from the shipwreck into which his very condition as an individual puts him. It is the path to the solution of all problems. 41 The reference to evolutionism is, in turn, related to the arbitrary, anti-natural and artificial character of socialist reformism, and even more closely related to the fundamental relativism that it holds. 42 On the basis of very obscure philosophical concepts with whose influence it is nevertheless thoroughly permeated, the Program denies most fundamental principles of the natural order (such as the distinction between the mission of men and women, the family, marital authority, patria potestas, as well as the principle of authority at all levels and in all fields, private property and the right of inheritance). The Program, warring against the work of the Creator, aims at reconstructing a human society diametrically opposed to the God-given nature of man. All of this presupposes that nature, which the SP holds to be indefinitely malleable, can be molded by man as he wishes. This is suggestive of evolutionism.
|
39. Catholics are frequently more sensitive to transgressions of the Law of God having to do with the institution of the family than to those respecting the institution of private property. So it is possible that some Catholic reader more or less complacent with the idea of self-management in business will try to imagine an application of the Program strictly limited to that field without touching the individual, the family, or education. But this would be an illusion, because the natural correlation between family and property makes such a separation impossible. The mere reading of this work makes it clear that business self-management as described in the Program is inseparable from its philosophical and moral foundations. Once accepted, these conditions necessarily affect all the aspects o human life.
40. Thc pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes contains a quite synthetic description of modern atheism with various nuances. From this standpoint, it is useful to quote it here: "The word atheism is used to signify things that differ considerably from one another. Some people expressly deny the existence of God. Others maintain that man cannot make any assertion whatsoever about him. Still others admit only such methods of investigation as would make it seem quite meaningless to ask questions about God. Many, trespassing beyond the boundaries of the positive sciences, either contend that everything can be explained by the reasoning process used in such sciences, or, on the contrary, hold that there is no such thing as absolute truth. With others it is their exaggerated idea of man that causes their faith to languish,- they are more prone, it would seem, to affirm man than to deny God.. . . There are also those who never inquire about God; religion never seems to trouble or interest them at all, nor do they see why they should bother about it" (apud Vatican Council II, The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents, Scholarly Resources, Inc., Wilmington, Del. 1975, pp. 918-919).
41. "To our understanding, collective is synonymous with grandeur, beauty, profundity and the joy of living" (Program, p. 157).
42. "The whole movement of science fits into a permanent questioning of the postulates of the preceding phase" (Program, p. 135). "In our view there could be no knowledge constituted once and for all. Since it implies rectification and even continuous reconstruction of reality as we see it, knowledge can never be said to have been attained and must constantly be questioned" (Program, pp. 136-137).
|
Table of Contents | Words: Alphabetical - Frequency - Inverse - Length - Statistics | Help | IntraText Library |
Best viewed with any browser at 800x600 or 768x1024 on Tablet PC IntraText® (V89) - Some rights reserved by EuloTech SRL - 1996-2007. Content in this page is licensed under a Creative Commons License |