DONOSO CORTÉS – I
One of the most important Catholic dogmas is that of original sin, whereby all human beings (except Our Lord and his Mother) have a nature seriously wounded from birth through our mysterious solidarity with Adam, father of all mankind, when with Eve he fell into the first of all human sins in the garden of Eden. Of course for most people today that Fall is just a fairy-tale, or mythology, and that is why they have built a Disneyworld all around us. In principle Catholics believe in original sin, but so seductive is Disneyworld that many hardly take original sin seriously in practice. After all, ith not at all nithe to believe we are all thinnerth. We are all thwimming in luv, luv, luv, ar’n’twe!
But a man who saw very clearly original sin in action was the Spanish nobleman, writer and diplomat, Donoso Cortés (1808–1853). His life spanned that first half of the 19 th century when in the wake of the French Revolution (1789), Europe was slowly but steadily replacing the old Christian order (“ancien régime”) with the ʝʊdɛօ-masonic nєω ωσrℓ∂ σr∂єr. Outwardly the old order was put back in place by the Congress of Vienna (1815), but inwardly it was not at all the same as before, because men’s minds were now resting on quite different foundations, liberal foundations, notably the separation of Church and State. When Donoso entered Spanish politics at a young age, he proclaimed himself to be a liberal, but as he observed the Revolutionary ideas working out in practice, he became more and more conservative until in 1847 he converted to Spain’s ancient Catholic religion. From then on until his early death his written and spoken words carried all over Europe his prophetic Catholic analysis of the radical modern errors forging the nєω ωσrℓ∂ σr∂єr.
At the back of all these errors he discerned two: the denial of God’s supernatural care for his creatures, and the denial of original sin. From Donoso’s Letter to Cardinal Fornari (1852) come the following two paragraphs which connect to original sin the rise of democracy and the diminution of the Church (the translation here is from a French translation):—
“If the light of men’s reason is in no way darkened, its light is enough, without need of the Faith, to discover the truth. If the Faith is not needed, then man’s reason is sovereign and independent. The progress of truth then depends on the progress of reason, which depends upon the exercise of reason; such an exercise is to be found in discussion; hence discussion constitutes the true basic law of modern societies, the matchless crucible in which by a process of melting, truths are separated from errors. From this principle of discussion flow freedom of the press, the inviolability of freedom of speech and the real sovereignty of parliaments.”
Donoso continues with a paralle l diagnosis of the consequences of man’s will being supposed to be free from original sin: “If man’s will is not sick, then he needs none of the supernatural help of grace to pursue good, its attraction being enough: if he needs no grace, then he can do without prayer and the sacraments which provide it.” If prayer is not needed, it is useless, and so are contemplation and the contemplative religious Orders, which duly disappear. If man needs no sacraments, then he has no need of priests to administer them, and they are duly banned. And scorn of the priesthood results everywhere in scorn of the Church, which amounts in all places to the scorn of God.
From such false principles Donoso Cortés foresaw an unparallelled disaster in the very near future. Actually it has been delayed for over 150 years, but how much longer?
Kyrie eleison.
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