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On the irreconcilability of National Socialist and Fascist theories with Catholicism in light of
The Catholic Church’s Magisterium and her ethos: A comprehensive critical analysis and a
comparison to the cohesiveness of the Hispano Catholic ethos
By Gian Carlo Berríos Gilormini

Date created: 29/11/2023 Date finished: 29/01/2024

Date revised: 16/04/2024 Date updated: 16/04/2024

Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................................. 1

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... 6
INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................... 7
PROLOGUE ................................................................................................................................... 8
PART ONE: THE CATHOLIC MAGISTERIUM’S CASE AGAINST NATIONAL
SOCIALISM AND FASCISM ................................................................................................... 14
MIT BRENNENDER SORGE: A CONTEXTUAL AND MAGISTERIAL ANALYSIS ................................. 14
The context of the encyclical: the periods of 1933-1937 ...................................................... 14
Suppression of Catholic Press ........................................................................................... 19
Suppression of Catholic Schools ...................................................................................... 19
Suppression of Catholic Youth Organizations .................................................................. 20
Denigration of the Catholic Clergy ................................................................................... 21
Espionage that reached the confessionary rooms ............................................................. 21
Other miscellaneous persecutions and The Catholic responses towards them ................. 22
The analysis of the encyclical’s objections: The key points .................................................. 24
National Socialist Theories of race and blood: a panoramic analysis .............................. 27
Stellrecht’s Faith and Action: An analysis .................................................................... 27
Blood ......................................................................................................................... 27
Race........................................................................................................................... 28
A People (Volk) ......................................................................................................... 29
State........................................................................................................................... 29
National Socialist racial doctrines: The Aryan Law, an analysis .................................. 30
Dr. Walter Gross and National Socialist racial doctrines: A panorama ........................ 33
Radio speech on Race ............................................................................................... 33
Radio speech on Blood.............................................................................................. 34
Racial policy speech to German women ................................................................... 35
Racial education and the start of Mit Brennender Sorge: culminating context ............ 37
The German National Catechism .............................................................................. 37
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Racial museum and racial science classroom ........................................................... 37

The language of the encyclical ......................................................................................... 40
The sacralisation of race: racialatry, a critical analysis................................................. 41
The Old Testament Question: The NSDAP’s Nazification of The Apostolic Tradition 44
Pantheistic Confusion and “the laws of race”: a critical analysis ................................. 47
Definitions of faith, a compare and contrast analysis ................................................... 49
On immortality: conflicting frameworks of eternal life ................................................ 50
On national churches: warnings against schism ........................................................... 52
Summary of Mit Brennender Sorge’s context ........................................................................ 56
NON ABBIAMO BISOGNO: A CONTEXTUAL AND MAGISTERIAL ANALYSIS ................................... 57
The encyclical’s key objections and Fascist Italy’s reaction ................................................. 58
On Statolatry or idolatry of the state: a contextual analysis ............................................. 58
Catholic Intellectuals against Gentilian Statolatry: contextual analysis ........................... 59
Suspicious truces: Catholic skepticism towards Interwar regimes ............................... 61
Gentilian Statolatry and its foundations ........................................................................ 63
Persecution of Catholic Action: a comparative analysis to the Cristero War case............ 68
A comparative panorama: Mit Brennender Sorge from Non Abbiamo Bisogno .................. 73
Quanta Cura and the Syllabus of Errors ........................................................................... 73
Pascendi Dominici Gregis................................................................................................. 80
Summary of Non Abbiamo Bisogno’s Context ...................................................................... 81
PART TWO: THE HISPANO CATHOLIC SOLUTION ....................................................... 82
THE HISPANO CATHOLIC ETHOS: A POSITIVE CASE ..................................................................... 82
The Cristero War and Hispanic Catholic Action .................................................................. 83
A brief overview of the conflict ........................................................................................ 83
The lack of admonishing encyclicals: A preview into the Hispanic ethos in Hispanic
Catholic Action ................................................................................................................. 85
Indo-Hispanidad and race: A philosophical and cultural analysis ...................................... 89
Ramiro de Maeztu’s Defense of Hispanicity .................................................................... 90
Conceptual sketch: On Hispanidad ............................................................................... 90
Its demarcation and dispersion ................................................................................. 90
On Spanish humanism and its value ......................................................................... 93
Human equality, the Principle of Growth and other values of the like ..................... 94
Hispanidad and its achievements: some selections worth mentioning ..................... 97
The Council of Trent ............................................................................................. 98
Guaraní Missions .................................................................................................. 98
The Orient and The Philippines ............................................................................ 99
The transcendental nature of Hispanidad and the racialism of Jews ............................ 99
The Foreignization Problem and Hispanidad........................................................... 99
The Moor-Jewish Question according to Maeztu ................................................... 104
On The Being of Hispanidad................................................................................... 107
The Catholic substrate of Indo-Hispanidad: a brief commentary ................................112
José Vasconcelos and mestizaje: The Cosmic Race Thesis .............................................113
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Hispanidad contra National Socialism: A contrastive analysis ....................................116

The Catholicity of The Cosmic Race: Bridging Maeztu and Vasconcelos ...............117
Hispanic Mestizaje: Catholicism’s victory over racial barriers ...................................118
The Aesthetic Hylomorphism of Vasconcelos’ Mestizaje .........................................119
Vasconcelos’ Racial Transcendence Argument ....................................................... 122
On Paraguay, México and other Hispanoamerican countries: A brief commentary ... 127
Raza Cósmica as an observed phenomenon ........................................................... 128
The value of culture and the death of racialism...................................................... 128
Pedro Albizu Campos and “Día de La Raza” ................................................................. 130
Albizu’s Concepto de La Raza and Catholicism......................................................... 131
Contrastive analysis: The NSDAP’s Race versus Albizu’s Race ............................. 132
The Catholic framework of Albizu’s concept of race .............................................. 132
Albizu’s political philosophy: Balmes and Civilizational Grandeur .......................... 133
Albizu Campos and The Balmesian Critique .......................................................... 135
The Catholic appeal to Civilizational Grandeur and the death of insularity ......... 137
October 12th Speech: The philosophy of civilizational identity over phenotype
(psychotype) ................................................................................................................ 138
Albizu Campos’ psychotypical analysis of Hispanoamerican civilization.............. 140
Albizu’s Nationalism versus The Enlightenment’s Nationalism: The Patria versus The
State, a contrastive analysis ........................................................................................ 143
The Magisterium on The Enlightenment’s Nationalism and its derivatives ........... 143
The Magisterium on Albizu’s Nationalism and The Hispanoamerican’s Primacy for
The Fatherland........................................................................................................ 150
Alberto Buela and the hospitality substrate of Hispanoamerica ..................................... 153
Hispanoamerica and “lo hóspito”: A philosophical analysis ...................................... 155
The transcendental symbiosis of telluric time and the medieval order................... 156
The structure of The Hispanoamerican Being ........................................................ 163
Hispanoamerica’s Psychotype contra National Socialist Germany’s racialism .......... 164
The Otherness of Hispanoamerica and Hispanoamerican Philosophizing ............ 165
The Utopic Rescue and Hispanoamerica’s Historic Mission ................................. 169
The philosophy of the Hispanoamerican ethos and the transcendence of Indohispanidad
..................................................................................................................................... 171
The Medieval Catholic Roots of Indohispanidad: a contextual analysis ........................... 173
The futility of the Casta Propaganda: a critical analysis................................................. 174
The Infamous paintings and the falsity of racial stratification ................................... 178
The trap of the castas: a look at Pilar Gonzabo’s thesis .............................................. 182
The Hispanic Monarchy as a generator empire: Gustavo Bueno’s analysis of Spain’s
Imperialism ................................................................................................................. 191
The Catholic Monarchs and Valladolid Debate .............................................................. 196
The 1503 Codicil of Isabel The Catholic .................................................................... 196
Sublimus Deus: The Papal Bull before the debate...................................................... 197
The Valladolid debate: Las Casas versus de Sepúlveda.............................................. 198
Argument 1 ............................................................................................................. 199
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Argument 2 ............................................................................................................. 200

Argument 3 ............................................................................................................. 201
Argument 4 ............................................................................................................. 202
The fruits of the debate and Hispanoamerican Ethos: a conclusive commentary ...... 203
PART THREE: CONCLUSIONS AND ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS ............................ 205
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................. 205
Overview of the tensions and incompatibilities .................................................................. 205
The Catholic view of race and the Hispanoamerican ethos ............................................... 206
Epilogue: The split between The Fatherlanders and The Pochos: a reconciliatory strategy
............................................................................................................................................. 207
OBJECTIONS AND REBUTTALS .................................................................................................. 213
On race idolatry in the encyclical and race idealism ......................................................... 213
On the styles of governance and political authority ........................................................... 218
On Lehmann’s analysis ....................................................................................................... 221
On the veracity of claims in Mit Brennender Sorge and Non Abbiamo Bisogno and
encyclical authority............................................................................................................. 230
On the claim that Fascism saved The Vatican .................................................................... 232
On Catholic Action and NatSoc/Fascist support from priests and bishops ........................ 234
On the Magisteriality of Humani Generis Unitas (Pius XI’s Hidden Encyclical) .............. 242
On the “Latinlessness” argument launched against Mit Brennender Sorge ...................... 243
On the accusation of hypocrisy of using non-Hispanic philosophies in the ethnogenesis of
Hispanoamerican thought ................................................................................................... 244
On perceived Fascist movements within Hispanoamerica ................................................. 246
On Hispanoamerican “colorisms” and objections to the castas critiques......................... 252
Other miscellaneous objections and responses to them...................................................... 256
On the bias towards the Hispanoamerican ethos ............................................................ 256
On the morality of endogamy ......................................................................................... 257
On the Marxist origins of Fascism and National Socialism and other 3P movements ... 260
On the Fascist State being “simply a collective of minds” and other Fascist
oversimplifications .......................................................................................................... 265
On the reliability of Calvin University’s Nazi Propaganda archives .............................. 265
On Saint John Chrysostom on his Timothy 5:8 commentary and racialism and other
misrepresented Saints...................................................................................................... 268
On sacredness vs sacralisation, the morality of each, and an analysis and commentary on
Humani Generis Unitas Part Two ................................................................................... 271
The Unity of Humanity ............................................................................................... 271
The Plurality of Humanity .......................................................................................... 273
The state (Paragraphs 101-102) ............................................................................. 274
Territorial nationality (Paragraphs 103-105) ........................................................ 275
The nation (Paragraphs 106-110) .......................................................................... 276
Race and Racism (Race and Racialism in the original English manuscript
(Passelecq and Suchecky 172–73)) (Paragraphs 111-130) .................................... 278
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Jews and anti-Semitism (religious separation) (Paragraphs 131-152) .................. 285

On the controversy of the term “Latino” versus “Hispanic” and its consequences ........ 287
On whether the Maeztuian assessment on the foreignization extends to Catholic
conversion and the foreignized-colonized overlap and critique towards so-called
“decolonization” methodologies ..................................................................................... 291
FINAL CONCLUSIVE REMARKS .................................................................................................. 295
BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND REFERENCES CITED .............................................................. 297
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Abstract
The two main political philosophies from the Third Political Theory (sometimes
colloquially termed Third Position) have been extensively analyzed from the point of view of
The Catholic Church’s Magisterium and the Catholic Intellectuals grounded in The Magisterium.
The two key encyclicals crucial to my analysis ─Mit Brennender Sorge and Non Abbiamo
Bisogno─ were analyzed separately, each encyclical with its surrounding context, its language
and doctrinal points, both elucidated and contextualized, comparing to the central claims The
Catholic Church understood the tensions and irreconcilable tenets to the faith emerged. It is
concluded that the main problem in these Third Political Theories is precisely the problem of
sacralisation ─manifested as racialatry and statolatry in National Socialism and Fascism,
respectively─ and its consequences in society and human thought that The Catholic Church saw
as harmful and deteriorating; these concerns are also analyzed in accordance with The Catholic
Church’s understanding of these positions and how she has dealt with them. Grounding my
analysis in both primary sources that exposit the doctrines of these political philosophies,
comparing and contrasting them with the Catholic worldview, and citing the works of historians
such as Emilio Gentile on the insight of the sacralisation problem reveal that the central doctrines
of these political philosophies presented profound consequences in building conflict with The
Catholic Church. The rationalizations of Catholics that have attempted to reconcile these
philosophies and movements are also critically examined as well in light of The Magisterium.
The second part of the research involved a comprehensive analysis of the Hispano Catholic ethos
from a compare-contrast standpoint by building a positive case, that is, a case that studies and
examines the elements in the ethos of Hispanic civilization that have allowed said civilization to
surmount all the problems The Catholic Church has observed in these Interwar nationalist
movements, particularly National Socialism and Fascism. The analysis bases its examination
from four primary authors I deemed fundamental to exposit and analyze said Hispano Catholic
ethos regarding three main aspects that the Third Political Theories touch upon: race, the State,
and national identity. These authors are Ramiro de Maeztu (Defensa de La Hispanidad), José
Vasconcelos (Raza Cósmica), Pedro Albizu Campos (Concepto de La Raza; October 12th speech
from 1933) and Alberto Buela (Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente). Each author is analyzed in
this order to answer the following questions: What is Hispanidad? What is the sense of being of
Hispanidad? What is the Foreignization Problem? What does said problem involve and how to
solve it? What is race according to the Hispanoamerican ethos? What is the relationship between
Nationalism and Patriotism in the Hispanic ethos? What is the structural identity of
Hispanoamerica and how has it surmounted the sacralisation problem? These questions are
answered and show that the Hispano Catholic ethos is grounded in a strong integrationist sense
of identity from the same Catholic sense of unity, and the telluric sense of time and life of the
native American tribes. The implications of how said identity manifested in society are also
analyzed. Finally, I answer a number of objections ─possible and actuals I have encountered─
that I refute in scholastic format, showing such objections do not hold water.
Key words: Hispanidad, foreignization, sacralisation, racialatry, statolatry, National Socialism,
Fascism, Nationalism, Patriotism, Cosmic Race, Hispanoamerica, Magisterium, Third Position
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Introduction

There are no brief sentences that can capture even the goal of this monograph. Few words
cannot capture the significant and groundbreaking value of this work, but if the title is anything
to go by, the goal should be simple: to show that there exists an incompatibility between The
Catholic religion and the unrevised ideologies associated to National Socialism, in particular
their theories on the State, economy and race, much more emphasis on the third and first terms;
and the unrevised ideology of Fascism of the Italian expression, this one more so its theories on
the State. Why “unrevised?” Because anyone can make revisionist changes to any ideology,
usually these revisionism seek to fundamentally change the original tenets and goals of the target
ideologies, the result ends up being a radically changed framework from the original, this work
will deal with the original points, as expressed by the intellectuals at the time and later expanded
by other faithful authors, political analyzers, historians, you name it. I will do so from the
standpoint of The Catholic Church’s own doctrines and understanding of herself and how she
sees the world and influences the world and using their lenses to understand these ideologies that
have tried to infiltrate and take root in Catholics overtime.

But why? What is the point of this work? Isn’t the entire world convinced that Catholicism
condemns these ideologies in the first place? For the inquired reader who is unfamiliar with, at
the moment, a fringe group of people on the Internet, particularly groups of the dissident right,
the perception that Catholicism condemns these ideologies is, in summary, that not only are they
compatible, but that The Church herself helped inspired these ideologies. Perhaps this perception
is found amongst people outside these circles, but as we know, they are very few. In an age
where The Internet exudes significant presence and influence on public opinion, the inevitability
that this perception reaches the level of fringe to “publicly acceptable alternative” is clear in the
last two years of the second decade of the 21st century. However, the inquirer may cast doubts in
the success rate of these perceptions taking root, and the doubting inquirer may be justified, but
for a Catholic, who defends the honor, dignity, and her good name, especially in influencing
certain political movements, this phenomenon is concerning. I am not aware of such a
monumental monograph published in the literature in the Humanities department on any
university, not to the level this monograph seeks at the very least, for this monograph has another
task: to show a specific expression of Catholicism, the Hispanic ethos; has a far more cohesive
interpretation of nationalism, of race, culture and the State, than the ideologies we are to analyze
critically, cohesive at least in regards to their coherency to Catholic thought. Therefore, the
audience in question this monograph seeks to inform is clear, the monograph is aim at Hispanic
readers, both from within their respective native homelands, and born outside, mostly from the
United States; that the religion of their ancestors, from The Catholic Monarchs of the late 1400’s,
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to all intellectuals, heroic figures and thinkers in general that constitute the entire ethos of the
Hispanoamerican continent. Any reader from all walks of life will likewise benefit from the
arguments and analysis laid forth in this work, such readers will be able to appreciate and even
equip themselves with information and arguments that will shield them and be able to attack any
misinformation, misinterpretation and generally faulty arguments that try to present a case that
the Catholic Church has had any influence, whether directly, indirectly; historically or
doctrinally, to the ideologies in analysis. Just to make this clear, going back to the first purpose of
this monograph; the ideologies analyzed do not enjoy a special status of strict analysis confined
only to the orthodox framework of these ideologies, that is; “in rice and beans” as my culture
would say; the critical analysis applies likewise to both the orthodox, classical interpretations of
these ideologies, and even revisionist versions of these ideologies, so long as those revisionist
versions also present the same tensions and contradictions present in the original; that is, the
arguments will extend to even revisionists forms of these ideologies as long as those key tenets
the Church finds incompatible to her, are found also in those revisions.
The second task of this monograph will then focus on a positive case for the Hispanic Catholic
framework and to show why their interpretation of nationalism, race, and the State, not only
makes sense to both their historical context as nations, but to the contemporary age that they find
themselves in, and why this consistency has never found any tension with The Church they
profess to base their ethos in. Therefore, this monograph has two monumental goals: To show,
from within The Catholic Church’s own Magisterial documents, why the ideologies in analysis
are not compatible with their key doctrines on a fundamental level, and why the Hispanic
Catholic framework in matters of national identity and their forms of government present no
tension. All these reasons will be carefully analyzed from a variety of sources of trustworthy
judgment and information on the concepts to be discussed. Without further delay, I begin the
investigation:
Does National Socialism, particularly of the German strand, and Italian Fascism, present smooth
compatibility to The Catholic Church regarding race, the State and national identity in general?
Does The Hispanic ethos, formulate a cohesive paradigm with The Catholic Church in matters of
national identity, race, and the State?

Prologue
We live in a climate in need to combat the deculturalization of liberalism, in all its forms, the
most common expression of this liberalism is of course, the one manifesting itself in the
sociocultural sphere. Among these include liberal values regarding sexual ethics, progressive
interpretations on the sacrament of marriage, to even liberal interpretations of racial dynamics.
While the context of these events is confined to the sphere of US American politics, in a
globalized age, this inevitably seeps into other countries, Hispanoamerica is no exception. The
end results of this deculturalization of progressive liberalism have dissatisfied the needs of many
people, Hispanics no less, from both within US and within Hispanoamerica (from hence forth,
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we will use HispAm as an abbreviation). A specific group of people are known as the dissident
right, a group of political right wing who have very critical disposition even within the right-
wing side of the political and social spectrum, their interests in ideologies or movements have
geared towards alternatives to the current system, and the majority seem to look towards the
phenomenon of Third Position ideologies (in professional parlance, that is equivalent to adopting
the Third Political Theory). Without diving too many details, the Third Position or Third Political
Theory is an umbrella term for a plethora of sociopolitical philosophies and ideologies that do
not fit neatly into the left-right paradigm common in American political parlance, among these,
are National Socialism, Italian Fascism, Spanish Falange, Romania’s Iron Guard, to name a few.
These movements are typically all grouped into the “far-right” spectrum by American liberals,
but the truth will be stranger upon closer analysis. The complex system that characterizes these
movements is especially difficult to relegate solely to “far-right” since a variety of aspects from
these movements are shared likewise from the left and right. The interest in these ideologies or a
revisionism of them is growing among these groups, and of course, many politically minded
Hispanics are no exception, and herein lies the problem. The rise in interest of these political
theories among Hispanics, however, is almost entirely exclusive to ones born and raised in the
United States of America, many are detached from their fatherland’s cultural heritage, this then
colors their vision of the world around them, pairing them closer to the US Americans than the
ones born in HispAm proper. The problem becomes more concrete when a lot of these Hispanics
identify with The Catholic religion, and their attempts to reconcile it with their ideology. This
phenomenon is of course, a problem in two main ways. The first one is the chronological
formulation from which they have developed a political philosophy without a foundation to
properly square it with HispAm’s culture and civilizational identity, and the other one is many of
these lack a mature religious framework that can likewise inform them to pinpoint key elements
of their ideology of inspiration to develop an organic political philosophy, the problem is then
clear: the lack of a well informed and formulated cultural identity grounded in their fatherland
and an inappropriate hierarchy in thought when analyzing philosophies to square with their
religious philosophy. This monograph does not aim for an exhaustive analysis of every Third
Position ideology to compare it with Catholicism, but two very iconic Third Positionist (herein
abbreviated as 3P) ideologies will suffice to allow us to analyze other offshoots: Germany’s
National Socialism, and Italy’s Fascism, these are the two most iconic Third Position ideologies
well known to those who have studied the Interwar nationalist philosophies, and many of their
analysis is predicated on the philosophical influence these two had. These two also happen to be
the most referenced inspirational basis of their formulation of their political philosophy, their
revisionism aside; thus, this monograph restricts to analyze the key elements that define these
political philosophies, their doctrines and how they fit (or not) into Catholic Sociopolitical
thought, and ultimately, whether these ideologies are legitimate sources of inspiration for
Hispanic political philosophy given their ethnogenesis.
How will this analysis be done? As mentioned in the Introduction, the following concepts are the
most commonly cited to justify their adoption of these ideologies in light of the sociopolitical
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climate: race (the nature thereof, whether these have any relevant impact in policies and
interpersonal relationships), the State (the nature of authority the State should adopt in societal
matters and its relationship to The Church), national identity (whether this should be based on a
phenotypical average or aesthetic or whether it should be based on psychology and spiritual
disposition and other immaterial things like language and cultural customs). The economic side
will rarely be the focus. Once these are analyzed from the standpoint within Magisterial
teachings and proclamations, the analysis will then move to a positive case for a Hispanic
Catholic framework that will serve as a foundational guide to responsible and cohesive
philosophy on everyday affairs, including political philosophy. In such an analysis, I will lay the
contextual problem that exists among Hispanic contemporary political philosophizing and how
this connects to a general obscure, distorted view of their history and culture and how this can be
resolved. The analysis will provide sufficient ─though not exhaustive─ information and
arguments that will help Hispanics, and even non-Hispanic readers, to have a proper framework
to operate on in everyday matters, specifically in formulating political philosophy but also non-
political thought.
It is important to stress, before the reader gets any misinterpretation or misunderstandings
(though these will eventually be addressed at the end of the analysis); that the aim of this project
is to first deconstruct and critically analyze the philosophical, cultural and even theological core
tenets that define and construct the ideologies to be analyzed, this means that it does not matter
how these tenets are later interpreted by other succeeding thinkers that later morph it into
something more unique, as long as these tenets remain intact, their critique will stand, this
project aims to pinpoint those tenets, how they influenced the thought process of these
movements in their apogee period, and how The Church has responded to said peak
development, I therefore will not focus on the “undergoing development” stages of these
ideologies, what would be the point of critiquing ideologies that have not yet solidified in a
culture to later be implemented? Thus I will exclusively focus on the already solidified
ideologies that contemporary people flirt with intellectually, and the ones that The Catholic
Church has felt the need to respond one way or another, and then provide a positive case for the
Hispanic ethos that is able to bring a mature and rich foundation that equips Hispanics to use to
responsibly, either build from the giants before them, or filter out foreign ideas to implement in a
way that coheres with the ethos. With this being said, I will now move on to a general scheme of
how this analysis will be approached:
The first step is a brief contextual analysis behind two key encyclicals (though others will be
referenced for further context on these encyclicals): Non Abbiamo Bisogno, published on June
29th of 1931, and Mit Brennender Sorge, published on March 14th of 1937. Why these two
encyclicals? For the simple reason these encyclicals, at least indirectly though directly by virtue
of their temporal proximity to the events; address the ideologies or regimes this monograph will
analyze. These encyclicals provide the groundwork for further analysis and will help us reference
other relevant encyclicals, which is how every encyclical in The Magisterium is ultimately
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analyzed and interpreted. After providing a brief historical context that led to the publishing of
these encyclicals, I will analyze very specific points from the encyclicals and compare and
contrast points that are addressed by the encyclical from National Socialist theories and Fascist
theories. Each point will then be unpacked in light of how the encyclicals understood the
problems and threats these doctrines posed to The Church. From this, I will analyze the same key
points from each of these ideologies The Church found to be against Catholic teaching and
provide evidence from The Church’s teachings how they conflict and why. This analysis will be
done separately though, as each encyclical has a different critique for each and these need to be
dealt with case by case. As for the sources used, I will use translated materials from Nazi
Propaganda archive that are easily accessible to the public without any search inconveniences, I
believe this is a fair use of citations so that readers are able to look for themselves what has been
cited without inconvenient translation exercises, critiques to this approach will be answered in
detail at the end of the analysis, but briefly I will say such critiques are irrational and motivated
by an unreasonable standard of evidence and suspicion and will be ignored throughout the
analysis.
For the Fascist theories, I will focus on two main sources to glean on their philosophical
underpinnings and how they affected The Church’s reception of the ideology: one source is from
what is consider the philosophical father of Fascism itself: Giovanni Gentile and his work
“Origins and doctrines of Fascism”, edited and translated by political scientist James Gregor, and
Samuel K.’s analysis on the philosophical underpinnings of these ideologies’ economic theories,
the latter of course is only to illustrate the extent to which the philosophical underpinnings
extended and helped them interpret even how they handled the economy, I will not focus on a
detailed economic analysis in my critique as that is beyond the scope of this project, however I
will provide how even The Church reacted to these economic theories, as she has said quite a lot
about them in earlier encyclicals, only to illustrate the context of her opposition in general, this is
not a project with an economic critique in mind in the strictest sense. As indicated earlier,
anticipated objections to the justification of use of these sources will be dealt with at the end, for
now I will say they are, from an academic standpoint, reliable sources that are charitable and
faithful to the theories sketched by the originators.
After a thorough analysis from a compare and contrast, there will be an analysis on the language
of these encyclicals, not from a grammatical-syntaxis point of view, but the tone and nature of
said language, this will be reserved especially so for Mit Brennender Sorge (herein MBS, and
Non Abbiamo Bisogno, NoAB). This analysis is crucial because, as will be discussed in that
section, there are interesting yet flawed arguments regarding even the language of said encyclical
to undermine its authority and seriousness.
Finally, after said critique, I will move on to a positive case for a Hispanic Catholic framework
that can equip Hispanics from all stripes in order to handle any foreign ideology with care and
intellectual responsibility. It is from here that I will provide the philosophical and cultural
underpinnings that define the Hispanic ethos and how they have shaped the intellectual traditions
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of the Hispanic civilization, even beyond the confines of the continent, HispAm. I will then
provide, albeit in a summarized manner, how Hispanic nationalist movements have been
conceived, the nature thereof and an overview of their problems that are relevant even in
contemporary times. The intellectual exponents that I will use to argue for the positive case for
the Hispanic ethos’ intellectual framework are: Ramiro de Maeztu and his iconic work, Defensa
de La Hispanidad, which as of now, has no official English translation, thus, I will provide a
faithful translation in English as best as possible closer to the original. Maeztu’s Defensa is, to
my estimation, the best source to lay the groundwork of what is even meant by Hispanidad, from
both a cultural and even historical context, which then helps us dive into the philosophy that
helped construct said understanding further in the analysis.
The next one is probably the best known thinker even by the Chicano movement: José
Vasconcelos Calderón, and his monumental work, La Raza Cósmica, and this one does have
official English translation, however the source I will use is one published from 1948 by
Colección Austral, though the section I will be focusing is his main thesis on Mestizaje, as the
rest are notes of his travels to South America, thus, it too is a Spanish language source that I will
translate to English. Vasconcelos’ Raza Cósmica (Cosmic Race) is probably the most
misunderstood work even to some Spanish academics, probably because they are colored by the
presuppositions of Anglophone humanities academics, but even some self-proclaimed National
Socialist Hispanics grossly misrepresent his work. Vasconcelos’ work either way is referenced
because his thesis is a summary of what has motivated and defined our conception of mestizaje
(“race mixing”, I put quotations because the Hispanic understanding of the term mestizaje does
not always connote biological racial mixture like it does in the English vocabulary). Vasconcelos,
to briefly summarize without spoiling, observes a phenomenon that has defined the ethnogenesis
of the Hispanoamerican culture since its inception, he pinpoints the mindset that has allowed
these people to overlook and disregard the racial barriers that even persist to this day in US
American culture and has colored the worldview of German National Socialists. Analyzing his
thesis will then help the Hispanic understand, in the simplest term, why a Hispanic disregard the
racial makeup of his partner or friends. The Anglophone will think such a behavior is “race
blind” but this is a mischaracterization, and this will be revealed in Vasconcelos’ section.
The third author to be revealed is another iconic figure in the Hispanosphere and is probably a
notorious thorn in US American’s past: Pedro Albizu Campos, the same Albizu who led the
Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. The analysis will take an interesting turn because even some
Puerto Rican readers have very little idea how Albizu Campos functioned in his campaign and
have little to no clue what even defined his worldview. However, unlike the first two authors
mentioned, Albizu Campos rarely, if at all, wrote anything, very few of his writings focus more
on economic solutions to the problems of Puerto Rico’s economy, which are beyond the scope of
this project, the source of our analysis on Albizu’s take on Indo-Hispanidad will then be
transcripts of his speeches (also only available in Spanish, which I translated for the English
readers) throughout his campaign in the island, and one source that analyzes the basis of his
 13

worldview: Anthony Stevens-Arroyo’s analysis of Albizu’s Catholic intellectual influence to his

political philosophy. It is a rather surprising fact for even the average Puerto Rican because most
do not conceive Albizu Campos as a pious Catholic thinker, yet this is exactly how Albizu
operated in his campaign and has defined many of his nationalist tenets throughout his life, and it
is his nationalism we will use as an example for a model on how Hispanic nationalisms have
been formulated from a well-defined ethos that integrates Catholic principles and a firm
foundation of one’s local culture and a continental civilizational outlook.
Finally, the last author referenced is an Argentinian philosopher that is contemporary to our
times: Alberto Buela Lamas. Alberto Buela has written many works of both philosophical and
political relevance, but the one I use is a collection of essays authored by him: Hispanoamérica
Contra Occidente (Hispanoamerica against The West), this too, has no English translation. In this
essay, I will focus exclusively on how he settles on what is to be the core defining tenet of
Hispanoamerican identity and unpack this later in the same essay. This will be the basis to finally
capture and complete the panorama of what defines the Hispanic ethos’ way of thinking as a
civilization and culture, even when the average Hispanic does not realize it, which is why he will
be the last one to be touched upon as I think it is appropriate to introduce his exposition last after
setting the grounds for the previous authors. Although these are four authors, they are by no
means the only ones, but they serve as key references that will help me reference other thinkers
which I use in this monograph to help supplement their line of thinking.
After their case, I will evidence Buela’s thesis and the other three aforementioned authors by
analyzing The Hispanic Empire’s enterprise from three key events or circumstances: Isabel’s
Codicil, Pope Paul III’s Bull from 1537 and The Valladolid Debate, these events will help
contextualize and serve as evidence for the driving thought process and foundation of how the
Spanish Empire or Hispanic Civilization in general, has operated on a net basis. From here,
unless otherwise notified, all sources on the Hispano Catholic ethos are Spanish that I had to
translate to English.
I will then provide a grand summary of the discussed topics and provide a panorama of
contemporary issues regarding intra-Hispanic relations between those born and raised in their
fatherlands, and the ones raised in the US and how to reconcile and solve their tensions and other
commentary from my own experiences on the matter.
Afterwards, I will deal with a specific number of objections I have encountered before the
making of this monograph and some detailed responses. I will do so from a Thomistic approach.
After that, I will finish with general concluding remarks from all discussed further down. With
that being said, I begin the analysis.
 14

Part One: The Catholic Magisterium’s Case Against National Socialism

and Fascism
This is the first part of my analysis: I will investigate two major encyclicals and their
surrounding contexts to analyze all their arguments, unpack them point by point to exposit their
irreconcilability to the paradigms of National Socialism and Fascism and their doctrines that
caused them to bear incompatibilities to Catholic teaching.

Mit Brennender Sorge: A contextual and magisterial analysis

MBS was published on March 14th of 1937, it was first released in German to address the
German nation and to her episcopate in that country of events that were reported to The Pontif at
the time, Pius XI, that has brought a lot of attention to him, attention of very concerning and
worrisome nature, so far as to call it “an anxiety” in the opening statement and in paragraph 5.
(Pius XI, “Mit Brennender Sorge,” para.5) The encyclical is 43 paragraphs long, each point
addressing particular issues and concerns which has been reported to him regarding
circumstances that were happening to the Catholics and their institutions within the Third Reich.
The encyclical, although translated as “with burning concern”, it is not a concern of mere
suspicion and doubt, but in the encyclical, we find clear authoritative statements and arguments
with the nature that the Pope sincerely believes the reports to be authentic and accurately
represent the situation within the Church and is very polite in his writing and prudent. However,
before diving into an internal analysis of the encyclical in a point by point method, I will first
establish the context that led to the publication of this encyclical, a context which best explains
not just the publication of the encyclical per se, but also the contents, which I will also provide
context and sources that ground the condemnations and arguments that Pius XI lays out, and I
will also substantiate the follow up actions Pius XI took after releasing said encyclical and the
reaction of the Führer.

The context of the encyclical: the periods of 1933-1937

Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany, under party membership as chancellor, on July 14th of
1933 (Bartley 14–15), however, Hitler consolidated full power as Führer on August 2nd of the
next year, though politically, his party has already made moves to overtake the government and
dissolve all opposition to establish Adolf Hitler as head of State before then. (Bartley 28) Thus,
we can restrict our analysis from the period when the NatSoc party took power (1933) and when
MBS was released publicly and the post-publishing days afterwards (1937). These are therefore
the pre-war periods, two years before Germany invades Poland in September of 1939. Thus, the
contextual analysis will focus on exactly the four years since the NatSoc regime developed all
their propaganda, legislation, political as well as cultural influence throughout Germany
unopposed by externalities. I will specifically focus on the context that led The Church to react to
the NatSoc regime in Germany. What prompted The Church to publish an encyclical that
 15

condemns and highlights doctrinal errors they perceived to be present in the administration of the
NSDAP? Let’s find out how and why:
The key turning point that prompted Catholics in Germany, of good conscience at least, to
oppose the National Socialist program, was one particular point within the 25-point Program of
the NSDAP, which says:
“24. We demand freedom for all religious faiths in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its
existence or offend the moral and ethical sense of the Germanic race.

The party as such represents the point of view of a positive Christianity without binding itself to
any one particular confession. It fights against the Jewish materialist spirit within and without
and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our folk can only come about from within on the
principle.” (NSDAP, para.24)
Now, at first glance, this seems like a unusual way of advocating of freedom of religious
association, particularly, freedom of religious Christian association, without any allegiance to a
Christian creed, Protestant or Catholic. The 24th point would seem reasonable to some, but for
the German Catholics who knew better, this presented a subversive element to Catholic
consciousness. (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 5) The 25-point Program was created in
1920, but the ideas that The Catholics foresaw in the spirit of the NSDAP were made manifest as
soon as Hitler rose to power in 1934 as head of state. What were these ideas?
I will demonstrate in detail what were these ideas, but to the German Catholics that opposed the
NSDAP, these ideas were an undue spiritualization of esoteric nature of the Germanic race, a
national Church that was schismatic in nature, and overall heretical dispositions towards the
faith, above all an aversion to the Old Testament. (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 5)
Now we must ask, in a country that is majority Christian, mostly Protestant by significant
margin; how could Hitler ever hope to gain support? How would Hitler garner support, to only
subvert it with his National Socialist program? Julio Meinvielle observes that Hitler was
politically astute and so just a year before he was officially declared head of State, he said this
about Christianity when his party already took political power on March 23rd of 1933:
“The national government sees in the two Christian denominations factors of capital importance
for the preservation of our value as a nation. It will respect the conventions that these
communities have concluded with the States. Their rights will be respected. But it expects and
hopes that the work of national and moral revival of our people, whose task the government has
undertaken, will be reciprocally appreciated.” (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 7)
This position explains point 24 of their NSDAP program, their party is a party which attempts to
reconcile two branches of Christianity which have been in opposition since the Reformation. But
the problem lies in the method of reconciliation, as admitted in the 25-point program, the
 16

reconciliation was conditional in that they do not put the Germanic race in jeopardy and fracture
national identity and unison. In other words, the basis of reconciliation was never religious
within the confines of Christendom, but racial, and this, was the main objection to many
conscious German Catholics. It was an illegitimate means of reconciling two confessions that
were born out of doctrinal disputes in nature, at the very least. Catholic philosopher Julio
Meinvielle assesses that the nature of the Reformation was less ecclesiastical and more racial and
cites Chamberlaine and Fichte that the Reformation instilled nationalist sentiments of schismatic
nature. (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 3–4) This is further confirmed by Konrad
Heidern, Hitler’s biographer, that the Protestant church was primarily a German Church and how
the Lutherans, the majority of them, looked favorably to Hitler’s policies than the Catholics.
(Bartley 17–18)
Be that as it may, it is clear that the context of this reconciliation is rooted in a secular attempt, to
mend the rupture between the old Catholic Germany and Luther’s Protestant Germany. This
attempt of course, is futile and backfires in several ways that cost the Catholics in Germany. In
fact, Bartley documents how although the Catholics showed the strongest resistance to NatSoc
propaganda and were the most hostile to National Socialism (Bartley 19–20), nevertheless due to
the growing popularity of the party, their initial prohibitions against NatSoc supporters in their
congregations had to be uplifted, Bartley explains why:
“The problem facing the bishops has been well stated by John Conway: “continued resistance
would be very difficult to explain to the Catholic masses, who implicitly accepted Hitler’s
pledges. Moreover, it appeared likely that the mass appeal of the Nazi campaign might succeed
in persuading thousands, even millions, to leave the Church.” The bishops were understandably
dismayed to learn that Catholic members of the SA, who had been banned from attending
services in their own churches, were now frequenting Protestant churches.
Further, it was evident to anyone who gave much thought to the matter that sooner or later the
Church would have to reach a modus vivendi with the new regime. Hitler was the legally
constituted head of state, a fact that caused many Germans to alter their opinion of him. It was
commonly believed that with his elevation to the position of world statesman, Hitler would in
future incline to moderation. The legitimacy of his office was no small matter to a people long
accustomed to giving unquestioning obedience to its leaders and to a Church that taught that all
authority came from God. In a pastoral letter of 10 February, Cardinal Faulhaber reminded the
faithful that the respect and obedience owed to the state was a matter of Christian duty, “even
when the present form of the state and its system does not please us.” Faulhaber reiterated the
point in a letter to his diocesan clergy of 5 April, at the same time encouraging them to be
forthright in denouncing error. Ernst Helmreich has drawn attention to the dilemma facing both
Catholics and Protestants in Nazi Germany who found themselves being against Nazism but not
against the government. He writes: “It is easy to decry this dilemma today, it was much more
difficult to see a way out of it in the Germany of that time.”“ (Bartley 19–20)
 17

Nonetheless, despite their temporary truce with the NatSoc government, the Catholic Church has
consistently repudiated racialism and the propaganda of race theories by the National Socialists
and even repudiated the racialisms of the German Christian Movement (more on them sooner).
(Bartley 20–21)
Recognizing their philosophical and theological opposition to the NSDAP, the German
Episcopate have declared this as soon as Hitler rose to power in the same year, 1933, on June
3rd:
“In recent years the Ordinaries of the dioceses of Germany, concerned with their duty to preserve
the Catholic faith in its purity and to protect the inviolable mission and rights of the Catholic
Church, have taken an attitude of opposition to the National-Socialist movement by injunctions
and warnings, destined to last as long as these reasons persist.
It is now necessary to recognize that the supreme representative of the Reich government, at the
same time the authoritative head of this movement, has made public and solemn declarations
which take into account the inviolability of the doctrine of the Catholic faith and of the mission
and the immutable rights of the Church, and in which the Reich government expressly assures
that the State treaties concluded between the Church and certain German countries will remain in
force. Without abrogating the condemnation of certain religious and moral errors contained in its
preceding declarations, the Episcopate believes it can express its confidence that the aforesaid
interdicts and warnings should not be considered necessary. The Catholic Christian, for whom
the voice of the Church is sacred, has no need, even at the present time, to be especially exhorted
to loyalty to legitimate authority and to the conscientious fulfillment of civil duties, rejecting, on
principle, all illegal and revolutionary conduct.” (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 7–8)
This seems all good and peaceful, even recognized by the German episcopate, which then lead to
the Reichskonkordat signed between The Third Reich and The Vatican on July 20th of
1933.(González) (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 8) It is important to understand that
The Vatican has always attempted to forge concordats with Germanic countries for years,
specifically with Germany, to no success until this date. (González) Arrangement of concordats
were anyways the more preferrable method to arrange Church-State relationships with various
governments after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungary Empire, as Bartley explains:
“Concluding concordats or legal agreements with secular governments enabled the Church to
secure her religious privileges while compromising on nonessentials. A concordat did not signify
approval of any particular government, as the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano on
several occasions made clear. Under Pius XI, the system became the preferred means of
regulating churchstate affairs.
The extension of the system of papal concordats was made necessary by the changed political
situation after 1918. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had been the traditional protector of
the papacy, became a victim of the dissolution of empires that marked the end of the First World
 18

War. Thus, it was only by entering into legal agreements with the new governments of postwar
Europe that the Church could protect her vital interests. Generally the system proved successful,
even though the Holy See sometimes had to negotiate with regimes in varying degrees hostile to
the Church.” (Bartley 22)
With Hitler finally taking initiative to sign such concordats, for The German Catholic, all seemed
like a relief and peace has been achieved. This is what even both Cardinal Pacelli, future Pius
XII, and the Pope at the time, Pius XI, have hoped to be so. Nonetheless, there was a huge
problem, for one, not even Pacelli trusted, in the long term, the treaty he signed. (ZENIT; Bartley
23) To detail the extent of this distrust, Pacelli and Vatican members undertook dialogues for
several weeks to determine how trustworthy Hitler could be in confidently arranging a concordat
with him. (Bartley 23) There is a certain oddness to why Hitler, after putting all bishops and
priests involved in the BVP and the Catholic Centre party at their mercy and dissolution, further
increasing suspicion in part of Pacelli for why even go for the concordat agreement after such
actions (Bartley 23–24), Bartley explains that there was a public image prestige, I cite:
“Although Hitler desired to see an end to political priests, his main incentive seems to have been
his awareness of the international prestige to be gained by entering into a formal agreement with
the Holy See. Mussolini had advised him to negotiate for this very reason, and Hitler had been
impressed when, in 1929, Mussolini had concluded his own concordat with the Holy See.
Additionally, a signed agreement with the Holy See would send a message to the world that the
National Socialist State had nothing but the friendliest intentions towards the Catholic Church.”
(Bartley 24 italics added)
Now unto the Concordat, it seems all beneficial and generous to both parties except one key
point (which below I detail how such controverted point eventually bit the Catholics back):
freedom of the Catholic Press. (Bartley 25) They not only could find agreement with the Reich
on that point, even Article 31 which concerned the Catholic associations (such as Catholic
Youths), proved very contentious as it too had political influences implied in the long run, which
he German Reich insisted The Church had to stay away from. (Bartley 25)
I will demonstrate further below why the Recihskonkordat was nothing more than a bandage to
cover the true conflict that was going on within Germany (Bartley 27–28), and why it eventually
led to the publication of MBS. Another key point that alarmed all Catholics of good conscience
was the legalization of sterilization laws on July 14th of 1933 (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El
Reich 9; Bartley 33), just six days before the concordat, this means that even before the
concordat, there has been aggressive opposition in part of The Catholic Church in legislations
that were contrary to Catholic Social Teaching. Before I document in detail specific events and
doctrines within the NSDAP administration, political and cultural; I will outline a series of
events that Julio Meinvielle outlines that The Church perceived to justify the publication of
MBS. The following list of persecutions took place to motivate said publication, all beginning on
March of 1935 all the way to April of the same year, when Hitler promulgated the banning of
 19

marriages between Jews and “Aryans”, which prompted Cardinal Pacelli to declare the regime in
believing the “myth of race and blood” [referenced in the MBS and condemned]. (Bartley 32)

Suppression of Catholic Press

How the Third Reich achieved this was by declaring that The Church be prohibited, under every
circumstance, to participate in the political sphere, as Joseph Goebbels has defined what he
meant on July 14th of 1936:
“We no longer understand politics as being concerned with the material affairs of a people. In our
eyes, politics has taken on a much broader character. It demands that it should concern itself with
all questions that touch the people in some way or other.” (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El
Reich 10)
Consistent with their view of National Socialism as a way of life, a weltanschauung or
worldview, they of course would isolate The Church even from political affairs, a concept which
of course goes against The Catholic Church as will be demonstrated soon. This position taken by
all officials of the NSDAP, even those who claim to profess the Catholic faith, have enforced this
policy throughout all of Germany, and any dissent they perceive from any religious institution, is
suppressed because it is seen as a violation and subversion against The State. (Meinvielle, Entre
La Iglesia y El Reich 10)
This further manifested, as briefly cited earlier, when The Church began opposing the
sterilization laws enacted that same year, and thus the Reich accused The Church for “sabotaging
the laws of the Reich.” (Bartley 33)

Suppression of Catholic Schools

It was bad enough that the NSDAP has taken a totalitarian position against The Church in
suppressing dissent against anti-Catholic legislation regarding human life and eugenics as
condemned by Pius XI himself three years prior (Pius XI, “Casti Connubii”), they suppressed the
educational influence of Catholic schools. (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 10–11;
Bartley 23, 28) This was a logical outcome from suppressing Catholic press. Why suppress the
press of Catholic standing but ignore dissent that Catholic teachers might instill in public and
even private education? The NSDAP took their next step by closing Catholic schools, even by,
ironically enough, the will of parents under governmental pressure of course. (Meinvielle, Entre
La Iglesia y El Reich 10–11) By suppressing both Catholic press and Catholic schools, The
NSDAP has ensured no information that could threaten public image and credibility of the party
be disseminated to the minds of individual Germans.
The regime did not always had their way, as Meinvielle attests when the NatSoc regime even
went so far as to ban and remove crucifixes from schools and other institutions (Bartley 35),
Meinvielle writes:
 20

“What was unsuccessful was the attempt to remove crucifixes from schools in all the communes
of Oldenburg. Such was the indignation of the population that 21 days after the ordinance of
suppression was promulgated, the head of the district had to revoke it, and he did so with these
words: “A wise government of the State must also know how to backtrack when it has taken a
wrong step. The ordinance of November 4 is hereby annulled. Crucifixes remain in schools.”“
(Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 10–11)
This markedly impactful event was followed by a meeting with Cardinal Faulhaber and Schulte
in a mountain retreat at the Bavarian Alps to discuss religious matters the Cardinals understood
were important while the concordat agreement was still in effect. (Bartley 35) Of course, Hitler
was all pleased and polite and in accord with them, until they addressed (rightfully so) the
sterilization laws that threatened Catholic morality in accordance with Casti Connubii, Bartley
describes how sudden the Führer reacted:
“[…] Hitler received them cordially enough, and the three had a long conversation. In their
discussion concerning purely religious matters, Hitler appeared accommodating. When, however,
Cardinal Faulhaber raised the subjects of the anti-Jewish legislation and the sterilisation law,
Hitler’s demeanour changed. He became angry and bluntly informed Faulhaber that interference
from the Church in such matters would not be tolerated.” (Bartley 35 citing “Nazi Germany” by
Klaus P. Fischer as well as “Inside the Third Reich” by Speer)
Further in the Hispano Catholic ethos I will examine the illicitness of Hitler’s reaction against the
Cardinals on the issue of politics, and will detail the licit concerns of the same Cardinals further
in this MBS analysis.

Suppression of Catholic Youth Organizations

You’d think that by suppressing the above two would cut it, but neither education nor the press
were the only means of disseminating informational conflict, there were Catholic Youth
Organizations that the Führer sought to dissolve in replacement of the Hitlerjugend organization
to ensure absolute national loyalty to The NatSoc State and Hitler. To achieve this, the Führer put
Baldur von Schirach in charge of amassing all youths to organize, under strict obligation, to
gather under the Hitler Youth body (Bartley 34), thus diminishing participation from strictly
confessional Catholic Youth organizations. (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 11) But how
exactly would he ensure this was enforced? By ensuring those who opposed this policy were
imprisoned or even shot dead, such as Dr Erich Klausener, Secretary of Catholic Action, and
Adalbert Probst, who was kidnapped and found dead. (González) This gesture clearly was a
violation of the Concordat that said agreement guaranteed freedom of confessional Youth
Groups, but the NatSoc government willfully violated it. (Bartley 34)The obligation was so strict
and forceful, that it demanded both, the physical, moral, and even intellectual education of the
youth. (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 11) I will expose what sort of education the youth
were to receive that demanded The State to rupture and dissolve any and all Catholic Youth
Organizations that they deemed threatening to their worldview soon.
 21

Meinvielle cites Baldur von Schirach has said, as chief of the Hitlerjugend, in his Der
Hitlerjugend, Idee und Gestalt:
“As head of the German Reich Youth, I belong neither to the Protestant nor to the Catholic
confession, I am a National Socialist. The Hitler Youth does not ask the young people what their
caste is, or what their creed is, but only what their origin is.” (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El
Reich 11)
The fact that someone like Baldur von Schirach was appointed chief of The Hitler Youth, by the
Führer himself, should already plant suspicion and doubts on the compatibility of such program
to Catholicism.

Denigration of the Catholic Clergy

The above event should be enough to alert even the clergy who oversaw to significant degree, the
Catholic Youth’s education in Catholicism, so the NSDAP naturally, would target all clergy
which would object to the aforementioned suppression. This denigration was carried out through
propaganda by misrepresenting and slandering the clergy and even imprisoning the clergy under
said slander to protect the morality and spirit of the German people. (Meinvielle, Entre La
Iglesia y El Reich 12; Bartley 34–35; González)
How these denigrations manifested range from fraudulent accusations of fiscal nature, for
example, against Catalina Wiedendörfer, accused of violating capital exportations, and
accusations against Otto Goettler who had to spend 10 years of forced labor, 5 years of being
stripped of civil rights and fined for 350k marks. (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 12)
Then there are the denigrations regarding their morality. The German government, by March 15th
of 1936, conducted an alleged investigation, specifically in the areas of Fulda, Wumzburg and
Bonn (Waldbreitbach) by means of its Gestapo. (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 13) The
alleged investigations were basically ones that justified the imprisonment of clergy for alleged
crimes which had very little to no evidential substance, but the State initiated them anyways in
fear of dissent from the clergymen to further suppress Catholic voices. (Meinvielle, Entre La
Iglesia y El Reich 13) What was the justification of the Reich for doing this? The Deutsche
Allgmeine Zeitung writes:
“When we learn that during 400 legal actions for violation of morals, a thousand members of the
Catholic Orders have been indicted, we are obliged to say that this business, as repugnant as it is
deplorable, is no longer an isolated case. The very purity of our people is at stake and the State
can no more tolerate these abysses of immorality than it can tolerate the machinations of high
treason revealed by the Rossaint trial.” (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 13 emphasis
added)

Espionage that reached the confessionary rooms

Not only were there were massive imprisonments by false accusations against priests, but there
were also even spies sent to monitor clergymen down to even the confession room. (Meinvielle,
 22

Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 14) The espionage initiated when a group of Catholics, Allmut Frisch
and Margaret Natz and a student, brought forth to their priest of Rosenberg’s book and their
contents to later condemn it in public. (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 14) The document
was denounced publicly in Bavaria on December 18th of 1936 by a council of bishops. There was
also a case of a German official, through espionage, sent his woman, with the appearance to
confess; and ask if her daughter should be sent to State camps, to which the priest answer that to
do so would endanger her faith due to Protestant and heretical influence present in such camps.
The priest was later imprisoned after the espionage concluded. (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El
Reich 14)
So scandalous was this persecution that it prompted archbishops and bishops from the provinces
of Cologne and Paderborn to declare on November 18th of 1936:
“We, the bishops of the ecclesiastical provinces of Cologne and Paderborn, meeting to discuss
the grave business of the Church, find ourselves in the presence of a painful fact: from all the
dioceses, from vast circles, bitter cries come to us about the harsh and unheard-of oppression of
conscience to which Catholics are subjected. In terms full of sadness, deeply Christian parents
tell us how, if not everywhere, certainly in many places, in schools and in the bosom of powerful
organizations to which their children belong, teachers and leaders apply themselves by their
words and writings to make the faith of their parents despicable in the eyes of the children and
thus inwardly separate these children from Jesus Christ and his Church and, therefore, from their
parents. Adults in the most diverse professions complain to us that their professional and
economic dependence is abused to force them to violate their Christian conscience, to despise the
divine commandments and to deny Christ and his Church. The facts that motivate these laments
are so numerous and so manifest that their foundation cannot be doubted. After so many vain
efforts to alleviate the anguish of conscience of our faithful, the hour has come when we bishops,
as God's appointed representatives and pastors of the Catholic people, must address the public.
To all those who have any influence on the course of events in our country, we pose this
question: Are things to continue as they are? Will our people, sorely tried, not be spared the
worst, the last of evils? After all the sufferings of the last twenty years, must souls also be
violated? must our people be so torn apart that one side venerates Jesus Christ, their God and
Savior, as our fathers have done, while the other side despises Jesus Christ and his disciples?”
(Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 15)

Other miscellaneous persecutions and The Catholic responses towards them

After February of 1934, Catholic teachers were removed from posts and priests were sent to
prison (most likely for opposing the regime’s racial ideologies [for good reasons]) (Bartley 27),
the persecutions were in such a scale that it even escalated to violence against bishops that
protested on even religious grounds against the regime’s anti-Catholic doctrines, Bartley writes:
“Acts of violence, even against bishops, were becoming commonplace. Bishops’ residences at
Wurzburg, Rothenburg, and Mainz were attacked and ransacked by Nazi mobs. When Bishop
Galen learned that Rosenberg was to speak at a Nazi Party rally in Munster, to be staged in the
 23

shadow of the episcopal palace, he sent a letter of protest to the governor of Westphalia. During
the course of the rally, which went ahead as scheduled, Nazi hooligans bayed for Galen’s blood.
From Fulda, where all the bishops now met for their annual conference, a signed statement was
forwarded to the fuhrer protesting the religious policy of the regime. The bishops felt that the
authorities were using the excuse of political Catholicism to persecute the Church. Frick wrote in
a memorandum: “Recently half the political police reports have concerned religious matters. We
have no end of petitions from all sorts of cardinals, bishops and dignitaries of the Church.” Hitler
declined to reply to the bishops’ protest but used the occasion of a speech at Nuremberg to echo
Goering’s charge of political Catholicism.” (Bartley 33 italics added)
Nearing the year of MBS, the bishops at Bavaria issued pastoral letters expressing their protests
and concerns against the injustices by the government officials (at no point do the letter inculpate
Hitler) for persecuting The Church for opposing anti-Catholic doctrines and policies that infringe
on Catholic moral conscience. (Bartley 35–36) The bishops in all their letters express likewise
gratitude and praises for the 1933 speech concerning protection to all Christian’s right to
freedom of religion and speech and that their rights be recognized after the fact, and they
conclude of course with assurance that they are still loyal to the fatherland even with all their
concerns and critiques; all fell on deaf ears, and The Church took to The Vatican, with Pacelli’s
patience already running out by 1937, culminating with MBS. (Bartley 36) After publication, the
encyclical was read on Palm Sunday of that same year in all parishes. The reaction of course,
was not pretty from the NatSoc side, Bartley writes:
“Taken completely off guard, Nazi leaders were enraged beyond measure. Volkischer
Beobachter fumed against “the Jew-God and His deputy in Rome”. Reacting promptly, the
Gestapo seized all the copies of the encyclical that it could lay its hands on and prohibited its
further publication. Catholic publishing houses that defied the ban were closed down, and
their printing presses were destroyed. Reprisals quickly followed. Hundreds of priests and
nuns were dragged before the courts on charges of immorality and of dealing in counterfeit
currency. The Nazi press reported the trials in prurient detail but evidently alienated readers,
as was indicated by a fall in subscriptions.
As well as bringing solace to the Church in Germany, Mit brennender Sorge was significant in
forming public opinion abroad, especially in the United States. Nazi propaganda had insisted
there was no persecution of the Church in Germany. The encyclical nailed that lie and forced
Western democracies to confront the reality. From countries across Europe and in the Americas,
German ambassadors reported to Berlin complaining of the overwhelmingly favourable
reception accorded the encyclical. It came like “a clap of thunder” in the words of François
Charles-Roux, the French ambassador to the Holy See. The historian Anthony Rhodes has called
it “one of the greatest condemnations of a national regime ever pronounced by the Vatican”. It
was less well received in Britain, which at that time was intent on appeasing Hitler, and in Italy,
where the Italian press took a proGerman stance.” (Bartley 37–38 emphasis added)
If Germany wasn’t that bad, Austria had it even worse, as the concordat was aggressively
violated by the NatSoc officials just after it was signed in Germany in 1933. (Bartley 40–41)
After the Anschluss plebiscite concluded, many other waves of persecution ensued after the
 24

Germany concordat, from bishops opposing NatSoc ideology sent to concentration camps or
imprisoned, to Catholic schools closed down and Catholic students expelled from school.
(Bartley 41) Cardinal Innitzer, the same man who thought to encourage and pressure all Austrian
Catholics suspect and critical of the Hitler regime to vote in the plebiscite, regretted his actions
and spoke profoundly critical against the Führer and the government officials’ actions against the
faithful in a courageous sermon, only for his episcopate to be sacked by the Hitler Youth.
(Bartley 41) News of this reached Pius XI, who unsurprisingly condemned Hitler, likening him
to Julius the Apostate, to which Hitler’s response was to ban printing of said speech against him.
(Bartley 41)
With all these events, it is easy to see why MBS had to be published, it also explains the
concerns that MBS points out and writes several condemnations against errors they perceive to
be found within the administration of the NSDAP in all its sectors. I shall analyze in detail what
were these objections and where they are founded considering the events that led to the
publication of MBS.

The analysis of the encyclical’s objections: The key points

I will now turn to a careful analysis with what I have established contextually in the events that
followed the publication of MBS. All I have presented so far will not only clarify the language
and claims made by the encyclical, but each relevant point in the encyclical will be
contextualized from contents within the NSDAP and NatSoc Germany that provide grounds that
prompted MBS to make the arguments it makes. I will first focus on analyzing the contents in the
first six paragraphs (including the opening statement) and connecting them to the events I have
contextualized in the earlier section to demonstrate the coherency and consistency of the events
that The Church has acknowledge to have had happened despite their, to their estimation,
however slight; their hope to achieve a peace treaty and avoid any souring of their already
troublesome tension since 1933 and even earlier. The key points to look forward to after the
analysis of their first six paragraphs are the NSDAP’s concept of race, how they define faith,
their demand of a national Church that is consistent as possible to point 24 of their 25 Point
Program, and other views like how they view immortality and even the Old Testament.
Starting in paragraphs 1 and 2 the encyclical expresses ‘deep anxiety’ in light of the reports it
was given at the time of drafting the encyclical, showcasing that what was reported is something
to be addressed and worthy of publishing said encyclical. (Pius XI, “Mit Brennender Sorge,”
paras.1–2)
In paragraph 3, it reads the following, full quotation:
“When, in 1933, We consented, Venerable Brethren, to open negotiations for a concordat, which
the Reich Government proposed on the basis of a scheme of several years' standing; and when, to
your unanimous satisfaction, We concluded the negotiations by a solemn treaty, We were
prompted by the desire, as it behooved Us, to secure for Germany the freedom of the Church's
beneficent mission and the salvation of the souls in her care, as well as by the sincere wish to
render the German people a service essential for its peaceful development and prosperity. Hence,
 25

despite many and grave misgivings, We then decided not to withhold Our consent for We
wished to spare the Faithful of Germany, as far as it was humanly possible, the trials and
difficulties they would have had to face, given the circumstances, had the negotiations fallen
through. It was by acts that We wished to make it plain, Christ's interests being Our sole object,
that the pacific and maternal hand of the Church would be extended to anyone who did not
actually refuse it.” (Pius XI, “Mit Brennender Sorge” bold and italics added)
The highlighted text reveals that the Vatican officials not only desired to undertake such a
concordat for peaceful measures, but they even knew the transgressions that were going on
behind the scenes, and afterwards, yet they still desired to undertake the concordat for reasons
explained by the cited paragraph. In other words, Pius XI and his officials knew the concordat
would eventually be violated as will be shown in the next paragraph and what has been known
from Cardinal Pacelli himself. (ZENIT)
“If, then, the tree of peace, which we planted on German soil with the purest intention, has not
brought forth the fruit, which in the interest of your people, We had fondly hoped, no one in the
world who has eyes to see and ears to hear will be able to lay the blame on the Church and on her
Head. The experiences of these last years have fixed responsibilities and laid bare intrigues,
which from the outset only aimed at a war of extermination. In the furrows, where We tried to
sow the seed of a sincere peace, other men - the “enemy” of Holy Scripture - oversowed the
cockle of distrust, unrest, hatred, defamation, of a determined hostility overt or veiled, fed from
many sources and wielding many tools, against Christ and His Church. They, and they alone with
their accomplices, silent or vociferous, are today responsible, should the storm of religious war,
instead of the rainbow of peace, blacken the German skies.”(Pius XI, “Mit Brennender Sorge,”
para.4)
The encyclical acknowledges that the concordat, despite the intentions and goals that it sought to
achieve and hoped for; has gone on deaf ears and was violated and in religious, pious language,
expresses the disappointment of said fruits, already validating the events contextualized in earlier
sections of this monograph.
Continuing to paragraph 5, it reads:
“We have never ceased, Venerable Brethren, to represent to the responsible rulers of your
country's destiny, the consequences which would inevitably follow the protection and even the
favor, extended to such a policy. We have done everything in Our power to defend the sacred
pledge of the given word of honor against theories and practices, which it officially endorsed,
would wreck every faith in treaties and make every signature worthless.”(Pius XI, “Mit
Brennender Sorge”)
The encyclical acknowledges certain practices which were clearly against the teachings of
Catholicism, very likely alluding to the legalization of sterilization laws six days prior to the
concordat agreement.
 26

Continuing from the same paragraph, the encyclical acknowledges that the motivations behind
the concordat were always about maintaining peace despite the disadvantageous agreements to
the detriment of The Church, and it follows, pointing clearly to the secular party, Hitler and the
German Reich:
“At the same time, anyone must acknowledge, not without surprise and reprobation, how the
other contracting party emasculated the terms of the treaty, distorted their meaning, and
eventually considered its more or less official violation as a normal policy. The moderation We
showed in spite of all this was not inspired by motives of worldly interest, still less by
unwarranted weakness, but merely by Our anxiety not to draw out the wheat with the cockle; not
to pronounce open judgment, before the public was ready to see its force; not to impeach other
people's honesty, before the evidence of events should have torn the mask off the systematic
hostility leveled at the Church. Even now that a campaign against the confessional schools,
which are guaranteed by the concordat, and the destruction of free election, where Catholics have
a right to their children's Catholic education, afford evidence, in a matter so essential to the life
of the Church, of the extreme gravity of the situation and the anxiety of every Christian
conscience; even now Our responsibility for Christian souls induces Us not to overlook the last
possibilities, however slight, of a return to fidelity to treaties, and to any arrangement that may
be acceptable to the episcopate.” (Pius XI, “Mit Brennender Sorge” bold and italics added)
Here it is observed clearly that the Vatican officials were very aware and informed of the
transgressions against Catholics and their institutions well before and even after the concordat,
and point out that despite the scandal, they were not going to be rash to pronounce judgment
until all evidence was stacked to draw out, without a shadow of a doubt, the veracity of the
reports that they allude to in the encyclical. Given the context provided in the earlier section, it is
clear that the pronouncements in the encyclical are not unfounded but informed by truthful
reports of the situation, otherwise The Vatican would not have been compelled to release such an
encyclical pronouncing said judgments to the other party.
Finally, paragraph 6 is speaking to the German Catholics that have resisted the persecutions and
have reported the incidents to The Vatican and praises them for their perseverance and prayerful
struggles. (Pius XI, “Mit Brennender Sorge,” para.6)
I now move to analyze the major objections the encyclical lays out from the following key
paragraphs: Paragraphs 7-11, 16-17, 23-31 and 33. The paragraphs I have listed are packed with
clarifications and arguments which addressed many doctrinal errors and misconceptions as well
as conflations which were present in National Socialist philosophy. From these paragraphs, I will
focus primarily on the following topics which will eventually tie into other objections present in
the listed paragraphs: race, the Old Testament and Positive Christianity as a whole and how The
Church responded to these. By addressing these three key concepts, one will see how the rest that
The Church addresses connect, since it will be revealed that National Socialism, was indeed far
more than a political position, it was a worldview that encompassed everything even down to
 27

how one decorated interior buildings. (Schultz) Given the all-encompassing nature of said
philosophy, it is no surprise that such would extend even to theological claims, which The
Church felt the need to address. I will point out what were these claims and connect it to how
The Church understood these ideas and why the encyclical displayed condemnatory language
against such ideas.

National Socialist Theories of race and blood: a panoramic analysis

I will provide an analysis of the racialist theories prevalent in the NSDAP since their rise to
power, there were other positions they adopted prior to 1933 when they took political power, but
those were eventually discarded, among them were the Nordicist theories of Hans F. K. Günther,
although his racial science was still used and referenced, his Nordicist elements were largely
abandoned, but not the underlying racialism promoted by Günther during and after 1933, which
will be analyzed in this section.
I will be utilizing three key sources, plus other supplementary material that support these:
Helmut Stellrecht’s Faith and Action (Glauben und Handeln. Ein Bekenntnis der jungen Nation
in its original German), E. H. Schulz’s Why The Aryan Law? A Contribution to the Jewish
Question (Warum Arierparagraph? Ein Beitrag zur Judenfrage in its original German) and Dr.
Walter Gross’ speeches on race and blood. Other material will be referenced to supplement these
main tenets, but these are the three main materials which MBS most likely had in mind when
addressing certain doctrines within National Socialism they felt the need to correct and condemn.
I will present each in light of Paragraphs 8, 17 and 23 in MBS.
Stellrecht’s Faith and Action: An analysis
Helmut Stellrecht’s Faith and Action was a small book that categorically was a “book of virtues”
which all youths were to emulate under the NSDAP, and of course, the only youth organization
that was legal under the NatSoc State was none other than the Hitlerjugend, and Stellrecht
oversaw the military education, among others, for the German youth. Thus, it is a reliable source
to glean on the sort of philosophical framework that was to be introduced to all youth in NatSoc
Germany. The book was published a year after MBS, so analyzing this booklet will be important
in understanding what The Church was responding to; nonetheless, the concordat was signed
four years prior to the booklet, and all the arguments and circumstances alluded to in the
encyclical are not restricted solely to the contents of Stellrechts’s booklet, but they are still
relevant to analyze.
The key concepts to analyze in this booklet are the ones defining Blood, Race, Faith, Volk, the
State and Faith. Others will be touched upon when I analyze the language and tone of the
encyclical, but for now, the ones mentioned will suffice to contextualize the objections The
Church had against the National Socialist worldview.
Blood
First concept the booklet defines is blood. According to Stellrecht, blood is the sum of not just
your generational part, but also future descendants which carry not just the physical component
 28

of your body and theirs, but even their character. (Stellrecht, sec.Blood) The author goes on to
attribute a sort of holiness to said blood three times, clearly emphasizing the sacred nature and
even divine nature of said bloodline, which it attributes “God’s will” living in it. (Stellrecht,
sec.Blood)
It is a rather brief section, but it can be seen already how the author framing blood here already
presents a problem that The Church objects: the attribution of holiness and sacredness to one’s
blood, not only the physicality associated to it, but even the spirituality. It would also appear that
the author argues that even spiritual, immaterial traits are passed on genetically through this
blood, this seems to contradict how The Church understands the human soul. For Stellrecht, the
German blood is holy, sacred, and to intermingle with any non-German taints and ruins this
holiness, as will be seen in the section on race; this of course is problematic to The Church, but
details on this view will be shown further below on other materials.
Race
In here is an interesting definition that Stellrecht gives to race, which some may point to as
evidence that the National Socialist had a predominantly idealist or non-material view of race,
but such a claim will be challenged further down in this analysis, as the NatSoc view of race is
not strictly idealist as some make it out to be.
The first sentence reads:
“Race means to be able to think in a certain way.” (Stellrecht, sec.Race)
According to Stellrecht, race is equivalent to a mindset, a set of behavioral and social cues
indicative of a collective that defines certain people groups. If this was all it is, then we would
expect that the National Socialist would have no problem with racial mixture as the Spanish and
Portuguese, two groups which have never attributed race any ontological importance to impede
them from engaging in racial mixture. However, there is more to the German NatSoc than simply
“a mindset.” The paragraph continues how values like courage and loyalty are noble values
which define the German race “even if he does not have the physical characteristics of the
“Nordic” race.” (Stellrecht, sec.Race) In here it is observed that the German NatSoc recognized
that it did not need strictly, the Nordic phenotype, to acquire values which they attribute to the
Nordic race as they argue elsewhere in the same section. (Stellrecht) The paragraph argues how
each “racial trunk” gave rise to different abilities and skills which he attributes to the totality of
the German race but argues that “the Nordic race must dominate in Germany and shape the soul
of each German. It must win out in the breast of each individual. Today our ideal is not the artist
or the citizen, but the hero.” (Stellrecht) As I have shown in the previous section, this inevitably
connects to how they view the blood attributed to each racial line, meaning, that not only is
“your blood holy”, but that the blood associated to the Nordic line must predominate in Germany
despite the racial diversity they acknowledge amongst themselves. One would think that by
acknowledging such diversity they would consider themselves an already mixed people, but
material elsewhere they address this very question, and they answer with a definitive no and
 29

explain why, and I will show how much later. Despite this, they clearly admonish racial mixture
in the following paragraphs:
“He who mixes his blood with that of foreign inferior races ruins the blood and soul that have
been given to him to pass on in purity to his children. He makes his children impure and
miserable and commits the greatest crime that he as a National Socialist can commit. But he who
follows the laws of race fulfills the great commandment that only like should be brought together
with like, keeping apart those things like fire and water which do not mix.” (Stellrecht)
Notice how the terms “blood and soul” appear distinct. Some may argue that is just a play of
synonyms, but I will show later that such is a naïve and ultimately ad hoc explanation. Thus, for
the National Socialist, it is not only advised to avoid racial mixture, but they even criminalize the
act, already attributing both political and legislative value against interracial marriages. The
motivation and framework operating behind this principle is precisely what The Catholic Church
felt the need to condemn in the MBS encyclical, in here it is observed the divinization and/or
spiritualization of race and blood that The Church observes it is “above their standard value.”
(Pius XI, “Mit Brennender Sorge”) Next section reveals the logical conclusion of why they
operate this way, and further material will detail said mindset and why The Church needed to
respond.
A People (Volk)
Next is the definition of volk, which is close to the word folk, interchangeable to people. In this
section, the author argues that all people should maintain a sense of differentiated state on the
analogy that “God created the trees, the bushes, the weeds and the grass not so that they could
merge into one species, but that each should exist in its own way.” (Stellrecht) Thus, for the
author, to race mix, is to hybridize nature, and they consider this, logically (to them at least), a
violation of natural law. This is of course in contrast to The Church’s own understanding of
Natural Law which they define and clarify in Paragraphs 30-31. Already we see conceptual
differences in The Church’s understanding of Natural Law, and The National Socialists, the
responses and corrections brought forward in MBS indicate an incompatibility The Vatican
detects within National Socialist paradigm. An interesting line in the same section talks about
what is to be meant when an individual dies, the author says:
“What does it mean when an individual dies? It is as if the wind blows leaves from a tree. New
ones grow eternally every spring.” (Stellrecht)
This of course is a claim they address in the encyclical, but I will not go into a comparative
analysis with it yet, however, we can observe that for the National Socialist, the existence of a
peoples or volk is the most sacred creation, and to “make them the same” (understand, to race
mix them with others) is an attack of such a creation. (Stellrecht)
State
In this last section I will analyze before coming back to it in the comparative analysis, I will
display how the National Socialist, according to Stellrecht, views the State. In here, they begin
 30

by stating that the people “gives itself its form through the state. There is only one natural form
for each people, only one state.” (Stellrecht) It is undoubtedly so that the National Socialist view
of the State is totalitarian in nature, but a totalitarian not solely politically but even defines the
very essence of its people. Further in this brief section the author declares the abolition of
parliament and the absolute rule of the Führer, further showing their state’s totalitarian nature.
(Stellrecht)
I have shown clues as to why The Church opposed the National Socialist view of race and even
the State, nonetheless, the booklet is a summary of ideas that have circulated in the NSDAP in
far more detailed manner, thus, Stellrecht’s booklet, although important for the Hitler Youth, it
was not the only educational material they received, if anything, it was one among many which
they were obligated to read and consume. Next section I will analyze other materials that the
NSDAP utilized to define further their racialist theories and how it influenced both the political
members and Germany as a whole.
National Socialist racial doctrines: The Aryan Law, an analysis
The next source in question is E. H. Schulz’s Why The Aryan Law? a book explaining why their
racialist thinking not only matters regarding the Jewish question, which is the focus of the book,
hence the sub-title, but to all other races that have to confront the Jew. Although the book mainly
focuses on the Jew, the background for their arguments obviously extend to other races and
racialism in general, thus the racialism argued in this book is not restricted only to their rhetoric
against the Jewish people but extend even to non-Jews.
In the section The National Socialist Racial Standpoint explains the purpose of their racialist
thinking, the authors argue that their racialism is not one motivated by disdain for the foreign or
that in any way demeans or makes ontological statements about each racial group, maintaining
that each group has their own values, cultures, and outlook in life. (Schulz and Frercks) They
argue therefore, that when you race mix, you “harm both sides.” (Schulz and Frercks) They
argue, contextually that the Jewish race has sought out to erase racial consciousness from the
people and argue that the consequence of this, is the erasure of racial boundaries and cultures.
(Schulz and Frercks) In other words, they have a segregationist racialist standpoint. From this
section and onwards it is clear that they do not simply overemphasize the spiritual aspect of one’s
race, as they acknowledge this, but they argue that when, physically, you mix your blood with
another person from another race, you harm them because you taint the thinking that defines
their boundary. (Schulz and Frercks) They not only have a segregationist view of race, but they
extend this to even to the concept of identity. By adopting a segregationist racialist view of life,
you naturally will adopt a subtracting view of identity or an exclusionary form of identity, this of
course means that, for the National Socialist, a person that is mixed race, cannot possibly possess
any tangible identity, they therefore adopt a bastardizing position on mixed race identities, to
mix is identical to bastardize, this is precisely how they conceptualize race not only in itself but
the phenomenon on race mixing in another book published three years later titled On the German
People and its Territories (Vom deutschen Volk und seinem Lebensraum. Handbuch für die
 31

Schulung in der HJ in its original German), this same book, as the full title describes, was
another handbook to be read by the Hitler Youth, thus Stellrecht’s booklet was not the only
manual, this handbook even predates Faith and Action and details a more complete vision of
their racialist thinking. From the same handbook, I quote from the first chapter titled “Human
Inequality” where they fully describe what their view of race has been since their inception as a
party:
“The foundation of the National Socialist worldview is the knowledge of human inequality. No
one will likely disagree with this as long as we stick to physical appearance. It is obvious that
the “red skins,” the “yellow people,” the Negroes, and the whites are very different. And all
whites are not the same. The careful observer can find differences in physical size and shape.
The color of the eyes, hair, and skin also varies greatly.
But there are also spiritual differences between people. That is particularly clear when various
people speak about a particular subject. For one person, work is a “curse,” “God’s punishment,”
a burden that one should remove as rapidly as possible. For the other, it is a necessary part of
existence that gives human life its meaning. For one, bravery and loyalty are nothing but great
stupidity. He would rather be “a coward for a few minutes” than to “be dead for the rest of one’s
life.” For another, bravery and loyalty are the characteristics used to value and esteem people. He
holds to his word, in good times or ill. He cannot live without honor and would rather die than be
a coward.
People differ in more than their physical characteristics. Just as deep, and with no way of
bridging the gap, is the differences in spirit and soul. body, spirit, and soul together make up the
whole person, since they form a unified whole. Their inner relationships must therefore be
studied. Then we will clearly recognize the vast difference between those of German blood and
the Jews, although their physical characteristics might otherwise suggest that they were both
members of the same human grouping. We then understand human inequality. We act according
to this understanding.” (Bennecke, chap.I italics added)
You can see that the National Socialist did not simply acknowledge phenotypical differences, but
not only did they acknowledge their psychological differences as a group, they even tied the
psychology in virtue of their physicality, to argue then the great differences between not just all
races, but the German versus the Jew, and with this they argue that the racial mixture that
occurred in countries like Paraguay, were illicit and produced:
“[…] unhappy bastards who were neither white nor native. In most cases, they inherited the bad
characteristics of both groups, lacking spiritual stability. In our time, too, certain people
occasionally lacked a feeling for racial honor or racial defilement. The numerous bastards
resulting from relations with the black occupation forces in the Rhine region, or those that came
from relations between Jews and Germans, are tragic examples.” (Bennecke, chap.I)
 32

You can thus see why this line of thinking has remained unchanged as early as 1934, the year
Schulz’s book on the Aryan Law, the segregationist view of race thus naturally entailed a
bastardizing position of racial identity for mixed race offsprings. They believed that the
Spaniards that mixed with the natives in what is now Paraguay produced unhappy bastards,
arguing they are “neither white nor native.” Indicating the bastardizing and subtractive view of
racial identity. Subtractive because the mixture subtracted both the racial elements of their
parents, and bastardizing, as a consequence, they inherited, and could only inherit, the bad,
destabilizing spiritual qualities of each. (Bennecke, chaps.I, IV) It is clear that such racialist
thinking leaves no room for a symbiotic, integrationist position of race, and this of course, we
can see that as far as 1934 and even the same year as the publication of MBS; The Church has
observed that such ideas, ultimately, are divinization and idolatrization of one’s race. I will
explain and argue in detail why this racialism is ultimately idolatrous much later, but it is
sufficient to say that this sort of racialism is clearly not only foreign to Catholic Teaching but
condemned. (M.J. Congar, “The Racial Point of View Is Foreign to the Catholic Tradition”)
We also see this thinking reflected in the Reichsführer himself, Heinrich Himmler, in his
Rassenpolitik speech, in particular, although a speech tentatively dated during the war period, it
still takes from the same ideas presented during the interwar period. Himmler points out how
from the inception of Christianity, racial mixing constituted a medium of unity that to him, have
hurt and violated this “sacred order” which other National Socialists hold dear. (Himmler) In this
same speech, Himmler raises this objection, which we will examine critically in detail in the
Hispano ethos chapter:
“Being absorbed into the Christian community and receiving Christian education did nothing to
change or improve the nature or lifestyles of the various peoples, however. They were only
rendered uncertain of their true nature, meaning that foreign influences interfered in areas where
only blood should speak, for example the relations between men and women, spousal selection,
the relationship between family and people, indeed in relations to foreign customs and lifestyles.
In over a thousand years, Christianity has not succeeded in raising the cultural level of Negroes
or South American Indians. But the Church has built walls where none should exist, for example
those between Germans of varying confessions. And it has torn down walls that nature
established by blessing marriages between Aryans and Jews, Negroes and Mongols. It took
millions of valuable people from their god-ordained roles in the people’s community and put
them in monasteries or the priesthood. Its doctrines are responsible for the fall of races, peoples,
and cultures.” (Himmler, sec.The Enemies of the National Socialist Worldview and their
Doctrine of the Equality of Humanity: The Churches)
As can be seen to the National Socialist, it is instrumental that blood and racial segregationist
thinking prevail to correct the “wrongs” of The Catholic Church and even the Roman Empire,
who they believed violated this principle. I will expand in the detail the implications of this
thinking and how it completely differs from the Hispano Catholic framework that has emerged in
Hispanic civilization when I touch upon the positive case for the Hispano Catholic ethos.
 33

The lines of evidence for this stance do not end in these two materials. There remains to analyze
a prominent figure in the racial education of the NSDAP: Dr Walter Gross.
Dr. Walter Gross and National Socialist racial doctrines: A panorama
Dr Walter Gross was not only a German physician, but he was appointed as head of office of the
NSDAP’s Racial Policy and thus, the head to impart the educational material coherent with said
racial policies. This means Dr Gross’ views on race are not only politically binding, but they are
even culturally and legally binding as they form the basis of how every member in the NSDAP
ought to apply these policies to the entire nation of Germany and its colonies. As will be shown,
Dr Gross’ views on race has shaped and defined the view of race of the entire NSDAP as an
administration and its racial worldview. We have three main materials all directly from him: a
written speech to German women, and transcribed radio speeches regarding Blood and Race, all
published in the periods of 1934-1935. Before I discuss his speech to the German women, I will
first discuss his radio speeches, which will contextualize his speech to the German women and
even the prior materials discussed so far.
Radio speech on Race
This speech was delivered on October 10th of 1934, just a month when Hitler was declared head
of State. In this speech, Gross highlights the following which I will touch upon next: the National
Socialist philosophy on race, as well as how they define race, their policies concerning race and
their justification.
Gross begins defining race as follows, quoting:
“The word “race” still has two primary meanings today. In one sense, it means all the inherited
physical and intellectual characteristics and abilities that a person has, in contrast to the abilities
that he gains during his life. In this sense, “race” means something like inheritance or genetics.
However, the word in its deepest and most important sense applies to whole groups of people
who are separated from other groups of people by their common genetic inheritance.”(Gross,
“Race: A Radio Speech by Dr. Groß”)
In this sense, race has taken on a physicalist meaning. He eventually goes over the spiritual traits,
but it’s important to highlight that, contextually in discussing racial policies, race here has a more
physical importance and the limitations he highlights regarding immaterial traits, are tied to
physical limitations.
Regarding inheritance, he makes it clear:
“The inherited characteristics than an individual or a whole people have are more
important than environmental influences.
He who lacks the inherited traits that result in strength or height will never become strong or tall
however good his diet or however much he is active in sports. Education and spiritual training
can only benefit someone who has inherited clear understanding and a clear mind.
 34

The physical and spiritual nature of each individual, you as well as me, is determined by his
inheritance, that which we have received from our parents, grandparents, and ancestors. Our own
efforts, or the education others give us, can only develop what we have inherited, or make it less
effective. Such efforts can never change one person into another one, making him either better or
worse than he was when born.” (Gross, “Race: A Radio Speech by Dr. Groß” bold in original)
Thus, we are faced with the kernel that defines the racialist philosophy in National Socialist
thought: to them, you are fixed to one inheritance that you can never change. Without discussing
the scientific errors implied in these statements, it is clear that this explains why they have
prohibited racial mixtures. Gross points out how because the blood of every racial group is
different, this means their phenotype and even their way of thinking is different, thus, he
concludes, that these differences must be kept as is and shouldn’t be intermingled because to
him, these differences were established by God and cannot be crossed. (Gross, “Race: A Radio
Speech by Dr. Groß”)
We can see the philosophical errors ─and its theological implications─ present from an
argumentative standpoint, that is, the error is not found observationally, but conceptually as well
as the conclusions derived from the definitions used to grounds said concepts. As a result, we see
why The Church would condemn such lines of thought, nonetheless, the detailed showcase as to
how exactly is condemned will be shown after contextualizing the theories of race.
Radio speech on Blood
This speech was aired on August 7th of 1935. Here Gross continues from his speech from last
year on race and talks about the importance of blood.
Right off the bat, we see Gross describing that the National Socialist view of race is not merely
an intellectual enterprise from a biological standpoint, but that he sees that such observations
carry over to sociopolitical implications, underlying how National Socialism is not simply a
political ideology, but a worldview that encompasses every aspect of our lives. (Gross, “Blood Is
Holy-A Radio Speech by Dr. Groß”)
This speech is different in that most of the paragraphs that follow are of Gross addressing various
claims from his opponents, ranging from objections on scientific grounds, to the place of ethics
and finally religion. Our attention will focus more on the final paragraph since it is relevant to
our future analysis. In this paragraph, Gross tries, to my estimation, failing; to refute the
objection of racial idolatry that is inherent in the racialist worldview of National Socialism. He
rejects the objection that accuses him and his worldview of “barren materialism.” (Gross, “Blood
Is Holy-A Radio Speech by Dr. Groß”) He asks a series of questions, for example, after
responding and denying the accusation of materialism, he asks:
“If we bow once more before the facts of creation instead of preferring empty liberal or
scholastic chatter, how is that impious? If we are once more conscious of our own nature, of the
inheritance given to us from Heaven, is that human arrogance or idolatry? If we once again
humbly understand that our lives as humans are bound by our race, and that we can know
 35

nothing other than follow and act according to the laws of blood that God himself has placed us
under, how can that be heresy or impiety? It is not in fact greater piety, and in the most genuine
and truest form?” (Gross, “Blood Is Holy-A Radio Speech by Dr. Groß”)
To the impressionable mind, Gross would appear to be framing these questions in a way that tries
to avoid being accused of race idolatry, however, I will later show that these frames of questions
are both framed from theological conflation, philosophical error and, ultimately, a self-delusional
attempt to escape the inherent idolatrous position that MBS has seen in these ideas. For example,
Gross admits that the observations of racial difference he sees something divine and holy
because, to him, he sees “the Power of The Creator.” (Gross, “Blood Is Holy-A Radio Speech by
Dr. Groß”) However, it is in here where we can observe the error I have pointed out before, it is
not found observationally, that is, the error is not found when acknowledging, as a matter of
observation, categorical differences, biologically and psychologically; among different racial
groups, the error is found in his sacral attribution to these observations, as he himself admits. I
will expand in detail these errors when I return to analyze in detail the paragraphs that object to
these errors alongside other derived errors from their material.
Racial policy speech to German women
Walter Gross published this written speech on October 13th of 1934, three days after his radio
speech on race. Having contextualized his concepts of race and blood, we can see how he talked
about this to female German audiences. He begins his speech talking about how Germany has
forgotten their now discovered “laws of race” and discusses the spiritual significances of them.
(Gross, National Socialist Racial Policy: A Speech to German Women) Further on, he eventually
gets into what can undoubtedly be the NSDAP’s eugenics position, which of course, is not
incidental, but consequential, to their racialist worldview. For example, Gross mentions how man
has attempted to fight and change the “ancient laws of selection” and how Germany, and thus
German women, must practice a form of natural selection by eugenics means to discard those
who are weak and unable to survive without external help, and only allow those who can survive
to live in society. (Gross, National Socialist Racial Policy: A Speech to German Women) Gross
goes further to illustrate how a mentally ill negro from England cost the State over 26k Marks to
provide care to show why his racial eugenics policies must be implemented. (Gross, National
Socialist Racial Policy: A Speech to German Women) The details he goes over clearly are
practices that the Pope at the time has condemned four years earlier in his encyclical Casti
Connubi, published on December 31st of 1930, the most relevant to this discussion is paragraph
68 of the encyclical, which reads, quote:
“Finally, that pernicious practice must be condemned which closely touches upon the natural
right of man to enter matrimony but affects also in a real way the welfare of the offspring. For
there are some who over solicitous for the cause of eugenics, not only give salutary counsel for
more certainly procuring the strength and health of the future child - which, indeed, is not
contrary to right reason - but put eugenics before aims of a higher order, and by public
authority wish to prevent from marrying all those whom, even though naturally fit for
 36

marriage, they consider, according to the norms and conjectures of their investigations, would,
through hereditary transmission, bring forth defective offspring. And more, they wish to
legislate to deprive these of that natural faculty by medical action despite their unwillingness;
and this they do not propose as an infliction of grave punishment under the authority of the state
for a crime committed, not to prevent future crimes by guilty persons, but against every right and
good they wish the civil authority to arrogate to itself a power over a faculty which it never had
and can never legitimately possess.” (Pius XI, “Casti Connubii” italics and bold added)
The next paragraph indicates how the family is far more sacred than the State and that Pius XI
argues when it comes to the body and marriage, the State has no right to incur impediments and
legislation on the sacrament. (Pius XI, “Casti Connubii,” paras.69–73) So not only are there
grounds for MBS to condemn the racialism inherent in National Socialism, but even their
consequential policies regarding matrimony, a Sacrament that is administered by The Church
herself in which the State has no right to tamper with.
To further illustrate how Gross and the NSDAP’s racialism falls more on conceptual and
theological error on race, Gross alludes, in a fallacious way, to Matthew 19: 5-6 when Christ
responded to the Pharisees regarding marriage and divorce, Christ of course cites Genesis 2: 24,
but Gross inverts this to mean: “What God has separated, man should not bring together.”
(Gross, National Socialist Racial Policy: A Speech to German Women) Earlier before he makes
this inverted parallel, he makes the claim that racial differences are not only not accidental, but
they are so different they imply different natures or ontologies. (Gross, National Socialist Racial
Policy: A Speech to German Women) To intermingle any racial group, therefore, consists of
violating divine order. One must wonder if Gross himself understands even the objection of
racial idolatry if he goes so far as to not only invert a Scriptural argument whose context is
marriage, but to attribute legal divinity to these accidental differences. It is clear that MBS was
not ignorant of this context when the encyclical made the argument in Paragraph 8 that it made
and laid out.
Gross makes the argument that by keeping these differences pure and unaltered, we respect the
races. The fallacy inherent in this argument is tied to how only the purist position can achieve
respect of human dignity in all aspects of human life, including racial. Why do two heteroracial
couples automatically incur disrespect when they choose, of their own volition, to intermingle?
Clearly there is more to respect for human dignity than simply adopting a segregationist view of
race, much less adopting a bastardizing position towards mixed race offsprings.
Thus finalizes the contextualization of racial thinking from Dr Gross, now I will showcase how
his racialist worldview has permeated even beyond the confines of intrapolitical circles. I will
demonstrate various materials that showcase that his racialist worldview spread even to
elementary and senior high school education.
 37

Racial education and the start of Mit Brennender Sorge: culminating context
At this point, I will illustrate more lines of evidence to illustrate that the National Socialist
theories of race and blood were problematic to The Catholic Church and thus prompted
responses from the encyclical of MBS.
The German National Catechism
This book instills religious metaphor that is only appropriate for a strictly religious context, but
this is unsurprising as has been shown, the National Socialist worldview is more than a political
idea, it is a lifestyle, one that even takes a religious form, and this book, published in 1934, is no
exception. This book was to be read to the German youth. On the section of race, it clearly
defines race, first and foremost, from a physical, phenotypic plane. (May) The definition on
inheritance is identical to what Gross discusses in his racialist speeches. Consequentially, the
“catechism” argues, under the question “what is racial defilement?”; that to intermingle with a
foreign race, in this case, a Jew; is to engage in not only racial defilement, but self-hatred and
self-contempt. (May)
Racial museum and racial science classroom
I decided to put these two lines of evidences together because they relate to both the concept of
race but also the eugenic policies consequential to these concepts.
In the racial exhibitions, you can observe posters relating to hereditary diseases and sterilization
posters arguing clearly for eugenic policies to curb these issues (see figures 1a and b):

Fig 1a: Poster showing the stark contrast of parents of poor racial stock reproducing more than those of racial stock.
(J.F. Lehmanns Verlag)
 38

Fig 1b: Sterilization poster justifying sterilization laws implemented on July 14th of 1933.(J.F. Lehmanns Verlag)

These eugenic policies are all condemned by The Catholic Church and the National Socialists
were aware of such, hence the opposition to many Catholics and their subsequent persecution to
force them to conform to the State, and why the NSDAP barred Catholics to influence laws
against these practices.
This is further explained, from a book utilized in school grades from 4th to 8th on 1937, the same
year MBS was published, where it goes over racial policies and concepts that drove the NSDAP
consistently in their administration, again, these concepts have gone largely unchanged
throughout their terms in power.
In this book, under the Grade 8 curriculum, they discuss, first topic on racial inheritance and its
preservation, and they justify this by citing Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which reads:
“Our race, too, has its racial inheritance, and a culture that grows out of it. We must fight for it.
The Führer gave us a high goal to fight for when he said: “We must fight for the existence and
growth of our race and our people, the feeding of its children, the maintenance of the purity of its
blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, and fulfill the mission given to us by the
Creator of the universe.” (Hitler, Mein Kampf).
The success and final victory of this great task depends:
• on the law of selection
• on the elimination of those with hereditary illness
• on the promotion of genetically strong lines
 39

• on maintaining the purity of the blood.” (Bareth and Vogel, sec.Preserving Racial
Inheritance)
As you can see, blood purity is a key component in their racialist worldview, and a purity defined
primarily from biological standpoint, not strictly “purity of a particular way of thinking.”
Further below the quoted paragraph the book discusses various examples and outlines certain
statistical observations regarding genetic diseases, including some which they think are diseases
like “feeblemindedness”, which they argue that in order to eliminate them, they require
sterilizing the unfit and augmenting sound racial stock through their eugenics program, which
undoubtedly imply barring individuals from marrying voluntarily even people they love
disregarding genetic fitness. (Bareth and Vogel)
In the following section which expands on racial purity, the book helps the reader define what
they mean by racial mixture and bastardization, I will quote the relevant paragraphs, as the one
before my selection only alludes to an example of canine dog breeds.
In the book under Maintaining purity of blood under the sub-header “Race mixing among
humans” I cite:
“We have already spoken about one racial mixing. That had to do with the racial development of
the German people. May we also speak of it as bastardization? If we look into the face of the
German people, peering deeply into its spiritual life, we are absolutely convinced that the joining
of these six races into one whole people was not a bastardization. Their genetic traits joined in a
wonderful and harmonious way to form the German people, from which our German culture
sprang.
We speak of bastardization in the case of a mixed race (Mischlinge) that develops from
fundamentally different races or racial mixtures, as, for example, one between Europeans and
Negroes, Europeans and Asians, Europeans and Indians, Europeans and Jews, etc. Such
mixed race individuals carry the contradictory traits of both races, resulting in a confusion.
Bastards are unhappy people. A bastard of European and Negroid descent has some of the
characteristics of the white race, and some characteristics of the black race. He unsuited both for
the jungles and hot sun of the south, but also for the north. Two souls live and compete within the
breast of the bastard. He never finds peace and a harmonious, balanced life. The hard laws of
blood force him to live a life of racial confusion and fragmentation.” (Bareth and Vogel bold and
italics added)
Thus, their conception of mixed races is consistent with Gross’: to mix is identical to bastardize,
and to be bastardized is to belong to a mixture. Furthermore, they argue that for the mixed
offspring, the racial quality only heightens for the lower caste, but the higher ones have their
highest quality subtracted, thus to the National Socialist, the net result is a net negative. (Bareth
and Vogel) Then they draft a summary what they believe made Rome fall, which they attribute to
the racial mixing of different groups as the empire expanded. (Bareth and Vogel) It is a rather
 40

interesting admission and observation they remark about not only the nature of the Roman
Empire, but on empires in general that emulate the Roman and even the Hispanic Empire. This
demonstrates clear implications of National Socialist Germans in both foreign policy of
expansion and imperialism: they believe that an empire must not integrate and mix with those it
conquers, but must segregate them, thus we observe the mindset of not just the German psyche
but its similarity with the British in how they undertook imperial ambition. Detailed commentary
on this will be touched upon in the section on the Hispanic ethos.
In the header “National Socialist Racial Thinking and the Peoples” further reinforces how racial
purity to them is not only important, but “[…] to follow the holy laws of blood that we follow,
for mixing with widely foreign races means the betrayal of the blood of each people and eventual
decline. The fundamental reason for excluding foreign-raced groups from a people’s body is not
discrimination or contempt, but rather the realization of otherness. Only through such thinking
will the peoples again become healthy and able to respect each other.” (Bareth and Vogel) It is
difficult to reconcile those last sentences and their insistence that mixed offsprings are eternally
bastardized and unhappy by virtue of their mixture. You also notice the clear divinization and
sacralisation of blood and race despite trying to argue they are not being idolatrous. That will be
dealt with in the next section.
In summary, we have seen the context that defines the National Socialist’s view of race, how
their view of race is, while not entirely materialistic, it is nonetheless of mystic, overly spiritual
and takes on a religious order equivalent to Church relics and the Eucharist itself, set apart for a
sacred and divine purpose. Here, is how I will demonstrate why The Church in her encyclical
MBS, especially in Paragraph 8, not only used the term idolatrous, but what they even
understood by idolatrous. I will not only showcase how, but I will showcase this in the second
encyclical in consideration: NoAB and demonstrate how The Church understood said adjective
when judging certain positions, she sees to be “exalted beyond its standard value.”

The language of the encyclical

Having established the context of National Socialist theories of race, how key figures and source
materials have defined and outlined the concept of race and its importance, I will now return our
attention to the encyclical of MBS. The first step before analyzing, at the very least regarding the
concept of race; to establish the language of the encyclical. When I am asking or investigating
the language of the encyclical, I do not attempt to engage in a strict, formal grammar analysis of
the encyclical, rather, the analysis is in the linguistic tonality that the encyclical was written. I
will also point out that, what I mean by the tonality, I do not restrict to emotional tonality (is the
encyclical written angrily, sad, joyful, etc.), rather, I will also analyze the tonality that measures
the level of display of authority and exhortation, or whether the tonality has a tone that has a
clarificatory tone, etc.
The first step is to look at the title: “With burning concern” or similar titles along similar line.
What is the nature of this concern? The answer is obvious, having cited the first six paragraphs,
 41

the concerns are of the nature of disappointment, corrective and disciplinary tone. In other
words, this concern expressed in MBS is not a concern of mere skeptical suspicion of
interrogative nature, nowhere in the letter indicates it, rather, it is a concern driven by, as the
encyclical points out “deep anxiety.” The anxiety also shares the same nature as concerns
communicated in the encyclical itself, an anxiety before events and circumstances that The
Vatican believes require not just discipline in moral character, but doctrinal discipline. The
encyclical would have no motive to engage in doctrinal discipline if the Church had no context
whatsoever to work with, to undertake such disciplinary measures, and as has been shown in the
earlier sections, as well as the historical context that led to the encyclical, The Vatican and her
officials are very much equipped and informed of the circumstances and concepts that have
circulated in the NSDAP and the German nation to warrant the publication of MBS. It is
important to keep this in mind, as it is the typical pattern to judge encyclicals’ level of authority
by many self-proclaimed traditionalists, more often than not, of the sedevacantist or other
schismatic sects; by the mere level of tonality written. This level of judgment is laid to
magisterial documents such as Nostra Aetate, arguing not only on their low authority but go so
far as to attribute it heretical status for not only being “too nice” or soft on the Jews and other
religious sects, but going against the “harsh, confrontational tone” from other Conciliar
declarations. The fallacy that is displayed in such absurdity, should be avoided when analyzing
the tonality displayed in MBS. I will showcase, each relevant paragraph in the encyclical, how
said disciplinary tone is displayed while also re-citing and comparing the source materials
relevant cited in the previous section. With this established, I begin the analysis.
The sacralisation of race: racialatry, a critical analysis
Earlier I provided source material to contextualize the racial theories Pius XI and his officials
had to deal with when writing MBS. We are not to underestimate the brevity of Paragraph 8 and
judge it to be ill-informed on the National Socialist theories of race, as I have provided earlier,
the paragraph is well within its right to declare what it says in paragraph 8, which I will quote
fully and break it down quickly afterwards:
“Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories
of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community - however necessary and
honorable be their function in worldly things - whoever raises these notions above their standard
value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world
planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life
which that faith upholds.” (Pius XI, “Mit Brennender Sorge” italics added)
First off, paragraph 8 doesn’t even stop at race, it even mentions “the people” (for the German
NatSoc, the volk), “the State”, “a particular form of State” and even “the depositories of power”;
the Church recognizes that in this paragraph, the errors of National Socialism do not just extend
to race, which is appropriate and expected since National Socialism is not simply an ideology
about race, it encompasses every aspect of human affairs, thus this paragraph addresses
exaltation of even those aspects of said human affairs. Following up with a note that she
 42

recognizes the importance of cherishing and looking out for said values of human affairs,
recognizing that when she makes these proclamations, she is not denying or diminishing the
value inherent in these depositories. Thus, at the very bare minimum, the National Socialist and
The Church can at least agree that such depositories are important to cherish and protect.
Nonetheless, there is one error The Church sees where the National Socialist errs tremendously,
and that is the error I have pointed out in the contextualization of NatSoc race theories: the
sacralisation of race. I have mentioned, and I will reiterate, that the error Gross and the National
Socialists do not understand is not that The Church thinks that they are in error for recognizing,
seeing or observing categorical differences both in biology and in psychology of each racial
group as a matter of observation, the error is in their mystical and divine attribution to them in a
manner that is inappropriate, the most significant error is of course, the sacral nature attributed to
these observations. What is wrong with attributing sacral nature to race? Do Catholics not
attribute sacral nature to bread and wine to transubstantiate it to the Blood and Body of Christ?
Not so, here is a key, very missed difference: when The Church consecrates bread and wine, they
do not sacralise the ontology of bread and wine as is, rather, the sacredness is after the
transubstantiation ritual, in other words, the sacred nature is imparted during the ritual of
transubstantiation into something that is by nature, truly sacred, which is The Blood and Body
of Christ. Now what about when the Church stores these objects even before the process? The
sacredness is only attributed in so far as it pertains to Church Tradition that has declared that
these objects have already been imparted special position in the liturgy by Christ Himself, not
that there is intrinsically sacred about bread and wine as a category, but only the bread and wine
set apart for liturgical purposes. Is this equivalent to how Gross and the National Socialist
regime treat race? As has been shown, this is far from how they treat race, and herein lies the
error that The Vatican sharply points out: unless there is special revelation, that specifically
imparts some sacramental value to the phenotype of particular racial groups that the National
Socialist can prove, under even Natural Law and Natural Theology, there is no appropriate
measure for which anyone, not even the Jews themselves, can impart sacral value and treat it as
something ontologically holy and divine, not to be tainted, to the level of divine importance that
you raise its ontology tantamount to Divine Law as morals and ethics have. Herein lies the
racialatry that The Church has seen within the NSDAP and felt the need to condemn it. To
reiterate in briefer terms: race, in the National Socialist worldview, to the irony of the ideologues
themselves; has taken a sacral position that is inappropriate, both by nature of said object and by
virtue of erroneous philosophy and theology that informed said sacralization of race. How is this
sacralization manifested? It is in the very mouths of the writers cited in the earlier section, from
rendering that your blood is holy by Stellrecht, and that in it “God’s will lives”, to attributing
some Divine Law of segregational purity to the accidentality of the racial differentiation and
impart a sacral barrier to these differentiations that, if crossed, incurs a crime of nature, and that
this crime results in immediate bastardization and unhappiness as if one has committed sacrilege
against nature as if committing religious sacrilege as many of these authors cited in the source
materials indicate. In other words, the idolatry inherent in racialatry does not even need to take a
 43

sort of liturgical offering to race in the strict religious sense, as if one is to render offering to
one’s race like one renders offering to a god, but the intellectual sacral attribution that is only
appropriate to a specific religious setting, is transferred to a realm that has not received said
privilege, imparted from man, to said object. Yves M.J. Congar points this out in the very book
regarding the race question when speaking of missionary works to different ethnicities across the
world:
“Obviously, what we are really concerned with here is the people, i.e. a phenomenon belonging
to the world of history and culture-not, in the strict sense, to that of biology. Racist writers
constantly fall into the fallacy of passing from one order to another and of attributing to a more
or less mythical entity, which they call race, a variety of features which are really due to
historical or local conditions or result from cultural or historical factors. The idea of “race” is
not a concept stemming from the Catholic tradition, and has no place in theology, missiology,
pastoral theology or canon law. All that the Church can do in this field is to take note, where
appropriate, of the conclusions of science. After all, since all spiritual souls are equal, but one
individual nevertheless differs from another in intelligence and character by reason of a different
balance or a different degree of perfection in his bodily powers, and since those bodily aptitudes
are in part inherited and genetically determined, why should not a group of men derived from a
common stock at a more or less distant date display a special type of temperament, conditioned
by heredity and therefore racial in nature? There is nothing inherently impossible in this; the
difficulty is that intermarriage has taken place almost everywhere on so large a scale that the
reality of race is extremely problematical. There is no doubt that what we should speak of is not
“races” but “peoples”. (M.J. Congar, “The Church and the Races from the Standpoint of the
Church’s Missionary Work”)
Now the National Socialist would respond to the last part by decrying that because of these
intermarriages happening, the reality of race they want us to see is demolished, but such a
response only proves Congar’s point and mine: the observation of these differences does not
impede marriages between them anymore than the vast differences between male and female,
impede each sex to cohabitate in any environment. It therefore is not enough to point out vast
differences in racial groups to argue for a purist nationalist ideal, this is the is-ought fallacy
transition that is committed even by many secularists. Anthropology can only give us descriptive
observations about reality, but how one interprets these from a moral or political framework has
no bearing nor relation to these observations, nor has Catholic tradition opted to use Natural Law
theology to prohibit any intermarriages between races as Congar points out elsewhere. (M.J.
Congar, “The Racial Point of View Is Foreign to the Catholic Tradition”)
Thus, to summarize: it is not at all necessary that The Church use the idolatry term to mean an
exclusive religious worship in a strict, liturgical sense to describe what is wrong in National
Socialist racialism, rather it is only enough that the National Socialist, in fallaciously attributing
sacral and some quasi-divine nature to racial characteristics to conclude a purist and
segregationist view of identity is what is sufficient for The Church to consider the National
 44

Socialist racialism as exalting their value “above their standard value”, and I shall demonstrate
how The Church has used this term elsewhere when criticizing a totalitarian version of the State,
which the National Socialist does commit, but I will analyze this in detail when I move to Non
Abiammo Bisogno on describing Fascist statism as “statolatry.” As we will observe, both forms
of idolatry commit more or less the same fallacy that MBS in Paragraph 8 points out. Thus, the
National Socialist cannot escape and hand wave under the notion that Paragraph 8 only
condemns “race worship” or “racial idolatry” in a strict, liturgo-religious sense of the word,
because as I have shown, it also includes exalting even “a particular form of State” beyond its
standard value. Clearly, the clause “divinizes them in an idolatrous level” does not strictly mean
a specific definition of idolatry like how a Christian would think of idolatry observed in pagan
religions, but at least, intellectually and in some cases, functionally, does bring in a pagan
outlook towards these objects.
Now what do we make of the earlier paragraph, the one which The Pope condemns pantheistic
confusion of reality? I would argue that Paragraph 7’s condemnation is due to how the errors
pointed out in Paragraph 8 are a direct consequence of pantheistic confusion. In a rather indirect
way, when National Socialists speak of “bowing down” to the facts of “the laws of race” or
creation when speaking of race, they do so from the fallacy of distorting how God has allowed
these differentiations to play out, and confuse it that God created these differentiations for the
sole purpose of maintaining them as if God consecrated these differences in a religious sense, as
was very clear in Gross’ language in his speech to the German women; it is in this sense that The
Pope has seen another manifest error from their racialist worldview. It is not exactly necessary to
think each condemnation in a specific logical order of priority but simply that, in one way or
another, the Nationalist Socialist worldview has manifest theological errors due to their departure
of seeing the world through the lens of an old Catholic Germany, and I will point this out how
this was so in the next section.
The Old Testament Question: The NSDAP’s Nazification of The Apostolic Tradition
The next paragraph to analyze has to do with the Old Testament. Paragraph 15 is only relevant so
far as to The Pope making a positive argument for including the OT in our canon, but Paragraph
16 says this, clearly talking about the NSDAP’s treatment of the OT:
“Whoever wishes to see banished from church and school the Biblical history and the wise
doctrines of the Old Testament, blasphemes the name of God, blasphemes the Almighty's plan of
salvation, and makes limited and narrow human thought the judge of God's designs over the
history of the world: he denies his faith in the true Christ, such as He appeared in the flesh, the
Christ who took His human nature from a people that was to crucify Him; and he understands
nothing of that universal tragedy of the Son of God who to His torturer's sacrilege opposed the
divine and priestly sacrifice of His redeeming death, and made the new alliance the goal of the
old alliance, its realization and its crown.” (Pius XI, “Mit Brennender Sorge”)
The strong language cannot be disregarded, Paragraphs 7 and 8 say they stray away from the true
faith, but here they say that just banishing the OT or reinterpreting it under the NatSoc paradigm,
 45

whose racialism departs from the true faith, consists of blasphemy. Intense language for an
encyclical that is only “concerned” with the NSDAP. Now the question arises: has the NSDAP
done this systematically as a regime? The answer is a definitive yes.
Dr David Austen Robert Clark has done a doctoral thesis documenting this phenomenon, in this
same thesis he brings the example of an exegete within Nazi Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
which does not falter to the NatSoc ideology, unfortunately, his exegesis has not found fertile
grounds within the NSDAP and his works have gone largely ignored, hence, why Pope Pius XI
felt the need to bring up the question of the OT in NSDAP circles. In the first chapter he talks
about the phenomenon of the ideology that has forged and culminated in the German Christian
Movement on May of 1932. (Clark 12) Clark argues, citing Bergen, that the movement was a
culmination of other ideas the National Socialists have been developing as early as 1920. (Clark
12–13) Among the themes and ideas the German Christian Movement drew upon, were of
course, the father of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, and the völkisch movements in
contemporary Germany at the time. (Clark 13) Thus the mystical and quasi-Darwinian theories
of race and blood developed in NatSoc Germany and their appeal to Martin Luther has
developed a unique anti-Jew position to the level it culminated with the rejection of the Old
Testament. (Clark 13) This movement, although largely of Protestant organ, has spread and
implanted itself so deep in German soil and psyche that it underplayed its demographic numbers,
Clark notes:
“German Christian membership reached approximately 600,000 in the mid-1930s, comprising a
minority in Protestant Germany; however, this figure underestimates their impact, as “they
exerted an influence far out of proportion to their numbers.” As Heschel suggests, the “power
and influence” of the movement may best be gauged by attending not only to its numeric
strength, but rather to “the location of its influence.” First, German Christians represented a
remarkable “cross-section of society,” spanning geographic and demographic boundaries.
German Christian supporters included “women and men, old and young, pastors, teachers,
dentists, railroad workers, housewives, and farmers, even some Catholics,” hailing from every
German region, with support from the cities as well as the countryside. Second, German
Christians became entrenched in key positions in churches and universities: as professors in
theological faculties, members of church governments, and even as bishops, adherents of the
German Christian Movement held a range of powerful posts, allowing German Christians to
exert “disproportionate influence in Protestant church affairs in the 1930s and 1940s.” This
positional influence, in turn, enabled the German Christians to shape the operations of Protestant
churches by controlling key components of daily church business, including the determination of
budgets, the production of liturgical materials, and the content of religious curricula.” (Clark 14–
15)
Thus, Clark shows that, even though the religious strata of the German Christian movement was
Protestant, because of its varied spread across multiple demographics and geography, they have
been able to exert numerous and powerful influence up to even the academia and religious
institution. (Clark 15) It can already be observed that the influence was so immense it would
naturally catch the eyes of Pope Pius XI. In this powerful influence, Clark argues in the same
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paper how this eventually led to the famous Kirchenkampf, Clark argues this was generated as a
consequence of opposition between Protestants that opposed the German Christian Movement,
and the German Christians of Protestant organ (Clark 16), but this struggle, as I have pointed out
in earlier sections, extended to even the Catholics, who were the strongest opposition to these
heresies, and is what justified the persecution against them to the NatSoc officials.
So how exactly have they tried to forge this heresy? Aside from its impressive influence, what
defined this ideology to lead them to promote what the party ultimately deemed “Positive
Christianity?” Clark describes how the National Socialists, at least in the eyes of some historians,
a sort of fusion or synthesis, in which to the National Socialists, they believed their synthesis was
a consequence of what they realized in the political sphere what, to their estimation, Christianity
realized religiously. (Clark 17) Nonetheless, Clark cites Herschel to point out that the actual
ideological dynamic in play, was subordinative than symbiotic, modification, rather than
harmonious synthesis:
“However, it is critical to note that whichever terminology is employed, Nazism must be seen as
the “senior partner” in this relation. German Christians did not attempt to adapt Nazism to
conform with Christianity, but rather worked persistently to adapt Christianity to conform with
Nazism. As Heschel observes, the German Christian Movement “sought to…modify church
doctrine in accord with National Socialist ideology.” Put simply, the German Christian
Movement did not seek to Christianize Nazism but instead to Nazify Christianity. When
historians speak of a ‘fusion’ of Christianity and Nazism, then, this is a fusion in which
distinctively Christian content quickly evaporated, resulting in an oftentimes theologically
unrecognizable “Nazi-Christian synthesis,” since it was to Nazism that German Christians were
uncompromisingly committed.” (Clark 18)
Julio Meinvielle, who I have cited before in the contextualization of the periods leading to the
publication of MBS, has pointed this out sharply as well, though in a different manner, yet it is
clear that the racialist worldview has penetrated even inside the theological realm, and this
affected likewise how they viewed God, creation, races and of course, the Old Testament.
However, Clark makes an interesting remark regarding the theological consequences of this
project by the NSDAP. For one, he argues that to view this as an offshoot of Marcionism is
inadequate because for the German Christian Movement, the theological inconsistencies that
generated in their rhetoric was inconsequential to them, their primary concern was the driving
force of their inherent racialism and völkisch ideology. (Clark 19) I think this is interesting
because, one, the act of removing the OT is not entirely new, and as Clark points out, it was done
by Marcion of Sinope, where the entire of the OT and some New Testament epistles were
removed in the Marcionite canon. Of course, this was later condemned as heretical by The
Church, but functionally, this is what the German Christian Movement has done, however Clark
is correct in pointing out that the motivations for doing this were entirely from a racialist point of
view, and the theological implications are incidental, not consequential. The next section will be
discussed much later as it is very relevant to discuss the Pope’s admonishment of the NSDAP
erecting a “national church” and thus a national religion with a schismatic ecclesiology. All these
ideas lead one thing to another because of the all-encompassing nature of National Socialism, it
 47

clearly did not restrict itself to a political ideology, it has become a political religion, and this
will be discussed in detail when I touch upon NoAB encyclical. Thus concludes this section to
highlight the context that has taken place to allow the Pope to condemn another key tenet within
Positive Christianity.
Pantheistic Confusion and “the laws of race”: a critical analysis
I now return our attention to Paragraph 7 of MBS, because now is the time to dive in further into
what is really the criticism Pius XI points out in National Socialist racial theology. Having
established in the previous section that what truly motivated the German Christian movement
were more racialist ideals than a formal systematic theology of the world, Paragraph 7 of MBS
becomes ever clearer, it reads:
“Take care, Venerable Brethren, that above all, faith in God, the first and irreplaceable
foundation of all religion, be preserved in Germany pure and unstained. The believer in God is
not he who utters the name in his speech, but he for whom this sacred word stands for a true and
worthy concept of the Divinity. Whoever identifies, by pantheistic confusion, God and the
universe, by either lowering God to the dimensions of the world, or raising the world to the
dimensions of God, is not a believer in God. Whoever follows that so-called pre-Christian
Germanic conception of substituting a dark and impersonal destiny for the personal God,
denies thereby the Wisdom and Providence of God who “Reacheth from end to end mightily,
and ordereth all things sweetly” (Wisdom viii. 1). Neither is he a believer in God.” (Pius XI,
“Mit Brennender Sorge” bold and italics added)
Interestingly, Pius XI is not really declaring that the National Socialist professes a sort of formal
pantheism, that is, Pius XI is not saying that the National Socialist worldview is formally
pantheistic, but that it does, in their racialatrous rhetoric, engage in the same confusion formal
pantheists engage in. What do I mean by this? Notice how Pius XI, contextually, references “pre-
Christian Germanic conception of substituting a dark and impersonal destiny for the personal
God”, he also defines, in the context by what he means: “lowering God to the dimensions of the
world or raising the world to the dimensions of God.” This is of course disguised in pious
religious language, so I’ll break it down in a way that helps us understand what exactly is being
meant by this. I’ll start with the first thesis I emphasized, “The believer in God is not he who
utters the name in his speech, but he for whom this sacred word stands for a true and worthy
concept of Divinity.” (Pius XI, “Mit Brennender Sorge”) What does this all mean? Recall how
the National Socialist has constantly attributed “divine order” and sacral nature to the
differentiation of nature to the differentiations found in races of people, often times comparing,
as a matter of ontology, that human groups are like different flowing rivers (Bennecke), as if they
were trees and plants (Stellrecht), or even attribute sacral nature to the differentiation of these
racial groups to avoid intermingling (Gross, “Blood Is Holy-A Radio Speech by Dr. Groß”;
Gross, “Race: A Radio Speech by Dr. Groß”; Bareth and Vogel), not that there is anything
erroneous in itself to make certain comparisons with humans to plants or other animals, however
the underlying premise behind these comparisons from the National Socialist racial worldview
is, to The Catholic Church, inappropriate and thus, constitutes a “raising the world to the
dimensions of God.” Indeed, as I have shown numerous times in the previous section to
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contextualize the racialist worldview of The National Socialist, the attributed mysticism,
sacralisation and/or divinization of blood and genetics of races was so integral to their
worldview, they unapologetically refer to these observations as carrying a divine order that, if
violated, constituted sacrilege. In other words, the sacralisation of race entailed a pantheistic
confusion to these facts. They have raised the dimensions of race, to divine and sacred
dimensions, and in their speeches to try to convince the audience that these were sacred divisions
created by God, they have indeed engaged in a sort of pantheistic confusion through the
sacralisation of races and have tied their sacralisation of race to their conception of Divine
Providence. So, what is the precise error in this thinking? Are not the different races created by
God? Yes, but so are the different chemical elements in the Periodic Table, yet nothing about the
nature of mankind nor these people group entail nor implicate that they therefore should adopt a
segregationist mindset, much less adopt a racial identity of bastardizing when mixed offsprings
are concerned, any more than the chemical elements fusing or combining into one another
constitutes a violation of nature for refusing to keep every element pure “as God intended.” Thus,
this is another key detail in the sacralisation of race or racialtry in National Socialism: In the
National Socialist worldview, they have adopted an exaggerated form of purity that is even
foreign to the Old Testament conception of purity. Purity in the sense of having a form of ordered
structure about the world connected to some divine, sacred order. (de Silva, “Purity & Pollution-
Structuring the World Before a Holy God” 246–47) In other words, and in a twist of irony, as I
will show in detail in discussing the Hispano ethos case; the National Socialist worldview has
adopted an extreme form of Jewish purity that far exceeds the appropriate boundaries to what
ought to be appropriately pure or clean and unclean, and it’s this extremity that Pius XI has
noticed and criticized in Paragraphs 7-8, with Paragraph 7 as a consequence, whether
consciously or not in part of the NatSoc worldview; of their extreme sense of purity towards
racial groups criticized in Paragraph 8. By far extending the boundaries of what ought to be pure,
the National Socialist has defined a world in which things that were inconsequential to divine
order, have now occupied the divine dimension, and this is where Pius XI identifies the
pantheistic confusion.
Moving further, Pius XI then establishes that because of this extreme definition of purity
inappropriate within Catholic thought, he moves on to condemn attributing or even syncretizing
any conception of pre-Christian Germanism that conflicts with Catholic teaching, and he
qualifies this in a manner that it seeks to achieve the earlier clauses I have analyzed previously.
For example, what does Pius XI mean, when talking of pre-Christian Germanic conception of
“substituting a dark and impersonal destiny for the personal God?” What could possibly be an
appropriate destiny for the personal God of the believing Catholic? It may seem erroneous, but,
for the Catholic, there is a destiny, in a looser sense, of the Christian God, and one which Pius XI
identifies in the National Socialist that is incompatible to the Catholic conception. One clue that
will answer our previous question is within the encyclical, the Book of Wisdom that Pius XI
cites, and this verse contradicts not only the concept of Divine Providence of the National
Socialist but contradicts even the sense of purity of them. What does it mean for God to “order
things sweetly?” As cited earlier, the concept of purity in the ancient world entailed a sense of
order in the world and in the environment in relation to a divine order, for God to order things in
the world well or sweetly, implies that the order that God has in mind is one in which there is a
 49

sense of unity, appropriateness and healthy boundaries that are rational and serve ultimately a
spiritual, moral goal, which culminates in the Gospel, and the barriers that the Old Covenant
enforced no longer apply because they have served their purpose, new barriers are forged, but
they are no longer physical barriers that separated the Jews from Gentiles, either way, the sense
of purity the New Testament world served more a framework from a moral standpoint more so
than physical structure or appearances, and this is clearly revealed in the various expressions of
Catholic liturgy. One would ask, isn’t this what the National Socialists promulgate? Not so, as
shown earlier, the National Socialist purity system is completely alien to Catholic Tradition, and
as will be detailed when we present Maeztu’s concept of Hispanidad, I will show how the
National Socialist has exaggerated the Hebrew purity system, it has frustrated its true purpose
and has applied it to races, and created a purity system that exists in bio-anthropology and has
attributed it a divine order that is inappropriate, and by doing so, it has contradicted the mindset
exemplified in the Book of Wisdom and by extension, all of Catholic Tradition.
The pantheistic confusion, again, is not exactly describing formal profession of religion of
pantheism, rather it describes a system in which it inappropriately attributes sacral attributes and
functions in nature which, as argued in Paragraph 8, “raises it above their standard value”
however important and valuable they may be. The “law of race” therefore, is a purity system that
falls into the errors of Paragraph 7 and manifests itself in the racialatry condemned in Paragraph
8, thus, the racialatrous defense the National Socialist worldview engages in a pantheistic
confusion due to the mysticism and exaggerated purity it manifests in their racialism. (Sánchez
Acosta, secs.1–2; Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 16–17). As Clark rightly observes
(Clark 19), their racialist platforms justify their entire worldview, and the pantheistic confusion
Pius XI finds in it is more a consequence of it than the foundation of it.
Definitions of faith, a compare and contrast analysis
In here I jump to Paragraph 23 from MBS to address how the National Socialist, as I have shown
previously, parodies Catholic ecclesiology and religious philosophy, and modifies it into a
racialist worldview that at its core, is antithetical to Catholic doctrine and philosophy. We see this
in how they even conceive the concept of Faith, although the material I will use post-dates the
MBS publication, as I have shown elsewhere, Stellrecht’s Faith and Action is a brief summary of
all the beliefs and doctrines I have exposed from earlier years that predate the manual.
In the same manual, under the section of Faith, reads the following:
“A wish that you can fulfill is called hope. Hope can easily come to nothing. But faith can never
fail, for faith is strength. Faith springs from your deepest feelings. It is that knowledge for which
there is no explanation through reason. In faith the soul sees a part of the world order. It has a
sense of that which should be and sees through its eyes a part of the way that it should and can
go. It knows that by going this way it fulfills god’s command and is working toward the great
work that is immeasurable, incomprehensible. Because faith sees this and can do it, it is more
than human strength. It is a part of the enormous power that fills all life and all worlds. With
faith, a person walks with the assurance of a sleepwalker. Who can resist him, for he follows the
path of the highest will. He will succeed when he believes. No hand raised against him will
divert him from his way. The bullet aimed at him will not hit as long as he has not finished his
 50

path, as long as he has not turned from it. Thousands do not understand the believing person
because their souls cannot see. But what do the faithful care about the opinion of others, what do
those who can see care about the opinion of the blind, what do those who have become strong
care about what the weak think. The way of faith is the way of everything great. Before our eyes
Adolf Hitler went the way fate led him. He was filled with it and believed what no reason of the
reasonable could see.” (Stellrecht)
How has Pius XI responded to this definition of faith? Paragraph 23 regarding faith reads:
““Faith” consists in holding as true what God has revealed and proposes through His Church to
man's acceptance. It is “the evidence of things that appear not” (Heb. ii. 1). The joyful and proud
confidence in the future of one's people, instinct in every heart, is quite a different thing from
faith in a religious sense. To substitute the one for the other, and demand on the strength of this,
to be numbered among the faithful followers of Christ, is a senseless play on words, if it does not
conceal a confusion of concepts, or worse.” (Pius XI, “Mit Brennender Sorge”)
Pius XI not only is condemning attributing sacral nature to race, but even condemns and corrects
the use of religious terms to conflate it with other words within the NatSoc framework. Stellrecht
defines faith something that in reality, means confident zeal in one’s future, as Pius XI clarifies.
It is quite different to the religious sense of faith, which translates more to loyalty or trust in a
higher purpose even if it’s not apparent to the naked eye. It seems to be the same as the faith that
Stellrecht defines but the context that defines faith in Stellrecht’s manual is very different from
the context that has defined faith in Catholic tradition, hence Pius XI’s correction.
Earlier in the same paragraph Pius XI warns and condemns the use of another religious term to
conflate another concept or phenomenon by the National Socialists: revelation. Pius XI argues
that Revelation should not be used as ““suggestions” of race and blood, for the irradiations of a
people's history, is mere equivocation. False coins of this sort do not deserve Christian currency.”
(Pius XI, “Mit Brennender Sorge”) This shows that Pius XI was aware of the inappropriate
sacralisation of race and how the Nationalist Socialist has “revealed” the true nature of races and
“bows down” to these observations and attributing them divine or sacred character. (Gross,
“Blood Is Holy-A Radio Speech by Dr. Groß”; Gross, National Socialist Racial Policy: A Speech
to German Women; Himmler)
On immortality: conflicting frameworks of eternal life
Another concept that differs tremendously from the Catholic tradition and National Socialism is
the concept of immortality. I now jump to Paragraph 24 from MBS, which reads:
““Immortality” in a Christian sense means the survival of man after his terrestrial death, for the
purpose of eternal reward or punishment. Whoever only means by the term, the collective
survival here on earth of his people for an indefinite length of time, distorts one of the
fundamental notions of the Christian Faith and tampers with the very foundations of the
religious concept of the universe, which requires a moral order.” (Pius XI, “Mit Brennender
Sorge” italics added)
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And where could Pius XI have heard such distorted view of immortality? None other than the
National Socialist doctrines promulgated throughout Germany. Although postdating MBS, again,
Stellrecht’s manual is simply a brief summary of all the ideas I have presented so far that
contextualize NS worldview, two paragraphs from two sections in Faith and Action will help
contrast what Pius XI argues and what the NS believes: A People (Volk) and Birth and Death. I
have cited the former in the section contextualizing NatSoc worldview on race, I re-cite it here:
“What does it mean when an individual dies? It is as if the wind blows leaves from a tree. New
ones grow eternally every spring. The peoples are the greatest and most noble creation of god on
this earth.” (Stellrecht, sec.A People (Volk))
Here Stellrecht argues that the very nature of a volk is immortal the same way trees regrow
leaves every spring season. Interesting how he does not apply this immortality to people that race
mix, would not the same principle apply to both the parents and the offspring? Clearly with what
I have contextualized, they do not extend this immortality to the mixed races. Perhaps the
purebreds are not as immortal as the National Socialists believed them to be.
The next section is Birth and Death, I cite the whole paragraph that contrast with how Pius XI
defines immortality:
“Birth and death are the same; they are the two sides of one door. To enter one room always
means leaving another. It depends on which room or which life we are in as to whether we say
“entrance” or “exit,” life or death. For he who understands it, death holds no terrors. But he who
did not go his proper way in life and sinned will see his guilt in death. But there is after death no
place of torture, no hell. To see one’s guilt is the severest judgment and at the same time the
greatest penalty. Judgment and punishment are within yourself. Neglected work can only be
made up by double effort. It will once more be your choice, either to work toward the world plan,
or to be its enemy. That is the only death that there is, to become a force for destruction rather
than for creation, and this death is not physical. It is your free choice to decide on which side you
belong, on god’s or, to use an old term, “the devil’s.” What we call birth and death is only the
door between two worlds. There is no birth and no death, only change, and we can go
confidently through the door, for all the worlds were created by one hand.” (Stellrecht)
Contrast this to how Pius XI has defined immortality, you can see that there is significant
difference, in reality, what I have shown is a consequence of how the National Socialist has
conceived the nature of races, to them, then, birth and death really have no true difference, and
this of course has unique theological consequences that are not present within Catholic tradition.
As Pius XI correctly points out, immortality is a state of being one transitions to after terrestrial
death, but the definition presupposes a real distinction between birth and death to speak of
immortality, the National Socialist lacks this distinction and Pius XI argues this too is a distortion
of The Faith in Catholic tradition. This theme is not uncommon in the literature from the NSDAP
that predates Stellrecht’s manual and Pius XI knew this. Clearly the encyclical is aware of the
key doctrines that construct the NS worldview, and it is clear it condemns these distortions and
errors in light of Catholic doctrine.
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On national churches: warnings against schism

I have shown in the sub-section regarding the views of the National Socialist on the Old
Testament and how these ideas were a culmination of previous ideas contemporary to early
1920’s and 1930’s Germany, namely, the racialist doctrines that have developed overtime to
culminate during the NSDAP’s rise to power. I will move on to discuss from the same doctoral
thesis paper by Clark on National Socialist ecclesiology, one aspect regarding baptism and other
ecclesiological doctrines that Pius XI was aware when MBS was in writing.
The racialism of the German Christian movement has effectively re-defined baptism, one based
on one’s blood (read, genetic descendance, phenotype). (Clark 20) As Clark points out, citing
Barnett, the German Christian Movement sought to create a Volkskirche (a people’s church)
entirely based on bloodlines and racial ties. (Clark 20) Citing Bergen, Clark expands and writes:
“This racialist ecclesiology was not a marginal belief of the movement, but a core conviction that
unified those calling themselves German Christians. “Above all,” as Bergen emphasizes, “they
stood for a people’s church as a community of race and blood.” This ecclesiology is reflected, for
instance, in “The Twenty-eight Theses of the Church of Saxony, Generally Recognized by the
German Christian Faith Movement,” adopted in December 1933. The third thesis of this
document reads, in part: “The church commits itself to [the doctrines of] blood and race, for our
people are a community based on blood and nature [Bluts- und Wesensgemeinschaft]. Only those
who are fellow Germans according to the law of the state can be members of the Volkskirche.” In
this way, German Christian ecclesiology “reconstitute[d] the church as an association of blood
and race,” thereby aligning with the racialist ideology of Nazism.” (Clark 20)
Thus, race and blood were not even incidental nor an afterthought, but the core and most integral
aspect of this movement, and from here they have sought to construct ultimately a national
church and consequently, a national religion based entirely on phenotypic aspects of race. The
implications of these are crystal clear: to redefine baptism under racial lines meant that baptism
was never efficacious towards non-Aryans who they deemed a threat to the German volk. (Clark
20–21) Recall how in the German Catechism cited in earlier sections to contextualize their racial
worldview, as well as their educational materials regarding their race science, have consistently
emphasized the intricate link between phenotype and psychosocial nature of said organism, they
of course extended this to the Jew more specifically, and by tying, fatalistically, the nature of the
Jew to his biology, no baptism in the Catholic sense could conquer the “eternal Jew” to the
National Socialist. (Clark 21) Clearly a departure from Catholic ecclesiology altogether down to
their most basic Sacrament. Clark cites Bergen on how this reflected the “fundamental illogic of
the Nazi definition of Jewishness”, when discussing the inconsistency of defining Jewishness
while utilizing baptismal records of grandparents to define their Aryanity. (Clark 21) However I
would point out that within the National Socialists own internal framework, this is expected and
sensical: by adopting the nature of racial identities the NSDAP has developed, it is no surprise
how they would distort even the Sacrament of baptism and define it in such a way that it deviates
from the traditional understanding of baptism and even Jewishness in Catholic tradition.
Nonetheless, Clark adds how this anti-Jewish concept of baptism is a consequence of their anti-
Jewishness both in identity and institutionally, but while the context was regarding their
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opposition to the Jew, their racialism would inevitably extend all the way to non-German, non-
Jewish races as a result of their sacralisation of race. (Clark 21)
So, what was the consequence of this development? The German Christian Movement has gone
so far to declare that Christianity is so different and so anti-Jewish, that they have posited that
Judaism and Christianity are radical antithesis of each other, and Clark points out that this was
not exactly developed as a consequence from a recent development within Judaism, but that, to
them, the entire religion from its birth was radically anti-Jerw, Clark writes:
“The movement expressed this claim starkly and programmatically in the Godesberg
Declaration, which “presented Christianity as the irreconcilable foe of Judaism.” Drafted by
German Christian clergy and laity, and adopted by no fewer than eleven of the Protestant
regional church bodies, the text of the Declaration appeared in April 1939 in the Gesetzblatt, an
official publication of the Protestant church in Germany. In what Heschel calls its “centerpiece,”
the Declaration employs a catechetical format, asking, “Is Christianity derived from Judaism and
is it its continuation and completion, or does Christianity stand in opposition to Judaism?” In a
resounding affirmation of the oppositional relation of Judaism and Christianity, the statement
responds, “We answer this question: Christianity is the unbridgeable religious opposition to
Judaism.” Thus, in an official and widely-supported confessional statement of the German
Christians, the movement presented Christianity and Judaism as irreconcilable opposites.
This overarching claim that Judaism and Christianity constituted unbridgeable opposites yielded
a variety of more specific antinomies in German Christian ideology. German Christians viewed
this opposition between Judaism and Christianity not as a later historical development, but rather
as the original goal and end of the Christian faith, “arguing that earliest Christianity arose not to
reform Judaism, but to eliminate it.” According to this reasoning, any residual traces of Judaism
in Christianity testify not to any historical dependence on the Jewish tradition but rather to a
hostility against Judaism that sparked the rise of early Christianity. As Bergen explains: “Instead
of demonstrating Christianity’s debt to Judaism, [German Christians] contended, those echoes of
the older religion showed Christianity to be Judaism’s sworn foe.”“ (Clark 23–24)
As you can see, the opposition to Jewishness, and how they conceived it, was to the point that
they have conflated the Rabbinical Judaism of the Talmud to the old Judaism from the Old
Testament, and this is no surprise, since they have rejected the entirety of the OT because of this
conception of Jewishness, one thing led to the other. It is no surprise how this led to an entire
revisionism and reconstruction of Jesus’ mission and identity, projecting their own party
doctrines to Jesus as a sort of “proto-Nazi” and how he was a conqueror and destroyer of
Judaism, not the fulfiller of its ancient laws. (Clark 25) This inevitably led to not only His
mission but even Jesus’ own heritage was heavily revised and denied His Jewish heritage, not
because he descended from the tribe of Judah and born from the Davidic lineage, but redefined
solely for his opposition to the Jews, again, with the NS conception of Jew in mind. (Clark 25–
26) Consequently, they have aggressively sought to eradicate and dejudaize any trace they
deemed Jewish from Christianity to conform it to their National Socialist ideology, from the
Biblical canon even down to the liturgical traditions like baptism. (Clark 29–30)
 54

Now one must ask, how successful was this dejudaization projects? Clark argues the task was so
insurmountable that the National Socialists doubled down in their efforts to such extremes they
ultimately redefined Christianity to conform to National Socialist image. (Clark 31–32) This of
course, is where Pius XI’s assessment of this situation more specially in Paragraph 22, which
reads:
“Faith in the Church cannot stand pure and true without the support of faith in the primacy of the
Bishop of Rome. The same moment when Peter, in the presence of all the Apostles and disciples,
confesses his faith in Christ, Son of the Living God, the answer he received in reward for his
faith and his confession was the word that built the Church, the only Church of Christ, on the
rock of Peter (Matt. xvi. 18). Thus was sealed the connection between the faith in Christ, the
Church and the Primacy. True and lawful authority is invariably a bond of unity, a source of
strength, a guarantee against division and ruin, a pledge for the future: and this is verified in the
deepest and sublimest sense, when that authority, as in the case of the Church, and the Church
alone, is sealed by the promise and the guidance of the Holy Ghost and His irresistible support.
Should men, who are not even united by faith in Christ, come and offer you the seduction of a
national German Church, be convinced that it is nothing but a denial of the one Church of Christ
and the evident betrayal of that universal evangelical mission, for which a world Church alone is
qualified and competent. The live history of other national churches with their paralysis, their
domestication and subjection to worldly powers, is sufficient evidence of the sterility to which is
condemned every branch that is severed from the trunk of the living Church. Whoever counters
these erroneous developments with an uncompromising No from the very outset, not only serves
the purity of his faith in Christ, but also the welfare and the vitality of his own people.” (Pius XI,
“Mit Brennender Sorge” italics added)
Furthermore, Paragraph 11 condemns the logical consequence of such radical racially centered
church that leads to a concept of a national religion and thus a national church’s conception of
God, which Pius XI condemns too. (Pius XI, “Mit Brennender Sorge”) Is it any surprise how
National Socialist officials such as Rosenberg and even Gottfried Feder have declared that the
Christianity, they were attempting to dejudaize was essentially a “negative Christianity” that did
not “answer to the needs of the German people?” Enrique Acosta Sánchez, citing these two
argues the following, which evidence, circumstantially, all that has been discussed in this section:
“We shall have the opportunity to induce the directions which the moral sense of the Germanic
race is being given by its so-called representatives. What the note of positivity in Christianity
implies for them is sufficiently interpreted by Rosenberg himself:

“The supreme values of the Roman and Protestant Churches, as “negative” Christianity, no
longer meet the needs of our soul; and they paralyze the organic forces of the northern races.
They must yield their place to these forces and allow themselves to be transformed in the sense
of a new Germanic Christianity” (Mythus, p. 203).
 55

This is his “positive Christianity”. On it the “German national church” would be founded,
admitting - in R. Jung's conception - the “fusion (!) of the two most widespread churches in the
German countries”, conditioned by a “break with the Roman centralization, the international
spirit and the Old Testament: essentially Jewish things” (Der nationale Socialismus, p. 89). A
crazy plan of a national church that would have no benevolence for the people who:

“consciously turn against the German people and against the State; who receive their political
directions from abroad and, although born in Germany, do not belong to the German community,
nor can they, therefore, exercise the rights of citizens” (Feder, Das Programm der NSDAP, p. 52).

In summary, as already affirmed by Rosenberg (Mythus, p. 646): “the doctrine of the Third Reich
is irreconcilable with that of the Catholic Church. It knows nothing but the hooked cross,
fighting against the Christian cross.”“ (Sánchez Acosta, sec.3)
Although not all of Rosenberg’s racial theories and doctrines were implemented ad verbum when
the NSDAP took power, the core principles of his racialism were, fused with a sacralisation and
mysticism of race and this in turn developed into a worldview which would inevitably conflict
with Catholic Tradition and even some Protestant churches which did not capitulate to the re-
doctrinization of their creeds. Pius XI then saw this in play since the NSDAP took power in
1933, before and after the Reichskonkordat and up to the publication of MBS. From the same
Paragraph 22, Pius XI argues the failures and spiritual sterility inherent in every national church
and, implicitly, pointing out their schismatic nature, whether materially or formally.
Our analysis in this sub-section culminates with an analysis of Pius XI’s direct condemnation,
though not explicitly naming it; of Positive Christianity and all its doctrinal baggage, including
all that has been discussed, and how Hitler reacted to this encyclical, Paragraph 33 reads:
“Thousands of voices ring into your ears a Gospel which has not been revealed by the Father of
Heaven. Thousands of pens are wielded in the service of a Christianity, which is not of Christ.
Press and wireless daily force on you productions hostile to the Faith and to the Church,
impudently aggressive against whatever you should hold venerable and sacred. Many of you,
clinging to your Faith and to your Church, as a result of your affiliation with religious
associations guaranteed by the concordat, have often to face the tragic trial of seeing your loyalty
to your country misunderstood, suspected, or even denied, and of being hurt in your professional
and social life. We are well aware that there is many a humble soldier of Christ in your ranks,
who with torn feelings, but a determined heart, accepts his fate, finding his one consolation in the
thought of suffering insults for the name of Jesus (Acts v. 41). Today, as We see you threatened
with new dangers and new molestations, We say to you: If any one should preach to you a
Gospel other than the one you received on the knees of a pious mother, from the lips of a
believing father, or through teaching faithful to God and His Church, “let him be anathema”
(Gal. i. 9). If the State organizes a national youth, and makes this organization obligatory to all,
then, without prejudice to rights of religious associations, it is the absolute right of youths as well
 56

as of parents to see to it that this organization is purged of all manifestations hostile to the
Church and Christianity. These manifestations are even today placing Christian parents in a
painful alternative, as they cannot give to the State what they owe to God alone.” (Pius XI, “Mit
Brennender Sorge” bold and italics added)
Nothing could be clearer a condemnation to the entire Positive Christianity platform and its fruits
than Paragraph 33, especially clear when Pius XI quotes Galatians 1:9, which Pius XI saw
appropriate considering all that has been contextualized. It is clear Pius XI was not pulling any
punches, among all that pious religious language is also snugged in harsh condemnations and
corrective tone of strong authority being exercised. After MBS was published and distributed to
all churches under the German episcopate, the Führer clearly did not receive this encyclical
joyfully, he was infuriated and offended because the encyclical clearly attacked not only the
NSDAP’s racialism but condemned the entire Positive Christianity platform promulgated by his
party’s NSDAP 25-point program. (ZENIT) Given all that has been provided thus far, it is
expected that Hitler responded with hostility and anger to this encyclical. The Führer himself and
all his officials understood the language of MBS, it was not a tone that asked for clarification of
their doctrines, the Pope understood clearly the basic tenets of NS worldview; it was not an
encyclical that bought into “anti-NSDAP propaganda”, since I have shown from both the
speeches and materials from the NSDAP, the clear hostility between the NS worldview and
Catholic ethos, and the circumstantial evidence laid out clearly provide the best explanation to
the encyclical’s claims; finally, the encyclical did not have an exclusive tone of friendliness and
supplicatory nature, the Pope clearly declares the Positive Christianity platform an anathema and
attacks the platform’s Nazification project of Christianity from all branches. In conclusion, the
language of the encyclical was condemnatory, corrective, argumentative and of preoccupation in
the events that have unfolded to the date of publication.

Summary of Mit Brennender Sorge’s context

It has been demonstrated the context that the MBS encyclical has had to work with, all the
conflicts that have emerged within the German episcopate during the NSDAP’s rise to power, the
Reichskonkordat agreement, and all the events leading up to the publication of MBS. The events
that defined those before and after the concordat have been defined by tensions, persecution and
hostility towards faithful Catholics and other branches of Christianity that have opposed the
racialist doctrines and its consequential ideas from it, such as racialist baptisms and the radical
dejudaization projects. I have also demonstrated the context, regarding the racial doctrines
themselves, that Pius XI had to deal with and subsequently condemned them in the encyclical, I
have also shown the nature of this racialism involved within NSDAP thought from various
authoritative sources that the NSDAP has trusted to be promulgated to all the people of Germany,
youth and older, the nature of this racialism has been properly understood to be a sacralisation of
observed racial differences among people groups and this sacralisation has been analyzed and
shown that this is how Pius XI understood when he meant “divinizes them to an idolatrous level”
in Paragraph 8 and shown that this is what he meant, and not exactly a formal, religious
profession of idolatry in a strict sense but sharing, at least functionally, the sacralisation of
 57

natural objects that, to the Catholic Church, was very inappropriate, I have also demonstrated
from this, how this has derived, whether subconsciously or not, from an extreme, deviant purity
framework even foreign to the Old Testament and other ancient cultures even up to the New
Testament, and how this concept of purity within NS worldview was more a distorted version
that was unacceptable to Catholic tradition, hence the condemnations in both Paragraphs 7 and 8.
Among other things, I have shown other concepts within NS ideology that The Church called
attention to and condemned as error such as how the National Socialist defined faith and
immortality. Finally, I have shown how all this eventually culminated into, at the very least,
material schism within the German episcopate, to the point it has created a national religion with
completely deviant forms of ecclesiology and theology due to their racialism, and how Pope Pius
XI has effectively condemned the entire Positive Christianity platform in Paragraph 33, all this
eventually infuriating The Führer since the encyclical was understood to be an attack on the
NSDAP and its worldview. With this I have effectively shown that the encyclical, with all the
context provided, could not have been written in a manner it asked for clarification, mere worries
or misled by “anti-Nazi propaganda”, strange claim in a period riffed with propaganda warfare
from multiple sides, including inside the same nation from different parties with conflicting
views. I have thus shown that the encyclical operated with a tone of authority, corrective tone
and a language with a condemnatory tone against doctrines and ideas Pius XI deemed erroneous.
Here concludes my analysis of MBS and its context that led to its publication, I have then
established clear incompatibilities with the NS worldview and The Catholic Church, MBS thus is
an encyclical, after all that has been demonstrated; that condemns National Socialist statolatry
and racialatry, the latter which has been shown why in detail. I now turn to another encyclical
which sheds light into another idolatrous elevation raised in MBS’s Paragraph 8: statolatry, and
the encyclical which first mentions this in word: Non Abbiamo Bisogno, encyclical directed at
Fascist Italy.

Non Abbiamo Bisogno: A contextual and magisterial analysis

Non Abbiamo Bisogno predates Mit Brennender Sorge, NoAB was published on June
th
29 of 1931. The encyclical is 74 paragraphs long, 31 paragraphs longer than MBS. In this
encyclical, Pope Pius XI is addressing numerous events and his concerns regarding actions
against Catholic groups and institutions that have been opposing the Fascist party’s policies or
the Fascist’s party’s persecution against Catholic institutions critical or suspicious of the party in
power under Benito Mussolini. The encyclical goes over numerous problems Pius XI observes
that he believes put Catholics in jeopardy and points out inconsistencies in the party’s respect for
the Church while undertaking actions which contradict said respect. (Pius XI, “Non Abbiamo
Bisogno,” para.66) I will show how Catholics have viewed the Fascist state and what Pius XI
deemed problematic with the conception of politics within Fascism in Italy. The problems are
less severe than the ones described in the MBS analysis, nonetheless, the same problem NoAB
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points out in Fascist Italy was also present in NS Germany and other dictatorial regimes: the
statolatry problem. I will show the context behind this and how this problem manifested and the
consequences it brought that led Pius XI publish NoAB. I then showcase, both from Gentile’s
Fascist doctrines and Fascists in general in Italy, why Catholics that objected to Fascism saw it as
a problem. I will go over the philosophical foundations and political philosophy that Catholic
critics saw were problematic for The Church and how this conflict played out in the inter-war
period.

The encyclical’s key objections and Fascist Italy’s reaction

In NoAB’s 74 paragraphs, two of them are of interest that will serve to contextualize the
problems surrounding that paragraph, these are Paragraphs 42-44, when speaking of the religious
education in both the private and public spheres (this will become relevant when discussing the
Cristero War), Paragraph 44 is especially the central objection that Catholic intellectuals have
been warning since the Fascist Party’s inception and rise to power. Especially Luigi Sturzo and
Francesco Luigi Ferrari, who were the earliest known Catholic intellectuals to warn against and
oppose fascist doctrines as early as 1918 and 1922, respectively. (E. Gentile, “New Idols:
Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 150; E. Gentile, “Catholicism and Fascism:
Reality and Misunderstandings” 17–18) I will also talk about the consequences that both these
intellectuals and The Church herself faced once these criticisms became more prominent
throughout the year including after the concordat under Benito Mussolini and how this too, was a
product of Catholic dissent who foresaw the dangers of these ideologies, including Fascism, an
ideology that claimed to be friendlier to the Catholic ethos than National Socialism. (E. Gentile,
“Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and Misunderstandings” 21–25) It should be noted that,
although Mussolini intended to compromise and forge alliances with The Vatican, the fruit of
these alliances always proved to benefit more the hegemony of the Fascist State than the Church
as we shall see and the authors in citation confirm this.

On Statolatry or idolatry of the state: a contextual analysis

I will begin by establishing, from the point of view of The Magisterium, the context behind the
use of Statolatry within the encyclical. The term first appears in Paragraph 44, which I cite in its
entirety with added emphasis:
“And here We find Ourselves confronted by a mass of authentic affirmations and no less
authentic facts which reveal beyond the slightest possibility of doubt the resolve (already in great
measure actually put into effect) to monopolize completely the young, from their tenderest years
up to manhood and womanhood, for the exclusive advantage of a party and of a regime based on
an ideology which clearly resolves itself into a true, a real pagan worship of the State - the
“Statolatry” which is no less in contrast with the natural rights of the family than it is in
contradiction with the supernatural rights of the Church. To propose and to promote such a
monopoly to persecute for this reason Catholic Action, as has been done for some time more or
less openly or under cover to reach this end by striking at the Catholic Association of Youth as
has lately been done; all this is truly and literally to “forbid the little children to go to Jesus
Christ,” since it impedes their access to His Church and where His Church is, there is Jesus
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Christ. This usurpation goes so far as to snatch the young from Christ and His Church even with
violence.” (Pius XI, “Non Abbiamo Bisogno” bold and italics added)
Take note that Mussolini has said and written that he and his party members would attempt to
respect Catholicism and its institutions as early as 1919 (E. Gentile, “Catholicism and Fascism:
Reality and Misunderstandings” 22–23), but this encyclical was written on June 29th of 1931,
Benito Mussolini rose to power as the fascist Duce in 1919. Within a span of twelve years the
totalitarian hand was forced against Catholic institutions to culminate in the publication of
NoAB, this is seven years longer than the time span between the NSDAP’s rise to power and the
publication of MBS. What happened in those five years? Before I dive in, let’s first analyze the
emboldened word in Paragraph 44: Statolatry.
In the section analyzing MBS, I touched upon this term in relation to MBS’s Paragraph 8, but in
that section, I focused on the problem of racialatry within the NSDAP, which was the major
component of the NSDAP regime than statolatry, although Paragraph 8 of MBS does include
this, but it was NoAB that coined this, at least as far as The Magisterium is concerned. In the
MBS section, I have broken down the way The Magisterium understood when she, albeit
implicitly, termed the NSDAP to be racialatrous on the basis that they have, in an inappropriate
and unjustified manner, sacralised race and racial identity and its baggage of extreme form of
purity. In that section I have underlined the error associated of sacralisation of objects with no
revelatory nor traditional precedent to do so and the theological errors that motivated it to do so.
The same erroneous attribution to race is the same one defined by Pius XI in the same encyclical.
I will dissect what Pius XI means by “pagan worship” of the State to term the fascist regime
statolatrous, but first I must contextualize not only the term prior to Pius XI (he was not the first
to coin it, or at the very least, define the phenomenon of statolatry), but the opposition that
culminated in requiring The Pope himself to decry the error from within The Vatican.

Catholic Intellectuals against Gentilian Statolatry: contextual analysis

My main sources to contextualize the tensions The Catholic Church, particularly in Italy, but this
context applies just as much to other countries where the threat was similarly present; are from
Italian historian Emilio Gentile, though others that cite and supplement him will be cited along
the way. Emilio Gentile notes that the threat of what he terms ‘sacralisation of politics’ has been
a warning heralded by The Church ever since the Robespierrian Revolution in late 18th century
France. (E. Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 144) The
Roman Catholic Church has warned society through encyclicals and other mediums of the
dangers of a society that welcomes politics which sacralise various aspects of civil society to fill
the vacuum that The Church once occupied, particular attention was given to what they have
termed the sacralisation of the State and its depositories of powers. (E. Gentile, “New Idols:
Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 144) The sacralisation manifested itself more
so in attempts of the State to undertake a position of hegemonic reach that overstepped the
boundaries which The Church understood it should not overcome given its limitations, a State
that penetrates and extends everywhere with no limit or control, blurring the spheres of the
public and private life. (E. Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of Fascist
Totalitarianism” 144) In referring to the accusation of “neo-paganism” that The Church has
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pointed to these secular regimes intending to weaken The Church’s influence in society, Emilio
Gentile describes:
“The concept of ‘neo-paganism’, with reference to contemporary politics, dates back in the
Catholic tradition to the time of the French Revolution. In 1797, a powerful cardinal in the
Roman Curia published a book addressed to all the peoples of Europe, denouncing ‘the
murderous power’ of revolutionary language and the fanaticism of the republican movement,
which only encouraged a new pagan cult. The patriotic celebrations, the rites and the symbols of
the revolutionaries were considered a ‘faithful imitation of the idolatrous rites of Paganism’, as
they described them a prolific Catholic author in 1797 in the Giornale ecclesiastico di Roma, an
official publication of the papacy. The cult of the revolution, introduced into the city of the popes
in 1798, was in effect perceived by the Roman Curia as a neo-pagan religion (Caffiero 2005: 122
– 39). Although the revolutionary cults were shortlived, the experience of the clear and present
danger left a profound and lasting disturbance in the collective mind of the church. From the
beginning of the nineteenth century on, the concepts of ‘paganism’ and ‘idolatry’ were utilized by
Catholic culture as terms to define modernity as a new and integral conception of life, a world
view that tended to deify man, leading him away from transcendental religion. The entire path
of modernity was an ‘offensive resurgence of paganism’ in battle against Christianity, as Gustave
Combe`s wrote in 1938, in a study that reviewed the history of modern ‘neo-pagan’ movements,
from humanism to totalitarianism. Paganism had not surrendered after the triumph of
Christianity, but ‘obeying the orders of its master, the Prince of Darkness, it has secretly
continued its progress through the Christian world’, taking advantage of the decadence of faith
and mores to worm its way into modern minds (Combe`s 1938: 1).” (E. Gentile, “New Idols:
Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 149 bold and italics added)
Thus, this is the context the Italian Catholic Intellectuals ─as well as the German Catholic
opposing racialist theories─ from the early 1900’s was operating with when Fascism was
emerging in Italy and other offshoot Nationalist totalitarian ideologies in the interwar period. The
statolatry, and its derivative terminologies, were not conceived as formal religious professions
but as materially manifest sacralisation of various aspects of human affairs, devoid of a proper
Catholic framework. Note that I am utilizing hylomorphic terminology, which is important, as
this is exactly how The Church has been utilizing the words of idolatry and neo-paganism ever
since The French Revolution. For The Church, modernity has attempted to displace The Church
to a role whose only functionality was private spiritual profession, and the rest of social and civic
life, was to be handled through the State, whichever conception of the State, and this
displacement was interpreted as, materially, a pagan afront against The Catholic Church in civil
society. (E. Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 149–51)
Before I dive further to contextualize the intellectual conflict, I must contextualize the historical
reality of the dynamic The Church and Fascism experienced from the moment Mussolini rose to
power, to the publication of NoAB, as this context is very important to keep in mind to
understand the mindset of these Catholic intellectuals, especially given the conceptual tools cited
previously.
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Suspicious truces: Catholic skepticism towards Interwar regimes

As provided earlier, The Catholic Church lived in a time where The Church has been displaced
from her protagonist role in civic society against the threat of Modernism and its various
philosophical and political manifestations. Fascism and National Socialism were no exception to
these suspicions, especially the seemingly pro-Catholic platform and speech their leading
spokespersons touted throughout their campaign, trying to assure their audience they were going
to protect their institutions and have their best interests at heart. (E. Gentile, “New Idols:
Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 145–46) It is important to note however, that
these speeches were clearly out of political expediency and convenience to secure power, and not
because of a political platform explicitly derived from Catholic first principles, despite this, The
Catholics, both laity and hierarchs, have worked together in their common enemy of Bolshevism
and liberalism, but they did this because of survival to secure their place in society in a regime,
to their estimation, believed would safeguard them from the dangers of secular liberalism and
Bolshevism that NatSoc and Fascism swore to fight against. (E. Gentile, “New Idols:
Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 146) Even with all this, this did not stop
Mussolini declaring that Italy was Fascist primarily, but its Catholicism was a convenient bonus
useful to his party, Emilio Gentil writes:
“For their part, the Fascist regime and the Nazi regime were willing to allow the church only its
pastoral practice, but absolutely refused to allow criticism of their totalitarian politics, which
subordinated traditional religion to the attainment of their objectives. In his presentation of the
Lateran Pact to the Italian Chamber of Deputies for approval, on 12 May 1929, Mussolini
declared that the Fascist state ‘is Catholic, but it is Fascist, indeed above all, exclusively,
essentially Fascist’ and for that reason it arrogated to itself a monopoly over the education of the
new generations (Mussolini 1951 – 63: vol. XXIV, 89). Mussolini’s speech, moreover, featured
statements concerning Christianity that the Pope considered heretical, and which imperiled the
ratification of the Concordat. The Duce did not hesitate to launch, twice, in 1931 and 1938,
campaigns against Azione Cattolica to force the church to restrict its activities to pastoral
practice.” (E. Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 147)
Thus, this display of statal power over The Church are the fulfillment of age-old warnings
previous Catholic thinkers have pointed out, and they have manifested themselves in the first
decade since Mussolini rose to power as well as other Interwar regimes, “right-wing” or not.
To further drive this point home, Emilio Gentile argues how, because of this level of political
expediency, these ideologies cannot be said to be derived from Catholic first principles or a
Catholic framework overall, because to them, although religion was integral, it was only integral
in a secondary sense, it was not the foundation of their ideology, but a tool to validate their
ideology, Gentile thus writes:
“For that reason, neither Fascism nor Nazism can be considered Christian-inspired political
movements. It would not be seriously conceivable to write a history of Christian political
movements (that is, movements that aspired to infuse Christian principles in the behaviors and
goals of politics) that placed Fascism and Nazism alongside the Zentrumspartei and the Partito
Popolare Italiano. Even when claiming to be Christian, the Fascist movements conceived of
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Christianity as an integral part of their totalitarian policy, which sacralized the nation and
politicized Christianity. Syncretism with traditional religion was typical of the Fascist political
religion (see Gentile 1996: 69 – 75). In Italy, Fascism developed this syncretism through the
myth of Romanitá, or Roman tradition, which considered Catholicism to be a product of the
Roman tradition; the Fascists attempted to ‘Fascistize’ Catholicism. Even the Christianity
professed by many of the leaders and militants of National Socialism was the product of a
racist syncretism that ‘Aryanized’ and ‘Germanized’ Christ and God. In all the Fascist
movements, syncretism between traditional religion and political religion took on a mystical
quality.” (E. Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 147–48
bold and italics added; the names of the political parties in italics are in the original)
As I have pointed out in the MBS section, what Emilio Gentile refers to regarding NatSoc
Germany is discussed in Robert Clark’s doctoral thesis on the Aryanization of Christianity by the
German Christian Movement in Germany, the same sacralisation occurred in Fascist Italy
regarding the State and its depositories of powers. The same author points out how this mystique
has been a very crucial and fundamental component in their ideologies, both in Fascism and
National Socialism, he cites philosopher and polymath Louis Rogier and Gustave Le Bon,
respectively to substantiate his arguments, with the latter source arguing how the concept of
mystique has the power to endow their proponents with similar experience as a new religion. (E.
Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 148)
This mysticism was acknowledged by former secretary of the Partito Populare, Alcide De
Gasperi, being a necessary component of its time or else they are unable to win the masses and
other people in society, a mystique that Pius XI in his encyclical, Divini Redemptoris Promissio
in the same year as MBS, warning and condemning against a mysticism that deludes people into
false promises. (E. Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 148)
A mysticism that clearly was present in what contemporary era would be termed ‘third
positionist’ ideologies. This mystique, present in totalitarian regimes fed by their respective
ideologies, served as evidence to justify theological and philosophical opposition to the inherent
statolatry and eventual racialatry in these interwar ideologies, most prominent being National
Socialism and Fascism.
Statolatry, then, is not even the root cause of these ideologies, but it is certainly a manifestation,
a powerful medium to assert hegemony over society when The Church is relegated to a lesser
role in society. What then, is the root cause of the statolatry inherent in Fascism and other
totalitarian regimes? It is of course, a child of the liberalism of modernity, as one Jesuit
publication house: La Civiltà Cattolica, in 1915 wrote how the liberalism of nationalism was
aggravated with Greco-Roman concepts of an all-powerful, all-extending State that attempted to
subjugate The Church to the State’s whims. (E. Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of
Fascist Totalitarianism” 150) Regarding the value of patriotism and the errors The Church saw in
nationalism, Emilio Gentile says this:
“The Catholic church recognized the legitimacy of patriotism, as long as it was held to be
secondary to devotion to God, but it condemned the theories of nationalism as ‘contrary to
natural and Christian ethics’, because ‘by practically deifying the state, exalting the nation and its
 63

greatness, as a supreme ideale, they tend to impose this same cult (of statolatry) upon the
religious society which is the church; that is, they wish to subjugate the church to the state, like
any and all other inferior societies; they thus deny it, in fact, both its existence as a society, and
all freedoms and rights, at the disposal of the sovereign state’ (La Civilta` Cattolica 1915: I, 142
– 3).” (E. Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 150)
Thus, the nationalism that The Church condemned was one that ultimately relegated The Church
to a subordinate role where the State, at any given moment, can silence The Church even when
she is legitimate to criticize it so. This criticism was similarly laid out by Luigi Sturzo, in 1918,
the same priest that supported Italy entering WWI, denounced the statolatry inherent within
Fascism. (E. Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 150)
It is thus very difficult to conceive the temporary truce between The Church and Fascist Italy as
some sort of “Holy Alliance”, when in reality, it was more a truce to help The Church survive in
a time she understood to be very risky and suspiciously dangerous due to the inherent nature of
the ideologies in functions in these regimes, in spite of the Pope benevolently receiving the Duce
and in spite of Mussolini’s benefits granted to The Church, Pius XI and the hierarchs still held
reservations about the regime. (E. Gentile, “Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and
Misunderstandings” 25–28) This is further confirmed when Pius XI, even as early as 1925, has
seen the warning from priests like Francesco Luigi Ferrari and Luigi Sturzo long before Pius XI
recognized their warnings to finally manifest when he delivered a speech that was published in
the Jesuit publishing house La Civiltá Cattolica. (E. Gentile, “Catholicism and Fascism: Reality
and Misunderstandings” 28–29; 17–19) From here I can begin discussing the prophetic warnings
by priests like Francesco Ferrari and Luigi Sturzo that Pius XI saw manifest themselves in the
early 1920’s.
Gentilian Statolatry and its foundations
It is worth discussing if these perceptions from Catholic critics within the Fascist regime were
even founded in good suspicion, what better way to find out than to analyze what the mastermind
behind the ideology himself: Giovanni Gentile. Though the original source material in Italian is
not referenced, a faithful translation by political scientist James A. Gregor, alongside a selection
of works from the same man further expanding on the doctrines and frameworks of Fascism, the
source of course is the one with the same title as the original book by Gentile: Origins and
Doctrine of Fascism. It is from here where I will analyze briefly as faithful as possible, the
reasons for Gentile as he understood it, for developing this philosophy and how he conceived the
State and comment comparatively the reaction Catholics took when this philosophy manifested
politically in Italy in the early second decade of the 1900’s.
In the very first five pages under Origins and Doctrine of Fascism (chapter with same book title
here is 42 pages long), Gentile discusses the historical context that led Italy to experiment with
new ideas and political philosophies that would help them forge a new national ideal and identity
during and after the Great War of the early 20th century, and he justifies Italy’s participation in
that war as the spark to forge Italy a new consciousness in national identity making. (G. Gentile
1–3) Gentile then moves to the phenomenon of the Risorgimiento that took place just before
Italy’s entrance to the war, given this took place in the prior century to the war. (G. Gentile 4) He
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argues that this phenomenon was crucial that revolved around various intellectuals, to his
estimation none were of the materialist school of thought (materialist understood sociologically a
la Karl Marx, though even here the disconnect is questionable as we will see), among them
Gentile underlines the intellectual influence of Giuseppe Mazzini, whose motto of thought and
action was the impetus of not only forging modern Italy’s national identity, but the nationalist
spirit that would manifest itself in later years leading to Mussolini’s rise to power. (G. Gentile 4–
6) In the same pages cited, Gentile talks about a sort of reinvigoration of a sort of religious
sentiment towards on ideal in life conceived through idealist lenses, this religious sentiment, as I
will show, is independent of a reference to Roman Catholicism, but incidental to it, as in the
previous page he already contextualizes what this religious sentiment is: Mazzini’s idealist
motto. (G. Gentile 5–6)
Gentile then moves on speak of a post-Risorgimiento era under Umberto I, who he believes was
instrumental in not only its waning but a revival after his reign in the late 1870’s. Despite this,
Gentile understood that this “waning” was necessary because it’s a time he believed was crucial
moment of the realization of two keen differences he observed manifested in the relationship
between the individual, the State and liberty. (G. Gentile 7) According to Gentile, the Right
conceived that any notion of liberties and duties of the individual was merely an extension and
had all its foundations in the organism of the State, whereas, to him, the Left saw the State as an
externality that proceeded the individual. (G. Gentile 7) Giovanni Gentile then describes various
events that took place in the Italy under Umberto I, he describes that the power of the State was
weakened through Marxist values, values in which he only criticized from a sociological point of
view, that is, he only criticized it on the view that the Marxist socialist had a materialist
conception of life, not in its methodologies, which he admitted even Mazzini did not dispute in
so far as Mazzini understood that the component of the Fatherland was to be maintained, not the
material conditions that the Marxist individualists imposed in the late 1870’s, to Gentile’s
admission was an Italy superior than the one preceding it. (G. Gentile 8–11)
On the fourth chapter then, Gentile describes the end of what he terms the sociological
materialist conception of life, and he describes that Italy, by the very end of the 19th century and
beginning of the three early years of the 20th century, Italy began to rediscover the idealist
conceptions of life of the works of thinkers he cited when discussing the Risorgimiento,
including the works of Mazzini. (G. Gentile 11) He describes this period as a sort of re-
awakening before the already improved conditions of life he admitted in the previous chapter
during the administration of Umberto I, he believes that this was a period in which the Italian
was able to realize that socialism, the ideology that improved Italy’s material conditions, was
not a finished dogma, but a doctrine that needed to be revised like all other doctrines, and he
describes how Italian thinkers turned to Marxist revisionists like George Sorel, who refuted the
dialectical materialism of Karl Marx, but only the dialectical materialism of Marxism, not the
other methodologies and functions that Sorel preserved in it, thus Gentile writes how by turning
to George Sorel the son-to-be Italian Fascist developed syndicalist principles, but still out of
Marxist foundations. (G. Gentile 12) He then describes another political philosophic foundation
that it too, was taken from the French: nationalism, and he conceives it as such in the text:
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“Less literary and more political in Italy because closer to a political current that had an immense
importance—the traditional Right—around which Italian Nationalism collected itself,
emphasizing the ideal of the Nation and the Fatherland. It was emphasized in a form, as we shall
see, that was not entirely acceptable to the traditional Right. The new form had to be
forthcoming; one which advanced the conviction to which the Right had remained committed: to
the State as the foundation in which the value and right of citizens was anchored. Nationalism,
whatever the case, was a new faith lit in the Italian soul, thanks to which the Fatherland was no
longer spoken of with socialist derision.” (G. Gentile 13 italics added)
Thus, Gentile describes a nationalism that was distinct even to an interpretation of what he
believes was typical to a traditional Right, and one which he believed needed to be revised to fit
a new Right that would be inherited by the Fascists. Afterwards Gentile describes the conflict
between the Parliamentarians who opposed the Italians wanting to intervene in WWI, and the
rise of Mussolini in its ranks, Gentile describes Mussolini as embodying the spirit of the
reinvigorated Italian he just described in the previous chapters, a Mussolini he described as being
a revisionist socialist with Mazzinian ideals. (G. Gentile 17) Gentile in this chapter does not hide
the revolutionary character he shared with the Marxists, he simply distinguishes the
revolutionary Sorelian socialist that embodied true action, from the socialists that opposed the
war on grounds that the latter had not used actualized revolution to create the new State he
envisioned in previous chapters. (G. Gentile 17–18) Chapters VII and VIII basically describe the
historical context that led Mussolini and his Fascists take power and describe how the ideals
described in the previous chapters manifested in these historic feats. (G. Gentile 18–20)
It is here where I now turn to demonstrate how all this contextualization culminates in
confirming not only the foundations, which were from the start, incompatible with Catholicism,
but it is an incompatibility recognized and admitted even by Gentile himself, despite arguing the
Fascist State was to work together, although from its foundation, was not of Catholic origin
formally nor even materially, but incidental. I begin by exposing what Gentile describes, without
reservations, the totalitarian character of the State, in here he describes, from precedent discussed
above, the overarching, all-encompassing nature of the Fascist State. Gentile describes that the
totalitarian character which he described previously is acknowledged in the Mazzinian maxim of
thought and action that he describes next in chapter IX, because of this Mazzinian doctrine,
Fascism is thus not only totalitarian but anti-intellectualist, and Gentile clarifies this does not
mean that it denies intellectual progress in philosophy and sciences, but that it is an intellect that
follows Mazzinian motto of thought and action, to actualize the intellectualisms that is not
confined to abstractions but concrete actions. (G. Gentile 22–23) From here onwards, Gentile
describes that Fascism is not a system per se but a conception of the State with politics as its
center of gravity, that is, it is a doctrine of political methodology with totalitarian character from
its conception of the State (G. Gentile 24–25) that he describes as being not only the foundation,
which he describes sharing with Nationalism (at least how he defines Nationalism here), but that
the State blurs the distinction between the individual in an organic unity sense, in other words,
the distinction between the individual and the State is that of a group distinction rather than some
compartment of a system. (G. Gentile 25) What do I mean by this? Gentile describes that the
State, being not just the foundation, but the being “inseparable in a necessary synthesis.” (G.
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Gentile 25) Thus here we arrive at Gentile’s conception of the State: it is a collection of
conscious action and thoughts of individuals, the will of the State is the will of the individual,
and vice versa, distinct from the State of the Nationalist, which is an empirical datum of nature
as Gentile puts it, even though it is a tool that both agree is the foundation of nationalist actions.
(G. Gentile 26) Gentile confirms this elsewhere in subsequent chapters, being that for the Fascist,
the State is a conscious populist collection of will, whereas for the Nationalist, it is an aristocratic
institution that the Nationalists depends on as an externality. (G. Gentile 28–29) With all this
said, how does the Catholic Church’s authority fit into this framework? Let’s hear Gentile speak
for himself:
“The authority of the State is not subject to negotiation, or compromise, or to divide its terrain
with other moral or religious principles that might interfere in consciousness. The authority of
the State has force and is true authority if, within consciousness, it is entirely unconditioned. The
consciousness that actuates the reality of the State is consciousness in its totality, with all the
elements of which it is the product. Morality and religion, essential elements in every
consciousness, must be there, but they must be subordinated to the laws of the State, fused in it,
absorbed in it […]
Out of this arises the exquisitely political character of the relationships between the Fascist State
and the Roman Catholic Church. The Italian Fascist State—for reasons already given—one with
the mass of Italians, is either not religious, or it is Roman Catholic. It cannot be irreligious,
because the absolute value and authority it confers on itself would be incomprehensible without a
relationship to a divine Absolute. It would be a religion that had a base, was rooted in, and made
sense to, the mass of the people of Italy. That would allow the absolute will of the Fatherland, of
which there could only be one, to find expression in a religious sentiment. The alternative would
be to stupidly fail to develop that which was already in consciousness, or to arbitrarily introduce
into consciousness that which it did not contain. To be a Catholic meant to live in the Church and
under its discipline. Therefore, it was a necessity for the Fascist State to recognize the religious
authority of the Church; a political necessity, a political recognition, with respect to the
realization of the State itself. The ecclesiastical politics of the Italian State must resolve the
problem of maintaining its sovereignty, intact and absolute, even before the Church, without
casting itself athwart the Catholic consciousness of Italians, nor the Church to which that
consciousness is subordinated.
That is a grave problem, since the transcendent conception that rules over the Catholic
Church contradicts the immanentist character of the political conception of Fascism—which,
as has been said, far from being the negation of liberalism and democracy (which even the
leaders of Fascism have regularly repeated for polemical reasons) actually aspires to be the
most perfect form of liberalism and democracy, in conformity with the doctrine of Mazzini, to
whose spirit Fascism has returned.” (G. Gentile 31–32 bold and italics added)
I will unpack the key points in the above citation, but first it must be acknowledged an
undoubtful reality: Gentile recognizes, in the Totalitarian nature of the State, derived from
foundations foreign to Catholicism, must be faced with an authority that, although he recognizes
that for the Italian mass, must engage in a political recognition, by the Fascist State’s own
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prerogatives; that recognition ultimately is one where it is the Church, ultimately, must be
subordinated to the demands of the State, a subordination of course, that Gentile recognizes it is
a problem.
From the start, we already see the culmination of Gentile’s exposition of the totalitarian nature of
the Fascist State and its implications, implications discussed just now, the State thus must
negotiate truces with The Church, but these are negotiations that do not compromise the State’s
totalitarian nature. As Gentile recognizes, there will be tensions because of the different natures
inherent between the Fascist State and The Church’s interests, and it is in here we see the
problems Catholic Intellectuals saw in Fascism from kilometers away: this nature inherent in
Fascism that Gentile saw, was also seen by Catholic suspicious and critical of fascism, but in a
far worse implication than Gentile is willing to admit.
Despite Gentile trying, albeit futilely, to undermine the problem of statolatry that he objects to in
The Fascist Doctrine of the State (here in I cite Selected works from the same book) (G. Gentile
52–53), in his futile attempt to refute the statolatry accusation, all he does is amplify the
totalitarian nature that Catholic intellectuals still diagnose, as statolatrous. In Against the
Accusation of Statolatry (pp 36-37), he says this:
“Is this statolatry? It is the religion of the spirit that has not been cast into the abject blindness of
materialism. It is the torch raised by the youth of Fascism to ignite a vast spiritual conflagration
in this Italy that has arisen to struggle for its own redemption. Redemption is impossible if the
nation cannot rehabilitate its internal moral forces, if it does not accustom itself to conceive life in
its entirety as religious. if it does not train its citizens in that simple readiness to serve the ideal,
to work, to live and to die for the Fatherland—that Fatherland that occupies the foremost place
in thought, venerated, sanctified.” (G. Gentile 55–56 emphasis added)
One would think Gentile refuted the statolatry objection, but as Emilio Gentile in the works cited
points out, this very piece of writing all it did was further confirm the threat of the totalitarian
nature Catholic critics have been warning before its inception. It is a futile attempt to reject the
Marxist materialism to then amplify the very totalitarianism Marxist materialist regimes share in
other contexts. What this shows is Gentile does not even understand the accusation. The
statolatry, as has been shown previously, is not an objection that terms Fascists being formal
idolaters in the strict religious sense, but hylomorphically, materially manifest idolaters of an
inappropriate increase in authority of the State that Gentile recognized elsewhere. In other words,
the totalitarian nature of the State, regardless of framework, is the statolatry in action. It is
therefore irrelevant that Gentile underlines how Fascism did away with the dialectical
materialism in Fascist doctrine in place of Mazzinian and Sorelian syndicalism, the statolatry
simply changed realms so to speak, but the threat is still there for all Catholics to see.
Considering how Gentile admits that Fascism’s Sorelianism was a genuine interpretation of
Marxism with nationalist addons (G. Gentile 59–60 in “Fascism and Its Opponents (pp 42-45,
47-48, 49-51, 56)”), and how he conceives Fascism as, literally from the title, Fascism is
Religion (pp 38-39) (G. Gentile 57); it is confirmed that what I have contextualized much earlier
before this treatment shows that even from Giovanni Gentile’s writings, the sacralisation factor
is never hidden nor denied, but openly expressed in its doctrinal formulations, another detail,
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which I will expand in the concluding summary of this part and the objections; is the Marxist
origins, however revisionist, of Fascism, origins which have been influential in Fascist
conception of the State which are equally shared by non-fascist regimes like the Soviet Union,
regimes whose statolatry is also observed by The Catholic Church. From here I now move on to
the fruits of these oppositions and the beginning of Non Abbiamo Bisogno, whose key claims
and concerns will be re-touched next.

Persecution of Catholic Action: a comparative analysis to the Cristero War case.

Having exposed the context of the doctrinal foundations and origins of Fascist thought, it is no
wonder why, despite the concordat and the collaborations issued in part from The Church, Pius
XI has never stopped stressing over the aggressive persecution against Catholic organizations,
which he talks about in the encyclical in numerous Paragraphs, starting in Paragraph 11 (Pius XI,
“Non Abbiamo Bisogno”) as well as the clear totalitarian nature inherent within Fascism and the
cult of violence, confirmed in Giovanni Gentile’s own writings. (G. Gentile 49–51 in “Fascist
Violence (pp 29-32)”) Commenting on the anxiety of Pius XI on the threats of statolatry in
Fascism, Emilio Gentile writes, after describing Pius XI’s speech on December 14th, 1925:
“Commenting on the pope's speech, La Civiltà Cattolica clearly alluded to fascism when it issued
the warning not to “lower the dignity of the human person, with its sacred and inalienable
rights,” a reminder of the fact that Christianity had always defended it against the “pagan
statolatry of Rome and Athens, for which individuals were things of the state,” as well as against
medieval barbarians “who recognized only the right of the strongest,” and against the supporters
of the French Revolution, and especially “of dictatorship and tyranny, such as Napoleon's.”“ (E.
Gentile, “Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and Misunderstandings” 28–29 original Italian
quotations translated as well as citations from this same work)
Even during the years of the signing of the concordat, the Pope continued to see violence
exercised against Catholic organizations. Emilio Gentile cites an anonymous antifascist observer
that has known The Vatican’s attitude quite well, taken from the Central State Archives, Ministry
of the Interior and General Directorate of Public Security, Emilio Gentile quotes extensively:
““Degree by degree there has been forming in the circles of pure Catholics, observant and a good
part of the political men of the Vatican a state of mind of growing alarm and distrust of fascism,
or rather of the fascist spiritual climate. Many among them wonder whether for the spiritual
future of the nation the embers of idolatry, statist and personalistic fetishism, and the nationalist
paganism of fascism is not worse than the freemason and demoliberal frying pan. Criticism of
the Gentilian statist idolatry [i.e. the ideas of philosopher Giovanni Gentile] and Rocchian [i.e.
the ideas of jurist Alfredo Rocco], to the conception of religion as an instrument of domination
social and political reserve by debt of office were degree by degree transmuted into heartfelt
reasons for resistance. The increasingly voracious grabbing for nationalist purposes of the church
and the pope has increasingly alarmed: it is obvious that this is one of the points where the
church as an international institution is most sensitive. As far as can be judged from multiple and
concordant indications it can be said that none of the men representing Catholic interests and
tradition are under any illusion as to the significance of 'conciliation' in the depths of Fascist
thought and in the fatal outlet of a totalitarian policy without any sense of limit or control: it is
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clear to see that on this slope one goes to the creation of a national and Caesarean church, to the
subjection in every way of the church to the state. It can be said in general that from a phase of
pro-fascism attuned to the moderate Lombard mentality of the Pope countered by disapproval
and remorse for physical violence but scarcely sensitive to political violence against parties and
social life and sustained by the hope of a sincere normalization rigidly conservative and anti-
socialist, moved into a phase of growing fright and resistance at the growing fascist greed,
contrasts attenuated [and] made perplexing and oscillating by the seduction of the certainly very
large and tempting material benefits given by fascism to the Church.” (E. Gentile, “Catholicism
and Fascism: Reality and Misunderstandings” 28–29)
This clearly reveals the risky and desperate situation experienced by the Pope even before the
concordat and after. As stated previously, the alliances were far from “agreements by
opportunists” but from the point of view of survival from a threat that was perceived long before
Mussolini rose to power in 1919. (E. Gentile, “Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and
Misunderstandings” 29–30) Far from being a harmonious alliance as some are led to believe, the
historical reality and research since the 1940’s on this phenomenon document that the
relationship between The Church and The Fascist state has consistently varied from mild, bitter
tensions to outright hostility, at no point there was harmony. (E. Gentile, “Catholicism and
Fascism: Reality and Misunderstandings” 30) Citing Catholic scholar who published similar
research on this relationship in 1941, D. A. Blinchy writes:
““No one, least of all Pius XI himself, can have expected that the agreement of 1929 would
prove an unmixed blessing for the Italian Church. The totalitarian claims of Fascism, even if they
were not so crudely asserted ten years ago as to-day, were there to remind Catholics of the risks
inherent in any settlement with Mussolini’s Italy. Historia concordatorum historia dolorum is
almost a maxim of ecclesiastical history, and it applies with unprecedented force to Concordats
with modern dictatorships. Even the parallel with the absolute monarchies of the seventeenth and
eighteen centuries is not complete; for at least these based their authority on tradition, and on a
formal acceptance of the faith and morals of Christianity. But a State which expressly rejects all
transcendental values, recognizes no binding norm outside its own immanent morality, and
grounds its title to rule on a so-called ‘permanent Revolution’ is a far more troublesome partner.
Association with such a State involves the Church in dangers which call for an exceptional
degree of firmness in its spiritual leaders.”“(E. Gentile, “Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and
Misunderstandings” 30–31 citing from “Church and State in Fascist Italy”)
It is also false to presume these tensions to be superficial or small, because these conflicts and
concerns dealt with religious and theological questions that fundamentally shaped society. (E.
Gentile, “Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and Misunderstandings” 31) This is demonstrated
how, even in principle, the Fascist State made absolutist claims about society even in the civil
sphere that were markedly similar to The Church, but one sphere required the submission of the
other, in this case, The State required full subordination of all under it, including The Church, but
this was, quoting from the paper: “[…] ridiculous to think of any submission of the head of the
Catholic church to the head of the Fascist government – or any other government or political or
military leader’, because the church ‘supports only its own interests, whether those be material or
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moral, and has no ties with any other power, because other powers are inevitably transitory, in
the eyes of the church, and therefore destined to perish…” (E. Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism
in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 154–55) Just the year after 1927, the same year that Pius
XI condemned Action Française, an anonymous observer counts how Pius XI even considered
writing an encyclical against nationalism in light of the conflicts between The Church and
Fascism, all of course, centralized on the problem they saw of the sacralisation of the State and
even the nation. (E. Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 155)
I will briefly detail what exactly, from here and onwards to be discussed, moved Pius XI to
publish NoAB:
February 11th of 1929 was the date of the signing of the Lateran Pacts, due to the problems of
getting negotiations to happen even just five years prior. Even then, on March 24th of the same
year, a plebiscite was held, largely supported by the clergy, yet just two months already the
conflicts re-emerged during the discussions of ratifying the agreements. (E. Gentile,
“Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and Misunderstandings” 31) In spite of Mussolini making
speeches of the great preservation of the Latin language of The Church, and making provocative
statements that if it wasn’t for Rome, Christianity would have died out in Palestine, Mussolini
declares that when it comes to the education and monopoly of the young, Mussolini declared that
The Church is “neither sovereign nor free” (E. Gentile, “Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and
Misunderstandings” 32), and with this the Pope reacted firmly to these declarations, Emilio
Gentile writes:
“The day after the duce's speech, Pius XI said, during an audience, that the State “is not made to
absorb, to engulf, to annihilate the individual and the family; it would be absurd, it would be
against nature, since the family is before society and the state,” which had to lend its help to the
families, respecting their desires and “above all the divine right of the Church. “ Then, in a letter
to secretary of State Gasparri, published on June 5th, Pius XI denounced the fact that in the
duce's speech there were “heretical and worse than heretical expressions on the very essence of
Christianity and Catholicism,” and asserted that “the full and perfect educational mandate
belongs not to the state but to the church, and that the State can neither prevent nor impair her
exercise of that mandate, nor even reduce it to the peremptory teaching of religious truths,”
whereby also threatening not to ratify the agreements.” (E. Gentile, “Catholicism and Fascism:
Reality and Misunderstandings” 32–33)
After that speech, the clergy that applauded the concordat expressed, as reported in Arma dei
carabinieri: “an unexpected cold shower. The enthusiasm suffered a time of arrest.” (E. Gentile,
“Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and Misunderstandings” 33), the more critical Catholics saw
it as the most ungrateful speech ever made, and the most disappointed Catholics expressed, after
the speech concerning the education of the young:
“the hosannas that greeted the Conciliation can be said to have diminished somewhat on the part
of the clergy, and some express doubts that, despite the fact that the Lateran Pacts were
sanctioned by the Royal signature, there is in fact some cooling in relations.” (E. Gentile,
“Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and Misunderstandings” 33)
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Furthermore, numerous reports talk about how this speech signified not only disappointment but
more conflicts to come for The Church as The State has declared supreme authority over aspects
of society The Church believed had more authority over, Emilio Gentile cites further:
“Furthermore, according to another report of September 4th, reliable sources in the Vatican
asserted that the Holy See was trying “by all means to make the Hon. Mussolini lose his patience
so as to drag him to some irreparable act or some statement that might allow him to cry out to the
world the disloyalty of the Fascist government and the lack of faith in the stipulated pacts. “
Indeed in the year of the Conciliation, the esteem and trust of Pius XI for the “formidable man”
that Providence had made him meet, were considerably weakened, according to observations
made already on October 21st, 1929 by Monsignor Luigi Maglione, apostolic nuncio in Paris, in
a meeting, in the Vatican, with a prelate who was an informant of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
“He no longer speaks with the same enthusiasm about Fascism and Mussolini, he laments, and
strongly, that the Italian government wants to usurp his rights over the education of youth and the
Catholic organization,” two points considered as:
“most essential [and] on which he absolutely does not intend to compromise; he is saddened to
tears, thinking of the persecutions that his beloved young people of the Catholic Federations and
Circles; he foresees, despite appearances courteous and deferential toward its representatives,
slowdown in relations if not a serious rupture in the not-too-long term; he has repeatedly told me,
we have fallen victim of our generosity, we have been deceived; God knows where we will end
up. Sentences, these, that he has been going on repeating, I am told in the Vatican, for five
months, also with many others.”(E. Gentile, “Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and
Misunderstandings” 35)
Amidst the dilemma and anxiety that The Pope experienced with this concordat, this motivated
him, as Emilio Gentile contextualizes, to write the encyclical Divinus ilius Magistri on
December 31st of the same year, arguing along the same lines as NoAB regarding the education
of the young, that the State had no authority nor legitimacy to take away her right on the
education of the young as it had done in the aforementioned speech. (E. Gentile, “Catholicism
and Fascism: Reality and Misunderstandings” 36) For the Pope, as was described in French
newspaper published on January 7th of 1930, Pius XI had trouble even sleeping, expressing
disappointment and anxiety, fearing he made a mistake signing the concordat.
Clearly the so-called “harmonious union” between the Church and Fascist Italy was anything but
harmonious, but stressful to the Pope and even admitted by the fascist press. (E. Gentile,
“Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and Misunderstandings” 37) We are already nearing a year to
the publication of No Abbiamo Bisogno, but just on early 1930’s, the weak union crumbled, and
already there were sequestrations of Catholic press and persecution of Catholic Organizations
followed. (E. Gentile, “Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and Misunderstandings” 37) It is in
these moments that I can safely say that he not only regretted what he signed up for, he even
regretted ignoring the warnings of Francesco Luigi Ferrari and Luigi Sturzo who saw the
problems a mile away, the problem of the sacralisation of the State, the nation, even the
sacralisation of the chief. (E. Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of Fascist
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Totalitarianism” 156–57) In fact, so strong was this problem, even the Italian Jesuit publishing
house, Civiltà Cattolica, observed that the same problems they foresaw in Fascism were being
manifested in other forms in Germany (E. Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of
Fascist Totalitarianism” 157–58), of course, that problem was the sacralisation of race discussed
in the section dealing with MBS.
This attitude of understanding sacralisation of the state as statolatry or sacralisation of race as
racialatry is best explained by Emilio Gentile this way when explaining how Catholics
understood the totalitarian nature of the State, from whatever political ideology they had to deal
with:
“The exploration of the link between totalitarianism and the sacralization of politics was
developed in a systematic manner by anti-Fascist Catholic scholars, who brought together the
various concepts used to define the sacralization of politics – statolatry, neo-paganism, human
mystique, idolatry – fusing them into the concept of political religion. This synthesis derived
from the Catholic interpretation of totalitarianism as a product of modernity. As we have seen,
one of the most important characteristics of modernity, for Catholics, was the secularization of
the state and the expansion of its power and capacity for interference in the affairs of society and
individuals. In the views of a number of Catholics, totalitarianism was a genetic descendant of
liberalism, which had proclaimed the principle of the separation of church and state and
established the supremacy of the sovereign secular state. The British historian Christopher
Dawson ranked ‘Liberal Humanitarianism’ with Communism and Nazism, as so many modern
enemies of Christianity (Dawson 1934). All the same, other Catholic scholars observed, Fascism
was not agnostic, nor was it satisfied with leaving the religious dimension sphere to the church
and to traditional religion; instead it took on a religious dimension of its own through the
sacralization of the nation, the state, or the race. Totalitarian movements ‘are new accentuations
of the turn toward immanentism, typical of modern history’, Waldemar Gurian wrote in 1939,
but in contrast with liberalism, which generally separates politics and religion, totalitarian
movements tend to a subordinate religion to politics. ‘Politics and religion are amalgamated but
the determining factor in this amalgam is power politics.’ Likewise, the neutrality of liberal
democracy toward the church ‘is thus far changed in the totalitarian systems, as the church
activity is limited by the dictates of the political religion’. Political religion satisfied many
different functions of totalitarianism, from control of the masses to indoctrination of the
individual and transformation of the individual into a tool of the community; it was especially an
essential factor in preserving the unity and the dominion of the totalitarian party (Gurian 1939).”
(E. Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of Fascist Totalitarianism” 159–60)
With this we finally observe and understand the anxieties expressed in Non Abbiamo Bisogno, all
that was discussed has been the context behind the publication of NoAB, and from here, it is
crucial to discuss, albeit very briefly, how this relationship also manifested itself in the Cristero
Wars in the late 1920’s, contemporary to the years Pope Pius XI was stressing out and feeling
disturbed and threatened by the statolatrous disposition of the Fascist regime, the same speech
that Mussolini delivered that monopolized the education of the people under his administration,
manifested in bloodier conflict in México under the Calles administration, a war Pius XI was
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well aware as he commented on the encyclical Iniquis Afflictisque, published on November 18th
of 1926, on Paragraph 8, Pius XI reviews strong restrictions (Pius XI, “Iniquis Afflictisque,”
para.8) which are no different than the ones imposed by Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in their
administrations. What Pius XI saw unfold in México, he would see inevitable in Fascist Italy and
NatSoc Germany. I will expand in more detail this conflict as it will serve as a fitting example of
how this statolatry was present even in Plutarco Calles’ regime.

A comparative panorama: Mit Brennender Sorge from Non Abbiamo Bisogno

Here is the critical opportunity to summarize comparatively, the problems observed in NoAB and
MBS. With what I have exposited so far, one can see how NoAB was an encyclical that Pius XI
knew he would have to expect the same material idolatry in National Socialist Germany in 1933
and onwards. With these two encyclicals finally contextualized with all the necessary details to
understand the circumstances that led the same Pius XI to publish them, I am now able to present
from Magisterial documents, the justification, from within The Vatican, opposition to these
ideologies. Why, even after all these agreements, albeit hesitantly, did the Pope and faithful
Catholics warned society of “new secular religions” that were going to threaten The Church?
What does The Magisterium have to supply us the justification for the warnings and oppositions
of priests like Francesco Luigi Ferrari, Luigi Sturzo and all the Catholic bishops in Germany
opposing and suffering under the regime of the NSDAP? Two encyclicals come to mind that will
help us understand how these have had precedents that predate these regimes for centuries: Pope
Pius IX’s Quanta Cura and its attached Syllabus of Errors, and Pius X’s Pascendi Dominici
Gregis on Modernism. I will analyze them separately as briefly and faithful as possible on the
key points that will help understand where the precedent lies and links it all the way to the two
main encyclical in this monograph.
Quanta Cura and the Syllabus of Errors
This encyclical was written by Pope Pius IX on December 8th of 1864. A 12 paragraph long
encyclical yet packed with condemnations of what Pius IX deemed to be “chief errors of this
unhappy age” (Pius IX, “Quanta Cura (EN),” para.2) at the time. He of course, was referring to
what the much later Pius X would refer to as The Modernist Heresy. In Paragraph 3, he first
condemns “naturalism” in the following manner:
“[…] as they call it, dare to teach that “the best constitution of public society and (also) civil
progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being
had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made
between the true religion and false ones.” And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church,
and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that “that is the best condition of civil
society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted
penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require.”“
(Pius IX, “Quanta Cura (EN),” para.3)
This is of course referring to building society in a manner in which explicit references to the
sacred or divine, anything religious, particularly in regard to Catholicism, ought to be restricted
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or related to a side issue. This is becoming very familiar to how many totalitarian regimes in the
past century have treated The Catholic Church regarding public education, but it doesn’t end
there, in referring to what, citing Gregory XVI; “freedom of speech” as it would be recognized
today, Pius IX continues:
“[…] that “liberty of conscience and worship is each man’s personal right, which ought to be
legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the
citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical
or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas
whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way.” But, while they rashly
affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching “liberty of perdition;”3 and
that “if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be
wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom;
whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith
and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling.”“ (Pius IX, “Quanta Cura (EN),” para.3)
It is no doubt that this “liberty of conscience” that Pius IX talked about, was abused by the
NSDAP’s Positive Christianity and of course, to some extent, by Fascist Italy when promoting
their statolatrous doctrines to restrain ecclesiastical authority, and certainly no doubt this
“liberty” played a role in reversing the genuine liberty of conscience of the Cristeros against
Calles anticlerical laws.
Paragraph 4 is very relevant to this analysis as it touches on the core problems the Catholics in
the early 1900’s saw in the regimes of Germany and Italy:
“And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority
of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened
and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it
appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound
reason, dare to proclaim that “the people’s will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in
some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in
the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished,
have the force of right.” But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set
loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the
purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows
no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and
interests? For this reason, men of the kind pursue with bitter hatred the Religious Orders,
although these have deserved extremely well of Christendom, civilization and literature, and cry
out that the same have no legitimate reason for being permitted to exist; and thus (these evil
men) applaud the calumnies of heretics.”(Pius IX, “Quanta Cura (EN),” para.4 italics added)
It should not surprise anybody, then, how the Catholics in the early decades of 1900 have been
able to identify the totalitarian regimes as “genetic descendants” of liberalism, the same
liberalism condemned in the encyclical analyzed, and to show how this connection is sound
within Magisterial and Catholic thought from the intellectuals in the early 1900, I continue from
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the same paragraph to show how this link explains the attitude these Catholics had regarding all
regimes they were suspicious when they entertained political sacralisation, after citing Pius VI on
how “the abolishing of regulars” is harmful to society and to even The Church:
“[…] And (these wretches) also impiously declare that permission should be refused to citizens
and to the Church, “whereby they may openly give alms for the sake of Christian charity”; and
that the law should be abrogated “whereby on certain fixed days servile works are prohibited
because of God’s worship;” and on the most deceptive pretext that the said permission and law
are opposed to the principles of the best public economy. Moreover, not content with removing
religion from public society, they wish to banish it also from private families. For, teaching and
professing the most fatal error of “Communism and Socialism,” they assert that “domestic
society or the family derives the whole principle of its existence from the civil law alone; and,
consequently, that on civil law alone depend all rights of parents over their children, and
especially that of providing for education.” By which impious opinions and machinations these
most deceitful men chiefly aim at this result, viz., that the salutary teaching and influence of the
Catholic Church may be entirely banished from the instruction and education of youth, and that
the tender and flexible minds of young men may be infected and depraved by every most
pernicious error and vice. For all who have endeavored to throw into confusion things both
sacred and secular, and to subvert the right order of society, and to abolish all rights, human and
divine, have always (as we above hinted) devoted all their nefarious schemes, devices and
efforts, to deceiving and depraving incautious youth and have placed all their hope in its
corruption. For which reason they never cease by every wicked method to assail the clergy, both
secular and regular, from whom (as the surest monuments of history conspicuously attest), so
many great advantages have abundantly flowed to Christianity, civilization and literature, and to
proclaim that “the clergy, as being hostile to the true and beneficial advance of science and
civilization, should be removed from the whole charge and duty of instructing and educating
youth.” (Pius IX, “Quanta Cura (EN),” para.4 italics added)
From this paragraph and emphasis, it sufficed for the Catholics in the early 20th century to
oppose the totalitarian regimes, including Fascism and National Socialism. Recall in the previous
section how the Catholic anti-fascists were critical of these regimes for the same reason Pius IX
condemned Communism and Socialism in the same encyclical. For Pius IX, Pius X and Pius XI,
and the Catholic intellectual, it did not really matter what the theoretical intricacies that
distinguished these ideologies from one another, at the end, both were branches of the same
liberalism they have condemned, and all share the same neo-pagan hylemorphism that manifests
dangers like statolatry and racialatry.
But if there is still in need of more confirmation, look no further than the next paragraph, again, I
cite in full with added emphasis on key sentences:
“Others meanwhile, reviving the wicked and so often condemned inventions of innovators, dare
with signal impudence to subject to the will of the civil authority the supreme authority of the
Church and of this Apostolic See given to her by Christ Himself, and to deny all those rights of
the same Church and See which concern matters of the external order. For they are not ashamed
of affirming “that the Church’s laws do not bind in conscience unless when they are
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promulgated by the civil power; that acts and decrees of the Roman Pontiffs, referring to religion
and the Church, need the civil power’s sanction and approbation, or at least its consent; that the
Apostolic Constitutions,6 whereby secret societies are condemned (whether an oath of secrecy
be or be not required in such societies), and whereby their frequenters and favourers are smitten
with anathema — have no force in those regions of the world wherein associations of the kind
are tolerated by the civil government; that the excommunication pronounced by the Council of
Trent and by Roman Pontiffs against those who assail and usurp the Church’s rights and
possessions, rests on a confusion between the spiritual and temporal orders, and (is directed) to
the pursuit of a purely secular good; that the Church can decree nothing which binds the
conscience of the faithful in regard to their use of temporal things; that the Church has no right
of restraining by temporal punishments those who violate her laws; that it is conformable to
the principles of sacred theology and public law to assert and claim for the civil government a
right of property in those goods which are possessed by the Church, by the Religious Orders,
and by other pious establishments.” Nor do they blush openly and publicly to profess the
maxim and principle of heretics from which arise so many perverse opinions and errors. For they
repeat that the “ecclesiastical power is not by divine right distinct from, and independent of, the
civil power, and that such distinction and independence cannot be preserved without the civil
power’s essential rights being assailed and usurped by the Church.” (Pius IX, “Quanta Cura
(EN),” para.5 bold and italics added)
Additionally, this encyclical included an attached Syllabus of Errors, among which I will cite
those which pertain to the key points highlighted in this analysis. The first to be cited are the
ones under the concerns of errors regarding The Church and Her rights, all will be cited in full:
“19. The Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free- nor is she endowed with proper
and perpetual rights of her own, conferred upon her by her Divine Founder; but it appertains to
the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church, and the limits within which she
may exercise those rights. — Allocution “Singulari quadam,&quuot; Dec. 9, 1854, etc.
20. The ecclesiastical power ought not to exercise its authority without the permission and
assent of the civil government. — Allocution “Meminit unusquisque,” Sept. 30, 1861.
21. The Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic
Church is the only true religion. — Damnatio “Multiplices inter,” June 10, 1851.
22. The obligation by which Catholic teachers and authors are strictly bound is confined to those
things only which are proposed to universal belief as dogmas of faith by the infallible judgment
of the Church. — Letter to the Archbishop of Munich, “Tuas libenter,” Dec. 21, 1863.
23. Roman pontiffs and ecumenical councils have wandered outside the limits of their powers,
have usurped the rights of princes, and have even erred in defining matters of faith and morals.
— Damnatio “Multiplices inter,” June 10, 1851.
24. The Church has not the power of using force, nor has she any temporal power, direct or
indirect. — Apostolic Letter “Ad Apostolicae,” Aug. 22, 1851.
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25. Besides the power inherent in the episcopate, other temporal power has been attributed to
it by the civil authority granted either explicitly or tacitly, which on that account is
revocable by the civil authority whenever it thinks fit. — Ibid.
26. The Church has no innate and legitimate right of acquiring and possessing property. —
Allocution “Nunquam fore,” Dec. 15, 1856; Encyclical “Incredibili,” Sept. 7, 1863.
27. The sacred ministers of the Church and the Roman pontiff are to be absolutely
excluded from every charge and dominion over temporal affairs. — Allocution “Maxima
quidem,” June 9, 1862.
28. It is not lawful for bishops to publish even letters Apostolic without the permission of
Government. — Allocution “Nunquam fore,” Dec. 15, 1856.
29. Favours granted by the Roman pontiff ought to be considered null, unless they have
been sought for through the civil government. — Ibid.
30. The immunity of the Church and of ecclesiastical persons derived its origin from civil
law. — Damnatio “Multiplices inter,” June 10, 1851.
31. The ecclesiastical forum or tribunal for the temporal causes, whether civil or criminal,
of clerics, ought by all means to be abolished, even without consulting and against the
protest of the Holy See. — Allocution “Nunquam fore,” Dec. 15, 1856; Allocution
“Acerbissimum,” Sept. 27, 1852.
32. The personal immunity by which clerics are exonerated from military conscription and
service in the army may be abolished without violation either of natural right or equity. Its
abolition is called for by civil progress, especially in a society framed on the model of a liberal
government. — Letter to the Bishop of Monreale “Singularis nobisque,” Sept. 29, 1864.
33. It does not appertain exclusively to the power of ecclesiastical jurisdiction by right,
proper and innate, to direct the teaching of theological questions. — Letter to the Archbishop
of Munich, “Tuas libenter,” Dec. 21, 1863.
34. The teaching of those who compare the Sovereign Pontiff to a prince, free and acting in the
universal Church, is a doctrine which prevailed in the Middle Ages. — Apostolic Letter “Ad
Apostolicae,” Aug. 22, 1851.
35. There is nothing to prevent the decree of a general council, or the act of all peoples, from
transferring the supreme pontificate from the bishop and city of Rome to another bishop and
another city. — Ibid.
36. The definition of a national council does not admit of any subsequent discussion, and the
civil authority car assume this principle as the basis of its acts. — Ibid.
37. National churches, withdrawn from the authority of the Roman pontiff and altogether
separated, can be established. — Allocution “Multis gravibusque,” Dec. 17, 1860.
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38. The Roman pontiffs have, by their too arbitrary conduct, contributed to the division of the
Church into Eastern and Western. — Apostolic Letter “Ad Apostolicae,” Aug. 22, 1851.” (Pius
IX, “The Syllabus of Errors” bold added)
The next section includes the same theme on the relationship between Church and State, I will
cite in full all the errors and as done before, highlight in bold the most crucial ones pertaining to
my analysis:
“39. The State, as being the origin and source of all rights, is endowed with a certain right
not circumscribed by any limits. — Allocution “Maxima quidem,” June 9, 1862.
40. The teaching of the Catholic Church is hostile to the well- being and interests of society. —
Encyclical “Qui pluribus,” Nov. 9, 1846; Allocution “Quibus quantisque,” April 20, 1849.
41. The civil government, even when in the hands of an infidel sovereign, has a right to an
indirect negative power over religious affairs. It therefore possesses not only the right called
that of “exsequatur,” but also that of appeal, called “appellatio ab abusu.” — Apostolic
Letter “Ad Apostolicae,” Aug. 22, 1851
42. In the case of conflicting laws enacted by the two powers, the civil law prevails. — Ibid.
43. The secular Dower has authority to rescind, declare and render null, solemn
conventions, commonly called concordats, entered into with the Apostolic See, regarding
the use of rights appertaining to ecclesiastical immunity, without the consent of the
Apostolic See, and even in spite of its protest. — Allocution “Multis gravibusque,” Dec. 17,
1860; Allocution “In consistoriali,” Nov. 1, 1850.
44. The civil authority may interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual
government: hence, it can pass judgment on the instructions issued for the guidance of
consciences, conformably with their mission, by the pastors of the Church. Further, it has
the right to make enactments regarding the administration of the divine sacraments, and
the dispositions necessary for receiving them. — Allocutions “In consistoriali,” Nov. 1, 1850,
and “Maxima quidem,” June 9, 1862.
45. The entire government of public schools in which the youth- of a Christian state is
educated, except (to a certain extent) in the case of episcopal seminaries, may and ought to
appertain to the civil power, and belong to it so far that no other authority whatsoever shall
be recognized as having any right to interfere in the discipline of the schools, the
arrangement of the studies, the conferring of degrees, in the choice or approval of the
teachers. — Allocutions “Quibus luctuosissimmis,” Sept. 5, 1851, and “In consistoriali,” Nov. 1,
1850.
46. Moreover, even in ecclesiastical seminaries, the method of studies to be adopted is
subject to the civil authority. — Allocution “Nunquam fore,” Dec. 15, 1856.
47. The best theory of civil society requires that popular schools open to children of every
class of the people, and, generally, all public institutes intended for instruction in letters
and philosophical sciences and for carrying on the education of youth, should be freed from
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all ecclesiastical authority, control and interference, and should be fully subjected to the
civil and political power at the pleasure of the rulers, and according to the standard of the
prevalent opinions of the age. — Epistle to the Archbishop of Freiburg, “Cum non sine,” July
14, 1864.
48. Catholics may approve of the system of educating youth unconnected with Catholic
faith and the power of the Church, and which regards the knowledge of merely natural
things, and only, or at least primarily, the ends of earthly social life. — Ibid.
49. The civil power may prevent the prelates of the Church and the faithful from communicating
freely and mutually with the Roman pontiff. — Allocution “Maxima quidem,” June 9, 1862.
50. Lay authority possesses of itself the right of presenting bishops, and may require of them to
undertake the administration of the diocese before they receive canonical institution, and the
Letters Apostolic from the Holy See. — Allocution “Nunquam fore,” Dec. 15, 1856.
51. And, further, the lay government has the right of deposing bishops from their pastoral
functions, and is not bound to obey the Roman pontiff in those things which relate to the
institution of bishoprics and the appointment of bishops. — Allocution “Acerbissimum,” Sept.
27, 1852, Damnatio “Multiplices inter,” June 10, 1851.
52. Government can, by its own right, alter the age prescribed by the Church for the religious
profession of women and men; and may require of all religious orders to admit no person to take
solemn vows without its permission. — Allocution “Nunquam fore,” Dec. 15, 1856.
53. The laws enacted for the protection of religious orders and regarding their rights and duties
ought to be abolished; nay, more, civil Government may lend its assistance to all who desire to
renounce the obligation which they have undertaken of a religious life, and to break their vows.
Government may also suppress the said religious orders, as likewise collegiate churches
and simple benefices, even those of advowson and subject their property and revenues to
the administration and pleasure of the civil power. — Allocutions “Acerbissimum,” Sept. 27,
1852; “Probe memineritis,” Jan. 22, 1855; “Cum saepe,” July 26, 1855.
54. Kings and princes are not only exempt from the jurisdiction of the Church, but are
superior to the Church in deciding questions of jurisdiction. — Damnatio “Multiplices inter,”
June 10, 1851.
55. The Church ought to be separated from the .State, and the State from the Church. —
Allocution “Acerbissimum,” Sept. 27, 1852.” (Pius IX, “The Syllabus of Errors” bold added)
Every item highlighted are errors committed by all regimes of totalitarian nature, of both left and
right, Fascism and National Socialism is no exception nor exempt from these highlighted errors,
as these errors have been demonstrated taking place discussed in previous section. In particular
interest is item 42, the error in which civil law prevails when there is conflict with ecclesiastical
moral laws; this was especially shown when the NSDAP legalized forced sterilization and other
eugenic legislations condemned by Pius XI’s Casti Connubii as was shown much earlier in the
MBS section. All the other errors were manifest in these totalitarian regimes, both Calles’
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regime, Hitler’s and Mussolini’s. Thus, these encyclicals and the cited syllabus undoubtedly
provided a precedent for the Catholic critics against Fascism and National Socialism to resist
their doctrines and face persecution, given these regimes refuse to negotiate their powers over all
aspect of society.
Pascendi Dominici Gregis
This is the encyclical that Pius X wrote against the Modernist Heresy, published on September
8th of 1907. This encyclical defines and exposes various areas that Pius X judges the Modernist
to have touched and from these areas he defines the doctrinal contrasts between how The Church
has seen herself in history, and how the Modernist reinterprets these matters. In this case, our
attention to this encyclical will be brief but not lessening its profound link to the main discussion
at hand in this first part of this monograph. I will focus on the very paragraph that Pius X speaks
on The Modernist’s view of Church and State, Pius X, and with my added highlights:
“But it is not with its own members alone that the Church must come to an amicable
arrangement - besides its relations with those within, it has others outside. The Church does not
occupy the world all by itself; there are other societies in the world, with which it must
necessarily have contact and relations. The rights and duties of the Church towards civil societies
must, therefore, be determined, and determined, of course, by its own nature as it has been
already described. The rules to be applied in this matter are those which have been laid down for
science and faith, though in the latter case the question is one of objects while here we have one
of ends. In the same way, then, as faith and science are strangers to each other by reason of the
diversity of their objects, Church and State are strangers by reason of the diversity of their ends,
that of the Church being spiritual while that of the State is temporal. Formerly it was possible to
subordinate the temporal to the spiritual and to speak of some questions as mixed, allowing to the
Church the position of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church was then regarded as
having been instituted immediately by God as the author of the supernatural order. But his
doctrine is today repudiated alike by philosophy and history. The State must, therefore, be
separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen. Every Catholic, from the
fact that he is also a citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the
way he thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church, without
paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders - nay, even in spite of its reprimands.
To trace out and prescribe for the citizen any line of conduct, on any pretext whatsoever, is
to be guilty of an abuse of ecclesiastical authority, against which one is bound to act with all
one's might. The principles from which these doctrines spring have been solemnly
condemned by our predecessor Pius VI. in his Constitution Auctorem fidei.” (Pius X, para.24
bold added)
It was important to lay this entire paragraph in context, because some sentences in isolation may
appear to invalidate the encyclical discussed earlier, but in full, Pius X describes how, the
sentences I highlighted in bold, are errors from the Modernist, and he says in the last sentence,
condemned by his predecessor in another encyclical. We now are able to see a bigger picture of
what was going inside the minds of these Catholic intellectuals that were skeptical and even
hostile towards Fascism and National Socialism, the same encyclicals I have cited were of course
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in the minds of educated and learned Catholics who saw the threats kilometers away, and even
Pius XI, who despite lamenting not heeding the warnings of Francesco Luigi Ferrari, his anxiety
experienced in the second decades of 1900 proved his intuition correct when he saw the threat
warned by Ferrari and Sturzo unfold when Mussolini declared that the State is to have full
monopoly over the education of children and all ages, free from ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
Now I turn back to the two main encyclicals of this monograph: MBS and NoAB, both
encyclicals share the same condemnations of statolatry, both condemn, as a result of statolatry,
the totalitarian education of stripping away The Church from educating the young, in education
that are against Catholic tradition and understanding, but MBS was the only one to call out a
special form of material idolatry: racialatry, the sacralisation of race. In reality, this sacralisation
was foreseen by Jesuits in Italy, but the peak of its sacralisation manifested itself just after the
Reichskonkordat signed on July 20th of 1933. This Magisterial analysis has shown that NoAB
and MBS have been informed by a context that the problem of sacralisation of the nation, the
State and other depositories of power were rampant and manifest all around them, across the
globe, from all sides of the political spectrum, and this context is what must be kept in mind to
understand both the language of these encyclicals, as well as the materials they most certainly
were aware of that propelled them to write these encyclicals, whether it be the racialist doctrines
and “race science” of the NSDAP or Gentile’s Fascist Doctrines and his Sorelian Marxist base
with Mazzini’s Idealism; The Church knew very well what they were dealing with as they saw
these events unfold as they voiced their concerns and observed the reactions from these regimes,
all were hostile in the end, and in the end in both cases The Church faced persecution and
hesitant concordats in fear of escalating conflicts they wished not to escalate.
Despite all this, out of all regimes, it appears that Mussolini himself, perhaps bittersweetly;
admits that when there is strong conflict, whatever it maybe, between The Church and The State,
it is the former that history has shown favor for. (Meinvielle, Entre La Iglesia y El Reich 17;
Ezcurra Medrano, “El Estado Nacionalista y El Catolicismo” 46) If only the Duce himself knew
this before he put the Pope in quite a psychological predicament during the 1920’s, but even
then, The Church triumphed over all opposition, including against regimes that tried to
subordinate her through sweet-nothings.

Summary of Non Abbiamo Bisogno’s Context

I will recap briefly and with details, what I have discussed so far regarding Non Abbiamo
Bisogno. The most crucial point is that NoAB explicitly condemns the statolatry inherent in
Fascism, the other is that the encyclical recognizes it has seen the Fascist state persecute Catholic
Action and exercised totalitarian authority beyond acceptable measures, and the context that
explains the history that led to this has also been discussed from the literature that has researched
the political climate in the Interwar period. The context also included a detailed analysis and
citations from Giovanni Gentile’s book on the doctrines of Fascism and its origins, showcasing
that even by his own admission, the doctrine of Fascism that would manifest in the Italian
government constituted a statolatrous nature, as well as Marxist origins which are condemned in
Quanta Cura and its attached syllabus. The historical record in the three decades of 1900 in Italy
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has shown that there was no evidence of harmonious alliance driven by political opportunism
from both sides, much less by The Church, and that the opposite has been true, the years even
prior to the concordat, Pius XI has shown numerous episodes of anxiety and concerns, and after
the speech that Mussolini declared that the education will be monopolized under The Fascist
state, excluding ecclesiastical influence, has driven Pius XI to a state of lament and regret. From
all this I have shown the attitudes of Catholics, even by Pius XI’s judgment, the concerns of
sacralisation observed in Italy’s Fascist regime even admitted by the Jesuit publishing house,
Civiltà Cattolica, and how priests like Luigi Sturzo and Francesco Luigi Ferrari have foreseen
the threats before Pius XI realized them too late even when the signs were staring at him. Not a
remark of his incompetence as in the same context, I have also detailed Pius XI’s suspicion
despite going along with the Lateran Pact.
Thus, the summary is concluding this first part, with all I have exposed, the doctrines of National
Socialism as understood both by the intellectuals of the regime and The Church, as well as
Fascism, are incompatible with Catholic Tradition, both in theory and practice. The doctrines as
presented and practiced by the NSDAP and the Fascist Party have shown consistent conflict and
tension between Catholic doctrine and tradition, and from Magisterial Documents I have shown
the precedent justifies The Church’s opposition as they understood it. From here concludes the
analysis on The Catholic Church itself conflict and incompatibility with these ideologies. I now
proceed to the next part: How the Catholicism of Hispanic political thinkers surpassed these
errors and conflicts, and how The Church responded to the Hispanic ethos and how Hispanic
thinkers interpreted modern political philosophies, how these interpretations helped them
formulate a framework that could cohere seamlessly with Catholic tradition and to point out
contrasts in the failures of Fascism and National Socialism in reconciling with Catholicism.

Part Two: The Hispano Catholic Solution

This is the second part of my analysis: I will focus now on dissecting and detailing the
Hispano Catholic ethos, what consists Hispanidad, what is its essence, what defines it, what
distinguishes it from other identities, the nature of this identity, and how this ethos ─when
consistently applied by Hispanics─ has given rise to various philosophical schools or social
attitudes that have surmounted the problems exposited in the first part by National Socialism and
Fascism. This part will present a positive case for why the Hispano Catholic ethos is a
remarkable model to emulate and how The Catholic Church has found no faults in its ethos.

The Hispano Catholic Ethos: a positive case

The first part of this monograph involved a comprehensive analysis on the historical and
intellectual context between The Catholic Church’s relation to two major interwar ideologies:
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Fascism and National Socialism. I have shown that, from The Catholic Church’s own
Magisterium and understanding on race, the State and other issues that these ideologies touched
upon; showcasing how they are incompatible with these ideologies, both in its theories and how
they were practiced. I occasionally made references to how I will refer again some points in that
section when talking about the Hispanic Catholic Ethos, now is the time to expand those small
mentions. There is a reason why I opted to first present this case second, and that is none other
than to establish, as a matter of first principle, that The Catholic Magisterium has provided
precedent that anticipated justified opposition to these ideologies. In other words, I first needed
to show that, from within the Magisterium, there is simply no way to reconcile these ideologies
with Catholicism, according to Catholicism and how The Church understood these ideologies.
This is important, because this is where this part shows fruits of that labor: if the first part has
definitively shown the liberal roots of Nationalism and these ideologies, even when they lent (at
least at first glance) support for The Catholic Church, how can Hispanic Nationalism ever be
reconciled with The Catholic Church? How has figures like Pedro Albizu Campos, surmounted
the objections from Pius IX and Pius XI, how has Pedro Albizu Campos and other Hispanic
Nationalist thinkers, overcame the sacralisation problem? How has Hispanic national identity
surmounted the racialism of the NSDAP or the totalitarianism of Mussolini and even Stalin?
How has The Catholic Church responded to the nationalism of Hispanoamerica? I will answer all
these questions in the same comprehensive manner as I treated the topics in the first part. From
here I begin a positive case for why The Hispanic ethos, by its very Catholic nature, and how it
was able to develop this nature, surmounted successfully all the problems The Catholic Church
saw in National Socialism and Fascism, and how this ethos is instrumental to formulate any
philosophy, including political philosophy, that can and will cohere successfully with Catholic
tradition with no issues. To note, this is not a formal project to provide for actual political
philosophers a Hispanic political philosophy framework, but this analysis will provide a toolset,
a basic paradigm that they can work with to successfully formulate a Hispanic Catholic
philosophy both in political and non-political thinking.

The Cristero War and Hispanic Catholic Action

In the first part analyzing the persecution of Catholic Action groups in Italy by Mussolini’s
administration, I have made brief mention and commented on the parallels that existed between
Mussolini’s Fascist government, and the government of Elías Calles in Mexico, both
contemporary in the decades of 1920’s. In it I mentioned how both administrations exercised a
level of totalitarianism targeting ecclesiastical bodies to suppress Church influence in society. I
now detail the context of this war and how Hispanic Catholic Action has been interpreted by both
the Catholic resistance, and the Pope that saw the conflict unfold after 1926.

A brief overview of the conflict

The specific period I will be analyzing is the one that took place in the course of three years,
from 1926-1929, although a second conflict of the same nature took place in the late 1930’s. The
Cristero War of the first phase was a civil war between two groups: Elías Calles and his
government of anticlericalists, and the Cristeros. (“Guerra Cristera: Conflictos Armados Entre El
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Estado Mexicano y Milicias de Grupos Católicos.”) The conflict began as a response to the
anticlerical laws implemented in the Mexican constitution under Plutarco Elías Calles on 1926,
these laws sought to suppress and restrict severely the religious rights of clerics and even the
laity. (“Guerra Cristera: Conflictos Armados Entre El Estado Mexicano y Milicias de Grupos
Católicos.”) It is from here that the conflict began to escalate from peaceful protests to full on
armed conflict. Before I dive into the causes and results, I will briefly lay out the context that led
to these conflicts in the first place.
The paper that will help me expand succinctly this context is one written by Damián López,
writing a historiographical approach to the conflict. The author first points out that since the
dawn of the 19th century, the Catholic Church already begun to experience sour confrontations
towards liberal governments (López 37), which is precisely the same conflicts the Church in the
Interwar Europe experienced with Nazi-Fascist regimes as well as Communist Russia. López
mentions that the period which set the precedent for the armed conflicts characterized by the
Cristero War was the reformation war (1857-1861). A period which established the pre-requisites
that would characterize liberal anticlerical oppositions towards the ecclesial body. (López 37)
Historians that analyze the antecedents to Cristero War agree that before the Huerta regime, the
Porfiriato period consisted in a relatively peaceful co-existence between Church and State,
before the beginning of the 1910 revolution, which the constitutionalists blame the Church for
the reactionary attitude in supporting the Huerta regime from the period of 1913-1914. (López
38) López mentions how in Guadalajara, many buildings were used as military purposes and
imprisonment of priests who resisted these efforts, as well as the implementation of the 1917
constitution, which had anti-ecclesiastical legislation, among them restricting monastic orders,
prohibition of property by these religious institutions and regulation of religious functions.
(López 38)
Regarding the constitutionalism characterized in the early 1910’s, López writes:
“According to the British historian Alan Knight, the triumph of constitutionalism in 1914 opened
the way to an anticlericalism that, previously minor and vague, moved to the center of the
official revolutionary scene; and although it is true that this was a movement that came
fundamentally from the cities and the elites, it did not take long for it to also spread to the
countryside and to some popular sectors. The link with the Church thus begins to become a
terrain of serious confrontations, politicizing the ecclesiastical institution and religion, and
tending to form confronted bands. Even so, overall, these are complex configurations in which
the most radical and intransigent fractions were a minority. With the consolidation of
constitutionalist hegemony and Obregón’s accession to the presidency at the beginning of in the
1920s the conflict even seemed to subside, in no small part due to the signs of greater
pragmatism and predisposition to conciliation on the part of this last. However, beginning with
the presidency of Elías Calles (1924-1928), representative of the most tenaciously anticlerical
sector of constitutionalism, the tensions around the religious issue would reach their climax,
producing at that time context of exaltation of the Cristero war.” (López 38 italics added)
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López then continues to mention how equally relevant were the projects wanting to establish an
apostolic see that was unusually supportive of the government at the time, which created more
tensions between the Catholic syndicates and the anticlericalists. (López 38) This attempt has
emboldened the opposition to the Catholics which inspired the formation of organizations like
the Unión Popular and Liga Nacional de Defensa de la Libertad Religiosa, which were relevant
to maintaining the war’s actualization. (López 38) The conflict that sparked then, the initiation of
the war was Calles’ pretension to implement anticlerical laws that, even after polite request to
abolish said laws, Calles doubled down and decreed that religious worship is to cease by August.
(López 38–39)
From then on, various protests of peaceful nature began to mobilize to petition the abolishing of
these laws, but the government ignored these plea (“Guerra Cristera: Conflictos Armados Entre
El Estado Mexicano y Milicias de Grupos Católicos.”) and by 1927, the conflict escalated to a
more aggressive nature, which eventually grew to full on armed conflict, the results which
culminated with a total of 70k to 85k deaths (López 39), with 250k deaths from the Cristero
Mexicans. (“Guerra Cristera: Conflictos Armados Entre El Estado Mexicano y Milicias de
Grupos Católicos.”)
From The Church’s standpoint, the Calles’ administration forced an armed resistance by the
Mexican Catholics against a statolatrous government lacking in peaceful martyrdom in NatSoc
Germany and Fascist Italy.

The lack of admonishing encyclicals: A preview into the Hispanic ethos in

Hispanic Catholic Action
Before I move on to discuss the encyclical during the first Cristeros War, I want to contextualize
the encyclical that deals with the second phase of the Cristero War, and then do a compare-
contrast analysis with the other two encyclicals analyzed in the previous part.
The first war was characterized by Elías Calles’ promulgation of anticlerical laws, which
involved strong restrictions in monastic orders and religious liberty in general. After peaceful
attempts were exhausted, armed conflict ensued, and the entire Catholic body was united in this
front. Now what of the second phase? My next analysis will be using Enrique Guerra Manzo’s
article on this matter to further glean on the nature of this conflict before analyzing the
encyclicals referring to these wars and how that compares with the language of the encyclicals
analyzed in the previous part.
The Second Cristero War was characterized primarily by a conflict that, to the Cristeros, the
armistice signed in 1929 was suspicious and presented problems through the following years by
part of the State itself, as Pope Pius XI himself has acknowledged in his encyclical written in
1932, Acerba Animi:
“But whereas other Governments in recent times have been eager to renew agreements with the
Holy See, that of Mexico frustrated every attempt to arrive at an understanding. On the contrary,
it most unexpectedly broke the promises made to Us shortly before in writing, banishing
repeatedly Our Representatives and showing thereby its animosity against the Church. Thus a
most rigorous application was given to Article 130 of the Constitution, against which, on account
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of its extreme hostility to the Church, as may be seen from Our Encyclical Iniquis afflictisque of
November 18, 1926, the Holy See had to protest in the most solemn manner. Heavy penalties
were then enacted against the transgressors of this deplorable article; and, as a fresh affront to the
Hierarchy of the Church, it was provided that every State of the Confederation should determine
the number of priests empowered to exercise the sacred ministry, in public or in private.” (Pius
XI, “Acerba Animi,” para.3)
Guerra Manzo likewise writes the same observations after citing how the main military chief by
1933 of the Second Cristero War, Aurelio Acevedo of Zacatecas, writes to the episcopate to
consider his pleas in part of the Cristeros who saw the effects of the armistice:
“[…] not only did the State not respect the agreements with the Church, but the latter turned its
back on the former Cristeros. These aspects continued to be accentuated until 1931, the year in
which the main promoters of the latter decided to prepare a new armed movement.” (Guerra
Manzo 518)
Despite this, there remained division, one which was born at the apogee of the first conflict when
the Pope opted to forge a peace treaty, no different from the usual arrangement of concordats in
Europe: those that wanted to keep the modus vivendi signed in 1929, main heads to promote this
pacifist co-existence were archbishop Pascual Díaz y Barreto and pontificate delegate Leopolodo
Ruiz y Flores; and then those who composed the LNDLR, the Cristeros. (Guerra Manzo 519) It
was this period ─the late 1920’s and most of the 1930’s─ which the Mexican episcopate have
attempted to pacify the Cristeros to remain faithful to the modus vivendi, but how did the
Cristeros justify their action against near insurmountable odds? They defended two theses: the
Cristiada was never defeated but forced the State to recognize their religious liberties, through
legal means, to respect and recognize the Mexican Religious Hierarchs, and that a pacified, weak
Catholicism was transformed into a warrior, aggressive and fervent Catholicism that remained
loyal to The Pope and Christ King. (Guerra Manzo 520–21) Another reason for remaining in
their struggle is they have observed that from the moment they signed the armistice to the early
1930’s, the political class made it clear they would not respect the pact, and they also recognized
a contradiction between the teachings of the Pope, and the suppressive attitude of the episcopate
that remained submissive to the State (Guerra Manzo 521–22) and how one of their bishops,
Jesús Manríquez y Zárate, has counselled the Cristeros to be “a sacred fire” for the people in
their struggle to fight for their religious liberties against the State. (Guerra Manzo 522) However,
due to a combination of logistics and even public support, as well as the death of Rafael
Ceniceros y Villarreal (the League’s president at the time); the movement experienced significant
setbacks and near the brink of collapse. (Guerra Manzo 523–25) It wasn’t until the second
semester of 1934, when the government approved the socialist education which became effective
by September of that year, that the Cristero organizations found opportunities to garner support
and continue their fights as they found new problem from the government to justify mobilization.
(Guerra Manzo 526) what Acerba Animi suspected from the government’s refusal to respect the
agreements, the Cristeros saw its consequences three years back and it manifested in September
of 1934, and thus their struggles were vindicated. (Guerra Manzo 527–28) The Cristeros justified
this momentous opportunity to launch their war against the State to save their fatherland and
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institute a civilization that is Catholic and Hispanist (Guerra Manzo 528), inspired by encyclicals
such as Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno. (Guerra Manzo 528 footnote 32) Despite this,
another conflict was emerging from within the government, which culminated in the triumph of
Lázaro Cárdenas, the new president of Mexico, between the period of Calles regime and the rise
of Cárdenas to power, the conflict of the Cristero under the Leagues was experiencing defeats in
battle in numerous regions and losing public support. (Guerra Manzo 531–32) Commenting on
Cárdenas victory over Calles, the LNDL described that although now the aggressive persecutions
weakened that “the stronger tyrant fell”, the socialism in the educations continued. (Guerra
Manzo 529–30)
In spite of various internal conflicts in the structure of the organizations and differing motives in
undertaking this war, Guerra Manzo has this to conclude regarding the complexity that
characterized this second Cristero War:
“The second Cristiada was a marginal social movement, composed of former ex-Cristeros who
were unable to integrate into the new social order that was in the process of institutionalization in
the 1930s, in which the State and the State and the Episcopate reached a modus vivendi after
intense bargaining between the two sides during 1929-1938. The militants of the latter did not
believe in this arrangement, which they interpreted as a modus muriendi, so they decided to take
up arms again in the hope that someday Catholic society would take off the veil that the
supporters of the modus vivendi had imposed on it and would listen to them and continue in their
struggle. The Cristero leadership considered that the right to freedom, which the post-
revolutionary State and its anticlerical laws had violated, could not be agreed upon, but only
conquered through what they called the “sacred fire” (the path of violence). This appeared as a
clear lesson provided by the first Cristiada. Therefore, the League’s high command thought, the
Church-State agreement of July 1929 only returned the Catholic bloc (all those actors who
actively or passively fought for the defense of the religious body, the extension of civil liberties
and the repeal of laws limiting worship) to the “peaceful, apathetic and defeatist” Catholicism of
the generation of the Porfiriato, which the Cristero rebels of 1926-1929 believed they had
overcome.” (Guerra Manzo 568–69)
The interesting conflict is more between the Mexican episcopate and The Cristeros: the former
tried to pacify the latter in hopes of, to their estimation, the agreement was legitimate or at least
was one which they could keep casualties to a minimum in their peaceful resistance. How did the
Pope saw the Cristeros’ actions throughout the 1930’s? To some readers’ surprise, The Pope
showed no condemnation, no admonishment, at best, the Pope counseled the Catholics, on all
sides, to keep in mind reasonable principles of resistance. This is shown precisely in Paragraph
28 in Firmissimam Constantiam published after the culmination of the conflict. The encyclical
prior also showed no condemnations nor admonishment, certainly no words along the lines of
“He who believes/does X strays from the path of God” or “He who does X does not preach the
Faith of the Apostles” or anything similar along those lines as we saw in MBS and NoAB,
instead, we see language of advisor nature, language that understands certain problems and
provides general principles of morality to mend with those problems, nowhere do we see
warnings of the Pope against the Cristeros with consequences that jeopardize the Faith, in other
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words, Pius XI is not even warning the Cristeros, nor is he scolding them, he is counselling them
in their struggles, and the episcopate interpreted this as a license to pacify them, most certainly
because of Paragraph 13, they interpreted legitimate means to only encompass peaceful means,
but if that is so, why did Pius XI not condemn the guerrilla attacks of the Cristeros which
happened between the second semester of 1934 up to almost the culmination of the war,
including near the end of March of 1937? Some may point to Paragraph 15 of Firmissimam
Constantium as definitive proof of condemnation, but this is false. Paragraph 15 shows no such
language, at best, it shows advisory language, which is what I have argued, but the context of
that paragraph has to do with social living conditions which Paragraph 13-14 regarding
charitable works to remedy those problems (Pius XI, “Firmissimam Constantiam,” paras.13–14)
Plus, in the same paragraph highlighted shortly prior, Paragraph 28, sets the standards of how a
Catholic should proceed when remedying any problem in society, and it again advises that any
action Catholics ought to take, they should do so with said actions meeting proportionate ends
and do so wisely. (Pius XI, “Firmissimam Constantiam” 28) Anticipating, they might point to
item 4, but item 4 says:
“That the use of such means and the exercise of civic and political rights in their fulness,
embracing also problems of order purely material and technical, or any violent defense, does not
enter in any manner in the task of the clergy or of Catholic Action as such, although to both
appertains the preparation of Catholics to make just use of their rights, and to defend them with
all legitimate means according as the common good requires […]” (Pius XI, “Firmissimam
Constantiam,” para.28 italics added)
The highlighted part is key as it is recognized in light of the previous items listed in the same
paragraph, but not even this fragment shows any sign of condemnatory language, merely
advisory one. Note I am not saying Pius XI necessarily approved of the Cristeros’ actions in their
war, but the likelihood that the episcopate reported faithfully of their exploits for Pius XI to
comment on the overall situation shows that Pius XI found no grounds to condemn them as he
too understood their struggles and reasons, and could find any opportunity to condemn them for
engaging in action that went against the episcopate’s wishes in Mexico, but he didn’t, and this is
precisely the underlined contrast that exists within the Catholics in Mexico, and by extension,
Hispanoamerica and its regimes that tried to suppress Catholic expression, and the Catholics Pius
XI had to deal with in the Nazi-Fascist regimes, especially so-called Catholics trying to
legitimize sacralisations in their politics, which Pius XI would not tolerate however polite his
means were. Thus, here is the fundamental difference between the Catholics in Germany and
Italy that tried to resist in their countries, and the Mexican Cristeros: the latter would not tolerate
the government to silence them, the former capitulated to the propaganda to pacify them. It is as
if to the latter, Catholicism was something to not just die for, but to fight and wage war over for,
even against all odds. This is not to demean the Catholics that faced persecution in Germany and
Italy, but the fact that Pius XI found very little to no issue in the war-like Catholic zeal in the
Cristeros, and found plenty of similarities between the Mexican Government and the Nazi-
Fascist regimes he had major headaches with, shows that there is not merely a materially
expressed contrast, but a formal and fundamental ethos manifested in this event alone. I will
detail what this ethos is and why any nationalism conceived with this ethos in Hispanoamerica,
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because of its very nature, was able to surmount the sacralisation problem inherent in National
Socialism and Fascism that was lacking in the nationalisms of Hispanoamericans. In the next
sections, I will dissect and unpack the nature of not just Hispanic Catholic Action, but the
Catholic core that defines Hispanic ethos and why this ethos has surpassed all the barriers and
problems present in National Socialism and Fascism.

Indo-Hispanidad and race: A philosophical and cultural analysis

What is Indo-Hispanidad? What defines it? What does it mean to be of Indo-Hispanidad? One
thing I will let you know is that it is not a political ideology, not even a philosophical school for
that matter, certainly not a theological one, but it does have some elements of those. Ultimately,
Indo-Hispanidad is an imperial identity that encompasses cultural, linguistic, philosophical, and
religious basis that are defined only of elements within this universe. That is what it ultimately is
in general, but how to specify what that ultimately is, is of course, notoriously difficult, but not
impossible. In the following sub-sections, I will talk about four major authors who have touched
upon this concept of Indo-Hispanidad or Hispanidad. Of course, there are more that did I am
sure, but these fours I have selected as I believe they better encapsulate the concept.
Unfortunately, this is not a concept that one can easily summarize in a single sentence, no matter
how many commas or semi-colons it takes before the period, but that does not subtract its reality
and ontology any more than how it is difficult to summarize in a single sentence what Molecular
Orbital Theory is or any other complex scientific theory. Many profoundly philosophically rich
theological concepts too, are difficult to summarize in a single sentence, probably true for any
complex subject for that matter, but I hope that with this detailed treatment, I will be able to
provide such as best as possible, and the reader as well.
You will notice that first and foremost, I will deal with Indo-Hispanidad from the subject
regarding race or racial identity. What does Indo-Hispanidad offer to race or racial identity? Is
Indo-Hispanidad a race? A collection of races? Is it intelligible to speak of an Indo-Hispanic
race? What would that mean for those who believe in “a pure race?” I will answer these
questions, and I will compare and contrast predominantly the National Socialist’s treatment of
race to Indo-Hispanidad, because I will tell you in advance: they are very different. Not only in
practice but in theory. The four authors in question are: Ramiro de Maeztu, who will provide us
not only a cultural and philosophical definition, but provide us a historical context on how this
concept played out in the Hispanic Empire; José Vasconcelos, who will describe to us the
concept of The Cosmic Race, what it means, how it came to be and what motivated its
ethnogenesis, what are those principles and how they play in contemporary Hispanic
consciousness; Pedro Albizu Campos, who will provide us a civilizational theology that defined
Hispanidad, an overview of his nationalism and how Indo-Hispanidad played out in his political
philosophy as well as interesting Catholic inspirations of his political philosophy; Alberto Buela,
who will provide us not only a deep philosophical outline of Indo-Hispanidad, but how the
inhabitants of the continent ought to define and conceive themselves in light of not just the above
authors, but Buela’s own thoughts in what would constitute the Hispanoamerican ethos and the
Hispanoamerican identity in the Western hemisphere. Along the way I will cite extras to
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supplement their thoughts to further solidify the concept to then combine it all together into a
cohesive concept to summarize and answer the earlier questions and other questions in the
previous sections like how Indo-Hispanidad surmounted the sacralisation problem.

Ramiro de Maeztu’s Defense of Hispanicity

The main work to be referenced in Maeztu’s thesis of Hispanidad is his iconic work: Defensa de
La Hispanidad published in 1934, currently no non-Spanish translation exists, at least an official
translation. The book was written to a Spanish speaking audience to give an apologetics of a
‘thing’ that unites, however subconsciously, all the countries and peoples that were born and
forged throughout the imperial feats of the Hispanic Monarchy. I will present Maeztu’s
Hispanidad thesis from the most relevant subjects that will help compare and contrast
Hispanidad with how National Socialism views race.
Conceptual sketch: On Hispanidad
“For twenty centuries, the path of Spain has no possible loss. It learns from Rome the language
with which its tribes can understand each other and the organizational capacity to make them live
together in law. In the language of Latium it receives Christianity, and with Christianity the ideal.
Then come the trials. First, that of the North, with the Arrian pride that proclaims it does not
need Redeemer, but Master, then that of the South, where the morality of man is abandoned to an
inscrutable destiny. We Spaniards could also let ourselves be carried away by Kismet. We would
be now what Morocco or, at most, Algeria. Our honor was to embrace the Cross and Europe, the
West, and to identify our being with our ideal. The same year in which we took the Cross to the
Alhambra we discovered the New Continent. It was October 12, the day on which the Virgin
appeared to Santiago at the Pilar in Zaragoza. The historical current made us extend the Cross to
the new world.” (de Maeztu 8–9)
Hispanidad, as I will demonstrate, initiates in The Cross, thus, it is born out of The Cross, and
only the particularities of the Spaniard, and subsequently, all the races that compose Hispanidad,
is what makes it different from any other expression of Catholicism. Hispanidad then is an
imperial Catholic mission born out of a Hispanic ideal, a zeal that has defined this empire for
centuries that made this empire, truly, the inheritor of Rome in the Western front. This section is
the appropriate place to define what Maeztu means, constitutes, and contextualizes Hispanidad,
and what, according to Maeztu, constituted its dispersion or fracture, and what has kept it unified
at the same time. Little by little I will show, and expand with details the concept of Hispanidad,
what it is, what it isn’t, what are its ideals, what is its essence.
Its demarcation and dispersion
What is Hispanidad? Or at the very least, what characterizes Hispanidad that distinguishes it
from other identities? Ramiro de Maeztu argues that Hispanidad is ─and suggests in an
interrogative manner regarding what constitutes Christendom─ that which encompasses all
Hispanic countries and its communities. (de Maeztu 19) He then asks shortly thereafter, if the
lusophones should be included under Hispanidad, after all, to the modern reader, Hispanic is
equivalent to Spanish speaking, so Portuguese is excluded. Ramiro de Maeztu rejects this and
cites various Portuguese figures that affirm a different interpretation of Hispanic:
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“First question: Will Portugal and Brazil be included? Sometimes the Portuguese protest. I don’t
think the more educated ones. Cámoens calls them (Lusiadas, Canto I, strf. XXXI):
“Huma gente fortissima de Espanha”
André de Resende, the humanist, said the same, with words that doña Carolina Michaëlis de
Vasconcelos praises: “Hispani omnes sumus” [We are all Hispanics]. Almeida Garret also said it:
“Somos Hispanos, e devemos chamar Hispanos a quantos habitamos a peninsula hispánica” [We
are Hispanics, and we should call Hispanics to those which inhabit the Hispanic peninsula]. And
Don Ricardo Jorge has said: “chamese Hispania à peninsula, hispano ao seu habitante ondequer
que demore, hispánico ao que lhez diez respeito” [The peninsula is called Hispania, its inhabitant
is hispano wherever it takes, Hispanic that which concerns him]. Hispanic are, then, all the
peoples that owe civilization or being to the Hispanic peoples of the peninsula. Hispanidad is the
concept that encompasses them all.” (de Maeztu 19–20 translations in brackets)
Maeztu then, takes the ancient Roman definition of Hispanic: that which originates and owes its
heritage to the Hispanian peninsula. Hispania was, of course, a Roman province, and in it
included every monarchy that served Rome, including Lusitania, which was part of the
Hispanian province of Rome, this is the definition that Maeztu argues, it therefore transcends
mere linguistic barriers, since to Maeztu, Hispania included all the linguistic communities that
encompassed the peninsula in question. That means Basques, Catalans, Gallicians, Portuguese,
Andalucians and every other community under the empire of Hispania, is part of Hispanidad.
From here Maeztu establishes that because of its imperial nature, Hispanidad then, is not a race,
because:
“[…] It could only be accepted in the sense of evidencing that we Spaniards do not attach
importance to blood, nor to the color of the skin, because what we call race is not constituted by
those characteristics that can be transmitted through protoplasmic obscurities, but by those others
that are light of the spirit, such as speech and creed. Hispanidad is composed of men of the
white, black, Indian and Malay races, and their combinations, and it would be absurd to search
for their characteristics by the methods of ethnography.” (de Maeztu 20 italics added)
The nature of Hispanidad then, transcends racial barriers because it now emphasizes an
immaterial principle that distinguishes even those within the same anthropological categories. To
Hispanidad, any race can, potentially, be Hispanic, but not all are Hispanic, and what
distinguishes a negro Hispanic from any negro, or a European Hispanic from a non-hispanic
European, to Maeztu, is the cultural and spiritual outlook that defines this imperial identity. This
means Hispanidad is not even restricted by geography either (de Maeztu 20–21) as Maeztu
argues that Hispanidad has, geographically, incorporated every climate, steppe and valley that
has distinguished different ethnicities emerging from these geographic niches. Thus, Maeztu
argues that Hispanidad, is not even a natural product, in the sense that it transcends nature. (de
Maeztu 21) Maeztu has effectively attributed a supernatural nature to Hispanidad, much like
Catholicism is supernatural over other ethnicities in bringing them together. Implicitly here,
Maeztu argues that Hispanidad, functionally, is identical to the Catholic religion’s universality,
and this point I will expand in future sections under Maeztu’s treatment.
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Finally, Maeztu goes so far as to say that Hispanidad transcends even historical circumstances,
and that ultimately, Hispanidad is a permanent community not defined by solely linguistic
similarities, because as he mentioned, Hispanidad is not demarcated on that all speak the
Hispanian languages, although it is a bare minimum, but it is more than its bare minimum, nor is
it defined by its historical origin solely nor adhered to particular circumstances. (de Maeztu 21)
Maeztu comments on the circumstantial disunity characterized by the contemporary republics in
the Hispanoamerican continent, but simultaneously mentioning how even a peninsular feels just
as home in its home peninsula as he is when traveling to various countries in Hispanoamerica,
and mentions how this temporary disunity among the republics ceases to be when the Yankee
regime attempts to set up military bases in Hispanic territory to the point of countries like
Argentina and Nicaragua calling for the sovereignty of Puerto Rico and Haití against the Yankee
menace. (de Maeztu 22) Maeztu rejects also the notion that the Hispanoamerican republics
forged merely as a reaction against the Crown, as he writes:
“[…] But this interpretation is too simple. Nations are not formed in a negative way, but
positively and by association of the spirit of their inhabitants with the land where they live and
die.” (de Maeztu 23)
In the following sections, Maeztu discusses numerous events that led to the crisis of Hispanidad,
I will save that discussion in the Foreignization Problem, which will be very relevant in pin-
pointing contemporary problems in the Hispanoamerican sphere in the current global stage.
Maeztu then after discussing the problems that characterized the circumstantial disunity of
Hispanic countries was due to admiration of foreign ideals that attack their core foundations,
Maeztu writes:
“Then we perceive the spirit of Hispanidad as a light from above. Disunited, dispersed, we
realize that liberty has not been, nor can it be, a bond of union. Peoples do not unite in liberty,
but in community. Our community is not racial, nor geographic, but spiritual. It is in the spirit
where we find both the community and the ideal.” (de Maeztu 43)
For Maeztu, Hispanidad disregards racial and geographic barriers, not because they are illusory,
but because they are not features that characterize a civilization of imperial character that so
characterizes Hispanidad. For Hispanidad, whether you were born from the steppes, the desert,
or nearby river valley, you can overcome your circumstances and strive for a greater ideal that is
not predetermined by your accidents of nature, but you can mold your own particularities to a
greater expression of that particularity that empowers a greater whole, a greater community that
does not cancel nor deny these particularities, but lifts them and build them up in ways that they
can overlook physiological differences. Thus, this aspect of Hispanidad is what has enabled the
Hispanians to surmount the racialatry problem: they have rejected racial puritanisms, their purity
shifted from a phenotypical to a psychotypical one, but details of this will be expanded further in
the monograph.
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On Spanish humanism and its value

“What we have believed and believe is that truth cannot belong to anyone, as a kind of non-
transferable property. For the belief that it is not a geographical or racial monopoly and that all
men can attain it, because it is transcendental, universal and eternal, we Spaniards have fought in
the best moments of our history. What our people have always felt, in the hours of faith and in
those of skepticism, is their essential equality with all the other peoples of the earth.” (de Maeztu
49–50)
This is what Maeztu says commenting on what Marcus Aurelio and Gavinet calls that man has “a
diamond shaft” that drives them towards a greater ideal amidst lives’ harshness and suffering.
Maeztu says this in response to Gavinet in unpacking the Spanish Idearium, which he cites:
““When one examines the ideal constitution of Spain, the deepest moral and, in a certain sense,
religious element that is and, in a certain way, the deepest religious element that one discovers in
it, as if as if serving as its foundation, is Stoicism; not the vital and heroic Stoicism of Cato, nor
the serene and majestic Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius, nor the rigid and extreme stoicism of
Epictetus, but the natural and human stoicism of Seneca. Seneca is not a Spaniard, a son of Spain
by chance: he is Spanish by essence; and not Andalusian, because when he was born the Vandals
had not yet come to Spain; that to be born later, in the Middle Ages, perhaps, he was not born in
Andalusia, but in Castile. The whole doctrine of Seneca is condensed in this teaching: “Do not be
overcome by anything foreign to your spirit; think in the midst of the accidents of life, that you
have within you a mother force, something strong and indestructible, like a diamond shaft,
around which revolve the petty facts that form the fabric of daily life; and whatever events may
befall you, whether they be of the kind we call prosperous, or of those which we call adverse, or
of those which seem to debase us by their contact with us, stand so firm and upright, that at least
it may Is be said of you that you are a man”.” (de Maeztu 47–48)
Maeztu agrees but with the caveat that the Spanish does not believe he possesses some rigid
internal exclusive truth to these universalities that the Spanish zealously spread. Maeztu sees
Hispanic civilization as a zealously missionary empire that he believes other civilizations have
not spread far enough with similar zeal but does not attribute privileged exclusivity to this. (de
Maeztu 49–50) This is where Maeztu outlines the character of Hispanic civilization as
embodying a Spanish humanist ideal, which he describes as having a deep-rooted core in
Catholic belief. (de Maeztu 52–53) How did he arrive at this? Maeztu previously commented
further into Gavinet’s Idearium, how the Spanish believes that life is a dream, but he argues:
“In Spanish lips this phrase means the opposite of what it would mean in those of an Oriental. In
saying it, the Buddhist closes his eyes to the surrounding life, to squat down and console himself
from the oppression of desires with the dream of Nirvana. The Spaniard, on the other hand,
would wish that life had the eternity that in these centuries used to be attributed to matter. And
even when he says, with Calderón:
“What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
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A shadow, a fiction,
That the greatest good is small
And all life is a dream,
And dreams, dreams are...”
is not theorizing or defining the essence of life, but rather desperately condoling that life and its
glories are not strong and perennial, the same as a rock. And in this inexhaustible longing for
eternity and power, we must find one of the categories of that mother force of which Ganivet
speaks, but not as a treasure, which we would avariciously keep in our coffers, but as a magnet
that attracts us from the outside.” (de Maeztu 51)
Maeztu identifies that this is indeed the Hispanic’s “diamond shaft” but not something that is
inherent in a privileged manner to him, but something external which they set their minds in to
strive for. In summary, Maeztu identifies this humanism as a theocentric humanism that believes
that man is capable of overcoming accidental circumstances, besides each individual differences
and particularities, can eventually strive for a greater good that all man is capable by nature of
being human and made in God’s Image. (de Maeztu 52–53) Perhaps, some races are born into
not-so prestigious circumstances, some are born with more weaknesses than others, but for the
Hispanic, that doesn’t matter, because in the end, they are sons of Adam, and a son of Adam is a
son of God and God created man with an Image destined for greatness that does not deny their
particularities whatever that may manifest itself into. Man is not fatalistically doomed to a niche
box as the National Socialist would box each race, despite his insistence that he respected those
differences, but to the Hispanic, man is not defined by arbitrary systems of castes that eternally
close them to a cultural box that he or she was born into, but he or she can preserve those
differences even if he transcends those differences, because his identity is not restricted to the
confines of geography or phenotype, but something greater that he or she can share and preserve
his or her uniqueness, and this is what Maeztu characterizes to his theocentric humanism that the
Hispanic has embodied in his imperial feats. (de Maeztu 52–55)
Human equality, the Principle of Growth and other values of the like
This is further confirmed when Maeztu discusses different forms of humanism, and when
comparing to the theocentric humanism of Hispanics, he argues:
“Between these two senses of man: the exclusivist sense of pride and the physiological sense of
leveling, the Spaniard tends his middle way. He does not equate the good and the bad, the
superior and the inferior, because the differences in the value of their acts seem indisputable to
him, but neither can he believe that God has divided men from all eternity, since before
creation, into the elect and the reprobate. This is the heresy, the sect: the division or sectioning
of the human race. The Spanish sense of humanism was formulated by Don Quixote when he
said: “Repara, hermano Sancho, que nadie es más que otro sino hace más que otro” [Repair,
brother Sancho, that no one is more than another but does more than another]. It is a saying that
comes from popular language.” (de Maeztu 65 bold and italics added, translations in brackets)
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What Maeztu just described in the highlighted text is precisely the error of the National Socialist
described in the first part: in attempting to glorify the differences and respect their differences,
the National Socialist has committed the same mistake Maeztu describes: a quasi-Calvinist
heresy that all men are predetermined to a geographic and phenotypic niche eternally confined to
these sects. Hispanidad rejects this error while conserving the particularities expressed in each
people groups, yet not believing that these particularities are confined to a box prohibited from
intermingling. Maeztu may not explicitly say this, but the implication is very clear: if the
Hispanic theocentric humanism accepts that each group is different in ways of doing and
thinking, but does not believe that all must be leveled to an absolutist egalitarianism, then the
result is inescapable: mankind is composed of different groups that can share and exchange skills
and customs and their crossings do not level nor erase their particularities but enhance them. This
is corroborated with this next citation when Maeztu explains this sense of equality in differential
hierarchies of works:
“This spirit of essential equality does not mean that the characteristic virtue of the Spaniards is
charity, although I do not believe that we lack it either. There are peoples richer than ours and
better organized, in which the spirit of social service is more active and who have done much
more for the poor than we have. But there is something previous to the love to the neighbor, and
it is that the neighbor is recognized as such, that is to say, like a proximal. A charity that
considers him as a pampered pet will not be charity, even if it treats him generously. It is
necessary that the poor be not considered as something different and inferior to other men. And
this is what the Spaniards have done like no other people. They have been able to make the
humblest feel that between man and man there is no essential difference, and that between man
and animal there is an abyss that will never be bridged by natural laws. All perceptive travelers
have observed in Spain the dignity of the poorer classes and the countrymanship of the
aristocracy. The stately air of the Spanish beggar is characteristic. The hidalgo may not be so in
his business. It is certain, on the other hand, that in a Spanish prison they will not appeal in vain
to the chivalry of their tenants.” (de Maeztu 66–67 italics added)
This is very different from the National Socialist perception of racial hierarchies discussed in the
first paragraph. The NSDAP would not consider a negro as an equal even if he was
“domesticated”, but the Hispanic would even if he exhibits some poor personality traits, he is
still a man.
When arriving at the Antilles in 1509, Maeztu recounts how Alonso de Ojeda could have
declared the racial superiority of the Spaniard over the indigenous, however, Maeztu writes:
“What he told them textually was this: “God Our Lord, who is unique and eternal, created
heaven and earth and a man and a woman, from whom you, I and all men who have been and
will be in the world, are descended”. The example of Ojeda is then followed by the Spaniards
spread throughout the lands of America: in the evening they gather the Indians, like a mother
gathers her children, under the cross of the village, they make them join hands and raise their
hearts to God.” (de Maeztu 68–69 italics added)
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Regarding the abuses, Maeztu acknowledges that there were Spanish that strayed from this ideal
but cites how no other empire have sought to formulate the Indian Laws (referring among them,
the Burgos Laws) which legislated equality among the indigenous like no other, among these
rights were amicable treatment, punishing encomenderos’ abuses, voluntary conversion and
prohibition to wage them war and slavery. (de Maeztu 69) With these achievements, the
Spaniards proclaimed October 12th to celebrate “The Festivity of the Race” while clarifying that
he deems “race” inappropriate in the titling. (de Maeztu 69) In the following authors to be
discussed, in particular Albizu Campos, we will discover why many in the Hispanoamerican
continent have not bothered with the old title that Maeztu disputes in his work, for now suffice it
to say, Maeztu highlights how this “Day of Hispanidad” was to honor this cultural fusion and all
its implications, between different races that the Spanish encountered throughout its odyssey. (de
Maeztu 69)
Maeztu further comments how because of this transcendental nature, the Hispanic Monarchy has
effectively labelled itself a Universal Monarchy because of its religious Catholic universality to
establish itself in its imperial feats, and argues how because of this, any secessionist nationalism
has always been absent since the monarchy has always attempted to fight these. (de Maeztu 71)
He even mentions so ingrained is this universalism that even their skeptics affirm this zeal after
mentioning how this line of thought was what fueled the Counter Reformation at Trent against
Luther. (de Maeztu 71)
From here Maeztu talks about the Principle of Growth which he cites from Bertrand Russel
discussing the phenomenon of impulses and desires. (de Maeztu 88–89) Maeztu rejects Russel’s
romanticist implications of treating desires as things to be unrestrained, even those that clearly
lead to evils and crimes. (de Maeztu 89–90) For Maeztu, growth is driven with a liberty truly
founded in maximizing goodness, for only true liberty is found in guiding impulses and desires
that allow for true growth and prosperity. (de Maeztu 89–91) Thus Maeztu affirms from here that
human equality should only be understood in reference to his free-will in their capacity to
“redirect his route” to betterment. (de Maeztu 91–92) Maeztu rejects the liberal notion of the
French Revolution in which equality is not only understood in this manner but extrapolated that
all men are equal in an essential sense beyond its capability amidst its particularities. Maeztu
writes:
“Political freedom favors the development of inequalities. And in vain will be proclaimed in
some Constitutions, such as the French Constitution of 1793, the alleged right to equality, stating
that:
“All men are equal by nature and before the law.”
To say that men are equal is as absurd as proclaiming that the leaves of a tree are equal. No two
are equal. And equality before the law has, and can have, no other meaning than that the law
must protect all citizens in the same way. If it has that meaning, it is because men are equal in
terms of their metaphysical freedom or capacity for conversion or fall. This is what makes them
subjects of morality and law. If they were not capable of falling, morality would not need to say
anything to them. If they were not capable of conversion, it would be useless to tell them
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everything. The validity of morality depends on men being able to change their course. This
condition of their nature is what has also made law possible and necessary. There would be no
laws if men could not obey them. They are imperative, because they can equally well not comply
with them. And they are universal in character, because in this capacity to comply with them, all
men are equal. In proclaiming the ability of men to be converted does not mean that they can go
very far on the new path they decide to take. He who only repents at the hour of death will not go
very far on the road to holiness. But if his conversion is sincere and total he will travel on the
wings of angels the road he cannot walk on his own feet. This capacity for conversion is the
foundation of human dignity. The most mistaken of men may one day glimpse the truth and
change his behavior. That is why we must respect him, even in his errors, as long as he does not
constitute a social danger. But apart from this common capacity for conversion, there is no
equality among men.” (de Maeztu 92–93)
Maeztu mentions what he terms “differential fact” after describing how different people will
have different appearances and talents that refute the egalitarianism of the French, but not their
essential equality before God in their capacity to betterment and conversion. (de Maeztu 93)
From this Maeztu argues that since the proclamations of the prophets in the Old Testament, this
universalist love and a universal capacity of salvation is ultimately a mystic work of fraternity of
human universal brotherhood (de Maeztu 96–97), because:
“All men can be saved; all can be lost. That is why they are brothers; brothers of uncertainty of
fate, shipwrecked in the same boat, not knowing if they will be picked up and reach port. They
would not be brothers if some of them could be certain of their salvation or of their loss. The
certainty of one or the other would spiritually set them apart. But all can be saved or lost. That is
why they are brothers and should treat each other as brothers.” (de Maeztu 97)
Hispanidad then has a fraternal aspect to its civilization explicitly because of its Catholic
soteriology as Maeztu argues in his work. Hispanidad’s fraternity is born out of an argument that
Catholic soteriology imposes on us a duty to improve our shortcomings because God wants us to
be saved, and this salvation is born out of a universal love that He wants to share, and this is
manifested in all the cultural encounters Maeztu discusses in his work.
Hispanidad and its achievements: some selections worth mentioning
“There is no work in universal History comparable to the one carried out by Spain, because we
have incorporated to the Christian civilization all the races that were under our influence. It is
true that in these two centuries of alienation we have forgotten the significance of our History
and the value of what we have achieved in it, to believe ourselves an inferior and secondary race.
In the seventeenth century, on the other hand, we were fully aware of the transcendence of our
work; there was no educated Spaniard who was not aware that Spain was the new Rome and the
Christian Israel.” (de Maeztu 105 italics added)
For Maeztu, the Hispanic Empire was a Universal Empire, and one characterized of missionary
nature. (de Maeztu 107) So much so he not only centers the entire civilizatory feat of the empire
to the religious orders, but goes so far as to say that even Bartolomé de Las Casas’ double-edged
sword in his zealous defense of the indigenous propelled the empire to create legislations to
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protect them and propelled also the Pope at the time to publish bulls to ensure their
evangelization and good customs, in spite of Las Casas major exaggerations on the cruelties
which the imperial enemies exploited to create the Black legend against the Universal Monarchy.
(de Maeztu 107–08) Thus, Maeztu defines Hispanidad under not just its inherent Catholic ethos,
but also extends this ethos to its imperial feats in the conquests, he frames the conquest as a
conquest of spirits for The Cross.
Among many feats that Maeztu mentions, which are plenty, but I will focus on a few honorable
mentions (that is not to demean the others of course) in his works that I believe will serve to
further supplement others’ takes on Hispanidad:
The Council of Trent
The Council of Trent, the very same Council which fought Martin Luther’s Reformation, was
more so work of the Hispanic Monarchy under the reign of Charles I of Spain, or more
commonly known Charles V of the Sacro Roman Empire. It was Diego Laínez, on October 26th
of 1546, to Maeztu’s judgment; that pronounced his discourse on Justification against Luther’s
justification (de Maeztu 111–12), and Maeztu describes this discourse as follows:
“It occurred to him to think of a King who offered a jewel to the warrior who won a tournament.
And the King’s son came out and said to one of those who aspired to the jewel: “You need only
believe in me. I will fight, and if you believe in me with all your soul, I will win the fight”. To
another of the contestants the King’s son says: “I will give you weapons and a horse; you fight,
remember me, and at the end of the fight I will come to your aid”. But to the third of the
aspirants to the jewel he says: “Do you want to win? I will give you excellent weapons and a
magnificent horse; but you have to fight with all your soul”. The first, naturally, is the doctrine of
Protestantism: everything is done by the merits of Christ. The third is that of Catholicism: the
weapons are excellent, the redemption of Christ is an unbeatable weapon, the Sacraments of the
Church are magnificent; but, in addition, you have to fight with all your soul; this is the
traditional doctrine of our Church. The second: that of the aspirant for the prize who is told that
he has to fight, but that he will not need to exert himself too much, because at the end an external
help will come and give him the victory, it appears to honor greatly the merits of Our Lord, but
in reality it depresses the value of Redemption as much as that of the human will.” (de Maeztu
113)
Maeztu argues that Laínez’s allegory triumphed over Protestantism and any soteriological
privilegism that is typical of those who consider themselves elect by their nature with no need to
exert themselves, as described in the second part of the allegory.
Guaraní Missions
Maeztu cites how Hispanidad’s missionary labor gave fruits to the Jesuit evangelization of the
Guaranís in the contemporary territory of Paraguay. (de Maeztu 118) After Maeztu comments on
the good and bad qualities of the Guaranies, he explains how the self-sacrificial love of the
Jesuits to risk so much to incorporate them to the faith made the Guaraní Indians convert and
from there the Jesuits educated them with great customs and elevated all the honorable qualities
that defined the Guaraní and controlled their bad ones. (de Maeztu 118–19)
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The Orient and The Philippines

Maeztu comments on the Jesuit missions in the Philippine islands how they had more success
here in convincing the tagalogs, that they are capable of improvement and equal under God and
to the Spanish as they are and capable of governing themselves. (de Maeztu 121–22) He
mentions that if it wasn’t for the Catholic doctrine of human universal descent of Adam and Eve
and a Divine Paternalism, it would not be possible nor intelligible to speak of a Philippines
capable of governing itself and honoring the Burgundy flag which they are proud of against the
Yankee regime. (de Maeztu 122–23) Thus even in their missions with the Asiatics which have a
very different attitude towards social cues, Maeztu believes Catholicism is capable of uniting
them under the flag of Hispanidad. (de Maeztu 122–24)
From this Maeztu compares the Spanish mission to the English, who he describes as being
illusorily generous but selfish and arrogant. (de Maeztu 124–25) He argues that the spirit of
English civilization is one which would not allow the Philippines to improve their former state
before the Hispanics arrived, and that the Spanish arriving at the India continent, would have
produced results in the Philippines and all of Hispanoamerica. (de Maeztu 125)
There is obviously plenty to take from his work on the various historical feats the Hispanic
Empire did, it is recommended to read his work for a fuller picture of his magnificent work. I
will now move on to comment further on the transcendental nature of Hispanidad and its contrast
with the racialatry of the German National Socialist.
The transcendental nature of Hispanidad and the racialism of Jews
Hispanidad so far consists of a transcendental unity of religious proportions, motivated by
Catholic soteriology, that is, the theology of salvation, which Maeztu interprets as an instrument
to unite every race to call for spiritual self-improvement with their sight set on Jesus Christ, the
center of their identity. The linguistic medium, the cultural fusions, are then means to express
this deep spiritual unity, which does not ignore each group’s inherent qualities and differences,
but believes they can be enhanced, shared, fused and to grow in unique ways under a single
banner: The Catholic Faith. I will unpack further this transcendental nature, what it would look
like regarding racial differences in these groups: how did Hispanidad, then, conquered and
bypassed racial barriers that the National Socialist sacralised?
The Foreignization Problem and Hispanidad
Before I dive deep into how Hispanidad solved problems in racial barriers, I want to discuss why
contemporary Hispanoamerica, finds herself in the same stagnant disunity generated after the so-
called independences, while paradoxically, able to latch onto a solidarity that recalls to them a
unity more ancient than the myths of their republics. Maeztu calls this the foreignization problem
(“el problema de la extranjerización”). He does not explicitly title this, but he describes this
constantly in at least the first chapter implicitly, and explicitly in a chapter under the same name,
I will briefly lay out, as faithful as possible, Maeztu’s panorama of the problems that, to this day,
are haunting the Hispanoamerican continent and the diaspora, and how to solve this.
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First, Maeztu finds that “The Crisis of Hispanidad” finds its roots in the separation of the
Americas and the empire in the 18th century. (de Maeztu 25) How and who caused this? Maeztu
argues that the seeds of separation originated in the very peninsula:
“And why should not the American [understood here, the Hispanoamericans] countries have
been separated from their history by the same causes that have done the same to such a large part
of the Spanish people? If Castelar, in the most celebrated of his speeches, was able to say: “There
is nothing more frightful, more abominable, than that great Spanish empire which was a shroud
extending over the planet”, and D. Emilio had learned this from other Spaniards, why should not
these intrepid prosecutors be the common teachers of Spaniards and Spanish-Americans?
If there are still Spanish lecturers in America who propagate claptrap similar to what Castelar
believed, why should we not suppose that, already in the 18th century, our own officials, touched
by the passions of the Encyclopedia, began to propagate them? Well, that is how it was. From
Spain came the separation of America. The crisis of Hispanidad began in Spain.” (de Maeztu 25
bracket info added)
Maeztu describes that the changes began when the Crown ceased to focus its missionary ideal,
and focus on mere entrepreneurial goals, adopting a more business mentality and economic
exploitation, he then cites an English scholar, Mr Cecil Jane, who argues that the turning point of
the disunity was when the Marquis George John and Ulloa, began to promulgate French
enlightenment ideals throughout all of Hispanoamerica. (de Maeztu 26) Maeztu describes:
“The fact that the Spanish monarchs themselves incited George John and Ulloa to berlin all
institutions, as well as usages and customs, in their “Noticias Secretas de América,” destroyed, in
Mr. Jane’s opinion, the very foundation of American loyalty: “From that moment the idea of
dissolving the union with Spain gained ground, not because the Spanish Government was hated,
but because it seemed that the Government had ceased to be Spanish, in all but name.” But
before George John and Ulloa, before the Guipuzcuana Navigation Company, D. Carlos Bosque,
the Spanish historian (who died recently in Lima to delay our claims), tells us that the Marquis of
Castelldosrius was appointed Viceroy of Peru on the recommendation of Louis XIV himself, for
having been one of the Catalan aristocrats who espoused against the Archduke the cause of
Philip V. Castelldosrius went to Lima on the condition that he allowed the French a clandestine
traffic contrary to the traditional regime of the Viceroyalty. When Castelldosrius died and was
replaced by the Bishop of Quito, he was prosecuted for having suppressed the French
contraband, which was detrimental to Peru and to the King. The process blames the bishop for
having forbidden the payment of the viceroy’s overdue bills. This is a fact that reveals the change
that took place. The Viceroys begin to go to America in order to pay their old debts. This is how
a world Is lost.” (de Maeztu 26–27)
Maeztu does not finish here, he mentions how the most decisive moment in the downfall was the
Jesuit exile, began when the Jesuits refused to recognize Marquis Pompadour in the courts, and
of course, planned by the Enlightenment thinker Voltaire as an instrument to weaken The
Church. (de Maeztu 26–27) Furthermore, another huge change that motivated the independences
were the changes in aristocratic inheritance titles, from ones defined by nobility from the
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Conquistadors for 2 centuries, to one defined by the Peninsular class, which relegated the
Hispanoamerica criollo nobility to second term; criollos who absorbed all the Enlightenment
liberalism by the French, so much so which Maeztu cites an Uruguayan statistician how in the
south of America all the inhabitants, especially the elite class, only accepted the French ideals.
(de Maeztu 28–29)
Maeztu goes even further, he argues how by the second half of the 18th century, aristocrats began
losing their Catholic ideal and be ruled by masons and secular liberals of French ideals, and from
this point on, Maeztu argues, that is when the Peninsulars and all of the Hispanoamericans,
began to look to the foreigners to dictate their destiny. (de Maeztu 30–31) Maeztu describes:
“Certainly, impiety did not enter the Peninsula ostensibly brandishing its principles, but under
the weed and by secret councils. For many decades our aristocrats continued praying their rosary.
We began to marvel at the splendor and strength of the progressive nations: of the fleet and
commerce of Holland and England, of the feathers and colors of Versailles. Then we peered
humbly and curious to foreign authors, beginning with that Montesquieu who had so much ill-
will towards us. Ashamed of our poverty, we forgot what we had realized, and were continuing to
actualize, an ideal of civilization far superior to any endeavor of the nations we admired. And as
we had not realized then, nor do we now, that the first duty of patriotism is the defense of the
legitimate patriotic values against all that tends to despise them, we are still suffering from this
alienation or illness of the one who goes out of himself, through the superstition of the
foreigner.” (de Maeztu 30–31)
To briefly summarize what I have cited, Maeztu argues that by losing the sight of the true
historic mission that defined Hispanidad, and fixating on foreign ideals, many which have been
detrimental to Hispanics, they have brought forward the downfall of their great empire, and
caused the disillusion of the Hispanoamerican inhabitants and thus, a disappointment, but in this
disillusion, even the criollos succumbed to the foreignization in part of the French Revolution
which characterized many of the independentists. (de Maeztu 31–32) It is this complexity that
characterized the “independence” wars more of a war between neighbors, a civil war against
those who wanted to remain loyal to the Crown, those who wanted to be loyal to the empire but
not Ferdinand VII, and those who wanted total separation. (de Maeztu 33) Maeztu mentions how
the independence of Mexico was easy because:
“[…] it was a reaction: “Against the liberal parliamentarism that has dominated Spain since,
following the military revolutions initiated by Riego, Ferdinand VII was forced to reestablish the
Constitution of 1812”. The last three viceroys and four fifths of the Spanish officers garrisoned
in Mexico were Masons.” (de Maeztu 34–35)
Many in Hispanoamerica were fighting as royalists, but the situation was very complicated in the
South of America; while in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the vote was unanimously for the
Monarchy until a friar tipped it towards independence, in the Nueva Granada Viceroyalty,
Caracas, the forces for and against the Monarchy were swinging back and forth (de Maeztu 34–
35), until eventually settled for independence under Simón Bolívar, who although initially was
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Mason for pragmatic purposes, he quickly backtracked to protect the Catholic Faith. (de Maeztu
35)
Thus, in the same chapter of the very same name, regarding the foreignization, Maeztu declares:
“Of the anti-Spanish feelings of Spanish Americans in the last century, Spain itself is the
originator, when not the responsible party.” (de Maeztu 152)
Maeztu continues to affirm, although against the extreme conclusions of Cecil Jane blaming the
revolutions of the Americas on Charles III; that the originator of the independences was the
ruling class of the Peninsular region and also the criollos who absorbed said ideas. (de Maeztu
153) Maeztu continues, after describing how as France gained more prominence during the
Bourbon Pacts, how many Spanish began to admire more the prestige of the French than their
own merits as an empire. (de Maeztu 156) This is where Maeztu describes eloquently, not only
the beginning of the Foreignization that weakened the Hispanic Monarchy, but it illustrates, in
vindicative manner, the problems Hispanics face in the contemporary era and what prompted me
to write this monograph, I will let Maeztu speak for himself, and I will unpack afterwards:
“For two centuries Spanish writers have lived in their homeland as exiles, reading foreign books
all the time. And it is not that they seek, as “Fígaro” wrote in “La polémica literaria”: “a good
French original from which to steal those ideas that do not usually occur to me”, but that the
most talented ones were persuaded that their compatriots could not tell them anything of interest.
In doing so, we closed ourselves to the understanding of what is ours, thus blinding our own
creative sources, but we have been secularly persuaded not only that “the biblical garden was
not in these lands”, but also that we were never a first-class civilizing power. Donoso Cortés
himself, when he was writing his book on Diplomacy in 1833, placed France at the forefront of
universal civilization, and when a critic reproached him for the Gallicisms of his style, he
responded unabashedly: “No one can rise to the height of Metaphysics with the help of a
language that has not been tamed by any philosopher”. Meanwhile Balmes, whom Heaven did
not want to give the slightest talent for poetry, he chiseled the admirable prose with which he
wrote the Filosofía Fundamental, and Donoso himself, a few years later, when the blindfolds fell
off, wrote his Ensayo sobre el catolicismo, el liberalismo y el socialismo, no longer with the gift
of tongues, but with what is much more valuable, according to St. Paul, with the spirit of
prophecy: “For he who prophesies is greater than he who speaks in tongues” (Nam major est qui
prophetat, quam qui loquitur linguis, I Cor. XIV, 5).” (de Maeztu 156–57 bold and italics added,
italicized works in original)
Maeztu goes further, and this I believe resonates with many Hispanics, at least those concerned
with Hispanidad not taking relevance in global stage:
“The whole nation has been pending on what the foreigner had available to know what to
wear, what to eat, what to drink, what to read, what to think. Patriots as distinguished as
Cánovas let fall the terrible sentence: “They are Spaniards... those who cannot be anything else”.
Magnificent national temperaments like that of the Empress Eugenia were educated without
having in their heads the slightest idea that Spain was something more than a country of
wines, flowers and songs. Even now one hears people who have half the history of Spain in their
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surnames saying that it is a disgrace to be Spanish and that they only dream of fleeing to the
unpleasant reality, instead of rallying against calamities and “destroying them by fighting them”,
as Hamlet would have done, had he not been Hamlet.” (de Maeztu 157–58 bold and italics
added)
If I were to substitute Spanish for Hispanic, the entire citation would resonate exactly with every
Hispanic reading this, if it already has not resonated without said exercise. The reality is
Maeztu’s description of the Foreignization of Spain extends to all of the countries under the
Hispanic Monarchy: to Mexico, to Colombia, to all the islands of the major Antilles, to all of
South America; Hispanidad does not feel center stage because it has stopped itself from being
center stage, it has taken a back-seat, weakened herself, and conducted herself to admire,
emulate, copy and absorb all foreign ideas, without nourishing and cultivating ideas of her own
civilization, it has forgotten her historic mission to build upon the ideas of old and to create a
framework able to filter out good elements worthy of incorporating, as Maeztu himself highlights
here:
“It seems as if we were possessed by some spirit that excites us all the time to be others, to not be
who we are. And even less bad, because with this determination to imitate and emulate the
foreigner we would still manage to do some things of benefit, if we would take the necessary
work to acquire the virtues in which other peoples excel: France, in saving; England, in
initiative; Germany, in organization.” (de Maeztu 158)
The problem then, is not that the foreign is the problem per se, the problem is Hispanics have
overfixated themselves to imitate the foreign in all its customs, including the vices, and at no
point, they cultivate and contribute their own virtues and feats unique to them. This has caused
an unfortunate stereotype among Hispanic culture that the only thing they are good at, is sharing
to the world the quality of their food, the eccentric nature of our music and dances, and the
beauty of our people, men and women. This has been the extent of Hispanidad, and the
geocultural world stage, although impressed, it is not impressed to respect it as a sphere worth
emulating and beholding, but to remember eventually as “Hispanics, those who can be anything
but themselves.” Maeztu’s Foreignization Problem has not been solved, in fact, it has been
exacerbated and reinforced in the last century and today, with Hispanics wanting to incorporate
different ideas left and right, with no foundation to filter out elements which might be
detrimental and erase their kernel as Hispanics, becoming parodies of other people. So
problematic is this problem that Maeztu has even identified a syndrome that has characterized
Hispanics for many centuries since Hispanidad has fallen into crisis, the syndrome of the
“inferiority complex” that makes us imitate everything foreign because we think that our ideals
are inferior even when they are not. (de Maeztu 209) But so deeply rooted are the ideals of
Hispanidad in our being, ironically, as our diamond shaft, that Maeztu says that we can even:
“[…] kneel before a skyscraper, but as soon as other people want to run over us, in the name of a
pretended superiority, it comes out of the depths of our spirit, that concept of free will and
essential equality, which we have been developing in the course of centuries of struggle […]” (de
Maeztu 208–09)
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I, however, mentioned another side of this dilemma, a paradox, that in the disunity, there seems
to be a temporary re-awakening to call to our ancient unity, but there is also another aspect to this
paradox, that the legacy of our civilization, the foreigners seem to admire something about the
Hispanic civilization that is so unique, so out there, that is not found elsewhere, but the
Hispanics, have not put the work to show what that ‘thing’ is, and why, while being unique, are
so heterogeneously composed of almost all the races, while maintaining a unity so typical of
“homogenous societies.” It is here where I will speak on the greatest abyss that separates the
Hispanic ethos from the National Socialist’s racialatrous worldview: Maeztu’s view of race
against Jews and Moors.
The Moor-Jewish Question according to Maeztu
“If we believe ourselves inferior to other peoples, it is because of ignorance of our history. When
it shows us the perspicacity of our geniuses, the magnificent sense of justice of our traditional
institutions, the moral spirit of our civilization, the chosen minds will think, with Menéndez y
Pelayo, that the foreignization of our souls is the reason for our decline.” (de Maeztu 203–04)
This is from the chapter titled “Against Moors and Jews”, again referencing the effects of
foreignization on Hispanic civilization. One aspect of this foreignization is the forgetfulness of
Hispanic civilization battling against two theological archnemesis whom Maeztu believes the
Catholicity of Hispanidad has been battling for centuries: the fatalism of Islam, and the racialism
of Judaism; the Muslim Moors and the Judaist Jews. For Maeztu, Hispanidad’s battle against
these two entities has never been racial, but religious or theological, against the Moors of Islam,
Hispanidad waged war to defend free-will and the liberty of conversion capability described last
sections, Maeztu writes:
“The Spanish character has been formed in a multi-secular struggle against the Moors and
against the Jews. In the face of Muslim fatalism, the Hispanic persuasion of man’s liberty, of his
capacity for conversion, has been crystallizing. I am not saying that among the learned Muslims
there is a predominance of ideas very different from ours about free will. […] Our laws require
of men a certain measure of perfection. At the very least, they must not be thieves; they must not
be murderers. This requirement is the expression of our belief in men’s capacity for goodness, in
their fundamental freedom. That is why the courts punish the guilty, even if those directly
harmed have forgiven them. We appreciate the extenuating circumstances, but we assume that
men can always overcome them to stop committing a crime. Islam attaches more importance
than we do to circumstances and less to man’s liberty. In its forgiveness is involved the belief
that the accused could not have proceeded in any other way. We, on the other hand, against the
rule of circumstances, which is the rule of God, affirm the liberty of man, because the liberty of
the Spaniard is the ability to do good, which the Lord promised us when He told us that the truth
will set us free, explaining to us immediately afterwards that this means freedom from the
bondage of sin.” (de Maeztu 205–06)
Hispanidad then, fights any form of fatalism characterized by Islamic fatalism, and if not
Islamic, any fatalism that undermines the liberty protected by theocentric humanism.
He then turns to the Jews, which he writes:
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“In the face of the Jews, who are the most exclusivist people on earth, our feeling of catholicity,
of universality, was forged. The main concern of the religion of Israel is to maintain the purity of
the race. It is not true that the Jews constitute, in the first place, a religious community. They are
a race. They believe in their own blood and not in any other. They are the purest race in the
world, because they have carefully avoided mixing with the others since the time of Ezra, whom
the Hebrews called “prince of the doctors of the law,” and in whose book of the Bible the reader
may see him tearing his clothes in indignation on hearing that the Jews had intermarried with
Gentiles, for which he tells them that the other lands are unclean: “And, therefore, do not give
your daughters to their sons, nor receive their daughters for your sons, nor ever seek their peace
or their prosperity” (IX, 12), and, finally he exhorts them, “Let us make a covenant with the Lord
our God, that we will cast out all (foreign) women and those born of them” (X, 3).
The proof of not being a religious community, In the first place, Is that they do not want
proselytes. Israel Friedlander tells us that, when they were admitted, it was always: “Under the
express condition that they thereby abandoned the right to be Jews of race”. For this reason, the
Samaritans were rejected, who professed their religion, but did not come from their blood. And,
on the other hand, a Jew remains a Jew when he abjures his faith. That is precisely why we were
forced to establish the Inquisition. We could not trust in their supposed conversion, because
history teaches that the pseudo-Christian, pseudo-Pagan or pseudo-Muslim Jews, who adopted
when it suited them a strange religion, return to their own as soon as they have a favorable
opportunity, and even if they have to wait several generations.
[…] If there was a time, around the twelfth century, when the Jewish race mixed with the
Spaniards, it did not take long for their orthodoxy to return, like Ezra, for purity of blood and
absolute separation of races. […] When they harbored the intent to rise up with Spain, it was not
to convert us to their religion or to make us equal to them, but to be better able to comply with
the precepts of “Deuteronomy,” which establishes, once and for all, the duplicity of their morals:
“Thou shalt lend to other nations and borrow from none.” “To a stranger thou shalt charge
interest; to a brother thou shalt not charge interest.” And it was because of the repulsion produced
by this double standard among the Spaniards, as they became aware of it, that their attempt to
take over the Peninsula for Israel did not prevail. St. Paul had already said: “et omnibus
hominibus adversantur” (and they are enemies of all men) (I. Thess. 2, 15).” (de Maeztu 206–08)
This extensive citation explains that the so-called ‘pureza de sangre’ in the Spanish system, was
one of religious nature to counter Muslim and Judaist subversion, on the one hand, against
subversion of fatalism, and on the other, against racial puritanism.
In the sub-section of the first part in dealing with the Pantheistic confusion of the National
Socialist in analyzing MBS, I mentioned how the National Socialist has adopted a purity far
more extreme than the purity practiced even by Jews, well here is the irony: The purity of the
Jewish race, is exactly due to them engaging in endogamy to such proportions that they have
avoided mixing amongst the Gentiles, this has been adopted by the National Socialist, to their
twist of irony, to combat the supremacy of the Jews, they have adopted the very Jewish mindset
they sworn to destroy, in reality the National Socialist has adopted a racialism that precisely
characterized the racial purity of the Jews the Hispanics have fought for centuries, and this is
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how Hispanidad has surmounted racialatry: by rejecting all notions of racial privilege of their
blood, and in turn adopting a view that true purity is purity of doctrine, of creed, of religion, but
even purity of religion needs to be carefully worded, because it’s clear that even in Catholicism,
you have various expressions of the liturgies, some born from cultural fusions, others by
incorporating various customs of the natives without losing the form of Catholicism, thus
Hispanidad has maintained more formal purity of religion, while materially, it has varied but also
being in line with the form as faithful as possible; biology has been disregarded as irrelevant to
the conducts of civilizational building. Note that Maeztu has never denied that there are racial
differences in people groups, but these differences are accidental, they are circumstantial that
happen to shape some way or form, the thoughts and proclivities of people, but they do not
determine them fatally to a destiny, thus Hispanidad defeats National Socialism’s combined
fatalism of blood and race, and the radical purity of race and blood in one blow as she did in her
battle against the fatalism of the Muslim and the racialism of the Jews. Maeztu, therefore,
summarizes the battle against the Moors and the Jews as follows:
“The fundamental traits of the Spanish character are, therefore, those that it owes to the struggle
against Moors and Jews and to its secular contact with them. Muslim fatalism, the abandonment
of the Moors, only interrupted from time to time by rapid and ephemeral outbursts of power, has
determined by reaction the firm conviction that the Spaniard harbors that any man can convert
and dispose of his destiny, according to the concept of Cervantes. The Israelite exclusivism is, on
the other hand, what has rooted in his soul the conviction that there are no privileged races, that
anyone can do what any other can do. These two principles are great and true, and because they
are so, we have been able to spread them among all the peoples that have been under our
dominion.” (de Maeztu 208–09)
So, what is the Moor-Jewish Question according to Maeztu? That it is a religious question only
solved through Catholicism, through purity of religion, and not purity of blood, through
cultivation of virtue through the free-will of the individual to overcome any circumstance,
however long it takes, some races start off small, some have prestigious talents, some not so
much to brag about in some setting, but all are capable of greatness, all can find unity and value,
all can be integrated into a greater family that can help them grow their customs and characters
that do not erase their substance, Hispanidad thus solved racial barriers by rejecting the
segregationist and bastardizing view of racial identities and adopted a harmonious and
integrationist view of racial identity: just as all sons of Adam are capable of converting, capable
of choosing virtuous acts to improve themselves, capable of governance and culture, so too are
the races that are forged of mixing, not only are all men capable of doing what I have mentioned,
but they are capable of forging their own destiny and identities that harmonize their culture and
circumstances, if the so-called pure races are just as capable, so too are the mixed races and all
its derivatives, Hispanidad extends this to all geographies it has conquered with The Cross.
Maeztu’s Hispanidad is also the greatest rebuttal of National Socialism before it came to being in
the 20th century, the civilizational project of Hispanidad has defeated all the enemies that would
come to denigrate her in the contemporary age, and that is why many races today feel some awe
and admiration to the ancient kernel of Hispanidad, that culture that houses many cultures held
together by a network created by The Catholic Religion. The solution to the Foreignization
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Problem is a return to exercise this ideal that Walter Gross, Fritz Bennecke and even Adolf Hitler
fought to eliminate; while the NSDAP wanted a world confined to their geographic locations,
Maeztu has argued in 1934 that Hispanidad wants the world that seeks unity in difference;
geographies that are as alive as human beings that they can not only choose to be free from the
shackles of their circumstances but improve themselves.
While the NSDAP taught the world that race mixing harms all sides and erases identities,
Hispanidad taught the opposite and repudiated such thesis when she fought against the Jews;
when the NSDAP taught that some races are destined to be mediocre and weak because of their
genetics; Hispanidad defeated that fatalism and uplifted the races, even if that race took a
century, Hispanidad’s Catholic substrate drove her to the ideals discussed previously, that
theocentric humanism Maeztu described is what defines the ethos of the Spanish and all the
peoples of Hispanidad. I will expand more on this theme as there is still more to unpack.
On The Being of Hispanidad
“The thinker ─and sometimes also the politician, the writer and anyone who tries to exert some
influence on his compatriots─ has to ask himself whether in this complex of the homeland the
territory, the race or the cultural values are the first and most fundamental. How are we going to
question the being of Don Quixote or the being of the battle of Salado? It is not a question of
that, but of understanding them, in order to fix their genetic order, for which it is necessary to
elucidate whether the being of the Homeland, a mixture of ontic elements or of valuational ones,
arises from its ontic elements or from the valuational ones. The practical consequence of
adopting one or the other solution will be of immense importance, as we shall see later on. This
is one of the greatest dilemmas that can be presented to us at the fork in the road: that of the
primacy of value or that of being.” (de Maeztu 229)
Ramiro de Maeztu dedicates an entire chapter in the section El Ser de La Hispanidad (The Being
of Hispanicity) trying to philosophically discern what really defines the Fatherland (Patria), what
creates it to give it its being or value, and here is where Maeztu does an eloquent exercise by
using France as an example for this. Maeztu points out from various citations and pointing out
certain advantages and flaws in each to pinpoint what really defines France from others. (de
Maeztu 223–24) Maeztu outlines that, for the Fatherland to be preceded by being, is to be
defined by territory and/or race, and to be preceded by values, is to be defined by religion,
culture and other ideals that forged said Fatherland. (de Maeztu 226–27, 229) He believes, as I
have cited above, that there is a dilemma given how different nations put a primacy of one or the
other, with the Nordic countries placing more value on race, whereas the latins, territory, even in
the plane of putting being as primary. (de Maeztu 228–29) Maeztu, to briefly summarize his
exercise to reach a conclusion; is to treat briefly the forging of the French Fatherland from two
lines that give a different primacy; on the primacy of being or ontic elements, he points that the
French have their territory, their race, language and memories of war; on the other hand, he gives
the example of how the French were only possible when King Clovis converted to Catholicism
and made Paris the capital of the franks, and at the time, there were only tribes and different
ethnic groups which had no necessary allegiance to the entire “nation” that was to be the future
territory of France. (de Maeztu 227–28)
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Maeztu reaches the conclusion that there is more a primacy of value but adopts a more
hylomorphic solution for this primacy by citing John 1:1-3. (de Maeztu 229–30) He concludes
that The Fatherland is spirit. He argues this by discussing Spain’s ethnogenesis:
“Let us say, of course, that before being a being, the fatherland is a value, and, therefore, a spirit.
If it were a being of which we were a part, we could not discuss it, as we do not discuss its ontic
elements. Each one was born where he was born and is the son of his parents. As far as the ontic
elements are concerned, Mr. Maura was right: “the fatherland is not chosen”. But the fatherland
is, above all, spirit. And the human soul is free before the spirit. That is how its Creator made it.
Spain began to be when Recaredo converted to the Catholic religion in 586. Then St. Isidore
praised Spain in the prologue to the History of the Goths, Vandals and Suevi: “O Spain! You are
the most beautiful of all lands... From you the East and the West receive light...”. But a few years
later Bishop Opas called the Saracens and Count Julian opened the door to the Peninsula for
them. Hispanidad begins its existence on October 12, 1492. Soon there arose among our writers
the awareness that something new and great had appeared in the history of the world. But many
of Columbus’ sailors would have wished that the three caravels had returned to Palos de Moguer,
without discovering unknown lands. With this it is said that the homeland is a value from the
origin, and therefore, problematic for its own children, as the soul, according to theologians, is
spiritual from the beginning, ab initio.” (de Maeztu 230–31)
Maeztu then continues that although before the creative feat of the fatherland, there were men
and territories, but no Fatherland forged because that was forged precisely when Recaredo
converted to Catholicism and made a communal effort to unite all ethnicities that were to later
become Spain in the 15th century. (de Maeztu 231) He writes:
“Until Recaredo did not provide the spiritual bond in which the government and the people of
Spain were to be united, here there were only more or less Romanized peoples subject to a
Gothic government, which they had to consider as a foreigner and an enemy. Rulers and ruled
inhabited the same land, an insufficient community to constitute the fatherland. But from the
moment that the rulers accepted the faith, which was also the law, of the ruled, there arose
between them the spiritual bond that united them all on the same land and in the same hope. The
men, the land, the previous events, the Roman conquest and colonization, the very propaganda of
Christianity in the Peninsula were but the conditions that made possible the creation of Spain.”
(de Maeztu 231)
Maeztu however, does not leave out those territorials and regionalities from those ethnicities as
those too were elements involved in the creative process of the fatherland, but he maintains that
the Fatherland is primarily spiritual. (de Maeztu 231) He argues further how the Fatherland is a
spiritual patrimony, hylomorphically embodying visible and invisible elements: the Churches,
the customs, language, the lands, etc; and the unity of this is comparable to a creative feat and
symphonic system that forges a country. (de Maeztu 232–33)
Maeztu then sustains that conceiving the Fatherland as such, he rejects the idea of a political
willpower determination of nations under a State, and even a mystic “collective soul” by M.
Boutroux and Max Scheler, respectively. (de Maeztu 233–35) Maeztu thus rejects the dichotomy
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between what he calls the individualistic voluntarist determination by the State through a
plebiscite by the French, and the mystic collectivism of Scheler. (de Maeztu 234–35) Maeztu
argues that the error of Scheler is the mistake of conceiving a collective soul, which he rejects
and argues that what exists are collective values whose interests are conserved by individuals
that compose a country, answering to Renan in Philosophical Dialogues:
“It is a reasoning that falls at its base when one wonders if it is true that the consciousness that
Renan calls of the second degree, that of man, is created by the consonance of cells, and when
one reflects that it is not true that consciousnesses of cities or nations are formed by the grouping
of individuals. There are no collective souls. There are no collective consciousnesses. What we
have is collective values whose preservation is in the interest of individuals, families and
peoples.” (de Maeztu 236)
Maeztu notes that while it is beneficial to stimulate a Fatherland that conserves territory and
people, what truly forges a Fatherland is a communal nexus joined by a universal value, he
illustrates this with the following thought experiment to tie it how Hispanidad likewise was
forged:
“But what forms the unique homeland is a nexus, a spiritual community, which is at the same
time a value of Universal History. Let us imagine a territory inhabited by heterogeneous peoples,
without unity of language or ideals. Then they will not constitute a homeland. Let us think that
they are united by a spirit of mutual defense and by ties of consanguinity, but not by the
consciousness of any universal value. For they will be a tribe, but not a homeland, because one
day people will come who truly have a homeland and will speak to the higher part of the soul of
these Kabyle people and will incorporate them into their nation. The homeland is made -forgive
me if I repeat myself- with people and land, but it is made by the spirit and also with spiritual
elements. Spain was created by Recaredo when he adopted the religion of the people.
Hispanidad is the Empire founded on the hope that the inhabitants of unknown lands can be
saved like us. The ontic elements, land and race, are but prehistory, sine qua non conditions.
Being begins with the association of a universal value or a complex of values to the ontic
elements. Every homeland, in short, is an incarnation.” (de Maeztu 237–38 bold italics added,
“sine qua non” italics in original)
He also adds that the fatherland or homeland is also the result of accumulation of all activities
that sustain them, but only those activities that sustain them for its betterment. (de Maeztu 238–
39)
In conclusion, the Fatherland is a hylomorphic result of spiritually motivated activities, forged by
a nexus of cultural customs unified by a common universal ideal sustained by visible and
invisible elements that are born from values that incarnate the material elements that preceded its
formation, and those values, that sustainability can only be maintained by a Higher Power, that is
God, that incentivizes the individuals composing the homeland, which includes, but not
exclusively defined, by territory and blood. In here Maeztu then comments on the duty of
patriotism, and why he sustains that the homeland can only be founded in not just values that
sustain them, but that sustainability is the only thing that can keep the homeland from collapsing,
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because any tradition that does not discern the good from evil will destine the homeland to
oblivion. (de Maeztu 240) He comments about Canóvanas on how the Fatherland is to be
defended like one defends his or her parents, and cites Francisco de Vitoria:
“Father Vitoria was right in affirming that: “When it is known that a war is unjust, it is not licit
for his subjects to follow their King, even when they are required by him, because evil should
not be done, and it is more convenient to obey God than the King”. Do we deny with this that
those who say that one should be with one’s country as with one’s father and mother are right?
On the contrary. One must be with one’s country as with one’s father and mother, but the
commandments of the Law must not be considered in isolation, but as a whole, in the
compendium that reduces them to two: that of loving God and that of loving one’s neighbor. One
must be with one’s father, which does not detract from the heroic nature of the thief’s son, who
flees from his father’s tutelage because he does not want his father to teach him how to steal. The
commandment that asks us to honor father and mother supposes that the father and mother
conduct themselves as corresponds to the spiritual dignity that paternity and maternity imply. We
are not asked to fulfill one commandment in order to break all the others, but each of the
commandments, except the first, which requires us to love God, is conditioned by the other
nine.” (de Maeztu 240–41)
This citation will be very important in discussing the section of Albizu Campos, but to comment
within the confines of this section; Maeztu maintains that our duties to the homeland are
derivatives of our duties to our parents with the values that imply to be a parental figure because
God is our Father and the duties that imply that position are transferred to the duties parents have
towards their children and why those implications are honorable, which is why afterwards
Maeztu affirms that governors ought to always be on the side of goodness of culture, law and
family ties (de Maeztu 241) and that the governed should honor that duty, but that does not mean
they have reasons to disobey if the govern engages in acts that undermine the homeland that the
governor ought to conserve that which sustains it. (de Maeztu 241–42) Thus, Maeztu writes:
“To the unjust fatherland one loses respect and ends up losing affection for it. If a nation kills and
steals from others, for the sole purpose of self-aggrandizement, it is inferior to its children,
because they must be sure that their being does not diminish, but grows larger, when they submit
their will to their morality. Men educated in a religion that teaches us that God is love, cannot
pay homage to a country that demands everything without giving anything. The fatherland-
Moloch-does not deserve our sacrifice, nor does it gain our affection. But, moreover, if those in
charge of it do not scrupulously watch over the cause of the fatherland and that of the universal
good, they will not only lose the affection of their children for it, but will arouse enmities against
it which, sooner or later, will be detrimental and perhaps fatal.” (de Maeztu 242)
This is why Maeztu concludes that even a homeland based on mere ontic elements, as was
undoubtedly the case of the National Socialist German, it is no different than the inherent
egalitarian of the voluntarist plebiscite nationalism of the French, and Maeztu rejects both
because he affirms that not all fatherlands are equally patriotic and each homeland is conducted
depending on the nature of their cultures and customs that direct them (de Maeztu 243) and that
to fall into the ontic primacy degenerates into “a passion” and that one in which the homeland is
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founded on values and primacy of the communal nexus can it not only be a good directed
passion but a duty. (de Maeztu 244) And this duty Maeztu believes creates a patriotism more
powerful than one based on territory and race and points out that a strong patriotism is one in
which cultural elements are enhanced. (de Maeztu 246)
Furthermore, Maeztu affirms the hylomorphism implied in his patriotism:
“With this it is said that spiritual patriotism also includes territorial patriotism, because the
material conditions of the possibility for the spirit to carry out its mission are found in the earth,
apart from the signs and stimuli that the work of previous generations has placed in it. But it
would not be accurate to say that territorial patriotism, on the other hand, is independent of
spiritual patriotism, because the spirit is present in everything, although dormant at times.
Whitehead’s philosophy tells us that all experience is bipolar. In the physical the spiritual is
pointed; in the spiritual, the tendency to incarnate in the physical. In all things there is also and at
the same time the universal and the particular. As the sustenance of men and at the same time
molded matter, embellished and formed by their spirit, the earth on which the homelands are
settled is also not foreign to the spirit.” (de Maeztu 247)
From here I conclude Maeztu’s patriotism by commenting how he ends with citing Saint
Augustine himself in how a true patriotism is one grounded in a derivation of the first two
Commandments, one based on a grander, communal love of one’s neighbor and superior to the
duty to one’s parents. (de Maeztu 248–49) From here, Maeztu summarizes the complete picture
of what constitutes the foundation of a homeland:
“Here is a complete sense of the fatherland. That which engenders is the race; that which
nourishes, the earth; that which educates, the fatherland as spirit, which is loved all the more the
more time passes, that is to say, the more we know it. It is not merely the earth, as an anarchist
used to say, who took his son to a frontier, to make him see that there is hardly any difference
between one nation and another. Nor is it merely a moral being, since it has incarnated in the
inhabitants of a territory. But neither is it a collective consciousness, as Renan would like. It is
not a supersoul. It is more than the State, because the latter can be oppressive and exploitative,
and it is no more than the juridical and administrative organ of the homeland. In a certain sense,
it is inferior to man; for man has conscience and will, and the fatherland has none. But it is
superior to him, because it can last on earth, because it must last, if it deserves it, until the end of
time, engendering, nourishing and educating successive generations, and man is ephemeral. It
could not be said, however, that man has been made for the homeland; because the truth is that
homelands have been made for men, so that men can spiritualize themselves on this earth, and
they will not achieve this at all if they do not dedicate their existence to see to it that their
homeland deserves to last until the end of time, which will not be achieved if we do not make it
serve justice and humanity.” (de Maeztu 249–50)
From here Maeztu adds that this love of the homeland cannot constitute a statolatry nor even a
racialatry, because to love God is above love of one’s country, saying that if this love is
converted as some absolute law, it becomes an idolatrous love, an “excess love” that eventually
leads to the loss of a homeland. (de Maeztu 250)
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Maeztu essentially made an argument against nationalism conceived by the liberals of the
Enlightenment, a Nationalism that depends on the will of a collective making the State law, and
implicitly against Fascist or any totalitarian duty towards the State and land, thus, Maeztu’s
treatment of Patriotism is his solution to surmount the sacralisation problem, a sober love of
one’s country that does not sacralise neither the State, which can undermine the homeland, not
sacralise the race, which can frustrate the ends of love of one’s homeland and become an idolatry
of conditions which precede the homeland and destroy that love that calls to extend it not just to
your immediate family but to even strangers who too are your neighbors. Maeztu made a
theological argument on why a sober nationalism, is in reality patriotism, because the values that
founded the homeland are the same ones summarized in the first two Commandments, and these
two incentivize a love that transcends racial and territorial barriers due to the nature of this love
that patriotism is founded upon, and this is what Maeztu argues, characterized Hispanidad
ultimately. Hispanidad, being an imperial sense of being, is an empire that transcends
regionalities but loves those regionalities like one loves their extended family but loves beyond
localities as one ought to love those outside your immediate household, together these principles
forge the essence of Hispanidad and synthesize a being that has been able to surmount all the
problems inherent in National Socialism and Fascism.
The Catholic substrate of Indo-Hispanidad: a brief commentary
All that has been discussed so far points to the Catholic nature of Hispanidad. Maeztu has
contextualized from both a historical and philosophical standpoint the Catholic core in
Hispanidad, and not necessarily in a confessional manner (more on this when I touch upon
Alberto Buela’s treatment on the subject), but from a paradigmatic standpoint: Hispanidad was
built from a soteriological mission, with a patriotism founded upon transcendental values that
surmount materialities though does not erase their ontologies, but subordinates them to a
universal, higher ideal that sustains them theological charity, Hispanidad therefore is an imperial
identity of organic origin, forged from premises that seek an integrationist, harmonious form of
identities and homelands that respect mankind’s free-will, free-association and a unity equivalent
to the unity of The Catholic Church. Hispanidad then has grown out of a sense of unity in
difference that seeks out harmonious integration of various ethnicities born out of different
circumstances that she believes they can be overcome and enhanced in cultural richness,
allowing these groups to engage in not only cultural exchange but even biological exchange,
born out of a theocentric humanism that believes that anyone, if they so wish, can not only
improve themselves, but exercise a love that can surpass racial barriers and circumstantial
chains, battling fatalisms and sacral purities that seek to confine differences to their niches in
arbitrary and exclusionary manners. Hispanidad seeks to break even those chains that pretend to
garner some form of respect and dignity but in reality, breeds selfishness and stagnant
conformism, as is evident in the British form of colonialism that Maeztu contrasted with the
integrationist nature of the Hispanic Monarchy.
From here Hispanidad then is an imperial communal nexus that births organic homelands and
regionalities united under a universal value, common language but for pragmatic sake of
communication, but used to unite different ethnicities, an identity that builds a paradigm that can
accommodate both “pure” races and mixtures because its theocentric humanist core believes that
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not only is every man equal in dignity before God and worthy of honor, but that they are free to
associate and build themselves an identity that harmonizes a greater community that allow them
to grow and nurture it, rejecting the segregationist egoism of the National Socialist, and also
rejecting the statolatry that threatens individual liberty to conserve the homeland without the
intervention of a State whose willpower undermines the values discussed above; Hispanidad’s
nature overcomes the sacralisation problems inherent in National Socialism and Fascism.
A brief comment should be made on the interchangeability of Hispanidad and Indo-Hispanidad,
are they identical? With what I have described, they are identical in so far as there is a core that
is identical among various Hispanicities. Indo-Hispanidad is in reality, the Hispanidad of the
Hispanoamerican continent, it is an interpretation of Hispanidad from the context of the various
cultures in the Hispanoamerican continent, but Hispanidad is an imperial identity, thus there is
not only the Hispanidad per se, but local Hispanicities, Hispanidad manifested in various
localities that said empire touched upon and forged a nexus with. In the next authors, I will thus
refer to Indo-Hispanidad or Indohispanidad to refer to that imperial identity that has forged a
symbiosis of two imperial identities: the civilizations of the American Indians, and the
Hispanians of the Peninsular continent; thus Indo-Hispanidad is an extension of a fusion of
empires, and I will show how this fusion took place and how it reveals deeply the Catholic
substrate of Hispanidad.

José Vasconcelos and mestizaje: The Cosmic Race Thesis

José Vasconcelos is the Mexican philosopher behind the idea of the Cosmic Race Thesis, the
thesis that all the races of humanity are destined towards mixing through cultural and social
exchange (Vasconcelos 27) through an ideal motivated by cultural and racial synthesis and
integration of true brotherhood and universal value. (Vasconcelos 26–27) Vasconcelos conceives
the Iberoamerican continent as the inheritor of this mission, meant to take all the great qualities
of preceding races to synthesize a community, a race that is universal and inheritor of the historic
mission initiated by the Hispanic Monarchy, one that is able to incorporate various races and
cultures with principles of harmonious integration to forge a continuation of the empire that
forged this race. (Vasconcelos 26–28, 29–30) Vasconcelos is not saying anything different from
Maeztu, at least in its implications. The results of Hispanidad, for Vasconcelos, inevitably
implied the synthesis of a new race born out of deep-rooted Catholicity and integrationist
magnanimity.
Vasconeclos’ Cosmic Race Thesis is divided into three parts, part I focuses on framing the
contrast between the Iberians (and Latins) and the Anglo-Saxons (and Germanics), he first gives
a brief overview of different ancient races that have reached an apogee to then be supplanted by a
stronger or more prestigious race, at least geopolitically, to culminate between two European
races: the Iberian and the Anglo. (Vasconcelos 13–16) A second part in the same chapter he
dedicates the current geopolitical and geocultural situation that the Hispanoamericans find
themselves in, he contrasts the constant disunity in our selfish republics to the unity of the
Anglo-Saxons that threaten their race and maintain their hegemony by exploiting our pettiness.
(Vasconcelos 13–18) He thus believes the solution is to recover a true patriotism that continues
the historic mission inherited from us by the Hispanic Monarchy and to not emphasize our
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patriotism in the independences which he believes truncated the Hispanic mission in the
Iberoamericamn continent. (Vasconcelos 18–20) Vasconcelos makes the argument that for the
historic mission to continue, the Cosmic Race must first recover and start not from the recent
independences that ended the imperial feat, but to continue from there and correct the mistakes
of the criollo elite class that abandoned the work that Maeztu points out began the Crisis of
Hispanidad. (Vasconcelos 21–22) Contrasting further, he sees that the English, despite their
independence from England, now the Yankee Saxon, forged a unity consistent with the British
Imperial spirit, whereas the Hispanics began to forget their traditions, to such an extent that they
even condemned their own race and feats and desired to be conquered by the English, which he
terms a grave treason:
“On the other hand, we Spaniards, by blood, or by culture, at the time of our emancipation,
began to deny our traditions; we broke with the past and there was no lack of those who denied
the blood saying that it would have been better if the conquest of our regions had been
consummated by the English. Words of betrayal that are excused by the disgust that tyranny
engenders, and by the blindness that defeat brings. But to lose by this fate the historical sense of
a race is tantamount to an absurdity, it is the same as denying the strong and wise fathers when it
is we ourselves, not they, who are guilty of decadence.” (Vasconcelos 22–23)
Vasconcelos thus makes a geocultural and geopolitical argument based on the observations of the
rising and falling of civilizations, and while criticizing the selfish “little nation-states”
(nacioncitas) that trouble and impede the Cosmic Race’s historic mission, he calls Hispanics to
heed even the Iberoamerican union called by many so-called liberators who realized that a
greater confederation would fulfill the historic mission of Hispanidad like Bolívar, than remain
as republiquettes. (Vasconcelos 23–25)
Chapter II of Mestizaje focuses on what are the conditions and circumstances that will be
required for the prosperity of the Cosmic Race and the nature of this Cosmic Race when these
conditions are in place and how favorable they are. (Vasconcelos 32–33) Vasconcelos establishes
three main factors that will prove considerable favor and the future of the Cosmic Race given
these conditions, first, he believes the future civilization will culminate in the tropical regions,
because all began in tropical climates, and that advanced races to be incorporated to the Cosmic
Race will have to adapt to conditions that suit favorable to the Cosmic Race because this one
already is adapted to said climates. (Vasconcelos 33–34) He argues that the future territory for
the development of the Cosmic Race’s hegemony will be what is now known as all of South
America, as he argues that the richest resources to facilitate the development of the Cosmic Race
with all the advancements to set the conditions for an economic and social development is in the
Amazons. (Vasconcelos 34–35) He argues regarding this:
“The conquest of the tropics will transform all aspects of life; architecture will abandon the
ogive, the vault, and in general, the roof, which responds to the need to seek shelter; the pyramid
will develop again; colonnades will be erected in useless displays of beauty, and perhaps snail
constructions, because the new aesthetic will try to conform to the endless curve of the spiral,
which represents the free yearning; the triumph of being in the conquest of infinity. The
landscape full of colors and rhythms will communicate its richness to emotion; reality will be
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like fantasy. The aesthetics of clouds and grays will be seen as a sickly art of the past. A refined
and intense civilization will respond to the splendors of a Nature full of powers, generous of
habit, shining of clarities. The panorama of Rio de Janeiro today or of Santos with the city and its
bay can give us an idea of what will be that future emporium of the full-fledged race, which is
yet to come.
Assuming, then, the conquest of the tropics by means of scientific resources, it follows that there
will come a period in which the whole of mankind will settle in the warm regions of the planet.
The land of promise will then be in the area that today comprises the whole of Brazil, plus
Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, part of Peru, part of Bolivia and the upper region of Argentina.
There is a danger that science will get ahead of the ethnic process, so that the invasion of the
tropics will occur before the fifth race has been formed. If this happens, battles will be fought for
the possession of the Amazon that will decide the destiny of the world and the fate of the
definitive race.” (Vasconcelos 34–35)
He answers that because of the conditions that will force the European, in his case, the English,
to attempt to conquer the Amazons, will force him to consider race mixing, although at a slower
pace, but he claims that the probabilities of the English even laying its hands on the English to
assert his hegemony are very low because of the weak adaptability he will present in the
environment. (Vasconcelos 35) Further then he discusses an interesting trait of this magnanimity
of the Cosmic Race, while he appreciates the contributions of ‘the fourth race (white)’, he
believes the nature of the Cosmic Race is one whose personality is one that offers a sort of
refugee and integrationist sense of communal union where all the greatest capacities of each
ethnicity are fused to synthesize them. (Vasconcelos 35–36) He mentions that even if most of the
qualities to be dominated will be the European one, he argues that is only due to the free choice
of taste and not violent domination. (Vasconcelos 36) He writes:
“The higher characters of culture and nature will have to triumph, but that triumph will only be
firm if it is founded on the voluntary acceptance of consciousness and the free choice of fantasy.
So far, life has received its character from the lower powers of man; the fifth race will be the fruit
of the higher powers. The fifth race does not exclude, it hoards life; that is why the exclusion of
the Yankee as the exclusion of any other human type would be tantamount to an anticipated
mutilation, even more fatal than a later cut. If we do not want to exclude even races that could be
considered as inferior, much less sane would it be to exclude from our enterprise a race full of
drive and firm social virtues.” (Vasconcelos 36 italics added)
Vasconcelos then exposes, following the line of thought of the previous citation, is the third
factor: the spiritual factor, with the previous two being the environmental, geographic factor and
the social factors. (Vasconcelos 37) Vasconcelos argues that the fear of a supposed repulsive
hybridity is unfounded because, as he cites in the case of the ethnogenesis of what is now called
India, surged out of the necessity to complete the culture of that civilization; nonetheless, he
argues that the mixture that will constitute the Cosmic Race, and he details this in Chapter III;
will not be guided by proximity nor any sense of necessity whatsoever, but by taste:
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“The Northamericans are very firm in their resolution to keep their lineage pure, but that depends
on the fact that they have before them the black, who is like the other pole, like the opposite of
the elements that can be mixed. In the Iberoamerican world, the problem does not present itself
with such crude characters; we have very few blacks and most of them have already been
transformed into mulatto populations. The Indio is a good bridge of miscegenation. In addition,
the warm climate is conducive to the treatment and meeting of all peoples. On the other hand,
and this is fundamental, the crossing of the different races will not obey to simple reasons of
proximity, as it happened at the beginning, when the white settler took indigenous or black
women because there was no other at hand. Henceforth, as the social conditions improve, the
crossing of blood will be more and more spontaneous, to such an extent that it will no longer be
subject to necessity, but to taste; in the last case, to curiosity. The spiritual motive will thus be
superimposed on the contingencies of the physical. By spiritual motive is to be understood,
rather than reflection, the taste that directs the mystery of the choice of a person from among a
multitude.” (Vasconcelos 37–38)
I believe Vasconcelos understates the number of negroes in the Iberoamerican continent, but he is
not mistaken at the same time, because as he mentions, the negroes too, even the darkest ones
you can find, already find themselves mixing with other races in the Iberoamerican continent
with the same principle Vasconcelos describes above, that of taste, of mystery, of aesthetic.
Thus, Chapter III discusses this very nature of that motivation or principle that will drive the
Cosmic Race to establish itself, the principle of mestizaje that characterizes the Iberoamerican
people. I will detail Chapter III much later in the following sub-sections, but suffice to say, from
here it is summarized the Cosmic Race Thesis.
Hispanidad contra National Socialism: A contrastive analysis
In the section of Maeztu, I have entered into a detailed contextual analysis of Maeztu’s
demarcation of Hispanidad, its character, historical context and being or essence, and contrasted
it to the National Socialist theory of race, whereas Hispanidad adopts an integrationist and
harmonious view of racial identity by nature of its Catholicity, the National Socialist takes a
sacral view of race and adopts an extreme purity system levels beyond that of ancient times, and
destines races and identities to closed intervals, divinely prohibited from crossing. Vasconcelos,
as I have shown, does not take any different route from Maeztu, at the very least, the core ideas
of Hispanidad that I have discussed, Vasconcelos understood it nine years prior to Maeztu’s
Defensa. What I have unpacked on Maeztu, Vasconcelos mentions it profoundly, in the prologue
of his work:
“The central thesis of the present book is that the different races of the world tend to mix more
and more, until they form a new human type, composed with the selection of each one of the
existing peoples. Such an omen was first published at a time when the Darwinian doctrine of
natural selection, which saves the fit and condemns the weak, prevailed in the scientific world; a
doctrine which, taken to the social field by Gobineau, gave rise to the theory of the pure Aryan,
defended by the English, and taken to aberrant imposition by Nazism.
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In France, biologists such as Leclerc du Sablon and Noüy, who interpret evolution in a different
way from Darwinism, and perhaps in opposition to Darwinism, have arisen against this theory.
For their part, the social events of recent years, particularly the failure of the last great war,
which left everyone upset, if not ruined, have determined a current of more humane doctrines.
And it is the case that even distinguished Darwinists, old supporters of Spencerianism, who
disdained the colored and mixed races, are today militants in international associations which,
like Unesco, proclaim the need to abolish all racial discrimination and to educate all men in
equality, which is nothing other than the old Catholic doctrine that affirmed the attitude of the
Indian for the sacraments and therefore his right to marry a white or a yellow woman.
Thus, the reigning political doctrine recognizes once again the legitimacy of miscegenation and
thus lays the foundations for an interracial fusion recognized by law. If to this is added that
modern communications tend to suppress the geographical barriers and that the generalized
education will contribute to raise the economic level of all the men, it will be understood that
slowly the obstacles for the accelerated fusion of the lineages will be disappearing.”
(Vasconcelos 9 italics added)
Vasconcelos argues, as I have discussed previously, that the conditions provided by the Hispanic
Monarchy, and the modern globalization in his time, set the conditions of the inevitability of the
Cosmic Race to a rate faster than before, and that the Catholic doctrine of human equality as he
mentioned, is one of the key basis to initiate the conditions for The Cosmic Race, and to his
estimation, it already began.
The Catholicity of The Cosmic Race: Bridging Maeztu and Vasconcelos
“When among us there are no longer mestizos, when the black or Indian blood has been diluted
in the European blood, which in the past and not too distant times, it is necessary to remember,
received contingents of Berbers, Numidians, Tartars and other origins, you will not fail to keep
indefinitely within your borders groups of irreducible population, of different color and hostile
feelings.” (de Maeztu 106–07)
If I did not indicate the source where I cited that quote, and you would only have to go off from
the sub-titles, you would think Vasconcelos wrote this, but this is a quote cited by Maeztu, the
quote belongs to a Brazilian named Dr Oliveira Lima, who Maeztu cites claiming Lima believed
in the Iberoamerican continent, a new race is forming based off of elements that enhance the
synthesis and discarding inferior elements. (de Maeztu 107) Maeztu does not know for sure if
said unity is taking place, but he believes the most important unity is the spiritual one. (de
Maeztu 107) Vasconcelos, however, differs optimistically in favor of this prophecy, if anything,
for Vasconcelos, and Oliveira Lima; it already begun, but what has not begun is that this
synthesis has not recovered the historic mission that Maeztu and Vasconcelos share, that of
Hispanidad, in this case, Indo-Hispanidad, the Hispanidad forged and recovered in the
Hispanoamerican continent (by now you may be perplexed why I interchangeably use
Iberoamerican and Hispanoamerican, stay tuned when I discuss Alberto Buela, for now, bear
with me here). Here then is where I synthesize José Vasconcelos’ Cosmic Race, and Maeztu’s
Hispanidad: the latter implied and led to the former, because the former is the product, result, and
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genesis of the latter. The values of Hispanidad, the inherent Catholic theocentric humanism, is
the religious framework that justified and allowed not only the fusion of races, and culture, but
created the conditions that would take place from the start.
This is clearly a stark contrast from the National Socialist conception of race. As was discussed
in the MBS analysis, the National Socialist’s view of race sacralised racial differences, and tied
their ways of thinking to their phenotype, that is, they linked their way of thinking so intricate to
their physiology, that they attributed divine order and status to these differences, and to cross
them is to destroy not only them, but the mixed breeds. It does no service to neither National
Socialism nor Indohispanidad to distract oneself to Stellrecht’s definition of race, because
although ways of thinking is affirmed, their physiology are likewise and are sacralised, this
sacral treatment is rejected vehemently in Indohispanidad. The only refugee, which is nothing
insightful I would argue, that the NatSoc sympathizer may have to tie into Indohispanidad is that
the latter recognizes racial differences and customs, but so does anyone else who is not biased to
a particular ideology, this is not an overlap that the sympathizer to National Socialism can use to
tie some similarity and compatibility with the Hispanic ethos, this is where the NS theory of race
departs fundamentally from Indohispanidad and the Cosmic Race Thesis. The Cosmic Race
Thesis is a thesis born out of the feats and principles implicated in the essence discussed on
Hispanidad and its historical context, it cannot therefore be even compatible with National
Socialism, because a National Socialist would have to sacralise these differences and violate the
theocentric humanist doctrines that have birthed the feats of Indohispanidad, and from that, you
would effectively tarnish the foundation of the Hispanic ethos and the people that were born
from said ethos. Thus, the nature of the Cosmic Race is the same nature inherent in
Indohispanidad: an imperial identity that unifies all the races because it believes they can
improve, some races help others to improve, some races learn from others, and their fusion
creates a fusion from which they can learn to and communally serve a Fatherland in spirit
nurtured from its core Catholic ethos.
Hispanic Mestizaje: Catholicism’s victory over racial barriers
I now detail the nature and principles that define Hispanic race mixing or mestizaje. Vasconcelos
in two chapters discusses the historical context, briefly, of all ancient races, their rise and falls,
and moves to the dynamic seen between two European races when they made contact with the
New World: the Anglo and the Iberian. The former effectively took the National Socialist route,
though how they sacralised races is not clear, but functionally, they detested race mixing. The
latter forged the Indohispanidad empire, and race mixed. What was the nature of this race mix?
Why did interracial marriages occur? Could not the Iberian remain racially pure but treat the
indigenous and Africans with dignity? Some might argue that such a practice is not so hard to
conceive, the Iberians could simply remain homogenous and also practice all the humanely,
dignifying affairs Indohispanidad has offered to various groups, and perhaps that might have
been possible, but I would argue, that the very Catholic essence inherent in Indohispanidad took
such zealous proportions, the driving theocentric humanist central to Indohispanidad was so
great, not to mention the imperial nature it gained, that the mixture of races was inevitable,
inevitable because another fusion took place: cultural fusion, and here is why, I believe,
mestizaje is more than biological fusion of races, though it is a bare minimum component. For
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the Iberian, it was not only that they were sons of Adam, it was not only that they were men like
them, full of dignity and worthy of honor, not only they did believe they could be saved and
improve like them, they also not only believe they could be civilized, but they even believed that
this process could be incentivized by engaging in cultural exchanges and intermarry within their
society, by declaring them their brothers under the empire, it was as if they were subjects of the
same empire, integrated into society sharing all the feats they would spread to lands they would
conquer, this of course, culminated in racial mixes, this was the turning point and what defines
the nature of Hispanic Mestizaje: a Catholic enterprise to unite races like individuals of a family
are united, they made an argument that they would be their kin, and if kins marry their kins, why
not marry them as if we marry our own if they can be civilized and cultured? Even if “civilizing”
did not need to take place, that did not stop Indohispanidad from incorporating them into the
community and Fatherland.
What Vasconcelos discussed on the hospitable nature of the Cosmic Race is the same nature
characterized by Indohispanidad’s theocentric humanism and Catholic essence. Among these
principles is the principle of tastes or aesthetics of mixture. Racial characteristics to the
Indohispano is really phenotypic aesthetic, and the crossing of these phenotypes shows that the
phenotypes are really accidental mediums from which a synthetic beauty is sought in this
synthesis of the new race.
The Aesthetic Hylomorphism of Vasconcelos’ Mestizaje
On Chapter III of Vasconcelos’ work, he details what are the principles and the nature of this
spiritual factor he attributed to the forging of The Cosmic Race. What drove the mestizaje of the
Hispanoamerican continent? Vasconcelos starts off by defining three major periods that
characterize race mixing or principles that governed the extent of racial mixture, the first one he
names it the material or war period, the second he terms it the intellectual or political period, and
the third one is the one he believes what characterizes the racial mixture of the Hispanoamerican
continent: the spiritual or aesthetic period. (Vasconcelos 38) The first period he says is
characterized by baser instincts of necessity, of violence and forced assimilation or subordinated
by a primitive will:
“In the first state only matter rules; the peoples, when they meet, fight or join together with no
other law than violence and relative power. Sometimes they exterminate each other or conclude
agreements according to convenience or necessity.
[…] but the suggestion of taste is not the predominant motive of the first period, just as it is not
the predominant motive of the second, which is subject to the inflexible rule of reason. Reason is
also contained in the first period, as the origin of human conduct and action, but it is a weak
reason, like oppressed taste; it is not reason that decides, but force, and to that force, commonly
brutal, judgment is subjected, becoming the slave of the primitive will. Corrupted thus the
judgment in cunning, it is debased to serve injustice. In the first period it is not possible to work
for the cordial fusion of the races, both because the same law of violence to which it is subjected
excludes the possibilities of spontaneous cohesion, and because not even the geographical
conditions allowed the constant communication of all the peoples of the planet.” (Vasconcelos
38–39)
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The second period, the Intellectual or political one, is characterized by legislation imposed by
reason, mainly motivated by political convenience, laws made to restrict choices of freedom in
the name of arbitrary social norms that, although correct the errors of the first period, it still
impedes the flourishing of taste and aesthetics:
“In this regime, the mixture of races obeys, in part, to the whim of a free instinct that is exercised
below the rigors of the social norm, and obeys especially to the ethical or political conveniences
of the moment. In the name of morality, for example, difficult to break marriage bonds are
imposed between people who do not love each other; in the name of politics, interior and exterior
liberties are restricted; in the name of religion, which should be the sublime inspiration, dogmas
and tyrannies are imposed; but each case is justified by the dictates of reason, recognized as
supreme in human affairs.” (Vasconcelos 39)
Not only is the second period characterized by arbitrary social norms that impede the liberty of
aesthetic choices, but it is also characterized by a false sense of scientific rigor, Vasconcelos
continues:
“They also proceed according to superficial logic and misleading knowledge, those who
condemn the mixture of races, in the name of a eugenics that, because it is based on incomplete
and false scientific data, has not been able to give valid results. The characteristic of this second
period is the faith in the formula, that is why in all senses it does nothing but give norm to the
intelligence, limits to the action, borders to the homeland and brakes to the feeling. Rule, norm
and tyranny, such is the law of the second period in which we are imprisoned, and from which it
is necessary to get out from.” (Vasconcelos 39 italics added)
The emphasis added in that quote is precisely what characterizes the entire National Socialist
paradigm and its Nuremberg Laws, though primarily targeting mixture with Jews, it nonetheless
victim of this second period which Vasconcelos describes, and argues is a period that it too, must
be transcended.
Thus, the first two periods are characterized by material necessities and conformity to norms,
primitive needs and other factors which Vasconcelos argues are all inferior that will not be
conducive to the synthesis of The Cosmic Race, so what is this third period? Vasconcelos
defines:
“In the third period, whose advent is already announced in a thousand ways, the orientation of
conduct will not be sought in poor reason, which explains but does not discover; it will be sought
in creative feeling and in the beauty that convinces. The norms will be given by the supreme
faculty, the fantasy; that is to say, we will live without norms, in a state in which everything born
of feeling is a success. Instead of rules, constant inspiration. And the merit of an action will not
be sought in its immediate and palpable result, as it happens in the first period; nor will it be
taken into account that it adapts to certain rules of pure reason; the ethical imperative itself will
be surpassed and beyond good and evil, in the world of aesthetic pathos, it will only matter that
the act, because it is beautiful, produces joy. To do our whim, not our duty; to follow the path of
taste, not that of appetite or syllogism; to live joy founded on love, that is the third stage.”
(Vasconcelos 40 emphasis added)
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Thus, the third period or stage, is one grounded in beauty, love and of artistic inspiration, for
Vasconcelos, the act of mestizaje should be seen more as a work of art inspired by a union
between physical and spiritual beauty, where beauty of the external is molded by the beauty of
the internals, refined by an ideal of art and beauty than by appetite or logic. (Vasconcelos 40)
Vasconcelos argues that, on one end, we are so imperfect that we will need to undergo all three
periods to understand why the third period is superior, but on the other, he believes to understand
the principles and ideals within the third stage will prove that some will leap immediately to this
stage, which will characterize the inevitable fusion of races. (Vasconcelos 40–41) Furthermore he
argues that true free-will is one that is guided by this divine sense of beauty, and not one guided
by cold formulaic reason nor base appetite (Vasconcelos 41) and that the scientific eugenics so
promoted by National Socialist will die off and replaced by what he terms a “mysterious eugenic
of beauty” that will lead to a fusion of races motivated by aesthetic and love. (Vasconcelos 41)
Vasconcelos calls it eugenic for the sake of clarity and familiarity, but what Vasconcelos is
advocating for is far more organic and far less rigorous than eugenics per se, as he points out that
the driving force of this third stage is voluntary choice driven by a sense of beauty and love, and
because it is not governed by any set of formulas of union, it is only called eugenics very loosely.
(Vasconcelos 41)
Thus, Vasconcelos found it appropriate to ask rhetorically, what would it matter if all races mix if
the third stage is to rule the world?:
“The mysterious eugenics of aesthetic taste will prevail over scientific eugenics. Where
enlightened passion rules, no corrective is necessary. The very ugly will not procreate, will not
wish to procreate, what does it matter then that all races mix if ugliness will not find a cradle?
Poverty, defective education, the scarcity of beautiful types, the misery that makes people ugly,
all these calamities will disappear from the future social state. It will then seem repugnant, it will
seem a crime the fact today daily that a mediocre couple boasts of having multiplied misery.
Marriage will cease to be a consolation for misfortunes, which need not be perpetuated, and will
become a work of art.” (Vasconcelos 41 emphasis added)
This is a far departure of racialism, especially that of the National Socialist. The racialists of the
interwar period of Europe, particularly of Germany, saw race as something sacred, to be kept
segregated and unhybridized, races are not to cross ever because it would be seen as an attack on
nature; Vasconcelos rejects this entirely and instead, attributes sacred value to the principle of
beauty itself, a value of beauty and love governs the races, racial identity thus is an afterthought
here, because as he mentioned, it would not matter the state of hybridization if the world is
governed by the principles of the third stage, which he believes truly sets willpower free and
frees humanity. (Vasconcelos 41) For Vasconcelos, races are a means to a higher ideal to create a
new group that transcends racial barriers, in other words, the third stage is a stage that breaks
these barriers free and replace it with a frame governed by beauty, passion and artistic sense of
love and joy, thus he says, marriages will be more a work of art than material necessity.
Some Mexican nationalists who read Vasconcelos think that because of his understatement of the
negro population, and declaring the American Indian a good bridge for mestizaje, that therefore
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the negro has no place here, but how will they explain this passage, as well as the ones cited
above?:
“Nowadays, partly because of hypocrisy and partly because the unions take place between
miserable people in a wretched environment, we see with deep horror the marriage of a black
woman with a white man; we would not feel any repugnance if it were the marriage of a black
Apollo with a blonde Venus, which proves that all is sanctified by beauty. On the other hand, it
is repugnant to look at those married couples that leave the courts or the temples every day, ugly
in a proportion, more or less, of ninety percent of the bride and groom. The world is thus full of
ugliness because of our vices, our prejudices and our misery. Procreation by love is already a
good antecedent of luxuriant progeny; but it is necessary that love itself be a work of art, and not
a resource of the desperate. If what is going to be transmitted is stupidity, then what binds the
parents is not love, but rather an opprobrious and dastardly instinct.” (Vasconcelos 42 emphasis
added)
If the indio is the only exclusive bridge of mestizaje, why did Vasconcelos argue that the
marriage between an Apollo negro (a negro that exudes high masculine attractiveness) and a
blonde Venus (a white woman with high feminine attractiveness) was superior to mediocre pairs?
The selection of his example is also key, as he says, that all unions are ultimately sanctified by
beauty, and that racial externalities are only accidentals, that although important, do not take
primacy. For Vasconcelos, the form of these individual’s appearances dictates the appeal of their
union, and matter can vary while being molded by a superior form, this is Vasconcelos aesthetic
hylomorphism for the racial fusion, and the driving force of these unions is not merely externals
but one motivated by love and art and not “dastardly instincts” of the desperate. Thus,
Vasconcelos most likely meant that the indio is a good bridge as a means because the indio is the
iconic inhabitant of the Hispanoamerican continent and a precedent to emulate its fusion for
other races, it would mean that is just as good a bridge for the European as for the negro or any
other race, but not because the indio is privileged to hold this bridge, but to stimulate a higher
end goal, the synthesis of the races in the Hispanoamerican continent with a soil of the
indigenous holding together the other races. I will comment more on this when I touch upon
Alberto Buela.
Vasconcelos’ Racial Transcendence Argument
“In the third period, the will becomes free, surpasses the finite, and bursts and floods into a kind
of infinite reality; it fills itself with rumors and remote purposes; logic is not enough for it and it
puts on the wings of fantasy; it sinks into the deepest and glimpses the highest; it widens in
harmony and ascends in the creative mystery of melody; it is satisfied and dissolves in emotion
and is confused with the joy of the Universe: it becomes a passion of beauty.” (Vasconcelos 41)
Vasconcelos argument for aesthetic is a component of an argument that transcends race, the
creation of the Cosmic Race is a race that transcends race because it no longer sees race as an
obstacle to behold but a means to a creative process that fulfills a higher, universal ideal, that of
beauty and joy. This same sense of transcendence is inherent in Indohispanidad as discussed in
Maeztu’s section. Maeztu may not have been certain if Indohispanidad guaranteed the unity of
races, but he did guarantee the unity of spirits, but Vasconcelos argues that the core tenets of
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Indohispanidad inevitably implied the unity of races because of its imperial fruits and the
conditions it set to synthesize a new race that overcame racial externalities. The unity of spirits
drove the unity of races, because Indohispanidad did exactly this in the cultural sphere, and now
it led to the biological sphere.
The National Socialist believed that the crossbreeds of races sabotaged the superior qualities of
the superior at the cost of bettering the inferior races in the mix and disliked this phenomenon,
but Vasconcelos would answer: so what? That is precisely his point: A mixture motivated by
beauty and sense of artistry would gather all the great qualities, even the great qualities of the
negro, with the great qualities of the indio and the European, to synthesize a race far greater than
its predecessors. (Vasconcelos 42–43) Vasconcelos writes:
“Unions based on the capacity and beauty of the types should produce a large number of
individuals endowed with the dominant qualities. By choosing at once, not by reflection, but by
taste, the qualities that we wish to make predominant, the types of selection will multiply, as the
recessive ones will tend to disappear. The recessive offspring would no longer unite among
themselves, but would in turn go in search of rapid improvement, or would voluntarily
extinguish all desire for physical reproduction. The very consciousness of the species will
develop an astute mendelism, so that it will be free from physical constraint, ignorance and
misery, and thus in a very few generations the monstrosities will disappear; what is normal today
will come to appear abominable. The lower types of the species will be absorbed by the higher
type. In this way the black, for example, could be redeemed, and little by little, by voluntary
extinction, the ugliest races will give way to the most beautiful. The inferior races, when
educated, would become less prolific, and the best specimens would ascend in a scale of ethnic
improvement, whose maximum type is not precisely the white, but that new race, to which the
same white will have to aspire in order to conquer the synthesis.” (Vasconcelos 43 emphasis
added)
Many writers that read Vasconcelos think that the negro here is the subject paired with the
“inferior races” but that is not what Vasconcelos said, if you read carefully, the “inferior races”
for Vasconcelos, are precisely “the ugly races”, and as shown previously, ugly races are simply
the races that were produced by not following the third stage, elsewhere he discusses that both
the indio, mestizo and even the negro, have the capacity to offer improvements to the European,
because he believes no homogenous race can definitively establish itself as the completed
pinnacle:
“No contemporary race can present itself by itself as a finished model for all the others to
imitate. The mestizo and the Indian, even the Negro, surpass the white in an infinity of
spiritual capacities. Neither in antiquity, nor in the present, has there ever been a case of a race
that is sufficient by itself to forge civilization. The most illustrious epochs of Humanity have
been, precisely, those in which several dissimilar peoples are put in contact and mixed. India,
Greece, Alexandria, Rome, are but examples that only a geographical and ethnic universality is
capable of giving fruits of civilization.” (Vasconcelos 44 emphasis added)
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This is another way of paraphrasing the understanding of human equality under the Indohispanic
ethos: every race, has something to offer, whatever it may be, to others, as Vasconcelos here
admits in this citation. He points out how the greatest civilizations have always been those that
integrated and mixed with dissimilar ethnic groups such as Alexandrian Greece and the Roman
Empire. For Maeztu, as well as Vasconcelos, every ethnic group has the capacity to not only
improve themselves but help improve others in this project of civilization and the synthesis of a
new race. There are various forms of aptitudes that each people can glean from, even the
humblest of them, and Vasconcelos recognizes this as he humbled the European whom he has
praised in previous paragraphs.
Vasconcelos argues how even the children descended from the Nordic countries tend to be slow
and stubborn than those from “the South” and he explains:
“Perhaps this advantage is explained by the effect of a beneficial spiritual mendelism, due to a
combination of contrary elements. What is certain is that vigor is renewed by grafting and that
the soul itself seeks the dissimilar to enrich the monotony of its own content. Only a prolonged
experience will be able to reveal the results of a mixture made, no longer by violence or by the
effect of necessity, but by choice, founded on the dazzle produced by beauty, and confirmed by
the pathos of love.” (Vasconcelos 44 emphasis added)
The mention of Vasconcelos of a “spiritual mendelism” shows that the true fusion of race
transcends even intellectual capacity of races but includes other aptitudes that complete the
human being. For Vasconcelos, mere intellectualism is something characterized by the arrogant
English, but not the magnanimous Iberian who saw more to the human psyche than notions of
reason and intellect in the modern sense. (Vasconcelos 45) The people that read Vasconcelos
through the eyes of a so-called “decolonization methodology” prove Vasconcelos’ points in that
the same “anti-racist decolonization” ideologies and the “racial superiority” of the English are
ones adopted by virtue of accepting the dominance of our enemies. (Vasconcelos 46) On
commenting on the perceived inferiority of the negro, Vasconcelos points out this is an
assumption of the English’s temporary geopolitical dominance which he characterizes of every
superpower over time and justified by virtue of combating a rival power:
“The English, who see only the present of the external world, did not hesitate to apply zoological
theories to the field of human sociology. If the false translation of physiological law to the zone
of the spirit were acceptable, then to speak of the ethnic incorporation of the Negro would be as
much as to advocate retrogression. The English theory assumes, implicitly or frankly, that the
Negro is a sort of link which is closer to the monkey than to the blond man. There remains,
therefore, no other recourse than to make him disappear. On the other hand, the white,
particularly the English-speaking white, is presented as the sublime end of human evolution; to
cross him with another race would be to sully his lineage. But such a way of seeing is nothing
more than the illusion of every fortunate people in the period of its power. Each of the great
peoples of history has believed itself to be the final and the chosen one. When one compares
these childish arrogance with each other, one sees that the mission that each people attributes
to itself is at bottom nothing more than the desire for booty and the desire to exterminate the
rival power. Official science itself is in every epoch a reflection of the pride of the dominant
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race. The Hebrews based the belief of their superiority on oracles and divine promises. The
English base theirs on observations concerning domestic animals.” (Vasconcelos 45 emphasis
added)
Thus, Vasconcelos racial mixture at no point is ever based on a notion of “zoological” superiority
assumed by the English, nor is it even based on the divine privilegedness of the Hebrew, which
in Maeztu’s section I discussed Indohispanidad fought through the Catholic principle of uniting
and harmonizing the races; but rather it is based on this principle of harmony and higher seeking
of beauty. Vasconcelos continues:
“All imperialism needs a philosophy to justify it; the Roman Empire preached order, that is,
hierarchy; first the Roman, then his allies, and the barbarian in slavery. The British preach
natural selection, with the tacit consequence that the kingdom of the world corresponds by
natural and divine right to the dolichocephalus of the Islands and his descendants. But this
science that came to invade us together with the artifacts of the conquering commerce, is fought
as all imperialism is fought, putting in front of it a superior science, a wider and more vigorous
civilization. What is certain is that no race is sufficient by itself, and that Humanity would lose,
loses, every time a race disappears by violent means. It is fortunate that each one can transform
itself according to its own will, but within its own vision of beauty, and without breaking the
harmonious development of the human elements.” (Vasconcelos 45–46 emphasis added)
Vasconcelos is simply expressing what I have unpacked in Maeztu’s section; it is never about
eradicating a supposed “inferior” race, and note, he does not even use inferiority in an
ontological sense, but more so functional, action-based and by aesthetic, regardless of his/her
lineage, whereas the National Socialist would consider the negro inferior in spite of attempting to
stress they do not consider other races inferior or superior, they tacitly believe this in practice at
the moment of considering racial mixture. For Vasconcelos, every race can improve themselves,
and must, he calls this “the deus ex machina” of their success, he continues from here:
“We have been educated under the humiliating influence of a philosophy devised by our enemies,
if you will in a sincere manner, but with the purpose of exalting their own ends and annulling
ours. In this way we ourselves have come to believe in the inferiority of the mestizo, in the
irredeemability of the Indio, in the condemnation of the Negro, in the irreparable decadence
of the Oriental. The rebellion of arms was not followed by the rebellion of consciences. We
rebelled against the political power of Spain, and we did not realize that, together with Spain, we
fell into the economic and moral domination of the race that has been mistress of the world since
the end of the greatness of Spain. We shook off one yoke to fall under a new one. The movement
of displacement of which we were victims could not have been avoided even if we had
understood it in time. There is a certain fatality in the destiny of peoples as there is in the destiny
of individuals; but now that a new phase of history is beginning, it is necessary to reconstitute
our ideology and to organize our entire continental life according to a new ethnic doctrine. Let
us begin then by making our own life and our own science. If the spirit is not liberated first, we
will never succeed in redeeming matter.” (Vasconcelos 46 emphasis added)
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I believe this entire citation refutes all claims that mischaracterize Vasconcelos as some “racist”
that believes in racial superiority, it is very clear that he argues that this notion of believing any
sense of irredeemability of the indigenous American and the condemnation of the Negro, is
exclusively the product of an enemy empire that has sought to undermine the empire that has
brought forth the principles that guide the third stage that will create the Cosmic Race and all
feats of Indohispanidad. Furthermore, the cited paragraph shows that Vasconcelos believes that
these racialist notions, whether by the English or the Germanics is also consequence of the
Foreignization problem Maeztu highlighted, it is simply more fruits of the same problem that
Vasconcelos calls to solve by developing and cultivating ideas and strengths from our own
continent to fight the enemy imperialism with the imperialism of Indohispanidad.
This line of thought is further demonstrated, and here is the nature of this racial transcendence of
Vasconcelos’ Cosmic Race Thesis:
“We do not claim that we are or will become the first race in the world, the most enlightened, the
strongest and the most beautiful. Our purpose is still higher and more difficult than achieving a
temporary selection. Our values are in potential to such an extent that we are nothing yet.
However, the Hebrew race was for the arrogant Egyptians nothing but a dastardly caste of slaves
and from it was born Jesus Christ, the author of the greatest movement in history; the one who
announced the love of all men. This love will be one of the fundamental dogmas of the fifth
race, which is to be produced in America. Christianity liberates and engenders life, because it
contains universal revelation, not national; that is why the Jews themselves had to reject it,
because they did not decide to commune with gentiles. But America is the homeland of
gentility, the true land of Christian promise. […] The biotics that the progress of the world
imposes on America of Hispanic origin is not a rival creed that, in the face of the adversary, says:
I surpass you, or I am enough, but an infinite yearning for integration and totality that for the
same reason invokes the Universe. The infinity of his yearning assures him the strength to
combat the exclusivist creed of the enemy side and confidence in the victory that always
corresponds to the gentiles. The danger is rather that what happened to the majority of the
Hebrews, who by not becoming gentiles, lost the grace that originated in their bosom, may
happen to us. So it would happen if we do not know how to offer home and fraternity to all men;
then another people will serve as an axis, some other language will be the vehicle; but no one can
contain the fusion of peoples, the appearance of the fifth era of the world, the era of universality
and cosmic feeling.” (Vasconcelos 47–48 emphasis added)
This extensive citation shows that Vasconcelos understood the nature and being of
Indohispanidad very well, he understood the nature and character of the Hispanoamerican ethos,
the fusion of races forged by this ideal, this central Catholic love that united all races under an
empire, this same empire is one composed of multiple races that all transcended their racial
barriers, they no longer saw their racial identity as primary but secondary, maybe even tertiary,
because it is merely a manifestation of different aptitudes and appearances that will feed and
nurture the synthesis of a new race that improves all the progenitor groups, and he believes the
Hispanoamericans in the continent are privileged to continue and recover this historic mission.
(Vasconcelos 51–52)
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On Paraguay, México and other Hispanoamerican countries: A brief commentary

“Only the Iberian part of the continent has the spiritual factors, the race and the territory that are
necessary for the great enterprise of initiating the universal era of Humanity. In there are all the
races that have to give their contribution; the Nordic man, who today is a master of action, but
who had humble beginnings and seemed inferior, at a time when several great cultures had
already appeared and declined; the black man, as a reserve of potentialities that stem from the
remote days of Lemuria; the Indio, who saw Atlantis perish, but keeps a quiet mystery in his
conscience; we have all the peoples and all the aptitudes, and all that is needed is for true love to
organize and set in motion the law of History.” (Vasconcelos 52 emphasis added)
For Vasconcelos, the privilege that Hispanoamerica enjoys is one in which all the conditions that
set up its civilizations, its resources, and the people, are in their favor to establish a race born out
of a universal love that harmonizes and dignifies all the racial components, each contributing
their unique strengths and cultures, to synthesize a new race that surpasses all obstacles faced by
its predecessors. How stark a contrast, from what Frirtz Bennecke commented, on the mestizaje
that took place in the Hispanomerican continent, calling the offsprings “unhappy bastards” and
illicit union of races because they violated a so-called “divine” law of race. (Bennecke)
Vasconcelos’ argument for the unity of races is a Catholic argument par excellence, which
contrasts with a racialatrous heresy embodied in the NSDAP of Germany.
For Vasconcelos, the Spanish that mated with the Guaraní Indians in what is now Paraguay, and
the various Indians in what is now México were never motivated by a racialist frame, they did
not see race as an impenetrable barrier to honor as one honors The Ten Commandments or even
divine liturgy, race was accidental, interesting differences to observe, but irrelevant to the
creation of civilization. It is important to understand what precisely is irrelevant about ignoring
race in matters of civilization. What do I mean by “ignoring race?” Color-blindedness? I believe
this is a gross mischaracterization of the Cosmic Race Thesis and Indohispanidad’s treatment of
various races. There was nothing blind about Indohispanidad, what is blind is the critic who does
not understand the intricacies of the philosophical arguments laid out by Vasconcelos and
Maeztu. It is obvious that the people composing the Cosmic Race recognize there are
differences, physical and psychological, of diverse groups, but to characterize their mixture as a
mindset of “colorblindness” is ignorantly absurd and misses the point. Indohispanidad does not
deny every race is different, this has been established in Maeztu’s section, and more so in this
one on Vasconcelos; what Indohispanidad argues is that these differences are not absolute nor
divine ordained boxes to be contained in purity niches, that is, to be maintained sacredly
differentiated; Indohispanidad rejects a purity system that tries to sell itself as honorable but
masks a selfishness of arbitrariness. Indohispanidad believes that if cultural customs can be
exchanged, shared, and enhanced, why not physical qualities? As Maeztu pointed out in his first
chapter, if Catholicism is the religion composed of various liturgical expressions, forms of the
same fundamental Truth under The Church, and each is not necessarily confined eternally to its
box but can change, adapt while maintaining form; why can’t the numerous people composing
Hispanidad also adapt materially while maintaining the form of their ethos which unites them in
their differences? Indohispanidad thus rejects arbitrary notions of identities that make it
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impossible and unintelligible to speak of a civilization be composed of multiple ethnicities united

by a nexus that transcends materiality, time, and space.
For Vasconcelos, as was shown, The Cosmic Race is simply the result of Indohispanidad
providing an argument against other civilizations’ arbitrary notions of purity that restrict the will
to seek beauty and love as argued by Vasconcelos. Indohispanidad provided Vasconcelos the
principles of the third stage, the spiritual aesthetic that disregards arbitrary barriers of physicality,
geographically or biologically. The barriers are products of human arbitrariness, not objectively
defined boundaries by a divine order, the only barriers for Indohispanidad are religious and
cultural barriers, which even here she believes can be conquered, because she believes, as
Vasconcelos points out, that the Iberoamerican continent exemplifies the famous biblical
proclamation: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither
male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28) Indohispanidad uses this
argument not to undermine these differences but to harmonize them, integrate them into a unity
that surpasses barriers that are inferior to the ultimate barrier: the barriers between allegiance to
Christ and His Church, and the heresies that oppose her.
Raza Cósmica as an observed phenomenon
Vasconcelos expands further from this third stage, let’s call it the Principle of Aesthetic, he
believes that this principle is something that is not only an ideal to seek out but observed in the
real world as many thinkers realize that the falsities of Darwinian sociology and other racialist
supremacist theories collapse, the third stage reveals itself as a phenomenon where it reveals a
fundamental unity of the human race predicated on Christian principles. (Vasconcelos 49) He
argues that as scientific knowledge grows to discover that nature itself has an in-built goal-
seeking procedure, he believes this discovery will justify that nature is not itself even restricted
to confine the races or anything to strict differentiated organisms, but there is room for fusion
towards improvement, one which will justify the synthesis of the new race through the laws of
aesthetics. (Vasconcelos 49–50) Thus, Vasconcelos argues that The Cosmic Race is not only an
ideal for the Iberoamerican continent, but the nature of this ideal is justified by the nature of
reality itself in a unity that is consistent with Natural Law, grounded in in a harmonious love
driven by spiritual factors of beauty and taste.
The value of culture and the death of racialism
Vasconcelos then summarizes the consequences of what would The Cosmic Race entail if it were
to be forged by the inferior stages, with the first one he believes will entail no harmony nor unity,
but destruction and extermination, which he rejects because it is blinded by an impetus of
violence and primitive force. (Vasconcelos 50) This force, of course, motivated by no less the
same nature of racialism characterized by the English imperialism. He then argues that if the
races were conformed to the second stage, it would be a world where only pure logic with no
sense of deeper human sentiments and bonds were possible, because it would be a world dictated
by strict legalism of duty and strangulated spirit that would collapse to the eventual combative
force that it attempted to correct from the first stage. (Vasconcelos 51)
Thus, Vasconcelos concludes that true unity of races is one that constitutes a free-willed spirit
moved by beauty, love and taste that breaks the chains of the previous stages, a principle founded
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in Christianity and its sense of divine charity, which he believes is a principle that is
characterized by the choices of taste of the Hispanoamericans. (Vasconcelos 51) Vasconcelos
believes that the nature of the Hispanoamerican ethos is characterized by all the implications of
the third period he discusses, their very personalities exude this, and why he believes they will be
the future to create the Cosmic Race. (Vasconcelos 51–52) For Vasconcelos, the fact that in the
Iberoamerican continent exists a variety of races, all united by the vivid spirit and sense of
hospitality founded on Catholic ethos is why no other empire or country will be successful to
conquer them. (Vasconcelos 52)
How then, he asks, can these races live in harmony or bring about the Cosmic race if children of
the same lineage cannot find peace under oppressive socioeconomic conditions that rule them to
this day? Vasconcelos answers that such conditions must not only change but will once the
Hispanoamerican people recover their historic mission and put into practice the third stage that
will lead them to glory. (Vasconcelos 52–53)
Thus, Vasconcelos confidently concludes:
“In order to express all these ideas that I am trying to present today in a quick synthesis, some
years ago, when they were not yet well defined, I tried to give them signs in the new Palace of
Public Education in Mexico. Without enough elements to do exactly what I wanted, I had to
settle for a Spanish Renaissance construction, with two courtyards, arcades and walkways, which
have something of the impression of a wing. On the panels of the four corners of the previous
courtyard I had allegories of Spain, Mexico, Greece and India, the four particular civilizations
that have to contribute the most to the formation of Latin America. Then, below these four
allegories, four large stone statues of the four great contemporary races should be erected: the
White, the Red, the Black and the Yellow, to indicate that America is home to all of them, and
needs all of them. Finally, a monument was to be erected in the center that in some way
symbolized the law of the three states: the material, the intellectual and the aesthetic. Everything
to indicate that, through the exercise of the triple law, we will arrive in America, before in any
part of the globe, to the creation of a race made with the treasure of all the previous ones, the
final race, the cosmic race.” (Vasconcelos 53–54 emphasis added)
Vasconcelos is speaking that in Hispanoamerica, he believes there should be a monument, an
architecture that represents the entire synthesis of the Cosmic Race in an artistic manner, of a
Spanish renaissance style as he mentioned.
Why did he include the three laws when he gave primacy to the third one? Vasconcelos has
pointed out previously that these laws are more periods of discovery that lead to the final
aesthetic stage, but in the theoretical monument, they were periods characterized by a kernel that
shines brighter in the third stage: the material, characterized by the conquests, the conflicts
characterized in many parts of the Hispanoamerican history, some were mere battles, others were
of more sensual nature; the second period, characterized by legalities binding social strata,
primarily of socioeconomic factors, but that these factors frustrated the unities that would limit
the opportunities of mixture of classes by different races, a period which collapsed in the
independences and that he believes needs to be corrected by the final stage, the Principle of
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Aesthetic, the principle that was inside in the previous ones but was the one that truly kept the
empire together, even when it collapsed in political structure, but not as a permanent community,
the third stage that binds and defines the Hispanoamerican ethos and the one that cultivated a
Catholic culture, from various other cultures. The third stage that surpassed and defeated the
racialisms of enemy empires that threatened the Hispanoamerican continent but could not defeat
it because what grounds them is a unity superior to terrestrial and biological nexus: a Catholic
nexus.

Pedro Albizu Campos and “Día de La Raza”

“We are direct heirs of the only civilization that the world has ever known... We are direct heirs
of an apostolate that is synthesized in the heraldry of our great coat of arms..”
-Pedro Albizu Campos, Speech at Ponce, 1950
“Puerto Rico stands tall in the greatness of its lineage, in the Cross of Saint John the Baptist! It is
the greatness of a race that wields its banner for the being of humanity!”
-Pedro Albizu Campos, Speech at ponce, 1950
If you find the coat of arms of Puerto Rico, you will realize Albizu Campos is referring to the
Catholic heritage that is embedded in the culture of the country he was fighting for her
sovereignty, it is undeniable that Albizu Campos was a passionate Catholic, and I will
demonstrate not only evidence of this, but demonstrate how his entire Catholicity shaped and
molded his Nationalism, I will also explain the nature of this nationalism and why it is
functionally a Hispanic Patriotism of the character described in Maeztu’s section.
The first thing to deal with is why Albizu Campos, never felt bothered to refer to October 12th as
“Día de La Raza” unlike Maeztu. If you recall, Maeztu said that October 12th was “wrongly
titled” such and that it should be “Día de La Hispanidad” because he argues Hispanidad never
bothered to care about racial lines, and that is true, but it would appear that the inheritors of the
Indohispanidad imperial mission, do not see it that way, and Albizu Campos will show us why,
as he and many other thinkers that touched on this issue, understood race very differently from
what Maeztu understood, that is not to say Maeztu is mistaken for referring October 12th as
Hispanidad, that has its valid reasons, but Albizu Campos, and all those who inhabit the
Hispanoamerican continent, give their reasons why they prefer to maintain it as such. What is the
nature of this race Hispanoamericans speak of? I am not asking what the composition is of said
race, Vasconcelos told us as I have shown, and he already told us what the principles were used
to drive this synthesis. I am now asking why they have been able to synthesize this, and maintain
a sense of racial Identity, that also surpasses racial barriers. An identity of race, that transcends
race. How is this possible? Vasconcelos says it was the principles characterized by the third
period: The Principle of Aesthetic, but I believe this explains one aspect of the phenomenon,
Albizu Campos’, and by extension, all of Hispanoamericans’ view of race, will explain to us, that
the nature of race they have conceived, inevitably led, and justifies, the Cosmic Race. To
elucidate Albizu Campos’ philosophy, I will refer to various sources, as I have stated in the
Prologue, Albizu Campos rarely wrote anything down, the majority of writings are speeches that
were transcribed by others. So, I will not only elucidate Albizu Campos’s philosophy, I will also
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contextualize and supplement it from other political philosophies of other Hispanic writers,
among them is Julio Meinvielle, who I have cited in the MBS analysis, Alberto Ezcurra
Medrano, and who I believe is the best researcher in the US on his political philosophy and
Catholic ethos: Anthony Stevens-Arroyo.
Albizu’s Concepto de La Raza and Catholicism
“When the President of the Republic of El Plata, Don Hipólito Yrigoyen, instituted the Day of
the Race, to what race was the Argentinean high magistrate referring to? Was his concept, with a
rancid predilection, referring to the rest of the great ethnic mosaic of America? The Argentine
president was referring to the Iberoamerican race.” (Albizu Campos, “Concepto de La Raza” 25)
This is a transcribed speech on October 12th that Albizu Campos made, among many that he
spoke about. From this citation, Albizu Campos lets us know that not only was he aware of the
old title, but so was the Argentinian president at the time. The race in question was of course the
Hispanoamerican one, which makes sense given the history of this festivity being exclusively
one regarding the fusion and symbiosis in the continent demarcating the Hispanoamerican ethos.
So, what is race to the Hispanoamericans? How did the Hispanoamerican interpret race in “Día
de La Raza?” Albizu Campos explains:
“For us, race has nothing to do with biology. Neither lunar complexion, nor boiled hair, nor
obliquity of the eye. Race is a perpetuity of virtues and characteristic institutions. We are
distinguished by our culture, by our courage, by our nobility, by our Catholic sense of
civilization.” (Albizu Campos, “Concepto de La Raza” 25 emphasis added)
The National Socialist sympathizer may alert and say that this is no different than what Helmut
Stellrecht has said, but not so fast. Further in his speech, Albizu Campos makes reference to the
discovery that Spain embarked to forge a unity that transcended even geographic boundaries, not
just racial ones. He says:
“The Discovery is the discovery of humanity by itself, the discovery of man by man, God knows
what moral cataclysm made possible the separation of humanity to the point of not knowing
itself! With the discovery Spain conquered human unity, gave the world its geographical unity,
made the earth a sphere. Man did not know where he lived. His plane of residence was a
conjecture. Spain gave him the security of stability and, feeling himself firmly established, man
began to walk again.” (Albizu Campos, “Concepto de La Raza” 25 emphasis added)
For Albizu Campos, Race, from the outset, has nothing to do with biology, in other words, “Día
de La Raza” is the forging of a civilization, it is therefore a civilizational identity, a civilizational
group with a Fatherland forged by virtues and the Catholic faith, echoing Maeztu’s conception of
The Fatherland. He extends this to the unification of the Asians by the Japanese and the
Ethiopians in Africa, (Albizu Campos, “Concepto de La Raza” 26) and when referring to the
Anglo-Saxons, the Yankees:
“It is the secret law of American politics to follow the inertia of the policy of its mother country
Great Britain. They all have from us their spiritual weapons because we were the ones who, with
blood and fire, with the cross of the sword and with the sword of the cross, gave to old Europe
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and to virgin America the tradition of virtue, of courage, of honor, of sacrifice, of contempt for
death and for material goods, that make our race today the only hope of the world.” (Albizu
Campos, “Concepto de La Raza” 26 emphasis added)
Although the work cited is from a book published on 1971, the speech was reproduced from
another work published in 1933, contemporary to the Interwar period. Thus, Albizu Campos was
no stranger to this period, a period where his country was forced to choose between two fronts
every epoch, in the interwar and in the Cold War Era: for the Yankee or for the Axis; for the
Yankee or Soviet Russia; dichotomies which he rejected in principle, for him the only choice is
the Iberoamerican mission.
Contrastive analysis: The NSDAP’s Race versus Albizu’s Race
By now you might be wondering how can Albizu Campos’ conception of race differ
fundamentally from Stellrecht and the NSDAP, did not the latter assert that race was too, a
perpetuation of virtues and spiritual qualities? Yes, but on the condition of physiological purity.
As I have demonstrated in the MBS analysis, the NSDAP did not simply settle for an exclusively
psychological view of race, to them, psychology was innately tied to their genetic and bloodline
purity, for them, their psychology could only be this way because of their lineage that forged said
lineage, and to race mix with other groups is to tarnish this. (see Gross, “Race: A Radio Speech
by Dr. Groß”; see also Bennecke, chap.I; Bareth and Vogel, sec.Preserving Racial Inheritance)
Contrast this with Albizu’s view of Race, which is a true form of a psychotype, that is, a trait
describing the psychology of a person, though this term too understates the totality of Albizu’s
treatment of race, because as he mentions, it is a perpetuity of virtues and a sense of Catholic
civilization, and this implies something greater than psychology, but a sense of patriotism that
goes beyond psychology, it is an embedded group identity at a civilizational level. This is
important to stress, and I will unpack this further in the following sub-sections under Albizu
Campos.
The Catholic framework of Albizu’s concept of race
When Albizu Campos made references to the “cross of the sword” and to “the apostolate”
embedded in the coat of arms, Albizu Campos calls to attention a transcendental reality that
drives and defines civilization, to him, it is the Catholic faith, the friars, the priests, The Church
herself that protects civilization. For him, The Virgin Mary, Saint John the Baptist, the rosary;
these are the bedrocks of not only our civilization, but our individual identity. The Catholic faith
gave Albizu Campos his reason of being. Albizu Campos defines the fatherland the same way
Maeztu elucidated in El Ser de La Hispanidad, and he called to attention the values and honor
that characterizes not only his people, but the Hispanoamerican people, the same principle that
forged The Cosmic Race as defended by Vasconcelos. The Cosmic Race, then, is a Catholic
Race, and a Catholic Race has a civilizational sense of identity, that transcends phenotypes. It is
not that Albizu Campos “turns a blind eye” to physical traits, for Albizu Campos, those are
merely for material accidents of a greater form, like Vasconcelos talks about in his thesis.
Whether you have dark, light, or anything in-between complexion, curly or straight haired or any
variation of your skull; to belong to the Iberoamerican race is to belong to a Catholic Empire,
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and to him, this is the true identity of a people. I will unpack and detail how these arguments
hold in the following headers.
Albizu’s political philosophy: Balmes and Civilizational Grandeur
The main sources I will use to elucidate the link between Spanish philosopher Jaime Balmes on
Albizu Campos’ Catholicism are two papers by Anthony Stevens Arroyo and one essay by
Ernesto Sánchez Huertas. Jaime Balmes is best known for two works: El Protestantismo
Comparado con el Catolicismo, which is the main work that influenced Albizu Campos, and El
Criterio. Jaime Balmes influenced Albizu Campos more on politics than anything purely
philosophical, but this does not take away the philosophical roots inherent in Balmes that shaped
Albizu, and I will demonstrate this, but first a few backgrounds into his life before initiating his
nationalist activism for Puerto Rican sovereignty and to what extent he saw its end goal.
Albizu Campos studied law in the University of Harvard at Boston in 1914 with the help of a
sponsorship from the Aurora Masonic Lodge at Ponce since 1871, but by 1912 he was already a
Masonic Freethinker. (Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic Worldview in the Political Philosophy of
Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll of Puerto Rican Insularity” 61) Although he received his
Law degree in 1923 after finishing his bachelor’s in 1916, he professed a fervent Catholicism by
1915. (Stevens-Arroyo, “Jaime Balmes Redux: Catholicism as Civilization in the Political
Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos” 61–62) What changed this initially Mason to an aggressive
Catholic Nationalist in a span of three years? Anthony explains:
“While a graduate student at New York University in 1974, I developed the hypothesis that
Albizu had been brought to his conversion through reading the works of Jaime Balmes, an idea
subsequently confirmed in a private meeting with Juan Antonio Corretger, longtime colleague,
friend, and biographer of Albizu. I would like to revisit this theme, however, to add a new idea. I
believe that Albizu’s reading of Balmes was transformed into a life-shaping experience because
he lived in Boston. The “Latino” side of Pedro’s intellectual formation in the United States was
what made his vision so original to Vasconcelos.” (Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic Worldview in
the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll of Puerto Rican Insularity”
62 emphasis added)
Before I continue, a little context regarding Vasconcelos. It is the most impressive data, because
Vasconcelos was a very prominent philosopher in all HispAm in the early 20th century, but in his
Indología, Vasconcelos praises Albizu Campos and the Catholicism of Puerto Ricans and
believed that Albizu Campos taught him a lot in one day. (Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic
Worldview in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll of Puerto
Rican Insularity” 53–54; Stevens-Arroyo, “Jaime Balmes Redux: Catholicism as Civilization in
the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos” 148 Note 3) The relevant praises are as
follows:
“In Ponce, we were welcomed by the Nationalists, the local head, Pedro Albizu Campos, won me
over immediately and has continued to impress me. He has a solid background. I don’t know
how many years at Harvard! That is why he understands the rival culture from top to bottom and
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no one else can expose its secret weaknesses and clever machinations as he. Few persons have
taught me so much in only one day as has Albizu Campos.

I am sure that someday this ungrateful America of ours will know of him and salute him as one
of its heroes. He lives in defense of the poor, which is to say, that he scarcely lives. Every day he
confronts temptations in the form of commissions and cases that he rejects because it runs
counter to his stance on collaboration with the invaders. The harshest demand of North American
power in Puerto Rico is the forced imposition of American citizenship on all Puerto Ricans. They
cannot continue to be Spanish, the right to be Puerto Ricans is not recognized and they have to
accept the yanqui passport to enter or leave the Island, to enter or to leave their very own home.
Albizu Campos almost single-handedly supports the weekly newspaper, entitled “El
Nacionalista” [The Nationalist].

He lives like a saint and since nothing untoward can be said of his behavior, it’s left for someone
to comment to me, “But look, he is mulatto.” This was said to me by another pseudo-Nationalist.
As if being mulatto was not the membership card to the most distinguished citizenship of
America! I think that even [Simon] Bolivar was such. He was, if we are to believe the English
description, even though today there are those who want us to make him a descendant from the
blue blood of I don’t know which ancestors of pure Basque stock.” (Stevens-Arroyo, “The
Catholic Worldview in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll of
Puerto Rican Insularity” 53–54 cited from Indología)
Anthony Stevens Arroyo believes these praises are due to Albizu Campos educating himself in
the inner intellectualism of the enemy empire and meeting other Catholic Nationalists, the Irish
Catholics at Boston, as well as reading Jaime Balmes and even works from philosophers like
Juan de Mariana and Francisco Suárez (Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic Worldview in the
Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll of Puerto Rican Insularity” 62) is
what made Vasconcelos appreciate the originality and educational background in not only
possessing a strong intellectual basis for his Catholic political philosophy, but possessing the
knowledge to combat the enemy empire in its own territory.
What of Puerto Rican Catholicism? Why did Vasconcelos praise it and indicate its indispensable
allegiance to the Iberoamerican mission? (Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic Worldview in the
Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll of Puerto Rican Insularity” 54)
After providing some background, Stevens Arroyo points out that the nature of the jíbaro is what
allowed flourishing of Puerto Rican Catholicism despite its weak episcopal administrative
influence (Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic Worldview in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu
Campos: The Death Knoll of Puerto Rican Insularity” 54–55) It was not until the Catholics in the
island saw the Protestantization and Americanization in the education system that many began to
rally and forge a nationalist sentiment to oppose Americanization even by US Bishops, Anthony
writes:
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“By the time of Vasconcelos’s visit, however, Catholicism had regrouped and was addressing the
collusion between Protestant missionaries and the North American regime. Despite the attacks,
Catholic leadership in Puerto Rico “was drawing new strength from the growing awareness of a
threatened identity and an aroused nationalist sentiment.” In a forthcoming study, Ana Maria
Diaz-Stevens sees the 1920s as a time when the Spanish-focused discourse of illegitimacy
against Protestantism and the North American discourse of competition were fused together in a
new Puerto Rican Nationalist rhetoric that identified Puerto Rican Catholicism with Puerto Rican
culture. To attack one was to attack the other. More importantly, this new mode of discourse
shaped a militant aggressiveness that challenged the premise of U.S. hegemony, namely that
Protestantism was the only faith compatible with U.S. rule.” (Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic
Worldview in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll of Puerto
Rican Insularity” 56–57)
These events Albizu Campos saw it unfold when he returned from the island and launched
critical speeches against US bishops that tried to Americanize the island by instituting systems
that facilitate Yankee regime and undermine Puerto Rican Catholic culture. (Stevens-Arroyo,
“The Catholic Worldview in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll
of Puerto Rican Insularity” 69–70) For Albizu Campos, the Puerto Rican culture and its values in
the island were non-negotiable, nor was sovereignty and he would not hesitate to point out
inconsistencies in Catholic leadership without violating The Magisterium. (Stevens-Arroyo,
“The Catholic Worldview in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll
of Puerto Rican Insularity” 69–70) The details of how he pulled this off I will elucidate below.
Albizu Campos and The Balmesian Critique
Albizu’s influence by Balmes’ El Protestantismo comparado con el Catolicismo is undoubtedly
attested in his actions as lawyer and how he viewed the contradictions between Protestant praxis
and theory and how they viewed local cultures and civilizations’ hierarchies in general. (Stevens-
Arroyo, “Jaime Balmes Redux: Catholicism as Civilization in the Political Philosophy of Pedro
Albizu Campos” 129–30; Sánchez Huertas 142–43; Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic Worldview
in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll of Puerto Rican Insularity”
62) Stevens Arroyo argues that Balmes’ work essentially was a philosophical work to construct a
Theology of Civilization that Albizu found instrumental in shaping his political philosophy on
Puerto Rican sovereignty. (Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic Worldview in the Political Philosophy
of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll of Puerto Rican Insularity” 63) Recall how in
Maeztu’s section, he cites Francisco de Vitoria on the question of civil disobedience in the case
of a tyrant exercising abuse of power against the fatherland; these very same arguments Balmes’
brings them in his work and Albizu Campos found them crucial in his opposition to the Yankee
regime. (Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic Worldview in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu
Campos: The Death Knoll of Puerto Rican Insularity” 63, 69–70; Stevens-Arroyo, “Jaime
Balmes Redux: Catholicism as Civilization in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos”
130–31) Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, Albizu Campos had no socialist leanings in his
economy, his economic model was very much alike Balmes’ model, who the philosopher argued
in his book it was a modern adaptation to the Medieval economic model and advocated for a just
order that not only uplifted the working class, but land owners and property owners in the island.
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(Sánchez Huertas 140–44, 146–48; Stevens-Arroyo, “Jaime Balmes Redux: Catholicism as

Civilization in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos” 141)
Further expanding on Balmes and Vitoria’s influence of Albizu Campos position on tyrannicide,
he believed that if the tyrant threatened the fatherland of its liberty and dignity, that tyrannicide
was justified, at least from a group and public standpoint and not by a particular individual
(Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic Worldview in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos:
The Death Knoll of Puerto Rican Insularity” 63), Anthony Stevens Arroyo describes:
“Mariana’s redress against tyranny served as a blueprint for the Nationalist Party. When the body
of the Republic had been deprived of its soul, that is liberty, said the Jesuit, several men of
prominence in the society must bring equal force against the tyrant and deprive his body of its
soul, that is assassination. Mariana felt that as long as at least some in the nation opposed a
tyrant, the rights of freedom were guaranteed. Moreover, this opposition was the equivalent of
war in which assassination was legitimate.
There are limits to the rebellion, however, each deriving from the code of the Spanish crusader.
At all costs, the rebellion must not be seditious (Hansen Rosas, 320). The mercenaries of the evil
ruler are also targets for violence. But just as the declaration of war against the king must be
open and without subterfuge, so to the attacks on his hirelings must be in the nature of the
knightly code of honor.” (Stevens-Arroyo, “Jaime Balmes Redux: Catholicism as Civilization in
the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos” 137)
This was the blueprint to the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party’s emergency protocol in case the
Yankee regime overstayed its colonialism after all peaceful routes were exhausted, thus, Albizu’s
Catholic political philosophy from a variety of Catholic philosophers of the Medieval and
modern era were undoubtedly present in his actions. From his collaborations with a variety of
economic classes and the clear influences of not just Balmes but Catholic social encyclicals like
Rerum Novarum, Albizu Campos’ Nationalism was a political expression of a Puerto Rican
Sovereign Patriotic Movement (Sánchez Huertas 150–51) that transcended Puerto Rico’s
geography, as he believed that Puerto Rico’s Nationalism was more a means to achieve freedom
from Yankee imprisonment to further a greater cause, such as the Antillean Confederation and
the ultimate goal: the Hispanoamerican Union. (Stevens-Arroyo, “Jaime Balmes Redux:
Catholicism as Civilization in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos” 141–42;
Sánchez Huertas 146; Camblor 10) For Albizu Campos, Nationalism was akin to a matrimony
between the citizen and the fatherland, who he considered fundamental, Sánchez writes:
“Jaime Balmes, just as he provided many ideas to the Irish, provided Albizu with several ideas
from Spanish thinkers that Balmes often quoted. From the international law expert, Francisco
Suárez, Albizu Campos used the idea of nationality as a marriage between citizen and homeland.
This gave a sacred character to the relationship. According to this idea, individual liberty is
limited by social obligations to the homeland analogous to a marriage relationship into which
one freely enters. Of course, this was not the kind of contract of the English philosophers of the
Enlightenment, such as John Locke, for whom this contract was more akin to a commercial
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contract. Albizu Campos, following Father Suárez, saw this social contract between the
individual and his homeland as a sacred bond:
“One loves the homeland as one loves a woman physically and spiritually. He who is not
ashamed to see the homeland scorned, is not a patriot and is not even a man.”
The right to independence, again following Father Suarez, was a natural right given by God and,
therefore, sacred. This brings us to one of the most extraordinary aspects of the idea that Albizu
Campos adapted about Puerto Rican sovereignty. Although, a nation may be without a
government of its own, it always has the right to act as sovereign. The vote of a majority against
the natural right to sovereignty, Democracy and freedom are given to us by God. Therefore, a
majority vote against the natural right to liberty cannot make good what is objectively evil.”
(Sánchez Huertas 154 emphasis added)
Details into the implications of this thinking and how it ties into his conception of race will be
touched regarding his October 12th speech and through a Magisterial analysis of his nationalism.
The Catholic appeal to Civilizational Grandeur and the death of insularity
With the above citation by Sánchez Huertas, as well as the goals of the Puerto Rican Nationalist
Party having ends that transcend geography, one could also see why Balmes’ Theology of
Civilization also justified Albizu Campos’ opposition to Insularism and what Anthony Stevens
Arroyo calls The Argument of Grandeur:
“Balmes emphasized that Catholic civilization respected local cultures. Protestantism, he said,
sought to level national differences and abolish local traditions in favor of a unified, centralized
nation-state. The beauty of Catholicism was found in the flowering of local customs, cultures,
and languages without weakening universal beliefs. As a Catalan native son, Balmes had
opposed the centralization policies of the liberal Espartero regime. He also wrote that not even
the Supreme Pontiff could use the claim of infallibility to alter the Catholic traditions unique to
Catalunya.
Balmes identified culture with a nation-its laws, language, customs, and artistic expression.
Civilization is the universal system of values that extends across the ages and connects national
cultures with world history. He viewed Catholicism as the guarantor of local culture as opposed
to Protestantism, which destroyed local cultures through the centralization brought by capitalism.
Thus, Catholic civilization preserved the diversity of even small nations by joining them into a
global religion, much as the Greco-Roman empire had been transformed by Christianity. I call
this “the Argument of Grandeur.” It gave to Ireland-and Puerto Rico-a defense against the
argument that these were island societies too small and insignificant to be independent. For
Balmes, no culture was mere folklore. Once local traditions were filtered through Catholicism,
they became a permanent part of human history and shared in the grandeur of the purest
expression of world civilization.” (Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic Worldview in the Political
Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll of Puerto Rican Insularity” 63 emphasis
added)
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It is no wonder how instrumental this argument was for Albizu’s involvement in his support for
the Irish Rebellion that took place in Easter Monday of 1916 and proclaimed Balmesian
arguments for Irish sovereignty irrespective of possessing a nation-state. (Stevens-Arroyo, “The
Catholic Worldview in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll of
Puerto Rican Insularity” 66) Albizu’s involvement with supporting Irish independence and his
inspiration by James Conolly on the matter were undoubtedly was incorporated into the
paramilitary structure of the Puerto Rican Nationalist body as well as the value of martyrdom to
witness the truth of their claims of sovereignty. (Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic Worldview in
the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll of Puerto Rican Insularity”
67) A stark contrast to Antonio S. Pedreira’s Insularism, which prevails unfortunately among
many Puerto Ricans even in the island, the idea that modernization has stripped Puerto Rico of
any significant spotlight into world civilization and that its folklore was inferior because of its
geographical limitations. (Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic Worldview in the Political Philosophy
of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll of Puerto Rican Insularity” 72–73) Albizu Campos’
Catholic Nationalism, with its Balmesian arguments propelling and molding his political
philosophy, rejected Insularist and Neo-Malthusian arguments and defended an etiological
belonging to Catholic civilization, as is inherent in this proclamation he made in a speech at
Lares, Puerto Rico:
“Because there is a Puerto Rican spiritual archetype... There is a Puerto Rican yearning for self-
improvement...! There is a Puerto Rican greatness! There is a Puerto Rican vision of beauty!
There is a Puerto Rican FAITH! There is a FAITH that extends into eternity, of generations to be
born of great and noble and holy Puerto Ricans!”
-Pedro Albizu Campos, speech at Lares, 1950
The Puerto Rican Faith in question is undoubtedly the Catholic faith that he references numerous
times, which he believes defines and strengthens Puerto Rico’s spotlight in world civilization.
October 12th Speech: The philosophy of civilizational identity over phenotype (psychotype)
“The other event that defines our personality is October 12, the Discovery of the New World. On
this date, gentlemen, so that you may understand something of history, so that you may know
what the celebration of this date has done for all the nations of the New World, I will only point
out several facts.
President Irigoyen governed the great nation of Argentina, and he conceived that all Latin
America should celebrate October 12th as Day of the Race. Many laughed and said: “Day of the
Race? Of the blacks? Of the Indians? Of the Italians in America? Of the Portuguese in America?
Of the French in America? Of the Spanish in America? Or of the Yankees in America? Or of the
Germans in America? Or of the English in America? Or of the Chinese in America? Or of the
Japanese in America? What race is he referring to?”“ (Albizu Campos, “Discurso Por El Dr.
Pedro Albizu Campos: Pronunciando Con Motivo de La Celebración Del ‘Día de La Raza’ En La
Noche Del 12 de Octubre Del 1933” 30)
Of course, Albizu Campos answered this question in his speech Concepción de la Raza, which is
a perpetuity of virtues, of civilizational values grounded in the Catholic religion, and said values
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are defined of the Iberoamerican character. However, there is more to that and his speech on
October 12th in Ponce will unpack for us further how he exemplifies race in Hispanoamerica
versus race in the Yankee nation, and the National Socialist in Germany.
He begins by comparing how even the negroes in the French Parliament, whose origins are in
French colonies, are not obliged to participate in the war France was dealing at the time, which is
WWII, he says this is a stark contrast to how the Yankee treats the Puerto Ricans (Albizu
Campos, “Discurso Por El Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos: Pronunciando Con Motivo de La
Celebración Del ‘Día de La Raza’ En La Noche Del 12 de Octubre Del 1933” 30), who were
force drafted to the war, including the First Great War which Albizu himself participated in in his
time at Boston. He further elucidates that despite France not wishing to extend obligatory draft to
the colonies, because they believed it would harm even the liberties protected by the French
Constitution, the negroes replied that they only wished to “share in the pains and sacrifices of
France.” (Albizu Campos, “Discurso Por El Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos: Pronunciando Con
Motivo de La Celebración Del ‘Día de La Raza’ En La Noche Del 12 de Octubre Del 1933” 30–
31) Thus, Albizu Campos explains that the purpose of this data, is to illustrate that race is
something that inherently transcends biological barriers, because it implies something that
surpasses biology:
“Indeed, gentlemen, the national structure is not the structure of the epidermis; it is not the
structure of the skin, because by the skin we judge the cat, we judge the goat, we judge even the
wild beasts to see from which of them we get the best quality of skin needed for the shoe, for the
coat or for the hat. And, gentlemen, it is of brutes to raise the division between men by the
epidermis. That can only occur to Northamerican brutes; to a savage people, yes, it can occur to
them! But the peoples of civilization, the mother peoples, those are always living from the
emanating unity of men, from the indestructible unity of men. They are seeing that the skin is
an accident and that the blondest man, with the bluest eyes, the most beautiful face, and the
most attractive black man, with the most vibrant eyes and the most powerful musculature, can
be the most powerful of men. Most powerful musculature, can be either a bloodthirsty or a
saint, but it depends on what they carry in their spirit, what they carry in their soul, which is
what distinguishes man from beast. The race, gentlemen, follows the transformation of a people
under an ideology of the spirit – the transmutation of the skin, of the feeling, of the thought,
through a fundamental ideology that informs life in every detail and in every transcendental act.
That is why the Iberoamerican race exists.” (Albizu Campos, “Discurso Por El Dr. Pedro Albizu
Campos: Pronunciando Con Motivo de La Celebración Del ‘Día de La Raza’ En La Noche Del
12 de Octubre Del 1933” 31 emphasis added)
And herein lies the kernel of Albizuist, and by extension, Hispanoamericanist Race: A race, is
one that uplifts a man, any man, to a higher plane greater than geographical and biological
circumstances, a man that is uplifted beyond the confines of his flag and locality, in other words,
Albizu Campos has understood something that was staring at Maeztu’s face all along in his own
work: that Indohispanidad transcends race to a plane superior to its material confines, a racial
identity that does not obey physical barriers, but crosses them because a true race is a
civilizational race, and in this is the greatest contrast in National Socialist understanding: The
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National Socialist German, in spite of his concessions that a race has a spiritual component, he
denied it transcendence, and imprisoned it to the material immanence of race, and sacralised that
permanence, whereas Albizu, with his clear Catholic philosophical, intellectual library,
understood the implications of the Iberoamerican imperial mission quite clearly and took its
Catholic core to its logical conclusion: if a Catholic civilization is to flourish in Catholicity, it
must extend the nature of Catholicity to all corners of human identity, including race.
Albizu Campos’ psychotypical analysis of Hispanoamerican civilization
With this clarity of Iberoamerican conception of race we can appreciate why Albizu Campos’
Nationalism is very different from the Nationalism of Northamericans and even Germans, the
best illustration of this in the same speech:
“That is why, gentlemen, we celebrate the Day of the Race. By race we mean what we have just
defined. And what are the Iberoamerican peoples, the Iberian peoples? Here are their flags. Here
you have the symbol of the Mother Nation of Spain. In the only act, gentlemen, that we put this
flag, a flag that is not exclusively the flag of our homeland, is on the Day of the Race. But those
flags are ours. The Spanish flag is ours. The Colombian flag is ours. The Haitian flag is ours.
The Dominican flag is ours. The Cuban flag is ours.” (Albizu Campos, “Discurso Por El Dr.
Pedro Albizu Campos: Pronunciando Con Motivo de La Celebración Del ‘Día de La Raza’ En La
Noche Del 12 de Octubre Del 1933” 32 emphasis added)
Before you think he only says this from a Confederal standpoint, he takes this line of thought one
step further, whose citation I will faithfully lay out explicitly to illustrate this:
“By law passed by the Congress of Mexico – listen well!, these are vital issues for us – a law
was passed in the Congress of Mexico, by virtue of which automatic Hispanoamerican
citizenship is established, which means that a Dominican arrives in Mexico and by stepping on
Mexican soil, he is a Mexican; and a Mexican arrives in Santo Domingo and by stepping on the
soil of that great heroic nation, he is a Dominican. And we must take this principle to all the
constitutions of America so that the unity of the spirit is transformed with the political unity of
Iberoamerica and is imposed on all peoples.
We, gentlemen, remember the man who was the instrument of this immense work, we remember
the mother country, Spain, and Spain, gentlemen, is one of the few nations that has always been
civilized. Listen well!: Barbarism never dominated Spain. Barbarism dominated Italy. Barbarism
never dominated Greece. Our Greco-Latin civilization comes from Greece, Italy and Spain, from
the three mother peninsulas that have the civilization of the West. Barbarism was never able to
establish itself in those peninsulas […] there was never barbarism in those three peninsulas.
There was, gentlemen, a transitory occupation of part of their territories by barbarian peoples.”
(Albizu Campos, “Discurso Por El Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos: Pronunciando Con Motivo de La
Celebración Del ‘Día de La Raza’ En La Noche Del 12 de Octubre Del 1933” 33 emphasis
added)
How can Albizu’s Nationalism, then, be a Nationalism, while advocating for a Continental-wise
citizenship as the ultimate goal of his Puerto Rican Nationalism? That is because as I have
demonstrated earlier, Albizu Campos never saw Nationalism the same way the European liberal
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Nationalists did, it was not a Nation-State Nationalism confined to strict borders, but a
Nationalism, functionally speaking, equivalent to the Roman Empire’s Imperial citizenship as he
alludes after the extensive citation I mentioned. (Albizu Campos, “Discurso Por El Dr. Pedro
Albizu Campos: Pronunciando Con Motivo de La Celebración Del ‘Día de La Raza’ En La
Noche Del 12 de Octubre Del 1933” 33–34) He explains that the imperial feats of Rome, being
as civilized as the Spaniards, are not comparable to the barbarism displayed by the Yankee
because unlike the barbarian regime, Rome granted citizenship and equal rights to citizens of
Rome to all the provinces under her yoke, and why all the illustrious Roman emperors were of
Hispanian heritage, and from this followed the imperial project of Indohispanidad after the
Reconquista period. (Albizu Campos, “Discurso Por El Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos: Pronunciando
Con Motivo de La Celebración Del ‘Día de La Raza’ En La Noche Del 12 de Octubre Del 1933”
34–35)
For Albizu Campos, this civilizational heritage is what allowed Puerto Rico and all the
Hispanoamerican nations not only transcend race, but unify the spirit with the body in this
process, and he eloquently proclaims this as such:
“That there is African blood? True. In Brazil there are eight million African descendants who are
senators, who are deputies, who are bankers, who are presidents of governments, who are the
great jurists of the contemporary age, as was Ruiz Barbosa.
That there is African blood? I also carry it in my veins and I carry it with the supreme pride of
human dignity.
Here we have Indian blood, here there are pure archetypes of Indian blood. I also have Indian
blood and that is why I feel perfectly American, native American, in the true meaning of the
word.
That there is white blood in us? I have it in my veins too. My father was from Biscay and comes
from the purest race in all of Europe.
And this type that is being formed, that is, from the unity of feeling, from the homogeneity of
daily action, is also forming racial unity in the biological sense and is restoring man to his
pristine origin because man did not start out yellow, white or black, but only man, like the Divine
Creator.
And here we come, in this sacred night, to live all that is in our veins, all that is in us, to live the
venerated ash of all our ancestors, to live all the millenary stone of the Iberian peoples and to live
the millenary stone of the African peoples. It is in the contemporary age that the greatness of the
Indian civilization is being unearthed from the Congo.
We are a predestined people in history, because Puerto Rico is the first nation in the world where
the unity of the spirit is formed with the biological unity of the body.” (Albizu Campos,
“Discurso Por El Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos: Pronunciando Con Motivo de La Celebración Del
‘Día de La Raza’ En La Noche Del 12 de Octubre Del 1933” 32 emphasis added)
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Undoubtedly not only is he acknowledging the material component of his race, but he implicitly
calls attention to the racial unity of each individual races that compose the Hispanoamerican
continent, demonstrating Albizu Campos is presenting the Cosmic Race thesis in his speech; this
unity therefore, is a testament that the groundworks of the Cosmic Race were a racial identity
grounded not in phenotypic primacy but psychotypic primacy, one grounded in a civilizational
sense of grandeur and unity explicitly Catholic, and that is why he is able to claim, unify and
synthesize all the races that compose his body without issues, demonstrating that Albizu Campos
and the entire Hispanoamerican ethos operates from an integrationist and synthetic principle of
race as opposed to a segregationist and subtracting view of race by the National Socialist. It
would be inconceivable for the National Socialist racialist to come up with a framework
elucidated by Pedro Albizu Campos unless the NS racialist adopts an explicit Catholic ethos,
which as I have demonstrated in the MBS analysis, they did not operate from said principle, and
why Pope Pius XI condemned National Socialism, while he showed no condemnation to Albizu
Campos’ Cosmic Race arguments, indicating that Pius XI and his successor saw an explicit
Catholic ethos operating in all the Hispanoamerican thinkers that defended the concept of an
Hispanoamerican race. This is further illustrated how he exemplifies why the basis of a
civilizational unity must be grounded in even the unity among the women, saying that a nation is
destined to crumble if the blonde woman finds no union with the negro woman, and that such
segregation will birth barbarism and no civilization, contrasting this with the unity that Isabel I of
Castilla sought with her subjects of various backgrounds. (Albizu Campos, “Discurso Por El Dr.
Pedro Albizu Campos: Pronunciando Con Motivo de La Celebración Del ‘Día de La Raza’ En La
Noche Del 12 de Octubre Del 1933” 35) Commenting further on why the role of women in
civilization is crucial, he expands further on Isabel of Castilla thusly:
“Isabel the Catholic brought the sense of unity to the New World. Spain brought to America, no
longer the ideology of the Romans of pagan times, but the Roman juridical sense, the Greek
philosophical sense, the mysticism of the East and brought to America the sublime spirit of
Christianity.
Wherever the Spaniard arrived, he formed a family. He found the Indian and made her his wife
and their children were Spanish.
By the laws of the Indies, the caciques rose to be princes of the Spanish Crown. Where are they
here or in that farándula that passes (referring to a demonstration) the princes of the Yankees?
Where is that nobility?
Spain did not deny its highest coats of arms to any man, nor to any woman, whether black,
Indian or white. There are still illustrious families here, of pure African blood, who are nobles of
the Spanish Crown, crusader knights of the Spanish Crown. Spain never denied them their
highest coats of arms.
When the quadricentennial of the discovery of Puerto Rico was celebrated in 1893, a Spanish
infantrywoman came here. At the entrance of the Palace of Santa Catalina she met a pure-
blooded black man, in a frock coat, hat and cover. There was a brute who asked him why he did
not uncover himself, He informed him, showing a beautiful decoration: “I am a covered knight
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of His Majesty, of the Spanish Crown and I have no reason to uncover myself.”“ (Albizu
Campos, “Discurso Por El Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos: Pronunciando Con Motivo de La
Celebración Del ‘Día de La Raza’ En La Noche Del 12 de Octubre Del 1933” 37)
With this, Albizu Campos shows that a dignified civilization is not someone that legislates
constitutions, nor statutes nor any legalities, based on phenotype or material accidents, but
through character disposition, class (in the economic and personality sense even) and valor. For
Albizu Campos, civilizational identity grounded in deep-rooted Catholicity is not only the truest
form of civilization, but the only successful form of civilization.
Albizu’s Nationalism versus The Enlightenment’s Nationalism: The Patria versus The State, a
contrastive analysis
I now turn to an important distinction that you may be wondering, it is rather perplexing, almost
confusing, to see that Albizu Campos, and any Hispanic Nationalist movement, has a nationalism
functionally indistinguishable from Patriotism. Are Hispanic Nationalists Patriotists re-defining
Nationalism? Or are there intricate nuances that need to be unpacked to understand how they can
call themselves Nationalists, and be immune to Pius IX’s Quanta Cura and its Syllabus of
Errors? After all, I have earlier exposited Albizu Campos understanding of the nation and
nationalism, and it is undoubtedly that for Albizu Campos, the nation-state is not a criteria, but
an afterthought of Hispanic Nationalism, this explains the functionality of Hispanic Nationalism
but does not elucidate a formal definition, but I believe the clues lie in the analogy Albizu
Campos conceived of the nation and his political philosophy, and how it played a role in the
future Hispanoamerican Union.
As I have demonstrated comprehensively, Albizu Campos’ Patria is the same conception Maeztu
elucidated (refer to On The Being of Hispanidad of this monograph) framed in the local political
status of Puerto Rico, which had a limited end goal in its immediate locality, that of definitive
sovereignty and freedom from Yankee regime, and this sovereignty would also serve a higher
purpose. To understand why Albizu Campos’ Nationalism and how it ties into the political
philosophy of many Catholic Nationalists of Hispanoamerica, I will recourse to two authors that
are also contemporary of Albizu Campos: Julio Meinvielle, whom I cited in the MBS section to
contextualize MBS; and Alberto Ezcurra Medrano’s work Catolicismo y Nacionalismo. Having
established Albizu Campos’ Balmesian origins of his political philosophy, the task is now to
elucidate what is the Hispanic Catholic Nationalist’s view of the State and its relation to the
Fatherland, which takes primacy in all Hispanic Nationalists politics. In here I will present how
Hispanic Nationalism circumvents the statolatry problem, as I have already presented
definitively how the Hispanic ethos surmounts the racialatry problem. Does Hispanic
Nationalism surmount statolatry and adheres to the encyclicals of Pius IX, X and XI? I will
answer these questions in the following sub-sections.
The Magisterium on The Enlightenment’s Nationalism and its derivatives
In the NoAB analysis, I have dedicated plenty of contextual analysis both in history and with
Magisterial teachings on the position of The Church on Fascism and have shown that the context
of the relationship between The Church and the Fascist State have not been very amicable and
Catholic thinkers at the time saw it as a manifestation of statolatry. In this section I will dedicate
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to exposit Julio Meinvielle’s and Alberto E. Medrano’s view on the proper position of a Catholic
in regards to political thinking, and Meinvielle believes this question can only be settled
depending how man sees the nature of society and politics of society: whether it is as natural as
the laws of physics, arbitrary as a work of art, or one bound by Aristotelian Natural Law and
some ethics that bind society and individuals. (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política
5–6) From the three categories, he points out two are erroneous, on the first one, he attributes
this error manifest in L’Action Française, that politics is as instinctual as the instincts of ants,
and of course the statolatry of Mussolini which affirms all I have exposited from Giovanni
Gentile’s Fascist Doctrines, and from this same category he also attributes it to Rousseau’s
individualism, in which society is ruled by the whims of the individual. (Meinvielle, Concepción
Católica de La Política 6–8) Meinvielle argues that despite being seemingly opposite ends, both
commit the same statolatry: with Machiavelli committing it by divinizing it through the
fatherland, and Rousseau by subordinating it to the whims of the individual, and Mussolini
through the collective of an enforcing State:
“But both coincide in exalting the notion of the State, reviving pagan Statism. Statism is the
name given to any political conception in which man is totally subordinated to the State as the
part to the whole. Just as the roots and the back parts of the tree have no reason to exist except as
part of the whole, so man, a member of political society. The State can sacrifice him
omnimodally as best suits its interests. And according to the historical particularities in which it
is verified, it bears the names of fascism, absolutism, Bolshevism, Platonic communism,
Caesarism, etc.” (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 7 emphasis added)
Thus, he concludes that God, being the author of man and society, his politics must be bound by
Natural Law in the Thomistic sense. (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 9–10)
Thus, citing Aquinas, Meinvielle argues that the most fundamental aspect of politics is one that
obeys Natural Law according to his nature inclined to virtue and thus it is a law that must be the
foundation of a moral society. (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 10–11)
Meinvielle argues that given the nature of the participation of Natural Law with Divine
Providence, he illustrates, extensively citing Aquinas; why society, being concerned as a moral
human category, must be governed according to Natural Law:
“We cannot enter into a direct consideration of politics without transcribing a very important
article, full of light, in which St. Thomas establishes that the natural law contains various
precepts that occupy different places in a hierarchy of values. This article is of capital importance
for our study, not only because it indicates the precise point of union between political society
and natural law, but also because it compares and relates this point to other natural rights of man.
It reads as follows:
“As being, in every order of things, is the first thing that falls under the perceptive action of
speculative reason, so good is the first thing apprehended by practical reason, ordered to action.
Since, then, every agent works for an end, and the end has the nature of good, the first principle
of the practical order must be that which is founded immediately on the branch of good: good is
that which every being desires. All the other precepts of the law of nature are based on this first
precept, so that everything else that is to be done or avoided will have the character and nature of
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a natural precept, insofar as practical reason naturally judges it to be a human good. But since, on
the other hand, good has reason of end, and evil reason of the contrary, the intelligence will
perceive as good, and therefore as necessarily practicable, everything toward which man feels a
natural inclination; and as an evil to be avoided at all costs, that which is contrary to and opposed
to that good. The order, therefore, of the precepts of the natural law will be in every way parallel
to the order of the natural law. The order, therefore, of the precepts of the natural law will be in
every respect parallel to the order of the natural inclinations. Let us consider this order.
There is, first of all, in man an inclination toward a good, which is that of his nature; an
inclination common to all beings, since all crave their own preservation, according to the
demands of their own nature. Corresponding to this inclination, it is necessary to integrate the
natural law with all those precepts that refer to the preservation of man’s life, or that come to
prevent evils contrary to that life. There is a second inclination – also a daughter of human
nature, but from the point of view in which it communicates with other animals – toward a more
particular, more concrete good. In conformity with this inclination, all those prescriptions will
belong to the natural law which deal with what nature teaches all animals: procreation, or the
perpetuation of the species; the formation and upbringing of children, and other of this nature.
Finally, we find in man a third one, proper to him, the fruit of his peculiar, rational, specific
nature, towards a more peculiar and concrete good: the knowledge of divine truths; social
coexistence. Equivalent to this order of natural inclinations, the precepts of the natural law are
those that proscribe ignorance and recriminate social injustices, which break the peace of society,
etc.” (I – II, q. 94, a. 2).” (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 12)
Citing Aquinas on the social needs of man required for a good society to flourish from the nature
of this Natural Law, Meinvielle thusly states from this:
“This observation indicates to us, from the outset, that political reality is essentially ethical in its
very constitution, since the movement that founds it is not free will. In its very internal
constitution, since the movement that founds it is neither pure free will nor a forced instinct, but
an intrinsically moral and morally obligatory movement. Just as it is obligatory to strive for one’s
own perfection, so is life in society obligatory. Therefore, it is the moral order that gives
existence and governs political life.
Let us delve deeper into the structure of political reality to see how in its very core it is a moral
reality, the very marrow of it is a moral reality. At the same time we will discover the unique
fundamental law of every political society: the temporal common good.
By analyzing the deep tendencies of man and the potential indigence with which he comes into
the world, we said that it is necessary for him to be incorporated into a society that will assure
him what is indispensable for life, ea quae sunt vitae necessaria; this society, whose constitution
does not concern us here, is the family, with its triple conjugal, parental and herile ordination.
But since it alone can assure you no more than what is strictly necessary, we said that a wider
society is necessary where families congregate in order to achieve a perfect sufficiency of life,
vitae suficientiam perfectam.
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Now, of what nature is this good that man seeks in the social community? It is, first of all, a good
that neither the family nor particular societies alone can procure for him; therefore, it is a
supraindividual and suprafamilial good, that is, a common good. Moreover, it is a good
demanded at present by man’s destitution in his earthly condition; therefore, it is a temporal
common good.” (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 14)
Meinvielle argues that the nature of this common temporal good is such that one achieved
through fullness of the naturalness of man’s inclination to virtue, that is, only by man inclining
and directing towards the virtuousness inherent in Natural Law, as a society, can said society
flourish and cites Pope Leo XIII indicating that if said duty is neglected, you not only sin against
religion, but against the structure of society as a whole since the nature of society is to serve
man’s needs in accordance to Natural Law. (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 14–
15) Furthermore, Meinvielle cites Aquinas on the three criteria needed for a society to truly
flourish and be able to provide man this common temporal good: assurance of societal peace
among men, which requires that their rights are protected and ascertain a regime that is just and
harmonious; seeking a virtuous cohabitation and third that by achieving such highest good
society is providing all the individuals the materials and spiritual necessities to ensure societal
harmony. (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 15) Thus, Meinvielle states that
because of this that society is, though natural to man, it ultimately comes from Divine duties, and
that likewise social common goods is something to be aspired for must be grounded, and unified
to transcendental common goods. (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 15–16) Far
from being some externality forced upon man, it is emergent from man’s rational demands from
his internal structure, and Meinvielle points out that the nature of this morality of politics must
not constitute aprioristically, but observationally dependent on not just the authentic natural
inclinations of man, but the circumstances that allow us to glean what sort of technical politics
we must apply that cohere with the authentic inclinations of man in accordance to Natural Law:
“If observation is necessary to establish the most universal moral precepts, it becomes greater as
we descend to the particular. Hence, no one should imagine that science and political prudence
must be drawn from pure principles, fixed and invariable, which render useless the immense and
inexhaustible arsenal of experiences accumulated by human history.
On the contrary, just as politics is a part of morality, and morality is not forged aprioristically, but
must respond to the postulates of the concrete nature of man, so it is observation, experience,
geography and history, which deal with living man, which, correctly applied, without forgetting
their subordination to the guiding principles, must dictate what is most convenient for the
government of peoples.” (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 16 emphasis added)
Thus, how one governs particular places in a given society, the types of people involved, their
cultural mindsets, etc, must be taken into consideration and not impose political systems ad hoc
as if they were universals. (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 17) Meinvielle terms
this political prudence and he points out this is instrumental as it too, takes into consideration
Natural Law because “it will be necessary to take into account what is most convenient for the
true good of man, in these determined and concrete conditions, for man with his complex,
hierarchical elements and his essential destiny as a creature made for the supreme Good, one will
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proceed within the moral order, which is nothing other than to truly serve man by procuring his
good.” (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 17) Thus from this, Meinvielle argues
that politics is dependent on theology, because from theology we find that the true purpose of
society is to ordain man morally to a good dictated by divine principles, and this is of course,
provided by the only institution credited enough to supplement this: The Church (Meinvielle,
Concepción Católica de La Política 17–18), Meinvielle writes after citing Aquinas:
“Hence, for the good government of a political society, it is necessary to learn from the
magisterium of the Church, which, possessing all human and divine knowledge, knows “the true
purpose of political society”. If secularism is a bloody absurdity in the purely natural order, in
the supernatural order to which man is elevated, there is no adequate word to define it. Only the
devil has been able to hallucinate the Christian nations with this imbecility, convincing them that
there are sectors of human activity that are self-sufficient, that they are endowed with the
privilege of the Aseity, that they do not need to bow down either before the Church or before
God. He has even been able to convince a good number of Catholics, who only know from
Scripture – having read it in liberal and socialist authors – that “render to Caesar what is
Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”, he has been able to convince them – I say – that Caesar
(politics) forms a world apart, omnisufficient. As if Caesar, with all that belongs to Caesar, were
not subordinate, like all that is contingent. As everything contingent, subordinate to him from
whom all good descends.
In short, political society is essentially moral, because moral is the movement that originates it
and because of the moral order is the fundamental law that governs it. Hence it must remain
intrinsically dependent on the theological order.” (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La
Política 18 emphasis added)
Thus, “Caesar” is not independent but subordinate to theology even if he has functions different
from The Church, but morally, he would be bound by The Church’s precepts that she finds
relevant to conduct society to the good that is proper to man’s nature, and from this Meinvielle
states that neither the rampant individualism of Rousseau nor the statolatry of Mussolini is
acceptable with this treatment of society because the nature of this society is a hylomorphic unity
between “terrestrial city subordinated by a supernatural city” in which their distinctions do not
imply their separation, nor do their duties imply confusion even when the supernatural takes
primacy in matters of morality concerning the nature of man. (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica
de La Política 19–20) Meinvielle explains:
“Neither individualism nor statism. Not the former, because incorporation into the State is
necessary for the individual to achieve his full human formation. Nor the second, because
incorporation into the State is one and not the only stage in the series of goods that perfect man.
Catholic doctrine is the summit of a mountain that saves, transcending, all that individualism and
statism truly contain. St. Thomas, as always, gives us provides us with the purest Catholic
doctrine in a transparent formula.
[…] we note that the anathematization of statism or absolutism of the State is as old as the
Church, which, already in the time of the apostle St. Peter, not many days after the Ascension of
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Jesus Christ, taught: It is necessary to obey God rather than men (Acts 2:29), without it having
occurred to them, either then or later, to invoke this or a similar distinction.
Statism is a monstrous absurdity, because it makes all rights derive from the State, when sound
reason teaches that if it is true that the State has certain and determined rights, man-individual,
man-family and man-society also have theirs, which are as inalienable as those of the State. And
precisely the divine ordination, manifested by the natural law, says that if the State must order to
the common good all these rights of the man-individual, of the man-family and of the man-
society, it must order them, not by devouring them, but by defending and protecting them. For
this is what men live for in society: to protect their legitimate and inalienable rights, to defend
and protect them. Their legitimate and inalienable rights, which they could not assert in the
jungle, where the law of the strongest would reign. So the reason that justifies the existence and
necessity of the State condemns statism. State condemns statism, because the State is not to
suppress, but to secure the rights of the units subordinate to it. The rights of the units that are
subordinate to it.” (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 19–20 emphasis added)
Thus, Meinvielle argues that the nature of society from Thomistic thinking, no terrestrial
institution cannot absorb man’s individual rights given by God in a manner that erases its proper
limitations like howe Fascism and even National-Socialism does (Meinvielle, Concepción
Católica de La Política 20–21), as Meinvielle points out succinctly:
“Outside of politics there are other activities and other powers that can in no way be merged into
the political one. These are: the religious power, the economic powers, the individual powers.
Thus, the activity of man cannot be governed totally by a single power. To pretend to do so
would be to incur in totalitarianism, which is a brutal and anti-human conception of man.
This is the error of communism, it is also the error of national-socialism, and no less the error of
demoliberalism, since, by suppressing the Spiritual Power and the economic powers, it leaves
individuals and society to a devouring materialistic bourgeoisie and everything is totalitarianized
in a secular, bourgeois and democratist regime.” (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La
Política 21)
Ezcurra Medrano reaches the same conclusions regarding Fascism and National Socialism
regarding its totalitarian character (Ezcurra Medrano, “El Estado Nacionalista y El Catolicismo”
36–41) and the secular nature of a liberal State which will inevitably neutralize the duties The
Church has towards society defended by Meinvielle. (Ezcurra Medrano, “El Estado Nacionalista
y El Catolicismo” 26–29) Thus the nature of a Nationalist State must therefore be congruent with
Catholic social doctrine given what Meinvielle has elucidated in determining the nature of
human society and the politics that must be applied:
“One consequence we would like to deduce from all this: The nationalist State must be Catholic.
Catholicism and Nationalism must march together, because this union can avoid terrible evils,
and on the other hand, if it is not achieved, the world has no humanly possible salvation. The
disunion of both forces would be a source of incalculable evils. It would mean world chaos and
the failure of Nationalism.
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Catholicism would not fail because it is divine, but it could only triumph when terrible
catastrophes had purified the world of its pride.” (Ezcurra Medrano, “El Estado Nacionalista y El
Catolicismo” 49)
A Catholic State would mean that the State constitutionally respects the Catholic religion and its
moral teachings. (Ezcurra Medrano, “El Estado Nacionalista Argentino y El Catolicismo” 59–61)
Ezcurra Medrano elucidates the history of the Argentinian State from the birth of Medieval Spain
to the establishment of the city of Buenos Aires, all following a Catholic Tradition that forged the
community of Argentina even up to the early 19th century. (Ezcurra Medrano, “El Estado
Nacionalista Argentino y El Catolicismo” 51–58) The implications of course are that the State is
to protect the rights of individuals and enforce order without prohibiting Catholics, both laity and
of the religious orders, in undertaking public and civic duties (Ezcurra Medrano, “Iglesia y
Estado” 70–74, 76–77) Among those civil duties, implies that Catholics, even among the
religious orders, should not be prohibited from exercising government duties as well as
undertaking political action and of course, education of the youth. (Ezcurra Medrano, “Iglesia y
Estado” 80–81) It also means a Catholic State must legislates catholic morality (Ezcurra
Medrano, “Iglesia y Estado” 83), an aspect which the National Socialist state of Germany
violated tremendously even before the Reichskonkordat with the sterilization and eugenics laws
that went against Casti Connubii.
What about the issue of violence? How would this work in a properly Catholic Nationalist State?
Ezcurra Medrano writes:
“[…] It is a defensive violence, more or less exacerbated according to the greater or lesser
dangers threatening the homeland.
[,,,] Violence is not a means of government. Nationalist violence ceases when the violence of the
enemies of order ceases. The more it will be translated into a greater severity of the penal laws,
as opposed to the suicidal liberal softness.
[…] It is up to the nationalists to know how to keep within the limits of what is due, not to spend
themselves in useless violence and to prepare themselves effectively for the day when violence
will be licit.” (Ezcurra Medrano, “El Estado Nacionalista y El Catolicismo” 47–48)
Which is consistent with how The Cristeros dealt with violence when the government threatened
their religious liberties and would have been licit in NatSoc Germany if the NSDAP threatened
the religious liberties of Catholic dissenters.
Thus, we see that from The Magisterium’s point of view, the Catholic Nationalism argued by
Ezcurra Medrano and Meinvielle are consistent with the Nationalism of Albizu Campos,
unsurprising given his Catholic philosophical basis in Balmes and de Vitoria. In conclusion, the
Nationalism of Albizu Campos and even the Cristeros, is more in line with the Magisterium than
the Nationalism expressed by the Fascists and National Socialism as I have exposited.
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The Magisterium on Albizu’s Nationalism and The Hispanoamerican’s Primacy for The
Fatherland
So, what does this all mean for Hispanic Nationalism? What then, is the nature of Hispanic
Nationalism? In reality, Nationalism for the Hispanic Nationalists is a political action to protect
the Fatherland’s sovereignty first and foremost, (Campos Bascarán) that is, an organized action
of the fatherland to protect its sovereignty when under attack. In his practice, this has been his
political action to refuse legitimacy from the US government because he argues that the Treaty of
Paris was null due to the legitimately established rights and duties of the Autonomy Letter of
1897 which he argued elsewhere was still in effect, thus, US power over Puerto Rico is “mere
fact” and Balmes would argue is a power that should be given no obedience. (Campos Bascarán)
As I have elucidated in Albizu Campos’ political philosophy in his involvement with the Irish
Rising in the early 20th century, even if a nation is denied a nation-state, sovereignty for the
Fatherland means sovereignty in other powers that Meinvielle believes the State has no
monopoly over but should at least protect it as it is conducive for the flourishing of society, as he
writes in solving the problem of sovereignty in regards to positions to be taken in front of an
illegitimate power after citing Jaime Balmes:
“What is the ultimate and definitive criterion for legitimacy? We have pointed it out above. The
community, with its usual adherence, is what gives legal efficacy to the regime of government
and realizes the constitutional law of a country. This usual adherence is like the testimony that
the common good has been achieved in that society.
Writing to the French Cardinals, Leo XIII says:
“Adopted political forms are replaced by others. These changes are far from being always
legitimate in their origin; it is very difficult for them to be so. Nevertheless, the supreme criterion
of the common good and of public tranquility imposes the acceptance of these new governments
established de facto in place of the former governments, which, in fact, no longer exist”.
What position should be adopted in the face of these de facto powers, as long as they do not
succeed in legitimizing themselves by the usual adherence accorded to them by the community?
The answer is clear and categorical: obedience is not due to them, because not being legitimate,
they have no right to command. But since, on the other hand, citizens have duties to the society
in which they live, they must comply with the things in which they live, they must comply with
the just things that this illegitimate power commands when the common good of society
demands it. “It happens – writes Suarez, the very erudite Jesuit theologian (DE LEGIBUS, C. X.)
– that when the republic is unable to resist the tyrant, it tolerates him and allows itself to be
governed by him, because to be governed by him is a lesser evil than to lack all coercion and
direction. Coercion and direction”“ (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 43
emphasis added)
This has not only been the position of Albizu Campos throughout his campaign, but it has also
been the position of the Cristeros since 1926, furthermore, because the nature and duties of
society are grounded in Natural Law and in God, so too is the nature of sovereignty and all its
limitations (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 27–28) Relevant to Albizu Campos
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preferred governmental structure, a Catholic Republic, Meinvielle has this to say, which it too is
derived from Jaime Balmes and what has informed Albizu’s politics:
“If, bearing this observation in mind, they want to act in politics and want to favor, in preference
to others, the democratic form of government, they can do so provided they take into account the
following points:
1. Sovereignty comes from God and not from the people.
2. Moral order is not a human creation.
3. Nor is the juridical order a product of human caprice. It derives from the moral order – like the
conclusions of principles or like certain determinations of more common laws (as St. Thomas
expresses it, S.T. I – II, q. 95, a. 2) – and can never contradict the eternal law inscribed by God in
human reason.
4. Nor can the city be organized at the whim of the multitude. Only the organization that respects
the fundamental law of politics, which is the effective procuring of the common good, is
permitted. A Catholic, therefore, who wishes to make a democratic profession in politics, will
have to limit himself to favoring in preference to others the form of government called
democracy, in which a greater or lesser participation is accorded to the multitude in public
affairs.” (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 31)
Some sympathizers to Fascist and National Socialist regimes quip that The Church does not
dogmatize any particular form of regime, and while this is true, an openness to forms of
government is not a license to all forms of government, only those that forms not only cohere
with proper Catholic social doctrine, but cohere with the proper nature elucidated by human
society towards the protection of the common good and all its implications previously exposited.
(Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 31–32) Meinvielle details by citing Aquinas
and Suárez:
“On the other hand, if these social virtualities can be realized equally in this or that other political
regime, with this or that other person who holds sovereignty, it follows that the natural law (or
God, its author), leaves it to the will and discretion of men to give themselves the political form
that pleases them best, and to designate the persons who are to govern them.
This is and has been the constant doctrine of the Church, so that the famous Suarez, the author of
the Treatise on Law, could write against James of England, who claimed to be sovereign by
divine right: “There is no king or monarch who has or has had immediately from God, or by
divine institution, the political principality. This is an egregious axiom of theology, not
ridiculously, as King James said, but truly, because, properly understood, it is full of truth and is
very necessary to understand the ends and limits of civil power”.
[…] But who will enact this law? It cannot be a simple individual or a simple father of a family,
because the law looks “first and foremost to the common good; now ordering something for the
common good belongs to the whole community or to the one who governs the community” (I-II,
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q. 90, a. 3). But since, by hypothesis, in this case there is no one who governs it, it must belong to
the whole community.
[…] Since every law must be an ordering of reason directed to the common good, it must be
honest, just, possible, in accord with nature, the customs of the nation, and the conveniences of
time and place. Conveniences of time and place (I – II, q. 95, a. 3). If the social body dictates the
law in virtue of the law of nature, it must respect its prescriptions. Justice demands it, and its
convenience depends on it; for he who violates the law that justifies and protects him cannot be
obeyed.” (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 32–33 emphasis added)
This has consistently been the principle that Albizu Campos has operated on since his campaign:
the constituent assemblies and the government must respect the customs and traditions inherited
by a greater ideal of the homeland, it follows that Natural Law dictates that governments,
whatever they may be, must exercise sovereignty in a manner that protects the common good and
provides material needs for it, while guarding their individual liberties in accordance with proper
reason. (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 33) Of course, it is not that the social
body is the one that governs, careful note must be made here, as Meinvielle points out the
contrary, but that the sovereign still derives legitimacy from God and not from the populace in
the Rousseauian sense, but that legitimacy takes the same form of relationship The Church
derives her power. (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de La Política 34–37) A constituent
assembly then, must use its organization as a means to honor the duties of a hierarch that is able
to enact proper function conducive to a hierarch, whatever is its form. Contrary to what some
may think, Albizu Campos has always believed that the highest moral authority on Earth,
institutionally, is The Roman See, so all his political philosophy has always been done in a
manner which any form of government is such that it coheres with the moral demands
expounded earlier by Meinvielle and Ezcurra Medrano. Simply put, Albizu Campos used the
constituent assembly not to transfer power to a hierarch but to manifest in it a power that a
worthy hierarch that knows to protect the fatherland can govern said people. Recall how Albizu
Campos did not believe even the vote of the majority to be decisive destiny of a country if it
meant the suicide of the nation, so clearly, Albizu Campos never derived legitimacy from the
populace if its majority vote signified the suicide of the country, a higher power, for him, ensured
that such a majority vote must be rejected by a greater authority that protects said fatherland.
These duties and nature of society elucidated from Meinvielle and Medrano are clearly not
something that can be achieved in National Socialism and Fascism unless these two ideologies
are modified in such manner, they eliminate all the core essentials that had made The Church
condemn its racialatrous and statolatrous precepts, but then it would not be NatSoc nor Fascism,
but a significant downgrade.
Albizu Campos, The Cristeros and many Hispanic Nationalists with a proper Catholic
conception of society has always operated with these intricacies, and why The Church has not
condemned their precepts, but guided them, in fact. Albizu Campos’ Catholic philosophy has
guided his political philosophy and why The Church found no objections to his campaign, nor
has she found objections to any Nationalist movement grounded properly in Catholic ethos and
in the proper cultural context appropriate for Hispanic society as I have uncovered from Julio
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Meinvielle’s writings. With all said so far, it is clear that from Maeztu to Albizu Campos there is
a coherent line that allows us to define what the Nationalism of Hispanic Nationalism is, it is a
Nationalism modified by Catholic doctrine in respect to the homeland, as Maeztu explained,
proper society is grounded in an ontology of the homeland being a civilizational and spiritual
undertaking, and the political actions used to protect the fatherland and its community is how
Hispanic Nationalists have conceived Nationalism, and this means that strict concepts of nation-
states with strict borders are but afterthoughts, as I have shown in Albizu’s Nationalism, it is not
the securing of a strict nation-state for the island, but a continental confederation with all the
Hispanic communities, the Patria is fundamental, but not an idol, because only God defines this
Fatherland and the society within it, and The Church takes a central role, who Albizu Campos
considered the highest authority. (Stevens-Arroyo, “The Catholic Worldview in the Political
Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos: The Death Knoll of Puerto Rican Insularity” 64)
The question arises from all this: what precisely is this Hispanic core that propelled Albizu
Campos and Julio Meinvielle construct these conceptions in politics and other aspects of society?
What defines this ethos to such an extent that can cohesively tie all that has been said so far?
Here is where Alberto Buela enters to identify the fundamental structure of Hispanic identity not
just individually, but continentally. In the next section, I will elucidate the nature of Hispanic
identity structurally.

Alberto Buela and the hospitality substrate of Hispanoamerica

What is the essence that makes Colombians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and all those that inhabit
the Iberoamerican continent; feel like they are one country but distinct? What makes this unity
possible? What is it about this identity that is fundamental that can allow it to transcend
phenotypic barriers, while recognizing it? What is the nature of this identity that can distinguish
us from others, while able to incorporate others and avoid annihilation? What is it of this identity
that has allowed a seamless Catholic ethos while being distinguishable from other Catholic ethos,
and what are the duties of this totality that has made this people act the way they did in their
ethnogenesis? All these questions are answered with the help of Alberto Buela’s Hispanoamérica
contra Occidente, a collection of essays that answer questions of identity of the people of
Hispanoamerica.
First off, what should even be the name of Hispanics? Latinamericans? Latinos? Iberians?
Indians? Alberto Buela deals with them on each, and concludes that it should be
Hispanoamericans, he explains why:
“[…] Finally, we believe that the most appropriate term to indicate this search for our
denomination is simply “Americans,” despite the misnamed “North Americans” who are the
ones who have appropriated the term. And we say that we must self-determine ourselves and be
called “Americans” not only because that is what our founding fathers did: San Martin, Bolivar
and our men of independence who knew what they were and preferred themselves, but because
we alone have fertilized America, since we come from the fusion of two worldviews: “The telluric
or Indian” and “The Catholic or low medieval”, which was nothing but what Europe and the
Mediterranean had the best.
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The character of “Americans” does not make any distinction of origins but of belonging; the
origins can be and are in fact different, German, Italian, Arab, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, etc.,
but belonging to America is what determines us. Now, of course, belonging means taking root,
putting down roots, founding a progeny, establishing and sharing values. All this supposes the
cultivation of America for the creation of a culture that, being our own, is different and
alternative to the universal and homogeneous culture that they want to impose on us.
If there is something to be said about the Anglo-Saxon conquest, it is that it was a bloody
transplant by elimination of the autochthonous, Quaker and Protestant culture of 17th century
England. Conversely, if the Spanish colonization and the different waves of immigration
deserves anything, it has been and is the fusion with the autochthonous, beyond the cases of
elimination and exploitation, which certainly occurred. But this did not occur as “a manifest
destiny”, as a specific purpose of the Spanish colonization of America, but as collateral and
accidental phenomena of the colonization of our continent.
This interpretation of the American consciousness as a product, by fusion and not by mixture, of
two elements complete in themselves: the “low medieval” and “autochthonous” worldviews,
resulted in a natural whole in itself the American consciousness, analogously different from the
elements of which it is composed, that is to say, it produced an autonomous and different whole
both with respect to the immigrant consciousness, whatever the latitude from which it came, and
with respect to the Indian or telluric consciousness.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra
Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 33–34 emphasis added)
It is obvious to see how the Hispano part is tied to the American part described by Alberto Buela,
but what about the Ibero? Alberto Buela cites Portuguese authors and explains that they are
simply a matter of semantics and do not imply any meaningful distinction:
“At first glance, the term Hispano-America may seem to exclude Brazil; however, nothing could
be more erroneous. The Portuguese themselves have recognized this: “Una gente fortissima
d’Espanha” for Camoens, the author of OS LUCIADAS.
Almeida Garret tells us for his part: “somos hispanos e devemos chamar hispanos a cuantos
habitamos a peninsula hispana”.
That is to say, the term Hispanic America does not exclude the Portuguese tradition, the main
source of Brazil and its language. What is certain is that the notion of Hispanoamerica tries to
rescue the bond of union and belonging between Spain and America, and vice versa.
[…] The term is proposed with the sole purpose of “unequivocally including” Brazil and its
Portuguese tradition as a substantive element of our America. But as we have just seen, the word
Iberian is convertible with Hispanic. Although it must be recognized that the term Iberian has a
geographical connotation rather than a philosophical or cultural one, as does Hispanic.” (Buela
Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 32)
Another detail in his elucidation may catch the attention of some readers: Why is Alberto Buela
making a hard distinction between fusion and mixture? Are they not synonymous? Is fusion not
implying a mixture? He also points this out when analyzing the notion of “Mestizo America” in
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which he rejects this notion due to the racial connotations which he deems inappropriate at the
moment of identifying ourselves as a people and prefers that the proper term is symbiosis at its
purest etymology. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos
30–31) I will detail his justifications for why this term is used, but to clue you in: it is not the fact
that Hispanoamerica that is mixed race what should define us, but that which has allowed freely
this to take place that should, and this will be key to understand why he justifies the use of
symbiosis and not mixture. First thing to unpack from this identity of Hispanoamerica, with what
Alberto Buela explicated is one key concept that all previous authors have pointed out, that of
hospitality. Hospitality from what? Why is hospitality, something so simple, the most defining
aspect of our continental identity? I unpack this further down and what this implicates on the
concept of symbiosis in two fundamental paradigms: the Low Medieval Catholic, and the
Telluric.
Hispanoamerica and “lo hóspito”: A philosophical analysis
Alberto Buela first wanted to present a panorama of different names for what is known
colloquially as “the Latin American continent” and decided that we should be known as
Hispanoamericans, with the provision that American here is understood as the autochthonous
sense of the word of American, to mean the telluric that was incorporated by the Hispanic, thus,
Hispanoamerican. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos
33–34) He then engages in a philosophically rigorous exercise to determine “the sense” of
America as a continental sense of being, that is, what is America. He cites various authors, both
from the Northamericans and the Europeans who had a thing to say, and from various authors,
we find that people like F.C. Northrop conceives Hispanoamerica as “that which is Medieval and
scholastic”, Richard Morse as “inadequate to the liberal world order”, then Hegel as “provisory
beings” with constant attachment to nature and not his Spirit, Keyserling as “telluric beings”,
others characterized as people with no sense of authenticity or value. (Buela Lamas,
Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 36–37) Alberto Buela observes
that some characterizations nail some aspects of Hispanoamerica but not quite, and thus he
settles to conceive Hispanoamerica as “that which is hospitable [“lo hóspito”].” (Buela Lamas,
Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 43) He explains why:
“Finally comes our own thesis: that America must be understood “as the hospitable” and the
American consciousness as a symbiosis of “the Catholic or low medieval” and “the Indian or
telluric”, understanding the Catholic not as a confessional category but as a cosmovision, that is
as a vision of the world that specifies the European and non-European consciousness arrived in
America beyond the nationality it carries.
And the Indian also as a worldview, a complete world of values and experiences that
substantially affects the arrived worldview. This clash produces the union by fusion and not by
mixture of two complete elements in themselves as are the Catholic and Indian worldviews,
forming a natural whole in itself: the American consciousness analogically different from the
elements of which it is composed.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos
Iberoamericanos 43 emphasis added)
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There is yet again the emphasis of distinguishing “complete fusion” from “mixing”, and he
explains that the fusion is understood as one where both worldviews are analogically different
wholes but that the symbiosis produces something different arising from two complete wholes.
The transcendental symbiosis of telluric time and the medieval order
Before I explain this telluric sense of the indigenous American and the “low Medieval Catholic”
sense of life, I want to unpack why Alberto Buela insists that the structure of this
Hispanoamerican paradigm in our identity manifests itself more as a symbiosis than “a mix” of
two worldviews. Alberto Buela pointed out that it is a fusion in the sense that the result is
analogically different from the two whole that formed. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra
Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 43) But what does this mean and what distinction does he
make? Before I explain, I want to point out how Alberto Buela sees etymology, as he makes
quite a lot of use when dissecting the identity of Hispanoamericans and the significance of the
continent in light of said identity, when wanting to define what is America, he says the following
regarding etymology:
“It is known that with respect to the sciences of the spirit the etymological method is one of the
ways of access to the real and is fully justified; especially after the contributions of Heidegger
and Zubiri, who showed how etymological work can restore the elemental force, worn out by
long use, of the original words to which it is necessary to return to recover their authentic
meaning.
The validity of etymological research -etymos means the true- lies in our opinion in the semi-
disclosure of the reality of things. Etymology is certainly an auxiliary science, but its function is
to open up a gray field where things are, to outline them, but which it cannot define by itself. It
leaves the question posed. And the main question is what is the link between words and things.
Or in other words, does the being of things respond to the name of things? In this sense we
maintain that yes, but analogically. That is, part ditto and part different. Therefore, it is up to
philosophy to resolve the question.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos
Iberoamericanos 45)
Thus, for Alberto Buela, while etymology is not everything, it explains the essence of things in
certain comparable respects, and while it is not strict in its application (not all words mean
strictly what their etymology dictates), it provides insight into their essentials and allows us to
distinguish it from other words of different etymology. For Alberto Buela, it was then useful to
apply etymology to word of America itself to glean on the nature of the identity of the American,
which, from etymology, means “powerful in its home” or “that which rules in the household” to
reveal that America as a place is one which the environment creates a community where one
works in freedom and have a sense of ownership. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra
Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 46) From here he argues that this will allow us to answer
the structure of the identity that definitively distinguishes a Hispanoamerican from a non-
Hispanoamerican, and although they are not petrified elements, the consciousness of one that
inhabits the environment forms them throughout his/her life as a product of said place. (Buela
Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 47) From here he
establishes that the structure of the Hispanoamerican identity is one characterized by the
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symbiosis of the Medieval Catholic worldview and the telluric indigenous worldview, and he
clarifies that none are not of confessional nor archaeological nature but adopt the value systems
that allow the identitarians of said place to think and view their surrounding it said paradigms.
(Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 47) With the
context of how he views etymology, how does he conceptualize this symbiosis in the
Hispanoamerican? He explains:
“We maintain that the structural elements of our Iberoamerican consciousness are given by the
mixture or symbiosis, this last term is taken neither from chemistry nor from biology, but in its
strict etymological sense (syn=with) (bios=life) of the catholic – not taken here as a confessional
but as an anthropocultural category – and the Indo taken here as a worldview and not as an
archaeological datum.
Note that we do not speak here of racial or cultural miscegenation, which is strictly speaking a
mixture, since this category – intensively used in progressive Christian environments – has a
primordial ethnic-racial connotation that invalidates and limits it ab ovo to be used in the
axiological-ontological explicitness that we pursue. Thus, we prefer to speak of symbiosis or
mixture, first, because the catholic – historically the low medieval worldview – is the distinctive
feature that characterizes the Weltanschauung of the mountainous man in these new lands, even
the last waves of immigration have been distinguished by belonging to a worldview whose
agglutinated number of consciousness is prior to the beginning of the so-called World
Revolution, and did not pass through its different stages.
[…] Having described the Catholic and the Indo in their substantive contributions to the
formation of a Hispanoamerican consciousness, we must now explain how it is contorted.
Our consciousness -what we are- is not produced by the mixture, aggregate, superposition or
summation -the Indian America is followed by the Iberian, the black, the immigrant- as the
melting pot theory pretends, where each of the components remain independent as substances,
Our Hispanoamerican consciousness is not an accidental compound, but a perfect mix to speak
philosophically.
Note that we speak of “perfect mixed” and not of “substantial compound”, as one might hastily
speak. And this is so because by substantial compound we mean, metaphysically speaking, the
entity whose components are incomplete substances that form by union a single composite
substance, but which nevertheless remain distinct, preserving their own nature after the union has
taken place. Such is the case with the human compound resulting from the union of soul and
body.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 67, 70–71
emphasis added)
Thus, Alberto Buela explains why the nature of this mixture is more the nature of a perfect whole
fusion and not a strict mixture, where the result is a composite that is made from partialized
components. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 71)
For the scholastic enthusiasts, the nature of Buela’s symbiosis rings closer to a sort of hypostatic
union than one of a hylomorphic union, though the hypostasis is not tantamount perfectly to the
Trinity since ideas nor worldviews are persons, but the sort of unitive relation the
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Hispanoamerican identity enjoys is closer more to hypostasis, where the components subsist in
the full union, although it’s also not a perfect analogy because Buela argues that not all
components contribute equally to the identity, whereas in Christ, all natures contribute equally,
Buela writes:
“Of course, and it is necessary to clarify, as Osvaldo Lira Pérez rightly does in Hispanidad y
mestizaje, Ed. Covadonga, 1985, p. 43 that the Catholic and the Indian are not equivalent
contributions, that is to say that they are equally different in their contribution to the American
conscience, a mistake made by the indigenists. Rather, the Catholic or lower medieval
contributes the hierarchical sense of values, rejecting the horizontal sense of the same as the
egalitarian and leveling consciousness after the beginning of the World Revolution has been
sustaining.
It also contributes the teleological sense of order based on the idea of the common good and not
simply of well-being, understood as the unbridled search for comfort by the consumer society.
It also brings the objectivity of values that rejects the subjective and arbitrary dissolution of
values that begins to take place from “the primacy of conscience”
In short, it brings the vision of man and society as a whole, which rejects, by contrario sensu, the
“specializations” so pleasing to the scientific-technological development and to the specialists of
the minimum.
The Indian brings a handling, utilization and characterization of the category of time that makes
the Iberoamerican consciousness absolutely and specifically different, in this aspect, from the
American one with its “time is money”, as well as from the decadent European one with its
“laissez faire”. Neither technotronic instantaneity nor cosmopolitan haste has anything to do with
the category of American time as a specific contribution of the Indian worldview.” (Buela
Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 47–48 emphasis added)
Therefore, while each element is whole and unique to each other, how they forged the
Hispanoamerican conscience is different in the sense that only specific anthropocultural elements
contributed to the Hispanoamerican conscience, and Alberto Buela believes that The Catholic
paradigm contributed its Medieval order values, whereas the Indigenous brought it the existential
sense of time. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 48)
Before I unpack the telluric sense of time, I want to take a few paragraphs to unpack Alberto
Buela’s treatment of Hispanidad “from America.” In the chapter that treats this subject, it is also
the same one that explains the Catholic paradigm in the Hispanoamerican conscience which he
believes is shared by not just the Spaniards but other Europeans (at least those that retained the
Medieval paradigm of an anthropocultural Catholicism). (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra
Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 67) For Alberto Buela, many key aspects of Hispanidad
framed by philosophers like García Morente and even Maeztu, are Hispanidad “looked at from
the Peninsula.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 54)
Additionally, Buela lays out a number of critiques he believes are not properly framed to capture
the essence of Hispanidad such as the equivalency of Catholic to “that which is Hispanic”
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because he believes other countries likewise have a Catholic ethos built-in to their conscience
such as the Irish. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos
55) He also criticizes García Morentes’ archetypes for being too broad and lacking both
philosophic and scientific rigor to adequately capture a true, unique and distinguishing essence of
Hispanidad that is not limited to a specific archetype that can universalize to an archetype either
from the point of virtues or vices. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos
Iberoamericanos 56) So what is the essence of that which is Hispanic and what makes it sensible
to the Hispanos of the continent? Buela points out that they are two essential aspects: the
hierarchical sense of life, and “the preference to oneself.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica
Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 58) What is the nature of this sense of hierarchy?
Buela answers that this sense of hierarchy is one characterized by a necessity of the inferior from
the superior in a functional sense, a holistic view of life and a sense of objectivity in absolute
values that refuses debates, which he believes has been denied and neglected since the “Global
Revolution [read, Industrial and French Revolution].” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra
Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 58–59) The second aspect is “preference to oneself”,
which Buela explains:
“As for the second trait that characterizes hispanidad; the preference of self, it was manifested in
the lack of fear for the loss of identity. The Hispanic colonizer mixed with the autochthonous
without inconveniences or reservations; the same did not happen in the northern hemisphere, nor
in South Africa, nor in India, nor in China, where the Anglo-Saxon conquered rather than
colonized, avoiding merging with the autochthonous. This led in some cases, such as in the
United States, to the elimination of the Indian in plain and simple terms.
Self-preference is not to believe oneself superior but different. This should not be confused with
crass selfishness, but properly understood, it contains the affirmation of the difference of values
that exist, in fact, in all reality.
Self-preference is the affirmation of the most existential realism, since it tells us: You are
different, therefore, there are others who are different. And the only integration comes from equal
treatment. The paradox of the case is that -and this is a digression for philosophers- if we were to
deepen our meditation on the meaning of difference we would arrive at the theory of friendship.
Thus, according to the Hispanic sense, difference founds equality, contrary to the modern sense,
where equality eliminates difference in search of leveling, which produces estrangement from
oneself and from the other. From there to the death of man is only a short distance.” (Buela
Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 59 emphasis added)
What Alberto Buela has described, Maeztu has termed this “Spanish humanism”, which is a
theocentric humanism: Maeztu recognized this in Defensa in that, whoever the Spanish wishes to
integrate, he acknowledges there are differences, but they can be saved, improved, and
harmonize within the imperial ethos, and be treated equally even if different, as for the first
category, Maeztu discusses that the hierarchies exist, but they are not petrified nor permanent, as
Maeztu affirms that today he might be the noble knight, but tomorrow he might be a
dishonorable one, and both should be treated with dignity and respect.(de Maeztu 66) He does
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not name it, but Alberto Buela describes what I have termed the theocentric humanism of the
Hispanian Catholic, and Buela also says this too, has been neglected by the egalitarianism
inherent in French and Anglo liberal values that Hispanoamericans continue to imitate or force in
their culture through foreignization. Having said this, Alberto Buela believes that the Hispanidad
seen from the Peninsula, in the Iberoamerican continent, does not exist, he lays out why:
“[…] From Asia, the Philippines was sold by Spain to the USA for 20 million dollars, as a
consequence of the Treaty of Paris of December 1, 1898. It is so alienated from itself that even
the Spanish language has been taken away from it.
[…] From Africa, Mozambique, Angola and the Guineas were successively alienated by the
revolutionary internationalism that alone brought death and destruction. Its uprooting is today
almost complete.
From America, a hodgepodge of some twenty republiquettes in a mad race to imitate a model
that has nothing Hispanic about it.
And as for themselves, Spain and Portugal, the sad figure of nations without direction, wanting
to enter the anti-Hispanic Europe by dint of renouncing their own intimate being. Where is, we
ask ourselves, the Christian knight of García Morente as an archetype of Hispanicity, in nations
that strive to be servants of the European Community, that boast of having invented the industry
without chimneys transforming themselves into countries without sun; like Spain about to let
itself be stripped of the Ñ in order to please a world that denigrates it from the depths of history.
It does not exist, we answer, it died.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente:
Ensayos Iberoamericanos 60–61)
Nothing essentially new discussed by Maeztu in the Foreignization Problem, and Vasconcelos’
own Raza Cósmica elucidates this problem in his own words as well. Buela thus, concludes that
to return to ourselves, and thus Hispanidad, we must retake it from the temporal ecstasy of a
future restoration to return to ourselves as Hispanoamericans and recover the Hispanic sense in
the Hispanoamerican. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos
Iberoamericanos 61) There is a lot implied in this recovery project that goes beyond culture, he
touches upon philosophizing itself, though I will elucidate the foreignization problem from the
philosophical point of view according to Buela later, I now unpack and return to the two identity
pillars of the Hispanoamerican identity, and the continent itself.
First, what is this “Hispanoamerican sense of time” Alberto Buela speaks of? The only chapter
worth unpacking this is precisely the last chapter in his book that expands more in-depth this
sense of telluric time: El tiempo americano (The american time). As mentioned earlier, it is not a
chronological-scientific sense of time, but existential or anthropocultural, that is, how does the
Hispanoamerican behave and treat time throughout his existence from the point of view of
identity? Alberto Buela comments that from an outsider’s view, the telluric time is confused of
laziness, “doing nothing” or “wasting time” and not wanting to work and instead opt for “la
siesta.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 48, 68–69)
Buela cites various instances that comment in more detail this perceived laziness, and I cite:
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“There are many testimonies, let’s bring only that of a wise English traveler who in 1825
crossing from East to West and back the southern cone of America said: “the richest class of
people in the provinces is not accustomed to business. The poorer ones do not want to work.
Both are totally destitute of any idea of contract, punctuality or the value of time.
A little more than a century later, that great mamarracho of Argentine letters, Ezequiel Martinez
Estrada, complains that he cannot find laborers or maids and that indolence and siesta take us
back to the time of Viceroy Sobremonte (letter to his friend Scheimes, March 10, 1948). Today,
almost half a century later, recently arrived Koreans complain about the indolence of the
Bolivians “who sleep during the day” (the siesta) and subject them to slavery conditions in
Buenos Aires itself, chaining them to sewing machines so that they “do not waste time”.” (Buela
Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 109)
Buela contrasts this sense of time with what some might call “the Protestant work ethic” typical
of the US gringo where “time is money” or “do not leave for tomorrow what you can do today”
mindset. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 48, 68,
110) Alberto Buela believes that in contrast to the gringo, the Hispanoamerican’s treatment of
time is one that uses time wisely in a manner that emphasizes a sort of “maturation with things”
(Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 49, 70, 110) When
it rains, Buela gives an example, the indio does nothing and takes breaks or attends to his/her
hobbies, whereas the gringo is in constant pressure of “not waste every second of the clock.”
(Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 68) So for the
hispanoamerican, time in his life is like a stopwatch, that he/she can pause at any moment,
whereas the gringo is at the clock’s ticks’ mercy. Regarding “maturation with things”, Buela
explains:
“Away from technotronic instantaneity as well as from the cosmopolitan city rush, we live time
as a maturing with things. In this respect, it is worth remembering the Martín Fierro “time is only
the delay of what is to come”. That delay sharpens in us the sense of waiting and highlights the
temporal ecstasy of the advent. It is the existential time stricto sensu of our cosmovision. The
time we give ourselves to be, to exist genuinely. This time is anchored in a fundamental category
that the philosopher Rodolfo Kusch glimpsed very well: “being here” that links us to a certain
category proper of the rooted American man, as opposed to “being someone”, typical of the
Yankee consumer society that today affects even the great Hispanic American cities.
This American time that we characterize as maturation with things, is not, as the European
conscience of a Hegel or a Keyserling believed, the revelation of a world -the American- without
spirit and stuck to nature, but the maturation indicates to us the interrelation between a prodigal
nature, not scarce, as the one that occurs in America, with the American subject that accompanies
it without forcing its development.
It is that in America the immeasurable force of nature imposes on man its regular rhythms, hence
the valuation of time is completely different in Iberoamerica than in Europe or the USA, where
the colonizing spirit of the modern European triumphed completely. The exasperation of a North
American or a European in the face of an Iberoamerican incapable of respecting the deadlines
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given to his work; the unpunctuality in the meetings, the slowness even in the movements,
creates the impression that we usually produce of improvisation and superficiality, when all of
them are nothing else but sensitive manifestations of that American time of which we have been
speaking.
Nature imposes itself in America and the American does not expect to humanize or dominate
nature, like those French gardens all trimmed. Nor does he submit to it, as the humanist Ernesto
Grassi maintained, but rather accompanies it. That is why our time is catalogued as a time of
maturation with things.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos
Iberoamericanos 110)
Buela goes further and believes that this attitude of time makes the Hispanoamerican have a
sense of ahistoricality as he describes that, because the Hispanoamerican feels no pressure to
time, he de-preoccupies it from his life, and disregards the historical dimension because his
environment already puts him in a position to cultivate the traditions because they are, in a way,
static and ingrained in his world. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos
Iberoamericanos 111–12) Buela explains this by contrasting it with the European sense of time
this way:
“Many years ago a Colombian thinker, Eduardo Caballero Calderón, speaking of the difference
between Americans and Europeans, said that the latter were historical men who have a culture
behind them that makes them just go on living.
It is not necessary to be a philosopher, anyone who has ever traveled realizes that in Europe
everything is done, everything is urbanized. The concepts of plain, mountain, forest, jungle,
countryside lost their pristine, primitive meaning centuries ago and to find it again the European
has to resort to legends and books. That is, to the past, to historical time.
The contemporary resurgence of Indo-European myths in Europe is not only explained by the
manifest decadence of Christianity but also for these reasons.
The American is always the landscape. Its conquests are not regressions in time but advances,
establishments. Hence the temporal ecstasy of the advent, which founds the waiting and allows
the maturing with things, stands out. When man, even the last one recently bequeathed to
America, founds for himself a new rootedness, fertilizes America, we can affirm that he is
already an American. That last immigrant is already an indolent. The hospitable has reached its
fullness. And thus the American time as a dimension of the spirit is intimately linked to the
landscape and with the work of that landscape.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra
Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 112 emphasis added)
It merits a discussion also now the essence of the geographic culture of Hispanoamerica that the
Hispanoamerican inhabits as opposed to the environment of the Anglo-Saxon; Alberto Buela
characterizes it as “that which is hospitable” and he explains what this entails:
“America, more than anything else, is a geographical space for its capacity to host (hospitari)
every man who as a guest (hospitis) comes from the inhospitable. From persecution, war, hunger,
poverty, in short, from the impossibility of being fully human.
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[…] It is not a simple opening, but rather it is a sheltering that demands the effort to found a
rootedness, to become American, to transform the ontic into the ontological, to give an American
sense to America. This possibility, unique and never again repeatable in the land that America
offers us, is rooted in its “novelty.”
[…] The new that America offers is the condition of possibility that allows us to create a
“different world, different” from the world we already know. It allows us to signify the purity of
entities, giving them an ontological meaning that, certainly, comes from our dis-covering
consciousness.
This does not mean that the new by the mere fact of being new is true, but that the new is
valuable when it informs the inert by transforming it into a good. As a possibility of giving
meaning. The novelty of America demands then an arduous work, as its etymology has already
told us, Work that previously demands a project: something previously launched forward that
must be realized. But no longer from ancient or contemporary utopias, but from ourselves, from
our own values and experiences. America offers us Americans to be the founders of a lineage; if
we do not carry it out, we cannot properly call ourselves Americans. However, this will only be
possible when the project of American unity achieves that the isthmus of Panama becomes for us
what Corinth was for the Greeks, as Simón Bolívar longed for. Simon Bolivar.” (Buela Lamas,
Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 49–51 emphasis added)
And why is this discovering aspect so important? Because as he explains, this discovering is to
manifest a certain intention, to reveal novelty and to “rise up” from hiddenness. (Buela Lamas,
Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 49–50) Because it was the
Hispanians that discovered the Americas while only the Vikings found it, the Hispanian’s
discovery is the one that implanted the nature of discovery in the hospitable spirit in the people
and not the Vikings. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos
Iberoamericanos 49–50, 108) Adding to the hospitality of Hispanoamerica, Buela argues that it
is not a simple “touristic” hospitality, but one that requires a founding, rootedness to incorporate
into the community and not one that immigrants land to benefit from it and later leave to
Northamerica or back to their homelands, but one that requires incorporation and adopting of the
customs of the people and become Hispanoamerican. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra
Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 72) It seems Alberto Buela is not only saying that the
nature of this hospitality demands a sort of cultural assimilation, but even psycho-intellectual one
that is not simply staying there like one stay at a motel, but one that is adopted into a household
and lives in the community permanently.
The structure of The Hispanoamerican Being
I now arrive at the structure of the Hispanoamerican ethos from Alberto Buela’s point of view:
The Hispanoamerican is a symbiotic being, in, not exactly perfect but analogous, hypostasis to
two fundamental paradigms of his identity: the telluric, whose sense of time is one characterized
by tranquility, “siesta work ethic” and a present-centric existence; and the low medieval Catholic
sense of life, characterized by what Maeztu calls Spanish humanism, with all its hierarchical
values and scholastic tradition in philosophy and culture; both full wholes integrated into an
authentic unity, with the Catholic side inherited from the Hispanians, and thus, our
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Indohispanidad is an Hispanidad molded out by the telluric sense of life in time and molded the
telluric into the Catholic ethos to save it from the darkness of idols. (Buela Lamas,
Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 109) This symbiosis then,
founded a homeland, of continental proportion characterized by a hospitable character that can
welcome any man worthy of partaking in a rootedness working to become part of a community
that demands an inner working to be integrated in a society of two symbiotic worldview, with the
Catholic one taking primacy, hence, the Hispanoamerican in Hispanoamerican, but Indohispano
in Indohispano signifies that in daily living, he is telluric with a Catholic core. To recover this
complete sense, we must continually emulate the values characterized by this sense of being, or
we will cease to be and cannot call ourselves properly americans as Buela defines, but
agringados (gringofied), who are rooted out from this sense of identity. What will it take to
undertake such a project I will discuss in the next sections and how this Hispanoamerican being
is starkly contrasted to not just the National Socialist, but even the entire world around
Hispanoamerica.
Hispanoamerica’s Psychotype contra National Socialist Germany’s racialism
So far, I have analyzed and exposited all four author’s description of what is the
Hispanoamerican, his identity, his view of himself and around him and extracted the Catholic
ethos from this Hispanoamerican, and one can appreciate that from this analysis, there is simply
no place in the Hispanoamerican ethos to incorporate National Socialism, to do so is to root out
the entire core of Hispanoamerican mind, to transmute him into something that is not
Hispanoamerican. For every sense of identity according to Alberto Buela, for the
Hispanoamerican to adopt the anthropocultural and philosophies of the non-Hispanoamerican, is
to cease to be Hispanoamerican, because said person has renounced not just his heritage but his
entire being and transmute to something else that is not him, he has denied himself the ecstasy of
temporal restoring of the Indohispanidad all four authors discussed call for every Hispanic to
take: he renounced the theocentric humanism of clear Catholic ethos that is not compatible with
National Socialism, he has renounced the Cosmic Race principles of aesthetic that characterized
the unity of all races, he has renounced a civilization that went exactly contrary to the National
Socialist in Germany, and he has renounced the very structure of the Hispanoamerican being in
its purest and most fundamental starting point, for Alberto Buela, such a person has committed
identity murder: identicide. He killed the Hispanoamerican in him to become one that is very
different from the Hispanoamerican.
Everything exposited thus far points in a direction that leads to conclusions that not only is
Catholicism incompatible with National Socialism and Fascism, but it also even erases the core
foundations of what constructs the Hispanoamerican ethos, his being, his very reason of being
Hispanoamerican and living Hispanoamerican. With what has been demonstrated so far reveals
that it is unintelligible to adopt National Socialist racialism. What is a race? A race is whatever a
race defines it to be in the contemporary age: biologicist, socially, psychologically, religiously; it
is a construct that has been obscure for millennia until the modern era, and that modern era was
defined by the Anglo-Saxon, the imperial enemy of the Hispanoamerican, so anything the
neoliberal order defined, the Hispanoamerican simply does not fit in their category, and
continues to not to. For the National Socialist, race mixing can only have a subtractive non-
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identity, impossible reconciliation, but the Hispanoamerican ethos is symbiotic and integrationist
to the core, to adopt a frame that has a philosophy of identity contrary to Hispanoamerica is
simply illogical. How can race be a bio-anthropological, scientifically strict category for a race
that has disregarded such a frame from its inception? At a civilizational level, it cannot be, so for
the National Socialist, for the English, for the continental European outside the Hispanian
peninsula, Hispanoamerica is “an other”, an alien, a different dimension, dare I say. I will
explore this concept of “Hispanoamerica as the other” as Alberto Buela too elucidates this, for
him, Hispanoamerica “as the hospitable” has de facto made it “an other” to the globe.
The Otherness of Hispanoamerica and Hispanoamerican Philosophizing
What is it to be “the other” of America? If Hispanoamericans are Americans, then they must be
“the other Americans” by the self-proclaimed Gringo-Americans; Alberto Buela explains:
“And what does it mean to be the other in this case? First of all, we are different from Anglo-
Americans. But at the same time we share with them the character of “someone” who is in
America. The hospitable as being from America is common to us.
Secondly, the fact of being recognized as “the other” of America gives us the indication that in
the most lucid European intelligences the political-cultural ethnocentrism has been definitively
broken. They know that they are no longer “the world” but a part of it. That there are “others”.
The term other, it is known, comes from the Latin alter, from which alternative is derived. And
this presupposes at its base a conflict. An altercation, then, arises the possibility of being
different, of being distinct.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos
Iberoamericanos 102)
And why else are we “the other?” Because from the start, Hispanics have taken an entirely
different course in the West, the Western world took one path common to the French, the
German, even the gringo, but the Hispanos took an entirely different path, they dis-covered a
world, and created an entire dimension alien to the West that threatens their homogeneity
projects. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 102–03)
Alberto Buela says that for Hispanoamericans “the universe, is in reality, a pluriverse” (Buela
Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 103) because of our
ecumenic sense of culture and even politics beyond the concept of a nation-state. Alberto Buela
believes that the Iberians may have dominated the Americas, but they at least passed down their
customs, religion, institutions, and language, whereas the other dominators only exploited the
Hispanoamericans with no effort of integration but elimination. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica
Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 103–04) And what of the nature of our thinking?
Alberto Buela mentions this too, and I believe this will transition neatly into the state of
Iberoamerican philosophy:
“The consideration of us as “the other” from the centers of productivity of meaning presents two
disparate attitudes.
Some, the lights thinkers, heirs of enlightenment rationalism, consider us as unreflective. Hence
the “philosophical scholarship-university normalism”, specialists of the minimum, make every
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effort in our lands to resemble the Central European and Anglo-Saxon by way of imitation. The
other attitude, embodied by very few “central” thinkers (e.g. Tarchi, Fernandez de la Mora,
Steuckers, Ricoeur, Morse) assume us as “the other”, as “someone else” that together with them
make up the West.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos
Iberoamericanos 104)
This is an eloquent way of Buela explaining that even in the philosophy sphere, there is a sort of
“surrenderisms” to the foreigner, by constantly having to imitate their ways of doing philosophy
and not cultivating our own philosophical schools of thought. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica
Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 76–77) Alberto Buela lists four characteristics that
underline this problem, this foreignization problem in philosophy as Maeztu would put it; by
Alberto Buela, he writes:
“Philosophy in Iberoamerica can be characterized by certain negative traits, namely:
(a) by the imitative sense of thought. The models of philosophies conceived, mainly, in
Europe, are elucidated. Thus, for example, according to the textbooks, a leading figure of
Argentine philosophy, Francisco Romero – who, by the way, was a Spaniard – thought on
the basis of Max Scheler.
This importation of ideas and models has led the acute Mexican thinker Gómez Robledo to
affirm that a kind of “philosophical surrenderism” has developed in America, a correlate in
the order of the spirit of political surrenderism.
(b) Because of the “empty universalism” of which Samuel Ramos speaks. And that means
the unrestricted openness to any intellectual product coming from the centers of power
and international culture. This universalism only calms down when one is “up to date”
with all the novelties. This leads not only to an infinite task, since novelties are produced
every day, but also to a manifest superficiality of all local production.
(c) Due to the lack of originality, as the Peruvian Salazar Bondy rightly points out: “There is
no philosophical system of Hispano-American stock, a doctrine with significance and
influence on the whole of universal thought, and neither is there, at the world level,
polemical reactions to the affirmations of our thinkers, nor after-effects or doctrinal
effects of them in other philosophies.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra
Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 76–77)
“Imitative sense of thought” from other countries foreign to our own; “empty universalisms” that
are apparently controlled by endless updates from a “consumerist” standpoint of the same
foreign systems, and no originality or cultivated Hispanoamerican schools of thought; this is
Alberto Buela’s Foreignization Problem in Philosophy in Hispanoamerica, which is to say is a
special branch from the same Foreignization Maeztu spoke of in his work. It is interesting how
Buela linked “philosophical surrenders” to political ones, and this is remarkable because he
remarks this very phenomenon in the very opening chapter of the same title as his book, he
writes commenting on how we should cultivate our national identity from our traditional past,
and which past should be referenced, in this case, he believes the only valid reference is the
Medieval, he says this commenting on how we conceive our revolutions in our own contexts:
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“[…] As far as Hispanoamerica is concerned, we reject a return ab initio as the so-called

“indigenist Marxism”, as well as the anthropologists and social researchers of Yankee America,
those who look for the Hispanoamerican identity in the Inca socialism or in the Aztec arts but
who forget, or worse, deny, all value to the Hispano-Indo-Catholic imagery, which, whether they
like it or not, expressed us in what we are. Thus our identity, following this path of return to the
sources, we have to look for it in the “mixture of the Catholic and the indigenist”. And when we
speak of “the Catholic” we do not do it as a confessional category but as the distinctive feature
that characterizes the Weltanschauung of the European man arrived in the lands of the South.
[…] Because of this vital heterodoxy (the mixture) we are a hybrid thing, not entirely
comprehensible to the Cartesian rationality of the average European man.
For example, what has Peronism been during the forty years of its existence? Bonapartism for
the French, neo-fascism for the Italians, socialism for the Romanians, social democratism for the
Germans, neo-falangism for the Spaniards. In short, a melange without sense nor north.
This European conscience does not understand because it judges by juxtaposing its own
categories to -experiences and expressions- that are decoded with other categories. In a word,
they are contradictory to them. But on the other hand, it understands perfectly well as revolution,
an “imported” revolution such as, for example, the Cuban one; given that it responds to the
categorical scheme of one of the dominant imperialisms. And this is so, because in the end,
whether the Soviets or the Yankees, they are nothing more, from the ideological point of view,
than children of the European categorical scheme. As their ideologists came from here, be it
Marx or Toqueville.
In short, when a country of Hispanic America attempts a national revolution it is something
undefined, hybrid, not entirely clear. On the contrary, when a revolution enters the orbit of the
categorical scheme of the centers of world power – cultural or financial – it is something totally
defined, clear and it is even given a moral character, placing it as an example to be followed,
Well then, as it does not escape the attentive mind, the Hispanicamerican identity is far from
being expressed through the “Latin American myth” for the consumption of the “developed”
societies that disguised with poncho, charango and headband sings its miseries provoking
feelings of “curious pity” in the subways of Paris.
We forged our identity by assuming the vital force and values of pre-World Revolution Europe,
which have been transformed by the formidable American matrix. That is why we have
recognized ourselves in the notion of the West and that it was nothing other, for us Americans,
than what Europe had of the best.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos
Iberoamericanos 20–21 emphasis added)
On the other hand, for Buela, when the West, and this is how he treats it throughout the essay, is
understood as a homogenization project and imposing universalisms across the globe, then the
Hispanoamerican must therefore be against the West because the West would be “our guillotine.”
(Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 21–22) The
extensive citation I provided is Alberto Buela explaining that our national revolutions, at least the
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ones that are properly recovering those Medieval Catholic and telluric values autochthonous to
us, do not fit the Western categories because they are, as he says “undefined” to “the others”
different from the Hispanoamerican, and that any other revolution that ends up imitating other
defined categories are engaging in political surrender like Cuba with their Marxist imposition,
and this is the context that he correlates it to the philosophical realm, if anything they are very
related.
Alberto Buela indicates how there must be a distinction between “Iberoamerican philosophy”
and philosophy “of that which is Iberoamerican”, the former he describes as problematic because
it is a historical panorama of how philosophy has been taught in Iberoamerica, which is nothing
more than imitation and empty universalisms, surrenderisms linked to the surrenders in the
political realm. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos
76–77) Although there have been key figures like Meinvielle and Mariátegui whose own
philosophy from the scholastic and Marxist, respectively, broke from the European or foreign
realm, there is still abundant foreignization in the philosophy sphere by constant imitation to the
foreigners such as the Central Europeans and the Yankee. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica
Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 78) Then there is philosophy “of the
Iberoamerican”, which he believes is the hardest task to cultivate because it is that philosophy
that touches upon the problems of Iberoamerican from Iberoamerica proper, until today, where
now most are focused on imitating and imposing philosophies that have no correspondence to
our problems and our own reflexive demarcations, that is, philosophical schools that develop our
own understanding of things from that which is integral to our understanding of the world.
(Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 78–79)
Furthermore, Alberto Buela describes that this has also meant that it has been strenuously
difficult, and produced a sort of rootlessness feeling of attempting to explain our own realities
and philosophical problems in terms of a framework of foreign systems that are radically
different from our conception of being and life. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra
Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 80) So what is Alberto Buela’s solution to this problem, in
essence? Alberto Buela does not believe our philosophy should prioritize solely our current
social conditions, but a philosophy that incorporates both “that which is” and “that which can
be.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 80) He
affirms this because this act of philosophizing is done from the starting point of an ontological
experience from the Hispanoamerican. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente:
Ensayos Iberoamericanos 80) Neither he believes that our philosophy is defined by adopting a
futurist foundation, nor must it be defined by recognized unedited constructions as Salazar
Bondy believes, rather, he refers that Hispanoamerican philosophy must be defined and
cultivated from the standpoint explained by Casturelli, which he writes:
“Caturelli is much closer when he maintains that “there can be originality without the discovery
of the spirit, but there cannot be originality without originarity... the discoverer conscience of
America, which is the one that reveals the American originarity, has been the European
Christian conscience”. But the Cordovan limits himself here to the analytics of the discoverer
consciousness, but, of course, does not extend to the problem of the originality of Iberoamerican
philosophy.
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In view of this, we maintain that originality is produced when the problem is illuminated from its
origin, from its originarity.
And the originarity of America is intuited by us in the hospitable, as we try to show in other
works when we state […]” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos
Iberoamericanos 81 emphasis added)
Thus, to solve originality, Alberto Buela says Hispanoamerica must recourse to their origins,
originarity, and that is found in the conception I have exposited from Alberto Buela’s work: on
the hospitality substrate of Hispanoamerica and the symbiosis of the Medieval Catholic ethos
and the telluric existential time of “siesta work outlook.” In simpler words, referring back to all I
have elucidated from previous authors, Alberto Buela is saying that the solution to the
foreignization problem is to cease the imitations of foreigners, to cease copying philosophical,
political, social, cultural and even economic systems of foreigners that have no precedent in our
originarity. Note Alberto Buela is not saying we cannot ever reference outsiders strictly, but that
we must refer to systems that have the same basis as our originarity, and because our ethos is in
the Medieval Catholic and telluric sense of time, our philosophies thus must resemble the
scholastics and the autochthonous views of life, filtered through our framework that is congruent
with our sense of being, “of the hospitable.”
The Utopic Rescue and Hispanoamerica’s Historic Mission
Alberto Buela points out that the current Western world, in all its fronts: military, social,
economic, cultural and even philosophical, are simply not only incompatible to the
Hispanoamerican ethos, but exacerbates even the problems in Europe, and one of the problems it
has produced is the Hispanoamerican rooting out its culture, language; all the essentials that
make up the Hispanoamerican ethos. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente:
Ensayos Iberoamericanos 87–89) He argues that the fruits of the Enlightenment have frustrated
the problems in every nation and their empty universalisms has only worsen the reactionary
separatisms. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 88,
92) His solution is to rescue and finish what other thinkers, writers and other figures that helped
forged an authentic Iberoamerican thought started (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra
Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 89–90) and to reject any ideology that attempts to usurp
and replace our ethos. (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos
Iberoamericanos 93) Alberto Buela’s diagnoses can be summarized as follows, and I cite to then
comment:
“Meanwhile, our various political leaders say that they are not moving ideologically but
pragmatically, all “the political class” jumping on the democratic bandwagon sub specie neo-
liberal (two exceptions: Cuba and Haiti); proceeding to sell off, little less than to the shell, the
state enterprises. They raffle -in a closed lottery- the fixed assets of our nations among a few
hands: the international oligopolies.
And the cause is the preaching orchestrated from the various centers of world power (the mass
media, as non-neutral instruments, respond to the interests that sustain them) on the mass
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consciousness of the peoples and on that of those political leaders who have the power to make
decisions.
We see how this hermeneutic circle closes at two levels. On the one hand: conception.
Theoretical-political thought deals exclusively with what is and not with what can be. In short, it
is a castrated thought, which does not question the system or overcome the reigning status quo,
while it receives from it the canonries (scholarships, salaries, trips, etc.) that allow it to remain
what it is: a servile thought.
On the other hand: execution. Things are done as they are done because they are the product of
an interested preaching that says how they should be done, and at the same time, this preaching
finds its justification in the facts it produces, since the opposition to the system is today sterile;
that is, it does not produce facts that affect it.
[…] There is an ideology, neo-liberal pragmatism, which denies and hides to present itself as
such. Moreover, man’s thinking is never neutral. For, even non-decision is a way of deciding.
And this is so, because the core of the human person is constituted by values that are preferred
or postponed when thinking or acting.
Secondly, it must be clear that the world in which we live as it is has been the product of the
omnipotent power that the last two centuries of stubborn enlightenment and its political correlate,
liberalism, granted to “calculating reason”. When today’s most quoted philosophers such as
Derrida or Finkielkraut affirm: “faithful to the ideal of the Enlightenment to work for the
Enlightenment of today” (L’autre cap), or, “It is necessary to take up again the project of the
Enlightenment” (La Aéfaite de la penséc), they are telling us that this project is not finished, that
it is necessary to finish it. But we answer them that the world is as it is because of this project.
This is the mother of the sheep.
Thirdly, that we can only oppose the world homogenization they propose to us by the
safeguarding of our different national identities within the framework of the ecumenical
identities that belong to us. In my case, the Iberoamerican one.” (Buela Lamas,
Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 91–92 emphasis added)
Thus, Alberto Buela is not conformed to mere pragmatisms, but that there must be action and a
restoration to a greater ideal that was built by our predecessors that will help us retake our
destiny and fulfill the ideal embedded in the being of Hispanoamerican in Hispanoamerica. What
of the use of Machiavellic politics or some “counter-revolution reactionism” to solve this
problem? Alberto Buela critiques both in, the first one, saying such politics ultimately devolve
into a habit of treason and disloyalty to their values, and the second one he does not believe it is
a problem to be solved internationally (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente:
Ensayos Iberoamericanos 93), in the same way Marxists thought to solve their problems
internationally; Alberto Buela believes that neither the universalist forced homogenization nor
the closed border Nation-States have been successful, and that Hispanoamericans must “tend to
the intensive use of our language-symbols, to produce “the meaning” of our facts and ideas and
not adopt the one proposed to us from the centers of power. To create a self-centered market and
communication channels (air, land, maritime, informative) back and forth.” (Buela Lamas,
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Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 93) In summary, Alberto Buela

believes that the Hispanoamerican must recover his historic mission, that mission that Maeztu,
Vasconcelos and Albizu Campos spoke of, the one started by Indohispanidad, to continue and
strengthen this project, to restore and continue the elements, the projects that perpetuate the
civilization that was meant to be, the Hispanoamerican civilization with all its identity structure
and duties and values.
All Buela explained so far is nothing new that the previous three authors exposited, each framed
it in their own terms, sure, but the problem remains the same: The Hispanoamerican has
neglected his historic mission, he is denying his duty to cultivate the ethos that defines him, and
instead ventures into the foreign, a foreign that is antithetical to the Hispanoamerican ethos, and
this exacerbates his problems; he must also be reminded of his legacy and history, the foreigners
have plenty of things to say about Hispanoamerica, as Alberto Buela shows in his work, but they
are all distorted or incomplete, and Alberto Buela shows that we must define ourselves from our
own context, not what foreigners say about us. Some may capture some elements about us, but as
I said, they are distorted or misconstrued because they operate within their own framework. In
summary, what Alberto Buela suggests we do is also what Albizu Campos advocated in his
Nationalist campaign as I have exposited in his discourse on October 12th: the future
Iberoamerican Confederation, defined not be strict closed borders but by cultural lines that trace
one land to another but united all the same, a unity in difference, the same unity in difference
described in this section of Alberto Buela and the same one described by Maeztu. With all this
said we can appreciate the significant contrast from the National Socialist racialist, his racialism
denies anyone an opportunity to become “the other”, if anything, the National Socialist
segregationism is an equal but opposite reactionism to the Neoliberal homogenization, both are
extremes that will exacerbate problems in society, one is driven by a consumerist universalism, a
universalism that consumes but does not unify; and the other end driven by a segregationist
world bubble realm, separated, touching but not intermingling, ever confined to their niche
geographies and condemned to their predispositions. The solution is of course the hospitable
mindset of the Catholic ethos that Maeztu described and Alberto Buela characterizes it natural to
the Hispanoamerican, a mindset that created the means to drive the creation of a Cosmic Race
that can synthesize different ethnicities into new ones with a quasi-hypostatic symbiosis in their
identity and being, a race that transcends race, that is, a race that transcends the modern
categories of race adopted by the National Socialist and the English, it is a race that is alien to the
Western world because it is a view of race more ancient, and it is ancient, because it is an ethos
with ancient worldviews.
The philosophy of the Hispanoamerican ethos and the transcendence of Indohispanidad
To summarize Alberto Buela’s elucidation of what is the Hispanoamerican and what is
Hispanoamerica, the Hispanoamerican is a hospitable, Cosmic Race, whose identity is a quasi-
hypostatic symbiosis of the telluric indigenous paradigm, which inherited the present-centric,
maturation with things, and the Hispanian theocentric humanism of the Medieval Catholic Era,
the hierarchical sense of life and the self-preferential mindset, that is, to seek one that is distinct
and harmonious to oneself. It is a person of powerful Catholic integrationist mindset that can
harmonize different people because from the Medieval Catholic mindset of hispanic humanist
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thought, they believe this will best foster friendship and co-existence, and the means to allows
this was through the maturation with things to improvement and principles of aesthetic that
surpass biological barriers, a high aesthetic view of mixing that propelled the Cosmic Race,
reminiscent of the mixing that the Iberian did with the autochthonous American to forge the
hospitable environment that defines the Iberoamerican continent, and this was seen through the
mindset typical of this, to forge, fecund and establish with a sense of ownership, to forge one’s
own destiny and take a different course from the entire West, to perpetuate the virtues of Catholic
civilization that so defined the Hispanic Monarchy, thus, this is not only the identity of the
Hispanoamerican but its philosophy, and this is why many foreigners see our culture as “behind”
or “grounded” or even scholastic, because while the world progressed in history losing their
sense in history, the Hispanoamerican surpassed even history because of the Hispanoamerican’
sense of time from the autochthonous.
Indohispanidad’s essence then, all discussed in Alberto Buela: Catholic hospitality that demands
rootedness, psycho-cultural integration and to surpass all obstacles that the Western world sees
are “natural” and “sacred”, this then caused them to see us “as the other” that opposes their
projects of liberalization, homogenization, and even segregation. Indohispanidad is not just
against The liberal West, it is against the entirety of modernity, because it, paradoxically, evolved
to not evolve with modernity, but to evolve within its ethos in modernity, that is, Indohispanidad
grows from its own framework as a Catholic dimension alien to modernity because no matter
how modern it looks, the rest sees it as Medieval, telluric, hospitable, Cosmic, and an enemy of
modernity, of liberalism, and of the two ideologies in study: Fascism and National Socialism, for
Indohispanidad confronts even these two because Indohispanidad operates at a different world
from National Socialism and Fascism.
For National Socialism, race is the most sacred thing and must be heterogenous and unmixed, for
Indohispanidad, only Christ is sacred, and only He can endow that which He considers worthy of
sacredness, any “sacredness” attributed by Hispanics to anything is poetic and incidental but not
ontological, the homeland may be “sacred” but proximally, not ontologically, that is, sacred in a
loose sense because it is blessed, but not ontologically because God can create it and destroy it if
the people are worthy or unworthy of it. As I have mentioned elsewhere, to sacralise something
is not exactly to poetically describe how blessed and crucial something is, but to attribute divine
ontology to the same degree and kind as actual sacred religious objects in an inappropriate
manner.
For Fascism, the State is everything because the people are a State and its power, to
Indohispanidad, the State is an instrument with a limited power, only the fatherland is central to
society, and this fatherland is blessed by God through The Church, and a fatherland is sovereign
even if the people are denied a formal State, as I have shown in Albizu Campos’ section, even if
countries like Ireland, Puerto Rico or even Japan are denied a nation-state by a greater power,
their sovereignty is circumscribed in the Patria, the community and God, not the power of the
State. The State is powerful but so are the people, and it matters not if the people have one or not
as I have explained in Albizu Campos’ section with Julio Meinvielle’s work; the State has limited
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powers and are not to be equated and blurred out with the individual, it must not absorb
everything, not even The Church nor the individual and Indohispanidad has understood this.
The question remains then: How is the Medieval aspect of the Hispanoamerican ethos held to
scrutiny? That is, just what did this Medievality look like in Indohispanidad’s history? What are
some iconic fruits that exemplified the Catholicity of Indohispanidad as a Medieval mindset? I
will answer in the following section that analyzes the Medieval Catholic roots of Indohispanidad,
some historical facts that will elucidate the inner workings of this Medieval Catholic mindset
inherent in the Hispanoamerican ethos, however subtle. In Albizu Campos’ and Maeztu’s section
I mentioned a few facts, but in the next section, I will now cite various historians and writers
about history that will help me unpack these elements in the Catholic ethos of Indohispanidad
from specific points in Hispanic history that will help tie all talked about together. Next section
will help sustain how this section’s analysis is not mere theoretical idealization but is grounded
in history, thus, I will substantiate these four writers’ claims about Hispanic history to show how
the elements they describe have rich Catholic basis.

The Medieval Catholic Roots of Indohispanidad: a contextual analysis

Last section was a philosophical and cultural analysis of Indohispanidad and how it was tied to
the concept of race and other socio-politically relevant subjects that are tied to National
Socialism and Fascism. That and its preceding chapters demonstrated definitively that
Catholicism is incompatible with those two ideologies, and the compatibility of Catholicism with
the Hispanoamerican ethos. This section will be an extension of the previous, though from a
different route, this section will focus on a contextual analysis of all I have exposited previously
from a historical and cultural standpoint, that is, it will be more an analysis that will glean from
historical data relevant to the previous analysis. Maeztu and Albizu Campos, as well as Alberto
Buela, mentioned a couple of historical claims that, in that section, were not the focus to put to
scrutiny. This section will focus to do just that: I will give a historical context to the
Hispanoamerican ethos, primarily from the Medieval Catholic root, which is the primary one in
the Hispanoamerican mindset, that is not to say the telluric is less important, but the entire
ethnogenesis of the Hispanic people is demarcated from the feats of the Hispanic Monarchy,
perhaps in a future study I might present the pre-Columbian root in similar rigor to this section,
God willing.
A disclaimer: I am not going to recount the history of the Hispanoamericans from early 15th
century all the way to the late 1800’s, what I will do instead is to contextualize the philosophical
and cultural claims analyzed in the previous section, and give them a proper historical analysis
that grounds them in history that substantiates their claims to demonstrate why the
Hispanoamerican was able to think the way he did as Alberto Buela, Vasconcelos, Maeztu and
Albizu Campos argued and expounded. By now I am sure the reader is eager to find out, for
instance, if there is any merit to the infamous “Casta paintings”, a painting that, in the
mainstream, is interpreted as a racially stratified society where certain racial groups were tied to
specific roles in society solely for their phenotype. From the outset, I will say that the assertion
that the Hispanic Monarchy was stratified by race and discriminated by biologic categories is a
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mere assertion, imposed by an analysis whose methodologies are questionable and suspicious in
origin, and I will defend the claim that, given all that was discussed previously, that the Hispanic
Monarchy, was a generator empire, that is, an empire whose net fruits generated civilization,
culturalization and granted a legacy to their future heirs. Thus, I will defend the claim that, from
a specific line of evidence from history, both from the empire and The Church, that the Hispanic
Monarchy had no race-based social system, but more a class-based system based on genealogic
prestige and that the claims of Maeztu and Albizu Campos about the fruits of the empire hold to
scrutiny and I will cite this from various historians who support the thesis of the authors analyzed
in the previous section.

The futility of the Casta Propaganda: a critical analysis

“This story does not resemble the one that Spaniards and Hispanoamericans have heard told. But
André has taken it from the Archive of the Indies and from original documents […]” (de Maeztu
35)
One of the key distortions about the Hispanoamerican civilization, I would argue the central
distortion, is that simply because the Hispanic Monarchy was a Monarchy of Spanish origin,
therefore it must have shared the same racial views like all other Europeans, that is, the distortion
is one which uncritically homogenizes all European societies, and this distortion is one in which
the Hispanic Monarchy was characterized by a sort of racial segregationism, where the Spanish
are at the top of the hierarchy simply because they are of Spanish stock, and that the negroes and
slave were always doomed to be of the slave class with no social mobility possible, and this
interpretation of Hispanic Monarchy’s history is, unfortunately to some, not founded in historical
texts but a historiography constructed by two main sources: Ángel Rosenblat and Gonzalo
Aguirre Beltrán in the 1940’s. (Moreno Ruiz and Acosta Ramos, “Las Castas:
¿Segregacionismos En Los Virreinatos?”) This is also recognized by various critical scholars
such as Laura Giraudo in her brief analysis that even the two authors mentioned, their referenced
works contain no explicit nor implicit mention of a “caste society” but are merely assumed
without question. (Giraudo 11–12) In her introductory page, she mentions how scholars such as
Berta Ares, Pilar Gonzalbo and even Joanne Rappaport have surveyed three Viceroyalties: Perú,
Nueva Granada and Nueva España, respectively, where in their archives they find no evidence of
a society that is based on such a system. (Giraudo 3) Thus it is definitive that the model emerged
from an erroneous interpretation from the mid of the 1900’s and is a modern interpretation of
Viceregal history. The most common source that many find a so-called “caste society” are of
course, the so named “Casta paintings”, and they believe that these paintings showcase a racial
stratification, but many historians that analyzed these do not find such thing, rather, these
paintings served more a souvenir for the continental Europeans to get an idea of the many
mixtures that occurred in the Viceregal Americas (Moreno Ruiz and Acosta Ramos, “Las Castas:
¿Segregacionismos En Los Virreinatos?”), and that such interpretation falls short when in these
same paintings you find various negroes dressing in attire typically found in noble society, such
as the one found in Fig 2a and 2b. If there truly was a racial stratification where each race was
confined to a specific social stratum, why are the same paintings that supposedly evidence this
stratification, you find slave classes dressed in noble attire, and the supposed top-of-the-
hierarchy Spanish, dressed as middle class or farmers? Clearly the paintings are not evidence
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racial hierarchies but of depicting various mixtures that occurred in Hispanoamerica across
multiple social hierarchies. You also find numerous inconsistencies in the supposed taxonomies,
a great example is Fig 2b, which says that a zambo is produced from a mulatto and a negro, but
other paintings say that the zambo is produced from a negro and indigenous, and the same “racial
ingredient” has a different name that is not zambo. Not only are these paintings not depicting a
racial stratum, but they do also not even have a rigorous taxonomy, and this is Pilar Gonzalbo’s
thesis as well as Rappaport’s, the former I will detail later in her own section.

Fig 2a: Casta painting chart from the 18th century. It reads “from negro and Spanish comes mulatto.” Source:
https://sites.berry.edu/dslade/2016/02/10/cuadros-de-casta/
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Fig 2b: Casta painting chart from the 18th century. It reads “Negro with mulata produces zambo.” Source:
https://adarve5.blogspot.com/2016/11/imagenes-para-leer-los-cuadros-de_23.html

Emilio Acosta in his podcast with Antonio Moreno Ruiz goes as far as to state that one will never
find no legislation that will ascertain such a racial stratification because simply put, there was
none, and many of the supposed “casta taxonomies” were more social markers of very loose and
ambiguous nature. (Moreno Ruiz and Acosta Ramos, “Las Castas: ¿Segregacionismos En Los
Virreinatos?”) Antonio mentions how the term “zambo” in Perú is generically applied to any
indigenous with some mild African features regardless of their genealogy or genetic admixture,
highlighting that they are mere loose terms of aesthetic with no strict taxonomical rules to it.
Antonio Moreno Ruiz cites numerous examples that put into question the racial stratum model
such as Juan Garrido, a negro conquistador, the “free morenos” in the Austrian Epoch, which
composed likewise mestizos and negro population of free men that embarked on expeditions to
the major Antilles such as Cuba, and the negro and zambo populations of the Peruvian
Viceroyalty in the Esmeralda zones of what we know today as Ecuador. (Moreno Ruiz and
Acosta Ramos, “Las Castas: ¿Segregacionismos En Los Virreinatos?”) Emilio Acosta mentions
the baptismal records as another evidence that refutes the casta myth, but I will detail this when I
touch upon Pilar Gonzalbo’s thesis as she mentions extensively how the baptismal records
showed no taxonomical rigor, which Emilio mentions that a racially strict stratified society
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would not accept. (Moreno Ruiz and Acosta Ramos, “Las Castas: ¿Segregacionismos En Los
Virreinatos?”) What you did find were social privileges that many groups could legally bind
themselves often to their benefit, and Éric Cárdenas mentions how many mestizos born and
raised in Spanish republics, would appeal to legalities exclusive to Indio republics to avoid
religious penalties that were exempted to indios because they were legally classified as gentiles
and were exempt from the Inquisition’s “limpieza de sangre”, which as I have clarified before in
Maeztu’s section, was strictly a religious background check. (Acosta Ramos and Cárdenas) Éric
Cárdenas mentions that the Crown did this as a legal strategy to avoid the Ultramar provinces
gaining too much power and, in some inconveniences, opt for separatisms and put the Imperial
integrity in jeopardy. (Acosta Ramos and Cárdenas) To further add to the legal loopholes in the
“limpieza de sangre (cleansing of blood),” there were cases of even Spanish people, specifically
those born in the New World, who would appeal to the religious exemptions normally granted to
the indigenous population to avoid Spanish law condemning them of being heresy suspects. Éric
Cárdenas even mentions that the so called “caste society” also falls apart when you consider how
many indigenous nobles were able to maintain their noble titles such as those in the Peruvian
Viceroyalties, and how the Moctezuma line was able to preserve their titles by migrating to the
Península after the Indies Laws legislated in the early 1500’s, again, to maintain a balance of
powers between the New World nobles and the Peninsular Crown, which, Cárdenas points out;
explains why the Moctezuma line is found more in current Spain than in Mexico. (Acosta Ramos
and Cárdenas) Another example that Emilio Acosta mentions to both Antonio Moreno Ruiz and
Éric Cárdenas was the case of Sebastián de Miranda, who wanted to occupy higher positions of
military prestige, but the criollo elites in Caracas doubted his eligibility on account of how he
gained wealth, Sebastián was a fisherman from Canarias, yet despite his wealth, the criollos
judged him unworthy, and Sebastián had to appeal to the then king Charles III to allow him to
occupy the position, which he eventually got after the appeal and order of the king under his
Royal Decree. (Acosta Ramos and Cárdenas; Moreno Ruiz and Acosta Ramos, “Las Castas:
¿Segregacionismos En Los Virreinatos?”) Finally, the same Emilio Acosta cites a documentary,
which can be found on YouTube titled Una Arteria del Imperio, which he points out that the
findings of the archaeological digging site in the old Cathedral at Panama reveal that, the
prestigious cemetery reveals DNA whose ethnic origins are of both Spanish, mestizo and African
origin, a site that, according to the racial caste system, should only belong to European and only
Europeans should be found being buried in such a prestigious site, but the evidence finds non-
Europeans of noble prestige. (Moreno Ruiz and Acosta Ramos, “Las Castas: ¿Segregacionismos
En Los Virreinatos?”) Antonio Moreno, in his interview with Emilio Acosta, shows from his
custom background the same chart I show in Fig 2a, indicating that the Hispanic Monarchy did
not limit mestizaje to the men, but Spanish women too intermingled with various groups just as
the Spanish men. (Moreno Ruiz and Acosta Ramos, “Las Castas: ¿Segregacionismos En Los
Virreinatos?”) All these lines of evidence indicate that the so-called “racial stratum” is not only a
fallacy, but a propaganda that tries to impose modern racialist interpretations of society on a
civilization that has transcended these barriers, thus, it is an interpretation that tries to project
errors of the British Empire and United States to the Hispanic Monarchy. (Moreno Ruiz and
Acosta Ramos, “Las Castas: ¿Segregacionismos En Los Virreinatos?”) To further substantiate the
claims of the four authors cited in the previous chapter, I will focus now on the observations and
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studies of two historians that have analyzed this phenomenon and come to the same conclusions
as Emilio Acosta Ramos and Antonio Moreno Ruiz: Joanne Rappaport, who analyzes the
Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada, and Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru ─whose work is only available in
Spanish, thus all citations written are translated to English as best as possible─, the Viceroyalty
of Nueva España, particularly the Mexican province at the time.
The Infamous paintings and the falsity of racial stratification
“Catalina Acero de Vargas claimed that Francisco Suárez’s appearance and diction betrayed his
Calidad, although she doesn’t provide any particulars, indicating that she read important cues
from his aspect, which she may have found difficult to define. In other documents I found more
precise descriptions. Witnesses testified that Diego Romero had brown skin, curly hair, and a
facial tic that caused one eye to open and close with frequency; his associates in Spain thought
he looked like a Moorish slave, but no one in Santafé had questioned his appearance until hie
was brought up on charges of being a New Christian. Fr Gonzalo García Zorro’s description
could have been that of any dark-complexioned Spaniard: “brown of face [moreno de rostro],
black beard that is growing out [barbinegro que le apuntan].” Likewise, don Diego de Torres’
distinguishing characteristics do not necessarily mark him as a mestizo: “a good-sized man
[hombre de buen cuerpo], not very tall [no muy alto], robust [robusto], a bit cross-eyed [un poco
visco de los ojos], and with scant beard [de pocas barbas].” García Zorro and Torres could be
easily confused with many Spaniards in the Nuevo Reino. Their physical descriptions do not
differ, for example, from that of Romero, who was from Spain. What made them “mestizo” was
not how they looked, but how observers, allies, and opponents identified them; this depended on
their bearing, clothing, speech, behavior, and peer group, in addition to their physical
characteristics.” (Rappaport 171–72 emphasis added)
What you just read was Rappaport’s description of key cases of Hispanics described by one
particular category, which was applied irrespective of its physiognomy, that is, a supposed
mestizo (Indigenous and Iberian), was labelled to Iberians who just so happen to look similar to a
typical mestizo. But Rappaport goes further, she reports how as early as 1627, a young slave
named Juan Mulato, was brought to the authorities by Diego de León, a merchant, because his
owner labelled him a slave even though by law, he should have been free. (Rappaport 173) What
she reveals of this case is that despite being labelled a mulatto, Juan Mulato was of Pijao
heritage, which would make him at least an Indian, but other documents have him as a mulatto or
“an Indian of the Pijao nation”, all this to show that these so-called “casta taxonomies” were
anything but rigorous taxonomies, but situational social class labels that depended on his
genealogy, social standing as well as the social standing of his parents. (Rappaport 173–74) More
often than not, his quality (a sociological category) overrides their phenotype, such as the case of
Cristóbal del Toro, who was described as mulatto “although white”, indicating that these
categories had exceedingly little to no relation to anthropological racial categories. (Rappaport
174) If terms like “mestizo”, “mulatto” and even “Spaniard” were this flexible and loose, what
then is the epistemological framework that the Viceregal operated before the nineteenth century’s
view of scientific race came into being? Rappaport reveals it quite so in Chapter 1:
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“The early modern term “raza”, which we can translate into English as “race”, referred more
properly to aristocratic lineage, distinguishing between those of “pure” Christian blood (Old
Christians) and the descendants of converts from Judaism and Islam (New Christians). This was
a moment at which important social attributes, including family honor and religion, began
to be thought of as being “carried in the blood.” In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
the public was concerned with the inheritance of spiritual purity─virtue─through blood
links, not the transmission of genetic characteristics.
Raza was an accumulation of spiritual virtue that a few lucky ones inherited from their
parents and grandparents, expressed through the metaphor of “blood.” We can see similar
referents at work in an eighteenth-century dictionary definition of Calidad: “The nobility and
luster of the blood [La nobléza y lustre de la sangre].” The same usage comes to the fore in a
discursive form employed by a member of the minor nobility (a capitán) of the Muisca
community of Suta, in the altiplano near Santafé, to argue in favor of his legitimacy to rule over
a section of the chiefdom: “It was and had been the custom to have as their authority… a captain
of the very lineage and race [un capitán de la qual linea y raza] from which issues don Juan
Guayana.” And it is clear in how don Diego de Torres, the sixteenth-century mestizo cacique of
the Muisca community of Turmequé, defended his right to govern his indigenous subjects by
appealing to his genealogical connections to Christian Spaniards: “For I am of such good blood,
flowing from Spaniards and Christians [Por ser de tan Buena sangre proçedida de españoles y
crisptianos].”“ (Rappaport 37–38 emphasis added)
What Rappaport just described was nothing different from what Albizu Campos elucidated in the
previous section in the definition of race in the Hispanoamerican ethos, thus what Rappaport
described and cited from other scholars, Albizu Campos knew in his 1933 speech on October
12th and his entire life since he studied the history of his fatherland. Rappaport even cites a
Spanish book by a friar on how genealogical survey was far more important than anthropological
racial measurements, the book talks about how a woman to be married is best ascertain if her
parentage and the religion of her parentage is found to be honorable and noble. (Rappaport 38–
39) What Rappaport emphasizes is that the modern notions of race brought about from the post-
Enlightenment epoch need to be discarded when analyzing the Viceregal era, whether it be
Viceregal Colombia or Viceregal Mexico; the notions of calidad and race were more to do with
social prestige of one’s parentage and socioeconomic rank than their phenotype, although the
phenotype was occasionally referenced, it was not absolute over their genealogical prestige and
was more incidental than causally determinant. (Rappaport 38–40) What this implies is that, even
in the case of describing phenotypic aspects, as was cited in the beginning, what really
distinguished a mestizo from another one was ultimately their social prestige, a mestizo of higher
class was more likely to pass off as “Spanish” quality than one of the rural communities, as
Rappaport documents elsewhere. (Rappaport 216–18) This means that “mestizo” is not even an
anthropological category, but a social one, even the category indio was not entirely racial, but
constituted a sociolegislative category confined with specific rights and duties that were not
always tied to anthropology. (Rappaport 7–8) Furthermore, Rappaport argues these categories,
especially mestizo was not homogeneous nor stable, as many individuals could opt in and out of
the category depending on the situation. (Rappaport 9–12) This also extended to the category of
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“Spaniard” as individuals that exhibited “Spanish” social habits and obtained their privileges
could often pass as Spanish legally even if their genealogy was mixed. (Rappaport 10) One case
Rappaport studies in the first chapter is that of Diego Romero, whom I cited earlier in
Rappaport’s work, she documents how Romero was able to identify as a Spaniard and even
attain Conquistador status and a number of privileges typically reserved to Conquistadors,
despite his genealogy being Moorish with an Islamic past, but the difficulty of him being
considered Moorish was because he was already raised Catholic since childhood and bypassed
the limpieza de sangre protocols, which were religious background checks that were to ban
certain religious non-Catholics from specific offices, all which Diego Romero could occupy by
demonstrating his Catholicity. (Rappaport 42–45) Another case of fluidity of these categories
were Francisco Suárez, who I have cited his case earlier in this section in a later chapter,
Rappaport explains in Chapter 1:
“Francisco Suárez’s wooing of doña Catalina Acero de Vargas is at first glance an iconic case of
passing as we understand it today (although the anxieties it evinces were very much part of the
early modern ethos). In contrast, the accusations against Diego Romero typify what passing
might have meant to sixteenth-century Santafereños. In both instances, racial
mixing─understood in the sense of raza as lineage, rather than as a genetic population─was
foregrounded: Francisco Suárez was an indio zambo of indigenous and African parentage, as
well as a commoner passing as a noble; Diego Romero was accused by his Santafé enemies of
being some kind of a mulatto. Sixteenth and early seventeenth-century definitions of
intermediate categories like “mestizo” and “mulatto” were fluid and broad. We have only to
remember Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s assertion that the offspring of a cacique and an
indigenous commoner was a mestizo to comprehend the volatility of early colonial categories of
Calidad. If Calidad was calculated on the basis not only of phenotype but also of behavior, then
what made people mixed is compounded several times over, while at the same time the hall of
mirrors created by intersecting uses of Calidad also opened up new spaces in which we can
investigate the broader implications of mixing is that of mestiza women dressed as Indians,
whose presence on the streets of Santafé and Tunja was ubiquitous.” (Rappaport 49–50)
Rappaport goes on to document how not only did these mestizas dressed in Indian garments with
some European ornaments mixed into it, but this clothing habit often would attribute them more
the Indian category than the mestiza category. (Rappaport 50) There is also another extreme:
mestizas with Spanish habit, identified as Spanish, such as Juana de Penagos, the daughter of
Juan de Penagos and a native woman, was never identified as mestiza but as Spanish as she
married Alonso Valero de Tapia and owned haciendas, confining her privileges typically granted
to Spaniards, a category itself of sociological nature. (Rappaport 97–98) All these examples, and
many others Rappaport documents all testify to what Emilio Acosta Ramos and Antonio Moreno
Ruiz discuss in their podcasts, demonstrating that not even the term “casta” is found in these
documents, as Rappaport argues in Chapter 1, indicating that it is more appropriate to speak of
Calidad than of “casta”, she also stresses how it is even more tentative than precise to speak of
“socioracial categories” as she argues:
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“It is indeed a challenge to confront a historical system that is so similar to, yet also so different
from our own, in which the same words─”mestizo”, “mulatto”, “negro”, “indio”, even
“race”─that at once connect with modern usages and yet seem so alien to us. The very fact that
no colonial term adequately conveys twenty-first century concerns over socioracial classification
reveals the enormous epistemological gap between the early modern worldview and our own,
cautioning us to be ever conscious that our modern fixation on “race” does not sufficiently
convey the ethos of the period.” (Rappaport 41–42 emphasis added)
What she just described here is precisely the error committed by many historians today that
continue to parade the myth of a casta society, which she rejects after surveying numerous cases
in the following chapters, she cites other scholars that have studied Viceregal Mexico arguing
that even when “casta” was implied, it was a very specific system tied to the social elites, and
only concerned marital matters, again indicating that the concept of race in that time concerned
genealogical prestige and not some “pigmentocracy”, thus Rappaport argues she continues to use
Calidad as she finds the term more consistently employed throughout the archives (Rappaport
208–10), which once more leads her to establish:
“Early colonial Santafereños did not negotiate their social worlds through the lens of a full-
blown caste system or even through a looser array of stable socioracial categories, but instead
disputed what constituted a mestizo or a mulatto─as well as a Spaniard or an Indian─not only
because people’s individual statuses were at stake, but also because these categories were not
entirely clear to anyone, and uncertainty as to who might belong to them prevailed. Indeed, it
remains in question whether such classes of mixed persons constituted sociological groups at all.
Identity, even physical appearance (including color), was not believed to be fixed or stable, but
was seen as highly malleable, subject to transformations generated by behavior, by the simple
process of aging, by official decree, and by the force of the imagination. Processes of
identification certainly revolved around aspect or parentage, but they also were grounded in
conflicting strategies for determining birthright, which only partially involved parentage and,
when they did, were primarily concerned with issues of honor and nobility.” (Rappaport 210
emphasis added)
It is important to underline those key aspects that have continued to define the concept of
calidad, such a concept was central to the ethos of the Hispanic Monarchy, and it is what allowed
other secondary and tertiary qualities of a person’s identity to remain malleable, because as she
points out, calidad was primarily concerned with honor, nobility, and genealogical prestige than
phenotype. Phenotype took a backseat. All that has been discussed so far validates not only
Albizu Campos’ arguments, but Alberto Buela’s characterization of the Medieval Catholic
substrate, that of the hierarchical nature of reality and the self-preferential outlook typified in
Maeztu’s Spanish humanism discussed in the previous sections. Thus, what the four authors
discussed in the previous sections all argued in their respective thesis, was reflected in the ethos
of calidad in the Viceregal society, thus, the primacy of calidad was central to the Indohispano
ethos of Hispanic civilization.
From here I believe concludes sufficiently the case of why these so-called “casta paintings”
should be more calidad paintings, and they capture the picture that Rappaport describes in her
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scholarly work more than “casta”, as it is a futile concept, and I will substantiate the nature of
this futility with Pilar Gonzalbo’s work: the trap of the castas and why it does not only not work,
but never existed to begin with. Gonzalbo’s analysis now concerns with Viceregal Mexico.
The trap of the castas: a look at Pilar Gonzabo’s thesis
“It is a trap because the idea of a caste society is very attractive. It seems to solve all the
problems for us to identify how they lived: they were estates, they were classes.... Castes...!
But it is not true, it is attractive as it is also attractive, the paintings of castes, that series is very
beautiful, and says many things: it says things about what they ate, what they wore, what they
worked on; what it does not tell us anything about, is the castes. So, it is attractive, but it is false.
Therefore, it is a trap.” (Gonzalbo Aizpuru, sec.¿En qué consiste la trampa?)
For Pilar Gonzalbo, there is a certain attractiveness, mainly in its simplicity, to attribute it to how
the Novohispano society operated, but as she mentions in the interview cited, it is a
misattribution to a term with very specific meaning, which she cites in her work, that even
among Hindu society, what really operated as a caste, was a caste defined solely by religion and
not by anthropological considerations of biological nature. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 24)
Thus even in a society that properly applied a caste system, it was a caste system specified by a
spiritual component more so than biological, and it was a system that the Portuguese that tried to
colonize the subcontinent of India tried to abolish eventually. (Moreno Ruiz and Acosta Ramos,
“Las Castas: ¿Segregacionismos En Los Virreinatos?”) In her same book, she makes it clear she
rejects from the outset a Novohispano society whose social strata was defined rigidly on race and
instead was a social stratum defined by social privileges from prestige lineages, which she argues
was only accepted by a minority and not implemented rigidly. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro
23) The key factors I will elucidate on what consists this trap and why it is false to assume a
caste based society, is one that Pilar Gonzalbo details in her work which I will present briefly,
though detailed as possible: the nature of limpieza de sangre, the baptismal (and marriage)
records, and the daily routine of society beyond the legal confines of Royal Decrees, some which
were attempting to alleviate the social limitations. What we will find is nothing different from
what Rappaport has found in Nueva Granada and more confirmation from the analysis of the
historians in the YouTube podcasts cited earlier.
Let’s commence with the limpieza de sangre, what consisted of this nature? Pilar Gonzalbo notes
that there was a huge gap in how even this notion of blood was understood back then from today
(Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 26) and was rarely applied as there are numerous cases where it
was bypassed, but when it was requested, it was usually restricted to specific offices of religious
nature that required a genealogy cleaned from heretical ideas contrary to Catholicism, which
unsurprisingly, were exempted by the indigenous because they were clean under this system due
to their gentility. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 25, 28–29) Gonzalbo notes that these
requirements of limpieza were more about the social and noble character of their lineage than the
phenotype of their ancestry, and more often than not, even the European visitors saw with
suspicion the entirety of Hispanoamerican society due to their cultural customs, irrespective of
quality. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 30) She then cites Antonio Ulloa who observed the city
of Mexico at his visit during the 18th century, which reads:
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“And returning to continue on the neighborhood it will be said that to the one of the people of
first class and one of the merchants follows the one of craftsmen and of people of trade, being
very grown, because this way it manifests it the workshops and stores where they work. In this
class there are families of all kinds: Spaniards, Europeans, Creoles, whites and of mixed blood,
resulting in the various castes that are known there. Some who are closer to the Spanish than the
Indian or black, and others the opposite. Each of these castes has a particular name by which
they are distinguished from each other, but in their class, they are esteemed as much as the others
because it is not blushing in the lines of castes to be less white than those of another. And so,
they engage in the same exercises, without qualm or distinction.” (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and
Alberro 31 citing Antonio Ulloa’s “Descripción de una parte de la Nueva España”)
As Pilar Gonzalbo said after citing, it would close the subject from all doubts without deserving
citing numerous testimonies in which this so-called “whitening” was something that the
inhabitants were indifferent towards, and I will show what those testimonies and factors are
briefly, but first a little context that Gonzalbo provides in the following chapter.
The origin of the Indie Laws and Royal Decrees to protect the land rights and dignity of the
Indians was born from knowledge of abuses that many of the religious orders put to attention
during the Antilles expeditions, this in turn motivated many of the Royal Decrees afterwards to
separate the Indians from the Spaniards in forms of republics, which of course, was not always
accomplished, but it at least helped conserved the lordship of the natives even if their political
hegemony was restricted to local government. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 43–46) This of
course was how the republics of indios and republics of Spanish emerged, but Gonzalbo notes
that the separation was not always accomplished in practice, especially in the metropolis where
Spanish rule had more influence, and more often than not benefited from the Indigenous
population there, even so, the separation was never due to racial considerations but because
many of the abuses that were observed in the initial expeditions weren’t just done from the
mulatto or even mestizo population, but even Spaniards as was underlined by the Royal Decree
of 1563, which mentioned how there were Spaniards of very bad and vagabond character
violating the Royal precepts, thus the separation was more due to social considerations, as racial
mixture still occurred even when the treatments were improved overtime. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru
and Alberro 47–49) Regarding the reciprocity in the urban areas observed by both populations,
Gonzalbo notes:
“It is clear that both needed each other. Recent studies have highlighted the importance of Indian
neighborhoods in cities, not only as integral parts of urban physiognomy, with their peculiarities
of urbanization and population, but also as corporate entities, with their own government, goods
and social organizations; far from the imaginary disorder considered by some authors. In Mexico
City, until the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the existence of different parishes for each of
them persisted, and the indigenous authorities were maintained while the population that
effectively resided in the barrios outside the layout of the capital decreased. When, after the
motuin of 1692, it was attempted to force the Indians living in the center of the city to return to
their neighborhoods, the proposals proved impracticable because, just as in the case of the
Indians living in the traza, originally intended for the Spaniards, there were also many Creoles,
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mestizos and mulattos living among the Indians, in the neighborhoods of San Juan, Santiago,
Santa María or San Pablo.” (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 49 emphasis added)
Pilar Gonzalbo mentions that the only place where, at least in theory, should have maintained a
more rigorous separation were in the ecclesiastical sphere, and even in here, the religious orders
felt inclined not to deny priestly orders to the Indians and mestizos, until after the sixteenth
century when the officials began to doubt of their worthiness due to, again, cultural customs and
inclinations more so than their bio-physiology, many which of course were bypassed in later
decrees. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 50) Regarding comments made by fray Gaspar of
Recarte on the abuses by some encomenderos, Pilar Gonzalbo notes:
“More than fifty years of Spanish rule had passed when fray Gaspar could already mention four
groups (Spaniards, mestizos, blacks and mulattos), along with the fifth group, the Indians, to
whom his plea referred. And the term mestizo had become generalized in place of the periphrasis
used during the early days, when they spoke of children of Spaniards and Indians. As for the
slaves, there was not the slightest doubt as to their infamous condition, but soon there were some
who began to purchase, and there were many small mulattoes, children of free mothers, who
therefore did not inherit the condition of servitude.” (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 52 emphasis
added)
Pilar mentions this because already as early as the sixteenth century, there was no clear
demarcation that the Spanish class was homogeneous as the casta myth would have it pictured,
but I will soon detail how far this ambiguity extends. Overall, from here is when Pilar Gonzalbo
cites the origin of how the parishes were required to annotate the quality or caste of their laity,
but as for how “to the letter” this was accomplished, Pilar Gonzalbo notes:
“Research in parish documents shows the extent to which this standard was disregarded. It is rare
to find any of these standards and, when they appear, they correspond to isolated years, are
incomplete and at most mention names and persons living in the dwelling. Even in the Parish of
the Sagrario in the capital, which preserves complete extraordinary series of, albeit with gaps, of
years from 1670 to 1816, it would be impossible to trace the qualities, marital status, occupation,
and descendants of family head of household. These are data that were rarely or never
annotated.” (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 53)
Regarding the term casta itself, Pilar Gonzalbo mentions how it was synonymous with lineage
with the additional attribute of responsibility and had exceedingly little to do with biology and
more to do with social standing, and she cites Sebastián de Covarrubias’ Tesoro de la lengua to
justify her claims. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 53–54) Regarding the supposed barring of
indigenous and mestizos from priestly order, the text was never absolute and was more of a
moderated suspicion, which was abrogated eventually in the Royal Decree of 1697. (Gonzalbo
Aizpuru and Alberro 54) Thus, before all these factors, Gonzalbo argues that the supposed
“society of castes”, even with the possibility of exceptions, is never justified before the archives
and documents analyzed. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 55) To illustrate further the
preoccupation of social status of the very mestizos, already by the decade of the 1530’s, there
were preoccupations by the authorities and ecclesiastical body on the illegitimacy status of many
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children born out of wedlock, which Pilar Gonzalbo underlines was never strictly a condition
attributed to the mixed children as Spaniards too experienced a level of illegitimate birth
(Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 26, 55–56), by the early seventeenth century, Gregorio García
considered that mestizos be recognized as “sons of Spaniards” and have their fathers’ inheritance
respected and recognized (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 56), of course, the issue was
determining the identity of the father, many which were unknown, thus mestizo eventually came
to mean a quality of unknown paternal parentage however assumed the father’s identity be
Spaniard, the issue was determining the social status of said father. Despite this, Charles V
decreed that the children of these mestizos to ensure proper investigation on the status of their
fathers and be relegated their proper duties and inheritances as well as not separate their children
from their indigenous mothers but also provide for their needs as well. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and
Alberro 56) Of course, it was not practiced immediately, but when it was implemented, the
difficulty of identifying the quality of the fathers persisted that the Royal Decree of 1674 already
recognized mestizos as “sons of tributary Indigenous mothers and unknown fathers.” (Gonzalbo
Aizpuru and Alberro 58–59) However it was not a rigid classification because the possibility
always existed that, if the quality and identity was recognized, the mestizos in questions would
always inherit the rights and duties of their fathers so long as the quality of their fathers made it
possible to inherit it, that is, if the father was of good social standing. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and
Alberro 59) Thus, we see that the problems that arose surrounding the mixture of races were
never questions of “tainting the biology” of the Spanish, but that in mixing, there were questions
of legitimacy, inheritance rights, questions of social disposition of the various qualities, all which
eventually were alleviated through the ecclesiastical sphere to educate them in good customs and
doctrine. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 61–62)
I now turn to the meat of the thesis that Pilar Gonzalbo highlights in the next chapter: the parish
documents. Pilar Gonzalbo notes that despite each caste having their own parish, as far as the
ecclesiastical authorities were concerned, baptismal and other sacramental registries were far
more important to record, especially if a native lived in a nearby parish typically populated by
Spaniards, the priests found no impediment to register them in Spanish parishes as opposed to be
sent to an Indio parish. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 67–68) Pilar Gonzalbo also notes that in
matrimonial records, they seldom recorded rigorously the quality of the pairs, if anything
sometimes only one of them were recorded, or none at all, and overtime, the etiquettes of each
parish document pretending to separate Spanish from other qualities was disappearing.
(Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 68) Overtime, many of the indigenous living in the urban areas
began to register in parishes typically occupied by Spanish than the parishes relegated more to
the Indian neighborhoods, adding to the confusion, which Gonzalbo notes that the requested
rigor to register the qualities of the parish records went largely ignored with no repercussions,
indicating that what really mattered to the parish was the recording of their baptisms, and the
need to register their qualities of course, was more a record to analyze their social standing more
than their biological appearance. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 70–71) To illustrate how the
baptismal records show no regards to not just the racial characteristics, but not even their quality,
Pilar Gonzalbo cites the baptismal record of the Sagrario parish, dated on 1603, in the baptismal
texts related to Spanish, she finds that of 510 baptisms, 29 were slaves, and 87 were of
illegitimate births, among which included Spanish and mulattoes, with their illegitimacy
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extending irrespective to their caste, as Pilar Gonzalbo notes, illegitimacy was not a condition
that depending on race nor class, she also mentions how in the same baptisms, Mestizos and
Indios make only 0.5% and 0.1%, respectively, but this is not due to strict identification but as
she mentions, some mestizos and even mulattos incorporated themselves to other qualities to
access certain privileges. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 72–74) Another observation that
surprised Gonzalbo were not only the disproportionate amount of free negros baptized in the
Sagrario Parish on 1635; but effectively all mulattoes are considered free children and men,
showcasing that there were a significant proportion of these mulattoes born from free mothers.
(Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 75) What about records of illegitimacy? Pilar Gonzalbo
documents that in the same 1660, there were parishes, from the “book of Spaniards” that reached
35% illegitimate, whereas in the Veracruz parish, 33%, showcasing that illegitimacy was not
exclusive to the other groups but was found just as common among the Spanish class. (Gonzalbo
Aizpuru and Alberro 26, 81) She cites other numerous anomalies to such a degree that she was
led to conclude that it was not even an anomaly, but that the parishes simply did not care whether
they belonged to a certain quality or not, commenting on all she gathered in the parish records:
“The disparity in the background is so great that it suggests the existence of an inconsistency of
criteria in who annotated the qualities. I would like to find some reasonable sequence in the
progressive increase or appreciable decrease of one category or another, but what can be seen are
abrupt alternative changes in which some quality appears, various groups are included or
disintegrate, some increase suddenly and others almost disappear and, overall, it can be
affirmed that there was no coherent, firm, and lasting norm.
The more we get to know the parish registers, the more doubts arise as to whether the parish
priests effectively knew and wanted to establish the differences in the quality of their
parishioners. The occasional appearance and disappearance of some census records, the
increase or decrease of certain groups and the frequent absence of data suggest that there were
no clear norms but rather variable routines and that in no case did they assume this as a
transcendental responsibility, but rather as an administrative requirement without
consequences.” (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 97 emphasis added)
Pilar Gonzalbo addressed briefly those who defend the use of census data to be accurate, but the
same pattern she observes in parish registries, she also observes in civic registries, arguing that
there was simply no attention to the relevancy of those differences, and instead affirm the
arbitrariness of these categories and further evidence that, when they did matter, only did so for
socioeconomic reasons and never biological. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 97–98) When
insisted once again on the accuracy of registering each parishioner by their quality, the late
monarch Ferdinand VII, the archbishop of Mexico, Pedro José de Fonte in 1815 responded, and
Gonzalbo cites:
“[…] The priests are satisfied with the simple statements of the interested parties, they do not
demand proof, nor do they argue with them, nor even if they know that they are of different class
do they embarrass them by showing them the insincerity of their stories.
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For this reason, Baptismal or Marriage Certificates only serve to accredit these acts, nor have
they ever been considered in court as reliable testimonies of the qualities of the individuals who
present them.” (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 99 citing Pedro José de Fonte)
Thus, for the archbishop, what really mattered was whether they were confirmed, baptized or
maritally certified, irrespective of their quality, which the parish officials felt no need to
negotiate.
Consistent with what Joanne Rappaport finds in her own work, Pilar Gonzalbo elucidates that, in
daily life, when a particular person was to be identified by their quality, it more often than not,
referred to their social station in society than their physicality, Gonzalbo explains:
“Undoubtedly, when faced with the need to identify an alleged offender or sinner, the authorities
looked for all the traits that identified him and among them was his quality; but since no one
presented himself to friends and acquaintances with the label of his quality, the information
gathered depended on the general opinion, expressed in the permanent declaration of “es tenido
por.” [it is taken as] The informants’ criteria could be based on physical appearance, but more
often it is clear that it refers to economic status, occupation and recognition in the community,
so, once again, it can be seen that the consideration varied when the same person, who
undoubtedly had not changed the color of his complexion or the shape of his hair, presented
himself as an established merchant, as a muleteer or peddler, or as a vago [vagabond] without an
occupation. The prosperous mestizo came to be considered a Spaniard and the same ruined,
fugitive, and miserable, he became a mulatto, “lobo” [wolf] or a coyote.” (Gonzalbo Aizpuru
and Alberro 101 emphasis added, translations in brackets)
This is very key to understand the following examples and documentation Pilar Gonzalbo will
mention and which I will cite briefly and is totally in line with what the historians Antonio
Moreno Ruiz and Emilio Acosta Ramos discuss in their podcast, and what Joanne Rappaport
sustains happened in Nueva Granada; all categories of qualities or “castes”, had more to do with
socioeconomic factors and perspective of their surrounding community than their
anthropometrics or biology. As she mentioned, the same mestizo that prospered and proved noble
was considered a Spaniard, the same one could be pejoratively remembered as a mulatto or
coyote irrespective of his/her physiognomy.
So, what are key examples that show the arbitrariness and socioeconomic dynamism of these
categories? Pilar Gonzalbo mentions the case of a peninsular Spaniard, Tomás Quintana, who
was identified as “gachupín”, but from other trustworthy documents, was described as
“amulatado”[mulattoized], while other testimonies affirmed he was mestizo. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru
and Alberro 102) As can be seen, and she affirms that it was no rare occasion that a vagabond or
criminal Spaniard be identified as a mulatto or lower quality, with those typically associated to
lower qualities, when they ascend socially, are classified as Spanish. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and
Alberro 102)
Another example of a Spaniard, this time a female, when suspected of heresy, to avoid being
judged by Spanish law, would identify as india (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 102), consistent
with what Éric Cárdenas talks about in his podcast with Emilio Acosta.
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Another example of a Spaniard identified as mulattoized, but testified under different qualities
was Pedro Antonio, despite being identified by others as mulatto, to the Inquisitors, he testified
as being mestizo, yet in the same trial he was described as presenting himself as “indio con
balcarrotas.” (Gonzalo Aizpuru and Alberro 102) Some of his neighbors would classify him as
Spaniard, yet other traits he would show to be that of a mulatto quality, but he himself would
consider himself indio. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 102)
It gets even stranger when considering census reporting, from a single neighborhood, differences
that coexisted, yet some would point out that these records show a disproportionate classified as
Spaniards as heads of prestigious families (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 103–04), but as Pilar
Gonzalbo reiterates:
“Now then, these undeniable differences had nothing to do with a harsh separation; on the
contrary, what is seen is that people of different qualities lived in the same house and even in the
same building, was occupied by a more or less numerous familiar group, of those who were
considered to be Spanish, while in the rooms, accessories, villas and inner courtyards were
housed the most modest workers or permanent unemployed, with no fixed occupation nor office.
And even the small proportion of heads of family castes who owned houses or were tenants of
principal dwellings indicates that there was no prohibition or limitation for them to occupy the
most comfortable homes.” (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 104 emphasis added)
In the working place, Pilar Gonzalbo notes various offices and occupations that were open to all
sorts of qualities, not just Spaniards, like trenchers and discipleship. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and
Alberro 107) She mentions how the teaching office was among the prestigious occupations that
were normally restricted to the Spanish class, but as she mentions, it was never absolute as she
mentions Juan Correa, a teacher of paintings, and of mulatto quality, that managed to gain this
position, but he was even an auxiliary to the Inquisition tribunal and a medic. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru
and Alberro 108) She mentions a study done by Castro Gutiérrez on a number of prestigious
occupations from a 1753 census where among them are a variety of registered qualities, few
which were Spanish, indicating that even the restrictions to the non-Spanish classes, were not
habitually followed nor had any legal consequences for violating them. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and
Alberro 109) Pilar mentions other studies from documentations of other occupations typically
relegated to Spanish, were also occupied by the mulatto and pardo classes such as the position of
blacksmith guilds, which sometimes required limpieza de sangre, but these mulattoes were able
to occupy it just fine, as well as José de Ibarra, who although of mulatto origin, signed
documents as a distinguished Spaniard with no consequences followed. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and
Alberro 111–12) These patterns are also documented by Pilar Gonzalbo in the higher studies
such as the liberal arts and in medicine. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 117–20) All these
examples showcase that the so-called system of castas was never practiced in the society and
what truly was the worry was origin of prestige and socioeconomic character displayed by the
appliers, many of whom were able to overcome it without problems.
It is by the eighteenth century when the distinctions of qualities begin to be more explicit, but
again, with the same socioeconomic nature, here, Pilar Gonzalbo observes how this first
manifested in the preoccupation of mixing of the qualities in the matrimony, what she observes
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to be a preoccupation of “unequal marriages”, one which had a nature of social inequality, not
racial. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 126) Pilar Gonzalbo observes this by around the mid
1700’s with members of noble families wanting to introduce the impediment of social inequality
to justify barring matrimony, but the ecclesiastical authorities found no reason to place them
under Canon Law as it was no issue for The Church for over 200 years since the discovery.
(Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 126–27) What she documents then, is that The Church, without
changing Canon Law, has adopted an attitude of prudence to avoid tensions of socioeconomic
inconveniences, despite being an institution that valued more the freedom of choice of marriages,
but because it was not put into Canon Law explicitly, there were cases where they could opt for
“loopholes” and exemptions against the parents’ wishes, but most of these cases were restricted
to the noble class or any family considered “decent” in the socioeconomic sense. (Gonzalbo
Aizpuru and Alberro 128–29) Many of the restrictions of course, were promulgated by the Royal
Audiencias, where The Church attempted to not circumvent them in secrecy by their own
volition even against their doctrines, but there were likewise cases where, at least heads of
households or families of noble lineage, they could circumvent them by appealing to their
inheritances as a means to allow the unequal social class to be taken into their caste, and others
could wait to turn 25 or any age of independence to marry of their own accord, either way, many
of these restrictions were more to do with socioeconomic interests that tried to protect privileges
of noble classes that were not impediments to lower classes. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro
130–31) Pilar Gonzalbo points out:
“In all the cases submitted to royal decision, they were families of the nobility or of the viceregal
plutocracy. As in the previous stage, there were other reasons as important or more important
than ethnic origin for opposing a marriage. In 72% of the cases of opposition presented, before
the Audiencia, no mention was made at all of any consideration related to race or appearance;
only 28% of the remaining cases were based on the established norm as sufficient criterion for
recognizing inequality, and no solid arguments were put forward, but rather relied on suspicions
and murmurings. In all cases, the racial question was used as a legalistic justification that
concealed the real causes of disagreement: family enmities, lack of fortune, bad habits or
personal antecedents of dubious behavior.” (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 131 emphasis
added)
She also mentions that although the qualities were registered, for example, in the book of
Diligences in the Mexican Archdiocese, 37% mentioned mixed pairs with no importance to their
qualities affecting their caste, so long as they were able to give credibility to the notoriety of
inequality, which was very that these cases were processed. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 132)
From this context emerges the “gracias al sacar” legal requests to petition social ascent by the
late third of the eighteenth century, which again, were specifically petitioned in offices of high
honorific that required the limpieza de sangre process, many which were conceded to as Pilar
Gonzalbo mentions, on top of that, it was a relatively cheaper processes compared to aspiring for
a noble title, legitimization and even 12% cheaper than paying for an internship in seminary.
(Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 132–33) Despite this, Gonzalbo notices that these were still
scarce because as was demonstrated, these were hardly needed for qualities of less prestige, not
only that, she also cites Konetzke’s Colección de documentos of various Royal Decrees where
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the qualities of various people played very little role save one, on January 18th of 1760, but it was
very weak despite recognizing the merits of Pardo commander, whereas the other Decrees
constantly allow pardos and other castes to undertake prestigious positions without paying for
“gracias al sacar” which they potentially could if they had the conditions necessary to even
competently work on those positions. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 134) Regarding
legitimacy, as was shown, and she further elucidates in the eighteenth century, it was a status that
was irrespective of quality, as she notes that from the census data dated to 1800, very few have
successfully petitioned for legitimizations, with Nueva España issuing very little (17.2% on
Mexico City and Guadalajara). (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 134–35) To further complicate
matters, already by the end of the seventeenth century, the Novohispano society has already
made distinctions between “the noble and republicans” and “the plebes” which Gonzalbo notes,
had no differentiated qualities, among which even Spaniards were found among them, she cites
don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, saying:
“being pleue [equivalent to plebe] so extremely pleue that only it can be, of which it is the most
infamous, and it is the most infamous of all pleues, because it is composed of Indians, blacks,
Criollos and Vosales of different nations, of Chinos, of Mulattos, of Moriscos, of mestizos, of
sambaigos, of lobos, and also of Spaniards who, in declaring themselves saramullos (which is the
same as rogues, pimps and arrebatacapas) and degenerating from their obligations, are the worst
among such dastardly scum…” (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 136 citing Carlos de Sigüenza,
additional comments in brackets)
Pilar Gonzalbo notes that people like Ortega y Montañez would rather trust the negroes, mulattos
and indios than the conglomerates of the plebes, with the Indians only preoccupied of revolt
when the government exacerbates their problems and abuses against them. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru
and Alberro 136) She also cites the Duke of Linares on the same opinions of the plebes, as well
as others such as Carlos Francisco de Croix, to his successor of even a third category in society,
the “populacho”, which is similar to the plebes distinguished by others, as a population perceived
of bad social habits, which Gonzalbo points out such was the major division among people.
(Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 137–38) The same is also expressed by Juan Antonio Vizarrón y
Eguiarreta, who governed the archdiocese of Mexico by the mid of the eighteenth century, when
he was to endow a woman applying for pious deeds in his prelate, among the requirements, she
was to belong to an honorable and distinguished Spanish family, which Pilar Gonzalbo underlies
that the qualification that such a family be honorary and distinguished has no bearing on the
genetic Spanishness but the class associated to such a class, which as we have previously seen,
the Spaniards were also found among the plebe class, once again showing that the so-called
“casta society” was absent, even on the description of Hipólito Bernardo Ruiz Villorroel, who
also occupied many offices in the Viceroyalty, does not seem to distinguish meticulously among
the qualities when speaking of the plebian class and general Viceregal society where he observes
all the “castas” coexist with no clear division. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 138–40)
A lot has been unpacked from Gonzalbo’s thesis, but it is to illustrate just how the “casta myth”
is not only a falsity, but a trap as she qualifies it, because as she summarizes it, with the parish
registries and all that was discussed, and tying it to Joanne Rappaport’s work: these so-called
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castas, were anything but rigid categories, but as flexible as the relationships of the people that
held it, and there was always the chance that one could incorporate into the higher stations so
long as they had the means and credibility to do so, which they often could get if they could have
circumstances favor them. (Gonzalbo Aizpuru and Alberro 151–52) The kind of society that
Nueva España, Nueva Granada, Viceregal Perú and virtually the entire Hispanoamerican
continent, operated with this same principle, granted, some Viceroyalties had different names for
each categories, some had more, some had less, some qualities weren’t as pejorative in one
Viceregal society as another, but the nature of these qualities were always the same:
socioeconomic, dependent on the social station of one’s lineage prestige, tied to the estimation of
one’s community and as Gonzalbo points out numerous times; were never rigidly legislated
qualities in a neatly segregationist manner. As she also mentions, these social hierarchies did not
prevent interracial marriages, much less prevented among the plebian stratum, but the nobility
could also opt for loopholes to graft lower qualities to their house, whether said quality proves so
by their merits or the adopters could write them off as Spanish with their resources available.
Thus, connecting back to the previous chapter; Hispanoamerican society had no racialatrous
dispositions toward their heritage, to them, the noble character of their family name was more
important, and this sense of hierarchical family is as old as the low Medieval ages and further
back, substantiating Alberto Buela’s treatment of Indohispanidad. What I have also uncovered
was substantiation from Vasconcelos’ epilogue in his Mestizaje III chapter, that is,
Hispanoamerican society was a developing empire that underwent all three stages of mestizaje,
all culminating in the third stage, with the second stage defined more by the formulaic and social
arbitrariness of qualities avoiding tainting their lineage in the socioeconomic sense, which all
culminated contemporarily to the third stage as more marriages leaned more to aesthetic and an
artistic sense of marriage.
The Hispanic Monarchy as a generator empire: Gustavo Bueno’s analysis of Spain’s Imperialism
When Maeztu defined Hispanidad in the first Chapter of his book, Maeztu gave all Hispanic
countries an imperial belonging, that is, as an empire, The Hispanic Monarchy encompassed all
its provinces under its banner and have embedded them to its ethos. What is the nature of this
empire? What does it even mean to speak of an “imperial identity” and what do we even mean
by an empire? Gustavo Bueno here will be able to help us answer these questions in his book
España frente a Europa, which ─also whose citations I translated─ is a philosophical treatise
that attempts to study the philosophical baggage tied to the concept of Spain as a nation, a
geography or as an empire in multiple categories that he considers throughout his work.
Why has the Hispanic Monarchy, conceived itself so different from other nations in regard to
concepts such as its unity of its countries, provinces, in regard to identity, whether itself as an
enterprise or to the constituents of its empire? How could an empire maintain or construct an
identity in light of other countries of their own identity? What would it mean to adopt one model
of identity over others? How would that affect the identity of its subordinates? All these
questions are ultimately philosophical, because as Gustavo Bueno points out, the nature of
nations and countries, all have philosophical concepts intertwined to things such as identity,
unity and the idea of nation itself, as he explains in the Prelude:
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“[…] because philosophical are the Ideas of Nation, Empire, as well as those of Unity, Identity,
Whole and Part. Any historian, or any political scientist, who uses these Ideas or others of their
semantic constellation when speaking of Spain, will be philosophizing, even if he pretends to be
doing only political science, or positive history, because the subject he is dealing with will force
him to go beyond the strict limits of his historical or political scientific discipline. A recent
example can be taken from the work of Henry Kamen in his book Philip of Spain, whose positive
rigor we do not dispute. But Kamen says: “like many other countries in Europe, ‘Spain’ was not
[at the time of Prince Philip] a unified state, but rather an association of provinces sharing a
common king”. It seems that Kamen accepts the possibility of a “non-unified State”, and this is
perhaps with accepting the possibility of an unclosed ellipse. The State, from a philosophical
point of view, always says (we suppose) unity of totality, only that the unity “is said in many
ways” (the ellipse can have two centers at very diverse distances, which oscillates from zero, and
then it converts itself to a circumference, to infinity, and then it converts to a straight line). It is
as if Kamen were to understand that the only strict or authentic State is the centralist-unitary-
totalitarian State that only the circumference is the true ellipse, with the compact unity of its two
centers merged into one. But this compact State exists only in the books of political theory;
however, the confused ideas of State and Province which Kamen utilizes authorize him, it seems,
to write Spain in quotations.” (Bueno 9–10)
Thus, when we speak of national identity, we are also bringing in our philosophical baggage to
those concepts as much as how we would even treat racial unity, and this is tied to how one even
conceives the concept of unity and at what point it is valid to speak of such unity. (Bueno 10–12;
31–33) Gustavo Bueno elucidates how ancient Hispania even experimented various
transformations of identity while maintaining a unity that was able to incorporate a past that
reinforced other sense of unities and identities throughout its development as a province and still
maintain a legacy with the Roman Empire. (Bueno 12–13) Maeztu has made similar remarks in
the treatment of the Being of Hispanidad, because as Gustavo points out in his work, even if it’s
not exactly a strictly philosophical treatise, it inevitably includes philosophical exercise to
determine the nature of said identity and unity involved when speaking about Spain and the
constituent Provinces of Spain, and how Spain even involved itself in an identity that could be
greater than herself while being the instrument behind it. From here, I will jump straight to
Gustavo Bueno’s treatment on the idea of the empire from a philosophical point of view. First
off, Gustavo Bueno wants to put aside not just theological and even psychological acceptance of
empire (Bueno 171–72), but he even sets aside the pejoratively implied term in colloquial
parlance of the term, arguing how it is equivalent to a pacifist zoologist refusing to analyze
predators simply because predators are violent towards animals below the food chain. (Bueno
174) Thus, when analyzing the various acceptance of empire to analyze the imperiality of the
Hispanic Monarchy, it is necessary we disassociate from emotive categories packed into the term
by colloquial parlance as it is useless in philosophical analysis.
Gustavo Bueno mentions how the term empire is not univocal, that is, it does not restrict itself to
a single concept, but has five acceptances of the term with concepts congregated and intertwined
to each other in relation to the term, each term with varying degrees of emic and etic descriptions
(Bueno 174–75), that is, descriptions that attempt to explain a sociocultural phenomenon from
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the point of view of the agent or the outside observer from those experiencing said circumstance,
respectively. (Bueno 462–63) That means, for example, how Gibbon in his work Decline and
Fall of The Roman Empire, is referring to a specific category of the term, nor is it’s easy to
specify if the description Gibbon is providing is an emic or etic description, as Gustavo Bueno
points out as well as how equally difficult is to analyze what sort of categories and descriptions
are they utilizing when describing empires or even what is meant when one empire truly existed,
and if this truly existed is one of an emic or etic proclamation in light of history. (Bueno 175)
Thus it is important to keep these intricate methods of descriptions in mind when describing
empires in history as, depending how we describe the phenomenon and what category one
assumes in the moment of describing it, we might have very different conceptions and terms of
empire with different implications that might underline certain theological and psychological
conclusions that may confuse these categories rigorously differentiated. I will elucidate what
these categories are, though Gustavo points out that while they are differentiated, that need not
imply they are inseparable. (Bueno 175)
The first category is Empire as a faculty of the imperator, that is, a subjetual concept of the
empire; is the capacity to rule and to govern, Bueno underlines have ethological concepts that are
not spiritual but require a physical persuasion, and it is a category of second or reflexive order
because it already presupposes a political society for which to exercise said rule with a specific
hierarchy already present in said society for which it is to exercise government. (Bueno 183–85)
The second category, is the space of the action as imperator; that is, it too presupposes a space of
anthropological nature from an already presupposed society for which to not only exercise a
certain rule, but to which extent this governance extends to various spaces, geographical and
political, thus, Gustavo points out this is the category referred when historians speak of natural
borders of the Roman Empire, referring not simply to physical borders but the political borders
for which the Imperator wishes to exercise his power. (Bueno 187–88)
The third category of an empire is one conceived as a system of States subordinated by a
hegemonic State (note, State here is taken from a functional category, not necessarily one tied to
the modern sense (Bueno 241–42)). In other words, this categorical acceptance of empire is of
diapolitical nature, that is, there is at least two major entities involved, with one having major
hegemony, while the other, or others, revolve around its power, while not disappearing. (Bueno
189–90) Gustavo Bueno identifies three types of relationships these States can exhibit within an
empire as follows: oriented from the hegemonic State to the subordinated States, oriented from a
reciprocal relationship between the subordinates to the hegemonic State, and a coordinated
relationship between the subordinated States, it is the second relation he observes is the most
common not only of the objective diapolitical empire, but it is also one characterized by the
predator empire whose relationship to the subordinate States disappears because the subordinate
States, because of the nature of the hegemonic State, is such that the subordination exploits and
disintegrates them as its power expands. (Bueno 190–91) It’s a structure of sovereignty, but of
“zeroth degree”, that is, one which not only does not recognize one above itself (theoretically),
but one which has no States in a condition of subordination because only the hegemonic State
remains, but this is only in theory, but in common parlance, Gustavo Bueno observes that the
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imperialism most have in mind of this sort of relationship, is of the predator kind, an empire that
is not interested in generating new states but in incrementing its solitariness. (Bueno 191–92)
Such empires can also be classified to the extent of how much subordinated States or how
solitary (at least close enough) the hegemonic State is, Gustavo Bueno outlines three, one is the
minimum diameric empire, which is one which the subordinate State, happens to, in some limits,
become the very hegemonic State, and Bueno cites the empire of Napoleon as an example, and
the one of Jacobo I In 1806 when he self-proclaimed himself the Emperor of Haiti; The second is
the intermediate diameric empire, which he cites the Roman Empire as an example, an empire
which constitutes imperial cities and vassal States surrounding the hegemonic State; finally, the
maximum diameric empire, which Gustavo Bueno argues has never existed in history because
such an empire would extinguish the idea of the State (again, not the modern State but a
functional concept of State), thus it is a limiting ideal like that of ideal gases in Physical
Chemistry or the Perpetual Motion in Physics. (Bueno 193–95)
The fourth category of an empire is a metapolitical category that, in one respect, is purely emic
of theological nature in which the condition of the subordinate States is contemplated by a
theological entity that justifies the hegemony of the representative hegemon exercising power
from the plane of the third category. (Bueno 195–97) In other words, Gustavo Bueno discusses
how, from an emic plane, the ancient conception of an empire, is one forged from a theological
point of view that transcends diapolitical projects. (Bueno 197) The second faculty that such an
empire can manifest is the idea of a Universal City or a Cosmopolis (or Universopolis, as
Vasconcelos would term it) able to encapsulate all the constituents of the empire to an idea that is
beyond the diapolitics of the empire. (Bueno 197–98) In practical terms in how this idea is
manifest, Gustavo Bueno points out that such category is manifested of an idea-force that is
codetermined by the subordinated States, from an ideal inherent in the empire, in other words;
the fourth category is an empire categorized metapolitically from the subordinates, complicit in
an interior ideal of the hegemonic State that propagates ideas or themes that expand the empire’s
prestige from an ideological plane beyond the diapolitical affairs of the category. (Bueno 198–
200) Gustavo Bueno summarizes it like this:
“We conclude, then, in general terms, by saying that the transpolitical (or metapolitical) Idea of
the Empire, as an activity aimed at the birth of a (universal) Cosmopolis, comes from places
outside the Empire and can be assumed, as an internal ideology of this Empire, first, in the time
of Augustus, through Stoic formulas (tu regere imperio populos...) and, second (from
Constantine onwards), through Christian formulas. The Emperor will now begin to be, as if he
were a priest, representative of God on Earth; on the coins of 330, the Emperor will already be so
‹‹by the Grace of God››. Trinitarian monotheism will be revealed as the theology most
appropriate to the Imperial Monarchy of Constantine. It is in this where the idea of the Universal
and unique Empire that will prevail throughout the centuries, and whose formula could be this:
‹‹from God (or by God) to the Empire››.” (Bueno 201)
The final category of the empire is the empire as a philosophical idea, that is, the empire as a
philosophical device to describe other ideas of empire in history, which Gustavo Bueno
underlines, is a political impossibility because such category is precisely an abstract category of
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empire, not as a utopic ideal, but a revertible limit. (Bueno 206–07) This is where Gustavo
Bueno highlights, for example, how in this category, it is intelligible to speak the idea of a
particular empire, which approximates the concept of a Universal Empire tied to the Human
Genre. (Bueno 205, 215–16) What this means is that empire in the fifth category, is a descriptive
device of philosophical rigor that attempts to analyze various historical enterprises, however
dominating their extent is, the political morphology that was undertaken by various groups
throughout history; how they influenced various cultures and geographies, independent of their
theological or cosmological justifications. (Bueno 213–14) Thus, the fifth category is a
philosophically descriptive device to analyze various imperial feats, regardless of their political
structure, that which constitutes an idea of incorporating all of humanity under an ideal.
How would the Hispanic Empire fit into each of these categories, where then, would Gustavo
Bueno put the Hispanic Monarchy in this analysis? He would place it under the generator
empire, which is an empire that generated cities, provinces and culturalization of its subjects, as
he describes in his analysis in Alexander the Great’s empire and the Roman Empire (Bueno 224,
227). With the Hispanic Monarchy, it is undoubtedly that it would fall too in the category of a
generator empire, which Gustavo Bueno defines as an empire that is measured by the
involvement and development of various societies under its hegemony by, for example,
concession of the empire’s citizenship. (Bueno 465) Gustavo Bueno describes how the generator
aspect has been present as far back as Alfonso X, a Universal Civil Monarchy, whose pre-
requisite was the Catholicization of its subject societies, even without the requirement of
obligating to learn the language of the empire, but that it was sufficient to be conceived as a
Universitas Christiana, as the friars saw the indigenous, because for Alfonso X all the way to
Charles V, the most important aspect was not the ever expansions and dominations of future
territories but to maintain a sort of Pax Católica of its subjects to defend against religious
enemies. (Bueno 340–43) Gustavo Bueno argues in the chapter cited:
“The idea of Empire of Charles I, without prejudice of being constituted around the Universitas
Christiana (as a general precondition), would have had from the beginning a strictly political
conformation (not religious-positive), even Ghibelline, as the Idea of Empire of Alfonso X had:
the Civil Universal Empire (not ‹‹damaging››) can only be an Empire shaped on Christian
kingdoms already existing or to be created; it cannot be an Empire shaped by barbarian or
idolatrous societies, nor an Empire of domination over schismatic peoples (Muslims and, perhaps
also, Protestants), but as the only way to achieve the very political unification of peoples in a
non-predatory or tyrannical way.
[...] The main objective of the Empire of Charles I will be to keep the Ottoman Empire within its
limits, just as the objective of the Roman Empire and Augustus and his successors had been to
maintain the pax romana in an immense territory, but surrounded by barbarians. It was not,
therefore, a question of extending the Empire more and more by means of domination,
depredation or tyranny. A generator empire can only grow over Christian peoples (or others
would say: ‹‹over civilized peoples››), and not to take away their lands, laws or privileges,
but to maintain peace between kings and sovereign and independent princes.” (Bueno 342
emphasis added, italics in original)
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Thus, the imperial feats of the Hispanic Monarchy have been one shaped by Catholic principles
of an idea of an empire that wished to incorporate all of humanity (at least in theory) under the
Catholic banner, supplementing what all the four Hispanic authors analyzed in the previous
chapter of this monograph. It also illustrates how the Hispanic Monarchy has implemented a
Catholic version of what the Roman Empire called pater patria, where the emperor was seen
more as a father figure of every household and society that he was responsible to look out for as
a father looks out for his children and family members in his immediate household. (de Silva,
“Kinship: Living as a Family in the First-Century World” 195) This is what sociologists call a
fictive kinship, which is as ancient as even the Old Testament, as is testified by Philo of
Alexandria when analyzing the Old Testament laws concerning households, that it would be
better to disown a heretical blood relative and incorporate an adoptee that preserves the religion
of the ancestors because the former implies a threat to the integrity of the religious honor of the
kin, which was more important to look out for than preservation of blood. (de Silva, “Kinship:
Living as a Family in the First-Century World” 194–95) This is in stark contrast to how the
National Socialists viewed kinship and society in general, showcasing once again that the
Hispanic ethos is grounded in explicit Catholic sociology and principles down to their
fundamental aspect of their being. Next section I will detail how this Catholicity was expressed
in the empire throughout its lifetime as a testament to its generative nature.

The Catholic Monarchs and Valladolid Debate

In this chapter I dedicate three main lines of evidence from the Hispanic Monarchy that further
substantiate the generative nature of the Hispanic Empire, as well as the Catholicity inherent in
the empire and how these events further cemented the Catholic ethos in the Hispanic identity,
whether in the American continent or outside it. The first one is the famous Codicil of Isabel The
Catholic on 1503, written alongside her Testament before her death, the second is the Papal Bull
Sublimus Deus published on May 29th of 1537, finally the third one is the Valladolid Debate
taken place on 1550 between Bartolomé de Las Casas, and Ginés de Sepúlveda, on the morality
of the conquest of the Indies. In each evidence we analyze the contents that demonstrate the
Catholic nature of both the administration of the empire as well as how these laws formed part of
the Catholic ethos of the Hispanoamerican identity.
The 1503 Codicil of Isabel The Catholic
The 1503 Codicil is attached to the Testament that Isabel I left before her death, in this Codicil,
are clarifying notes and additional testaments that the testifier added under Isabel I’s wishes,
among them is paragraph 11, which reads:
“I also command that inasmuch as the Pope has granted us the Islands and Tierra Firme of the
Ocean Sea discovered and to be discovered [America and the nearby islands], and as it was my
intention to procure, induce and attract the peoples who populate them to the Catholic faith, and
to send to the Islands and Tierra Firme prelates and religious and clerics and other learned
persons... to instruct the inhabitants of those lands in the Catholic faith, and to teach them good
morals. In addition, I most affectionately beseech the king my lord, and I charge and command
the princess, my daughter, and the prince, her husband, that they do so and fulfill it, and that this
be their principal end and that they put much diligence into it, and that they neither consent nor
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give place to the Indians, neighbors and dwellers of the Indies and the Tierra Firme, If they have
received any offence, they are to remedy it and provide for it so that it does not exceed in any
way what was commanded and established in the apostolic letters of the said concession.”
(Isabel I de Castilla, para.XI emphasis added)
As we have analyzed in Gonzalbo’s work, it is obvious that this Codicil was not always obeyed
by the inhabitants, however this testifies that the empire’s concern for the goodwill and Catholic
education of the inhabitants always be peaceful and without force and to not enslave them. (de
La Prada) Obviously there were abuses even after this Codicil, but as Albizu Campos argued in
his October 12th Speech, her Codicil was crucial in establishing the legislative spirit that was
inherent in the imperial enterprise of the Hispanic Monarchy as exposited in Gustavo Bueno’s
work.
Sublimus Deus: The Papal Bull before the debate
This was a Papal Bull published on May 29th of 1537, the paragraphs of interests are the
following, which I cite in full:
“The enemy of the human race, who opposes all good deeds in order to bring men to destruction,
beholding and envying this, invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder
the preaching of God’s word of Salvation to the people: he inspired his satellites who, to please
him, have not hesitated to publish abroad that the Indians of the West and the South, and other
people of whom We have recent knowledge should be treated as dumb brutes created for our
service, pretending that they are incapable of receiving the Catholic Faith.
We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord and seek with all our might
to bring those sheep of His flock who are outside into the fold committed to our charge, consider,
however, that the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the
Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring
to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any
translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical
dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding
whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people
who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the
possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they
may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property;
nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no
effect.” (Paul III emphasis added)
As was read, Paul III has affirmed the dignity of the human person of the indigenous Americans,
it even found it worthy to publish it not under as an encyclical but as a Papal Bull, and it even
affirms that both, the original and translations of the same Magisterial document, is morally
binding and ought to be obeyed and that the Indians be instructed in the faith and Catholic
teaching. (Paul III) I will bring this expressly crucial point when dealing with objections
regarding the language written of MBS to fallaciously tie it to its authority. Overall, Sublimus
Deus also follows from the Isabel Codicil as well as the Burgos Laws and other Royal Decrees
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that reinforce the virtuous treatment of the natives and even to the slaves in the Americas,
demonstrating the Catholic principles exercised at the administrative level, civically and
ecclesiastically, in the empire.
The Valladolid debate: Las Casas versus de Sepúlveda
The main paper ─whose citations I translate as well─ to help us contextualize and analyze the
debate of Valladolid is one written by Ana Manero Salvador. The debate revolved on the
legitimacy of the conquest, and how the preceding events were only stepping stones to lead to
the culmination of the great debate between Las Casas and de Sepúlveda, among the preceding
chain of events that were crucial were the legislations of the 1512 Indie Laws that were a
consequence of the friars criticizing the abuses of some encomenderos, and especially the
sermon of 1511 by friar Antonio de Montesinos condemning the injustices done by the
authorities against the indigenous Americans. (Manero Salvador 86–88) Before I enter to
elucidate Manero’s analysis of the debate, it is helpful to contextualize the philosophy and
policies of each of the two interlocutors, and how their positions were argued in the debate, and
the conclusion of the debate, which I will analyze in its own sub-header, both Manero’s
conclusions and mine with all that was expounded thus far in this chapter.
The first one is to contextualize Las Casas. Las Casas adhered to the concept of “the noble
savage”, first conceptualized by Pedro Mártir de Anglería, which was a concept that theorized
that through Natural Law and tendencies, one could arrive at Christian truths and morals, and
Bartolomé de Las Casas and Luis Vive observed this, they believed, in the good conduct of the
Caribbean indigenous people groups when Columbus arrived in the Bahamas and Hispaniola as
well as Cuba and Borikén (indigenous name of Puerto Rico); praising their innocence and
without any ill-will towards them. (Manero Salvador 88–89) Casas would contrast this to the
“barbarian civilization” of the Spaniards that colonized these natives because it was
characterized by the lack of natural humility and good-willed he saw in the American Indians.
(Manero Salvador 89) Manero, citing Pérez Luño, mentions how Casas had three phases of
iusnaturalist thought regarding natural rights, the first one is the voluntarist phase, a thought
grounds natural right grounded in God, the second phase a more naturalist one that finds natural
inclination in man in equilibrium to Nature, and the third phase, the rationalist phase, one that
argued reciprocity of reason and liberty in man, with the second phase more central in the debate
Las Casas had with Ginés de Sepúlveda. (Manero Salvador 90–91) Las Casas would argue in his
Apologética Historia the natural right and capacity of self-governance of the American Indians
and demonstrate their natural humility and good-will in said work by citing not just similarities
in their ancient traditions to the pre-convert Europeans, but even categorize the American
Indians’ traditions as superior to the European by citing numerous factors in their cultural
customs that testify to their cultural richness and wisdom that he believed was arrived through
Natural Law. (Manero Salvador 91–93)
Next is the nature of barbarity attributed to the American Indians, which in his same Apologética,
was able to categorize: first kind is the generic sense, characterized by strangeness or strange
customs, the second kind, characterized by ignorance to written alphabet or written knowledge;
the third kind, characterized by a lack of social strata or organization and have perverse customs,
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and the fourth; the gentiles; which Las Casas identifies to the American Indians and only the
third kind is where Las Casas and Sepúlveda would agree compose the “natural servants” in the
Aristotelian tradition and barbarian in the truest sense. (Manero Salvador 93–94) From here Las
Casas’ contextual debate position ends.
Next is Ginés de Sepúlveda’s position to contextualize. Manero indicates that it is helpful to keep
in mind Democritus Primus’ Just War Theory, which Sepúlveda maintained in his conqueror
position in the debate, which in brief, war should only be declared when all pacific methods have
been thoroughly exhausted, but Manero underlines that Sepúlveda and Primus differed crucially
in how Sepúlveda incorporated the Aristotelian servant into his conquest ethics in Primus’ Just
War Theory to justify subjugation of the American Indians. (Manero Salvador 94–95) When
expositing the Democritus Primus, we find no justification to wage war on the American Indians,
but Sepúlveda attempts to do so in his Democritus alter, sive de iustis belli causis apud Indos
book, the following are Sepúlvedas’position regarding the American Indians and why he believes
it is justified to subjugate them through force if necessary: one is that the Indigenous Americans
were less cultured and less civilized, and thus needed the subjugation of the Spaniards to lead
them to civilization, two was that, to Sepúlveda, the Indigenous Americans committed sins
against Natural Law such as anthropophagy and human sacrifices, third, following from the
second, was that such acts affected innocent victims within the indigenous population which he
felt the need to intervene through war and subjugation, and fourth, to preach the Gospel, and
through force if need be. (Manero Salvador 95–96) Another related reason was that Sepúlveda
justified the conquest was the idolatry they committed and authorization by the Papacy as well as
those same idolatrous acts that offended God, thus, waging a sort of holy war on behalf of the
Catholic Crown. (Manero Salvador 96) Before this, Las Casas’ Lascasian position was very
adamantly pacifist, unconditional even, because for Las Casas, the American Indians deserved no
warfare waged to them and that we ought to follow the example of Christ to preach the Gospel
and tutor the natives in Catholic conducts consistent with Christ’s teachings, which were contrary
to waging the war Sepúlveda was justifying. (Manero Salvador 97) From here, we can now
appreciate the context of the debate as well as the arguments put forth of this debate.
I begin to establish a convenient format to follow along the argumentation of each interlocutor so
that it is easier to keep track of how Las Casas responded to each of Sepúlveda’s arguments,
which were four central arguments. (Manero Salvador 100) I will label BLC and GS for
Bartolomé de Las Casas and Ginés de Sepúlveda, respectively. Let’s see the arguments:

Argument 1
GS: Sepúlveda argued from the Aristotelian “natural servant”, on the basis that such barbarians
were practicing strange and harmful culture and needed to be subjugated because they did not
conform to natural reason, and if they resisted after exhausted peaceful methods, war was to
follow; thus, Sepúlveda argued this justified the American Indians to obey and let themselves be
ruled by the Spaniards. (Manero Salvador 100–01)
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BLC: Arguing also along Aristotelian logic, Las Casas emphasizes that even among barbarians,
there are four categories that are also grouped in two major sets of barbarians: the properly called
barbarians (which is exclusively the third category as explicated by Losada and Abellán, authors
cited by Manero who studied Las Casas’ distinctions and the one that Sepúlveda refers to), and
the improperly called barbarians (those of the first, second and fourth category), Las Casas thus
responds to Sepúlveda by pointing out that Sepúlveda fails to make these intricate distinctions
when referring to the American Indians and that the warlike subjugation cannot apply to them
since Las Casas argues the American Indians fall more into the fourth class, the gentilic sense of
barbarians. (Manero Salvador 101–02) Las Casas sustained that the nature of civilization and
character the American Indians displayed did not justify classifying them under the third
category nor wage them war as their civilizing needed to be done peacefully. (Manero Salvador
102)
Nonetheless, Losada asks if Las Casas was fair to interpret Sepúlveda’s “servants by nature” as
being tantamount to “inferior condition by nature”, as Losada argues that, for Sepúlveda, the
former did not imply a condition in essence but more a condition that is second nature and
mutable by culturalization, leading Losada and Manero to conclude that what they truly differed
in this argument were perception of the facts, whereas Las Casas saw the American Indians as
civilizationally superior and morally upright, Sepúlveda saw they lacked proper conduct and
needed the Spanish moral tutoring. (Manero Salvador 102)

Argument 2
GS: Sepúlveda appealed to the anthropophagy argument to justify subjugation against the
American Indians, comparing them to the OT Canaanites that God commanded to be destroyed
by the hand of the Israelites, and by connecting it to idolatry, Sepúlveda argued the American
Indians needed to be subjugated. (Manero Salvador 102–03) Additionally, Sepúlveda argued that
not only their idolatry offended Natural Law, but they also even offended the Faith of the
Catholics, and under public and pontifical authority, he argued, it was justified to wage them war
to subjugate and evangelize them. (Manero Salvador 103)

BLC: Las Casas dealt with this argument in two ways, one was refuting whether the American
Indians were subjected to the jurisdictions Sepúlveda believes were in force to begin with; and
two, was the penalty in regard to their idolatry by The Church.
Las Casas argued that the four jurisdictional faculties (domicile, origin, vassalage and crime
committed) were never possessed by neither the Pope nor the Christian princes in the Indies, not
only that, by these jurisdictions were bound the Moors and Jews in the Christian kingdoms in
which they lived, that they indeed were subjected to respect the same civic laws as the believers,
but in respect to religion, The Church exercised no such faculty, that was only reserved to the
heretics, who knew the faith but refused to preserve its traditions and dogmas. (Manero Salvador
103)
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In regard to the status of infidels, Las Casas argued that, in act, they were not subject to The
Church because they were ignorant of the Faith, Losada develops said argument from Las Casas
this way:
“Although Christ [had] been granted [...] power in heaven and on earth over all peoples,
[whether] faithful or unfaithful [...] and thus all the peoples of the orb [were] subject to him by
the authority and power over every creature which he received from the Eternal Father, not only
as God, but also as Man; yet not all men are subject to him in act or effect, nor even as to the
execution of the power granted to Christ. As to act and effect, there are men who are not subject
to Christ on the part of themselves, since they are unfaithful and sinful, by their unfaithfulness
and rebellion, of their own will, they are not subject to Christ by not acting in conformity with
Christian piety [...]. Such men [...] not knowing Christ nor obeying his commandments, are not
subjects in act or in works, but only in potency. Now, however, they will be in act and effect once
they are [regenerated by baptism].” (Manero Salvador 104 citing Losada)
In regard to sin of idolatry, only The Church could punish those who under her jurisdiction she is
able to exercise said penalties, situation that did not apply to the American Indians because Las
Casas, following Augustinian reasoning, The Church, regularly speaking, has no jurisdiction
over them although they ought to submit to her, but without frustrating their freedom of choice.
(Manero Salvador 104)

Argument 3
GS: Following from his second argument, Sepúlveda justified warlike subjugation in grounds
that the innocent victims of said sinful activities would require intervention by a power that
would help remedy the injustices inflicted upon the innocents among the Indigenous population,
and at the very least, the ones committing the acts should be battled in defense of the innocent
victims, because to Sepúlveda, all men are bound to follow Natural Law, and an empire that
abhorred violations of such acts was ever more reason to intervene in warlike methods. (Manero
Salvador 104–05)

BLC: Las Casas once again re-emphasizes the issue regarding jurisdictions, which, Manero
citing Abellán on this specific refutation, is presented in three ways:
1. When the infidels were in act, subjects under The Church, which Las Casas argued was
not applicable to the American Indians.
2. When they in act, they concretize the jurisdiction they had only in potency under
evangelization duties, but such exercise was only in very specific circumstances and with
delicate care to be taken when such criminal acts were to be committed by the Indians.
3. When they voluntarily accepted baptism, which only implied spiritual jurisdiction, not
legal nor civic.
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For Las Casas, the innocence of the American Indians implied that it was the duty of The Church
to take them in their care and provide them utmost protection by teaching them the Faith, which
could not be achieved during warfare. (Manero Salvador 105)
However, for Las Casas, the most problematic issue was the licitness of bringing war to a
population that inflicts harm and lethalities to innocent victims, Las Casas argued, under
Lascasian pacifism, that even under such a case, the costs would outweigh the benefits too much
to tolerate, and argued that Natural Law dictates that we should instead offer to God that which is
the most precious and honorable, and that not only would warring the American Indians cause
intolerable casualties to the victims, it was a war not based any penal nor legal principle.
(Manero Salvador 105–06) Thus, for Las Casas, the greatest strategy to remedy those violations
of Natural Law was to simply change their religion and encourage them to change their ways
with the most pious acts that would convince them to drop their barbarities. (Manero Salvador
106)

Argument 4
GS: Sepúlveda argued on the facilitation of evangelism to the American Indians by two methods:
by exhortations and doctrines, and by force and fear of penalties; both methods Sepúlveda based
them from Saint Augustine’s necessary compulsory violence from the threat of any man erroring
so gravely that it may lead to their damnation and such acts may put in serious jeopardy to
themselves, although Augustine only applied this to heretics, Sepúlveda extended it to the
American Indians. (Manero Salvador 107) The purpose of the second method was to suppress
any impediment to evangelization done from the first method when peaceful methods are
frustrated. (Manero Salvador 106) Sepúlveda argued that such methods were defended
historically since Augustine justified the same from the Parable of the Banquets in Scripture.
(Manero Salvador 107) According to Losada, Manero cites; the first method was preferable since
one can only be loyal meaningfully if done so voluntarily and not forcefully; while the second
method was necessary to fulfill Natural Right to save the souls of those who are leading
themselves to damnation, which as mentioned earlier, Augustine justified it against the heretics,
but Sepúlveda extended it to the American Indians, because to him, Christian Emperor already
utilized it to isolate evils and since the number of believing princes grew, extending the doctrines
of Catholicism, Sepúlveda argued that it should be used as a useful method to likewise expand it
to the Indies. (Manero Salvador 107)
More on the second method, Sepúlveda argued that the usefulness of said method was to provide
justification to the American Indians that those defeated in war by the Catholic victors, would be
convenient and sensible to imitate and adopt their customs and belief systems since not only
would they curb the criminal idolatries, to Sepúlveda, but help save the innocents, which would
want to convert, all utilizing the second method; and Sepúlveda justified this by appealing to the
Papal Bulls by Alejandro VI, underlying the duty to evangelize those of conquered lands to the
Catholic Faith and to submit the Indies to the Hispanic Empire and punish the barbarians since
the empire is to be a Catholic Empire. (Manero Salvador 107–08)
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BLC: Las Casas points out three major errors in Sepúlveda’s argumentation, the first one was to
point out that Sepúlveda stretched inappropriately Sain Augustine’s compulsory violence because
the context was only towards heretics, which was not a condition applicable to the American
Indians who did not even knew the Faith and could not be accused of such. (Manero Salvador
108) Las Casas points out that The Church only held jurisdiction and could licit such dictum by
Saint Augustine against three major groups: the Jews and Moors, the apostates and heretics, the
Turks and Moors who attack Christians in times of war; all three did not apply to the American
Indians because they belonged to the category of pagans and idolaters that lived in faraway lands
which had no contact with the Faithful like the aforementioned groups. (Manero Salvador 108)
The second error consisted in conflating these very categories and lumping all into one
homogenous groups of infidels and apply jurisdictional powers to The Church which she did not
have on particular and distinguished groups. (Manero Salvador 109) Finally, the third error, was
Sepúlveda’s misapplication and misinterpretation of the Banquet Parable, which Las Casas found
foolhardy and inappropriate to argue that a group of people that have never heard of Christ, are
to be compelled to be converted through arms and that Christ ordered His Church to undertake
such prerogative to such people when such Parable lacked any exegetical basis to justify such
methodology. (Manero Salvador 109)
The fruits of the debate and Hispanoamerican Ethos: a conclusive commentary
According to a report in the Council of Indies on July 3rd of 1549, Charles V was so worried
about the spiritual and social conditions of the natives, that he prohibited any expedition unless
specially requested by The Emperor. (Manero Salvador 98) The debate was held on August 15th
of 1550, where the two distinguished men would debate their strongest points in front of
theologians and jurists to evaluate all the arguments put forth in the debate. (Manero Salvador
98–99) This was a significant debate, because it is something never before seen in Imperial
history, an Emperor of the greatest empire, ceased conquest from the pleas of a friar to defend
why they must reconsider the methodologies that Sepúlveda was to justify in the debate.
(Manero Salvador 98–99) With this panorama and all the arguments put forth, what was the
result? Who won? Who was declared victor? Several authors that analyzed this debate believe
the debate to be inconclusive, for Las Casas, he believed the jurists favored his arguments,
whereas Sepúlveda argues the contrary, others explain the discrepancy by arguing that the
theologians favored Las Casas, but the jurists leaned more towards Sepúlveda. (Manero Salvador
109–10) Despite the inconclusiveness, Manero points out that the debate did bring forth fruits
that would appear to favor more Las Casas wishes on 1556, the Viceroy of Perú decreed
instructions regarding the settlement of the Spaniards, these were the Ordinary Route or Pacific
Route, and the Extraordinary Route or Military Route. (Manero Salvador 110) The former was to
be the regular expeditions of friendly relations, evangelization and cultural integration to the
natives, while the latter was only resorted to as an emergency in case the natives rebelled and
were hostile towards Catechesis. (Manero Salvador 110) According to Manero, the debate
provided a definitive argument for the rationality or rational capabilities of the natives and to be
considered men, while Las Casas never conceded gradations, Sepúlveda argued the contrary and
that those gifted with more capabilities ought to culturalized those not-so-gifted, which he saw
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such a case with the American Indians. (Manero Salvador 110) Manero then concludes that the
debate also provided insight into the Spanish thought in the Imperial expedition from two
clashing views, with Las Casas as a passionate defender of the dignity of the natives and their
potential to better themselves, with Sepúlveda a passionate defender of the Imperial glory and
nobility of the Spanish action. (Manero Salvador 112) Manero cites Abellán how Las Casas
defended a sort of Universal Medievalism while Sepúlveda was justifying a sort of “Renaissance
Nationalism”, Las Casas found Alejandro VI’s Papal Bulls sufficient to justify evangelization but
not to wage them a holy war, whereas Sepúlveda found it an opportunity to tutor them into their
culture, which he saw as better than the American Indians. (Manero Salvador 112) Finally,
Manero concludes by quoting Tomás y Valiente how with all the heroisms, cruelties, colonization
and the mixing of bloods, Spain gave birth to a mestizo America. (Manero Salvador 112)
Those seem to be the fruits of the debate according to Manero and the authors she cites. As for
me, I believe there is a lot of truth to her analysis, but I do not believe the debate establish
definitely the rational capacity of the natives, nor do I believe the debate was revolutionary in
understanding the natives’ nature, however it was very novel and extraordinary in the sense it
was a debate that an emperor called forth because he was concerned with how the natives were
being treated as reported by Las Casas and other friars who likewise called out the mistreatments
that were happening, though not exaggerated as Las Casas would, but they existed nonetheless,
as they exist in every place in this world. The debate was evidence that the Hispanic Monarchy
had a Catholic soul, a Catholic heart truly concerned with the conquests, with the ethics and
preoccupied with the status of its subjects, including especially the native inhabitants of the
conquered territories. The debate was an excellent example of a generator empire that exhibited a
coherent Catholic ethos, obviating its flaws and shortcomings. The Hispanic Monarchy generated
numerous centers of culturalization, integration, it provided a framework for all its subjects to
find solace and an identity that transcended their geographic and racial barriers. Despite all the
shortcomings and flaws the empire had, despite all those errors found in the independences and
the nuances pointed out by Maeztu, the empire provided a civilizational identity, an ethos that
neatly and smoothly cohered with a Catholic ethos, it took this ethos to a level no other empire
dared to humbly take. It is this ethos that Hispanoamericans must recovered as Maeztu,
Vasconcelos, Albizu and Buela have maintained in their works analyzed here, by analyzing and
meditating on these contexts of the Hispanic Empire, can an authentic sense of Hispanoamerican
thought, culture and ideals be generated, whatever ideals they may manifest themselves, it is an
ethos that recovers that greatness analyzed in this chapter, and while, again; there were abuses,
violations of precepts, decrees and rules, there were annoying bureaucratic social ladders; these
difficulties did not impede the benefits from forging a sense of being in the Hispanoamerican,
and all other countries that have a belonging in the Hispanic Catholic ethos.
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Part Three: Conclusions and Answers to Objections

This part summarizes all I have exposited in the two previous parts, synthesize various
arguments that follow from all I have elucidated in this monograph, and answering various
objections that may be launched or already have been launched to the thesis of this monograph
even during writing of this monograph. I show why these objections do not hold water in light of
the evidence presented and principles exposited and why the Hispano Catholic ethos surmounts
all opposition laid against its solution to the problems exposited in the first part by these interwar
nationalisms.

Summary and Conclusions

A lot has been covered in three chapters, two of them which showed how, from The
Magisterium and Catholic intellectuals that understood the religion’s ethos, was incompatible
with National Socialist theories on race, culture and civilization as well as Fascism; and one
chapter to show how the Hispanic ethos had a Catholic substrate that allowed it to overcome the
problems associated with Nazi-Fascism and to analyze key aspects of this ethos, the nature of
this ethos, how it was able to reconcile various forms of sub-constituent identities into one
imperial identity, I have also analyzed the historical and cultural context behind said ethos after a
philosophical analysis and how the Catholic ethos provided grounds to synthesize the Hispanic
identity. I will summarize what I have exposited so far and what conclusions can be drawn from
this, as well as some strategies to deal with cultural and philosophical ruptures with Hispanics
from the Fatherlands, and those of the diaspora community.

Overview of the tensions and incompatibilities

The encyclicals, MBS and NoAB, after rigorous contextual and Magisterial analysis that led to
their publication; demonstrate that The Catholic Church and the ethos of Catholicism have
shown insurmountable obstacles to National Socialism and Fascism, these obstacles manifest
themselves in the sacralisation of aspects of society which The Church saw inappropriate to
elevate beyond its standard value, National Socialism in particular not only exaggerated but
sacralised the observable differences in different racial groups and created arbitrary barriers in
the name of “the divine law of race” or “natural law”, expressions which clearly represent
sacralisations which The Church saw as inappropriate, in Fascism, The Church observed
sacralisation of the State and its depositories of powers that sought to undermine The Church’s
influence in politics and the civic sphere, which were condemned by preceding encyclicals such
as Quanta Cura. These encyclicals and the historical analysis, as well as contextualizing the
Fascist doctrines have shown how NoAB not only established a problem that was known for
years since The Enlightenment, but even justified the unpublished Humani Generas Unitas,
which was a large summary and treaty of all preceding encyclicals condemning National
Socialism and Fascism, at least the core doctrines that define said worldviews. These doctrines
have demonstrated tensions and conflicts with the Nazi-Fascist State which led to persecution of
The Catholic Church in the Interwar period which are acknowledged by the historical documents
and the scholars that examine this period. The evidence from The Magisterium and Catholic
Intellectuals well-grounded in The Magisterium and Church Tradition elucidate these obstacles
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as too strong to surmount and reconcile without fundamentally changing and distorting the
original doctrines in question, namely, the totalitarian nature of the State, the subordination of
The Church to the depositories and whims of the State, and the subordination of The Church to
racial consciousness with arbitrarily rigid barriers. In sum, the sacralisation problem is the most
central obstacle in these ideologies and/or worldviews, which spread to other aspects of how
these worldviews interpret the world that conflict with The Catholic ethos from The
Magisterium’s perspective and the Catholic intellectuals that saw the problems where others
compromised.

The Catholic view of race and the Hispanoamerican ethos

Both in the encyclical analysis and in the Hispanic Catholic ethos analysis, I have shown that the
Catholic view of race is one of integrationist nature as opposed one to a segregationist,
bastardizing nature which disallows any possibility of mixed bloods to reconcile two seemingly
“opposing” races in their identity. In the Hispanic Catholic ethos analysis, I have documented
from four key authors ─Ramiro de Maeztu, José Vasconcelos, Pedro Albizu Campos and Alberto
Buela Lamas─ how that integrationist nature of racial consciousness manifested itself in the
Hispanoamerican ethos. The integrationist nature, as shown in Vasconcelos, created the
conditions to develop an imperial, continental identity capable of surmounting seeming racial
incompatibilities through the concept of a Cosmic Race grounded in an active hospitability
ethics, elucidated by Buela in a rigorous philosophical analysis of Hispanoamerican identity, the
same author, as well as Albizu Campos and Maeztu, have pointed out that the symbiosis of two
worldview was ultimately thanks to the nature of the Catholic ethos that has been conserved
throughout the ethnogenesis of the Hispanic Empire’s different races, this in turn generated an
identity that has disregarded racial barriers that others have raised where The Catholic Church
has attempted to tear down, the Hispanic Empire applied successfully in a civilization where race
meant, according to Albizu Campos, a perpetuity of virtues and institutions defined by the
Catholic ethos and that concretizes virtuous character dispositions across multiple lineages able
to overcome their limitations, geographical, racial, national, etc; all this summed up in Maeztu’s
Spanish humanism born out of a Catholic soteriological argument summarized in Don Quixote’s
expression “One is not more than another but does more than another.” This Hispanoamerican
ethos was analyzed likewise from a historical context by touching upon key themes pertaining to
understanding how said civilization worked from an institutional and generally social level, such
as analyzing the futility of the Castas propaganda, being ungrounded in the historical documents
and archives, as well as elucidating on Gustavo Bueno’s philosophical analysis of an empire,
showcasing that the very expression has various acceptable categories not restricted to the
political sphere, and this helps to understand the notion of an imperial identity from the point of
view of specific categories of the concept of empire itself, finally I have listed key Medieval
Catholic historical contexts that defined and substantiate those same elucidations, such as the
Papal Bull of Sublimus Deus, Isabel I Codicil’s and an analysis of the Valladolid debate that
helped put in perspective the character disposition of the empire throughout its history from the
point of view of two central interlocutors in said debate: Bartolomé de Las Casas and Ginés de
Sepúlveda. From this I have concluded that to truly appreciate a notion of Hispanoamerican
thought, whether the arts, political philosophy, and philosophy itself; one must understand the
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context that birthed said ethos revealed by the four aforementioned authors and take into account
the history analyzed regarding the empire’s attitude to race and class in the expeditions, which
according to historians and scholars such as Joanne Rappaport and Pilar Gonzalbo, the views of
race were seldom of bio-anthropological nature but more of a socioeconomic nature and social
disposition, whether by community perception of reputation in one’s family name. In sum, this
analysis concludes that not only is Catholicism proper incompatible with National Socialism and
Fascism, but neither is the Hispanic ethos compatible with National Socialism nor Fascism since
the Hispanic ethos was born out of the Catholic ethos in a fundamental sense.

Epilogue: The split between The Fatherlanders and The Pochos: a

reconciliatory strategy
There is one informal expression utilized by Mexicans in the Fatherlands towards Mexicans in
the US, and by extension, all Hispanics of the diaspora community, that term is pocho, which is a
term used to describe Mexicans of said heritage but were culturalized in the United States’
culture, barely resembling the culture of their parents’ fatherland. (“Pocho”) Conversely, many
Mexican-Americans, especially those politically conscious regarding specific socioeconomic
problems they experience within the US, refer themselves as chicanos, though that has certain
controversial tones to some even within the same Mexican-American group, however, the term
pocho, Nuyorican and other ethnic terms, usually launched because of deficient language
proficiency, are also packed with cultural baggage that the fatherland in-group perceive to be
lacking in the out-group of the same Hispanic category of the diaspora, thus more often than not,
connotes derogatory tone. (Arrieta 181–82) Regarding pocho itself, some Mexican authors, such
as Horacio Sobarzo, pocho even implies a “rooting out” of the homeland. (Carrasco) Thus, from
an in-group/out-group standpoint, the fatherlanders, or those who feel a sense of cultural
belonging and deep familiarity to the country they were raised, experience tensions and negative
perceptions towards the diaspora community, the reasons could vary, but the central theme is
cultural detachment aside language proficiency. The latter often takes a more comedic tone, but
the former, I believe, is the defining serious tension between these two groups. In the
Introduction, I have mentioned how the diaspora class, the “pochos”, are the most prominent
group to adopt these foreign ideals and philosophies as a consequence of their deculturalization
away from the fatherland, though there are some even within the fatherland that adopt these
foreign worldviews alien to the ethos of their fatherland, in this case, such a group could be said
to be “pochofied” or more formally, foreignized if we are to use Maeztu’s assessment. In my
experience, I have come to determine three main class of pochos with varying degrees of
foreignizations and kinds of foreignizations involved, I will define them as follows and underline
what distinguishes them from other categories, and then generalize them from a Maeztuian
assessment:
Pocho of the first kind: This is the Pocho I believe to be the most common, it comes in different
sub-categories, but the major defining feature of the foreignization of this pocho is one defined
by a “yankification”, that is, its foreignization is primarily defined by how he or she perceives
the US American culture and ethos, its socioeconomic prestige or potential compared to the
Hispanoamerican. The Pocho of the first kind is defined by an adoption of certain US American
cultural niches (regardless of political leaning) that he or she believes are best to incorporate,
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even superior, to the ones he or she perceives to be deficient or lacking in those born in the
fatherlands. An example of this, to this pocho, the “siesta work ethic” exposed by Buela, is
inferior or deficient, compared to the Protestant work ethic criticized by Alberto Buela in his
work. For this Pocho, Alberto Buela is mistaken and/or close-minded, even goes so far as to label
Buela and others of similar arguments as resentful, jealous or “acomplejado” to the superior
work ethics of the US American, and blames its current economic, third world status on
continuing to hold to the siesta work ethic. For Alberto Buela and the fatherlanders, the Pocho of
the first kind presents a threat to the telluric basis that defines the Hispanoamerican ethos, as well
as other cultural niches similar or related to the US American work ethic. There is also praising
certain social character dispositions to the US American and even their political and philosophic
framework that this pocho sees deficient or inferior to the Hispanoamerican, and employs
arguments that try to convince the fatherlander that he or she should adopt said character
disposition, political, philosophical paradigms or cultural practices, whether this manifests in
how they view time, how they treat the concept of extended family, how parents and their
children co-exist even so far as beyond 18 or 21 years old, etc; anything that the US American
does different in these areas from the Hispanoamerican, the pocho of the first kind believes the
latter must adjust itself to the former’s expectations, while selling to the Hispanoamerican that
such incorporation will present no identitarian crisis or conflict whatsoever. With all I have
analyzed from Alberto Buela’s work, you can begin to see why the fatherlanders, even if they do
not articulate it as formally as I have done here; see this class of the diaspora with derogatory
remarks even a threat.

Pocho of the second kind: The foreignization of this pocho is not looking towards the Yankee,
but to outside the American continent, this can range from looking towards the philosophical and
cultural tenets of Western Europe (whether postmodern or even Interwar period Europe) or as far
as in countries like Russia or China. This Pocho is extraordinarily foreignized because unlike the
first kind, which limits its foreignization at least to Northerners of the Americas, at least
primarily; the Pocho of the second kind feels that the future lies in incorporating anything
outside the continent. To him, countries like Europe, China, East Asia, have better philosophical
system that can restore or reset the Indohispano project halted in the independences. A specific
sub-class of this Pocho are the ones that romanticize the Interwar Modern Europe, which this
monograph mostly addresses. This Pocho believes that Hispanoamerica has no authentic
philosophy to incorporate even from a continental standpoint, and instead, argues that the
Hispanoamerican should look and incorporate the ideals of Interwar Europe like Fascism,
National Socialism, the Iron Guard; any of these ideologies, and impose them as Hispanic elites
implement other ideals like the liberalism of the USA or the Marxist Communism, whether that
be the Soviet Russian model or any other model outside the philosophical sphere of
Hispanoamerica. Furthermore, this Pocho goes a step further and even renounces and distance
himself from the mestizaje of Hispanoamerica and wishes to reverse the process because he
thinks (rightfully interprets so) that Adolf Hitler’s National Socialism does not allow for race
mixing, and because said ideologies are better to combat the liberalism of the United States and
the West in general, therefore─ they believe─ mestizaje must be eliminated from our ethos. From
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Alberto Buela’s point of view, not only this Pocho attacks the telluric aspect of our ethos, but
even attacks the Spanish humanism aspect of the Medieval Iberian that comfortably reconciled
himself with the native and other races he incorporated to his empire. Because of the near
exclusive appearance of this class in the digital media, the threat is not as perceived nor
appreciated in daily life and common parlance, but those grounded in the ethos that do encounter
this class likewise display the same derogatory view as to the Pocho of the first kind under the
same premise: cultural detachment and foreignization.

Pocho of the third kind: The foreignization of this Pocho is still there, but unlike the first two,
this one, although recognizes some level of foreignization, it displays a shift in mindset, a sort of
reversal to foreignization, instead of justifying his/her foreignization, he or she attempts to de-
foreignize his/her mind. This class understands that there is value to foreign ideals, but he or she
must do the work to first familiarize himself with his Fatherland to build a philosophical and
cultural filter that is able to properly determine which ideals can neatly synthesize with the ethos,
and which cannot, which can pass by no problem, and which require serious modification to
incorporate to the ethos. This class of Pochos seeks to study and nourish from his/her cultural
roots and to undergo a re-familiarization of his fatherland. To this Pocho, familiarity to his
fatherland is a first requisite to conclusively determine which ideals he had previously are worth
keeping. This Pocho already comes with certain biases and philosophical baggage that may or
may not be compatible with the Hispanoamerican ethos, but overtime, he familiarizes himself
with the fatherlands, and filters out which ideals are compatible to the ethos, and which are not.
Which help supplement it, which further sabotage and weaken it. For Alberto Buela, he is a self-
rediscovering Hispanoamerican, shedding away all elements that threaten the ethos of his
identity as a Hispanoamerican, because, overtime, he realizes the basis of the ethos of his
fatherlands, and accepting it, he rediscovers his heritage and a groundwork to develop authentic
thoughts that pertain to the particularity of his culture.

If we are to employ this analysis to a general Hispanic community, what we find is that the first
and second kind are simply different manifestations of the foreignized Hispanic community
Maeztu saw take place in the Peninsular territory as well as in the American territory, and the
third kind is a category that willfully undergoes a deforeignization. In the Pocho of the first kind,
he believes all US American ideals (liberal, progressive, conservatives, etc) are to be
incorporated and emulated into the Hispanoamerican continent, the second kind believes the
foreign must come outside the continent. France, Germany, Russia, China; Hispanoamerica
either way, cannot re-discover herself and cannot even restore her glory from within, she needs
outside source, she is incapable of resorting to self-discovery, someone must discover her again
and re-initiate the process anew from different sources. If you believe this is a different form of
arguing against colonization, you would be correct, because the same people that propagated the
Castas mythos are also the same one propagating the decolonization platform. The foreignized
Hispanics, even those raised in the fatherlands, engage in a form of colonialism in, applying
Gustavo Bueno’s philosophical analysis of empire; the fourth category, a sort of metapolitical
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colonialism of predatory nature that attempts to limit Hispanoamerica’s own self-discovery and
authentic development. This colonialism is not exclusive to the so-called “right wing”, this is
manifest even in the ones calling for all people to “decolonize” but decolonize to then be
colonized by another power structure defined by a sociopolitical stratum that subjugates the
Hispanoamerican to an ethos antithetical to her authentic one. Indeed, taking Alberto Buela’s
analysis in his Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente, because we are not like the West, and because
of the West’s rampant liberal colonialism, the West needs to colonize through a medium that
attempts to homogenize Hispanoamerica to said order, but there is also “another phantom West”
that is not in power, that it too seeks to redefine Hispanoamerica, and that phantom is the West
defined by the Interwar Europe that claims to be the inheritor of illiberal West. For Alberto
Buela, such entities must be resisted because Hispanoamerica must defend an ethos that was
born out of taking a different path even to the other traditional Westerners.
What I observe in this phenomenon reading Ramiro de Maeztu and the other three authors is that
Hispanoamerica is simply not allowed a voice to re-establish herself. Whether it be out of spite,
envy, fear, whatever it may be; the logic of the foreignization of Hispanoamerica is the same one
Maeztu elucidated in his work, and as I have pointed out in his section, it remains unsolved
because the most popular course of action is for the Hispanic to imitate, to emulate, to copy, to
“LARP (Live Action Role-Playing)” (as is termed in some niche Internet generation); but she
cannot dare to even try to be authentic, from all sides, she is reminded of a mixed past that she is
constantly told she cannot reconcile because they are so different, and she must pick a side. One
end tells her she is a bastard of the Catholic colonizers, the other tells her she is a bastard of the
colonized Indians whose mestizo descendants are without an identity, reinforcing the notion that
Hispanics can only imitate and copy, reminding them and reinforcing a vicious cycle. Our
education system is educating historians and philosophers that only tell Hispanoamerica what she
is without having herself tell who she really is as she sees herself. How can someone possibly
feel motivated to seek self-discovery when you are silenced from telling your own story while
others speak for you? This is not comparable to someone who is unable to speak because of
circumstances out of his control and requires genuine help of others to speak on their behalf (and
even in such a case, the one speaking on his/her behalf speaks according to how the victim sees
herself). This is a situation where Hispanoamerica is not allowed to reinforce and rediscover
herself. The factors are multiple, from fear of being discredit, fear of ridicule, peer pressure;
numerous are the factors.
From a Maeztuian point of view, so to speak; the fatherlanders are alone. They are the only
source the Pocho of the third kind has as reference for self-discovery, because they are the only
ones who can know intimately what that ethos is, formally, informally; consciously,
subconsciously, regardless, only the fatherlander knows what the fatherland is just as a parent
knows who his child is. Alberto Buela’s work shows that the many different views and names of
Hispanoamerica only give a glimpse, some nail a key important aspect, others distort it, others
are outright misrepresentation, but very rare are they complete descriptions. This is a problem for
the Hispanoamerican grounded in his ethos. He would need to articulate this ethos, whether in
arts, philosophy, politics, in culture; the split between the fatherlanders and the diaspora is
precisely the level of foreignization manifest in the latter, but there is also a special class of
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foreignized Hispanics, those born in the fatherlands, but voluntarily choose to not only foreignize
themselves, but the fatherland as well. This is not a new class, as Maeztu saw this in his
countrymen and describes it also happened before the civil wars in the early 19th century. To
make something very clear, if it wasn’t clear enough (perhaps as a consequence of foreignization
too): I am not trying to argue that foreign is malicious and that we must reject all things foreign.
The nuance is in the mindset in how this foreign is treated. As Maeztu illustrated, if we are to
emulate others, we should emulate those things that can cohere with the ethos because, from the
internal logic of the ethos, it too can accommodate such, but in order to accomplish such a task,
one must know what that ethos is and what it consists, assignment that is very much lacking in
the foreignized precisely because they overemphasize the need to incorporate others’ with no
work to develop and nourish the native ethos. And how can the foreignized ever hope to
successfully reconcile an idea, to an ethos he does not even understand nor know? Thus, the
suspicion and pejorative nature of the term “Pocho” and other Hispanic out-group terms carry
with them the element of cultural detachment because the detachment is a consequence of the
foreignization Maeztu argued was a problem, the Crisis of Indohispanidad is not because
Indohispanidad failed, but because the Indohispanos forgot their roots and decided to foreignize
themselves. They looked to the French enlightened philosophers, the English libertarians, the
German National Socialists, the Russian Tsarists, they forgot the Caudillos of Hispanoamerica,
the Libertadores, the Emperors, the Catholic Monarchs, even the Natives, rebels or royalists.
Another aspect of solving the foreignization is to solve the rampant reactionism observed both in
“the right” and “the left”, and I cite Éric Cárdenas’ video on this very topic in how we ought to
see the history of Indohispanidad. In the video, he presents three interpretations of Hispanic
ethnogenesis: Hispanidad, mestizaje and [indigenous] resistance. (Cárdenas) In the video, he
argues how a romanticized or pessimistic, simplistic view of history inevitably births what he
calls, the tragedy of reactionary thought, he cites numerous examples of how each of the three
interpretations took place in different epochs in the Hispanoamerican ethnogenesis, and in his
reflections, he concludes it is impossible to reduce these events to one epithet because that would
be incurring into an error of demanding the past a form of interaction that even today, we
continue to struggle, much less should we demand of the past where such interaction took on
various forms whose product is the Hispanoamerican ethos. (Cárdenas) Thus, his reflection also
serves as a bridge to the authors analyzed in this monograph, in particular Pedro Albizu Campos,
who was certainly an Indohispanista, in the most authentic sense: he understood the complexity
of history that America unveiled herself to yet decided to celebrate these complexities as Día de
La Raza. I believe, with all I have exposited and analyzed so far, was because of the Catholic
ingredient in his philosophy. To him, the greatest and noblest of people in our history, built our
ethos, and to him, those were the friars, the Catholic clergy, the Catholic Monarchs, the natives
that, as Bartolomé de Las Casas would put it, obeyed Natural Law and exceeded the piety of the
Catholics that failed to live up to their principles, and it’s this lore that Albizu Campos drew from
the Indohispano ethos. The rest, were a consequence of said ethos struggling to fight those that
were sabotaging the Catholic ethos to dignify the new inhabitants, and the result that allowed the
development of said Hispanoamerican ethos Alberto Buela philosophically analyzed, the same
ethos that Vasconcelos saw was the inheritor of the Cosmic Race mission, was the ethos Maeztu
valued that carried the true spirit of Spanish humanism that he saw was forgotten in the
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Peninsular territory and inherited by the mestizos, mulattos, and all the other classes of people
with their varying degrees of mixtures, as Maeztu dared to suggest when he spoke of a
hypothetical Aztec Indian, or a negro from Cuba, or a Luzon Tagalog, contemplating a Mexican
Cathedral and how the work of Hispanidad surpassed even Rome because the Hispanic
Monarchy, ab initio, began as a promise of brotherhood and kinship to all men under the empire,
and that he might be the one to continue the project, not necessarily a Spaniard. (de Maeztu 287–
89) Thus the historic mission of the Hispanic Monarchy is the work and duty of all those that
constituted the empire, it can even go as far as Equatorial Guinea or the Portuguese Angola.
The historic mission of the Hispanic Imperial ethos is a mission unfinished. Of course, I am not
limiting the use of empire from a military point of view, as Gustavo Bueno has elucidated in his
work that I analyzed, empire can simply take as a philosophical idea, thus the new empire of
Hispanoamerica does not need to return or regress to a postmedieval Viceregal era, but one
adapted to modernity while preserving and strengthening the ethos it has inherited from days old.
Maeztu calls them the “Knights of Hispanidad” (Los Caballeros de La Hispanidad). They could
very well be knights, but they can be artists, philosophers; the Hispanic Catholic ethos is not
limited to the political sphere, it is a foundation, like a fountain spring, where from there can
birth various manifestation of the core ethos, and deep rooted in that particular ethos, is an
ancient Catholic ideal that has adapted to many epochs and survived even the most aggressive
foreignizations. From the postmodern standpoint, again employing a Maeztuian assessment, the
Knights of Hispanidad will be the fatherlanders and the Pochos of the third kind, Pocho here I
am utilizing a more general category not exactly restricted to the US diaspora, but can be non-US
diaspora, as long as they are of the kind that wishes to reverse foreignization, they too carry the
responsibility of the Hispanidad Knighthood Maeztu describes. This is the reconciliatory
strategy: to recover that heritage, live that ethos, however that ethos must be lived, but it must be
lived. The fatherlanders too must carry this duty. They must articulate and communicate this
ethos to the diaspora, they cannot sit comfortably in their laurels, because these laurels are
waning and are attacked on all sides. The Hispanic community must rid itself of the concept of
“the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” The situation here is that, unfortunately, no one is
Hispanidad’s friend. Even Catholic France was a powerful opponent of Hispanidad at some
point. Hispanidad developed a consciousness so alien from The West and even East, Alberto
Buela indeed saw it fit to conceive ourselves as “an other”, The Other of The Western
Hemisphere, so to speak. An other with an ethos that threatens the postmodern liberal world, and
threatens even the expansionism of Russia and China. Hispanidad is not central stage, but the
world that knew Hispanidad’s glory days know that if she taps into her ethos once again, the
world will need to deal with a hemisphere capable of integrating actively many groups,
transforming them as members of an empire that cannot loose herself because she is not afraid of
such, and equipped with a telluric sense of life, nor time, nor space will limit her. As Alberto
Buela described, this is an ahistorical empire, an empire that surpassed history and challenges the
barriers of the old regime and the current regime. Perhaps, at least in some near future, if today
Hispanoamerica decides to recover her historic mission; may not be the most prestigious military
world power, but it will wield a power that surpass even modern weaponry, and an empire
capable of tapping into such potential cannot be subdued with conventional means, but how will
the empires of today, alien to the active hospitality and integrationist ethos, challenge an empire
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that can exercise this with ease even when unconscious of her ethos? It will certainly be
interesting to see unfold, but for this to unfold, there must be a return and a moving forward to
the ethos described in this comprehensive analysis. Mundane things will not accomplish this, this
rediscovery requires an effort of willpower strictly from the very being of each and every
Hispanic, both as an individual and a family. I am not here to discuss in the detail the various
ways that can be manifest, that will be responsibility of each Hispanic, laity and intellectual to
figure out, but the core duty of studying, rediscovering that heritage and pondering it is
paramount to answer those questions of what proceeds from here.

Objections and Rebuttals

I have effectively finished my analysis of the central thesis of my monograph, but of

course, there are various possible objections, some which I have found launched on my thesis
when it was in development that I believe are best answered in similar comprehensive detail. I
believe some objections presented here were indirectly addressed but I present them nonetheless
and refute them. It is my estimation that this analysis should establish without a shadow of a
doubt the case made in my thesis, but of course, I must deal with objections that may not have
been dealt in the monograph and I wish to refute them to defend why the thesis of my
monograph still holds even in light of these objections and more that I might not have thought
about. I list 12 key objections that I believe target a specific theme I estimate to seriously
challenge my thesis, but which I too believe said objections have major flaws and shortcomings,
other objections with no specific theme to them are grouped under Other miscellaneous
objections and responses to them, objections I answer in no particular order of category or
relation. As I have indicated in the Introduction, I employ a format similar to the Summa
Theologica, there is an objection, a response to said objection, a response to that and a rebuttal to
that very response, so on and so forth.

On race idolatry in the encyclical and race idealism

Objection 1: Your analysis of “race idolatry” in the encyclical to mean a sort of sacralisation of
race is a huge stretch. It clearly refers to a worshiping of race, which the National Socialists
never did nor said in their doctrines. In fact, some of the sources you cited even refute the notion
of race idolatry. You are not being fair to the National Socialists when they define their
doctrines. MBS only condemned Pantheism and race idolatry, which was not present in the
National Socialist paradigm, they simply had a high reverence to racial thinking, just as the
authors you cited did.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: This is not only false, but also ad hoc to oversimplify that the encyclical
simply condemned Pantheism in a credal sense likewise “race idolatry.” As Emilio Gentile has
shown in his analysis of secular religion and sacralisations of the State and race in National
Socialist Germany, sacralisation did not need to involve a credal sense of worship, but simply a
divinization secularly attributed to any object of reality. It can be anything, even race. As I have
shown in my analysis and David Clark’s doctoral thesis, the National Socialists did not need to
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have a formal, credal sense of Pantheism, they simply needed to err like the credal Pantheists to
warrant condemnation by The Church.
Regarding the so-called sources refuting the accusation of race idolatry, the one you refer to must
be Dr Walter Gross, who I addressed in the analysis. Walter Gross simply does not understand
The Catholic objection, because Walter Gross lacks a Catholic framework to appreciate and
capture the nature of the objection. Gross thinks that the accusation of idolatry is in part because
The Catholic Church denies these racial differences or he feels The Catholic Church’s
soteriology threatens to blur these lines, and this threat he interprets as if The Church thinks that
recognizing these differences is tantamount to religious idolatry. But as Emilio Gentile
recognized in his analysis and other scholars who studied this phenomenon of the Interwar
ideologies; The Catholics did not object because the National Socialists recognized observed
differences, they objected because the National Socialists sacralised, that is, they divinized these
barriers to the same level Purity systems in the Old Testament worked when they argued that
certain barriers in reality teach us something about the moral order; Catholics saw that the
National Socialists conflated these intricate nuances and exaggerated these differences to an
ontological level that The Church did not recognized it as valid in theology and philosophy.
Thus, the scholars that studied the Catholic opposition to Fascist and National Socialist
ideologies are erroneously labelled liberals on the basis that these ideologies were socially
conservative as the Catholics, so to oppose them is to accuse them as liberal, but this too is
fallacious, because as the scholars point out, they were not motivated out of liberalism but from
Magisterial teaching. As I have analyzed in the NoAB section, the arguments of the anti-Fascist
Catholic Intellectuals were premised on the same arguments present in Pius IX in Quanta Cura
and in Pius X’s in Modernism.
Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: Well even if that was so, the fact of the matter is that the National
Socialists were more race idealists. Race idealism is summarized in Stellrecht Helmut’s “race is
the ability to think and act a certain way”, which is no different than what Albizu Campos said
about race. The National Socialists simply wanted to preserve the unique culture and identity of
Germany. What is wrong with that? Regarding how you addressed on the expression of race and
blood in your analysis; I think you are misunderstanding how Germans express similar concepts
in two different terms like synonyms. It clearly referred to spiritual attributes, not physical blood
and phenotype.
Furthermore, you say that the National Socialist theory of race would prohibit race mixing
among various races like Jews, Negroes and Native Americans, but how do you explain the
Rhineland Bastard Hans Hauck and the Cameroon negro Louis Brody? The former was legally
excluded from Reich citizenship and the Nuremberg Race Laws yet was considered an honorary
Aryan for his distinguished military duties, likewise, Louis Brody lived at the time of National
Socialist Germany as a cinema film director and married a Polish German woman from
Danzing, clearly the materials you cite regarding prohibition of race mixing were not enforced
as legally as The Nuremberg Race Laws.
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Rebuttal to Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: I have addressed this in the section of Albizu Campos, and
such a comparison is not only out of context, but it is inappropriate when you consider the
differences in ethos of each entity. After all, the Catholic Church too, thinks and acts in a certain
way, and when you develop a thinking, whose substrate is the way of thinking of The Catholic
Church, and such thinking coheres with the principles generated from Catholic thinking, what
you get is of course, an ethos that is very much the Hispanoamerican ethos. Conversely, a
thinking that is developed whose contents in the thinking generate conflict with the thinking of
The Catholic Church, you produce something like the NSDAP.
The NSDAP did not simply believe race was solely a way of thinking, as I have cited from the
National Socialist materials on racial education, which were the primary source to educate
Germans in National Socialist German education on race and racial ideologies; Stellrecht’s
handbook is simply a summary and a small sample of the totality of the National Socialist
worldview which is found in the other handbooks that expand on Stellrecht. Stellrecht’s
handbook is not “The Magisterium of National Socialism” loosely speaking; it is a document
among many that express their ideals but are not the only one among their archives. Unless the
objector is honest and wants to argue for a critical revisionism, that is, a revisionism that wants
to fix or modify the orthodox position to argue that such revision is the better interpretation and
adaptation of said theory, but again, from a critical standpoint; the objector has no grounds to re-
interpret the orthodox National Socialist position with such ad hoc claims. Finally, to deny the
National Socialist prohibited race mixing is simply irresponsible intellectually and dishonest. Of
course, the race mixing that involved the mixture of genetic information and interracial
marriages, not “mixture of thinking.” There is simply, no such thing, what you have is a
symbiosis that harmonizes two totalities into a new whole that preserves both totalities in varying
degrees as Buela explains in his work. It is simply ad hoc and erroneous to speak of race mixing
as to simply “a mixture of thoughts.” The ordinary understanding of race to the National
Socialist was the bio-anthropological definition which is present in their Race science textbooks
and the Lebensraum handbook by Bennecke. Stellrecht’s definition is the spiritual and
extraordinary meaning when referring to the national spirit of the German expressed in the
Nordic warrior, when the same National Socialists speak against marrying Jews and Negroes or
how they perceived negatively the intermarriage of the Spanish and the Guaraní Indians of
Paraguay, they are not speaking of the extraordinary, spiritual sense but the phenotypic category,
which they too condemned. They would not only prohibit racial mixing in the spiritual sense, but
they even did also so physically.
Thus, addressing your examples, Hans Hauck precisely is an exception, but exceptions only
prove the rule, not refute the rule. There were also Mischlings (that is, Germans of some Jewish
heritage even up to a second generation) who were exempt from Nuremberg Racial penalties, but
these are simply exceptions the NSDAP accommodated because of very exceptional work they
prudentially deemed passable to classify them as Reich citizens, they did not make this a rule.
Likewise, Louis Brody, some context, did not exactly marry a German of the mainland but a
Polish woman from the Baltic region of Poland, away from the mainland. Would he be exempt
from the anti-miscegenation if he were to marry a German woman in Berlin or Münich? The
chances he would are exceptionally low. Finally, the greatest evidence against National Socialist
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Germany allowing race mixing is to simply ask ourselves: where are all the German Mulattoes?
Serious question: if NatSoc Germany was so pro-mestizaje, where are all the Heinrich
Himmler’s (Himmler’s phenotype is very Asiatic)? Where are all the mulattoes? The answer is
obvious: they are nowhere to be found because they did not occur in the Reich. If there are race
mixed populations of German descent, they are found outside the Reich’s hemisphere, which
proves my thesis.
Objection 3, to Rebuttal 2: The reason because you cannot find those mulattoes and mestizos is
because the Interwar period was too short lived to allow such mixed marriages to happen. You
are not being fair to Germany’s situation at the time. Not even the mixture in the Indies happened
so quickly. It took time.
Rebuttal to Objection 3, to Rebuttal 2: This is simply ad hoc and an unfounded assumption. The
people that make this objection will need to account for the various anti-miscegenation
propaganda in all the sources I cited as well as the Racial education and Gross’ speeches. The
Interwar period began shortly after WWI and before 1939, that’s 21 years, are we to seriously
believe that the Spanish that married the natives, needed to wait more than this for mestizaje to
take place? That is absurd and the facts do not testify such circumstance. The observable facts
are there: Hitler’s Germany worked hard to indoctrinate Germany, for years, against race mixing,
whereas the Hispanic Monarchy had no such indoctrination, the issues were more social class
than miscegenation of races. Hitler’s Germany did not operate from the Catholic ethos that
Alberto Buela analyzed was present in the Hispanic Monarchy, to deny this is to deny history
and reality. Since this is a question of population genetics; it should be easier to measure the
level of miscegenation found in Germany, at least data as early as possible that could be recorded
in Germany, to the Hispanoamerican admixture data, and you will find that, if anything, any
miscegenation in Germany of non-European admixture is very recent, that is, after World War II;
conversely, the admixture found in Hispanoamerica is as old as the 16th century and onwards as
Gonzalbo documents as well as Joanne Rappaport; Emilio Acosta Ramos and Antonio Moreno
Ruiz.
Thus, if I were to treat this as an empirical project of population genetics, hypothetically, from
the Interwar period all the way decades after WWII, we would expect similar admixture of non-
Europeans in Germany as we find in Hispanoamerica, but we find the opposite. Most
admixtures, before the introduction of mass immigration to Germany, are relegated to European
admixtures, very few do we find Asiatic. Heinrich Himmler was a rarity, not a commonality,
conversely, he should have been exceedingly common if Germany was mestizo. Therefore, the
anti-miscegenation propaganda incentivized culturally, to avoid miscegenation from a
phenotypic standpoint, not from Stellrecht’s interpretation. Even if we grant Stellrecht’s
interpretation, you would still not find many racial mixtures, because now you would have a
situation where Germany had to force everyone to not only think like a German, but every
German, racial or by citizenship, had to preserve their ways, and the Jew was excluded, but if it
was just a matter of thinking, should not the German work more to convert the Jew or even the
Moor to Catholicism? Why banish them from the country? What if the Jew changed his
thinking? Would that suffice? The sources I utilized in the monograph indicate the contrary
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because the National Socialist’s theology of the Jew convinced him that he cannot be trusted.
Conversely, in Hispanidad, the Jew was only barred as a matter or religion. If he converted, at
least to the Inquisitor’s eyes, he could intermarry. Therefore, Stellrecht’s view of race was not
culturally authoritative even.
To further substantiate my point, the most scholarly defense of German Colonialisms even
admits that the halting of German colonial expeditions that would even allow enough time to
merit miscegenation, were halted by Hitler and he criticized the expeditions because Hitler
believed Germanization was not possible for the Negro or any other non-European race. (Gilley,
“Nazi Anti-Colonialism and the War on Europe” 192) Bruce Gilley, has this to say regarding
Hitler’s anti-colonialism of Germany’s past:
“He branded the colonial lobby “criminally stupid” and full of “idle chatter.” “Finally, we cease
with the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-war period,” he wrote, “and proceed with the
land policy of the future.” Germany’s need for territory, he insisted, “cannot be fulfilled in the
Cameroon but almost exclusively in Europe.”
[…] Hitler rejected not just colonialism in general, but German colonialism in particular. The
German model of colonialism was particularly noxious to Hitler because of its emphasis on local
legitimacy, the protection and documentation of local cultures, and the globalization of German
national identity. The successful alloy of classical liberalism and conservative patriotism that had
forged what one scholar called the unique “transculturality” of German colonialism was
explicitly rejected by Hitler. As the University of Hamburg historian Birthe Kundrus wrote: “The
Nazi leadership positioned itself unequivocally in a state of discontinuity with respect to classic
colonialism.”“ (Gilley, “Nazi Anti-Colonialism and the War on Europe” 192–93 emphasis added)
Gilley goes even further, he even points out how the anti-colonialism had its origins in Fascism,
he indicates:
“Strangely, the contemporary academy is completely silent on the fascist origins of anti-
colonialism. As one scholar writes: “Historians have consistently ignored the question whether
there was any profound interplay between fascism and certain strands of anti-colonial
nationalism.” As he notes, progressive academics consciously ignore evidence of Nazi
sympathies in anti-colonial circles even when that evidence stares them in the face. They simply
do not want to admit that the anti-colonial movements they admire are rooted in fascist ideas and
connections.” (Gilley, “Nazi Anti-Colonialism and the War on Europe” 195)
Assessing this from Gustavo Bueno’s philosophical rigor in the treatment of empire, I too use it
in the treatment of colonialism or colony. From Gilley’s point of view and usage, he is utilizing a
category of colonialism very near to the enterprise of a generator empire, a generator colonial
enterprise, which Hitler rejected, and thus the entire NSDAP as they also rejected the Roman
Empire’s willingness to allow intermingling of races. It is no surprise that the NSDAP’s racialist
worldview would not produce the imaginary mulattoes and mestizos that the objector insists
were possible under the NSDAP. Maybe in the German colonial past before Adolf Hitler came
into the scene, but once he rose to power, all attempts to engage in a generator imperial
enterprise were rejected by Hitler and the party because they went against their racialisms.
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Objection 4, to Rebuttal 3: Well even if this was true, you are still unfairly comparing Germany.
Germany was young as a nation, she had very little experience in matters of imperial expeditions
as Spain. It is like comparing apples and oranges. Germany’s very novel entrance into the stage
of national identity is too early to be properly compared to other nations. That is why National
Socialist Germany lacked an ethos to properly accommodate racial mixing.
Rebuttal to Objection 4, to Rebuttal 3: This too, is also ad hoc. Germany, at least the territory that
at the time would have been known as Germany today; was a Catholic vassal of other empires
before the Protestant Reformation. When you are insisting that Germany cannot be compared to
the Hispanic Monarchy, what you are effectively insisting is that Germany cannot be analyzed in
terms of Catholic ethos when the same ethos was used by other nations and how they developed
said ethos. It seems this objection already would have to admit and concede that NSDAP
Germany, was not only not Catholic in ethos, but contrary to Catholic ethos, thus, from this very
objection, the objector cannot now utilized NSDAP Germany’s apparent Catholicity to compare
it to the Catholicity of Francisco Franco, after all, they were different, and Germany was just
getting started, while Franco already had a headstart from the Hispanic Monarchy.
Such objection really fails to apprehend and realize the precise error the Catholic Church saw in
Germany in the Interwar period that she did not see in Hispanoamerica. It is precisely this
comparison is where we can arrive at the conclusion that the nations that best cohered with the
inherited Catholic ethos, were, at least in potency, better equipped to integrate various racial
groups that the NSDAP fallaciously saw as rigidly irreconcilable. The objector that makes this
argument no longer is defending the National Socialism’s compatibility of Catholicism but
admitting a flaw and failure in reconciling to the Catholic ethos that the Hispanic Monarchy
exemplified excellently compared to other nations, and to simply declare that such comparison is
“like comparing apples to oranges” is like a Catholic objecting to the clergy on the ground that
Christ is so perfect that for the clergy or the priest himself to call all Catholics to emulate Christ’s
morality is inappropriate because humans and Christ is like asking an apple to emulate an
orange.

On the styles of governance and political authority

Objection 1: The Catholic Church doesn’t have a dogmatic model of how nations are to employ
forms or styles of governments. That means The Catholic Church does not have a dogma that a
nation should or should not employ some form of Fascist government nor even a monarchy. The
Church only cares that the State be Catholic regardless of how it structures its government, as
long as The Church recognizes that she is below the State in a particular sense that does not
usurp Caesar’s role as governor.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: It is true that The Catholic Church has no dogmatized model of
governmental structure that she demands every nation to adopt, but this is not tantamount to
conclude that all forms of government are compatible with The Catholic Church’s conception of
politics. As I have exposited from Julio Meinvielle’s work on Catholic conception of politics;
The State’s unique role to exercise secular power does not entail The Church is below it any
more than the police exercising his role as police means that he is above The President when the
latter is found to violate traffic laws. As Julio Meinvielle argued in his work from Thomistic
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ethics, The Church’s involvement in political matters means that these matters will always touch
upon the ethics and morals implied in government policy that The Church has jurisdiction over,
this is true even if the nation opts for a democratic republic. Julio Meinvielle argues it as such:
“It follows from what has been said that the sphere of activity of a man, however helpless he
may supposed to be, cannot be fully understood by the political society or by any other society,
including the Church. In another place (“UN JUICIO CRÍTICO SOBRE LOS PROBLEMAS
NUEVOS DE LA POLÍTICA”), this has been stated in a conclusive manner, which deserves to
be recalled here: ... “politics is a part of human activity. It is not the one all-embracing and all-
consuming power. It has a limited sphere of activity, specified by its own object. Outside of
politics there are other activities and other powers that can in no way be merged into the political
one, these are: the religious power, the economic powers,” the individual powers. Thus, the
activity of man cannot be governed entirely by a single power. To pretend to do so would be to
incur in totalitarianism, which is a brutal and anti-human conception of man”.” (Meinvielle,
Concepción Católica de La Política 21 emphasis added)
What Julio Meinvielle argues then, is that when it comes to political matters, The Church ought
to be involved because there are other powers involved that she has legitimate jurisdiction over
and say in those matters, such as the problem of abortions, marriage rights and other depositories
that The Church does have doctrinal claims to, including whether euthanasia or forced
sterilization should be legalized, which to The Church, society ought not to condone such for it is
condemned in Casti Connubii and in her Social Doctrine Compendium. That means that while
The Church has no dogmatic structure for nations to adopt a specific form of government, it
nonetheless sets certain parameters that restrict said structure from exercising political power that
may threaten The Church’s sovereignty as well as the individual, this is true whether the
government is a republic, a monarchy or even some strand of secular autocracy.
Therefore, for The Church, she has no dogmatized structure, but she has restrictions for all
structures, this inevitably means that as far as The Church is concerned, a “Catholicized Fascist
State”, would have to be stripped away from all its Gentilian dogmas. But if you do that, can you
really say you have Fascism? This is the nuance: that not all forms of governments will suffer
fundamental modifications by The Church’s Social Doctrine, some suffer minor peripheral
changes, others inevitably must be modified at a fundamental level. The implication is that a
National Socialist state that is Catholicized is not National Socialist because that implies that
elimination of the racial worldview packed into such conception of the State. If the National
Socialist government retaliates against such a change, that is when the incompatibilities and
questions of hierarchy emerge, and Quanta Cura condemns the solution that the civil State should
prevail over the requests and demands of The Church in its Syllabus of Errors.
Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: Your objection is premised on the assumption that political power is
predicated on moral legitimacy, which is false. Only those in power, however they claimed said
power, are truly legitimate. When it comes to political authority, you can only legitimize it when
you attain power, whatever means it was obtained. Governments do not become illegitimate
when they violate a moral precept regarding their position of power.
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Rebuttal to Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: That is a Nietzschean framework of political philosophy,

and that is condemned by The Catholic Church, Magisterially and theologically. Julio Meinvielle
explicitly condemns this in the cited chapter that deals with the issue of sovereignty. (Meinvielle,
Concepción Católica de La Política 23–24; 27–28) I have also analyzed Julio Meinvielle’s
exposition of when illegitimacy emerges and how it is licit to oppose said illegitimate ruler from
abuse of power which he grounds both in Aquinas and Balmes. (Meinvielle, Concepción
Católica de La Política 38–44) Thus, the basis of opposing an unruly tyrant presupposes a
principle from which the ruler ought to cohere to preserve legitimacy which does not depend on
government of mere fact, which Balmes and Meinvielle agree is not a government that is worthy
of honor nor obedience and must be resisted in principle. (Meinvielle, Concepción Católica de
La Política 42–43)
The objector could even, in fact, invoke a response such as Jean Jacques Rousseau invoked in his
work Social Contract, who said that “the thief's pistol is also power” (Balmes y Urpiá,
“CAPÍTULO XLVIII: La Religión y La Libertad. Rousseau. Los Protestantes. Derecho Divino.
Origen Del Poder. Mala Inteligencia Del Derecho Divino. San Juan Crisóstomo. Potestad Patria.
Sus Relaciones Con El Origen Del Poder Civil.” 447), well the totalitarian version: “the State's
pistol is also power”, but I will quote the refutation of Jaime Balmes himself, whom Julio
Meinvielle has quoted in his work [Balmes’ work that I cite is originally in Spanish, which I
translate here]:
“Rousseau, in this passage, by showing himself ingenious, has made himself futile; he has taken
the question out of its field, out of the prurience of coming out with a piquant witticism. In fact,
it was not difficult to know that in speaking of civil power, he was not speaking of a physical
power, but of a moral power, of a legitimate power; otherwise, it would be useless to tire oneself
in searching for its origin. This would be tantamount to investigating where wealth, health,
strength, courage, cunning and other qualities that contribute to form the material strength of all
power come from. The question, then, was about the moral being which is called potestas; and in
the moral order, illegitimate potestas [it’s synonymous with power but could not find a more
accurate translation to its original Spanish potestad] is not potestas, it is not a being, it is
nothing; and, therefore, there is no need to seek its origin, either in God or elsewhere.
Power, then, emanates from God, as the source of all right, of all justice, of all legitimacy; and in
considering that power, not precisely as a physical being, but as a moral being, it is affirmed that
it can only have come from God, in whom resides the fullness of being.” (Balmes y Urpiá,
“CAPÍTULO XLVIII: La Religión y La Libertad. Rousseau. Los Protestantes. Derecho Divino.
Origen Del Poder. Mala Inteligencia Del Derecho Divino. San Juan Crisóstomo. Potestad Patria.
Sus Relaciones Con El Origen Del Poder Civil.” italics in original, bold and underlines added,
additional comments in brackets)
Therefore, the objector that attempts to reconcile Catholicism with an unmodified strand of
autocratic regimes are committing the same error the National Socialists attempted to do to
reconcile their worldview to said religion: they have modified central tenets of the religion,
instead of allowing the religion to modify central tenets of their worldview, this mistake is the
root of tensions and incompatibilities generated in Catholicism and other paradigms that present
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themselves as reconcilable to Catholicism, the subordination of Catholicism to the doctrinal and

paradigmatic demands of the outsider always produces hostile responses from The Church, this
implies that a Nietzschean understanding of power can never reconcile with a Catholic
understanding of power because both define hegemonic legitimacy very differently.

On Lehmann’s analysis
Objection 1: Leo H. Lehmann proved in his book “Behind The Dictators” that Catholicism
inspired National Socialists and Fascist ideologies, he even proved that it was the work of Jesuits
within The Church that created these ideologies, thus all those sources you cite that contextualize
the so-called conflict are not only mistaken, Lehmann proves those were the liberal forces within
The Church that Pius XI and XII tried to suppress. Your contextual analysis is wrong, and
Lehmann has shown from his factual analysis that it was the liberal forces that attempted to
sabotage the Catholic NSDAP and Fascists.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: Regarding Leo H. Lehmann showing how the Jesuits from The Catholic
Church inspired the Nazi-Fascist Regimes; this is simply false, not only is it not true, at no point
in his work does he even adequately cite the boldest claims he makes about The Jesuit-
Nazifascist connection. For example, in the first Chapter, he claims that the origins of Nazi-
Fascism originate in the Jesuits (Herbert Lehmann 3), and how the Jesuits have attempted to
poison Leo XIII and cites the New York Tribunal report, and that the sudden recovery issued
policies favoring Jesuit privileges as if The Jesuits were above The Pope as some sort of secret
agent controlling the Papacy. (Herbert Lehmann 4–5) Yet the supposed citation of said Tribunal
report is nowhere to be authenticated. Where does he even get that information? This is not the
only citation blunder. On Chapter VIII, titled “Nazi Socialism and Catholic Restoration”, he is
addressing the historical facts that I have cited in this monograph regarding the persecutions
experienced by The Catholics documented in the literature, and his response is to argue that there
were internal contradictions and battles within The Catholic Church (Herbert Lehmann 44), with
the Jesuits being the ardent defenders of tradition and thus, Nazi-Fascism, and the ones that the
NSDAP and Fascists persecuted were the liberals, and to substantiate this he cites Josef
Schmidlin, he cites a paragraph that apparently it’s from Vol III, page 1, which says this, word
for word:
““The history of the Popes during the 19th century presents a succession of divergent systems
following each other like a game of opposites and of warring forces striving for the mastery, with
first one side winning and then another. On one side are the zealots striving in an intransigent and
intolerant manner to preserve fixed traditions and orthodoxy, and who take a hostile attitude
towards the progress of modern civilization and the liberal victories that followed on the great
revolutions, which are the unremitting enemies of the [Catholic] Church, the State and the
principle of authority. On the other side are the liberals who, actuated by a more equitable
political sense, endeavor to break free from the traditional restraints bound up with the ideas of
old, and who try to reconcile themselves with modern progress in order to live in peace with
liberal states and governments, and to integrate the church, as a spiritual force, in contemporary
civilization. From the beginning this war-like game of opposites has been going on within the
Roman Curia, and especially within the College of Cardinals. It is most evident in the papal
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conclaves which become the stage for this play of divergent tendencies, which are afterwards
openly expressed in the attitudes of successive pontiffs. For the popes support one or the other of
these tendencies and personify them by the conduct of their internal and foreign policies after
mounting the papal throne.”“ (Herbert Lehmann 45 citing Schmidlin’s compendium of Vol III,
page 1)
There are two major, grave problems with this paragraph from a citation standpoint: one, the
source he believes to cite this, is from Josef Schmidlin’s The History of The Popes (the “in
Modern Times” clause is not even found in the source I could find), however, the paragraph he
claims to attribute to Vol III and page 1, the source from Vol XXV which I could find extant, lists
it as a Volume documenting the Papacies recorded from years 1458-1483, that is, the mid and
late 15th century. How is this possibly a History of the Pope in Modern times, when the volume
an available source documents said Volume from the Middle Ages? (See Fig 3) It gets worse, this
same paragraph cannot even be authenticated back to Schmidlin if you translate the same
paragraph to German, the German title is precisely Geschichte Der Papste In Mittelalter Und
Renaissance, which literally means “History of The Popes in The Middle Ages and Renaissance”
(see Fig 4a) and the author of that book is not even Schmidlin but Klaus Herber (see Fig 4b), a
secular Medieval historian born on 1951. The paragraph is attributed to a volume that only
speaks of the late Middle Ages when it should be referring to the 19th century.
This is not the only blunder. This happens with every full paragraph citation; none are
authenticating him. Before the objector thinks the strategy, I am using to authenticate the source
is invalid, take note that every academic professor when evaluating any essay or monograph,
including a scientific article, must resort to this tactic to verify if you are plagiarizing or is able to
trace the source to the reported reference or bibliography and is able to authenticate that such
source is properly represented or is able to trace the claims from said source.
 223

Fig 3: Screenshot from Volume XXV of History of The Popes, this page lists all the volumes of
said encyclopedia and the timespan each volume touches upon. As you can see, Vol III only spans
the mid to late 15th century, that is not the timeline of modernity Lehmann claims to cite in that
Volume.
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Fig 4a: Screenshot of the same paragraph translated to German. As you can see, the only match that could closely
resemble something remotely related to the History of The Pope is underlined, but this book is authored by a
Medieval historian of secular background.

Fig 4b: Screenshot showing the author of the book from Fig 4a.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the entire thesis of his book is premised that not only that the Jesuits
the inspirator of Nazi-Fascist ideologies (which he does not cite nor substantiate it but merely
asserts so), in Chapter V “Hitler and The Catholic Church”, he claims that Pius XI’s
“dissolution” of the Catholic Centre Party was all done ─as well as Sturzo’s banishment by Pius
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XI─ to secure the Nazi-Fascist interests as if he were the supporter of said ideologies (Herbert
Lehmann 28), yet nothing could be further from the truth. As I have documented in the NoAB
analysis, Pius XI did these out of pressure to survive, not because he found any agreement with
the ideologies, but was suspicious and he eventually regretted and saw how right the opposition
were, which prompted to write the encyclicals analyzed as well as Humani Generis Unitas.
Additionally, this affirmation of Lehmann towards Pius XI does not even coincide with reality
when the Pope himself on April 13, 1938, has launched a congregational announcement in the
Vatican condemning all the National Socialist and Fascist precepts that Lehmann pretends to
attribute to the pope, I quote the eight condemnations in the Magisterial Congregation by Pius
XI, it says as follows:
“Confronted by this situation, the Sacred Congregation of Studies, urges other universities and
Catholic faculties to make use of biology, history, philosophy, apologetics, legal and moral
studies as weapons for refuting firmly and competently the following untenable assertions:
1. Human races, by their natural and immutable characters, are so different that the
humblest among them is farther from the most elevated than from the highest animal
species.
2. It is necessary, by all means, to preserve and cultivate the vigor of the race and the purity
of the blood [effectively the National Socialist maxim]; anything that leads to this result
is, by that very fact, proper and permissible.
3. It is from the blood, the seat of the race’s character, that all man’s intellectual and moral
qualities derive, as from their principal source.
4. The essential goal of education is to develop the characteristics of the race and to ignite in
minds an ardent love for their own race as the supreme good.
5. Religion is subject to the law of race and must be adapted to it. [also a National Socialist
dogma]
6. The primary source and supreme rule of all legal order is racial instinct.
7. There exists only the Cosmos, or the Universe, which is a living being; all things,
including man, are only diverse forms of the universal living being, growing through the
course of the ages.
8. Each man exists only through the State and for the State. Everything he possesses by right
proceeds solely from a concession by the State. [effectively the Gentilian maxim]
One might, moreover, easily add others to these detestable propositions.
The Most Holy Father, the prefect of our Holy Congregation, is certain, your Eminence, that you
will spare no pains in order to bring to their full realization the prescriptions contained in this
letter..” (Passelecq and Suchecky 113–14 emphasis added, additional comments in brackets)
This is not even the encyclical Humani Generis Unitas but a congregational announcement made
in the same year that the hidden encyclical was drafted and again, it is Pius XI condemning the
sacralizing doctrines of National Socialism and Fascism, but Lehmann pretends to sell us a
narrative (unsubstantiated and unfounded, of course) that Pius XI was a secret supporter of Nazi-
Fascism. Certainly, Lehmann pulls information out of the air to suit his propaganda.
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What about Pius XII as a supposed “Hitler’s Pope?” Lehmann claims he was pro-Nazism in the
book, yet the letters of the same Pope to Bishop Clemens August von Galen, indicate the
opposite, he writes to him:
“For your sincere wishes for the current year we offer you, venerable brother, our most heartfelt
thanks, which, because of the work and burdens that have piled up, reach you with some delay,
but are all the more intimately felt. With all our heart we reciprocate them to you, to your clergy
and to your faithful. We raise our prayers and we daily offer the sacrifice for you, so that this
year, whose dark destinies fill us all with anguished waiting, may be transformed for you into a
year of grace, in which God pours out his mercy on you (cf. Eccl18,9).
The letters that come to us in recent months from the German episcopate unfortunately give the
impression that the year 1941 threatens to bring new and hard trials in your country to the
Catholic Church also. Your account (with enclosures), of which we have taken account while
suffering with you, brings out in particular the dangers to which Catholic youth is exposed. It is
your and our greatest worry, all the greater as the dechristianization of youth goes course ahead
with a force and violence such that often the domestic hearth and the Church, though animated
by the best intentions, appear almost helpless against them. We acknowledge with all the greater
praise what you have done for youth in the safeguarding of the faith through the special teaching
of religion. Also from other sources we have been told with admiration of the success of the hour
of religion [Glaubensstunde]. Though it seems to you little, continue to do what lies within your
strength, and support religious life in the family as much as you possibly can.” (Andreotti,
sec.Letter of Pius XII to Bishop of Münster dated Feb 16 of 1941 emphasis added)
There is more from Pius XII towards Bishop Münster, this one, dated February 24th of 1943:
“[…] The concerns, the cause of so much travail, that you list as regards your diocese - priests
sent into exile or imprisoned in concentration camps for their faith (our peculiar blessing goes to
the parishes and to the families of those who, amongst them, have perished there), the
expropriation of the Episcopal College of Gaesdonck, so well deserving for the training of priests
and of lay Catholics, and the shortage of priests because of the loss of those students fit for war
and the drafting of young priests into the army - all these concerns bear on the general needs of
the Catholic Church in Germany that we share with you bishops from the bottom of our heart
and in the sharpest way.” (Andreotti, pt.Letter of Pius XII to Bishop of Münster dated Feb 24th
1943 emphasis added)
Furthermore, the belief that these Concordat were somehow motivated by some support, passive
even; is false as the issuing of Concordats was a common practice of The Vatican to establish
clear guidelines how the State is to relate to The Church in different nations and their
circumstances. (Eatwell 151)
Another blunder is that this same assumption that Pope Pius XII was “Hitler’s Pope” comes from
John Cornwell’s work on the same title, however, the research of that book is dubious and flawed
and has not only been criticized and refuted (directly or indirectly) by other scholars (Bartley;
Griech-Polelle; Baerwald; Griffin), but Ronald Rychlak even showed how Cornwell manipulated
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photographic evidence to frame Pope Pius XII as Hitler’s Pope. (“Pope Pius XII, Hitler, and the
Jewish People”) The author of the article just cited states thusly:
“Cornwell's scholarship has been criticized. For example, Kenneth L. Woodward stated in his
review in Newsweek that “errors of fact and ignorance of context appear on almost every page.”
Five years after the publication of Hitler's Pope, Cornwell stated: “I would now argue, in the
light of the debates and evidence following Hitler's Pope, that Pius XII had so little scope of
action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was
under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany”.” (“Pope Pius XII, Hitler, and the
Jewish People”)
To add to the falsity of Pius XII being “Hitler’s Pope” and contrary to Lehmann’s and those who
support his ridiculous narrative; consider the fact that Summi Pontificatus (SumPon) makes
reference to the unity of the human race that is so contrary to the notions of race promulgated by
the National Socialists, the paragraphs relevant to these are Paragraphs 34-51, Pius XII says that
one of the two main errors that he saw promulgated in his epoch was forgetting the inherent unity
in the human family. (Pius XII, para.35) In Paragraph 35-37, we read:
“The first of these pernicious errors, widespread today, is the forgetfulness of that law of human
solidarity and charity which is dictated and imposed by our common origin and by the equality
of rational nature in all men, to whatever people they belong, and by the redeeming Sacrifice
offered by Jesus Christ on the Altar of the Cross to His Heavenly Father on behalf of sinful
mankind.
In fact, the first page of the Scripture, with magnificent simplicity, tells us how God, as a
culmination to His creative work, made man to His Own image and likeness (cf. Genesis i. 26,
27); and the same Scripture tells us that He enriched man with supernatural gifts and privileges,
and destined him to an eternal and ineffable happiness. It shows us besides how other men took
their origin from the first couple, and then goes on, in unsurpassed vividness of language, to
recount their division into different groups and their dispersion to various parts of the world.
Even when they abandoned their Creator, God did not cease to regard them as His children, who,
according to His merciful plan, should one day be reunited once more in His friendship
(cf. Genesis xii. 3).
The Apostle of the Gentiles later on makes himself the herald of this truth which associates men
as brothers in one great family, when he proclaims to the Greek world that God "hath made of
one, all mankind, to dwell upon the whole face of the earth, determining appointed times, and the
limits of their habitation, that they should seek God" (Acts xvii. 26, 27).” (Pius XII)
He goes on to tie this unity in the love and wisdom of God’s creative act and sacrificial love for
humanity through Jesus Christ, grounding the unity in Him and through His salvific plan (Pius
XII, paras.38–41), which is no different than what I elucidated in Maeztu’s section, in fact, this is
precisely the basis of Spanish humanism and why it propelled the creation of the Cosmic Race,
as I have analyzed in Vasconcelos’ section. Thus, Pius XII can say, with similar argumentation I
have exposited in the four Hispanic authors:
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“In the light of this unity of all mankind, which exists in law and in fact, individuals do not feel
themselves isolated units, like grains of sand, but united by the very force of their nature and
by their internal destiny, into an organic, harmonious mutual relationship which varies
with the changing of times.
And the nations, despite a difference of development due to diverse conditions of life and of
culture, are not destined to break the unity of the human race, but rather to enrich and
embellish it by the sharing of their own peculiar gifts and by that reciprocal interchange of
goods which can be possible and efficacious only when a mutual love and a lively sense of
charity unite all the sons of the same Father and all those redeemed by the same Divine
Blood.
The Church of Christ, the faithful depository of the teaching of Divine Wisdom, cannot and does
not think of deprecating or disdaining the particular characteristics which each people, with
jealous and intelligible pride, cherishes and retains as a precious heritage. Her aim is a
supernatural union in all-embracing love, deeply felt and practiced, and not the unity which is
exclusively external and superficial and by that very fact weak.
The Church hails with joy and follows with her maternal blessing every method of guidance and
care which aims at a wise and orderly evolution of particular forces and tendencies having their
origin in the individual character of each race, provided that they are not opposed to the duties
incumbent on men from their unity of origin and common destiny.” (Pius XII, paras.42–45
emphasis added)
The emphasized sentences all are explicitly used in the arguments analyzed in Maeztu’s section,
Vasconcelos’ Cosmic Race Thesis, Albizu Campos’ October 12th Speech and Alberto Buela’s
philosophical analysis on Hispanoamerica. These are the core arguments that justify the ethos of
the Hispanic civilization (and all its local expressions [Indohispanidad, Afrohispanidad,
Semitohispanidad, etc.).
That is not all, you also have to see his arguments that attack the totalitarian State, which is an
attack on the Gentilian conception of the State, all found in Paragraphs 52-74, but I will cite the
most distinguished Paragraphs, in my estimation, that directly attack the foundations which form
Giovanni Gentile’s conception of the State and vindicate the analysis done in the first part and
Emilio Gentile’s scholarly work on the subject:
“But there is yet another error no less pernicious to the well-being of the nations and to the
prosperity of that great human society which gathers together and embraces within its confines
all races. It is the error contained in those ideas which do not hesitate to divorce civil
authority from every kind of dependence upon the Supreme Being - First Source and
absolute Master of man and of society - and from every restraint of a Higher Law derived
from God as from its First Source. Thus they accord the civil authority an unrestricted field of
action that is at the mercy of the changeful tide of human will, or of the dictates of casual
historical claims, and of the interests of a few.
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Once the authority of God and the sway of His law are denied in this way, the civil authority
as an inevitable result tends to attribute to itself that absolute autonomy which belongs
exclusively to the Supreme Maker. It puts itself in the place of the Almighty and elevates the
State or group into the last end of life, the supreme criterion of the moral and juridical order
[effectively the Gentilian maxim], and therefore forbids every appeal to the principles of natural
reason and of the Christian conscience. We do not, of course, fail to recognize that, fortunately,
false principles do not always exercise their full influence, especially when age-old Christian
traditions, on which the peoples have been nurtured, remain still deeply, even if unconsciously,
rooted in their hearts.
None the less, one must not forget the essential insufficiency and weakness of every principle of
social life which rests upon a purely human foundation, is inspired by merely earthly motives
and relies for its force on the sanction of a purely external authority.
[…] To consider the State as something ultimate to which everything else should be
subordinated and directed, cannot fail to harm the true and lasting prosperity of nations.
This can happen either when unrestricted dominion comes to be conferred on the State as having
a mandate from the nation, people, or even a social order, or when the State arrogates such
dominion to itself as absolute master, despotically, without any mandate whatsoever [This is
ultimately what Giovanni Gentile defines as the criteria for the totalitarian nature of the Fascist
State as discussed in the first part of this monograph]. If, in fact, the State lays claim to and
directs private enterprises, these, ruled as they are by delicate and complicated internal principles
which guarantee and assure the realization of their special aims, may be damaged to the
detriment of the public good, by being wrenched from their natural surroundings, that is, from
responsible private action.
Further, there would be danger lest the primary and essential cell of society, the family, with its
well-being and its growth, should come to be considered from the narrow standpoint of national
power, and lest it be forgotten that man and the family are by nature anterior to the State, and that
the Creator has given to both of them powers and rights and has assigned them a mission and a
charge that correspond to undeniable natural requirements.
[…] The idea which credits the State with unlimited authority [again, this is no doubt referencing
Giovanni Gentile’s statolatry elucidated in the first part] is not simply an error harmful to the
internal life of nations, to their prosperity, and to the larger and well-ordered increase in
their well-being, but likewise it injures the relations between peoples, for it breaks the unity
of supra-national society, robs the law of nations of its foundation and vigor, leads to
violation of others' rights and impedes agreement and peaceful intercourse.
[…] Now no one can fail to see how the claim to absolute autonomy for the State stands in
open opposition to this natural way that is inherent in man - nay, denies it utterly - and
therefore leaves the stability of international relations at the mercy of the will of rulers,
while it destroys the possibility of true union and fruitful collaboration directed to the
general good.” (Pius XII, paras.52–53, 60–61, 71, 73 emphasis added, additional comments in
brackets)
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These not only contradict Lehmann’s claim and even Cornwell’s “Hitler’s Pope” narrative, but
this encyclical cannot even make Pius XII to be Mussolini’s Pope either. All the emphasized
statements in the last cited paragraphs all point to the fact that the Catholic Church condemns
any notion of Fascism that attempts to conserve the Gentilian doctrines that The Magisterium has
determined to be erroneous and detrimental to Catholic conscious. It also clearly contradicts the
racialist dictates of the National Socialist by rejecting the rigid immanentisms declared by the
National Socialists and also rejects the same rigidities that are sacralized by calling attention and
reminder to the mysterious and harmonious unity of human nature in the sons of Adam like
Maeztu and all Hispanist authors cited mention.
To make matters worse, Lehmann asserts that Jesuit priest Friedrich Muckermann was the author
of racial hygienic laws, but he is not only conflating two Muckermanns (Hermann Muckermann,
the eugenicist NatSoc, versus Friedrich Muckermann, the Jesuit priest) (Herbert Lehmann 6, 24),
he claims that the Jesuit formulated the very doctrines of National Socialist racial hygiene
(Herbert Lehmann 6), yet this is simply false and erroneous. Croatian Professor Prof. Grgo
Grbešić documents how the Jesuit labelled National Socialism as “the heresy of the 20th century”
because of the sacralisations of race in the NSDAP, not only that but the German Catholic
Church in 1928 already condemned the racial theories that were developing before 1933.
(Grbešić 453–54) Furthermore, Lehmann’s assertion of Jesuit conspiracy in how they motivated
Nazi-Fascist ideologies falls apart when you consider the historical context that Pius XI
requested American Jesuit John LaFarge to draft Humani Generis Unitas alongside the
collaboration of other Jesuits such as Gustave Desbuquois and Gustav Gundlach. (Passelecq and
Suchecky 5, 35–38, 41)
Lehmann not only makes grave citation errors, but he also makes grave factual errors.
Lehmann’s work therefore cannot be considered serious scholarly analysis on the Interwar period
in the relationship between The Catholic Church and the Interwar nationalist regimes. Factual
analysis that lacks rigorous, faithful and trustworthy bibliographic citations and make bold
assertions with no substance cannot be considered trustworthy scholarly analysis. From the looks
of it, Leo H. Lehmann is a former Catholic, Protestant convert that seems to be very biased to
Protestant and Masonic liberal values and make bold, quasi-conspiratorial claims about the
Jesuits, this already clouds his judgment and that makes his “factual analysis” more a
propaganda piece to discredit Catholic feats that have opposed these regimes that are
documented by the literature.

On the veracity of claims in Mit Brennender Sorge and Non Abbiamo

Bisogno and encyclical authority
Objection 1: Well, those scholars are buying into anti-Fascist and anti-National Socialist
propaganda and are biased to the serious claims of National Socialists and Fascists. The
Interwar period was littered with propaganda warfare that have tried to paint the National
Socialists and Fascists as evildoers bent on destroying The Church and everyone and any claim
that tries to paint a picture that they have tried to suppress and persecute The Catholic Church
are brainwashed by the victors. The National Socialist and Fascist regimes were friendly and
loyal to The Church. Moreover, since the Catholic Church was carried away by destructive
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propaganda against Fascists and National Socialists, therefore, the statements of the encyclicals
against them and their doctrines are not for any Catholic to submit under its precepts under any
circumstances, by virtue of that, it lacks authority.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: I could easily dismiss this claim as buying into pro-Nazi-Fascist
propaganda that triers to paint a romanticist picture that The Church had a harmonious
relationship with these regimes, and that any criticism to the contrary is censored and ridiculed
by an elite that tries to paint The Interwar regime as benevolent who were victims of the Allies.
Furthermore, this is clearly propaganda of religious fanatics who are very hostile to the
Pontificate of Pope Francis and The Second Vatican Council and thus their claims cannot be
taken seriously because they have a political agenda that clouds them from the observable facts.
Thus, dismissing the nuances of these scholarly research articles that document the conflicts and
compromises of The Church and these Interwar nationalist regimes must itself be dismissed as
emotional and irrational argumentation that are biased to the aesthetic and romanticism of these
ideologies that sound Magisterial analysis shows they are incompatible with sound Catholic
teaching. The contextual analysis done in MBS and NoAB and the research from Professor
Grbešić document how the sterilization laws and Anti-race mixing laws provoked opposition
from The Church which the Reich suppressed them and their rights in spite of the Concordat
Agreements. (Grbešić 454–57) These documentations are no different than what Meinvielle
reports and other scholars that recognize these persecutions. In the NoAB I have pointed out
from Emilio Gentile’s paper clearing away misunderstandings that the supposed harmonious
relations with the regimes were anything but harmonious and were often brought with suspicion
at best, and anxieties and hostilities at worst. (E. Gentile, “Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and
Misunderstandings” 28–29) Roger Griffin likewise has this to say regarding the so-called
“compatibility” between The Church’s doctrines and the regimes’ sacralisation mythos:
“Clearly if Catholicism is gutted of its theology and redemptive promises and reduced to a
reactionary bulwark of national identity, conventional morality, and bourgeois interests, and if
revolutionary fascism is likewise stripped of its revolutionary – modernist – radicalism, and then
examined in its most compromised, conservative adulterations, or solely as an authoritarian
regime in league with existing ruling elites, then an impression can emerge that they are as
natural buddies as Bonnie and Clyde, or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Marxist
assumptions about the capitalist roots of fascism and the repressive ideological function of
religion under capitalism are especially conducive to such a shot-gun marriage of two alien
entities. It would thus be salutary to dispel such misconceptions in preparation for such study to
read some key passages of St Paul, Luther, Kierkegaard, or Jesus Christ Himself, and by the
same token refresh an acquaintance with the more uncompromising pronouncements of Giovanni
Gentile, Roberto Farinacci, Julius Evola in Italy, Gottfried Benn and Martin Heidegger (at least
in their supinely Naziphile phase), Arthur Rosenberg, or Hitler himself, so as to bear in mind a
deep impression of the chasm that existed between them. Revisiting the pictorial record of a
death camp would also serve as a useful prophylactic against a wishy-washy, intellectually lazy
blurring of definitional boundaries.” (Griffin 54 emphasis added)
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Thus, aside from the nuances that need to be analyzed to understand how the compromises and
what sorts of compromises were made in different facets of the ecclesiastical body, to argue for a
fundamental compatibility between the two would require stripping away key tenets in either or
both of these worldviews to a generic commonality devoid of particularities and intricate
distinctions.
Finally, as to whether the encyclical carries a level of authority as stated above: every encyclical
published by the Vatican always carries within itself its authority under frameworks of faith and
morals, which the NoAB and MBS encyclicals definitely possess; the statements analyzed in the
encyclicals undoubtedly possess characteristics of magisterial statements of faith and morals,
which every Catholic must be subject to under the judgment of the papacy given the moral and
doctrinal implications of the encyclicals themselves. This implies that, even if the encyclical is
based on imprecise or inaccurate accounts, its doctrinal and moral statements are non-
negotiable by any Catholic in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, at least its doctrinal declarations,
therefore, they are encyclicals that require ministerial submission on the part of Catholics in the
ecclesiastical body. That the statements in the encyclicals make some Catholics uncomfortable
because they carry a narrative that is inconvenient to their political and philosophical stances is
not justifiable efforts to adopt.

On the claim that Fascism saved The Vatican

Objection 1: Without Mussolini’s Fascist regime, The Vatican would not exist. If The Vatican is
destroyed by Italy, that would destroy Catholicism’s central claim regarding the Roman See of
Peter. Thus, Fascism was compatible with Catholicism in the sense that the former’s ideology
helped to maintain the latter’s existence.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: Not even Mussolini made such a bold claim. (Meinvielle, Entre La
Iglesia y El Reich 17; Ezcurra Medrano, “El Estado Nacionalista y El Catolicismo” 46) What
truly happened was twofold: on the one hand, The Catholic Church adopted a diplomatic policy
to maintain as much harmony between two parties, however different and opposing they were;
and minimize major hostilities, as Emilio Gentile documents in his work that I have detailed in
the NoAB analysis. (E. Gentile, “Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and Misunderstandings”) On
the other hand, you had the strategic compromises and oppositions by The Church to maintain
order in the midst of tensions she knew could not resolve through concordats nor diplomacy. The
Church was experiencing opposition from modernist errors in secular totalitarian regimes across
all political spectrums, she thus adopted a policy of minimal casualties as possible, even at the
psychological distress of Pius XI. (E. Gentile, “Catholicism and Fascism: Reality and
Misunderstandings” 28–36) On the latter, Mussolini realized that if any more hostilities were to
be exacerbated against The Catholic Church, he would lose reputation before a perception that
his regime was friendly to Catholicism when the ideology promoted bore fruits to the contrary,
thus you now have a political tactic to minimize public image that Adolf Hitler did not hesitate to
risk after the Concordat. (E. Gentile, “New Idols: Catholicism in the Face of Fascist
Totalitarianism” 145–47; Grbešić 453–55) Therefore, alongside the analysis in NoAB and what
has been said here; the Catholic Church was not saved by Fascists and Mussolini himself admits
this.
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In regard to the claim that if Vatican City is destroyed, Catholicism loses claim to the Roman See
of Peter and thus, refute Catholicism, this is based on the erroneous assumption that the Primacy
of Rome of The Catholic Church is predicated on secular, geographical considerations instead of
divine proclamations by Christ through Saint Peter; an error committed by the Eastern Orthodox
and they resort to the twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon as evidence against the primacy of the
Roman Church, but Erick Ybarra in his monumental work defending The Papacy from Eastern
Orthodox arguments has this to say after contextualizing the canon:
“If the jurisdiction of Constantinople was to match “equal” with Old Rome’s jurisdiction, and if
this jurisdiction was restricted to regional boundaries, then the kind of jurisdiction the twenty-
eighth canon refers to when it speaks of Roman jurisdiction was also regional. Thus, the
jurisdiction of Rome that the bishops said was due from its being the capital of the empire was
Roman’s patriarchate, which is not the same thing as Rome’s universal primacy to all
churches. On this reading, the kind of primacy that the twenty-eighth canon speaks of was
entirely different than jurisdiction that received dogmatic treatment at the First Vatican Council,
since the latter treats the universal worldwide primacy over the whole Church.
Catholics might well agree that the Roman patriarchate, with its care for the churches of the
West, was organized from the prestige of the imperial city. However, the “care for all churches”
and theirs from Tu es Petrus investiture recorded in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, which
is a different kind of prerogative altogether, rests not on the socio-political status of the
Roman city but on the primacy given to St. Peter by the Lord and is inherited by his
successors.” (Ybarra 359–60 italics in original, bold and underlines added)
Thus, the primacy of Rome as the universal Church is not predicated neither from socio-political
nor geographical circumstances, this implies that if Mussolini were to attack and sack The
Vatican, Pius XI could simply move the Vatican to another place, and that would not change Pius
XI’s Roman universality ecclesiastically speaking though it might change his patriarchate on a
local level.
Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: Well even if that was the case, The Catholic Church would have been
better off under Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Just look at all that has happened under Francis’
Pontificate, that would not have happened if Mussolini and Hitler would have won the war. If
The Church maintained friendlier relations with Hitler and Mussolini, The Catholic Church
would not have suffered so much subversion from liberalism and the LGBTQ agenda.
Rebuttal to Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: The literature that has analyzed the relation between the
Church and these regimes as discussed in the analysis and the previous objections simply
demonstrate that it would not be the case. What would happen was The Church would have to
compromise doctrines and their ecumenical attitude to appease the sacralisations and
secularizations of society that would ever exacerbate the tensions Pius IX and Pius X saw when
they wrote their encyclicals Quanta Cura and Pascendi Domini Gregis, respectively. Regarding
the so-called infiltration by liberals on The Church, if there is one infiltration I believe is more
insidious have to be the self-proclaimed “traditional Catholics” that accuse Francis of heresy,
departing from tradition or introducing extra-traditional novelties such as the last year’s (2023)
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Dubia responses and the latest Fiducia Supplicans, all are accusations that try to paint a sort of
major crisis in The Catholic Church institutionally in the sense that such crisis is a result of
Francis departing from tradition and thus delegitimizing his Pontificate. I believe that what The
Church is undergoing now would have been far worse under the so-called “Catholic” Third
Positionist regimes because from the literature analyzed, they would have doubled down on the
same antagonism the sedevacantists and radical traditionalists display towards Francis’
Pontificate. Perhaps it was Divine Providence, from The Church’s perspective, that the National
Socialist and Fascist regimes collapsed and were destroyed if it meant they would have to
conform their doctrine to their sacral demands. On the other end, the liberal “infiltration” is just
the Liberal Order absorbing everything it can into some empty universal conglomerate from the
Western Atlanticist hegemony and weaken The Church’s influence over society.
This is a case of one needing to pick one poison over another. It is my estimation that from a
civic standpoint, the Church is safer in the current age (relatively speaking) than it was under the
totalitarian regimes exemplified under Hitler, Mussolini and even Plutarco Elías Calles.
However, without them as a reference and taking it all from a bird’s eye view, The Church views
the liberalism of The Atlanticist hegemon as a form of soft-powered totalitarianism, one not
exercised by military might, but by cultural might, and in here, I believe The Church has the
upper hand despite all the “news” and fearmongering by some vocal crowd. The Church’s
greatest strength has always been her ability to exercise cultural influence, and this is how she
was able to survive multiple epochs threatening her even at the threat of the sword and bullet. It
be effectively asking The Church if she would rather live with a totalitarian abuser of “right-
wing” tendencies, or “left-wing” tendencies, a question which, from The Church’s point of view,
is absurd because both are condemned in The Magisterium and thus for her, there can be no
peaceful co-existence in the long-term. Therefore the objector that makes this claim fails to
contextualize even from The Church’s point of view on what it entailed to compromise with
these regimes, each regime had different levels of compromise, both which The Church only did
so bitterly and with grave suspicion and have acknowledged that in the long-term, they would
have to be undermined and appease to the demands of the State or the culture shaped by said
State, a situation I believe is no different from today’s ruling cultural hegemony, that this current
order exercises it through soft-power is irrelevant.

On Catholic Action and NatSoc/Fascist support from priests and bishops

Objection 1: There are numerous photographs of peaceful meetings between Catholic Bishops
and Catholic Youth organizations with National Socialists and Fascists. Furthermore, there are
examples of bishops and priests showing that there can be reconciliation with National Socialism
and Fascism, even the literature records some instances of said bishops. Thus, The Catholic
Church’s relation to these regimes was not entirely antagonistic, and that shows that there is a
way to reconcile with them. Thus, your analysis is biased towards the antagonistic body of The
Church against National Socialism and Fascism and does not pay attention to the arguments of
the other side that found ways to reconcile said worldviews.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: To this objection I would cite Roger Griffin’s work that analyses these
phenomenon as well as Jorge Dagnino’s work that contextualizes the various views Catholic
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Intellectuals in Italy had to these various ideologies. In explaining the various Catholics that have
attempted to reconcile the Fascist theories with Catholicism, Griffin argues we should abandon
such simplistic notions of a sort of homogeneity in psyche to this nuanced and complex
phenomenon and cites Robert Lifton’s The Protean Self to substantiate said analysis in
explaining the various collusions and hybridizations attempted by various Catholics in support of
Fascism. (Griffin 63–64) Griffin indicates that by adopting such a complex model of psyche to
describe this phenomenon we get a clear picture of what really was going on in the minds of
these Fascists, with the first phase he terms shallow duplicity, which he describes as:
“[…] those with a weak inner core of religious faith could all too easily see both fascism and
Catholicism as compatible on central social issues (family values, anti-Communism, stopping
moral and cultural decadence, stabilizing and respiritualizing society), but without entering any
deep sense of cognitive dissonance or conflict, since the Church was merely for them part of
Italian or German everyday normality.” (Griffin 64 emphasis added)
Next phase is what he terms passive collusion, which Griffin describes as being defined by self-
deception and mental gymnastics to justify a sort of doublethink or double lifestyle as living like
Catholics while accepting outwardly the myths and sacralisations of the fascists. (Griffin 64)
Finally, the third phase is proactive collusion, and Griffin describes it as such:
“Here devout congregational or clerical Catholics entered a more complex state of
accommodation with fascism by convincing themselves that by supporting it they were lending
their weight to the bulwark being created against the arch-enemies of Christianity: materialism,
secularism, atheistic science, liberalism, communism, the atomization and disenchantment of
society, moral anarchy, and even the hegemony of ‘Jewish’ values. This could lead to a feeling
that fascism was a providential force sent to rescue the Church from destruction, as when a
German pastor’s response to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in January 1933 that “the wing
of a great turn of fate [was] fluttering above [them]”.” (Griffin 64 emphasis added)
The proactive collusion, however, is not the pinnacle of duplicity or cognitive dissonance, in the
next level, Griffin describes what he calls “a mazeway resynthesis”, which he attributes to the
hybridization of Catholicism and fascism by Cardinal Stepinac and Schuster, creating a new
“politico-religious compound or alloy” that is characterized by the creation of a new synthesized
‘nomos’ to recover the old one through radical revolutionary solutions to the crisis. (Griffin 64–
65) This sort of hybridization was also discussed in Robert Clark’s Doctoral Thesis describing
the Aryanization of Christianity, this precise mazeway resynthesis is what is done by the
supposed Catholic Intellectuals that believe there is a reconciliation between two incompatible
worldviews. But as I have discussed in the MBS analysis from Clark’s work, such a synthesis
only works one-way, that is, the synthesis is actually a subjugator idea, modifying a target idea
under its own image, and this was the case with many National Socialist Christians (Protestants
and Catholics alike), but this is not evidence that said ideologies can be reconciled due to
inherent core fundamentals natural to each other, but rather, it is a reconciliation in spite of the
absence of such natural tenets that smoothly reconcile due to their nature. That is, these
Catholics had to force a synthesis where there could be not.
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Dagnino documents from three major worldviews or political ideologies: Bolshevism, National
Socialism and Fascism, with the first two the Italian Catholic intellectuals saw as
insurmountable, with the second one exhibiting a sacralisation of race and nation that was to,
overtime, replace the Catholic religion with a theology completely motivated through a racialist
worldview that absorbs Catholic aesthetics and dispenses with their virtues contrary to the
NatSoc worldview’s ethics. (Dagnino 222–24) With Fascism, Dagnino notices that the
compromises were ambivalent and mixed, utilizing Griffin’s analysis, Dagnino describes those
that showed the duplicities described by Griffin such as the FUCI (Federazione Universitaria
Cattolica Italiana) and Movimento laureate, tried to reconcile these ideologies by appealing to
the need of a unifying worldview to provide certainty in uncertain post-war times such as
believed by assistant Adriano Bernareggi. (Dagnino 227–28) But Dagnino also documents the
Catholic Intellectuals which did indeed saw a threat in Fascism, not only were they aware of
many proclamations of Fascism as a political and civil religion that emulated the Gentilian
statolatry (Dagnino 228), others such as Fausto Montanari saw that the reactionism exhibited by
Fascism went into a radical extreme where the individual’s potential to self-improve, was
sacrificed into an abstract collectivity, and laments how God and religion became another myth
in the myth-making of secular rulers and society in general. (Dagnino 229) For Catholic
Intellectuals that saw Fascism as a threat also pointed out to the anthropological revolution of
“the new man” whose ethical baggage is informed by the paradigms laid out by Mazzini and
Nietzsche, which Montanari saw as contrary to the scholastic anthropology in Catholic
principles. (Dagnino 230) Therefore, any evidence that supposedly points to Catholic collusion
or hybridization of Fascism with Catholicism, decontextualizing the nuances inherent in each
worldview, fails to acknowledge the model described by Griffin. It is true there were Catholics
who could attempt to harmonize Fascism with Catholicism, but if we take Griffin’s analysis
using Lifton’s model of complex psyche, we can appreciate how this phenomenon is also found
in Catholics who try to reconcile other non-Fascist ideologies such as Communism and other
worldviews which too stand in stark contrast with Catholic ethos. Appealing to a group of
bishops supporting a particular movement as evidence that said movement is Catholic or
Catholic friendly is not only insufficient but disregards the role of The Magisterium and The
Papacy’s in conducting the doctrinal and theological education and cohesion of their flock. What
matters really is not how many Catholic laity, priests or bishops support anything but that what
they support is in-line with The Magisterium and the ethos of The Church. Thus, the assumption
that Fascism occupies a privileged position of exceptionalism devoid of the reconciliatory errors
with other ideologies different from Fascism or Third Positionism fall into the fallacy of special
pleading since, by recognizing inherent tenets of Catholicism that are incompatible with
worldviews or philosophies that run contrary to their tenets, the phenomenon of cognitive
dissonance is not limited solely to non-Fascist hybridization but common to any attempt to
reconcile Catholic ethos with anti-Catholic ones.
Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: But those Italian Catholics from Catholic Action supported still an
Ethical State that was strong to enforce Catholic principles. What exactly is incompatible of that
to Catholicism? Catholic Intellectuals from Catholic Action were still able to reconcile Fascism
at least from the commonality of socially conservative principles that cohered with Catholic
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interests, that is why many Catholics supported Fascist policies even if they had suspicion in how
they executed the power of the State.
Rebuttal to Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: It is true, but that was only on the condition that such a
State was not of the Gentilian strand. (Dagnino 229) The nuance here is that many Catholic
Intellectuals critical of Fascism did not oppose them because they were “shameless subversive
liberals” or other absurd accusations, rather, they understood rightly that for a truly Fascist state
to manifest itself, it must precisely enact the Gentilian form of the State, which was unacceptable
to Catholic Intellectuals even those that tried to have some collusion with the Fascist regime, but
in such a case, it was an exercise where Catholicism played more a central, magisterial role, than
the other way around characterized by those displaying the proactive and the mazeway
resynthesis. It is important to stress that many of the Catholic critics of Fascism opposed them
from philosophical and theological grounds, such as Father Giulio Bevilacqua, who saw the error
of the anthropological transformation of man in Fascism as a desperate delusion to exalt an era
motivated by bellicosity not found in Catholic ethics, but in an ideal that is desperate in search of
a greatness that is not found outside Catholicism. (Dagnino 231) Therefore, it is important to
keep in mind the nuances in how Catholic intellectuals intricately conceived politics and political
action grounded in sound scholastic principles such as those done by Meinvielle and the Catholic
Intellectuals that criticized the errors of these ideologies. It is also recognizable that some
Catholic intellectuals saw these ideologies a sort of “vessels” to introduce Catholic elements to
use as tools to further their goals, but from this point, they are no longer working with the proper
forms of these worldviews but modifying them significantly to an image unrecognizable to the
intellectuals or thinkers that developed the original product.
In this respect, as the scholars I have cited admit, the Catholic intellectuals that have attempted to
reconcile these ideologies were what Pius X had in mind who have succumbed to the heresy of
Modernism, as Igino Giordani and Giulio Bevilacqua identified. (Dagnino 218) As I have
exposited in the NoAB analysis, Pius X’s condemnation of Modernism wasn’t directed at a “left,
progressive liberal” Catholic group as is often misinterpreted by the “traditional Catholics”
group, rather, it encompasses all the compromises across all the sociopolitical spectrum that
attempt to introduce ideals and philosophical tenets that undermine The Church’s influence over
society. For Luigi Sturzo, Giulio Bevilacqua and other Catholic critics of these interwar
nationalist regimes, the heresy of modernism was manifested in these ideologies and the
Catholics that tried to reconcile with them were the ones Pius X had in mind when writing that
encyclical, thus from The Magisterium’s point of view, the Catholic Intellectuals that categorized
these worldviews as modernist and thus heretical, were more Magisterially consistent than the
compromisers. It is important to keep in mind that all that Pius X condemned in Paragraph 24 of
Pascendi Domini Gregis applies to any structure of government, of any political spectrum, that
attempts to make the Church subordinate to the State.
To further drive home these points, let’s consider two letters by German Jesuit priest Gustav
Gundlach, one of the pioneers which helped LaFarge draft HGU; sent to the US American Jesuit
regarding the situation in Europe during the interwar period, the first one written on March 15th
of 1939 (Passelecq and Suchecky 76), and the second one on May 10th of the same year
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(Passelecq and Suchecky 82); let’s read what he has to say about the attitude of Catholics in
adopting these mazeway resynthesis double thinking elucidated earlier, I cite the relevant
portions from the book The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI:
“[…] The attitude of the A.R.P.N. [abbreviation of Admodum reverendus pater noster, which in
the context, refers to Jesuit General Father Wladimir Ledochowski] with regard to the diverse
“isms” is vacillating. Let him receive information about all the anti-Christian and socially
destructive things that are happening to popular morality in Germany, especially in the domain of
religious instruction and the morals of the youth, and he proclaims to anyone who will listen that
National Socialism is at least as dangerous as communism. People appear from Germany with
information on some (apparent!) concession or other that National Socialism is supposed to have
made in the religious domain, and he is all optimism. Let next similar reports about communism
come in from America, and now communism is once again the sole true enemy! What is lacking
is precisely a position based on fundamental principles and especially on natural law; and in
addition, unfortunately, there is a great misunderstanding of the causes and the facts. Moreover,
the A.R.P.N. unfortunately is strongly influenced by the privileged and property-owning groups
in almost all countries. Any legislation that inconveniences in a greater or lesser degree the
property-owners in the so-called “economy” is simply presented as leading toward communism,
as an influence of communism, and is denounced as such. Moreover, the bourgeois and
industrialists in many countries are so blind that in order to oppose the so-called pressure of labor
unions and workers’ organizations, they support forms of government in the German style; for
over there, they say, the workers are completely docile and no longer have any power. Let’s do
the same thing here politically, they say, and the economy will do well. They don’t consider the
fact that this German system is pure State socialism [I will corroborate this much further
down the monograph, he is not wrong here!], or that the middle class is ultimately the one that
truly suffers, and soon “Capital” will suffer as well. These people are blind, and my opinion is
and remains: fight communism, whether it is red or another color.
Fight communism in a positive way, by representing, in matters of social and economic life, the
line of natural law and the gospels, which is taught by the Church. But it is erroneous to
want, out of fear of red communism, to spare the bourgeoisie, and especially the Catholic
bourgeoisie, all real sacrifices, by presenting anti-communism as a simple reform in
mentality and by giving the “good” bourgeoisie gooseflesh by holding up frightful images of
communists attacking religion and the Church. It is clear that the A.R.P.N. is not very satisfied
with those who see his anti-communism in this way. But the Church will not be able to exist
honorably and successfully unless it clearly supports the challenge of the gospels and of natural
law, everywhere and with regard to everything. Please look up, in the most recent great biography
of Montalembert, what this great patriot and Catholic was saying, and writing, at the time of
Bonapartist absolutism, when so many prelates were resigning themselves to the system.
Because the churches remained open, these prelates thought they could overlook all the arrests
contrary to natural and administrative law, the violation of postal secrecy, etc. Today, at the same
time that the newspapers are describing the fall of the rest of Czechoslovakia and Prague, we
have to see clearly that this crazy business of race could become no less a danger to the
world than red communism. May the Lord preserve other countries from having to be cured of
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their blindness by going through similar practical experiences. […]” (Passelecq and Suchecky
79–80 italics in original, bold and underlines added for emphasis, additional comments in
brackets)
Gundlach understood very well that Ledochowski has fallen into what Griffin describes as
shallow duplicity at work, the perfect example and Gundlach rightly observes that
Ledochowski’s position is absurd and erroneous and purely emotive and driven by manipulative
propaganda.
There is more, here is the full citation of the relevant parts of the other letter I mentioned, also
written to John LaFarge, this time, the context is regarding the failed results of an anti-
communism because the same anti-communist regimes also are as failed and threatening
Catholic liberties as the red communist regimes:
“[…] At a time when the country of the Weichsel is threatened and when many people perceive
the specter of a B[erlin]-Mosc[ow] alliance, naturally our current direct superior’s {most likely
referring to Ledochowski} sky is falling. For because of the friendship between Spree and the
Weichsel up to this point, B[er]l[i]n’s anti-Bolshevism was taken seriously and it was thought
that the fight against the Church and Christianity was no more than an “episode” that could more
or less of [our] own anti-communism, it was already secretly hoped that we could present
ourselves as allies and companions, in one way or another, of the Authoritarians and the
Totalitarians {Gundlach undoubtedly is describing the predicament of Catholics displaying
shallow duplicity in light of what he just said here}. If to informed observers all these opinions
and hopes seemed false in themselves, it is natural that now, following the concrete
developments, this so-called “purely religious” anti-communism, whose tendency is
nevertheless fundamentally political, is collapsing under its own weight. In addition, because
of the secondary social and economic effects in the authoritarian and totalitarian states, the
communist danger, far from diminishing, is spreading among the dispossessed masses who
have been deprived of all rights {More on this much further, he is onto something!}.
There is no “purely religious” anti-communism. Without a program oriented toward socio-
political goals, based on the principles of natural law and revelation, a program which can
obviously not be the same in all countries, anti-communism on our part is without influence
{This is similar to what I have been saying the entire monograph up until this point, and I also
mention similar points in another objection}. Anyone who rejects such a program, because it
is “political”, is either not a Catholic, and clearly an idealist and spiritualist with Protestant
tendencies, or even a “politician” who is hiding his cards, for he refuses to require of
certain groups a Christianity of sacrifices or wants to please the dominant systems {Oh boy,
now who could possibly fulfill such criteria? Hint: It is not the Catholics that opposed Fascism
and National Socialism on theological grounds as discussed in the first part, that’s for sure.
Clearly, he is talking about the ones displaying the varieties of cognitive dissonances described
in Roger Griffin’s paper}. Worse yet, these “purely religious” people are helping the radical
Catholics such as the well-known radio preacher over there, because “purely religious people”
have nothing positive to oppose to this Catholic radicalism {Because they have no Magisterially
grounded principles to offer rational solutions and rely on mental gymnastics like the bishops
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and priests that think the religion of the Apostles is reconcilable with racialisms and
statolatries.}.
That is why we have to have a social program with at least some goals, founded on the
principles of natural law and revealed law and taking local relationships into account.
Without wanting in the least to claim to know what these relationships are, in my opinion the
principal point of view ought to be: the security and promotion of what is called the middle class,
which means: guaranteeing and promoting above all property acquired through personal labor
and which supports the economic unity of the family. Contrary to some European industrial
countries, it seems to me Christian social reform over there must still aim less at guaranteeing the
existence of the salaried worker qua salaried worker than that of the middle class. Hence:
maintenance of property acquired through personal labor as the basis for the unity of family
economics. From a negative point of view, this implies that one must approve the state’s
intervention in social and economic questions, not only in theory, but also in practice, and that
one must not oppose measures of this kind [under the pretext that they would amount to]
socialism. Frankly, a social and popular policy carried out by the State would necessarily affect
the federal structure of the United States through its economic impact, which might turn out to be
negative primarily in child-raising and in schools, as we conceive them. But I don’t see how one
can avoid this risk, which is far more moderate; the use of another possible means of social
reform seems to me currently impossible over there. This would be to make social reform the
responsibility of autonomous trade associations, which would propose the appropriate
legislation; to do that, however, it seems to me that the preliminary sociological conditions have
not yet been met in the United States, insofar as both the people and the state of things are
concerned. It would be in other respects negative to refuse to allow anti-communist movement
over there to derive inspiration, by giving them a Christian interpretation, from the slogans and
formulas of the communists; for example, in place of “the world revolution of the proletariat,”
“the world revolution for Christ.” But as method, that is a bit rudimentary. Moreover, that would
disturb other groups of collaborators and would unfortunately serve only to cover up a personal
lack of positive social ideas.
Why all this relation to our unfortunate activity of last summer? Because the gap still remains,
but now it has to be filled in other countries. And there appears to be great danger of seeing a
choice between communism and national totalitarianism imposed on South American minds
{not just strictly South America, this is also another way of mentioning all of Hispanoamerica,
for the foreigner, there is only two Americas: the North, which is United States and Canada; and
the South, Mexico all the way to the Patagonia.}, far more than on those in the United States.
That must be avoided at all cost. In order to do so, we need a true and adequate social
program. For neither the “purely religious” nor the radical Catholics will be able to provide the
Church with a solid point of view in the difficult conflicts to come. Both will act on behalf of
Capital, which, in order to protect itself against a socialism of the masses, is rushing toward an
American national totalitarianism on the model already seen in Europe {What an
interestingly eloquent way of underlying the foreignization problem towards these ideologies
imposing themselves on Hispanoamericans and everywhere they go, almost as if they are as
imposing universally like the Marxist trains of thoughts}. When that happens, there will no
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longer be anything to do but to pray for the Church there, because it will appear as a foreign
body to be combated, still more than it has been under German totalitarianism. Or else then
there will be communist-revolutionary explosions that will ravage from within the unity of the
faithful in this country. At that moment, the “purely religious”, for lack of a coherent social
program, will have nothing to say to the belligerents. As for the radicals in the clergy, they will
be on the right or on the left {they could be fanatical statolatrous Clerical Fascists or
statolatrous liberation theological Catholics!}, and thus they too will fan the flames. And the
Church there will demonstrate that it has no clear orientation.” (Passelecq and Suchecky 84–86
italics and square brackets in original, bold and underlines added for emphasis, additional
comments by me in curvy brackets)
This extensive citation (and it’s not even the whole letter!) of Gundlach’s letter to John LaFarge
vindicates everything I have exposited and argued in the monograph: the shallow duplicities to
the mazeway resynthesis employed by these compromising Catholics in their delusion to allied
themselves with modernist ideologies with clear incompatibilities to Catholicism and against
Magisterial teaching, the illusion attributed to these same Catholics on the mere superficiality of
these ideologies solely through “social conservatism” despite their clear Marxist origins (again,
more on this soon) which were also condemned by The Magisterium, the need to be clear and
coherent with The Catholic Magisterium to formulate sensible plans that make sense and provide
realistic solutions from a Catholic standpoint; Gundlach understood just as much as I did here
and all the authors cited so far: what truly must be evaluated at the end of the day, is to ensure
that any idea proposed to allied itself with Catholicism in modernity, must cohere with
fundamental teachings of The Catholic Church and allow her to guide the morality of these ideals
as Julio Meinvielle has argued in his cited work, dispel and remove any element that tries to
eclipse or antagonize core doctrines and social teachings of The Catholic Church and adopt those
that The Church judges to be noble and compatible, otherwise, as Gundlach rightly argued, the
Catholics in mind will have no clear goals, no realistic orientation and will be severely
disappointed at the turn of events when these ideologies that they put their utmost trust in,
inevitably turns against them and fundamentally change and subvert their religion to a new
synthesis so detached from the true source, a new amalgam that is virtually indistinguishable
from the political sacralisation of the pet ideology.
To smokescreen these points with the overused “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s” will need to
consider informing themselves on the works such as Julio Meinvielle’s which add an excellent
nuance to that interpretation, which I have cited extensively in Albizu Campos’ section.
Therefore, the objection to insist that such Catholics, whether of the clergy or laity, have
seemingly found a way to reconcile their faith with the doctrines of these Third Positionist
ideologies, or even communist ideals, fall into the same error of the modernist-synchretists who
employ the illusion of harmony of two diametrically, fundamentally opposing worldviews like a
synchretist convincing a well-grounded Catholic that he or she has managed to harmonize
Catholicism with progressive liberalism on the grounds that there are some common grounds and
points of similarities between the two, however the latter distorts the former.
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On the Magisteriality of Humani Generis Unitas (Pius XI’s Hidden

Encyclical)
Objection 1: Humani Generis Unitas may be the only “encyclical” that explicitly mentions and
condemns racialist doctrines in an extensive manner beyond what MBS does, unfortunately for
you, Humani Generis Unitas is not magisterial, it is not an official encyclical, it would just be an
archived Vatican document like other archived documents of the Church. Thus, calling it a
“hidden encyclical” is a misnomer.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: It is true that Humani Generis Unitas is not magisterial, at least not
formally, but I would argue that materially, it is such, and I would defend this claim the same
manner I have contextualized how Pius XI and other Catholic intellectuals used idolatry
materially even though not formally in a strict, religious sense. In the MBS and NoAB analysis, I
have contextualized what Catholic critics meant by ‘idolatry’ when describing the errors of
liberalism regarding the State, race, etc, which involves a sacralisation that overestimates its
standard value appropriate to said objects, to the same level Catholics give to religiously,
formally sacred objects such as The Eucharist or other relics, that is, sacralisation does not need
to involve a ‘religious worship’ but a cultus as if it had the same value as a cultus to a religiously
sacred object. How I defend this principle of interpretation to Humani Generis Unitas? By the
simple fact that Humani Generis Unitas (HGU), while not carrying the formal pontificate
authority relegated to formally published encyclicals, the doctrinal stated contents implied in
such document, impart it, contextually from preceding official encyclicals, said authority. How
this works is two-fold: first, from the historical context that surrounded HGU, which Pius XI
summoned John LaFarge, requested his intellectual rigor from previous work Pius XI knew from
him on his works regarding race relation while in the US. (Passelecq and Suchecky 35–38) This
means that Pius XI has not only wished to use LaFarge’s theological input as well as Desbuqois’
and Gundlach’s input, but Pius XI would have issued the encyclicals that served to expand and
extend that which MBS, NoAB and Divini Redemptoris had argued before 1938. Second, it is the
theological and philosophical context, which follows directly from the first; the theological
context of HGU allows us to interpret HGU magisterially even if it’s not formally magisterial,
that is, to understand HGU from a contextual standpoint, you would refer to formally magisterial
documents that HGU expands upon. From these two contexts, it can help bolster the magisterial
value, however informal and unofficial it may be, of HGU.
The implications of HGU taking such an extraordinary status as an encyclical ─even if
unofficial─ is that it would help us extend HGU’s unique status as a general pattern for future
unpublished encyclicals that have the same doctrinal statements as official documents. For
instance, if the objector were to take his/her objection seriously, would Divini Redemptoris
disqualify it from being authoritative if it suffered the same circumstances as HGU did? Would
the unpublished, hypothetically, status of Divini Redemptoris justify the acceptance of Catholics
to be formal communists, even material communists? After all, it’s not magisterial, it was not
published. We can go further: what if, for some strange however tragic reason, Pope Pius IX fell
ill and was unable to issue Quanta Cura and the Syllabus of Errors, and the latter would be put to
the same status as HGU, would the Syllabus loose magisterial value and thus, would the errors
and its referenced encyclicals loose value? The objector, and future Catholic individuals that
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make this argument would be wise to reconsider such an objection, because the implications of
the objector’s premise are very clear: if the documents are not officially published, however
contextually connected they are to preceding and even proceeding official documents, then that
would disqualify it from being held into the conscious of Catholics.
It seems to me that the argument of unofficial status, at the very least, needs to be carefully
evaluated on a case-by-case basis, thus a contextual analysis of such class of Vatican documents
needs to be analyzed in such manner before jumping to conclusions of authority from The
Magisterium’s point of view. Therefore, while conceding that, for being unofficial, HGU is not
formally magisterial, it is nonetheless materially one in virtue of the context that surrounded the
encyclical, nor does the unofficial status diminish the theological, philosophical and doctrinal
value it possesses like other encyclicals.

On the “Latinlessness” argument launched against Mit Brennender Sorge

Objection 1: Well even if all that was true, there is another detail you forget: Mit Brennender
Sorge was the first encyclical to be released in German, while it is traditional custom for
encyclicals to be released in Latin, and since Latin is the language of the Vatican, for an
encyclical to be truly authoritative, it must first be released in Latin as it is the most preferred
language and most authoritative language of The Vatican. The fact that MBS has yet to receive a
Latin translation demonstrates its lack of authority, so you cannot use MBS as a Magisterial
document knowing it lacks a Latin translation.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: This has got to be the most ridiculous argument against anything
regarding MBS. The objector that makes this argument has obviously not visited the Vatican’s
website to review just how many encyclicals, bulls and speeches have yet to receive an up-to-
date Latin translation. The objector has also not considered the fact that, MBS was specifically
written to the German Reich, that, for obvious reasons, would only understand German. There
are various encyclicals that carry just as much authority in doctrinal matters that have yet to
receive a Latin translation even by encyclicals that have nothing to do with anything politically
relevant, yet for some reason (and it pains me to inform this to the readers) this argument was
specifically launched at MBS to discredit its authority when other arguments surrounding the
context of MBS have been exhausted and rebutted soundly.
Another detail: Latin is not “an authoritative” language. The objector will need to provide
Magisterial justification to demonstrate that only encyclicals first released in Latin carry
Magisterial authority. This argument is very typical of the so-called traditional Catholics that put
arbitrary specialness to the Latin language. Magisterial authority of Vatican documents are not
hinged on the language it was transmitted but on the direct approval and signing of the Pope, that
is, as long as The Pope, with or without auxiliary writers helping it draft it, issues the document
as part of The Magisterium, it is Magisterial and carries with it the authority of every other
document in The Vatican published. I have saved a particular point regarding this very objection
when I presented Sublimus Deus, the sentence in question is precisely, and I quote:
“By virtue of Our apostolic authority We define and declare by these present letters, or by any
translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical
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dignitary, which shall thus command the same obedience as the originals […]” (Paul III
emphasis added)
It could be released in Latin, French, English, Hebrew, Greek; the language is irrelevant. What
matters is the message that The Pope transmits in those documents and the authority The Pope
exercises on said document as I have expressly highlighted. It is therefore absurd and irrational
to appeal to the linguistic preferences of The Vatican as an argument to confine authority of a
Vatican document. The Vatican could switch its preferred language to Hebrew and that would not
diminish the authority of its previous nor proceeding encyclicals.
Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: Wrong, because if the Vatican transmits gibberish or unintelligible
language, the message will make no sense and its carried authority lost. Thus, the language
transmitted matters.
Rebuttal to Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: Again, that does not depend on the specific language used,
but how said language is used, gibberish is a universal quality of linguistic unintelligibility, it
can be spoken in any linguistic medium, that does not demonstrate why Latin is special and
authoritative over others. Intelligibility likewise does not depend on the medium transmitted but
that the message simply coheres grammatically and syntactically, whether it be in Spanish, Latin,
etc.

On the accusation of hypocrisy of using non-Hispanic philosophies in the

ethnogenesis of Hispanoamerican thought
Objection 1: This complaint of Maeztu and Buela of not cultivating philosophies or political
thoughts from the Hispanoamerican context just looks so petty and strange. What is precisely
wrong with adopting philosophical systems of other civilizations to try to adapt to another one?
This insistence of originality from each civilization is sincerely overvalued and ridiculous. Ideas
do not emerge in some isolated island free from external interactions of inspirations. It’s also
ironic and hypocritical how in some instances Alberto Buela makes mention of Heidegger when
elucidating on the concept of being, or how Julio Meinvielle references Thomas Aquinas, neither
of them are Hispanic in any way. That means they too must be foreignized by your logic of your
critique against foreignization.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: The objector that makes this argument does not even understand the
principle behind the critique of foreignization and has not understood the critique very well when
analyzing Maeztu and Alberto Buela. As I have stressed a number of times when the topic was
referenced, the problem is not borrowing or referring to foreign concepts per se, the problem is
not that an object is foreign, the problem is the mindset associated to said foreign object. When
Maeztu and Alberto Buela criticize the foreignization of Hispanics in philosophy, politics, etc,;
they are not critiquing that they are adopting external ideas to their culture, they are critiquing
that they do not provide said ideas a context to turn said ideas into something authentic that
coheres with their ethos, or develop one’s own systems of thought that follow a pattern, tradition
or link to the ethos that defines the Hispanoamerican. Since this ethos has both Medieval
Hispanic, Catholic, as well as indigenous links to their ethos, then naturally, it should be sensible
to create or further polish the philosophical systems that pertain to those traditions in the ethos.
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That means it makes sense for Julio Meinvielle to reference the scholastics since the Argentinian
ethos is the Medieval Hispanic Catholic. Likewise, it makes sense to also adapt some native
American philosophical systems, and Catholicize them within the context of Hispanoamerican
thought, that pertains to problems (whether political, philosophical, artistic, etc.) of
Hispanoamericans.
This of course means that, for external ideas, the Hispanoamerican must be well grounded in
his/her ethos to filter and discern what elements in said ideas are coherent to the ethos, and which
require modification within the ethos’ context or which require rejection, but such an exercise
cannot be done if the individual does not understand this ethos or outright rejects it, and in such a
case, you get Hispanics adopting foreign ideas, and imposing them as is, with little to no
modification that makes sense in the Hispanoamerican context. What always happens is, for
instance, some Hispanics adopt the ideas of Nietzsche’s Übermensch, when such Übermensch
according to Nietzsche’s understanding, does not fit into the Hispanoamerican ethos, which has a
different understanding of what it means to be “an overman.” This is what it means to
particularize a universal, but not all ideas pretending to be universal, are in fact universal. Take
the idea of democratic government with the Lockean understanding of liberty. It is very common
today to conceive such an idea as universal for all cultures, but it seems that not all cultures
receive this idea as a universal, some may adapt it remarkably to their culture, others,
unfortunately, do not accept it. Liberals may criticize as they are not educated enough or are not
open-minded to the ideas of liberal democracy, but perhaps what they need to realize is that, yes,
perhaps some of these cultures are not so open-minded to such ideas, but not because they are
ignorant, backwards barbarians, perhaps some, but perhaps others, simply do not square it well
with their ethos. Therefore, the central critique to the foreignization is not that Hispanics are
adopting foreign ideas or ideas external to their ethos, the problem is the mindset that shapes
how they treat once they adopt it or at the moment of adopting said ideas.
Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: So your critique is that when they adopt a philosophical paradigm or
idea in general outside the Hispanoamerican ethos, they do not apply a sort of ‘cultural filter’ so
to speak, that makes sense to their ethos. This still looks very petty and ridiculous. If an idea
works for all time and places, then it works, it doesn’t matter if it came from Africa, Korea, etc;
why exactly is this a problem? Wasn’t part of your analysis in the Hispano Catholic ethos was
that every race in the world has something to offer? Well maybe Hispanics have some things it
can’t offer and need external help to make it grow and stand out.
Rebuttal to Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: What if said idea doesn’t work in X culture? What will be
the solution to that? This is precisely what Maeztu and Buela try to argue in their works. The
most common solution opted by many intellectuals in the Hispanoamerican sphere, is to simply
force fit said ideas. To them, there cannot possibly be a way it cannot work here, so they force it
to work in the countries they try to apply it. This happens with the American liberal model in
socioeconomics and even the Marxist socialist models. Perhaps they work in some countries, but
in the Hispanoamerican countries, they do not seem to work. The liberal elite does not accept this
conclusion because if they do so, they are forced to admit that there is an ethos unique to
Hispanoamerica that demands another model that fits their ethos, and if said model is contrary to
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not only the US American, but the entire ‘Western civilization’ ─Which is effectively Buela’s
thesis─, then they will fight against such a conclusion like their life depends on it, and of course,
the entire ‘Western hemisphere’ will ensure that goes according to plan.
This same logic of the liberal elites is also the same logic Pochos of the second kind adopt when
they want to impose Third Positionist models of continental Europe to Hispanoamerica. They
believe, as do the liberal elites, that Hispanoamerica cannot offer something authentic to the
world stage, they have an idea that Hispanoamerica must constantly “keep up to date” with the
latest trend in other countries. It is this mindset that Maeztu and Buela, and even Vasconcelos
himself, observe that is so damaging to the Hispanoamerican cultural, social, economic, political
and maybe even technological development.
Regarding the last clause of the objection, it is precisely that point why Buela and Maeztu stress
the foreignization problem, because they believe that Hispanoamerica─ all its constituent
fatherlands─ can offer something authentic to the world without constantly needing to copy,
emulate or imitate the foreign. The entire thesis of Maeztu’s critique of the foreignization of
Hispanics is precisely this mindset that I have elaborated. I have cited how Maeztu comments
that even in the imitating the foreign, we do not even imitate the best of values they possess but
their trivialities or vices, and even some of their ‘best’ values do not necessarily fit to our ethos
1-1. This is not a “racist” or “ethnocentric” argument to encourage Hispanics to be authentic in
their philosophical paradigms, to characterize this as such not only misses the point but it is
suspiciously of ulterior motives to justify the foreignization of Hispanics. As Maeztu has
observed when he wrote his Defensa; Hispanics have been too occupied imitating and refining
the Enlightenment ideals of the French, as the French would like them to be, but very little is
dedicated to modifying said ideals in the image of our ethos that make sense to our problems, our
context and our experience so that we can also grow alongside other groups.

On perceived Fascist movements within Hispanoamerica

Objection 1: You critique Pochos of the second kind for wanting to incorporate Fascist or
National Socialist ideologies in Hispanoamerica. Yet what do you make of people like Juan
Ignacio Padilla of the Mexican Synarchist Union? Or of Juan Domingo Perón? Or the founder
of ‘Joven América,’ Aldo Rosado Tueldo, a Cuban nationalist that was neither Marxist nor
Capitalist, in essence, third positionist? What of the ‘Movimiento Nacionalista Cubano’ that
released a periodical with the title “What is the Third Position?” How can you claim that the
Third Position is foreign to the Hispanoamerican ethos when these movements emerged in the
continent as a response to the Cold War propaganda of “Capitalist America” versus “Soviet
Russia”?
Rebuttal to Objection 1: I am very well aware of these names; I am also aware of the MNC
mentioned and the periodical in question. Unfortunately, what the objector fails to realize is that
the Third Position of Hispanoamerica, as all political movements in Hispanoamerica since the
early 20th century, were of socioeconomic platform with the same nationalism discussed in this
monograph. For example, let us take a look at the Manifesto of Joven América:
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“1-. Iberoamerica constitutes a unitary Nation. The time has come to put an end to romantic
nationalism and to make the best illusions of the great figures of Independence come true, from
the Rio Grande to Patagonia.

2-. Iberoamerica is the world of unity. Unity of language, religion, customs, ways of life and
destiny. Over the current artificial frontiers, over selfish prejudices, we want to show our peoples
the gigantic horizon of Iberoamerican unity.

3-. In the face of the oligarchies compromised by outdated structures, the workers and students,
with a young spirit, will be capable of promoting the great American revolution of the
destruction of borders and the conquest of the new freedom in unity.

4-. Unpatriotic Supercapitalism is as materialistic, anti-Christian, despotic and perverse as

Marxism. We reject the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the oligarchies,
extremes of the same “democratic” system, which has robbed man of dignity and justice,
plunging him into misery and systematic exploitation.

5-. Ours is a flag of political unity. We will destroy, therefore, the outdated party system, which
has wasted the vital energies of the American peoples; and we will replace it with another, based
on the natural units of human coexistence: the family, the municipality and the union.

6-. We advocate the syndication of credit institutions; this measure will permit the planning of
the economy, the development of industry, the modernization of agriculture and the
establishment of authentic social security.

7-. For capitalism and Marxism the owner of the capital is the owner of the enterprise. Those
who are part of it are only instruments of production, just as a machine or an animal can be. The
new community order of JOVEN AMERICA is based on a different conception of labor
relations. We believe that the enterprise is a community of labor, a shared responsibility. Capital
has only instrumental functions.

8-. The enterprises, in the future State, will gather in associations by branches of production.
These unions will constitute a great national organization, in charge of the organization and
distribution of production.
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9-. One of the fundamental needs of Iberoamerica is that of Agrarian Reform. It is unjust, and
moreover intolerable, that enormous masses of peasants live in misery, sometimes close to
slavery, in vast areas of the continent. The peasant will be the owner of the land he works.
However, he will be protected against the demagogues and the money-grabbers, who only seek
in the reform a means to politically control the peasant masses, who, in the communist style,
remain impoverished and defrauded.

10-. Ignorance shall be gradually eliminated from our peoples. Education shall be free and
compulsory, and shall serve to select the most capable elements of the community and elevate
them to leading positions.

11-. It is necessary to revalidate the policy of neighborly relations with the United States. It is
necessary that these put an end to their paternalistic policy towards Iberoamerica, and that they
do not protect the expansive activities of their great capitalist trusts. Our nations are no longer
mere colonial markets.

12-. From Gibraltar to Narvik, the European peoples, under the same postulates of “Neither
Moscow nor Washington”, fight equally for their independence. We will look to them for the
necessary alliances to consolidate our efforts on the international level.” (“Manifiesto de Jóven
América a La Nación Americana”)
As you can see, at no point do we hear about racial purity or even a totalitarian State of the
Gentilian strand. If anything, this is very similar to what Albizu Campos has proclaimed in his
October 12th speech cited in his section, it is also similar to another nationalist manifesto by
Colombian Nationalists. These very same proclamations are found in the MNC and even in the
Mexican Synarchists. The love of the fatherland and the psychotypic understanding of race is
virtually unchanged in these movements. Of course, there are also degrees of foreignizations
involved in some of these movements, but the pattern among them is very clear to see: the ideal
of the Iberoamerican Confederation, a Patria that transcends artificial Nation-State borders, a
sensible socioeconomic model that, to the best of their abilities that they understand, is neither
the ones like the Yankee model nor extra-American (continent-wise) ones, a defense of Agrarian
economy, their natural resources and emphasis on continental unity from an ethos that links them
all concretely. Phenotypes, biology, Gentilian Statism; none of these are found among them, thus
on one end, their Third Position is one where they have incorporated, to some degree, an ethos
they subconsciously know they experienced and molded it to these platforms, on the other, it is
also a similar phenomenon to how socialist or neoliberal socioeconomic movements emerge in
Hispanoamerica since the last century. Rarely are they grassroots, and when they are, and do
happen to be familiar to “third positions”, they seldom contain any elements that a European
National Socialist or Fascist would recognize. These are examples Alberto Buela would term
that, to the outsider, they are strange forms of a familiar platform recognized by the minds of
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either Europeans or US Americans, but to the Iberoamericans, they are authenticated solutions to
their own problems that make sense in their context.
Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: See?! Then there are Third Positionist grassroots movements in
Hispanoamerica! That is what the Third Position truly is about, it is a position taken against the
classic alternatives of liberal Capitalism and Marxist Socialism, and each one variates
according to each nation. So what really is the criticism of adopting the Third Position in
Hispanoamerica if there are some precedents that you concede are there? Under this paradigm,
even Albizu Campos could be considered some National Socialist as he was accused one time
before the Cold War.
Rebuttal to Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: The fact of the matter is these movements are of
reactionary nature to a particular circumstance that cannot be translated to current problems. The
fate of these movements has been the same as many communist or socialist movements of
nationalist elements in the Iberoamerican continent in the last century. Any contemporary ‘third
positionist’ example are now parodies of the same trends happening in the US and in Western
Europe, they are not grassroots but explicit manifestations of foreignization. Even in those
examples, like the Mexican Synarchists, MNC, etc., are found some elements of foreignizations
where the Hispanoamerican tried to emulate other Third Positionists, even in the context of their
own geoculture. The criticism remains the same: we cannot implement these ideas raw into
Hispanoamerica and expect a longterm success. This is the importance of recovering the historic
mission, which in a way, was in the minds of these ‘third positionist’ nationalists discussed
earlier, but so was it in others that tried to claim a ‘Patria Grande’ (Greater Fatherland). I will not
elucidate which socioeconomic model specifically should work in Hispanoamerica as that is not
the focus of this work, rather, the focus is that when engaging in these theorizing, it must be kept
in mind a complete, cohesive idea of the Hispanoamerican ethos, or any other country’s ethos
because that is the foundation of their sense of being, their identity, their basic experience as a
people group, things that transcend material conditions. If any fundamental tenet of said ethos is
ignored and secularized into some decontextualized ideal that pretends to cohere with the ethos,
such a project will be destined to failure, one way or another. The foreignization problem, one
key concern that this problem underlines is the disregard of these fundamental tenets of the
ethos. The distraction of universals without context. It is not that there is anything wrong with
universals, but as I mentioned, some universals need to be concretized, particularized, so they
can accommodate a particular circumstance to operate its function. Even in Catholicism this is
true. The universality of Catholicism does not override the particularities of each ethnicity but
nourishes it to an ideal it can help them grow within its boundaries, without rigidities, it allows
flexibility to transcend those boundaries, but it must first touch upon its plane of contact for
growth in Catholicism. This is why evangelization is not such an easy task. You cannot simply
“preach the Gospel” in a vacuum as you were accustomed in your setting. The Gospel must be
preached in a setting palatable to different interlocutors, so they arrive at the same Catholic faith
with their particularities.
Regarding Albizu Campos being labelled as a National Socialist or a Fascist, it is not far-fetched
to find out that, as absurd or as niche sounding it is, Albizu Campos has indeed been tried to be
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characterized as a formal Fascist by some scholars as Juan Manuel Carrión documents briefly in
his article. (Carrión) Nonetheless, they all fail. For one, the same nationalist was characterized by
two contradictory labels in two periods: the Interwar period, and the Cold War; the former he
was characterized as a Fascist, but in the latter, he was characterized as a Communist for obvious
circumstantial reasons. (Stevens-Arroyo, “Jaime Balmes Redux: Catholicism as Civilization in
the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos” 143) Regarding attempting to connect various
criticisms of Albizu Campos to certain dictatorial regimes in HispAm and the aesthetic and
organizational structure of his Cadets to Communism and Fascism, respectively, Anthony
Stevens Arroyo answers:
“José Luis González has advanced the thesis that Albizu was so conservative as to be anti-Franco
because he was a Carlista (cited in Ferrao, 307, n. 68), and advocated the most reactionary form
of Catholicism. While most commentators do not agree with González on this point, in varying
degrees they do equate the support of the Falange by some members of the Party, the antipathy to
Communism, and the adoption of Fascist organizational trappings as evidence of Fascist
sympathies.
I would suggest, however, that the question should be addressed from a philosophical basis. The
issue cannot be decided merely by tracing the influences upon the Nationalist Party in Puerto
Rico by other Nationalist movements such as that of Mussolini in Italy. Nor should the
accidentals of black shirts, banners, paramilitary activity, and so forth, be substituted for the
substance of a political philosophy. Ferrao falls into this trap and concludes that at heart Albizu
supported the Falange (326-27).” (Stevens-Arroyo, “Jaime Balmes Redux: Catholicism as
Civilization in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos” 144)
The letter Stevens cite is Albizu Campos proclaiming the glory of Spain and a recovery of her
Christian civilization, yet Stevens argues the same proclamations would have been written by
Balmes in the 1840’s, thus showing that the connection is actually inverse: Balmes preceded and
influenced the Falange and Albizu, not the other way around. (Stevens-Arroyo, “Jaime Balmes
Redux: Catholicism as Civilization in the Political Philosophy of Pedro Albizu Campos” 144)
The same is recognized by Juan Manuel Carrión in his article (Carrión). Albizu Campos’
intellectual library is misconstrued to be influenced by Interwar period nationalisms when his
philosophical basis predates these nationalisms by at least a century earlier. The error the
objector makes is thus the same error Carrión observes many liberals who use “Fascism” as a
sort of transhistorical category devoid of its unique historical context from which it emerged. He
writes:
“Going beyond the insult, Fascism must be seen as an ideological political movement which
historical sociological analysis can explain. The study of Fascism must examine what it means
both in terms of its ideology and its practice. It must take into account who its leaders have been,
both in and out of power. It must ponder whether it was a historically framed phenomenon or
whether one can speak of Fascism in various historical epochs. Some see in Fascism a trans-
historical tendency: synonymous with everything beastly that a good liberal despises. But if this
were so, perhaps Genghis Khan and Julius Caesar would have been some of the Fascists of the
past. The more correct thing to do must be to examine Fascism as a reflection of the era in
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which it arose. To examine fascism as a phenomenon with epochal characteristics.” (Carrión

emphasis added)
There is another detail that Carrión mentions, and it is the ideal type or archetypes of Fascism, or
‘generic fascism’, but as he correctly points out, Stanley G. Payne ─the scholar who coined such
a term and laid out the methodologies to identify how said ideologies approximate said
archetype─ never existed in pure empirical form because generic fascism is only a conceptual
tool utilized by political scientists and historians to characterize and measure which political
ideologies best approximate said archetype of generic fascism, but from a conceptual standpoint.
(Carrión) As Stevens Arroyo rightly points out, Ferrao falls into the trap of tying in accidentals
that were not even unique to Fascists but were shared also by leftists, in fact, the very first to
utilize partisan militia organizations or paramilitaries of a nationalist stream were not even right-
winged but liberals in the 19th century which were then adopted by both radicals of right and left-
winged spectrums. (Carrión) Other accidentals that Carrión mentions that Ferrao characterizes
Albizu as Fascist, are seldom clear-cut Fascist from Payne’s methodology, which Carrión argues
Ferrao lacks the nuances and subtleties of Payne’s method. (Carrión) Beyond the erroneous leaps
Ferrao and other academics try to characterize Albizu as a fascist from an analytical standpoint,
there is of course, the rhetorical one that is emotionally charged (and this is also in part how
some Hispanic nationalists that sympathize with 3Pism would characterize Albizu as a fascist,
but such a characterization is born out of ignorance of the nuances), you have Gordon Lewis,
who characterized Albizu’s nationalism as some sort of “psychotic nationalism” based on racial
frustration and hate, and Lewis appeals to Albizu’s not-so-prestigious heritage to make said
point, nonetheless, as Carrión correctly points out, such misconstrued characterizations are
nothing more than reflection of Lewis absorbing the Yankee Imperialist rhetoric that surrounded
Albizu’s reputation during his campaign. (Carrión) Another book published by the University of
Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras Campus also points out the fallacies present in the narrative of
Gordon Lewis and Luis Ferrao about the political philosophy of Albizu Campos in both the
formation and philosophy of the party and even its social position, even Ferrao himself cites
materials that he thinks support his thesis but when contextualized, refutes him. (Pedro Albizu
Campos: ¿conservador, Fascista o Revolucionario? (Comentarios al Libro de Luis A. Ferrao,
Pedro Albizu Campos y El Nacionalismo Puertorriqueño) 9–10, 49–61) The same book in fact
publishes in full Albizu Campos' letter to his wife commenting on the reigning empires during
the interwar period and World War II, I will quote the relevant parts that refute Albizu Campos as
an Axis sympathizer for simply being anti-Yankee [The original work is in Spanish, which I
translate below]:
“[…] The inevitable end of irresponsible government is dissolution. Since the postulate of its
existence is the absence of law, the fulfillment of its will carries with it by necessity the violation
of its own laws - yes, of all laws, human and divine. His will soon loses its apparent impersonal,
imperial character and degenerates towards the personal and even variable whims of those whose
mission in life is the enjoyment of slavery. It is a spiral whose fatal end is collapse - the end of
everything without a foundation of reason or justice.
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[...] Do not trust the international slogans that brutalize humanity. Imperialism is hopelessly
divided and stupefied in its final ascent into the void. What democracies mean can be determined
by recent events: Massacre of Ponce, March 21, 1937 in the name and by the power of this
empire; the Massacre of Port Lyatly, Morocco, perpetrated by the French to the strains of the
Marseillaise; the Massacre of Arab nationalists in Palestine the Holy Land, with the British army
invoking “God Save the King.”
What those empires that pretend to save civilization from the clutches of communism mean, ask
the Jews in Germany, the Abyssinians in Africa or the Chinese in their Homeland.
“The dictatorship of the proletariat” is the most modern of personal tyrannies, which is inevitable
characteristic – “blood purge” Ivan The Terrible resurrected.
See the Pharisees mixed with the Christian flock in their desire to keep all mankind in perpetual,
brutal and materialistic slavery, presenting themselves as the ones who will redeem us from
communist materialism.” (Pedro Albizu Campos: ¿conservador, Fascista o Revolucionario?
(Comentarios al Libro de Luis A. Ferrao, Pedro Albizu Campos y El Nacionalismo
Puertorriqueño) 91–93 Albizu Campos’ letter to his wife published on May 3rd in 1938)
If we see all that I have exposited about Albizu Campos in his speech on October 12th, 1933, we
see that the imperialism condemned in his letter is the imperialism of predatory nature, absent in
the generator imperialism of the Hispanic empire that Albizu Campos has praised in all his
speeches he referred to.
This is unfortunately the same problematic principle in many Hispanics ─sympathetic or
otherwise to 3P─ when they analyze figures such as Juan Domingo Perón and Albizu Campos.
They employ a very distorted analysis of generic fascism or simply oversimplify fascism to such
trivially universal traits of parodical proportions that such categories begin to mutate into
rhetorical epithets that lack any rigorous meaning beyond said epithets. In summary, summing
what Alberto Buela expounded regarding revolutionary nationalist movements, as well as
contextualizing these movements from a Maeztuian assessment, we can see that a lot of these
nationalist movements, while indeed sharing some core elements pertaining to their ethos, they
are more often than not eclipsed by the foreign externalities that dress their platforms, with the
most recent ones being mere parodical aberrations attempting to imitate the gringo nationalists or
European nationalists but trying to implement it to Hispanoamerica without the proper exercise
of filtering certain elements or modify it according to the ethos of the continent.

On Hispanoamerican “colorisms” and objections to the castas critiques

Objection 1: Your analysis from Joanne Rappaport and Pilar Gonzalbo on the casta is such a
romanticized version of history to turn a blind eye to the myriad examples of colorisms, even
some cases of Hispanic parents discriminating based on skin tone or racial features even from
the older generation. How can you sincerely believe that phenotypic judgments were not subject
to discriminatory assessments to other groups in Hispanoamerica? We do not even have to go
that far, look at how many TV series portray certain actors of Hispanoamerica, most are
lightskinned or tending to a European or Caucasian phenotype. There are also numerous
testimonies from African descent Hispanics experiencing discrimination or even some form of
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internalized racism like how their darker skinned parents want their children to date
lighterskinned people to “major la raza” (better their race). How can you possibly characterize
this as solely of a socioeconomic difference? Clearly your analysis is flawed from these
numerous examples.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: As I have explicated in the critique of the Casta system before diving
into Rappaport and Gonzalbo, all these examples of colorisms are precisely foreign cultural
impositions from the Anglo-American ethos, ironically enough, as a result of the foreignization
characterized by the Pocho of the first kind, and this kind of foreignization began as an
admiration for the socioeconomic ‘superiority’ over our socioeconomic conditions, which
quickly mutated to be associated with aesthetic standards from the US and Continental Europe.
In other words, these are not grassroots discriminations of the Hispanoamerican ethos, but a
consequence of foreignization. Some less pernicious than others. I will go from lesser to more,
starting with the supposed “lightskinned” representation phenomenon. The simplest explanation
for this is simply a matter of aesthetic preference conditioned through propaganda, often
innocent from consistent bias towards lighter skinned beauty. Then this takes a meta-epidermal
plane and becomes a matter of preferring generally European aesthetic features, mostly facial,
over others. These are not racially based discrimination, but it is a racially misattributed
preference towards a beauty model statistically more like that of European standards. The
constant bombardments of these standards are then transferred to the lay public and create a
belief that, to aspire for said standard is ideal, thus to “mejorar la raza” implies that if a Hispanic
aspires to those beauty standards (regardless of sex), or marries someone that possess said
standards, they are bettering themselves. This phenomenon translates even to the economic
plane, which expresses the older system exposited in Pilar Gonzalbo and Joanne Rappaport’s
works on the so-called castas. Then you have other in the middle such as how some interpret the
term mulatto from an etymological point of view, some believe I comes from the word mule, the
sterile hybrid of a horse and donkey, but other scholars note it simply is a term to refer to anyone
with a mixed ancestry, irrespective if it involves an African. These sorts of appeal are too,
consequences of foreignization because as I have analyzed in the section of Pilar Gonzalbo, a
mulatto or “amulatado” is a socioeconomic category that, while it can refer to the typical African
and Spanish admixture, in Viceregal eras, it referred more to a class of people of particular
circumstance, whether that was due to their track record, genealogy (did it have nobles or is it
characterized by peasantry or criminals?) or overall status in their community. On the more
pernicious side, we have the usual discriminatory attitudes. This is not to diminish the anecdotal
experiences of some, but the reality is that a discrimination-free society has never existed. If
there was one, I would like to know, but all sort of discrimination existed in society, what matters
is if this was statistically speaking, the norm or a marginal deviation, each society varied. In
Hispanoamerica, discrimination was almost always socioeconomically based, even in
contemporary Hispanoamerica it exists today as Emilio Acosta mentions in the panel discussing
the Castas with Antonio Moreno. Any discrimination based on race, in my experience, it mostly
involved aesthetic, but some did involve racial, though these examples were mild and were
corrected by peer pressure quickly.
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Thus, from what I have analyzed in the work and these examples cited by the objector, a lot of
the so-called “colorisms” are more aesthetically grounded than they are racially. Of course, this
principle of aesthetic itself has been explicated in José Vasconcelos’ section, where the primary
motivator for “mejorar la raza” is more about embeautifying the race, and the misattribution that
it is a colorism of “blanqueamiento” (whitening) is because the European features occupy a
privileged position over others. It is my estimation that a lot of these quips and enumerations are
really, manifestations of the same foreignization in different degrees, some masking less the true
ethos than others, others sabotaging them outright. Therefore, all the examples listed by the
objector are mostly explained by aesthetic preferences attributed to European beauty features
occupying a privileged preferential position over other features, remnant of the socioeconomic
Calidad system of the Viceregal era adapted to modernity and colored (no pun intended mind
you) by the foreignization from external civilizations, the other minors are of course, unfortunate
proclivities of the sin nature of mankind.
Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: How convenient that you relegate all those instances of
discrimination to foreignization by externalities. This is clearly handwaving of rose legend
fantasies in your analysis. The history of Hispanoamerica was not some idealistic lore that was
free from racialisms.
Rebuttal to Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: Of course, the usual dismissive non-arguments to the
explanatory scope possessed by the historical analysis by Pilar Gonzalbo, Rappaport and Maeztu
is conveniently touted as ‘leyenda rosa’ (rose legend) and the counterpoint is “the true picture”
Hispanoamerican history. This tactic is not exclusively launched to historians critical of the
vilification of the Hispanic Monarchy. The analysis I have exposited in my work was also
similarly done by another scholar that defended the German colonial legacy before the Third
Reich (which the esteemed Führer renounced by the way), Bruce Gilley, after listing numerous
examples of how the German colonialists handled various East African countries and their tribal
communities like providing them social needs, he has this to comment which reveal the
fundamental illogic and rhetorical devices employed in these analysis that portray similar fashion
the Hispanic Monarchy and its successor republiquettes with discriminatory colorisms, here is
what he says:
“Like much of the academy, scholars of German colonialism today pour their hearts into studies
of sexual fantasies and laundry detergent commercials. The trend is captured nicely in the title of
a 2010 article by the American scholar Daniel Walther entitled: “Sex, Race and Empire: White
Male Sexuality and the ‘Other’ in Germany’s Colonies.” In German East Africa, white men
outnumbered white women by seven to one. Walther’s research breakthrough in his article is to
show that German men had sex with local women. That was bad, in his view, because sex
“became an instrument for European conquest.” How exactly? Because the women liked the
Germans more than they liked native men. Professor Walther has another research breakthrough:
some German men did not have sex with local women. That was bad too. Why? Again, because
it was an instrument of European conquest. Efforts to limit sex were “invoked to extend further
German control over the colonial environment.” To discourage sex, the colonial bureaucracy
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established public health systems, a population census, regulations, and all those other hateful
things of modern government.
Chief colonialism inquisitor Jürgen Zimmerer has also insisted that attempts to limit interracial
sex were racist. By denying black women access to the boudoirs of white men, he asserts,
German imperialists denied them access to European civilization. “Thus, the principle of biology
had pushed aside any civilization-missionary interpretation that Africans would have to be
educated as Europeans,” laments Zimmerer. Wait! Wasn’t the “civilization-missionary” impulse
what scholars find morally repugnant? Indeed, in other moods, Zimmerer condemns that
impulse. Self-contradiction is never a problem as long as the anti-colonial viewpoint is
unchallenged. It’s hard to keep up with this intellectual Cirque du Soleil.
The scholarly schizophrenia—colonialists are evil when they do A and they are evil when they
do not do A—is also found in studies of how German rulers dealt with tribal organizations. In a
2010 essay, Frank Schubert of the University of Zurich argues that German rule entrenched
tribalism in Africa. The result, he explains, was that German colonial areas could never develop
national political movements.47 So according to Schubert, African ethnicity is a Western
invention, a pretty demeaning claim if you are an African. But Schubert also admits that his
theory does not apply to German East Africa because a pan-ethnic national movement, the
Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), later became the leading force in politics. As we
will see below, his theory also does not work for German Togo. To put it politely, if your theory
fails in two of four cases, including the most important one, it is probably not correct.” (Gilley,
“The Culturally Competent Krauts” 76–77 italics in original)
This extensive citation reveals exactly the inherent paradigm that feeds this propaganda of
“colorisms” in the Hispanoamerican civilization, both in the Viceregal era to contemporary
period. This so-called ‘decolonization’ platform propagated by many liberal scholars and
analysists, are themselves operating on a colonizer mindset to subjugate other civilizations that
do not fall in line with the liberal hegemony of ‘the West.’ Thus, I can indeed say, that these
phenomena cited by the objector in the initial objection are indeed consequences of
foreignization. On the one end, you have the foreignized that insists that Hispanics must
‘decolonize’ and open to liberal democratic paradigm while subverting the Hispanoamerican
ethos and homogenizing it to the liberal order, then you have the other foreignized extreme that,
while correctly encouraging opposition to the West, it does so with the reactionary
segregationism of the National Socialist and this too, acts as a sort of ‘decolonizing colonizer’ of
the other end; both describe a past to the Hispanic, that he/she should renounce because it was
unpleasant, bastardizing and it brought its identity crisis, both, in reality, propagate the same
machinery of the Black Legend campaign against the Hispanic Monarchy, one side simply thinks
it was ‘racist’ and ‘classist’ while the other thinks all that, but it was “based”, that is, it was cool,
‘edgy’, extraordinarily good, but ultimately bad because the Spanish race mixed and did not kill
all the natives nor deported the Africans. Both must be rejected paradigms, both are not rational
frameworks to analyze the history of the Hispanic Monarchy nor provide a complex, complete
picture of what happened nor provide a faithful basis of identity that is able to harmonize all the
accounts in that history.
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The accusation of ‘rose legend’ then is a silencing tactic that shuts down criticism of all the bad
faith, uncharitable analysis of the historic accounts of the Hispanic Monarchy’s expedition. If
there is a rose legend, it is the one propagated by the current elite class, a fantasy that the
foreigners are the true embodiment of liberty, enlightened aristocrats that will impart us an
identity that will give us a true national identity, all according to their ethos of course. The rose
legend is manifest in the lore created after the independences, the exaggerations created by the
criollo elites in a smear campaign of the Viceregal society and a glorification of the corrupt
republics. I would even boldly argue that even the narrative of the Nazi-Fascists regarding the
relationship between the interwar regimes of revolutionary nationalism and the Catholic Church,
was very smooth and unproblematic, or very few and insignificant problems. That is to say, the
interpretative platform of historical analysis of the liberals against the Hispanic Monarchy and its
propagation of caste society, is well shared with the NatSoc-Fascist sympathizers when they
speak about the relationship of the National Socialist and Fascist regimes with the Catholic
Church. Indeed, the rose legend is the propaganda of the foreignized class, narrating a history
that only fits the paradigm created by the cultural opponents of Hispanoamerica, and to question
this narrative, “no, that's propagating the 'rose legend', you have to be realistic” so they say, but if
Gonzalbo's thesis statement and Rappaport's work are anything to go by, as well as the historical
analysis of scholars such as Emilio Gentile and Roger Griffin; it is precisely that such history
presented much complexity and nuance that the narrative of “Hispanoamerica was and is colorist
and racist and had a racially stratified society” and “The Catholic Church got along very well
with the Third-Positionist regimes, the critics were fake liberal communist converts sabotaging
such a relationship.”
There was no romanticism invoked in their work, it is evident that the average Hispanic in those
days struggled to even navigate in the bureaucracy of calidades, there were even challenges
imposed by others of the same social strata, consequences that followed by being even accused
of the wrong Calidad with said Calidad carrying certain expectations and reputations, and said
could happen to Spanish, indigenous, African and everything in-between. To deny this or to over-
qualify footnoted exceptions is to purposefully obfuscate the discussion and propagate a
paradigm that benefits the imperial enemies of Hispanoamerica.

Other miscellaneous objections and responses to them

Here are other objections I have encountered or are in similar line from the previous ones that I
too answer in similar format, in no particular order, these are some of them I deemed relevant to
discuss:

On the bias towards the Hispanoamerican ethos

Objection 1: Okay this analysis of yours is very interesting and insightful, but it is clearly biased
from the view that the Hispanoamerican ethos is the exemplar of a particular ethos that best
coheres with the Catholic ethos. How will this analysis work for other ethos. What of the German
Catholic ethos? Or a French Catholic ethos? Would they too follow a Hispanoamerican path if
they cohered with the Catholic ethos? It seems this analysis is geared more towards
demonstrating that the Hispanoamerican ethos is the only ethos that is consistently Catholic, and
the rest must emulate it to cohere best with their Catholic substrate.
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Rebuttal to Objection 1: Admittedly, I am not aware how a coherently Catholic German ethos
would look like, as I am not German. I believe that work is best figured out by German
Catholics. Nonetheless, this comprehensive analysis serves more as a tool ─as I have indicated in
the Introduction─ that can help people of other ethnicities to work out their ethos or rediscover
it, and develop from there, that is why the first topic I tackled involved more the Catholic
religion’s own perspective in itself to these ideologies, to then demonstrate how a particular
expression that I am aware, coheres with said Catholic ethos and integrated it throughout its
ethnogenesis. How this will manifest in other ethos will have to be homework for Germans for a
German Catholic ethos, French for French Catholic ethos, etc. Such a homework involves plenty
of study material to read and glean from and compare and contrast it with The Catholic Church’s
ethos (its morals, ethics, philosophy, etc).
Personally, I believe indeed, the Hispanoamerican ethos is unique and the best model to cohere
with the Catholic faith, I base these claims from the analysis I have exposited thus far and from
what I know so far from experience, but one thing is certain is when these two are analyzed
together, the Hispanoamerican ethos has shown to be consistently Catholic, and only the
foreignized and de-culturalized have been inconsistent with this ethos. Perhaps they may be
consistent with another, but not the Hispanoamerican, much less Catholic.

On the morality of endogamy

Objection 1: Okay racialism is bad, sacralizing race is against Catholicism and good moral
conscience, but what is wrong with wanting to preserve one’s own bloodline per se? That is,
what is inherently wrong with endogamous relationships per se? What if a group of people or
community wishes to be endogamous for aesthetic purposes, for instance? Is endogamy sinful?
That is my question. It seems to me that there can be a healthy, not racialist way to maintain
endogamy. There are cultures that do this out of custom. Surely, they are not being sinful.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: Supposing, within a Catholic marriage framework, this involves
heterosexual marriage; how one marries from an out/in-group preferential scheme is not the
morality in question, but the justification driving said preferential scheme. There is a very crucial
distinction between marrying out of trivial preferences for aesthetic, or even for cultural and
linguistic conveniences, and marrying for the sake of purity preservation, and said preservation
justified under racialist premises; the latter is explicitly condemned by The Church, the former is
sensible compatibility prudency, but the former does not justify on the grounds of racial identity,
racial identity is hardly the concern at all. As the objector admittedly points out, some cultures
marry out of custom, but the custom here, is culturally framed. Endogamous cultures such as the
Jews and some Asiatic tribes, marry in endogamous terms to preserve some cultural continuity,
others for linguistic barriers, others precisely because of cultural barriers that they feel will get in
the way of a successful marriage, however, the assumption of the racialist is to point out such
prudency demonstrate racial immutability from an identitarian point of view, but this is a non
sequitur because nothing about these barriers show that said obstacles are immutable,
immutability is something that must be philosophically shown to be present from the outset and
not simply when the encounters emerge. These obstacles are no more immutable than the
obstacle of a native English speaker having trouble understanding a Russian or Norwegian. The
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English speaker can simply opt for a translator or dedicate a few months learning the foreign
language. The extra steps required to surmount these barriers do not demonstrate the
immutability, and thus, the irreconcilability of racial mixing, if anything, it demonstrates the
opposite. The question can just as easily be turned to exogamous marriage, as many indigenous
tribes in the Americas have indeed used exogamous marriages as an adoptive gesture to welcome
and integrate other tribes their ethos, and the marriage of those children in said tribe would then
be endogamous.
There is also another assumption of the privileging of endogamy over exogamy. The racialists
believe that endogamy is the only way to preserve cultural continuity. But how do they justify
preservation from an endogamous standpoint? What is the justification for that? If the concern is
cultural continuity, the solution for an exogamous tribe is to simply assimilate the guest tribes
and their children endogamously marry. If the issue is simply by blood, then the cultural
continuity does not follow from blood purity, because family ties are not justified by blood but
by household code loyalties, and as discussed in Gustavo Bueno’s section from deSilva’s work
on the New Testament culture, the ancient world up to the classical period, familial ties were
justified through cultural and religious lines (de Silva, “Kinship: Living as a Family in the First-
Century World” 194–97) If a family member dishonored the gods deemed worthy in the
household, or even adopted another culture, they would be cast out, even if they are blood
related. This is precisely how Muslim families operate and even Jewish families as well. They
are endogamous under cultural and religious premises, not racial, certainly not under phenotypic
lines. When the justification involves rationalizing immutability and rigidity of ontology tied to
one’s bio-anthropological makeup, that is when the immorality is manifest from the point of
view of The Church. However, if no such immorality emerges, The Church does not care if the
couple is exogamous or endogamous, as long as said marriage fulfills basic Canon Law criteria,
which at no point include racial premises.
What about for aesthetic purposes? This too is also arbitrarily privileging endogamy. As I have
exposited Vasconcelos’ Cosmic Race thesis, the question of aesthetic disregards the in/out-group
reference because the driving force behind marriage and racial mixture is simply the pairing of
aesthetic physiognomies, and this can be present in any race because the property of
physiognomic beauty is universal and not dependent on a specific anthropological category of
people. Therefore, even on aesthetic, there is an unjustified, privilege of endogamy. The privilege
position of endogamy is completely arbitrary, as arbitrary as exogamy, because both dichotomies
are conventions of marriage, and conventions are not based on rational necessities, but are mere
conveniences that each people can pick and choose to their liking or circumstance. It is as
arbitrary as the paternality of a genealogy, that is, whether a culture chooses to base genealogic
legitimacy from the mother or the father, too, is arbitrary depending on what they deem
preferential to inherit from which line. The pretension to attribute some sacred necessity to
endogamy on all levels of human affair is another aspect of the racialatry error in the National
Socialist. The National Socialist is trying to convince himself, delusionally so, that the only
system of purity, is an endogamous, rigidly immutable sense of racial identity where preservation
can only be conceived from a segregationist policy, and the extremity and novelty of such a leap
of logic is precisely its liberal element that is ironic about a political theory that pretends to be
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illiberal. When such a mindset drives an endogamous policy is when it becomes immoral,
heretical and condemned by The Church. Of course, the same arbitrariness applies also to an
exogamous policy, but all this goes to show that there is nothing inherently “divinely sacred and
immutable” to the endogamy/exogamy convention in cultural affairs. People marry simply based
on a number of factors that suit their circumstantial conveniences, all the same guided by
principles that transcend racial lines: is my partner a good person? Is my partner responsible and
loyal? Will my said partner be loyal to the religion of my forefathers? Will my partner provide all
the necessary resources for a better household? Other factors of course involve the physical
beauty of said partner, but this category is a universal that too is mutable and can be changed by
any individual, regardless of its scientific bio-anthropological category.
Therefore, the preference to marry within one’s own family, as well as marrying outside one’s
kin, are mere conventions that suit each cultural, linguistic and even socioeconomic
circumstances (as analyzed in Pilar Gonzalbo’s and Rappaport’s work on the calidades). Many of
these barriers the National Socialist or racialist in general, dogmatically points to as being so
insurmountable because of another unjustified assumption of some ontological immutability tied
to its phenotype, that he, in ad hoc manner, ties to its modes of thoughts, are arbitrary attempts to
establish a liberal, segregationist purity system foreign to history before the Enlightenment.
There are numerous options various groups can utilize to overcome said barriers, and it’s up to
the discretion of each person to evaluate if they wish to take the extra steps for a hard work
reward or to opt for a more convenient endogamous path because it is easier and more accessible
to him or her, or because they do not want to work with the language barriers, etc. The barriers,
however, do not demonstrate the immutability of said barriers, and by extension, the
immutability of the modes of thoughts of said race nor the phenotype of said race, especially
when said immutability is pretending to construct an ontology of such that when these
boundaries are crossed, results in the equivalent of desecrating a religious site. Such a framework
is nonsensical, and The Catholic Church has specifically fought against this for millennia. The
issue is one of a specific mindset with a framework that wants to moralize a particular
convention, sacralise it, and demonize the other convention for reasons assumed in the
justification for said sacralisation. In this sense, the racialist purist commits a form of vicious
circularity dressed in moralistic rhetoric, typical of a good political propaganda to sell the target
a worldview. This of course is the other key difference that the objector must keep in mind: most
people do not marry with a political worldview that they wish to impose as some sort of law to
be followed, whether cultural or in the level of government, this was what the National Socialist
effectively have done, but a dignified Catholic marriage simply focuses on the essentials that
have been tried and shown to improve a marriage for all times and places, and none involve
ensuring that the marrying parties are genetically homogenous to each other.
Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: But even if you are right about that, it doesn’t change how some
races are predisposed to certain habits over others, and some groups do not want to marry
people that they know will exhibit those habits consistently over time, thus that is why endogamy
is sometimes preferred over exogamy, even if the practice itself has no moral character in and of
itself beyond treating your partner with the dignity it deserves.
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Rebuttal to Objection 2, to Rebuttal 1: And what if an in-group individual finds that the average
social habit typically found in his/her in-group is undesirable to his/her taste, what would be the
solution for him/her? Should said individual be forced to intramarry? Both endogamy and
exogamy have their pros and cons, and to pretend that endogamy will universally be privileged
and should be imposed over exogamy, both being mere conventions of marriage, is already
falling into a moralization of arbitrary nature, and this will bring in more problems than it will
solve. Regarding social habits or other proclivities, this does not demonstrate the superiority of
endogamy anymore that because certain groups of people are prone to alcoholism, the only
solution is that alcohol should be banned outright, or if certain people are predisposed to certain
criminal activities, that the justice system should be abolished because those people can’t help it,
and neither can other people. Neither scenario logically follows. Of course, certain groups of
people will have certain predispositions to certain things that may be deemed undesirable or
repugnant, but likewise, some people are predisposed to things that are noble and worthy of
praise and worthy of emulation to, and perhaps some people marry exogamously because they
find some traits more desirable in one group over another. This sense of desirability or taste is
precisely what Vasconcelos argued is a much freer choice of marriage than one confined to
arbitrary precepts or worse, one based on primitive urges. Again, the proper mindset to adopt in
regards to interpersonal, romantic or marital relationships is to ground their choice in taste, the
moral disposition of the other party, oneself, the resources that they have to provide for said
future home; socioeconomic factors that may or may not be practical; factors that do not involve
the “racial compatibility” because “racial compatibility” already enters into assumptions that a
racial group has an inherent nature that impedes it from reconciling or harmonizing with another
different group based on a fear of crossing an arbitrary boundary of inadequate sacral nature.

On the Marxist origins of Fascism and National Socialism and other 3P

movements
Objection 1: In your NoAB analysis, when you cite Quanta Cura, you assume that Quanta
Cura’s condemnation apply to Fascism and other Third Political Theory based movements, but
that is such a leap because QC clearly only refers to the Marxist branch of Communism and
Socialism, not Fascism and National Socialism. All Third Positionist movements were primarily
nationalistic than socialist, thus QC’s condemnation do not apply to them.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: This is simply false. For starters, the condemnations to Communism and
Socialism follows from what The Church identified in those two ideologies which prompted
them to condemn said ideologies, and what you find is that those doctrines are shared by the
Third Political Theory. In my analysis of Gentile’s Fascist Doctrines, the man himself admits that
Fascist theory arose out of a revisionism and nationalist imbuing of Sorelian Syndicalism, which
has explicit Marxist origins. Nonetheless, Gentile is not the only Fascist philosopher who
admitted this, this is something that was inherent in all Fascists because they all have the same
Marxist origins as David Ramsay Steele demonstrates in his article The Mystery of Fascism, he
writes regarding the documented facts about Fascism:
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“Fascism was a movement with its roots primarily in the left. Its leaders and initiators were
secular-minded, highly progressive intellectuals, hard-headed haters of existing society and
especially of its most bourgeois aspects.
There were also non-leftist currents which fed into Fascism; the most prominent was the
nationalism of Enrico Corradini. This anti-liberal, anti-democratic movement was preoccupied
with building Italy's strength by accelerated industrialization. Though it was considered
rightwing at the time, Corradini called himself a socialist, and similar movements in the Third
World would later be warmly supported by the left.” (Steele, sec.Five Facts about Fascism italics
in original)
Steele mentions people like Robert Michels and Hendrik de Man, both Marxists, disillusioned by
the Social Democrats of their days and thus became revisionists. (Steele, sec.Some who became
Fascists) What was the nature of this revisionism? No different than Gentile’s, Steele writes:
“Fascism began as a revision of Marxism by Marxists, a revision which developed in successive
stages, so that these Marxists gradually stopped thinking of themselves as Marxists, and
eventually stopped thinking of themselves as socialists. They never stopped thinking of
themselves as anti-liberal revolutionaries.

[…] At the beginning of the twentieth century, leftists who wanted to be as far left as they could
possibly be became syndicalists, preaching the general strike as the way to demonstrate the
workers' power and overthrow the bourgeois order. Syndicalist activity erupted across the world,
even in Britain and the United States. Promotion of the general strike was a way of defying
capitalism and at the same time defying those socialists who wanted to use electoral methods to
negotiate reforms of the system.
Syndicalists began as uncompromising Marxists, but like Revisionists, they acknowledged that
key tenets of Marxism had been refuted by the development of modern society. Most syndicalists
came to accept much of Bernstein's argument against traditional Marxism, but remained
committed to the total rejection, rather than democratic reform, of existing society. They
therefore called themselves “revolutionary revisionists.” They favored the “idealist revision of
Marx,” meaning that they believed in a more independent role for ideas in social evolution that
that allowed by Marxist theory.” (Steele, sec.Two Revisions of Marxism emphasis added)
Steele then mentions what was the ideological consequence of this revisionism, and that was
what Steele calls practical anti-rationalism, which is the idea that, not that humans ought not to
rely on rationality to know things about the world, but that certain aspects of social life,
particularly behavioral patterns in society are motivated by intuitions, by the “mythos” (Steele,
sec.Practical Anti-Rationalism), which is precisely how Gentile sought to revise Marxism
through Sorelian Syndicalism (G. Gentile 59–60) and his Mazzinian ideal of Thought and
Action, which Gentilian termed as anti-intellectualism (G. Gentile 21–24), which is synonymous
to what Steele describes as practical anti-rationalism. Gentile uses George Sorel’s Marxist
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revisionism to justify his coupling of Mazzinian idealism because Sorel precisely revised
Marxism to include practical anti-rationalism with the idea of the national mythos, Steele writes:
“Practical anti-rationalism entered pre-Fascism through Georges Sorel and his theory of the
“myth.” This influential socialist writer began as an orthodox Marxist. An extreme leftist, he
naturally became a syndicalist, and soon the best-known syndicalist theoretician. Sorel then
moved to defending Marx's theory of the class struggle in a new way--no longer as a scientific
theory, but instead as a “myth”, an understanding of the world and the future which moves men
to action. When he began to abandon Marxism, both because of its theoretical failures and
because of its excessive “materialism,” he looked for an alternative myth. Experience of current
and recent events showed that workers had little interest in the class struggle but were prone to
patriotic sentiment. By degrees, Sorel shifted his position, until at the end of his life he became
nationalistic and anti-semitic. He died in 1922, hopeful about Lenin and more cautiously hopeful
about Mussolini.
A general trend throughout revolutionary socialism from 1890 to 1914 was that the most
revolutionary elements laid an increasing stress upon leadership, and downplayed the
autonomous role of the toiling masses. This elitism was a natural outcome of the revolutionaries'
ardent wish to have revolution and the stubborn disinclination of the working class to become
revolutionary. Workers were instinctive reformists: they wanted a fair shake within capitalism
and nothing more. Since the workers did not look as if they would ever desire a revolution, the
small group of conscious revolutionaries would have to play a more decisive role than Marx had
imagined. That was the conclusion of Lenin in 1902. It was the conclusion of Sorel. And it was
the conclusion of the syndicalist Giuseppe Prezzolini whose works in the century's first decade
Mussolini reviewed admiringly.” (Steele, sec.Practical Anti-Rationalism emphasis added)
Thus, when James A. Gregor, the political scientist whose translation work of Gentile I cite,
terms Fascism as a “Marxist heresy” needs to be handled carefully as Steele correctly points out,
because although intellectually, they rejected the clear theories and doctrines of Marxism
regarding class struggle, historical materialism, surplus value, nationalization of the means of
production; in power and in practice, they have converged with the Communists on every point
(Steele, sec.A Marxist heresy?), thus, Steele concludes the section regarding Fascism as a
Marxist heresy, which is more a nationalist revisionism; with the following words:
“Fascists did with their eyes open what Communists did with their eyes shut. This is the truth
concealed in the conventional formula that Communists were well-intentioned and Fascists evil-
intentioned.” (Steele, sec.A Marxist heresy?)
What this means of course in normal parlance is, what Communists had to rationalize when they
contradicted their doctrines, the Fascists executed all the Communist’s thoughts and deeds
openly because they saw no conflict from their framework in their revisionism, hence, what
Communists chided what they hypocritically endorsed, Fascists endorsed openly in thought and
action (pun intended of course, fittingly so).
If that was not enough to establish the intricate links to Marxist Socialism that The Church
condemned, Steele mentions how the initiators of Fascist were precisely motivated to
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revolutionize the working-class, as they were anti-capitalist militants that, against their
intellectual opposition to nationalize all means of production, eventually settled to do so due to
the inevitable nature of the totalitarian State, with Mussolini’s Statist maxim: “Everything in the
State, nothing against the State, nothing outside the State.” (Steele) The anti-capitalist nature is
likewise well documented by L.K. Samuels regarding the National Socialists’ socioeconomic
policies, which were unapologetically Marxist, Samuels writes:
“The National Socialists of Germany were anti-capitalists par excellence. They actually spelled
it out in the 13th plank of their 25-Point program of 1920, demanding “nationalization of all
businesses which have been up to the present formed into companies (trusts).”
[…] In several interviews, Hitler railed against the bourgeoisie and threatened to crush them. In
one 1931 interview by journalist Richard Breiting, Hitler reaffirmed his new world order,
revealing, “we will do what we like with the bourgeoisie… We give the orders; they do what
they are told. Any resistance will be broken ruthlessly.” In another conversation bashing the
bourgeoisie, Hitler declared that capitalists “know nothing except their profit,” and that these
money-grubbers were “cowardly shits.” One of the Nazi’s first acts in taking power in 1933 was
to issue a threat to “raid business houses that don’t contribute sufficiently to party funds.”
[…] Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, considered himself a “Revolutionary
Socialist. He represented the essence of socialism and collectivism. He believed that “To be a
socialist is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.”
To the National Socialists, wealth inequality was a horrendous injustice that had to be solved.
Both German National Socialists and Italian Fascists attempted to strengthen and enlarge their
socialized safety nets via social justice programs. This is why Goebbels applauded the generosity
of Hitler’s welfare state, boasting in a 1944 editorial, “Our Socialism,” that “We and we alone
[the Nazis] have the best social welfare measures. Everything is done for the nation… the
Jews are the incarnation of capitalism.”“ (Samuels italics in original, bold and underline
added)
Furthermore, on The National Socialists’ economic policies, Samuels cites how they expanded
state-owned firms to 500 by the mid of the Interwar period to 1943, and aggressively
expropriated private industrial companies. (Samuels, sec.Socialist Economic Policies) The
expropriations were to such an extent that the State had the power to control the prices, what is
produced, when, how and for whom. (Samuels, sec.Socialist Economic Policies) Regarding the
nature of the welfare state, Samuels writes:
“Moreover, Hitlerian socialism advanced domestic social policies that “were remarkably friendly
towards the German lower classes, soaking the wealthy and redistributing the burdens of wartime
to the benefit of the underprivileged,” as noted in Götz Aly’s book Hitler’s Beneficiaries:
Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State. In other words, The German National Socialists
secured revenues that “amounted to a state-sponsored campaign of grand larceny.”
To prop up this large welfare state, Nazi Germany had become a redistributive regime that
sought to rob the rich to pay the poor to fashion a universal social utopia—a sort of social
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justice mecca that has been dubbed a “racist-totalitarian welfare state.” Aly wrote, to
“achieve a truly socialist division of personal assets, Hitler implemented a variety of
interventionist economic policies, including price and rent controls, exorbitant corporate
taxes,’ subsidies to German farmers,… and harsh taxes on capital gains.” (Samuels,
sec.Socialist Economic Policies italics in original, bold and underline added)
Samuels goes further and lists how the National Socialists abolition of the Stock market, for
example, all companies, private and public, were forced to make loans to the Third Reich,
declared illegal anyone that tries to respect the employer’s interest over the State’s, imposition
of high tax rates, and government subsidies (Samuels, sec.Pushing to Abolish the German Stock
Market), which Samuels details:
“Günter Reimann in his 1939 Vampire Economy repeatedly detailed the negative impacts of state
planning by the National Socialists. He was inside Nazi Germany as a Communist underground
resister who had to flee by 1934. He documented the harsh conditions that businesses faced
under the Third Reich. He revealed that most German proprietors “fear National Socialism as
much as they did Communism in 1932” and that “these Nazi radicals think of nothing except
‘distributing the wealth.’” He further asserted that “Some businessmen have even started
studying Marxist theories so that they will have a better understanding of the present economic
system.”
[…] A host of economic side effects surfaced. After suspending what remain of the gold
standard, Nazi Germany pressured its central bank to keep interest rates low and government
budget deficits high, causing the economy to overheat and triggering higher prices. By
November 1936, the Nazi regime issued a price-stop decree that prohibited increases in prices
and wages. Despite the fact that more waves of inflation continued to occur, prices were still kept
artificially low. Although Germany’s economy was floundering, the Nazi administration pursued
more centralization of its domestic and foreign economies, and international trade continued to
slow, which resulted in serious food shortages and rationing of key consumer goods like produce,
butter, and many “consumables.” Even gasoline and fuel needed to operate cars were rationed,
preventing many German citizens from owning or driving vehicles.” (Samuels, sec.High taxes
and government subsidies)
Do these accounts sound anything to what Quanta Cura and its Syllabus of Errors condemn in
Marxist Socialism and Communism? It definitely does since as pointed out earlier, the Third
Positionists were really nationalist Marxists of the Sorelian revisionist school, and each Interwar
nationalism sought to play around how they would frame their national mythos in light of how
they interpreted socioeconomic conditions of society, how to solve them and how to keep the
working-class and the entire nation united in their struggle against modernity while themselves
being modernizers. (Steele, sec.Five Facts about Fascism)
Therefore, the use of QC, its Syllabus and PGD by Pius IX and Pius X, respectively, are all The
Church’s opposition to the doctrines that not only unify them but genealogically link them
together which The Church saw as an institutional and ideological enemy of Catholicism. Of
course, this goes beyond mere economic policies, what I have been focusing on is
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contextualizing their movements from a philosophical standpoint, which those in turn affected
their economic policies, policies which The Church too condemned in her encyclicals
condemning the Marxist parents of Fascism and National Socialism.

On the Fascist State being “simply a collective of minds” and other Fascist
oversimplifications
Objection 1: The Fascist State is conceived simply as a collective of minds or consciousness of
various individual in society, such a collective can be conceived in a Catholic society where all
the collectives are unified by a Catholic ideal that is enforced upon everyone. That’s the essence
of Fascism and what truly matters in the analysis.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: This is such a gross oversimplification of Gentile’s nuanced exposition
of the Fascist State, which he was clear to emphasize that the difference between, say, one
collective of minds like a syndicate, and the State, is that the latter carry with it authority and
force of law (G. Gentile 31–32), this oversimplification of the Fascist State as some collectivist
democracy of unified consciousness, while indeed an admitted aspect by Gentile (G. Gentile 28–
29), when he deals with the nature of The Corporate State and Liberty, Ethics and Religion, the
key difference between the State and any other collective is that the State ultimately holds power
and enforcement of law of a unified populace. This means that a proper analogy of the Gentilian
State is equivalent to a beehive: the entire beehive is the State, the bees are the individuals, but
the authority of the State is concentrated and exercised uniquely by the officials of the Party and
the Duce, which would be the consorts of the Queen and the Queen herself of the analogical
beehive. This nuance is important to keep in mind because no mere collective is sufficient to
establish a Fascist State, the full realization of said collective is ultimately, governmental power,
which is concentrated on the leadership and charisma of the Duce or Führer in the NatSoc case.
This nature of the State, its totalitarian nature expounded elsewhere by Gentile (G. Gentile 20–
21) is precisely what The Church condemned as anathema and why they deemed Fascism as
inherently statolatrous, all this in spite of Gentile’s failed rebuttal to the accusation. As the J.R.
Oppenheimer in the Oppenheimer movie released in 2023 would say: “Theory only gets you so
far.” In theory, Gentile branded Fascism as some romantic, glorious democratic State that
respected liberties, but in application, it was no different than the Communist regimes like in
Soviet Russia and Romania. The overarching, all-consuming authority of the secular State is
what The Church warned would threaten society in Pius IX’s encyclical and what Pius XI
condemned in NoAB and in HGU (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938)” 185–211). To
assert that Fascism is reducible to “a collective conscious” unified by an ideal is equivalent to
affirming that Feminism is solely about affirming men and woman are equal under the law. Such
gross oversimplification of concepts with very specific, key defining elements is a sign of an
individual who lacks nuance and a serious assessment of complicated concepts.

On the reliability of Calvin University’s Nazi Propaganda archives

Objection 1: Well, all those National Socialist Propaganda archive documents are not reliable
anyways because the people that release said information are unreliable. Calvin University is
notorious for fabricating speeches by certain National Socialist to make them look anti-Christian
when they were very much pro-Christian. They fabricated Robert Lee’s speech to make him
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sound like a Pantheist when he made numerous references to Jehovah or the Christian God in
positive manner. That shows that Calvin University has subversive ulterior motives and thus their
sources should never be used nor trusted.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: If the argument is grounded on the premise that Calvin University wants
to portray all National Socialists as anti-Christian by fabricating speeches of certain officials that
are portrayed pagan when otherwise they are Christians confessionally, then we should expect
this sort of pattern consistently throughout the archives, but what is observed is indeed the
opposite. Consider Calvin University’s archived speech of Gerhard Hahn titled The Cross of
Christ and The Swastika (Christuskreuz und Hakenkreuz in its original German) delivered on
1934 sponsored by the German Christian Movement, whose context and doctrines I discussed in
the MBS analysis. This speech, from the title, suggests that there is a connection, one of
reconciliatory nature and harmony between the Cross, and the National Socialist interpretation of
the Swastika, indeed, this is what is found in the speech and what we would expect given the
context from Robert David Clark’s Doctoral Thesis. If Calvin University was so anti-National
Socialist to the point they would censor or manipulate every speech that it even makes any
positive connection to the Christian God, even down to their symbols, we should expect such a
pattern to follow consistently, however, consider this fragment from the speech referenced:
“Thousands of arms reached to heaven in the Hitler greeting, and thousands of people’s
comrades praised the Führer with a triple “Sieg Heil.” The same thousands spontaneously sang
the Horst Wessel song. Then Pastor Hahn-Elmlohe, the leader of the “German Christians” in
Hanover, spoke on behalf of the provincial church council. Like many others, he was wearing a
brown shirt:
28 August 1933 will go down in the history of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Hanover — if
God wills — as the day in which the clear will of the church members affirmed its people in a
new way, stating:
The church stands here under the cross of Jesus Christ —
The German people stands there, which under the symbol of the swastika has awakened.
In past decades, the subversive powers of liberalism, materialism, and Bolshevism alienated
millions of German people’s comrades from the German nation. It is doubtless God’s grace that
our Führer Adolf Hitler has once again won back to the nation the German people’s comrade and
the German worker. Hitler could and had to achieve his goal, because he broke totally from the
past and followed the entirely different, yet ancient, path of National Socialism.
In past decades, these satanic powers alienated millions of our German people’s comrades from
the Evangelical Church. It is the holy duty and solemn goal of our movement of faith, the
“German Christians,” to win back the German people’s comrade and the German worker, with
God’s help, to the Evangelical Church. To do that, we want to, and must, follow a different, yet
ancient path in the church, namely the path of Martin Luther that leads to a deep connection of
church and people, of Christianity and German nature.
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The cross of Christ and the swastika should not and may not oppose each other; they belong
together. One must make us look to eternity, and admonish us” Remember that you are a
Christian! The other points us toward the present, and admonishes us: Remember that you are a
German!
Both together should and do admonish us:
Remember that you are a German Christian!
It is, therefore, a holy joy to declare at this hour: As leader of the religious movement
“German Christians” in this provincial church council and as the servant of our
Hanoverian provincial church, I confess to you, my dear comrades from the S.A., the S.S.,
and the Stahlhelm, my thankful joy to God, and I confess my genuine joy in our Führer
and Chancellor Adolf Hitler. Let me say openly: It was you, my comrades, who led the fight
against the Satan of Bolshevism, and who know how things would be if Hitler had not called
and if you had not answered. God, however, blessed our struggle.
As a representative of the church members and also the National Socialists, who will become one
with the church members, I joyfully confess our Lutheran church and the Lord of our
church, Christ.” (Hahn bold in original)
For a University so bent and biased to National Socialists in consistently representing the
National Socialists as ardent anti-Christians, this speech is such a huge stain to such a pattern.
There is more from the same archive that go along similar lines. Therefore, the nature of said
objection is an emotive reaction to confirmation bias in that conclusions that they reject in their
paradigm are interpreted as “catastrophic propaganda” or other discrediting remarks. The people
who make these objections are clearly making these arguments because deep down they know
that the National Socialist’s Christianity is a heretical modification to fit the National Socialist
racialist worldview. That Calvin University provided the public these speeches are simply a
gesture of academic objectivity to demonstrate the lengths to which the National Socialist would
try to rationalize the reconciliations, rationalizations I have discussed in the monograph in the
MBS analysis. The archives are consistent with what is discussed in the literature that analyze
these Interwar nationalisms in relation to The Church, alongside The Church’s negative reaction
to these worldviews. Hahn is simply another example of how the German Christian Movement
rationalized their mazeway resynthesis and their modification of Christianity to fit their racialist
paradigms. The objector’s argument presumes of course, that the National Socialists were not
heretical in their treatment of Christianity with racialisms, but such responses is the sort that we
would expect from interlocutors who engage in the sort of cognitive dissonance exposited in
Roger Griffin’s paper. Their arguments and assumptions have already been soundly refuted in the
analysis, thus I will not repeat them here.
Objection 2, Rebuttal 1: Well, those archived documents are bad translations anyways. The real
translations are found in an archive that only I have access to, and I read them and you are
wrong and are relaying on distorted sources, same is true with the other sources for Fascism.
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Rebuttal to Objection 2, Rebuttal to 1: Quasi-gnostic pseudo-arguments on privileged access to

“the real sources” are suspiciously grounded in unreasonable standards of public assessment and
other standards of evidence for convenient access for others to verify. The argument that the
sources of Calvin University or James A. Gregor are so distorted that the supposed “secret
document” with “the true translations” that require loophole for the lay reader to access them
already is a red flag of intellectual desperation and ad hoc rescuing devices to avoid the
uncomfortable conclusions of this thesis against the narrative and propaganda of the objector.
Most translation or transcript errors are so minor that they seldom change the central message of
the original. To ground oneself over trivial grammar errors or minor translation losses as some
central argumentative scheme to discredit the source materials for fear of them disproving the
central thesis of the objector’s narrative is the epitome of intellectual dishonesty and thus such
standards should be discredited and rejected in principle.

On Saint John Chrysostom on his Timothy 5:8 commentary and racialism and
other misrepresented Saints
Objection 1: You make it seem as if The Church denied the reality of race and racial differences,
even down to the psychological level or how it is important to have racial thinking, well what do
you have to say of The Church Fathers’ commentary on 1 Timothy 5:8, like Saint John
Chrysostom, arguing how caring for a stranger than your close kin is as worse as an infidel,
proving that Chrysostom puts an importance on caring for your own race’s faith and needs first
over others just like the National Socialists tried to argue? The scholars you cite are clearly
unaware of how The Church Fathers and Doctors of The Church recognized the importance of
racialisms.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: Such propositions are clearly absurd and devoid of proper context and
nuance to what the Church Fathers actually taught. Let’s take Chrysostom mentioned by the
objector.
1 Timothy 5:8 says this:
“If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned
the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (RSVCE ver)
What is the full commentary in context by John Chrysostom regarding this verse? Let’s see:
“Many consider that their own virtue is sufficient for their salvation, and if they duly regulate
their own life, that nothing further is wanting to save them. But in this they greatly err, which is
proved by the example of him who buried his one talent, for he brought it back not diminished
but entire, and just as it had been delivered to him. It is shown also by the blessed Paul, who says
here, If any one provide not for his own. The provision of which he speaks is universal, and
relates to the soul as well as the body, since both are to be provided for.
“If any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, that is, those who are
nearly related to him, he is worse than an infidel.” And so says Isaiah, the chief of the Prophets,
“You shall not overlook your kinsmen of your own seed.” Isaiah 58:7, Septuagint For if a man
deserts those who are united by ties of kindred and affinity, how shall he be affectionate towards
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others? Will it not have the appearance of vainglory, when benefiting others he slights his own
relations, and does not provide for them? And what will be said, if instructing others, he neglects
his own, though he has greater facilities; and a higher obligation to benefit them? Will it not be
said, These Christians are affectionate indeed, who neglect their own relatives? “He is worse
than an infidel.” Wherefore? Because the latter, if he benefits not aliens, does not neglect his
near kindred. What is meant is this: The law of God and of nature is violated by him who
provides not for his own family. But if he who provides not for them has denied the faith, and is
worse than an infidel, where shall he be ranked who has injured his relatives? With whom shall
he be placed? But how has he denied the faith? Even as it is said, “They profess that they know
God, but in works they deny Him.” Titus 1:16 What has God, in whom they believe,
commanded? “Hide not yourself from your own flesh.” Isaiah 58:7 How does he then believe
who thus denies God? Let those consider this, who to spare their wealth neglect their kindred. It
was the design of God, in uniting us by the ties of kindred, to afford us many opportunities of
doing good to one another. When therefore you neglect a duty which infidels perform, have you
not denied the faith? For it is not faith merely to profess belief, but to do works worthy of
faith. And it is possible in each particular to believe and not to believe. For since he had spoken
of luxury and self-indulgence, he says that it is not for this only that such a woman is punished,
because she is luxurious, but because her luxury compels her to neglect her household. This
he says with reason; for she that lives to the belly, perishes hereby also, as “having denied the
faith.” But how is she worse than an infidel? Because it is not the same thing to neglect our
kindred, as to neglect a stranger. How should it be? But the fault is greater here, to desert one
known than one who is unknown to us, a friend than one who is not a friend.” (St John
Chrysostom italics in original, bold and underline added)
The National Socialist interprets all this as Chrysostom affirming some sort of Volk philosophy,
but to interpret such like that is to engage in eisegetical anachronisms. Here is where deSilva’s
work on contextualizing the social world of the Bible is very crucial, and the perfect Chapter to
elucidate such dynamic is Chapter 5 on Kinship. What was the main component of the household
as opposed to the nation? It was clearly the immediate kin in accordance with the ties of the
immediate family ties: the husband, wife, slaves and children. (de Silva, “Kinship: Living as a
Family in the First-Century World” 173–74) The household unit was important for both the
maintaining of cultural customs, inheritances and even the economic stability of said household,
as the household itself was also a producing as well as consuming unit. (de Silva, “Kinship:
Living as a Family in the First-Century World” 177, 179) Furthermore, relevant to this
discussion is the practice of endogamy versus exogamy. DeSilva points out that endogamy, while
it served primarily as a way to maintain cultural continuity and preserving the religious customs,
exogamy was also a means to increase honor and forge strategic alliances with other patriarchs of
other countries like the Roman style of marriages. (de Silva, “Kinship: Living as a Family in the
First-Century World” 174–77) DeSilva mentions how Josephus marriage was honorable because
his wife was a gift of the Emperor and him accepting her as gift was graceful and thus solidified
their patronage relationship and his prestigious position as someone of aristocratic line. (de Silva,
“Kinship: Living as a Family in the First-Century World” 176) Following from this is why many
ethicists in the ancient world placed more emphasis on similarity of character, honor status and
religion than mere blood, as DeSilva cites Philo of Alexandria that although similarity of blood is
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important, it was not sufficient to establish genuine kinship if important features of what
constitute a stable kinship are missing. (de Silva, “Kinship: Living as a Family in the First-
Century World” 194) He justifies it in the following quote from the same work:
“Philo, in fact, is willing both to dissolve kinship by blood where shared religion is absent and to
take a common devotion to Torah as sufficient basis to make people kin:
“For we should have one tie of affinity, one accepted sign of goodwill, namely the willingness to
serve God, and that our everyday word and deed promotes the cause of piety. But as for these
kinships, as we call them, which have come down from our ancestors and are based on blood-
relationship, or those derived from marriage or similar causes, let them all be cast aside if they
do not seek earnestly the same goal, namely, the honour of God, which is the indissoluble
bond of affection which makes us one. For those who are so minded will receive in exchange
kinships of greater dignity and sanctity.” (Philo Spec. Leg. 1.3616-17, LCL).” (de Silva,
“Kinship: Living as a Family in the First-Century World” 194 emphasis added, italics in
original.)
And this of course is the basis and logic of the new kinship promulgated by Jesus Christ and how
he argued against the Pharisees that discriminated against the Samaritans and even the Galileans.
(de Silva, “Kinship: Living as a Family in the First-Century World” 195) As DeSilva concludes
in the same chapter:
“The possibility of becoming part of God’s family provides the basis for the alternative kinship
group that Jesus begins to create within his own ministry. The most well-known passage in this
regard is Matthew 12:46-50 (see also Mk 3:31-35; Lk 8:19-21), in which he redefines his own
kin not as those born in his father Joseph’s household but rather as “whoever does the will of my
Father in heaven,” that is, whoever is born into his heavenly Father’s household.” (de Silva,
“Kinship: Living as a Family in the First-Century World” 197)
From this social context it provides us the correct exegetical scheme from which to decipher
what Chrysostom was referring to in his commentary, and given his epoch, he was not far from
the classical period of the NT period, thus, the stranger was not “a foreign national” but quite
clearly, foreign to the immediate household, and said stranger would most certainly be within the
same national ethnos.
Thus, Chrysostom is not arguing alongside some Volkisch ethics but alongside an agonostic
classical ethics, so a stranger did not strictly belong to another tribe or race, but could very well
belong to another household foreign to your immediate kin, and as I have contextualized, these
kins were grounded more on cultural, honor status and religion than mere blood ties, this was
true for the Jews as for the Gentile world, especially the Greco-Roman society. Thus, according
to Chrysostom’s commentary, it is far more a moral burden to neglect a known family member or
even a friend, versus a complete stranger, even one born in the same country as your household.
This is important to stress, the basis of kinship was one of immediate familiarity tied to moral
and cultural links, not blood quantum or even national ties. It is very clear that for the average
Galilean villager, he felt more a stranger in Judea and even the Gilead region even if both regions
were populated by the same Israelites, but the strangeness is more due to familiarity with a
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locality of known ties than one based on some greater fatherland, which the Samaritans nor
Judeans shared even though they were genetically linked as Israelites. These arguments that
attempt to insert some Volkisch readings to the Church Fathers and the biblical authors are
ignorant of the social context of the era, whose ethics, sense of familiarity and kinship radically
differed from the racialist thinkers from the post-Enlightenment era.

On sacredness vs sacralisation, the morality of each, and an analysis and

commentary on Humani Generis Unitas Part Two
Objection 1: What exactly is wrong with considering something to be ‘sacred?’ Is life not sacred
to the Catholic Church? What do you even mean by ‘divinizing’ a particular object? Is that not
precisely worshiping the object in a religious sense? This quip of sacralisation just seems like a
wordplay to deem a genuine reverence and concern for one’s race and kin equivalent to
paganism and thus it is misconstrued what the problem is to deem something sacred as opposed
to worshiping something as sacred. You are not clear on the morality of the former versus the
morality of the latter.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: The difference between the Catholic Church deeming life as sacred
versus what the National Socialists deem to race is the colloquiality or informality of the former
and its limited moral implications tied to its sacred value. From here I will extensively cite HGU
on this matter to clarify the wrongness of sacralisation and how The Church understood it. The
chapters I will be basing my analysis to answer this objector’s confusion is The Unity of
Humanity (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938)” 212–26) and The Plurality of Humanity
(Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938)” 226–59) to help us elucidate on the nuanced
differences between what is deemed sacred and worthy of protection, versus what is sacralised
and the errors associated to this activity.
The Unity of Humanity
The core thesis of HGU is of course, the very central theme of its title: the unity of the human
race. Paragraphs 72-74 exposit on the nature of said unity in all humanity, and this commonality
is what, Pius XI argues, gives us a certain level of sameness and familiarity that allows us to
reconcile differences however rich they are. (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.72)
He justifies this sense of unity and how it manifests itself in the affirmation of original sin and
the sanctifying project of the Redemptive work of Christ. (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas
(1938),” paras.73–74) From this, Pius XI argues in Paragraph 75:
“And this is the true “mystery of the blood.” That is why and how blood relationship underlie the
reality of the community of men, “the great human family that extends beyond the borders of
all races and countries,” and which links all men by that which is deepest in them, namely by
their relationship to God. It is sad to observe that today there are men who still want to be
Christians, at least in name, who do not admit this mystery of the blood, which is nonetheless
one of the foundations of our Christian religion. Such men grossly exaggerate the role of
accidental and in any case very superficial accidents of blood and blood relationships in the
formation of social groups larger than the family. And they do so to the point that, in
opposition to all experience, and still more in opposition to the teaching of our Catholic faith,
they absolutely reject the unity of the human race and seek to erect insurmountable barriers
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between the different communities of blood and race. They even go so far as to formulate the
proposition that human races, because of their natural, immutable characteristics, are so
different one from another that the most inferior race is more remote from the most developed
than from the highest developed animal species.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),”
para.75 emphasis added)
This entire paragraph is precisely what drove the condemnation in Paragraph 8 in MBS and what
Walter Gross and the National Socialists failed to grasp when The Church retaliated against their
racialisms. This is also precisely what Albizu Campos referenced in his October 12th Speech and
the foundation of what they considered true unity in plurality (which I will expound in more
detail quickly soon here). Thus, why Pius XI affirms in the next Paragraphs, 76-77, how men are
united by their life on Earth, through space and time, for example, Pius XI cites Saint Augustine
how our unity on Earth testifies how “all men of all time go as pilgrims toward their eternal
destiny, and over which passes the endless “caravan” of which Saint Augustine speaks […]”
(Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.76) Pius XI mentions men’s sorrows, happiness,
all human experiences, how they treat their memories and their sense of belonging and longing to
feeling home and grounded in a familial sense of unity however far apart from time and space
they may be. (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” paras.76–77)
Paragraphs 86-89 speak of the religious character of the family and the State and its true scope
which form the foundations of what exactly limit the State and the Church as well as race in the
Plurality of Humanity chapter. Paragraph 86 mentions that the social factor that contributes to the
unity of humanity is the role of the family and the State, whose origin in human nature is due to
their same origin, in God. (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” paras.86–87) For the
family, Pius XI argues that its religious consecration is due to the unifying factor inherit as
deriving from Paradise, in Eden, and how this permeates the customs of marriage and family
bonds, testifying the religious origin of the family in Genesis, thus adding the unity factor to it.
(Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938)” 87) As for the State, it is no different than what I have
exposited in Julio Meinvielle’s work of Concepción Católica de la política, Paragraph 88 states
how the origin of authority of the State is ultimately of divine origin and this in turn confines
divine origin with the role as “servant of God.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),”
para.87) A role and origin which he even observes in so-called ‘primitive peoples.’ Regarding the
scope of the notion of the family, Pius XI argues that the most important cell in society to
maintain human unity in society when the family is under attack, and that said unity must be
understood as a spiritual-corporeal unity and that the foundation of social cohesion is one
grounded in all expounded in the previous paragraphs. (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas
(1938),” para.89) Thus from here we see a pattern, a unity whose nature is such that its origin is
not just divine, but a particular scope and role from which God has imparted a specific scope and
function that Pius XI rightfully deems sacred because of all discussed regarding this unity, and
the errors of racialism distort this scope. Thus sacredness, from here, is understood in light of a
profound mystery in the divine origin of said human nature that confines us a profound role that
fulfills said deep unity in all diversities, and all the moral precepts implied to undertake and
protect said unity that all men share, and to overemphasize accidentals that are likewise honored
by said spiritual-corporeal unity, is to sacralise, but you would sacralise the exaggerated elements
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and not the overarching unity, which is eclipsed by said exaggeration. I will detail this
exaggeration committed by the racialists and even the Fascists in their theories of the State and
why they commit the error of sacralisation The Church deemed gravely erroneous.
The Plurality of Humanity
I will begin the analysis starting from Paragraph 95 to 126. Paragraphs 95-100 are guidelines that
Pius XI set forth in order to understand how the Pluralities observed in humanity, are
particularities to express a greater unity elucidated in the previous paragraphs. Paragraph 95
states how these different groups testify to an overall unity of mankind grounded in the
mysterious unity confined by Christ and how they allow for various interests and bonds to
intersect and find commonality (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.95), Pius XI
stresses that such particularity is an expression of the overall unity of humanity (Pius XI,
“Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.96) and proceeds to provide doctrinal points expressed in
a positive and negative sense. These are the three criteria of the falsity of a human grouping, and
the three criteria of a justifiable group:
“Let us take the first negative points. These are all derive from the proposition that no group, no
particular social organism, can constitute a genuine human unity unless it is connected with
the general unity of humanity. Within this fundamental proposition are included, if we analyze
it, three criteria or value judgments. The first is this: A group which, by the way it is established
and its members bonded, suppresses and destroys the inviolable source of humanity itself,
namely, the internal unity and liberty of the human person and the internal unity of the family, is
itself marked with the sign of inherent falsity and non-value. The second: A group which,
because of its own social type, pursues goals and proclaims values that contradict objective goals
and values constituting the inner unity of humanity, is also marked with the sign of inherent
falsity and non-value. The third: A group that claims, for its own advantage, an extensive
totality, that is, one which, because of its own goal and the value it attributes to itself, seeks to
determine the content of all other goals, all other values of social life, makes a mockery of the
fundamental structure of humanity, with its ancient unity in its authentic plurality; such a group
once again marks itself with the sign of inherent falsity and non-value.” (Pius XI, “Humani
Generis Unitas (1938),” para.97 italics in original, bold and underline added)
Paragraph 98, are the ones that justify groups that cohere with the unity of humanity:
“Here now are the positive doctrinal points. These all derive from the proposition that every
group, every particular society, if it is truly a human unity, will bear fruit for humanity
considered as a whole. This proposition can be analyzed into three criteria or value judgments.
The first is: The fecundity of a group is shown by a certain characteristic vigor, which is a source
of consistency and solidity, and which the group provides for the families it brings together. The
second: The special know-how with which group grasps and realizes the general, objective goals
of humanity enhances humanity’s pursuit and achievement of these values and goals. The third:
Every group, simply by living in accord with its own essence and all its demands, and by being
in that way an intensive totality, supports and gives life to the internal edifice of humanity,
namely its genuine unity in its genuine plurality.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),”
para.98 italics in original, bold and underline added)
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From these criteria, Pius XI determines the validity of ontologizing and philosophy that attempts
to establish some paradigm from which each group conceives its identity, role, function, destiny,
etc in human society in light of the truth of the Unity of Humanity, from here, Pius XI
summarizes the goal of these criteria in Paragraph 99:
“Hence it is clear that the negative propositions formulated above ultimately include a positive
truth that repels any subterfuge, namely, that every result proceeding from man, whether by
commission or omission, must, in order to establish its final value, be measured by this rule:
Does it put God’s stamp still more deeply on the world, the stamp of the God of justice and love?
Does it make still clearer, in the men who are acting, their resemblance to God?
When this is not the case, it makes no difference how useful and successful the results are;
their realization makes no direct addition to their actual value, and it is therefore blasphemous
when in such cases peoples and their leaders claim that their successes are proof of Divine
benediction, as if success were a sign of particular favor.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas
(1938),” para.99 emphasis added)
From these criteria, Part Two of HGU is able to give an account how to best interpret five
specific topics regarding human society: the State, Territorial nationality (the fatherland
essentially), the nation, Race and the Jews. I will deal with each one in such that is able to link to
the entire analysis done so far in this monograph. Consider this extra as a supplementary
summary to MBS and NoAB and all that was analyzed so far in the Hispano Catholic ethos case:
The state (Paragraphs 101-102)
Pius XI elucidates nothing new to what I have exposited in Julio Meinvielle’s work, Pius XI
states it quite clearly in Paragraph 101:
“In accord with its origin and nature, it must be an organization that creates order to safeguard
law and human well-being in society. It follows that it is the very essence of the state to
recognize that all its members, without exception, have a right to equal protection of the law. And
the law that it is called upon to safeguard can derive from no source other than the one from
which the state derives, that is, from the order that is moral, universal, and valid for all men,
including natural law: that is the supreme rule leading the state to safeguard law.
[…] If the state is to remain a genuine state, and fully realize itself in its natural function, that is,
develop an intensive totality, then the following proposition must be absolutely rejected as false:
“The primary source and supreme rule of all legal order is racial instinct.” It goes without
saying that the same would be true with regard to any given national instinct.” (Pius XI,
“Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.101 emphasis added)
Already The Catholic Church understands that a proper State, is an intensively total State, which
means it must, in totality, subordinate itself to a principle defined outside it to condition it a
proper function from Divine Institution, as he affirms in the next paragraph:
“In any case, the general re-awakening of the state’s awareness of its true role, in the sense of a
limit on its direct intervention, would lead it to mitigate the dynamism of the modern state,
against which people are rebelling, and which is manifested within the state as well as in
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international relations. This would facilitate the organization of different states into a relatively
effective, unified system based on international law, and this would in turn make it possible for
individual states to work together to set up larger economic unities. In addition, by reducing the
dynamism of the state in this way, the common, peaceful, and productive life of various groups,
whether national or racial, within a single state entity would be facilitated. In fact, exaggerated
direct activity of the state, especially in the area of spiritual life, has no doubt made more acute
the deplorable current problem of so-called minorities and different national groups, and this
hinders the pursuit of state unity, to the extent that the latter is legitimate.” (Pius XI, “Humani
Generis Unitas (1938),” para.102 emphasis added)
Thus, Paragraphs 101-102 are direct refutation to the Gentilian conception of the State, and the
limits set forth by Pius XI based off the three doctrinal points from Paragraphs 97-98, this of
course is no different than what NoAB has argued, but HGU expands upon it in greater detail.
Territorial nationality (Paragraphs 103-105)
One term that Pius XI brings forth to define in Paragraph 103 is ‘territorial nationality’, which is
effectively the equivalent to the fatherland or homeland discussed previously. Pius XI defines it
as “an association of men more or less conscious of what they have in common, insofar as they
were born on the same soil and are consequently permanently marked by the same personal
characteristics.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.103) Please note that this does
not preclude an individual or group having different heritage or fatherlands (this is explained in
Paragraph 110 of the encyclical in more detail), but a territorial nationality is defined as a
characteristic permanence to a particular community in a specific geography, and Pius XI
distinguishes this from the state, he argues:
“Such a territorial nationality, taken in and of itself, has no direct relation to the essentially
political achievement constituted by the state. It would therefore be false to consider in advance
as unnatural the fact that human groups belonging to different territorial nationalities may be
brought together in one state, or that members of the same territorial nationality may live in
different states. It would be equally false to claim that such a group has any absolute natural
right or natural duty to seek political union with a state in which it is represented by a sizable
minority of citizens. And it would be equally false for that state to claim any kind of sovereign
power, no matter how and under whatever pretext, over a group of its own territorial nationality
belonging to another state.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.104 emphasis
added)
What Pius XI seems to be arguing is that no state, that tries to incorporate groups of different
territorial nationalities, should have the right to exert a centralized, extensive totality over other
groups belonging to different fatherlands, likewise, it also argues against the notion that the only
valid state, is a nation-state of homogenous composition. This means Paragraph 104 is arguing
that a true state that coheres with the three doctrinal points is one that rejects the concept of a
centralized homogenous state that violates the authentic territorial nationalities of its
constituents. This attacks the central notions of Fascism and National Socialism regarding
national identity under the State. This also has implications regarding immigration and foreign
policy, Pius XI continues:
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“The falsity of such a claim also derives from the fact that it would be an inexhaustible source of
concern in the world, and from a political point of view, would make members of that
community suspect throughout the world, and give other states legitimate reason to defend
themselves against them with all the means at their disposal. That is why it is all the more clearly
the duty of territorial nationality that has members dispersed beyond its native soil, or which
sends them to take up residence in foreign lands, to limit itself to not forgetting them, to helping
them in time of need, and as for the rest, being proud to participate in a major way in the life of
humanity by providing valuable men who have been shaped by their connection with the
homeland. It is naturally inevitable that the new land where the emigrants have taken up
residence should begin to exercise on them the formative social power it exercises on all those
who live there together, and it would not even be legitimate to seek to prevent this. But the more
the mother country’s gift of its children is disinterested, the more it will receive in return from
them in time of need. Many peoples of the old world have had this experience in recent years.”
(Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.105 emphasis added)
This plea is remarkably achieved by the Hispanoamerican hospitality attitude towards other
groups of different territorial nationalities (see my analysis on this topic for more details in
Alberto Buela’s essays).
The nation (Paragraphs 106-110)
Pius XI takes five Paragraphs to exposit a definition of the nation and its role and a brief
comment on Nationalism and the errors he sees. This section will be very important to help
expand what made the Hispanic Nationalism different from the Nation-State nationalisms of
Continental Europe, especially after the Enlightenment.
Paragraph 106 distinguishes it from territorial nationality in that the former arises from
“circumstances of common life, not so much in the same place as in the same time” (Pius XI,
“Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.106) and defines the nation as:
“[…] a large association of men who have common memories and whom a common tradition,
particularly with respect to spiritual culture, has shaped and continues to shape. Like territorial
nationality, this bond in the body of the nation has a powerful formative influence on the thought,
will, and sensibility of individuals and families, and this consolidates the body of the nation
itself; it stimulates and gives life to humanity’s overall effort to achieve general goals, to realize
the values assigned to man.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.106 emphasis
added)
Just as in territorial nationality, Pius XI too, distinguishes the nation from the state, he writes:
“But just as in the case of territorial nationality, and for the same reasons, this bond within
national body does not in itself give us the direct right to conclude that belonging to a nation
implies belonging to a given state. Belonging to a given state is in and of itself distinct from
belonging to a nation. The opposite view, which is widespread, derives from a more or less
artificial idea of the nation that relies far too much on a shared language, and takes far too little
account of bond ─which is nonetheless of capital importance─ between a national group and its
collective historical tradition, and ultimately indicates less a nation than a state that is founded or
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to be founded on the basis of a shared language. We have personally experienced this. For the
solution of the “Roman question” was made possible only by abandoning this false idea of the
nation, which would necessarily have entailed the maintenance of the integrity of the state, and
returning to the true idea of the state, which is based on history.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis
Unitas (1938),” para.107 emphasis added)
The definition of nation that Pius XI exposited is precisely the one defined and believed by
Hispanic Nationalists, and it is from that framework, that the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, has
as its ultimate goal, the formation of a greater fatherland that transcends national borders that are
based artificially around the idea of a nation that Pius XI disagrees. From here is where his view
of nationalism emerges, and a nation that adopts an extensive totality towards territorial
nationalities, by conflating itself with the notion of the state, is what Pius XI deems the essence
of Nationalism. (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.108) On the other hand, when a
group fulfills his duties to a nation defined in the same way as in Paragraph 106, that is when that
group is fulfilling Natural Law and in accordance with Divine Precepts. (Pius XI, “Humani
Generis Unitas (1938),” para.109)
From this follows Pius XI’s arguments that allow groups to be loyal to an additional fatherland,
Paragraph 110 states:
“Let us add this: Men can really give themselves another fatherland, they can really incorporate
themselves into a second territorial nationality; similarly, through major events, it is possible for
them to be gradually incorporated, without being forced to do so, into another complex of
traditions, into another national society. To deny this would be to see man’s life in common as
having a rigidity which, because of its development in time and space, it absolutely cannot
have. Moreover, if it were rigid in this way, none of the existing nations would ever have been
able to establish themselves.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.110 emphasis
added)
Thus, we see the pattern manifested in the sacralisation of the State, its depositories of powers
and the nation: the manifestation is built on premises that violate the realities expressed in the
three doctrinal points (in the positive sense from Paragraph 98), which in turn manifests
themselves in establishing artificial rigidities that impede different territorial nationalities to
surrender their genuine group identities to conform to a barrier or framework that undermines the
fluidity, natural liberties and sense of human unity that is capable of transcending the obstacles
the artificial rigidities divinize in mystical and legalistic manner, and against Catholic teaching of
an integrationist, harmonious sense of identity, raises a segregationist or even a senseless vacuum
that homogenizes all identities under an artificial one not based on history. That is the error and
immorality manifested in sacralisation as opposed to the inherent sacredness of these territorial
national identities that have an inherent potential to incorporate themselves freely in accordance
with human unity.
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Race and Racism (Race and Racialism in the original English manuscript (Passelecq and
Suchecky 172–73)) (Paragraphs 111-130)
I now turn to the encyclical’s treatment of race and racialism, in 20 paragraphs, Pius XI details
how to properly understand race, deal with the differences, how to understand them, and the
errors and immoralities of racialism. Paragraph 111 establishes definitional constraints on how to
understand the nature of race that will guide, along with the doctrinal guides in Paragraphs 97-
98, in his refutation and condemnation of racialism.
Before I dive in, it is important to stress one key detail: is it racism or racialism? For the
purposes of the encyclical and the context of the extant English draft by John LaFarge, they are
the same concept. After the context of HGU, racism seems to have mutated to simply being a
generic, discriminatory remark about other groups of people based on a variety of characteristics,
usually in a vulgar or colloquial context, whereas racialism takes on a more sophisticated,
philosophical scope about racial groups, and their assessment of their social, physical and
spiritual capabilities along racial and anthropological lines. For HGU, both terms refer to the
definition of the latter, and for HGU, the latter has justified the former overtime.
With that out of the way, I proceed to analyze the encyclical, first Paragraph 111:
“When we arrive at the issue of race, we find a striking example of the harm caused by the false,
sentimental, and almost mystical way of speaking that has been applied to the ideas of nation,
people, and state. There is so little agreement, whether in scientific terminology or in common
usage, with regard to the meaning of the terms “race” or “racial link” that we find them used
today ─and still more in the past─ solely to designate a nation or a people. In addition, the
expression “racial link” usually signifies, in modern scientific vocabulary, certain definite
physical characteristics which are permanent and common to a group of human beings. In
relation with the physical constitution, which is itself marked by these bodily traits, we
constantly observe certain mental characteristics. If the term “race” is used to refer only to these
obvious facts, and if the individual racial characteristics are not assumed to remain constant
over too long a time, then the use of this remains within the limits of verifiable observation.”
(Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.111 emphasis added)
The emphasized sentences are key to keep in mind in how Pius XI treats the concept of race and
how he judges the errors of racialism, whose errors are as followed and their Paragraphs from
which they are exposited: Negation of human unity (112), Negation of human personality (113-
115), Negation of the true values of morality and religion (116-119).
On human unity:
“But the term “racism” is used to refer to a great deal more than that. Then the word contradicts
the negative conclusions already established in this Letter, which are based on the teachings of
the Faith, on the testimony of philosophy and other branches of knowledge, and on experience as
well. It contradicts them with regard to the authentic divisions within human social life. It
contradicts in both theory and practice the principle that categories or genuinely human lines of
separation cannot be admitted unless they themselves participate in what forms the common
bond of humanity. For the theory and practice of racism, with their distinction between superior
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and inferior races, ignore the unifying bond whose existence is demonstrated by the three kinds of
testimony mentioned above, or at least they deprive it of any practical scope. One has a right to
be surprised that, confronted by these facts, there are still people who claim that the doctrine and
practice of racism have nothing to do with Catholic teaching on faith and morals, nothing to do
with philosophy, and that they remain a purely political issue.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis
Unitas (1938),” para.112 emphasis added)
Here are the first errors that racialism commits and contributes to its sacralisation factor, the
other is of course, as Pius XI mentions, that the attitude that racialism or the issue of race only
concerns the political realm is the error committed by the modernist and compromisers who
believed they could reconcile racialist theories with Catholicism. Paragraph 113 states:
“Our surprise at this incomprehension increases when the three criteria proposed to reinforce
these negative conclusions are applied to racism. The first criterion showed that the inner unity
and free will of the human person were necessary conditions for founding any genuine human
society. But if the racial community is to be the source of all other forms of society, the human
person’s inner unity and free will have to be guaranteed. Racism does not accord the human
person its rights and its importance in the formation of society. It claims that the fact that
individuals have the same blood irresistibly involves them in a single current of physical and
psychological characteristics. Any other explanation makes it impossible to understand the
hopeless position racism assigns to the races it considers inferior. Any other interpretation fails to
account completely for the mechanism of racist legislation that judges all individuals of a given
race by means of the same ethnic formula.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.113
emphasis added)
This is the next pattern observed which reveals the error I have exposited in the MBS analysis:
by departing from the genuine sacredness inherent in a race’s racial identity in accordance with
the first doctrine regarding respecting the human’s personality, free will and sense of human
unity to other groups by virtue of this nature shared through Adam, racialism elevates artificially
the racial barriers, rigidifies them and confines them to a box, a racial formula that racialism
binds said race as if said binding had dogmatic authority over it, that is the error and immorality
of racialatry. There is more, Paragraph 114 indicates that these conclusions from racialist
theories cannot be reconciled with the doctrinal affirmations in Catholic teaching, and states:
“For only tendencies, and nothing more can be inherited through the blood, not definitive,
already formed qualities. And the development of character ─leaving aside the possible effects
of man’s free will─ is affected by the environment, and especially as regards upbringing, at
least insofar as the psychological tendencies that depend on the physical organism are
concerned.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.114 emphasis added)
Thus, the assumptions of the immutability of racial proclivities and their “modes of thinking” by
the National Socialists are refuted by The Catholic Church. In Paragraph 115, it states how
racialism’s own doctrines have ignored The Catholic Church’s doctrines that she affirms such as
the human person, free will, the body-soul unity and divine grace and that racialist thoughts run
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contrary to philosophy and modern science. (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),”
para.115)
Paragraph 116 argues that racialism fails also to constitute a genuine human society grounded in
human unity when subjected to the second criterion, and Paragraphs 118-119 examine how it
fails:
“The same close relationship with the doctrines of faith, morals, and science appears when
racism is subjected to the second criterion We established earlier in discussing the undeniable
unity of the human race. We said in particular that when a group’s social constitution affirms
goals and values in opposition to those that objectively serve the bond of humanity, it betrays by
this very fact its inner mendacity and poverty. But racism denies, practically if not theoretically,
that there are objective goals and values common to humanity as a whole.
Let us examine racism’s moral teaching, whose essential thesis We have recently been obliged to
condemn. “The strength of the race and the purity of blood must be preserved: any means that
serves this end is, for that reason alone, good and legitimate.” [This is effectively the National
Socialist’s racial maxim that I have discussed in the MBS analysis] That is the rule of racist
morality. We ask: Doesn’t such a principle deny the existence of an objective moral order valid
for all men and all times? Doesn’t it abandon that order to the arbitrary will and instinct of
particular races?
Nevertheless, even the pagans acknowledged the existence of this universal moral order when
they saw its origin in a divine and simple principle. Aristotle observes: “He who asks that law
govern is asking that God and reason alone govern.” Cicero says the same. Among the
Christians, Saint Jerome says: “One law, written in our hearts, extends to all nations, and no man
is unaware of this law.” Finally, Saint Augustine: “There is no soul capable of reasonable thought
in which God does not make his law heard.”
In any case, the existence of a natural moral law, which all men carry in their hearts, and which is
written by the Creator, is taught by Holy Scripture. Hence the racist rule of morality is once
again in conflict with Catholic teaching in matters of faith and morals. It constitutes in addition a
permanent threat to the security of public and private life, and to every kind of peace and order
in the world. This world has become aware of the crisis it is suffering. In the past, this crisis was
already not primarily social and economic in nature, and under the influence of this destructive
doctrine it has developed objectively into an immense crisis of all morality.” (Pius XI, “Humani
Generis Unitas (1938),” paras.116–119 emphasis added, additional comments in brackets)
This extensive citation of Paragraphs 116-119 once again shows that Pius XI was well aware of
the National Socialist paradigm, and has, again, condemned it as it did in MBS. Already at this
point we can see what sort of language and philosophical rigor MBS was working on, HGU is
expanding on Paragraphs 7-8 of MBS. Paragraphs 120-122 effectively condemns the “law of
race” of the National Socialists that attempt to subordinate religion to race, thus, once again
vindicating the arguments from MBS. (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” paras.120–
122)
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Paragraphs 123-124 argue that racialism’s segregational framework of identity destroys societies,
which would be expressed in the negative sense of the third criterion, the encyclical states:
“According to this criterion, any group that claims an extensive totality, that is, which judges the
content of all other purposes and values from the standpoint of its own purpose and fundamental
values, destroys the basic structure on which humanity depends in order to achieve true unity in
authentic plurality. Thereby it reveals its inner falsity and its poverty. Now, this is precisely what
racism does, either in its theory or in its practice. It makes the fact of racial grouping so
central to its system, assigns it such an exclusive significance and efficacy, that in
comparison all other social bonds and groupings no longer have a distinct, relatively
independent individuality or foundation in law. Through an abusive extension of racial
values, the entire life of society is reduced to a totality whose unity is wholly mechanical. It is
deprived of precisely that form that the spirit gave it: true unity in real plurality.” (Pius XI,
“Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.123 emphasis added)
This is precisely what the Hispano Catholic ethos has avoided and surmounted: by rejecting such
sacralisation of racial barriers and categories, by rejecting the rigidity of racial categories, did the
Cosmic Race thesis flourish, and how Hispanidad succeeded in cohesively synthesizing all the
racial groups under an imperial identity that fulfills the positive case of the third criterion from
Paragraph 98 in HGU. In here we see the grave presuppositions in operation in all racialist
thinking devoid of Catholic framework: the mystical value, the divine attribution to these
barriers, and consequently, the segregationist barriers under the false pretense of “respect” and
“dignity” by the National Socialists.
Paragraphs 124 goes further:
“When racial value is oversimplified and made central and exclusive and obliterates all other
notions. Through its totalitarian extension, it realizes a type of society that exactly resembles the
internationalist society that racism claims to oppose and that We Ourselves are combating. Its
concept of the world is too simple, primitively simple.
Young people exposed to these ideas about the world become fanatical when they accept them,
and nihilistic when they reject them. Both attitudes are possible if hearts and minds have
become incapable of appreciating the manifold riches of the True and the Good, riches which, in
their broad extent and unity, can only be the heritage of an authentic spiritual life.” (Pius XI,
“Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.124 emphasis added)
Nothing could express further rebuttal and condemnation to racialist ideas and an affirmation of
all I have analyzed in this paragraph, and how this paragraph is the diametric opposite of the
Hispano Catholic ethos. The Hispano Catholic ethos is a particularity of great example that Pius
XI makes reference in how it has become a remarkable model for other particularities to follow
in how it was able to synthesize so many pluralities into a unity that respects pluralities. Surely,
HGU vindicates MBS, NoAB and this monograph’s analysis.
From 124, Pius XI also condemns another National Socialist maxim regarding Racial Education
(Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.124), whose contents I have analyzed in this
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monograph, Paragraph 125 also condemns such propositions of the National Socialist to use
education to instill racialism in the young, and Pius XI calls on Christ to pray for them to
repentance. (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.125)
Paragraphs 126-127 are worthy of citing in full to demonstrate how HGU expands upon the anti-
National Socialism in MBS and how it vindicates Indo-Hispanidad and its remarkable re-
definition of race being a perpetuation of virtues, character disposition and a civilizational
outlook under Catholicism. HGU eloquently states:
“Would that the world were free of this mistaken and harmful racism that erects rigid barriers
between superior, inferior, and indigenous races, and assumes invariable differences in blood!
Certainly there exist today more or less perfect, more or less developed races, if they are
measured by the outward manifestations of their cultural life. But these differences are
determined by the environment, in the sense that, setting aside the effects of the exercise of free
will, only through the influence of the environment could fundamental racial characteristics
develop in one or another manner, and continue to develop. Even if we grant that these primary
tendencies, or those that later emerge on account of race, set the direction and even the limits of
this development and the influence of the environment, they do not provide the basis for
essential differences that might arise among particular races with regard to religious, moral, and
cultural life. This truth emerges from the teaching we derive from revelation as well as from
philosophy and other branches of knowledge.
These teachings tend to demonstrate the original and essential unity of the human race, along
with the fact that its fundamental tendencies are not due to primitive differences of blood but
solely to the influence of the environment, including the spiritual environment. Some large,
isolated human groups have been subjected to such an influence over long periods of time. In
that respect the positive development of various racial tendencies, through the diversity of
particular races, occurs in exactly the same way as the development of other elements shaping
human communities. These tendencies put on the whole the clear stamp of different races in the
world today ─again, apart from the influence of human freedom─ is in the favorable or
unfavorable disposition of the past or present environment.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas
(1938),” paras.126–127 emphasis added)
What a remarkable vindication of what Maeztu exposited in what constituted Spanish humanism
through the Quixote maxim: “No eres más que otro sino hace más que otro [You are not more
than another but you do more than another].”
An even greater vindication is what HGU has to say regarding the practical consequences of
colonization (literal subtitle over Paragraphs 128-129) and how it ties to how the Hispano
Catholic ethos is a remarkable model for other ethnic ethos to learn from if they are to be a
properly consistent Catholic particular ethos, I again, cite in full:
“Logically, then, the existence of more or less developed races implies no race question, whether
we consider it from the standpoint of biology or of theology in the sense of divine election or
rejection. In principle and in practice, the matter comes down to the influence of the
environment. If the colonizing nations, urged on by political ambitions and the thirst for material
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gain, neglect their duty to raise the cultural level of certain human groups by means of
beneficient political, social, and economic measures, and in that way fail to imitate the constant
example of the Church in her missionary work, and if in certain cases they even keep the
colonized peoples at this inferior level, then they are violating the elementary principles of
Christian morality and natural law. These principles concerning the respective rights of the
colonizers and the indigenous peoples were, moreover, set forth by the Church shortly after
the discovery of the New World. In spite of the frequent, deplorable offenses men driven by
avarice and political ambition then committed against these principles, the latter nevertheless left
their imprint. Thus, today we see that they have been adopted among the proud, powerful
peoples of South America [undoubtedly a metonymy for Hispanoamerica], who have a bright
future. This is a living proof, let us note, of the execution of divine plans in the diversity and
mixture of races. On the other hand, what would have been the result had racism exercised its
destructive power without constraint in the colonization of these regions? No doubt something
analogous to what would have happened to the leading role of European peoples ─themselves a
mixture of diverse races─ had they been “purified” by racism.
Although not based on its more recent assumptions, racism long exercised its pernicious
influence on certain parts of the American continent [Also undoubtedly, this is referencing the
USA, the Yankee regime]. There, the idea of a fixed distinction between inferior and superior
races has been kept alive not so much by the surrounding circumstances as by the artificial
nurturing of prejudices. And the application of this idea is carried out by unleashing the basest
human instincts in the so-called lynch law. And it is still evident in those who are and wish to be
branches of Christ, members of His mystical Body, and yet who as a matter of principle or
practice are not willing to acknowledge that the House of God is open to all races and is the
visible expression of their brotherhood in Christ.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),”
paras.128–129 emphasis added, additional comments in brackets)
HGU undoubtedly acknowledges the successful imperial feats of the Hispanic Monarchy’s
transcendence over racial and even geographic barriers, and emulated the same universality of
the Catholic Church, vindicating all I have exposited and analyzed in the monograph, contrast
this with the prevailing racialisms in the Yankee regime and the National Socialists’ racial
worldview. So far, we can see the extent to which the sacralisation of race and the State has led
to societies that adopted such gestures and are contrasted remarkably to Hispanoamerica. From
these paragraphs follows the final one, a prudential recommendation by the Pope, informed with
all that he exposited since Paragraphs 97-98 regarding racial relations which cohere with all I
have argued in the moral question of endogamy, I will cite in full such eloquent Paragraph:
“That is why men of good will should do everything they can to put an end to all unmistakably
defamatory and discriminatory distinctions in public life, so that relations among social groups
may be regulated solely by interracial justice and charity. But no one will reasonably consider as
discriminatory such differences and social separations as brotherly love and prudence may
counsel to the advantage of all the different races in view of their actual circumstances. Just as
there are unwritten matrimonial impediments arising from differences of age, education, social
conditions and origin, and even from bodily conditions, which the prudence of parents, the
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wisdom of those immediately concerned, and an experienced pastoral guidance have always
been wont to consider, so there are also such actual, even if not unchangeable and rigidly
normative, circumstances in relation of the races. The races will observe them in their own
interest, in accordance with the oft-quoted words of Saint Augustine: “we are not obliged to
provide all things to everyone, but we are obliged to love everyone, and injustice toward anyone
is unacceptable.” These unwritten matrimonial impediments between races are preferable to
written ones, particularly if written impediments would attack the personal rights of individuals
and the institution of matrimony as a Sacrament instituted by Christ and exclusively subject to
the Church. And rightly so, for what a fearful insult to a race and what a degradation of
humanity is committed when marriage between the members of different racial groups is
systematically prohibited yet none take offense at unlawful sexual intercourse between members
of different groups!” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.130 emphasis added)
Thus, the heart of this Paragraph is that prudencies should be made in such that they only take
into account circumstances that might warrant, so long as they respect the individual liberty and
genuine personality of the couples, and that these are not immutable, rigid norms but can change
over time as these impediments are surmounted. Such an attitude was absent from the National
Socialist paradigm but was perfectly practiced in the Hispanic Monarchy and were surmounted
with principles exposited by Vasconcelos’ Cosmic Race thesis.
Thus, from this, we can see how the sacralisation error is manifested from all that was read
versus the morality inherent in sacred things:
A sacred object is one imparted its sacred value by virtue of its fulfilling certain criteria that
cohere with the goals of a universal unity that harmonizes plural elements, and that such unity
and goals are achieved through a framework that can integrate in a manner equivalent to a
Catholic sense of integration of various elements that allow free-will and plurality of
personalities to flourish without fear of destruction by encounter of differences but by enriching
them and flourishing through their union. This dynamic is reflected in every object, whether
externally sacred by an outside source imparting it, or by its nature. Sacralisation, on the other
hand, involves subtracting a particular in from dynamic, and imparting it an exclusivist privilege
over all others in a manner that impedes the sense of unity in plurality enjoyed by genuinely
sacred objects or bodies, this manner of sacralisation exacerbates the nature of said elements and
the object that constitutes said elements, and from there arbitrary rigidities are generated that
frustrate the desire and goal of expressing a universal union enjoyed by the nature of Catholicity.
Thus, we find a real immorality in sacralisation: it is not the sacralising itself, but what and how
you sacralise, in fact, to privilege certain elements in an inherent organic unity over others is
precisely the error of the sacralisation of races and States of National Socialism and Fascism,
such privilegism is the immoral manifestation that the Catholic Church condemned in NoAB and
MBS.
Therefore, the civilizations that best achieve the duty of Catholic unity are more in line with The
Catholic ethos than those who sacralise certain things in the world and pretend to be for The
Catholic ethos when they deny it that foundation elucidated by HGU.
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Jews and anti-Semitism (religious separation) (Paragraphs 131-152)

Now what of the Catholic take on the infamous ‘Jewish Question?’ Before I dive in, let’s recall
how Maeztu treated this question, and how we can tie this to how the Hispanoamerican was able
to solve the Jewish problem. In Maeztu’s section of this monograph, I have detailed an extensive
quote from his Defensa work that showed that the error that Hispanidad viewed in the Jews was
racial purity. But are not Jews strictly a religious community? Surely, to constitute a Jew, is to be
religiously Jewish… right? It is far more complicated than this, and I could dedicate a
monograph on its own to elucidate such nuance from the Catholic Church’s (and Hispanidad’s)
view on the Jewish Question, but from now, I will briefly expose the central argument that
guided both The Church and Hispanidad: the religion of the Jews, as HGU affirms in Paragraph
133:
“[…] Essentially, the so-called Jewish question is not one of race, or nation, or territorial
nationality, or citizenship in the state. It is a question of religion, and since the coming of Christ,
a question of Christianity.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.133)
Aside from condemning all persecution and hypocritical patriotisms against the Jews (Pius XI,
“Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” paras.131–132), HGU proceeds to elaborate what is The
Church’s position regarding Judaism from Paragraphs 134-141. The Church recognizes that the
Jews enjoyed a privileged chosenness as a means to prepare for the coming of the Incarnate
Messiah Jesus Christ. (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.134) This vocation was
very profoundly manifested in the birth of Christ through Mary, His Jewish mother to the tribe of
Judah, which culminated in the Crucifixion and Resurrection, and the former was thanks,
predicted by the prophecies of His own people, His own people rejected Him and from this He
Resurrected to save all those who rejected Him, Gentiles and Jews. (Pius XI, “Humani Generis
Unitas (1938),” para.135) This Redemption “opened the doors of salvation to the entire human
race; it established a universal Kingdom, in which there would be no distinction of Jew or
Gentile, Greek or barbarian.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.135) Through the
rejection of the Messiah, the Jews helped bring about the salvation of the Gentiles, but HGU
cites Paul that there too remained a remnant from Israel that too would be saved, as it
acknowledges the early Jewish Christians that accepted Christ. (Pius XI, “Humani Generis
Unitas (1938),” para.136) Julio Meinvielle shares similar observations by observing that the
rejection of the Messiah by the Jews created a dialectical tension between the Jews and the
Gentiles, and that because of the extraordinary privilege of the Jews’ historic mission (which
they rejected with the coming of Christ during His Ministry), manifested their rejection in
various works that have attempted to wage war on Christian nations due to their sense of
privilegedness to not want the salvation of Gentiles and affirm that if the tension is to end, both
must convert, but if the non-Jews refuse to subject to Christ and His teachings, then the Jewish
power will inevitably take hold of them due to the nature of the tension. (Meinvielle, “Los Judíos
En El Misterio de La Historia y de La Escatología” 208–10)
HGU and Meinvielle discuss the nature of this tension. From HGU, Paragraphs 137-140 exposit
Paul’s teaching regarding what Meinvielle terms “the mystery of the tension of Jews and
Gentiles in relation to history” (Meinvielle, “Los Judíos En El Misterio de La Historia y de La
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Escatología” 210). Paragraph 137 talks about how Paul affirms that the Rejection of the Israelites
to Christ brought not only the Gentiles to salvation, but even, mysteriously, allowed the Jews to
have a chance to be saved and repent. (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.137)
However, Paragraph 138 exposits Paul’s humbling of the Gentile’s arrogance when participating
in the salvation and being inheritors of the New Covenant, by comparing Israel to an olive tree,
and how other branches were grafted, and the unbelievers were cast out, but the wild olive, the
pagan converted to Christ, are benefiting from the root, which is the Israelite heritage of the
Messianic plan, and they are to remember three things:
“[…] first, that they posses this supernatural life solely thanks to the root and sap of the natural
olive; second, that they, the non-Jewish Christians, do not carry the root, but the root carries
them, that is to say, Judea does not receive salvation from the Gentiles, but rather the opposite is
true; third, that the Gentiles themselves, if they apostatize from the Faith of Christ, and live in
presumption and blind self-confidence, can perfectly well share the unhappy lot of the fallen
branches.” (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.138)
Julio Meinvielle observes very similar remarks, regarding the pre-eminence the Jews enjoy, Julio
Meinvielle cites Romans 11:28 to refute the notion that because of the disloyalty of the Jews, that
their privileged position is annulled, and how Romans 11:28 reminds us that regarding the
Gospel, they are enemies for our own good, but in regards to election, they are loved on behalf of
their fathers, whose promises are irrevocable. (Meinvielle, “Los Judíos En El Misterio de La
Historia y de La Escatología” 210–11) This is precisely affirmed and acknowledged in Paragraph
140 in HGU. Another observation Meinvielle remarks regarding the mystery, and this is where
Maeztu’s assessment enters and how Hispanidad has solved the Jewish Question; is regarding the
nature of the superiority adjudicated to the Jews versus how the Jews interpreted this over time, I
will cite in full said remark:
“The permanent temptation of the Jewish people has consisted in believing that their greatness
came purely from their carnal lineage and not from faith. It is clear that their carnal lineage
was great, inasmuch as it should be the vehicle that would bring us to the Savior. But it was great
because of the Savior and because God in his designs had chosen its lineage and no other to
bring us to the Savior. The greatness came from the Savior to the lineage and not as the Jews
thought from the lineage to the Savior, St. Paul strongly points out this truth in Gal, 3, 6,
showing that the greatness of Abraham did not consist in his flesh, that by it he was the father of
Ishmael of the slave girl Hagar, without it bringing him any glory; his greatness consisted in
faith, “in that he believed”, he believed that Sarah, his wife already old, would give him Isaac,
son of the Promise, and Abraham believed so much that he did not hesitate to obey the divine
command and sacrifice his only begotten Son. Faith saves. The law and the flesh lose because
they are a curse. And “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for
us”, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who hangs on the stake” so that the blessing of
Abraham may be extended over the nations in Jesus Christ and through faith we may receive the
promise of the Spirit. we receive the promise of the Spirit”.” (Meinvielle, “Los Judíos En El
Misterio de La Historia y de La Escatología” 211 italics in original, bold and underline added)
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Herein lies the great error, and thus, by extension, the doctrinal error, the Semitic Arrogance that
permeates all cultures that sacralise their race: the belief that the merits of their race are not due
to the faith and deeds of their race but the blood and carnality of their lineage, it was this that
Maeztu saw in their religious error, not racial, but a religious doctrine, that manifested in a
dogmatic assertion to the purity of their race. The arrogance of the Jews, exposited by Maeztu, is
solved by what Hispanidad represented, by what the Hispanic humanism represented: the
ecclesiastical integration into Christ. (Meinvielle, “Los Judíos En El Misterio de La Historia y de
La Escatología” 211–12; Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” para.141) This racialism is
not exclusive to the Jewish arrogance in their lineage, it is characteristic of an archetypal
sacralisation of one’s lineage and forgetting the supernatural merit imparted by God, and thus,
the opposition to the Jew is not to the people as Jews but by the spirit which they bring forth by
virtue of their unrepentant character, which the Church prays incessantly while condemning
persecutions against them, who she affirms only escalates conflicts and increases evil. (Pius XI,
“Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” paras.142, 144, 145–146) Thus Hispanidad emulated that
which Saint Paul wants us to keep in mind regarding what he identifies as “the stumbling block”
that God has put on Israel, so that by Israel’s stumbling and subsequent humbling, are provoked
to jealously by the Gentiles, so that they remember their historic mission through the faith of the
Gentiles. (Meinvielle, “Los Judíos En El Misterio de La Historia y de La Escatología” 212–13;
Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” paras.139-140,) Therefore, the Catholic ethos within
Hispanidad compels the Hispanic Catholic ethos to approach the problem of Jews from the same
plane Maeztu, Meinvielle and of course, HGU worked with: to pray for their conversion in
charity and justice (Pius XI, “Humani Generis Unitas (1938),” paras.150–151), to return to their
historic mission, to be testimony to the faith of the Hebrew Patriarchs, a faith greatly emulated
by the Hispanic Catholic ethos’ imperial feats which the Israelites have forgotten (de Maeztu 15,
105), that a lineage worth defending is a lineage full of faith and not purity of blood and
phenotype, just as Abraham their Patriarch in blood, and our Patriarch in faith was credited with.

On the controversy of the term “Latino” versus “Hispanic” and its consequences
Objection 1: Throughout your analysis in your work, you always emphasize the term “Hispanic”
or “Hispanoamerican” in opposition to “Latin American” or “Latino” and take Alberto Buela's
arguments for granted. I am still not convinced by the need to even put into struggle and
controversy even a demographic and cultural term, a semantic struggle so to speak, and tie it to
questions of identity and historical destiny. How can you say that, for example,
Hispanoamericans have nothing to do with the French or even Italians? Did not France coexist
with the Viceroyalty of New Spain since the first thirds of the 16th century, and therefore this
coexistence does not give it at least a cultural link? What about the cultural influences that can
be found in Mexico or in other Hispanoamerican countries that have a clear French influence or
even in descent? And what about the thousands of Italian descendants in Argentina? Doesn't
Italy or the peninsular Italians have a link with the Argentine culture and vice versa? Why
emphasize an enmity against the term “Latino” if Hispanics, French and Italians are part of the
Mediterranean-Latin culture in contrast with the Germanic-Anglo-Saxon culture? This seems to
me very petty and almost ridiculous to defend even a semantic struggle of the name.
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Rebuttal to objection 1: On your objections to the controversial terminology of Latino-Hispanic,

Alberto Buela is very clear in his work, but Alberto Buela is not the only one who observes how
prostituted the term is and how suspicious it is, the same historians cited in this monograph:
Antonio Moreno Ruiz and Emilio Acosta Ramos discuss how this term even has its origin in a
hegemonic policy that benefits the empire and the French intervention of Napoleon III (Moreno
Ruiz and Acosta Ramos, “La Controversia Del Término ‘Latino’”), it is even a term used to
differentiate itself, for clearly political reasons, against what is Spanish and has even acquired
indigenist connotations, disassociating it even from its clearly Latin roots, strictly speaking.
(Moreno Ruiz and Acosta Ramos, “La Controversia Del Término ‘Latino’”) Thus, if this is so, it
is not surprising the opposition that the same philosopher Buela indicates in his work: it is clearly
an imperialist exercise to disassociate the autochthonous Hispanic center to insert the French
hegemony that itself has benefited from the foreignization discussed in Ramiro de Maeztu's
section.
But let us see to what extent the importance of fighting for this term Hispanic or even
indohispano, I will quote here a brief article by the Centro de Estudios Metapolíticos
Centroamericanos (“Center for Centralamerican Metapolitical Studies”) to demonstrate the
soundness of the arguments put forward here: in its article titled ¿Qué es lo ‹‹indohispano››?
(“What is ‹‹Indohispano››”), the author says why this so-called 'semantic' argumentation is
important for the naming of a people [note: the original article is in Spanish, which I translate to
English here]:
“First of all, “what is” is admitted that its response is an identifier, since it will manifest the
existence of something, it will explain it and therefore differentiate it from the rest of things.
Therefore, to ask ourselves about the “what is” of our people implies an identity response. And
conversely, if we want to reflect on the identity of our people, or of an individual, we must ask
ourselves about the "what is" of the people, and of the individual.
The “what is” is a question of children and philosophers. Through that question and its like, we
embark on the description of existence and all that is in it. Now, bringing it to the metapolitical
realm, the question “what is?” we assign it at this moment to the reality of the being of our
people.” (“¿Qué Es Lo «indohispano»?” emphasis added)
This was precisely the philosophical exercise that Alberto Buela has carried out in his work, and
I will not repeat my analysis or comments on it, I will go to the point with the article cited, well
then, in the same article he mentions the ignorance of many Hispanics to this question,
responding, as he says, the “prostituted term that is already short for ‹‹Latinamerican›› (the fact
that it is shortened reflects enough mental laziness to say it completely). This term has several
drawbacks to be used as an identifier of our peoples.” (“¿Qué Es Lo «indohispano»?”) And these
drawbacks are discussed by Maeztu, Buela in his work, and the historians cited above (Moreno
Ruiz and Acosta Ramos, “La Controversia Del Término ‘Latino’”), for the mere fact of
constantly adopting this term is evidence of the victory of the French enlightenment and the
liberalism that this nefarious empire has imposed on us. (“¿Qué Es Lo «indohispano»?”) But the
objector will perhaps ask why call him by such a derogatory name, was not Napoleon Bonaparte
“the ultimate Catholic emperor before the decadent liberal Spain?” Well no, as Maeztu discussed
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in his work, the liberal decadence of Spain is precisely due to the Spanish crown adopting the
liberal enlightenment of the French through the Bourbon house and its enlightened encyclopedia,
so much so that even the same brilliant philosopher Jaime Balmes, the same whose work served
as a philosophical weapon and provided the conversion to Catholicism to the nationalist leader
Pedro Albizu Campos; in his illustrious work, chapter 52, after explaining the Catholic basis for
the justifications of tyrannicide and the true application to freedom and democratic processes and
how liberal republics have distorted and bastardized such noble ideas, has this to say, I quote in
full [the work cited is originally in Spanish, which I translate it to English]:
“The words of people, pact, consent, have come to cause fright to men of sound ideas and
upright intentions, by the deplorable abuse that immoral schools have made of them, which
rather than democratic, should be called irreligious. No, it was not the desire to improve the
cause of the people that moved them to upset the world, overthrowing thrones, and making
torrents of blood flow in civil discord; but the blind frenzy to ruin all the works of the centuries,
attacking particularly religion, which was the firmest of all that European civilization had
conquered wiser, more just and healthier. And, indeed, have we not seen the impious schools,
which so highly prized their love of liberty, humbly yield under the hand of despotism, whenever
they have deemed it useful to their designs? Before the French Revolution, were they not the
lowest flatterers of kings, extending their faculties inordinately, with the idea that the royal
power would be employed in overthrowing the Church? After the revolutionary epoch, did
we not see them grouped around Napoleon, and do we not see them still working to make his
apotheosis? And do you know why? Because Napoleon was the revolution personified,
because he was the representative and the executor of the new ideas, which were intended
to replace the ancient ones; in the same way that English Protestantism praises its Queen
Elizabeth because she consolidated the established Church on solid foundations.” (Balmes y
Urpiá, “CAPÍTULO LII: Influencia de Las Doctrinas Sobre La Sociedad. Lisonjas Tributadas al
Poder. Sus Peligros. Libertad Con Que Se Hablaba Sobre Este Punto En España En Los Últimos
Tres Siglos. Mariana. Saavedra. Sin Religión y Buena Moral Las Doctrinas Políticas Más
Rigurosas No Pueden Salvar La Sociedad. Escuelas Conservadoras Modernas, Por Qué Son
Impotentes. Séneca. Cicerón. Hobbes. Belarmino.” 500 italics in original, bold and underlines
added)
This should not be surprising when one observes the results of the French intervention and the
fruits of the Bourbon house during the 18th century discussed by Maeztu in his monumental
work, and add this to the attitude that the same French delegates demonstrated before the so-
called Latin Press Congress when the same nationalist leader, Pedro Albizu Campos, called
attention to the North American intervention (the Yankee) in the political and social affairs of the
Hispanoamerican people, including Haiti, and denounced it before the Congress (Rosado 137–
38), the same that yankee presses were present, what was the reaction of the French, those
French that have so much good will towards us? Let's see how much solidarity this supposed
“Latin” empire shows and how it shows this excellent Latin solidarity, let's see:
“On the first day of the Congress, Albizu formulated a series of Resolutions condemning the
interventionist policy of the United States in the internal affairs of the Hispano-American
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republics. These motions were already endorsed by some delegates, Cubans, South Americans,
Belgians, Italians and others, but the French delegate, who represented the Petit Parisien, was
intimidated by the text and protested that political matters were being brought to the Congress,
requesting that they be withdrawn. In the discussion that ensued, Albizu argued that the freedom
to propose was being curtailed and defended the right to have his resolutions at least read and
voted on. Albizu Campos' resolutions, in addition to protesting the intervention of the United
States in Latin American affairs, proposed that the Congress call on the world press to speak out
against the U.S. occupation of Haiti and Nicaragua and to show solidarity with the independence
of the Philippines and Puerto Rico. It also protested the presence in Congress of two U.S.
agencies: United Press International and Associated Press.” (Rosado 138 bold in original, italics
and underlines added)
Outstanding Latin solidarity on the part of the ‘Catholic heirs of Napoleon’. Even the Belgians
have nothing to do with our civilization and showed solidarity to the leader. (Rosado 139) The
author of the aforementioned book explains that it did not even matter whether their resolutions
were passed or not, but their intervention was to unmask the predatory Yankee imperialism that
the French trusted on; to unmask the sham of “the free press” which their intervention proved
can also be controlled by the empire. (Rosado 139) Thus, this simple panorama demonstrates that
the heir nucleus of the Hispanic American civilization is the Hispanic with its autochthonous
matrix: the telluric one. (“¿Qué Es Lo «indohispano»?”) And of course, it is true that from time
to time the term “Latin America” was used in political speeches in opposition to the Yankee
empire (“¿Qué Es Lo «indohispano»?”; Moreno Ruiz and Acosta Ramos, “La Controversia Del
Término ‘Latino’”), but such a recourse demonstrates precisely the reactionary political nature of
the term, since it is a term used with notoriety to oppose us to the Yankee empire and by
extension, the Anglo-Saxon civilization, but as Buela mentions in an interview, it is not enough,
it is not even necessary to define ourselves as an opposition to someone; It is necessary to define
ourselves positively from an autochthonous reference that defines us based on our customs, our
thinking, our ethos, that is precisely what he means that we should prefer ourselves at the
moment of defining ourselves as a civilization:
“[...] But this is fundamental, this I can say. This applies, and this is the criticism that I have
made to those who said they were doing philosophy of liberation. But how can you do
philosophy in opposition to? Well, one has to do philosophy without more. One has to do
philosophy without prejudice, without preconceptions and not philosophy to fight against so-and-
so. No, no, I have to do as Leibniz said: I am not interested in those who criticize me, I am not
interested in those who think differently; I think as I think. I prefer myself. That is the first
principle of genuine thinking: to prefer oneself. And when you prefer yourself, you prefer your
ethos, your tradition. One's cultural, linguistic, all kinds of tradition... Anthropocultural.” (Buela
Lamas, “Iberoamérica Contra Occidente - Conversaciones Con Alberto Buela. Metafísica de La
Cruz Del Sur” emphasis added)
This is precisely the basis of Maeztu's formulation of the foreignization problem: the
Hispanoamerican stopped preferring himself, and began to prefer others, the foreigner, and
consequently, he preferred to do philosophy dictated according to the categories of the foreigner
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and not of his own ethos, of his autochthonous tradition, not that the foreigner is bad, but the
philosophical and anthropocultural mentality that one has before the foreigner without referring
to and preferring oneself. To refer to and prefer oneself is what the Hispanoamerican and all
Hispanics of all forms have lacked in every way for two centuries, approximately, and it is
necessary to solve this, says Buela, says Vasconcelos; every Hispanoamerican thinker who
respects and prefers himself. So, to call oneself “latino” is not to prefer oneself, it is to prefer a
cabbage of ideals defined by the French, the Italian, the Romanian, but not defined by the
Hispanian (Spanish and Portuguese), by the autochthonous American; so the references to
whether France coexisted with the Viceroyalty of New Spain or whether there were French and
Italian influences in each Spanish American country does not even touch the issue of
civilizational identity, because what the objector refers to does not contribute to the ethos and the
central civilizational autochthonous thinking of a people, they are peripheral influences that may
or may not mold the central trunk, decorate it so to speak, but the one that defines the empire of
Hispanidad is not “the latino”, rather it’s “the hospitable” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica
Contra Occidente: Ensayos Iberoamericanos 45–52), “the medieval”, “the ones from the land,
the natural, the adventurous conquistador.” (“¿Qué Es Lo «indohispano»?”) That there are
nuances and regional variations within Hispanoamerica, yes there are, but these variations do not
take away the two-trunk nucleus between the Hispanian (Spanish, Lusitanian, Galician, Catalan,
Basque, etc.) and the autochthonous American (Guarani, Gaucho, Aztec, Carib, Quechua, etc.).
This mother cell of a symbiosis molds, modifies, sculpts; the local variants that have been hosted
in it: African, Jewish, Italian, French, Japanese, and so on, there are some of these, like the
African, which holds a special space in some Hispanoamerican countries, especially the
Caribbean, and the Isthmus such as Colombia and Venezuela, but even this special space is
sculpted by the Hispanic and the indigenous, thus, trying to find a name that pretends to include
all kinds of influence is equivalent to adopting a tactic of “inclusive language” which is another
subversive instrument of the Western empire of Yankee-French matrix (in fact even the very
purpose of the language in “Latinamerican” is of French nature and its liberal ideals,
demonstrating once again how suspicious and prostituting the term is).

On whether the Maeztuian assessment on the foreignization extends to Catholic

conversion and the foreignized-colonized overlap and critique towards so-called
“decolonization” methodologies
Objection 1: Okay, I finally understand more the theme defining the foreignization problem as
elaborated by Maeztu and Buela, but then there is one problem: would this foreignization not
extend towards the Catholic faith itself? After all, the American continent, before the European
Catholics arrived, their ethos [the natives] were far different from the ethos of the European, and
they imposed their ethos onto them, would this not mean that according to Maeztu’s own logic as
well as Alberto Buela’s, the Catholic faith is also a foreign religion imposed against an ethos that
is alien to Catholicism? This goes even further to how, even in your own history, the same
imposition on the foreign religion even extends to the republicanisms imposed during the 18th
century, so technically, there is a precedent for Enlightenment ideals from your own history even.
Thus, it appears that even from Maeztu’s own assessment and the internal logic of his
formulation of the foreignization problem, one would have to admit that even Catholicism is a
 292

foreignization of a foreign people that was converted first to then impose it on other tribes or
people. How then, would you surmount this problem, arisen from an internal contradiction from
the assessment of Maeztu and Buela? It appears that once again, even from a charitable
standpoint; the foreignization problem seems like an ad hoc problem or a problem that arises
from a group of people who complain that foreign ideals have surmounted better obstacles than
the native ethos or ideals in their native lands.
On another side from this problem, this vindicates the decolonization methodologies or how the
indigenists claims to decolonize from foreign influences antithetical to their ethos, so how would,
in this case, Maeztu’s Foreignization Problem avoid falling into the Indigenist Acclaims? It
seems that even from here, Maeztu’s Foreignization Problem can easily collapse into the
Indigenist decolonization arguments of similar line of logic.
Rebuttal to Objection 1: The objector is essentially bringing two aspects of the same problem,
and I tackle each separately, though not in dissociative manner. The objector’s first part is asking
one fundamental question: does Maeztu’s assessment of foreignization share the same
interpretative framework as the so-called ‘decolonization’ methodologies to interpret and analyze
various quasi-European cultures or cultures that have adopted European cultures as a result of
conquest or colonization? In other words, can Maeztu’s assessment logically deduce the lines of
thoughts and conclusions of the so-called decolonizers, and thus show a dead-end or internal
contradiction in the arguments of Maeztu’s Foreignization Problem? If we read carefully
Maeztu’s formulation of the problem, and even the foundations for why he formulated such a
problem in the first place, we find that Maeztu’s framework cannot collapse to the indigenist
conclusions, because Maeztu’s assessment precisely presupposes and/or starts from a Catholic
framework of interpreting this problem, and the lines of thought that have formulated Maeztu’s
foreignization problems and the solutions that proportionately solve them are explicitly Catholic,
thus they can only generate Catholic conclusions. I will illustrate this by referencing Alberto
Buela’s essay that was cited in this very monograph, in fact, I have cited part of the page that will
help clear this confusion, here is what Alberto Buela has to say in how one ought to recover
Hispanoamerica’s historic mission:
“As far as we are concerned, this idea is not a personal occurrence of the speaker for this
particular colloquium, but it is part of what is known in our southern lands as “national
thought”. It was born already at the dawn of our independence, with San Martín and Bolívar and
the Panamerican Congress of 1826, aborted by the unrestrainable power of the English
Freemasonry, whose most successful fruit, as we said before, was to have transformed us into a
score of meaningless republiquets.
This national thought, we say, runs through the whole Hispanoamerican history. And so, it is
marked by thinkers such as Henríquez Ureña, de Anquín, José Vasconcelos, Antonio Gómez
Robledo, Rubén Darío, Frank Tamayo, Leopoldo Zea, and politicians such as Paz Estensoro,
Luis Alberto de Herrera, Haya de la Torre, Juan Domingo Perón and others.
Thus, work was done for almost a decade 46-55 in the most serious and sustained manner on the
theme of the restoration of the Hispanoamerican Patria Grande. This ideal has been defined by
 293

the “national thought” through the concept of Third Position in relation to capitalism and
communism [Note how he, like all Hispanic nationalists, only conceived 3P from a
socioeconomic standpoint without all the Gentilian and racialist baggage.]. This Third Position
should not be confused with the concept of Third World as given to us by the two imperialisms.
(Third World: set of underdeveloped regions of the world that must imitate the developed model
to get out of their state. Version USA and its cronies) or, (Third World: set of exploited regions
that must liberate themselves through a unique philosophy for all, structured on the axis:
bourgeois states-proletarian states. Soviet-Marxist version).
On this last point we share the criterion of that great Argentine historian Antonio Pérez
Amuchástegui in the sense that before reaching a united Hispanoamerica it will be necessary to
begin with a Confederation of certain groups of countries whose history and reciprocal
complementation will make it a true autonomous unity with complete meaning.
[…] Now, the only possible way to make it explicit is to go back to the sources, in a word, to
make explicit historically and ideologically those features that make us what we are. In this
sense, we consider that formula of Carl Schmitt's thought to be correct: “What is new can only
come from what is older”, but in order to do what? And his answer was Ab integro nascitur ordo.
That is to say, the valid ancient values (which still make man prefer or postpone things or
actions that make it possible to constitute an order with plausible answers to the questions posed
by contemporaneity).
However, we do not understand this return to the origins of our nationality, in any way, as a
return to the Patagonian man of Florentino Ameghino or Darwin, who say that they were naked
because their stone underpants have not yet been found.
In this sense, we reserve our judgment before that European attitude that seeks in the most
ancient -the pagan Europe- the new. Since the old is worth, as long as it is still vitally assumed,
otherwise it is only a dead datum.” (Buela Lamas, Hispanoamérica Contra Occidente: Ensayos
Iberoamericanos 18–20 emphasis added, additional comments in brackets)
This extensive citation was necessary to reveal the crux of what Maeztu’s Foreignization
Problem entailed, the detail is what Buela terms the national thought, which is the autochthonous
philosophy or paradigms forged from the contexts of their own cultures or nations, in other
words, the thoughts that cohere with their ethos, and as you can read, Alberto Buela points out
this does not always mean we recourse to the far ancient past, which is what the indigenist and
even many white nationalist pagans recourse to, nor does it mean we recourse to every incident
that forms part of our history, like the Enlightenment impositions in our history since the 18th
century; Buela then distinguishes what is traditional, and what is conservative: the former is
generational transmissions of valuable vitalizing values that build the nation up to their
contemporaneity, the latter, is essentially what the indigenists and pagan white nationalists
endorse. But the objector might ask, what exactly is so vitalizing about Catholicism that should
be preferred over, what Buela calls “the dead datum?” The Catholic core is the expression of the
fullness of the truth, the living incarnality of this universalist substrate to particularize itself in
various context to enrich and unite it to a Greater Unity, thus, from Gustavo Bueno’s point of
 294

view, we could say the Catholic Church has a philosophical idea of its own empire, maybe a
sixth category, the religious idea of an empire, of a generative nature, whereas other empires
wither and fade like all temporalities of nature, Catholicism thus, bears a unique cultural
eternality that embeds its living universality to enrich a united plurality that allows it to survive
space and time, and this tradition, living tradition, characterized by Catholicism itself, is
imparted to every culture it touches. Thus, while Catholicism, first born in ancient Palestine, a
semitic populated geography, because of its universalist theology, it has been able to incarnate in
other cultures and unite it to a greater empire that transcends geographic historicities, and this is
the tradition in Buela’s and Maeztu’s framework when elucidating the foreignization problem.
From Maeztu’s point of view; the Foreignization Problem then, is a problem formulated from the
point of view of the Catholic particularity of Hispanidad, and the problem is formulated from
foreign ideas that threaten to sabotage, weaken and tarnish this ethos that said empire worked to
build a civilization that incarnates remarkably the universality that is so enriching about
Catholicism, and from this demarcation, Maeztu formulates the foreignization problem and why
its solutions are the way they are. Thus, from this exposition, the Maeztuian assessment cannot
collapse to the indigenist conclusions because of all elucidated from Buela’s extensive citation
that expands on Maeztu’s assessment.
I now turn to the claim that Maeztu vindicates the decolonization methodologies employed by
the indigenists and so-called black/white nationalists against Catholicism. With all exposited,
such a claim is unfounded and mistaken. The reason being that the so-called ‘decolonization’
methodologies in many social sciences already operate from a secular, anti-Catholic framework,
and their decolonization procedures are illusory powerplay to get the “decolonized” to be
colonized to a power structure, the ‘decolonizer’ hegemony constructed from the liberal,
Atlanticist Western Hegemony that the Hispanoamerican ethos, by virtue of its essence, is
antithetical to the ethos and demands of said hegemony, so the so-called ‘decolonizers’ believe
themselves to be liberators against a world they deem to threaten their power, their “democratic
liberal” powers, engaging in an imperial power struggle, and they accomplish this by gaslighting
the opposition into thinking that what they are doing is nothing of the sort, but to “educate them”
and “free them of their slavery” and elude them into a false liberty that is dictated by the power
structure of said hegemony, while weakening and dismantling, destroying the Catholic ethos they
claim is “enemy of the liberal West.” The epistemic and metaphysical dilemma then, is on the
‘decolonizer’: how, can they decolonize a country, a people, while intellectually binding them to
a world where the only ethos allowed, is the one dictated by the power structure defined by the
so-called liberators, and why do they retaliate like an empire, when the “decolonize” reject their
“evangelium?” Thus imperial power struggles, are inevitable, at the very most, religious ideas of
empires, with the lower category being of a philosophical nature of imperialities.
Hispanoamerica faces two great philosophical imperiums: the Atlanticist Western Liberal
Hegemonies, and what I call “The Fascist Phantom Empire”; Hispanoamerica must create a new
position constructed from its own national thought, or rather, continental thought congruent with
their ethos.
 295

Final conclusive remarks

“God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of
Eli′jah, how he pleads with God against Israel? ”Lord, they have killed thy prophets, they have
demolished thy altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” But what is God’s reply to
him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Ba′al.” So too
at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace.” (Romans 11: 2-5, RSVCE)
With all I have discussed, I would like to make a few comments and observations regarding the
things left pending to discuss in this monograph: The works cited in this monograph, many have
a lot to extract enriching information and insight into the Hispanic Catholic ethos. I am not aware
of any monograph or article or thesis defending such a task as I do, perhaps there is, but I am not
aware of it, if there isn’t, I invite those from the Humanities department to extend this project,
those that wish to dive deeper into the works of the authors of the Hispanoamerican continent. So
much to dive in that I could also take, but time is limited, and it will take valuable time, hours of
reading and analyzing to then dive in to expose such analysis to the public. One thing I believe
this monograph could have taken more time with was Albizu Campos’ Balmesian philosophy,
how he managed to get his hands on reading and immersing himself in philosophers like Balmes,
Suárez and de Vitoria, the consequences of said thought are very interesting to study and have
profound implications to the Puerto Rican national and ethnic identity. Another is Gustavo
Bueno’s work on España frente a Europa, the purposes for why I referenced that work to
illustrate the Imperial idea of Spain understated how important and crucial such a work needs to
be read to understand how deep the implications are to understand Spain from a standpoint that
transcends it beyond being a European country, the implications to conceive Spain and her
empire as something more than European, or even questioning how European it is by virtue of its
historic mission are also very profound that the limited scope of this work did not permit to
expand, nonetheless, I invite others to read him, especially Hispanics. Of course, one cannot
forget the rich insights from The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI by Georges Passelecq and Bernard
Suchecky, and how it ties into MBS, NoAB and further tie it to other works from Hispanic like
Julio Meinvielle, whose works I have cited for their profound insight into political philosophy
and a more nuanced, Catholic centric view on the Jews and Judaism. Again, the limited scope of
this project sadly did not allow me to expand upon their insights as much as I wanted to, God
willing some other work might do so. Other projects I have pending that tie into the thesis of this
book are sure to follow, God willing I am able to write them soon enough. Time will tell.
Now unto the opening citation: I believe I have the same intuition as Saint Paul towards the
Hispanoamerican civilization. As Maeztu rightly points out in his Defensa in the last chapter:
Hispanidad is just getting started. The Hispanic civilization set a remarkable precedent for others
to emulate. This is one crucial aspect of our civilization, out of many, that the Hispanic
civilization can offer to the world. A world still plagued by the old concepts that did not stand
 296

against the hegemony of the Atlanticist Liberal Order. However, just as the good Saint warned
the Gentiles, so too I must warn the Hispanics: do not get arrogant. Remember that the greatness
of your legacy was not due to your mixture of blood ─and that is something worthy to defend
and nourish of course─, it was not due to the beauty of your cities, your fertile continent or even
how privileged you are geographically, it is due to a greater ideal, as Maeztu eloquently
discusses in his work, that he so painstakingly wants to hammer down. An ideal that is not
inherent in the Hispanic, but because of how passionate he is, he became so dedicated that he
lived through that ideal, the noble ideal of the Hispanic Humanism, grounded in the Catholic
faith, and a faith indeed it is in all its forms and meanings, faith in humanity, faith in a unity that
integrates pluralities, faith in surviving a clash of cultures, and faith in Christ. Maeztu affirms
this principle very well in expressing just how ingrained in the conscious of the Spaniard, that
even the less religious feels religiously adamant in the deep Catholic origin of Hispanic
Humanism (de Maeztu 53), even if they do not understand or believe it has that root, but they
feel it because that is how deep the Catholic roots penetrate the most zealous and most passionate
individual fueled by The Catholic Flames. These flames penetrate even the most irreligious soul,
and the proof of this is the author of España frente a Europa himself, who describes himself as
“Catholic atheist”, setting aside the contradictions of said terms, the contradiction reveals a
profound reality in the Hispanic soul, whose details I will not elaborate on here, but such details
surely can be derived from all I have discussed in this work.
Thus, with all I have discussed ─The incompatibility of National Socialism and Fascism to
Catholicism, and the positive case for the Hispanic Catholic ethos surmounting all the problems
in the aforementioned ideologies─, including all the information and arguments laid out in each
objections, I can confidently say that I have definitively shown the incompatibility of
Catholicism to ideologies that violate or contradict the doctrinal points discussed in HGU, the
official Magisterium documents, Catholic conception of the world, and by extension, an
incompatibility to these theories and the Hispanic Catholic ethos, all the arguments and contexts
elucidated, all point to a direction that for a grounded Hispanic, to adopt such ideologies, or any
Catholic grounded in Magisterial teachings, well catechized and confirmed in The Church;
cannot adopt these anti-Catholic ideologies without: 1) Compromising with cognitive dissonance
or 2) Radically and fundamentally revising, critically modifying the internal core doctrines of
said ideologies to conform to the Catholic ethos, in which case, option 2) would mean the
deconstruction and re-construction of an ideology or philosophy foreign and radically different
from the original. There is more to be said on how deeply irreconcilable Catholicism is to
National Socialism and Fascism, no doubt there is more to be analyzed, but I believe what I have
written and argued here should suffice to drive the point home. Those who still remain in doubt, I
invite them to investigate from trustworthy sources that critically examine these ideologies,
compare it with Catholicism with the proper context and nuances required to understand the
tensions, study the Magisterium carefully; if the reader still believes the contrary, I will leave it
to the Holy Spirit to illuminate such clouded judgment and to seek further counsel, perhaps from
a local priest. From here concludes my research of said scope.
 297

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