All power comes from God. Christians always knew – before the revolutionary disorders of the contemporary men of the Church – how to respect the political, patronal and paternal authorities, even when they were abusive and persecuting.
1. It is still necessary that such powers base themselves on some sort of legitimacy! Christians can only give a de facto submission, in a purely external and pragmatic manner, to "democratic" authorities based on the cult of man, which claim to be the expression of their own consciences, convictions and desires! If the prince orders me in God’s name, in the name of his divine right, then I submit. But if he claims to order me in my own name, in accordance with my rights and for my freedom, then I am doing no more than obeying myself.
Democratic power is non-existent. The phalangist recognises in it no rights over himself, over his family or the nation, other than a de facto right for the good of public order.
2. This power is not always persecuting, but it is seductive. It flatters, indoctrinates, monopolises and corrupts those who yield to it, and it breaks those who rise against it. Even without demanding any kind of submission to its authority, it is confident of lasting. Therefore, to fight against a democratic regime from within the framework of the system is useless, perilous and ruinous. It is useless, because the electoral mechanism always crushes minorities. It is perilous, because of the lies, illusions and false promises that have to be taken on board by the parties as they outbid one another to gain a hearing. It is ruinous, because of the pledge one gives to the system in lending oneself to it; at the very moment that one seeks to bring it down, one is actually strengthening by this game the democratic legality that is being contested.
3. The phalangist’s struggle against the world and its idols is wholly united with his open, and always legitimate, political struggle against democracy itself, its apparent powers, its impious laws, its corrupt personnel, its all-embracing and oppressive administration. This struggle against the republican regime must always, however, be carried out with respect for the nation and its common well-being, in submission to the State and to the various de facto authorities.
That is to say, it must aim at a spiritual, mental and moral overthrow of democratic ideology and republican sentiment, rather than at some impossible coup de force or a direct conquest of political power that is unattainable. There is a constitutional contradiction in declaring that the people are sovereign whilst forbidding them to profess monarchist opinions. One cannot force people to democracy without thereby denying and suspending democracy oneself. The phalangist claims that the sovereign people are free, if the mood takes them, to overturn the plutocratic republic to the cry a thousand times repeated from a hundred thousand breasts of:
"Long live the King!"
Since 1789, politics have become the stamping ground for a perpetual combat in pursuit of power. It is a mystifying, corrupting and exhausting combat. Power has become everything for man and the means of obtaining everything. It makes a god of man, but at the same time it dishonours and destroys him. It makes the people sovereign, and at the same time divides them, demoralises them and enslaves them. It makes an absolute of the nation in whose name it establishes its tyranny, yet it leads to the nation’s ruin and bankruptcy. Even though the regime knows how to defend itself, it inevitably goes to its ruin, dragging the country down to catastrophe.
1. The phalangist knows that democracy drags on in continual expectation of receiving its deathblow. Regime of endemic crisis: the exhausted state of parties and of men constantly returns to government the same incompetent types. Regime of pillage and muddle: financial pressure increases beyond measure as does the national debt, yet the State spends more and more, leading the nation to bankruptcy. Regime of violence and disorder: without justice and without adequate police, it allows robbery to spread high and low, slowly corrupting the morals of the people and affecting even the elite. Regime of moral licence, falling birth-rate, individual egoism and unconcern: it allows the present generation to compromise irreparably the happiness, security and the very life of future generations.
Regime of social revolutions, foreign wars and invasions: through a succession of immense catastrophes it leads the country to a state of exhaustion close to death. Should any national re-awakening or heroic burst of energy come to pull the country out of the abyss, this same democratic regime will imperturbably return and resume its termite’s work, seeking to bring it to its final end.
Anticlerical regime: it is more concerned with struggling against God, against Christ and His Church than with anything else, thus defying God’s justice, spurning His patience and His mercy, and drawing down punishments which will never be more than the typical results of the most disorderly and insane politics.
2. The phalangist witnesses this collapse with sorrow, shame and indignation, knowing that its accomplices are the liberal Catholics, the deserters who constantly rally to the system and prevent any nationalist coalition, and the "authoritarian" conservatives ever tagging behind the straw and money dictators who lose themselves in short-lived adventures.
The phalangist will wait, if necessary, for the power of France to be "picked out of the gutter".
The salvation of France must not be some kind of adventure, but a sure and legitimate course ordered by faith, by nationalism and the love of our homes: Pro aris, focis et patria. For our altars, our homes and our country!
1. The Phalange works firstly for the Catholic conversion of his country and its elites, a conversion which, to be sincere, must lead to a hatred of the Revolution, the rejection of democracy and the aspiration of hearts and minds to the monarchy. First of all, let the men of the Church cease to harm the country with their compromises, their selling out to the republic, and finally their political heresy – not to say their apostasy – which substitutes man for God in every part of the temporal domain!
And that in itself will be half the work, for he who has the Church with him is assured of victory.
2. The Phalange, when the moment comes, will form itself into a League, into a heroic, nationalist movement. It will join the legal political combat for the conquest of power and will preach a national and human restoration in an "open plot" against the democratic parties and the false brethren, the liberals and conservatives. This combat will take place outside of the "electoral circus" as long as there is no certainty of winning there, and it will only enter the system at the end in order to dominate and destroy it legally.
A Catholic national league will carry all before it on that blessed day.
3. The Phalange excludes on principle, sincerely and absolutely, the very idea of a coup de force, since this only excites hotheads, distracts from the methodical conquest of the elites, provokes uncontrolled violence, police infiltration, and shady machinations, and ends in unleashing unlimited acts of repression. And if perchance the Coup were to succeed, the immorality of its means would have corrupted in advance any success it might have had and would have compromised its future.
The Army alone, the nation’s ultimate recourse in time of danger, is rightfully empowered to seize power in order to establish a new legitimacy. On the day when the Phalange becomes the nation’s great spiritual and political force, it will call on the Army for protection against revolutionary insurrection and to destroy republican institutions once and for all, in conformity with the wishes of the greater and saner part of the nation.
4. The Monarchy or the institution of a dictatorship in anticipation of the Monarchy must not and cannot be the spontaneous creation of a party or of a people, stirred up in an instant by way of counter-revolution. It must be – and with God’s grace it can be – the beautiful fruit of a spiritual, intellectual and moral maturation, the great work begun in 1900 with the Action Française of Charles Maurras and of many other admirable patriots, Catholics for the most part and legitimists without fear of reproach, of whom Pope Saint Pius X prophesied that one day their work would be successful.
And then France will set an example to be followed by the world!
All human history is sacred, for it is conducted by Providence from a perspective so farsighted and immense that it surpasses the human mind completely. The Catholic faith, however, is in no way shaken by the slowness at which the plan for universal redemption at work in the world proceeds. The wrecking of Christendom in the waters of the Revolution is a mysterious divine chastisement, punishing men’s pride even more than their egoism and chastising them through the effects of their own malice, for the democracy they desire is the cause of the horrifying ills they suffer without wishing to learn their lesson.
1. When God wills, He will restore to Christ His Son, Our Lord, His former kingdom and He will extend it to the ends of the earth, more beautiful than ever, a holy kingdom, the heavenly Jerusalem. Christendom, "the only international that stands fast" will tomorrow "be the whole human race". The red flag, embossed with the Heart and Cross of gold, symbols of our salvation, the standard of our Phalange, announces this victory in the Christ's Blood for the glory of the God of mercies.
2. This will not come about without great suffering, persecutions, oppressions and wars, but also great miracles, great signs from Heaven, and the visible help of the angelic legions, heavenly phalanxes, coming to the aid of the Christian nations. We must simply hold our standard fast without sacrificing to the modern idols, without reaching an agreement with the ruling oligarchies, and without associating ourselves with the dechristianised and demoralised masses. We must preserve and enrich our legitimist tradition until there is a change of hearts and until the peoples, acclaiming their God and their kings, restore the universal Christian order.
3. It is the Church that holds the keys to the Catholic Renaissance and to the restoration of monarchies. What the Church does not wish, simply will not happen; what she wishes, will be done. Outside the Church there is no salvation, not for France, not for Europe, not for the world. But through the Church salvation will come to France with miraculous ease, and through France it will reach the other ancient Christian nations and the whole world. For what was lost through them will also be found through them, in accordance with the designs of our God’s infinite wisdom and mercy.