Editor’s Introduction
The Catalan priest Félix Sardá y Salvany (1841-1916) is most famous for his book Liberalism is a Sin. One of the first mentions of the word “integralism” [or “integrism”] by the Holy See was in response to El proceso del integrismo, an attack on Don Sardá’s book by Canon Celestino de Pazos.[1] Both books had been sent to the Sacred Congregation for the Index, which responded in 1887 that Pazos’s book should be withdrawn from circulation, and praised Fr. Sardá’s book as its “exposition and defense of the sound doctrine therein set forth with solidity, order, and lucidity.”[2] Liberalism is a Sin, become the vade-mecum of the first political movement to be given the name “integralist,” namely the movement founded by the Carlist writer Ramón Nocedal Romea (1842-1907), when he broke with the mainstream of Carlism, because the Carlist claimant to the throne was making what he considered untenable compromises with liberalism.[3] What exactly was meant by calling this movement integralist? In the Manifesto of Burgos, written by Nocedal and signed by a number of Spanish traditionalist newspapers in 1888, which is seen as the beginning of the Integralist party in Spain, reference is made again and again to the “integrity” of the adherence of the signatories to Catholic doctrine and tradition, to “la integridad y pureza de las doctrinas,”and “la integridad de nuestra doctrina y nuestra intransigencia con los errores modernos,”and so on.[4] This is why they were known as integralists: because of their integral adherence to Catholic doctrine, and their intransigent rejection of modern errors. One of the Catholic teachings to which they were particularly insistent in their adherence (since it was under particular attack at the time) was the teaching on the relation of spiritual and temporal power. The Manifesto of Burgos uses the traditional analogy of body and soul to explain the teaching:
As the body to the soul, so must the state be united and subordinated to the Church, the lesser luminary to the greater, the temporal sword to the spiritual sword, according to the terms and conditions that the Church of God lays down, and are established in our traditional laws.[5]
In 1889 El Siglo Futuro, the newspaper edited by Nocedal, printed a talk by Don Sardá entitled “¿Integristas?”.[6]Sardá explains that the name integralists is one that was being given to their movement by its enemies, but he argues that they ought to embrace the name. We are pleased to offer a translation of Don Sardá’s talk below.
Integralists?
A Conference read at the Catholic Academy (before Catholic Youth), of Sabadell by Don Felix Sardá y Salvany, Priest, Counselor of the same and Director of the Revista Popular.
Translated by HHG
The Parrot answered pertly, As with argument conclusive,— "You are nothing but a Purist, Of taste foolishly exclusive."—? "Thanks for the compliment," quoth Magpie, curtly. (Iriarte, The Two Parrots and the Magpie)
Integralists? Yes, my dear gentlemen, and I accept the name as an honor. It is about this that I have wished to speak to you here at our beloved Academy—after not being able to speak here for a long time—and have thought it fitting to choose as theme for my familiar Conference the present epithet or sobriquet with which it seems our enemies seek to defame us. Under this name I wish to see you present yourself with saintly loftiness and Christian pride. I assure you that, by the grace of God, this is how I am; I am proud of my faith, of my baptism, of my Catholic education and of my Catholic priesthood and of everything it constitutes. Thanks be to Heaven, regarding my mode of being in the supernatural and Christian order.
Yes, my friends, I am an Integralist, and Integralists I wish you all to be who are members of this Society, and an Integralist I believe every man to be of whose beliefs and customs I have a favorable opinion, and Integralists I wish for all the world to be, that is the only way in which all recognize the Son and submit themselves to Our Lord God. Therefore, let us appropriate it and with loud voice declare this title of ourselves which intends to be denigrating but is nothing else than glorious. Let us repeat it and raise it high, as high as possible, as the immortal banner which symbolizes all our aspirations, reminds us of all our duties, elevates and wonderfully dignifies our condition in modern social life, and which separates us with a distinctive characteristic from all else which the reigning Liberalism sees as its own, whether in a greater or lesser degree. Let us talk then about Integralism and accept it with all its consequences and do so with manly countenance and strong chests.
It has been the constant obsession of the enemies of Catholicism to search for disguises and epithets with the intention of using them to attack its sons and make it appear that they attack them not for being Catholic but for something quite independent and foreign to what really is their essential character. Nearly all heresies have invented an epithet with which to asterisk Catholics, supposing that they do not combat them as such but rather for another concept with which that epithet pretends to express. However, it has turned out that these epithets have always been an unconscious and involuntary revelation of something glorious for those to whom they have been applied. Without needing to go through the pages of recent history we can quickly point out how the Anglicans believed themselves to have achieved a great success by calling “papists” those who refused to accept the scandalous schism of Henry VIII. You see, gentlemen, it was an insult intended to make those brave Englishmen feel embarrassed for endeavoring so generously to give their lives to safeguard their fidelity to the Holy See.
Afterwards, the Jansenists, Gallicans, and Regalists, which can be grouped all together by their common denominator of early signs of liberalism, invented in France the epithet of “ultramontane” to point out the faithful on the other side of the Pyrenees or the Apennine, in other words the Spanish and the Italian, who were the countries most against the innovative tendencies of that cunning sect. Today the Catholics in France are not persecuted for being Catholic, for the devil, who is evil but not stupid, does well in not using that as an insult! The Catholics are persecuted not for being Catholic outright but for being “clerical,” it’s well-known that the battle cry is now “Clericalism is the enemy.” Yet the same is taking place in Spain right now, glory be to God. To attack for being Catholic the host which most ardently wishes to distinguish itself by its zeal and fire for the defense of Catholicism, to attack its businesses and publications for being Catholic when they seek only to be inspired by the most fiery Catholicism, to combat viciously and spitefully its men for being Catholic, men who do not want to distinguish themselves nor admit any other division in their flag than that of pure and unsullied Catholicism. Oh! That would be infantile honesty and ill-used frankness, faults into which our clever assailants will never fall. No, sir, none of that: we will not be attacked or denigrated for being Catholic, for that we would still be respected by the consideration of those who call themselves the inviolable champions of the human conscience. The reason we will be ferociously denigrated and without truce or rest in combat is for being Integralists. It has already been settled by all and even by the anti-Catholics, that Catholicism is respectable and serious, and at least as a good steppingstone. However, the same consensus is also found in how all agree, to the inclusion of stern anti-Catholics with the lukewarm Catholics, that the real and perverse enemy is the Integralists. It could easily be said, that now is the time to raise in Spain, like a flag for social defense, a motto analogous to that which France raised under Gambetta: “Integralism, yes, Integralism, that is the enemy.”
It is fine, my good sirs; and we can be honored to be singled out in public with disdain and execration. Yet that itself is what gives us the right to pick up this glorious insult and analyze it closely and coolly conclude, not for the sake of convincing ourselves, since by the mercy of God we already are convinced, but for the sake of convincing our contraries that this really is for us our first blazon and glorious title.
Watch. It will be seen as blasphemy for some of our disdained opponents when we tell them that the very first Integralist is Our Lord God. This we learn from Christian philosophy and theology. In God we will find the integral plenitude of Being and the integral summit of perfection. The essential integralness of His sovereign attributes is not undermined by any deficiency or limitation. Since we say that God is pure and absolute Being with no mixture of non-being we can then affirm that the Divine Essence is Integralism in its purest and most high, philosophical, and transcendental meaning. In God there is nothing else than an infinite and eternal love of the good, on par with an infinite and eternal hatred towards evil; hatred and love are identified in one sole attribute, that is, His sovereign and eternal justice. In the same manner that God loves the good and hates evil He is unable to stop having that hatred and that love or even to have them attenuated. No, rather his own divine essence forces Him to infinitely love the loveable and infinitely hate the abominable to the point that He would cease to be God if in Him there ceased to exist that integralism of the love towards the good and that integralism of hatred towards the evil. In this sense of the word, Integralism is the expression of that which is absolutely perfect. We can guarantee that when the divine call invites us to the divine Redeemer in order to emulate, within what is compatible with our human frailty, to the perfection of the Heavenly Father, with that Estote perfecti sicut et Pater vester caelistis perfectus est, He invites us to be nothing more and nothing less than good and perfect Integralists. And if I need to support this interpretation with an authoritative commentary of a Doctor of the Church, I would find it in our own glorious Apostle of Spain, who charges us with His Canonical Ut sitis perfecti et integri in nullo deficientes, to be “Integral and perfect with no faults in anything.” And we can find further support in the text of Saint Paul to Titus, to whom he says, “show to all an example of good works in doctrine, in integrity, and in gravity.” Teipsum praebe exemplum bonorum operum in doctrina, in integritate, in gravitate.
The ideas of integrity and sanctity are not analogous but perfectly identical. The Dictionary of the Academy defines sanctity as integrity of life. As we have said, Our Lord God by His essence is the Integralist and after Him the saints are the greatest Integralists of humanity, and at their forefront is the most glorious Queen of all, Mary Mother of God. It is this immaculate integrity which is the closest and most vivid reflection of the Holy Trinity and of the Humanity of the Blessed Son, an admirable integrity, an incomparable integrity, an integrity of which we can say with the poet:
Demonstration of what man can be,
Demonstration of what he was without sin.
I ask then, is not our primitive nature, not yet stained by original sin, that which the theologians call integral nature? Look, then, to what concepts the enemies of Integralism may be believed to be opposed to and with what disgust and even horror they try to afflict on that word with which these unhappy ones seek to degrade us.
Let us place this issue, my good sirs, on the firm field of its right natural sense, wherein a certain class of enemies are most prone to confusion. That abominable Integralism of which we are accused of at every hour, as if it were a crime or a sectarian idea deserving of all anathemas; that Integralism is only decried as a horror when it is applied to the distinct order of ideas which constitutes the public law of Christianity.[7] In any other sphere, integralism seems to our enemies something very dignified, honorable, and even indispensable. Let us see some examples, which, as we say, are vivid and palpitating right before our eyes.
You are a businessman, my friend, and you believe that all business should operate with exquisite rectitude and good faith. You do not allow yourself to negotiate with your conscience, nor do you tolerate such a thing in your managers and subordinates. You maintain a rigidity up to the point of scruple for your books and correspondence, just like your verbal communication, you revolt at the idea that there may be found any blemish on you which may obscure your reputation of a clean and faithful gentleman. Tell me now, do you know what you are then, with those firm ideas of a scrupulous business conscience? Know clearly, though it may surprise you. You are an Integralist. What you profess and what you practice is simply commercial Integralism.
You are a public administrator; you are, for example, a mayor of a city or town; you are a dignified judge of a party or simply the most modest judge of a municipality and you hold the highest idea of these offices (in realty these are very high offices in a Christian commonwealth), to the extent that you endeavor day and night to make sure you are rightly fulfilling to the exact degree with your duties, and not only do you avoid twisting the law or taking a bribe like the old Castellan phrase goes,[8] but you see with sacred reverence, as it were, the interests of those whom you administrate and you see in each of them and in their good and honor a deposit of which you will be held accountable before God Himself when He calls you for that gravest of accounts. For this reason, it does not even cross your mind that any fraud could be licit before Him, nor that even the most minimal negligence or lukewarmness could be excused in you. Thus, you conduct yourself with the most beautiful character of a good public functionary, father of subordinates, and living image of justice on earth and of the providence of God. That is why you will be called by many mouths a good mayor, an honorable magistrate. Do you know, however, what you really are? You are nothing more and nothing less than an Integralist. You profess and practice with great nobility administrative and judicial Integralism.
Few careers are so noble and chivalrous as that of the military. The civilian who, intending to defend his fatherland and its laws, takes upon himself the profession of discipline and makes himself slave to the most austere duties of which he swears to die before failing them, not only giving his personal liberty, that he has already renounced from the beginning to become a servant of the Ordinance, even to the point of sacrifice of his whole existence, of the most holy affection and affirmation of the family, of his own health and of his very own life. That is how he is unperturbed when he throws himself at the greatest of dangers, stands strong in the harshest of fatigues, and imposes on himself, as ordinary and usual, the practice of great sacrifices. He lives for his flag, and he dies for it too. This man, to whom the whole world will call a good soldier, and to whom may very well be acclaimed as a hero in history, what is he in reality? Ah! He is simply an Integralist to whom we can also call a fantastic exemplar of Integralism of conscience and honorable military.
The laws of conjugal and domestic society are sacred laws. God and the Church demand of them a strict morality, much stricter than that which the world will authorize, which to our disgrace is a suspicious moralist. You conform yourselves to these ideas, guard them and demand that they be kept with honor and decorum in your home with the inviolable respect of a sanctuary. You are not only zealous for what we may call the material order of your home and family, but precisely because of its moral prestige you impose on yourself and on its members all kinds of modesties and privations. The good name of your wife, the bright halo of the innocence of your daughters, the unblemished reputation of your sons, these are the treasures that for nothing in the world you would allow to be compromised. You rather expose yourself to anything and resign yourself to anything to avoid a blemish coming on your family name, not only not accepting a gross accusation, but neither a rumor nor the most veiled innuendo. Now then, do you know what you are? You are nothing else than a perfect Integralist, a zealously intransigent Integralist for your home.
My good sirs, let us depart from the sphere of general ideas in which up to now we have placed the issue, and concretely fix on that specialized point of view in which our enemies place it. They are not nor can they be adversaries of that essential and absolute Integralism which is the being of God. Nor can they be of the participative and relative Integralism in which the virtues and perfections of the Saints are constituted. Nor can they be disgusted with the commercial Integralism, nor disdain the magistracy’s Integralism, nor call insane the disciplined Integralism of the military, nor defame the simple and ordinary Integralism of the honorable husband and father of a family. On the contrary, if any of our enemies find themselves in these categories of great praise, they enjoy being qualified in them as a perfect and constant Integralist. Our adversaries find all that quite well and adjusted to reason and conforming to good logic. All those Integralisms appear to them as pearls. They reserve their wrath and holy indignation and awful anathemas—oh, surprise!—against another Integralism, which is precisely the fundamental one and without which the other Integralisms we have praised until now live exposed to the elements, or better, they collapse miserably for lack of a foundation. Yes, my good sirs, the Integralism they abhor and continuously revile is the integralism of the social rights of Christ-God, the Integralism of his divine sovereignty over States as much as over individuals. To preach this Integralism and defend it resolutely and propagate it by all means—this is our sin, this is what we are at all times formally denounced for doing, and for it a most rigorous sentence is sought against us. It would seem that Christ-God and his Gospel have less of a right to be respected in the integrity of their divine jurisdictions, than the laws of the market or of the stock exchange, or the Code of Ordinances, or simply those of the most homely and familiar natural honesty!
And this exception they make against the laws of the Integralists of the religious-social truth, although they are very respectful of the laws of the other integralisms previously mentioned, is all the more unjustified and absurd if you consider the idea that we have just pointed out and will now develop with greater amplitude. We have said that the Integralism of the social laws of God and His holy Church is what we may call the fundamental Integralism. This is the foundation and soul and life of all those other subordinate integralisms and without which they have no reason of being. Therefore, it is ridiculous and illogical to sustain any other integrality, be it public or private, in the relations of the citizens if there is not first settled as the undisputed first principle the integrity of the rights of the law of God and His Church, which the liberal and contractualist school has sought to give the epithet Integralism. Say what you will and debate whatever you want… the truth is and always will be that all human laws, as respectable as they may be, are derived from the recognition of the supreme divine law. If there is no God, or if I do not have the duty to recognize and obey in all its extension the authority of God, then neither is there a man who can exercise over me any type of authority which I ought to recognize. And if the authority of God can be negotiated by a human creature, or if it can be mutilated for the sake of human interests and temporal conveniences, or if it can be ignored in what does not accommodate to the particular criteria or inclination of someone, then I certainly do not see any reason whatsoever to not allow my free will to bargain with other authorities of the inferior level. No, I do not see any reason whatsoever for which they may be intransigent and intolerable with me in the rights of commercial integralism, called the Code of Commerce, or the judicial integralism, called the Prosecution, or the military integralism, called the Ordinance, or the domestic integralism, called conjugal fidelity. Therefore, the anti-integralists of the social laws of God have no logical way of being integralists for the social laws of man. Either they must renounce those subordinate and human integralisms, or they must recognize as good the fundamental and divine integralism. There is no other exit from this dilemma than inconsistency. I do not think our opponents will accept this as their retreat, because inconsistency, accepted and recognized as such, is nothing else than the complete loss of shame in the controversy.
These considerations are of great interest today more than ever because today more than ever before there is a tendency of Revolution towards radicalism, and thus the anti-revolutionary response must also tend towards radicalism. The selfishness, the cowardice, and the love of personal conveniences procure, insofar as possible, the favoring and prolonging of the reign of the lukewarm, which is what has prevailed, as happens during times of transition, for the last one hundred years. The fate of this interim will end soon, my good sirs, let us thank God and pray it may end as soon as possible. We have arrived at the beginning of the end, soon it will be necessary to accept the most difficult of consequences from the hand of Liberalism. The last word of European Liberalism is graphic and utterly crude with no comparison. Call it Nihilism. Beware of it. It is no longer about stripping God of His rights for the sake of a false emancipation of man; neither is it only about weighing these absolute rights of the divine sovereignty against the sovereignty of wrongly called rights of man. None of this; when we confront the problem with frankness, we hear them saying: Nothing of God in the social organization; Nothing of God in the regimen of the family; Nothing of God as the foundation and safeguard of property; Nothing of God as the fount and rule of morality; Nothing of God as the beginning and end of the human soul; Nothing of God as the hope for the afterlife and the guard of the present. Nothing; this word is brief but compendious and is worth a hundred programs. It is the tabula rasa of Liberalism, and it is the negation, epilogue, and definitive consequence, frightening, yes, but logical and rational, based on all its preceding negations. This is, my good sirs, Nihilism. Now then, against this absolute negation, what can best oppose it than an absolute affirmation? Against that audacious nothing of the Revolution, what other decisive response can be given except the all of the Christian restauration? Why not go forward in an analogous manner: In all, the rights of God: In all, all the rights of God: in all, all the rights of God with all their applications and all their consequences. Even clearer. If the Revolution proclaims itself today and is already Nihilism, what must be the true counter-revolution if not Integralism?
I am astonished, by faith, that not all see it this way, and that there are so many hearts and clear talents, which we assume are well intentioned, who are blindfolded and seduced, as we disgracefully see so often, by the false attraction of the thoroughly old, worn-out, and discredited moderationism. It is unavoidable, much to their dismay, that they will wake up from their dreams, those blessed mortals, blinded by convenience and deaf of willpower, because they affect not to see or hear what is so clearly appearing on the social horizon, and which so firmly and securely marks the course of the Catholic Propaganda for our days. Ah! My good sirs, let us open our eyes at once and see the blaze of the incendiary torch which prepares to illuminate hell for us; let us lend an attentive ear to the soon coming roar of the hurricane which threatens to envelope us, and at least that will be a good thing which revolutionary perversity will bring us, that is, to make us watchful, suspicious, and warned.
That is why they even more disgraceful than the Revolution, and, if they operate consciously, they are more criminal than the Revolutionaries themselves—namely, those Catholics who seeing the gravity of the crisis in society, never seen like this before in centuries past, reject, as if exaggerated, the warning movements and procedures of defense of the catholic radicalism, that is, of Integralism, that which, they qualify, these unhappy ones, as being no less disturbing than the radicalism of the demagogy. Ah! Our enemies are correct on this occasion with the use of that word, and we must do their happy initiative justice and do so to the exactness of their dictionary. Yes, it is true; we are disturbers, and unruly, restless, and annoying to the greatest degree is our Integralism. Disturbers of that false peace which the sons of this century seek after as the supreme good; disturbers of the unhappy leisure of the flesh and blood that flee today, as they have always fled, from the asperity of the Christian combat; disturbers of dormant consciences, of the lethargic hearts, of the softened spirits, like the disturbers of the careless walker or of the lethargic sick person by the salutary cry of the friend, which warns him of the proximity of the abyss, or the cautery or revulsive that hugs his skin to awaken his sensitivity and restore him to life. The lukewarm catholic does well in speaking of us in this manner, but perhaps he does not realize the service he is providing to the beast of the Revolution, of which he is becoming the best ally and auxiliary. Because, in reality, the ally of the burglar is he who when seeing the door being forced open decides not to yell loudly and sound the alarm so as not to disturb the peaceful sleep of the homeowner; the accomplice of the arsonist is he who seeing the first flames of the fire does not shout: fire! fire! so as not to disturb the peace of the neighborhood.
Ah! My good sirs, the house is burning by its four sides, and they want us to neither shout nor blow the alarm? It invades and devastates everything and plunders the ferocious irruption of new barbary hordes, and it is claimed that it is better to act as if we do not see anything, so that the blessed peace of those asleep is not disturbed by the alarm? Call it prudence, call it moderation, call it the desire to avoid a greater evil; in the language of the common sense of all people this has never been called anything else but treason or cowardice.
You wish to be neither traitors of the holy flag of the integral social rights of God, nor cowards in its defense, my friends and fervent associates of the religious Academy. Integralism has taken deep root in more than one place of our dear country because Spain is not known to be a place of infidelity and cowardice. This blessed ideal has apostles today in all the nations of the globe, wherein it is sneered at with the same or similar epithet by the Revolution and its accomplices. It has them in France, in Switzerland, in Belgium and Germany and Austria and Italy and England; it has them in our sister republics of the American continent, at the forefront of which Ecuador has begun to fly this flag painted by the blood of Garcia Moreno, who died for it. Yet, believe it: even if these countries were to no longer have a single soldier of the integral sovereignty of Christ Our Lord, there would still remain many soldiers for Him in His faithful Spain, where with greater splendor than any other nation He has reigned for the past centuries, and where with more veneration than anywhere else on the globe He has promised to reign again. And if, due to our sins, even in this privileged land, the integrally Catholic spirit were one day completely overwhelmed by the ill-fated liberal or contractualist current, do not doubt it, the death of Catholic integralism in Spain would be the death of our vigorous nationality, and the last Spaniard worthy of the name would be…the last Integralist.
I have spoken.
Sabadell, Feast of the Annunciation 1889.
A.M.D.G.
[1] Celestino de Pazos, El proceso del integrismo: Refutación de los errores que contiene el opúsculo del señor Sardá y Salvany «El liberalismo es pecado» (Madrid: E. de la Rivera, 1885).
[2] A translation of the letter of the Congregation can be found in: Félix Sardá y Salvany, Liberalism is a Sin, trans. and adapt. Conde B. Pallen (Charlotte: TAN, 2021), ix-xi. The original Latin of the letter can be found in the later Spanish editions. For example: El liberalismo es pecado: Cuestiones candentes, 7th edition (Barcelona: Pino, 1887).It is unfortunate that the only English translation of Sarda’s book is Pallen’s heavily abridged and “adapted” version, which omits the important ch. 41 on political parties.
[3] See: John N. Schumacher, “Integrism: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Politico-Religious Thought,” in: The Catholic Historical Review 48.3 (1962) 343-364.
[4] Manifestación hecha en Burgos por la prensa tradicionalista el mes de julio de 1888 (Madrid: Gabriel López, 1903) 4, 7, and passim.
[5] “Como el cuerpo al alma ha de estar unido y subordinado el Estado á la Iglesia, el luminar menor al mayor, la espada temporal á la espiritual, en los términos y condiciones que la Iglesia de Dios señala, como lo establecen nuestras leyes tradicionales.” (Manifestación hecha en Burgos, 20).
[6] Félix Sardá y Salvany, “¿Integristas?” El Siglo Futuro, August 24th, 1889, 1-2, http://hemerotecadigital.bne.es/issue.vm?id=0000136407.
[7] El derecho publico cristiano. Lit. Christian public right. I.e. Jus publicum ecclesiasticum.
[8] “No torceis derecho ni llevais cohehecho.”