The American Monarchist: The Eccentric Position (2012)

NOTE 1 (1984)

NOTE 3 (2012)

The princes of the house of Orléans-Braganza understood and felt the contradictions in their heritage as heirs of both the Jacobin prince "Philippe Égalité" and of legitimate Bourbons and Stuarts. And they belonged to the group's inner circle, even providing as their own address, in Burke's Royal Families of the World, the address of the organization's "maquininha"—its head office, with street shrine, in the Santa Cecilia neighborhood of São Paulo.

My reference to the organization in 1984 caused a problem. Although the group purchased whole pages and sections of advertising space in national newspapers around the world for its anti-socialist messages, its teaching about a coming millenial restoration of medieval civilization (with monarchy, of course) was still private and not supposed to be known beyond the circle of "collaborators and sympathizers." The group wanted no help with its message, and certainly it preferred to leave its positions as ambiguous as possible while pursuing a kind of masonic influence within corridors of the American political right. It also chose to keep its attitude towards papal authority unclear. Endorsements by bishops (including the future Pope Paul VI) of particular publications were cited as evidence of its status as a faithful entity within the Church, not in schism; but the group was not a recognized order or secular institute in the Catholic Church and followed no one's direction. Accusations arose regarding its orthodoxy (made by traditionalists, not only by liberals) and also regarding its recruitment and formation techniques. Anyone making allegations was threatened with swift and decisive litigation at the least. Noted conservative writers warned me against the group; meanwhile the conservative political organizer Paul Weyrich (whom I did not know) defended it absolutely.

To observers who were waved inside the front door, the group seemed to be conceived in the image of a sovereign military-religious order, one with a feverish enthusiasm for edge and point weapons. A broadsword crafted by its monks was presented to the chief of the Reagan administration's Catholic desk,
and was said to hang in the west wing of the White House.

Some of the suspicions that critics held about this group resembled suspicions held about Opus Dei. But Opus Dei never pretended to be a mere "cultural" or "civic" association incorporated under civil law, nor did it openly embrace political causes. The notoriety of the Brazilian group peaked in late 1984 when Venezuelan security forces closed down the organization's branch in their country (called "Resistencia") and staged the arrest of an alleged member whom it charged with plotting an assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II on his 1985 South American tour.

The group's founder, who died in 1995 aged eighty-seven and was buried amidst splendid ceremony, did not possess an academic doctorate but was regarded as a "doctor of the church" by his followers. The great-nephew of the last monarchist prime minister of the Brazilian Empire, he was a leader of Catholic youth organizations, a journalist for church publications, one of the founders of the Catholic Electoral League, and a delegate to the Brazilian constitutional convention of 1933. While he denied holding Maurrassian positions,he identified deeply with his Brazilian Catholic rightist forebear Jackson de Figueiredo (1891-1928) and might have been in substantial agreement with the Argentine propagandist and éminence grise of paramilitary groups Father Julio Meinvielle (1905-73). One could say that the Doctor's analysis of mundane affairs ran a consistent parallel to Maurras's, although he added a supernatural dimension to it.

Scholarly accounts of the organization are difficult to find in English. Thomas C. Bruneau, in The Political Transformation of the Brazilian Catholic Church (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1974, pp.226-8) provides some background on the organization's usefulness to the military regime of the 1960s and 1970s. See also Sandra McGee Deutsch, Las Derechas: The Extreme Right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1890-1939 (Stanford Univ. Press, 1999, pp. 275, 319, 323, 325) for brief but telling references. A house biography of the leader by Roberto de Mattei, The Crusader of the 20th Century (Leominster, Gracewing, 1998) is marginally helpful. A scholarly article by Margaret Todaro Williams, "The Politicization of the Brazilian Catholic Church: The Catholic Electoral League" (Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol 16 No 3, August 1974, pp.301-325), mentions the Doctor's political work in that organization in the 1930s. On such aspects of the 1980s' controversy as esoteric doctrines and formation techniques, see the cover article in the May 1989 issue of FIDELITY (edited by E. Michael Jones)and the extensive letters in the July-August and September issues; also the book Escravos do profeta by Giulio Folena (São Paulo: EMW Editores, 1987).

After the founder's death, his designated successor took a number of the monks with him into a new papally-approved religious institute where they received priestly ordination, while he obtained, in effect, episcopal jurisdiction over them—directly beneath the Pope—all at the price of submission to the second Vatican council's decrees, to the novus ordo missae, and to the Pope himself, something on the order of the fourth Jesuit vow. Such a clear and complete prostration would, I believe, demand the full surrender of specific teachings of the founder's that I might lump freely under the term "Maurrassian" and also the abjuration of several esoteric (if not gnostic) supernatural doctrines that would never have interested the French academician in the least.

One hopes indeed that the submission has been sincere and complete. Such a rehabilitation would agree with the Woijtila-Ratzinger policy of returning the separated or practically schismatic brethren of traditionalism back to the fold in order to bolster the orthodox forces, and to carry forward "the reform of the reform." Note then, that with the new, authorized order, there has been a significant change of policy. The Doctor's old anticlericalism was not as benign as St. Josémaria Escriva's, who said, "I am anti-clerical because I love the priesthood!" The Doctor was not a priest, and priests could not be members of the original organization. Priests who ministered sacramentally to its members were allowed no further into the organization's affairs (lay confession seems to have been the usual practice), and were probably regarded with suspicion as much as any other clergy, including Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. When Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer, who had been the Doctor's stalwart backer, turned against him in 1983, this was for reasons not admitted by the group's partisans and not understood by scholars of Brazilian rightist politics.

Important founding members of the group, including the princes—attached as they were to the core of the Doctor's teaching and to the worldly political mission—refused to submit to this regularization under the Pope. The schism has resulted in an epic lawsuit over the name, symbols, properties, and endowments in Brazil.

The group's American headquarters in the 1980's was the former mansion-estate of Carll Tucker, Jr. in Mount Kisco, New York, known as "Penwood Farm" until it became the "Seat of Our Lady of Good Success." (See The New York Times, Dec. 17, 1978, Sect. 22, pp 1 & 6, "Uneasiness Over Some New Neighbors" and "A Phenomenon," by Betsy Brown.) The mansion was not maintained, fell to total ruin, was abandoned and finally razed, as recalled in a memoir of the neighborhood, "And So To Bedford," by Alex Schoumatoff (Vanity Fair, Feb. 1999, p.164).

The organization deserves some of the credit for achieving a mandate in the new Brazilian constitution of 1988 for a national referendum on monarchy in 1993. Even though only around 10% of the vote in the 1993 referendum favored monarchy, it was an accomplishment that such a referendum could be held at all. Descendants of imperial courtiers would not be the only enthusiasts for the old dynasty. Princess Isabel's memory is revered by descendants of the slaves freed by her in 1888.

The truth about this organization is a subject for specialists. My use of the term "ideology," in reference to its doctrine, can be taken in the strict Voegelinian sense. Pronounced by a Brazilian, "tradição" sounds more like "tragic" than "tradition."

Monday, May 21, 2012

The Eccentric Position (2012)