The 150 Points of the Phalange, Catholic, Royal, and Communitarian - Point 43

Point 43. Against So-Called "Specialised Catholic Action"

1. Catholic Action termed specialised – fabricated to oppose Action Française in the years 1920-30 in accordance with the spirit of the times, which was at one and the same time democratic and totalitarian, monolithic in its organisation and its effect on the masses, but anarchic in its doctrine and life – is contrary to the Church’s constitutive principles. Incapable of being amended, it can only continue to do what it has done ever since its appearance: disorganise the hierarchy, like a state within a State, and corrupt Catholic doctrine and morals through a continual demagogic outbidding of the hierarchy.

2. Its specialisation by socio-professional classes is absolutely anti-Catholic and indeed aberrant. It leads to class warfare, involving those priests who dedicate themselves to it, and it separates these militant laity from their clergy and from their parishes, which are at the service of everyone.

Its method of conducting the apostolate “ of the milieu by the milieu ” is secular, democratic and fundamentally immanentist. It is contrary to the unity and holiness of the Church, whose ministry has always been carried out by hierarchical authority and by the influence of her holiness. Furthermore, a clericalism reserved to a party of “ specialist ” priests and religious and an elitism set apart for the benefit of the Christian-democrat party has made of Catholic Action a sect with heretical and schismatic objectives.

Its fruitless attempts to attract the so-called popular masses by presenting a falsified “ Gospel ” responding to their cultural aspirations, to their demands for dignity, justice and participation in political affairs, have proved to be contrary to the faith, the law, and the charity taught by the Church. Already won over to modernism and progressivism, specialised Catholic Action has sunk into a practically atheist or agnostic materialism and has joined the revolutionary struggle alongside militant communists By putting human progress first, it has ended by completely obscuring the divine work of eternal salvation.

3. The Phalange intends to construct itself as a movement for Catholic Action on an entirely different basis, one that is supernatural, traditional and canonical. It is open to all Catholics of any age, background, or profession. And from any country. Its first aim is the religious perfection of its members. Its second aim is to offer well-disciplined support to the Church’s apostolate, without which its other activities would drift away from the purity of a life, a way, and a truth which are Christian and Catholic and which remain its beginning and end.