An Appeal to Today’s Elites
The Common Good Needs Your Sacrifices
There is no doubt that elites directly derived from the natural order—the result of inevitable inequalities—have a task to fulfill on behalf of the common good. Their very existence dictates that they should be willing to sacrifice as this task demands, and to improve as its perfect fulfillment requires. For it would be absurd to imagine that God created the natural order solely to benefit pleasure-seeking people, who appropriate, solely for their benefit, goods whose deprivation creates unhappiness and misery for all.
On the other hand, if progress and “evolution” are ascensional marches, they can only occur with the sacrifices ascensions demand—whether of the goods of the soul or of the body. To move mankind in an ascensional way requires a painful effort to which a great part—indeed the greater part—of humanity is more or less adverse.
This vast ascensional effort must be accomplished, nationally, regionally, and even among families and individuals, by individuals or small groups especially endowed in nature and grace who desire to improve themselves and their environment so intensely that they become the driving forces of individual improvement and social progress. In a word, they are the yeast, the others the dough.
To imagine that yeast is the enemy of dough because it is distinct, because it rises more quickly, because it raises that in which it acts, in short, because it is a driving force and stimulus; to imagine that the dough suffers by seeing itself thus elevated and increased, is to combat progress, eviscerate evolution, paralyze life and impose on all people the torments of boredom, idleness, and uselessness.
These reflections are supported on the teaching of the Divine Master, Who, in explaining the predominant ecclesiastical mission, said: “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its savor, with what shall it be salted? It is good for nothing anymore but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men. You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the house. So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:13-16).
To favor temporal elites who are neither light nor salt, preferring to blend in rather than allow their superiority to shine is to favor the advance of darkness, not light.
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