D. The Single Front of the Revolution
Such “clots” and crystallizations normally lead to clashes between the forces of the Revolution. Considering them, one might think that the powers of evil are divided against themselves and that our unitary concept of the revolutionary process is false.
Such an idea is an illusion. By a profound instinct that reveals they are harmonic in their essential elements and contradictory only in their accidents, these forces have an astonishing capacity to unite against the Catholic Church whenever they face her.
Sterile in the good elements remaining in them, the revolutionary forces are only truly efficient in evil. Thus, each of them, from its own side, attacks the Church, which becomes like a city besieged by an immense army.
It behooves us not to fail to include among these forces of the Revolution those Catholics who profess the doctrine of the Church but are dominated by the revolutionary spirit. A thousand times more dangerous than her declared enemies, they combat the Holy City from within her walls. They well merit what Pius IX said of them:
Though the children of this world be wiser than the children of light, their snares and their violence would undoubtedly have less success if a great number of those who call themselves Catholics did not extend a friendly hand to them. Yes, unfortunately, there are those who seem to want to walk in agreement with our enemies and try to build an alliance between light and darkness, an accord between justice and iniquity, by means of those so-called liberal Catholic doctrines, which, based on the most pernicious principles, adulate the civil power when it invades things spiritual and urge souls to respect or at least tolerate the most iniquitous laws, as if it had not been written absolutely that no one can serve two masters. They are certainly much more dangerous and more baneful than our declared enemies, not only because they second their efforts, perhaps without realizing it, but also because, by maintaining themselves at the very edge of condemned opinions, they take on an appearance of integrity and irreprehensible doctrine, beguiling the imprudent friends of conciliations and deceiving honest persons, who would revolt against a declared error. In this way, they divide the minds, rend the unity, and weaken the forces that should be assembled against the enemy.17
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Part I, Ch. VI, Pgs. 36 & 37.
