Louis Veuillot (1813-1883), the man whom Pope St. Pius X called a model for the Catholic laity, came back to the Faith of his birth through a life-changing conversion experience on a visit to Rome. The Eternal City provided the setting for an intellectual and spiritual awakening of analogous importance for me as well, and one that was to a large degree inspired by the thought of precisely this all too maligned and forgotten essayist, satirist, devotional writer, and newspaper editor.

My admiration for Veuillot was, due to historical circumstances, a nuanced one from the very outset, with some of my objections actually becoming still sharper over the years. Nonetheless, the basic jolt that he and his allies gave to my way of viewing the modern world has remained as stimulating and formative as when first administered. A cynic might argue that that I was merely overwhelmed by the writing of someone whom the great nineteenth century literary critic, Sainte-Beuve, considered to be one of the master stylists of his day, but I do not believe that Veuillot’s facility with words adequately explains his effect on me. It was not simply of question of how the man said things, but what his comments offered: a clear reflection of Catholicism, both contemporary and perennial, and, through that Catholic message, a devastating assault on false religious and political images that desperately wanted to be worshipped for what they were not. I shall leave it to the reader to decide about Veuillot’s greatness from what he learns in the discussion of his life and work to be found in this book. What I wish to do here, in its introduction, is to treat of him as he moved me: as a Catholic icon and iconoclast.

When I say that Veuillot was an accurate image or icon of contemporary Catholicism, I do so primarily in order to make reference to my chief criticisms of his work, those engendered by historical circumstances. I came to the editor of the Parisian daily l’Univers via study of the Roman, Jesuit journal, La Civiltà Cattolica, and their joint combat against anti-Catholic, revolutionary developments. My years of study were those of the 1970’s, when the counterrevolutionary positions that Veuillot and his friends had supported, with Pius IX and many prelates behind them, had come to be openly reviled by the Papacy itself. I was doing research in a city in open and destructive revolution against its own past. Ultramontanism, that movement for the clearer delineation of the contours of papal authority, and the construction of the machinery that would allow for a more effective Roman administration of the Universal Church, was a force whose errors and limitations I could not help but be very much aware of and suffer from. The apparent failure of men like Louis Veuillot to recognize the potential consequences of the exaggerations of that nineteenth century ultramontanist vision which they enthusiastically represented could not help but stand out in my eyes as somewhat problematic, to say the very least. I was put on guard against following them as though they were flawless guides.

Ecclesiastical revolution in the 1970’s also led me to view Veuillot’s attempts to judge what ultimately involved delicate theological issues by appealing for the support of the readership of a daily newspaper as being misplaced. In fact, such nineteenth-century, popular, ultramontanist campaigns could be seen to be, on the one hand, a continuation of Lamennais’ effort to found Catholic doctrinal formulation on the testimony of a “silent majority” moved to action by energetic, charismatic leadership, and, on the other, a prelude to the ambiguous goals of later Christian Democratic movements and their party propaganda. Veuillot’s desire to be orthodox was unquestionable, but he seemed to me to have helped, however unwittingly, to forge both the mentality that would accept willful edicts emerging from Rome as Gospel Truth, as well as the journalistic modus operandi that could be used on behalf of heterodox, populist rejection of the just commands of legitimate papal authority.

Nevertheless, exaggeration and misplaced activity aside, I think that one must note even in this flawed aspect of Veuillot’s work an accurate icon of perennial Catholicism which raises him far above many of his contemporary and later critics. His ultramontanism and journalism were part and parcel of a zealous modern defense of that eminently traditional and proper distinction of the spheres and personnel of Church and State which lies at the heart of a sound Christian understanding of political and social life. Veuillot’s exaltation of the Papacy and lay activism were inevitably dictated by his other labors on behalf of Catholic liberation from the restrictive policies under which the Church suffered at the hands of all early nineteenth century states: that “regalism”, both absolutist and constitutional, which most local prelates, historically susceptible to immediate governmental pressures, showed little, if any, willingness to contest. The editor of l’Univers had not experienced the “flip side” of centralization when he began his innovative labors on behalf of the perennial tradition, and cannot be judged with the same severity as those who had knowledge of its problems, and yet moved forward along this pathway all the same.

Moreover, some of Veuillot’s statements regarding the lofty character of the Popes, which have been emphasized by his enemies to illustrate his creation of a personality cult around the figure of Pius IX, were, while perhaps tasteless, actually part of the gradual rediscovery and reinvigoration of a Christian vision obscured by years of Catholic subservience to naturalist, Enlightenment sensibilities. To read them merely as examples of an unacceptable hero-worship is to miss their deeper testimony to the supernaturally elevated status of every office within the Mystical Body of Christ, and of every person striving for a closer relationship to Christ. Similar sentiments, expressed much better theologically, can be found in Cardinals Pie, Manning, and Dechamps, as well as in the spiritual writings of the vast number of nineteenth-century traditionalists innovatively recapturing the entirety of the badly neglected Catholic devotional and mystical heritage.

Prominent among the men missing Veuillot’s imaging of more profound themes of perennial Catholicism were his Liberal Catholic opponents, Charles de Montalembert and the writers of the journal, Le Correspondant. Such figures were perhaps more responsible than any non-Catholics for bequeathing to us the picture of Veuillot as an intransigent, crude, and even cynical obscurantist. Anyone listening to their attack on the editor of l’Univers would certainly be directed to undeniable statements and actions which the greatest admirers of Veuillot might themselves regret. But a student who stopped there, and failed to read Liberal Catholic arguments on behalf of their own specific ideology and causes celébres would be guilty of prematurely abandoning an indispensable education in just how closed-minded supposedly “open” modern men can be.

It is in discussing this seeming paradox that I arrive at the Veuillot who most awakened me from my own dogmatic slumbers, the man whom I feel happy to join St. Pius X in recommending as a permanent model for the activist laity: Veuillot, the Catholic Iconoclast. As smasher of false “sacred” images, the editor of l’Univers excelled beyond most others. He understood the modern world, born with the Renaissance and Protestantism, and developed through the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, to be guided almost entirely by such erroneous idols. These were all the more dangerous in that they were presented not as the terrifying fetishes that they really were, but as the latest sensible constructions of sane, rational men. While depicting itself as the first era in human history truly eager for founding its institutions on the basis of scientific observation and intelligent debate, revolutionary Modernity pridefuly offered its peoples the most extensive collection of irrational, iron-clad credal formulations that the world had ever known; dogmas which no free spirit or open mind was allowed even to begin to criticize:

Veuillot the Iconoclast ignored these taboos, striking at the whole panoply of false modern fetishes through a rationally grounded satire. Contemporary certainties concerning science, education, freedom, progress, and—a topic which ought to be of special importance to Americans–the unprecedented glories of the New World, all suffered from his merciless sting. And in each of his assaults he emphasized the central, pathetic reality manifested by the irrationality of the supposed men of Reason discussed above: the fact that revolutionary Modernity as a whole is an enormous fraud, its erroneous principles producing everywhere the very opposite of what they promise to people, with its supporters smugly, arrogantly, refusing to admit the obvious contradiction. This is why Liberal Catholics, who unceasingly preached a message of political openness, eagerness for fresh initiatives, and liberation from harsh authority, could blithely promote a program that blatantly belied their cherished image of themselves. Hence, their demand for an absolutely unquestioning faith in the necessity of modern constitutional government, with a non-traditional definition of separation of Church and State, which placed the final judgement regarding abuse of spiritual power firmly in the hands of the government ; their bitter rejection of the innovative, “insubordinate” activism of Veuillot and his school; their encouragement of joint ecclesiastical and political intervention to bring these upstart lay rascals to heel. Start with a revolutionary modern principle, Veuillot insisted, and you can be sure that you will end with a brutal violation of everything that it claims infallibly to guarantee. It was bad enough that sincere non-Catholics embraced such self-destructive axioms. Significantly more horrendous was the attempt by Catholics to interpret Church doctrine in line with “the ideas of 1789”, thereby lending the most sublime teachings for the exaltation of man and society to the cause of a pathetic crippling of the human condition. Here lay the reason for the primary direction of his satire towards his fellow believers, their salvation from a secular abyss being a precondition for conversion of those outright enemies of Christianity who would be all the more certainly lost through their apostasy.

A man’s inconsistencies are certainly open to critique, though I find criticism of some of those “contradictions” which have been identified in Veuillot to be cheap and cynical, merely pinpointing the difficulties faced by anyone trying to live a life in conformity with his principles in a world guided by quite opposing rules. Belly laughs at the expense of the anti-modern, Romanophile Veuillot’s frenzied hunt in the Eternal City for the necessary equipment required to transmit his press reports seem to me to be utterly beside the point. One might just as well ridicule the frustration of an individual who detests a society of constant movement for complaining about the lack of proper amenities on the interstate highway that his job forces him to drive up and down each week in order to ensure his survival.

He who reads the writings of Louis Veuillot does not encounter an infallible guide to religiously and politically correct opinion. But what he does have opened to him is a brilliant critique of a fradulent, self-deluding world built on anti-Christian and anti-natural sophisms; a summons to respond vigorously to modernity’s diabolically appealing message through openness to a fully Catholic life. It was both of these aspects of the man’s work that affected me. To paraphrase what the editor of l’Univers himself once said about the great counterrevolutionary writer Joseph de Maistre, “when I went to Rome, Louis Veuillot blew the trumpet and I heard it”. I have never regretted having done so, since I believe that it has helped mightily to free me from the grip of those rationalist lies that most of our contemporaries seem to take for granted as the self-evident, common sense basis for a fully human life.

The Colorado Party has conceded defeat in the election for president of Paraguay, ending the conservative party’s historic 61-year hold on power in the republic. The Colorado candidate, Blanca Olivar, won only 30.72% of the vote compared to 40.82% for the renegade ex-bishop Fernando Lugo, a Socialist and follower of “liberation theology” who has been suspended from his episcopal duties by the Pope.

But though it is certain that Lugo won the vote, the Constitution of Paraguay bans clergy from election to the presidency. While Pope Benedict XVI has suspended Lugo from his episcopal and priestly tasks, the Pope has turned down the renegade bishop’s request for laicization, or removal from the priesthood. Lugo is a known ally of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, whom many see as the inheritor of Fidel Castro’s legacy.

The Colorado Party was founded in 1887 by General Bernardino Caballero, the descendant of both Spanish nobility and an Incan emperor who served as President of Paraguay from 1880 to 1886. After ruling in a coalition in 1946, the Colorado Party banned all other political parties and turned Paraguay into a one-party state from 1947 to 1962. It served as one of the two pillars (the other being the military) of the regime of the late General Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled as President from 1954 to 1989.

De la Guardia Victoria Architects & Urbanists have won a Charter Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism for their design of a row of classical townhouses in Coral Gables, Florida. “In a rare collaboration between city, owner, and architect,” the CNU statement read, “the zoning code was changed to allow for the building of traditional townhouse typology in this project”. The developer Fernando Menoyo built Almeria Row, which consists of ten townhouses of identical classical design. While the townhouse row is more a northern European concept, the use of a courtyard in this development adapts the type to the Florida’s mediterranean climate.

ITALY WENT TO the polls on the weekend of April 13 & 14, 2008 and elected a right-wing coalition government with a historic majority of seats. Silvio Berlusconi will become prime minister for the third time since 1994, and will form the sixty-second post-war government in coalition with two regionalist parties, Umberto Bossi’s Lega Nord and Raffaele Lombardo’s Movement for Autonomy. Mr. Berlusconi is in control of 344 seats in the lower chamber, a lead of 98 seats over the single left-wing grouping under Walter Veltroni.

The snap election was called after Prime Minister Romano Prodi, head of a pan-leftist coalition, failed to survive a vote of confidence in the Italian Senate in January when a minor party withdrew its support. The Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano (himself a prominent former member of the Italian Communist Party), asked the President of the Senate, Franco Marini, to look into forming an interim government to reform Italy’s complex electoral laws before a new election would take place. (The current electoral laws were blamed, in part, for the hung Senate). Mr. Marini, however, reported back to the President that he could not find the necessary parliamentary support for an interim government, and so the general election was called for April.

The surprise of the election was the right-wing majority in the troublesome Senate, which is elected regionally rather than based solely on population. There Mr. Berlusconi’s coalition’s won 174 seats, a majority of 17 and with 42 more seats than Mr. Veltroni’s coalition.

For the first time in the post-war era, there is no Communisty party represented in the Italian parliament, though many ex-Communists have joined the Democratic Party headed by Mr. Veltroni.

One of the dominant themes of the period leading up to the election has been the convergence of Italy’s dozens of political parties into fewer and larger entities. This process has taken place both on the Left and the Right, with varying success.

Mr. Berlusconi succeeded in merging his own Forza Italia party with the Alleanza Nazionale headed by Gianfranco Fini into a new party called “Il Popolo della Libertà” (PdL) — the People of Freedom. Forza Italia (literally “Go Italy!”) was founded in the 1990’s by the millionaire businessman Mr. Berlusconi as a personalist vehicle supporting his successful bid to become Italy’s prime minister. The Alleanza Nazionale, meanwhile, was originally the Italian Social Movement (MSI), the main fascist party of the post-war period. The MSI evolved during the 1990s into a more mainstream party defending the family, law and order, and opposing mass immigration. Despite the AN’s closeness to the Catholic Church’s positions, Mr. Fini still retains a number of views from his party’s more fascist days, namely a support for abortion and embryonic stem-cell research. However, his views on this issues are almost completely out of step with the rest of the Allianza Nazionale.

The northern regionalist Lega Nord founded and led by the eccentric Umberto Bossi joined the PdL in coalition but will not be merging into the party itself. The Lega Nord hopes to gain more regional autonomy, to restrict immigration, and will oppose any move to lessen the power of the smaller political parties. Of the northern regions, it is strongest in the Veneto, Lombardy, and the Trentino, but is almost insignificant in Tuscany, the Marches, and especially Umbria. Mr. Bossi has previously advocated independence for northern Italy — which he and his supporters call “Padania” — but the party currently focuses more on decentralisation and moving power away from Rome and towards the regions.

The christian-democrat Union of the Center was formed mostly by the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (UDC) headed by Pier Ferdinando Casini, alongside the smaller White Rose, Party of Christian Democracy, and Christian Democratic Party as coalition partners. Mr. Casini’s UDC was invited by Mr. Berlusconi to join Il Popolo della Libertà but decided against the move. The conservative christian-democrats are generally wary of Mr. Berlusconi who, through the media outlets he owns, introduced what can only be described as light pornography onto Italian television.

The UDC is particularly influenced by the social encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII and is widely perceived to be the party closest to the Vatican. It is also the party of Rocco Buttiglione, the politician and philosopher whose nomination to the European Commission was famously rejected for stating his fidelity to Catholic Christian teaching on sexual immorality when officially asked by a Member of the European Parliament.

The Union of the Center (UdiC) supported Pier Ferdinando Casini for prime minister instead of Mr. Berlusconi. Winning 36 seats, a loss of three from the last parliament, the UdiC failed to break through as the third force of Italian politics, and suffered significant losses in the less-representative Senate. Nonetheless, they maintain a respectable number of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and, with a two-party divergence between the PdL and the Democratic Party emerging, it is perhaps signficant that they have come out of the election relatively unscathed.

On the Left, the spirit of convergence resulted in the numerous leftist groups merging into two main parties.

Walter Veltroni’s Democratic Party (PD) united a handful of leftist parties, most significantly the Democrats of the Left (which was joined by most Communists once the Moscow-supported party dissolved in 1991), the left-centrist “Democracy is Freedom - Daisy” party, and various reformist groupings. The Democratic Party is based on the L’Ulivo (Olive Tree) coalition formed by Romano Prodi, whose 1996 electoral success brought Communists into the Italian government for the first time since 1946.

The far Left avoided the Democratic Party; the Communist Refoundation Party, the Party of Italian Communists, the Federation of Greens, and the Democratic Left merged to form “la Sinistra - l’Arcobaleno” (The Left - The Rainbow). The Rainbow Left did so poorly in the election as to not win any seats at all. The absence of the Rainbow Left from parliament may shift support to the Democratic Party, the only leftist party in parliament apart from the single-issue anti-corruption Italia dei Valori. Such a shift, however, might draw the PD further left, losing it the essential support of centrists. It is entirely possible, though, that they will stage a comeback in the next general election.

Mr. Berlusconi has stated that his plans for government include improving the state of the economy, lowering taxes, reforming the justice system, reducing the public debt, and shrinking the cabinet to twelve ministers.

It’s a tale of two houses. Borghese: the ancient Sienese family that came to Rome and augmented its wealth and power, eventually gaining the papacy. Savoy: the disgraced Sardinians who stole the Pope’s kingdom and have lately been better known for criminal connections. But the scions of both dynasties found something in common during the recent Italian parliamentary election: they were both candidates.

Princess Alessandra Borghese, to use the words printed in The Economist, “is no ordinary parliamentary candidate”. She is well-known as a close friend of the Pope, attends the annual Lourdes pilgrimage with the Order of Malta, and is an ardent defender of Christian social values. Speaking on religious instruction in schools, the Princess is adamant: “To know the history of Christianity, to know Jesus Christ does not nullify us, but enriches us. […] What are we to do when confronted with young Muslims and those of other religions if we don’t know our culture, our identity?”

In this recent election, Princess Alessandra headed up the Rome & Lazio list of Senate candidates for Pier Ferdinando Casini’s Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (UDC). “The UDC,” the Princess said, “is the only party the openly calls for the social doctrine of the Church and allows Christians like me not to submit to rejection.” This loyal daughter of the Church supports a party firmly in the Christian-democratic tradition enunciated by Pope Leo XIII and his successors.

But just as there are loyal daughters, there are wayward sons. Prince Emmanuel Filiberto is the grandson of the last King of Italy and son of the disgraced Crown Prince Victor Emmanuel famous for punching his third-cousin the Duke of Aosta in 2004, and arrested in 2006 for corruption and recruitment of prostitutes but never charged. Emmanuel Filiberto enraged Italian monarchists by marrying a French actress an ardent socialist who was already six months’ pregnant with their child on the day of the wedding.

Now, however, the Prince is seeking to turn around the bad reputation of the House of Savoy. Emmanuel Filiberto recently founded a political party named Future e Valori — “Future and Values” and ran for the Italian parliament on his self-made ticket. The prince supported his father’s legal bid seeking $380 million in reparations from the Italian Republic that replaced the Savoy monarchy, but now says he “isn’t asking for a single lira from Italy” but instead seeks to serve his country.

Alas, neither the loyal daughter and the wayward son won enough votes to win a seat in parliament. Alessandra Borghese will no doubt continue her various charitable and cultural efforts, but it is unknown at the moment whether Emmanuel Filiberto will seek to keep his personal political party going.

METTERNICH famously claimed that Italy was “little more than a geographical expression” but the princely statesman’s quip has found a perhaps unlikely supporter in the wife of Silvio Berlusconi. In an interview with La Stampa Veronica Lario, the 71-year-old millionaire’s 51-year-old wife, said that “Italy has never been well-suited to being a single country, and has never matured enough to become one. There is no longer any value in a unified Italy”.

The remark comes as the northern regionalist Lega Nord had its greatest electoral success in a decade. The Lega Nord is in coalition with Mr. Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party, and it is expected that the Deputy Prime Minister will be named from the northern party founded by Umberto Bossi which draws most of its support from the working classes.

“This is a disillusioned country, even after Berlusconi’s victory,” Ms. Lario said in the interview, adding that it was time for the elites to stop being “snobbish” about the Lega Nord. “The League expresses concrete demands from the most productive part of Italy, which is tired of dragging the rest of the country and does not find itself represented by the Left-wing.”

FRÀ FREDRIK Crichton-Stuart has been sworn in as Grand Prior of England by his immediate predecessor, Frà Matthew Festing, who left the position to become Prince & Grand Master of the Order of Malta. Born Frederick John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, “Frà Freddy” (as he is more commonly known) is the son of Lord Rhidian Crichton-Stuart (son of the 4th Marquess of Bute) and Selina Gerth van Wijk (daughter of an ambassador of the Netherlands to France). Frà Freddy was educated by the Benedictines at Ampleforth and was awarded the Territorial Decoration during his service in the Army. The late beloved Frà Andrew Bertie, the recently deceased Prince & Grand Master, was Frà Freddy’s cousin.

The installation took place at the Grand Priory’s ecclesiastical seat, the Church of St. John of Jerusalem, St. John’s Wood, London. His Most Eminent Highness Frà Matthew Festing, the Prince & Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, was present, and the Mass was offered by Msgr. Antony Conlon, Principal Chaplain of the Grand Priory.

Frà Freddy is the fifty-sixth Grand Prior of England, in succession to Frà Walter, who was appointed as the first prior in 1144. He is only the second (after Frà Matthew Festing) since the Grand Priory was re-instituted after a 450-year abeyance. Frà Freddy was briefly President of the International Federation ‘Una Voce’ (FIUV), and is well-known as a defender of Catholic tradition.

Mr. Vernon Quaintance was present at the installation and provides these photos. His site can be accessed at http://www.traditionalcatholic.org.uk/.