The Cult of Sex as Literature

The Cult of Sex as Literature resurgence demonstrated dramatically on the first Sunday of each May when the mountain of Montejurra in Navarre is covered with tens of thousands of red berets which turn the craggy heights into scarlet fields of poppies as Mass is celebrated there on a stone altar surrounded by a forest of crosses and banners blazoned all over with images of the Virgin and Christ the King.

The Catholic Right was inspired by motives whose political implications were consequences of a religious affirmation. Mr. Andrew Whiteside aptly illustrates this in his Austrian, study where he traces the growth of the Christian Social movement of Karl von Vogelsang back to Leo XIII’s Libertas Praestantissimum. Although the traditionalism of the Catholic Right and the more nearly simple conservatism (“Old Liberalism”) of the Protestant Right had their roots in religion, we cannot reduce the European Right as such to a simple religious reaction to “the age of materialism.” Professor Hans Rogger in his “Afterthoughts” grapples with the truly philosophical problem of finding an analogical set of principles that enables us to group together a welter of political tendencies, often mutually opposed, under the common rubric of “The European Right.” His conclusion is truly brilliant: what makes the term “The Right” meaningful, as a generic concept applicable to a host of differing political movements in the Europe that grew out of the French Revolution, is its hostility towards rationalism, egalitarianism, and internationalism. Wherever one or another of these three dimensions enters a political movement as a positive factor, that movement ceases to be describable in terms acceptable to political philosophy as “rightist” within the European context.

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Phillip Abbott Luce

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The Cult of Sex as Literature resurgence demonstrated dramatically on the first Sunday of each May when the mountain of Montejurra in Navarre is covered with tens of thousands of red berets which turn the craggy heights into scarlet fields of poppies as Mass is celebrated there on a stone altar surrounded by a forest of crosses and banners blazoned all over with images of the Virgin and Christ the King.

The Catholic Right was inspired by motives whose political implications were consequences of a religious affirmation. Mr. Andrew Whiteside aptly illustrates this in his Austrian, study where he traces the growth of the Christian Social movement of Karl von Vogelsang back to Leo XIII’s Libertas Praestantissimum. Although the traditionalism of the Catholic Right and the more nearly simple conservatism (“Old Liberalism”) of the Protestant Right had their roots in religion, we cannot reduce the European Right as such to a simple religious reaction to “the age of materialism.” Professor Hans Rogger in his “Afterthoughts” grapples with the truly philosophical problem of finding an analogical set of principles that enables us to group together a welter of political tendencies, often mutually opposed, under the common rubric of “The European Right.” His conclusion is truly brilliant: what makes the term “The Right” meaningful, as a generic concept applicable to a host of differing political movements in the Europe that grew out of the French Revolution, is its hostility towards rationalism, egalitarianism, and internationalism. Wherever one or another of these three dimensions enters a political movement as a positive factor, that movement ceases to be describable in terms acceptable to political philosophy as “rightist” within the European context.