Dr.

Robert Hickson

10 October 2015
St. Francis Borgia, S.J.

Applying Democratic Centralism to the Catholic Church Currently

--Epigraphs-Modern democracy depends upon a hidden oligarchy [oligarchie cache or,
perhaps, in the plural oligarchies caches?], which is contrary to its principles
but indispensable to its functioning. (Franois Furet, Penser la Rvolution
franaise (1978).
***

That is to say, modern democracy is built uponand depends upon-- a

deception. (Arnaud de Lassus)
***
You stopped to call on King Herod. Deadly exchange of compliments [perhaps
opportunistic blandishments?] in which there began that unended war of mobs
and magistrates against the innocent [e.g., the incited and manipulated ochlos
soon to be cheering for Barabbas]! (Evelyn Waugh, Helena (1950)--emphasis
added)

Josef Pieper once memorably said to me in a conversation in the library of his home: You find
the most precious truths in unlikely places. (And he often manifested the implications of that insight,
in his attentive receptivity and buoyant expectancy. In his early 90s, he even once said to a group of
students and professors in Germany: May I tell you a love-story? And he suddenly returned to a
gracious nun he had known many years earlier, when he had traveled to Iceland as a young adolescent
with two of his friends.)
Such a precious and abiding discovery of truth also came to me suddenly in France in the late
1980s in the home of another beloved mentor, Arnaud de Lassus. Through my mentor's generosity,
he took a book in French and pointed me to one sentence. It was a sentence from Franois Furet's book
on the French Revolution, Penser la Rvolution franaise (1978), specifically to be found in his
concluding chapter on Augustin Cochin (1876-1916), the admired young Catholic historian who died at
the battle of the Somme in World War I. (As a young historical scholar Augustin Cochin had also
already written much on the French Revolution and especially on Les Socits de Pense et La
Dmocratie Moderne, an analysis of influential and well-organized, revolutionary oligarchies which
was highly esteemed by Furet, who was himself then (in 1988) a well known leftist-leaning intellectual
1

historian, surprisingly.)
Franois Furet's own lapidary sentence candidly said the following: Modern democracy is
dependent upon a hidden oligarchy which is contrary to its principles but indispensable to its
functioning.
As I stood there reflecting on that incisive insight, my beloved mentor, Arnaud de Lassus, then
said with his characteristic modesty: I consider that sentence almost perfect. But, I would place
'hidden oligarchy' ['oligarchie cache'] in the plural, 'oligarchies caches'. For, there are also civil wars
within and among the revolutionary elites themselves and their own leavens as Lon de
Poncins so well understood. And then Arnaud de Lassus added his own lucid inference from the
perspicacious words of Furet's own insight: Modern democracy is built upon and depends upon
a deception. That is where we must start! Thus begins the breaking of trust, for the greatest social
effect of the lie is that it breaks trust. And we soon discover the rancid fruits of such perfidy and
intimately broken trust.
To what extent do we see this deception in the procedures and the consequential breaking of trust
now also spreading in and throughout the Neo-Modernist Occupied, updated Catholic Church,
especially in the form of a Specious Democratic Centralism?
We might now learn a little more to help us illuminate reality, if we better come to understand
The Concept and Reality of Democratic Centralism in light of the three Soviet Constitutions and
even the 1982 Chinese Communist Constitution, but especially as that Principle and Doctrine might be
(or is being) effectively applied today by an apostle of Antonio Gramsci and his grasp of how to
achieve a Cultural Hegemony, also through Liberation Theology. 1 (In all of this brief presentation,
however, I propose to be and please allow me to be suggestive, not comprehensive, much less
conclusive.)
Our reflections now should also be guided and prudently disciplined by another profound insight
from Arnaud de Lassus, an insight which is also a formidable challenge to us: How does one resist
the corruptions of authority without thereby subverting the principle of authority? And, he
added, especially in the Catholic Church.

1 See Humberto Belli, Nicaragua: Christians Under Fire (1984) about the hidden underground influence of Gramsci and
the use of symbolic subversion learned by the Sandinistas from the Cubans to undermine Pope John Paul's March
1983 visit to Nicaragua.

One test case of the reality of this challenge is the currently applied equivocal methods of the
October 2015 Synod on the Family in Rome. I speak especially of the procedures directed and applied
by Cardinal Lorenzo Baldissieri the Secretary General of the Synod with the acknowledged prior
approval of the Pope.
Baldissieri's Papally-Approved Principles and Ambiguously Applied Methods certainly remind
me of the manipulative changes and equivocations in Praxis of the important and recurrent Concept:
the Soviet-and-Chinese Communist Concept and Reality of Democratic Centralism, as specifically
defined in the texts of all three Soviet Communist Constitutions (1924, 1936, and 1977); and also still
in the later, post-Mao 4 December 1982 Chinese Communist Constitution of the People's Republic
[sic] of China (Chapter I, Article 3). The three Soviet Constitutions are sometimes sequentially called
by shorthand: the Lenin Constitution (1924), the Stalin Constitution (1936), and the Brezhnev
Constitution (1977).
Moreover, fair-minded scholars still discuss the balance or changing proportions of the
composite elements of Democracy and of Centralization in the dialectically evolving meaning
and application of Democratic Centralism as a concept and as an exquisitely fitting organizational
method to allow purportedly freedom of discussion and sternly disciplined unity of action.
With this specious organizational method, one can have the appearance of a participatory
democratic procedure while, in reality, the whole process is organized and steered by a small group of
people. It is as if one would say about the desired outcome these are the conclusions on which I base
my facts and thus the factoids I shall now rearrange to fit my artifice. A recent example of this
tendency might help us to grasp these maneuvers even some subtle and indirect Gramscian
maneuvers more adequately.
In his candid report from Rome on 12 October 2015, entitled Thirteen Cardinals Have Written to
the Pope: Here Is the Letter, Sandro Magister has revealed some important facts and maneuvers
concerning the ongoing Synod of Bishops on the Family. A portion of this report is pertinent to our
own suspicious consideration of Democracy, as such, wherever we hear the word; and also to the
evidence confirming an entirely expected Centralized Oligarchic Manipulation of the putatively Open
Synodal Process. For example, as Sandro Magister says:
On the afternoon of the same Monday, October 5, during the first discussion in the
[plenary synodal] assembly, Cardinal Pell [from Australia] and other synod fathers
referred to some of the questions presented in the letter [to the pope, personally
3

and privately by more than ten cardinals]. Pope Francis was there and listening.
And the next morning, on Tuesday, October 6, he spoke. The text of these
unscheduled remarks has not been made public, but only summarized verbally
by Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J. and in writing by L' Osservatore Romano....To this
account from L' Osservatore Romano, Fr. Lombardi added that the decisions of
method were also shared and approved by the pope, and therefore cannot be
brought back into discussion. [Franciscus Locutus, Causa Finita?] From this it
can be gathered that Francis has rejected the [Cardinals'] letter en bloc, apart from
the marginal recommendation not to reduce the discussion only to communion
for the divorced. And he has not rejected them [the requests of the Cardinals]
without a polemical jab, as afterward made known in a tweet that has not been
disowned by the director [editor] of La Civilta Cattolica, [Fr.] Antonio
Spadaro, S.J., also present [with the pope] in the hall, according to whom the pope
told the [synod] fathers not to give in to the conspiracy hermeneutic, which is
socially weak and spiritually unhelpful. All this at the beginning of the
synod....On Friday, October 9, Cardinal Luis G. Tagle, archbishop of Manilla and
president delegate of the synod, said out of the blue that, with regard to the final
relation [the official Relatio Finalis], we await the decision of the pope. And the
next day, Father Lombardi, S.J. clarified that we do not yet have certainty on
how the conclusion of the synod will take place, meaning if there will or will not
be a final document. We will see if the [capricious? centralizing? arbitrary?] pope
gives precise [sic] indications [commands?]. Incredible but true. With the synod
in full swing, a question mark has suddenly been raised over the very existence of
that Relatio finalis which figured in the programs [procedures, methods] as the
goal towards which all the work of the synod was finalized....Catholic doctrine
on marriage has not been touched, Pope Francis pledged [sic] in referring to the
entire conduct of the synod from 2014 to today [now in mid-October 2015], in
response to the concerns of the thirteen cardinals of the letter [the official
personal, private letter to the reigning pontiff]. But Cardinal Tagle, a prominent
representative of the innovators, also said at the press conference on October 9,
with visible satisfaction: The new method adopted by the synod has definitely
caused a bit [sic] of confusion, but it is good to be confused once in a while. If
things are always clear, then we might not be in real life anymore. (My bold
emphasis added to the translated text posted on 12 October 2015 on
www.chiesa.espressonline.it.)
Does not this entire set of Magister's selected reports and modest insights also suggest the
presence and permeation of manipulative Democratic Centralism? At least we should now be
convinced that the Directorate of the Synod is not playing with a full deck. This kind of praxis
must not be considered an honorable Pastoral Method, much less an Example of the genuine Mercy.

--Finis-4

2015 Robert Hickson