08 February 2017

Vatican Intrigues and Italian Politics

Many a bookshelf could be filled with volumes on Vatican intrigues and there's no doubt that events for many future chapters are taking place right now.


Bergoglio-Francis is himself a complicated figure with an unclear and somewhat controversial past. If he does indeed have Right-wing connections to the Argentinean Junta then the question is... has he abandoned all such opinions and proclivities?
Is he really a Leftist, a modernizer? Is he something in-between?
Regardless of where exactly Francis falls on the spectrum, it's clear there are Right-wing and very conservative moments afoot within the Roman Catholic organisation. The Right-ist surge taking place across the West has also re-invigorated the various forms of political Christianity.
The Catholic Church is looking for a new kind of Risorgimento, or really Anti-Risorgimento, a revival that this time is not secular and merely political, as in the original movement which led to Italian Unification and the elimination of the Papal States. No, they want a new political Black Nobility, an alliance that will reinvigorate Catholicism and Conservatism... the two working symbiotically. They want a revival that will largely undo the legacy of the 19th century Unification movement.
Francis won't be around forever and the next pope will be so very critical to this plan. The political climate is such that if they can get the right pope in place, I'm sure they're hoping for a transformed Europe, one re-organised and based on a different model. They will likely find many allies in the United States, not just in the ecclesiastical hierarchy but within the political forces and financial wells of the Christian Right.
The United States government has a long history of alliance and intrigue when it comes to the Vatican, including the manipulation of conclaves and the bugging of the Vatican. This story is nothing new, just a quick glimpse into the ongoing and dynamic relationship between the Vatican and the powers who have taken up the mantle of Western leadership.
Once again, the American Right's fascism was left-wing narrative is belied by the fact that in Europe, it's very clear the like-minded Right is directly connected to old fascism. The Lega Nord or Northern League represents on the one hand a regional separatist movement but on the other hand it is heavily permeated by Right-wing and fascist ideology. Once again it needs to be recalled that Fascism should not be equated with the Third Reich. It can and certainly did take other forms.
The Vatican always fascinates and all we can do is continue to watch and warn. Who do we warn? The host of blind Evangelicals who have been seduced by the Vatican and the temptations of power.


2 comments:

  1. I guess it's the day of the intrigues! I didn't realise I had scheduled two articles on 'intrigues' for the same day.

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  2. Carl Schmitt, a brilliant political theorist, admitted in his work on political theology that old-style monarchical conservatism was basically dead. It was an expectation for a past that would never come, and these people were merely dragging their feet as they compromised on every issue they claimed to stand for. The future of European Conservatives, according to Schmitt, was in the figure of the dictator, the only possibly "monarcH" in secularized, disenchanted Europe. Schmitt, like many others in his frame of mind, despised the Fascists, but saw them as the only viable alternative to the threat of Communism.

    He wrote all of this in the 30's. His council is even more true than ever. The only right-wing alternative in Europe is, truly, the dictator. It might not be fascism per se, with the aestheticization of violence and valorization of race (though it is sometimes), but it's the only viable future for the European Right. It's a ticking timebomb, waiting for the right crisis to dissolve parliamentary government.

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