REVOLUTION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 306, 25 November 1937, Page 8

REVOLUTION

CATHOLIC SOCIAL GUILD. LECTURE BY FATHER HIGGINS. On Sunday evening, speaking in St. Patrick’s Hall, Rev. Father J. A. Higgins, S.M., concluded the series of lectures for this year on social problems. In his final lecture Father Higgins spoke on the subject of revolution, and remarked that when one tries to find a definition of revolution, one discovers that the authorities do not agree. This authority will define revolution in the “sweet’’ manner and will call it the struggle for liberty and equality. Another high authority will condemn revolution by a “bitter” definition describing it as a fiendish and inhuman movement.

I “Between these two extremes lies the truth, not that the truth is that revolution is an even mixture of good and evil, but that it is neither all good nor all bad,” the speaker added. “Unfortunately we must declare that there is always more evil than good in revolution. We say unfortunately, because to-day the very air is filled with revolution which is once again one of the idols that men worship: and it is most unfortunate that when revolution is so easily resorted to, it is, nevertheless, always against the true welfare of the people. “For the truth is that, though revolution will gain some freedom or liberty, it always sacrifices much' more; though revolution punishes many guilty people, it always involves many innocent persons in ruin: though revolution may work some justice, it always breeds grave and serious injustice, The gains from' revolution are never equal to the damage that it causes. The cost of revolution is always excessively high both in material and spiritual values. Yet men continue to revolt. From time to time throughout the history of our race revolution breaks out, usually provoked by injustice done to the people, almost nlways because the people are driven to desperation by socially vile conditions. Yet the fact remains true, revolution does not pay the people who are always they who suffer most through civil strife.

“One lesson men have constantly to learn and to keep in- mind, a lesson which is almost always forgotten in revolution: Man is not in his own human nature as good as rationalists always say he is. It is folly to assert that men are naturally good enough, that without any consideration for what they will do and how they will act, they may be trusted. If there is any lesson which the long story of revolutions has'to tench us, it is that mon are not to be trusted, that when they are left to themselves they are guilty of the most vicious conduct to their fellow men. Men are creatures of great hatred as well as of ardent love, of disgusting injustice as well as of justice, of cruelty even of fiendish nature as well as of kindliness. And though it is not only during revolutions that man shows . forth hjs power for evil, certainly when revolutions break out nil the remark- 1 able force of human nature for what : is unspeakably evil is seen in action. “That is why revolutions never work out as men hoped and even most sin- , cerely prayed that they would. The French Revolution ended in Napoleon j Bonaparte who certainly was not what the French had expected as the out- j come of their revolution which cost France so many lives, with so much 1 blood and torture and horror. The a Russian Revolution has ended not in i the dictatorship of the people, as was

the promise held out to the Russian people when they suffered tho untold horrors of their recent revolt, but in tho dictatorship of one man. “The evidence seen in the history of revolutions is sufficient to assuro us, even if we had nothing elso on which to judge, that the Church is most sane and sound when she so constantly warns us that, without the assistance of religion men will not deal fairly by men. Time and time again have men taken up the sword to havo done with injustice, but only to find that the new rulers, who conquered and slow the old, were also men who wreaked ruin among their fellowmeu by the practice of injustice. The very men who have been loudest in their cries against injustice, who havo been most ready to fight by physical'force against the oppressor of the people, have themselves turned out to be men capablo of inhuman conduct even more iniquitous than that against which they fought so fiercely.

“The ages of justico in the history of our race aro the ages in which men . rested not upon their own natural , goodness, but in which they refused to trust themselves, and turned to roligion for Divine assistance. Those ages of justice, those periods in which men dealt humanely by men, were in a deep sense ages of revolution, but of the personal kind; then men were in revolt constantly, but each man against the impulse of evil in him. To overcome himself is the only aim of tho man who in true and human sense is a good revolutionary. For when men revolt against injustice they must remember that what they rebel against is evil which is in the heart of men. But this is exactly what revolutionaries practically never bear in mind. They think that they themselves are perfect, that they themselves bear within them no power for evil, they therefore revolt against other men, but never against themselves. “The result is always the same; it is the betrayal of the people. Until men learn the Christian law of persona] control of self according to the law of God, revolutions will continue, because men will be driven by desperation to revolt, and they will continue to wreck tho best hopes of men for peace and prosperity. That is why the Church .never encourages the idea of revolution; that is why she always most gravely warns us against il. Revolutions have always produced more evil than good. The trouble is not so much that in revolutions men resort to force, for the use of force may in circumstances not only be justified but necessary. The trouble is that when men revolt they forgot that, unless men are truly self-controlled, they run riot and are guilty of the gravest excesses. But the unfailing testimony of history is that in revolutions men do not even consider self-control, they will deny tho necessity of it. And consequently they will sacrifice all that is best in human life.

“The history of revolutions lends us to an inescapable conclusion: Without religious self-control a nation will repeatedly produce tho intolerable conditions of life driving the people to revolt; and the revolutions will never solve the great social problems of the justice that must obtain between men. AVe are driven by the weight of overwhelming evidence to assert that revolutions have proved conclusively that, while they are the outcome of men’s neglect of religion in the practical affairs of life, they are also themselves doomed to failure because in them men do not strive to become the masters of themselves for good and against the evil that so readily surges up in men.”