It is provocative to talk about intellectual leadership now that the single thought prevails and that those who claim to have their own voice are frowned upon because they supposedly endanger social cohesion.
It is curious that it is precisely those who complain that the Church unifies thoughts and impedes freedom, who insist on subjecting citizens by any means to the uniformity of the single thought, of closed and all-encompassing, totalitarian ideologies.
In Spain, the slogan par excellence of the sanctimonious left, which accepts dogmas without foundation or analysis, is that the left is morally superior to an immoral by nature and selfish right wing, as well as fascist, a term that serves for everything.
From this pretended superiority, an elaborate project of social engineering is set in motion: deconstruction of the family, abolition of merit and effort, manipulation of language, free disposal of life (abortion and euthanasia), misrepresentation of history, manipulation of education, gender self-assignment and many other things. This, continuously hammered in the populist media, ends up internalizing and shaping a cultural model (Goebbels dixit).
Not long ago the concept of the "Thucydides Trap" was coined to explain that when the hegemony of a dominant power (the left) is disputed by an emerging power (the right), there is a great probability that a war will break out between the two. That war has broken out: the battle of culture, a great opportunity, since one asserts one's being when confronted with the will of the other and has to refine one's opinions and substantiate them.
In order to promote this task, it is important to create or encourage intellectual elites, groups of people with prestige, recognition and influence within their sphere, acting as referents in the orders of social life, to rebuild the European cultural model based on Greek thought, Roman law expanded, where appropriate, by the Judeo-Christian tradition, revelation, reason complemented by faith.
This insubordination to the alleged intellectual superiority of the left is already taking place. It is no coincidence that opinion groups are spontaneously emerging, think-tanks or simple gatherings, engaged in this task. There is also a tribe of writers, mostly young, most of them in digital media, who are making their voices and opinions heard. Curiously enough, they are all popular, spontaneous movements, emerging from society, outside of subsidies and official recognition.
The cofrade world cannot be a mere spectator in this cultural battle, although there are still brotherhoods in which anyone who dares to step outside the common thinking dictated by the self-appointed leaders of the tribe is marginalized. However, when the individual assumes as true the moral superiority of the left and considers that there are only a few morally acceptable ideas, a single label of good citizen, or good brotherhood, granted by the hierarchs, he is renouncing his moral autonomy, basic to the foundation of any free society and to avoid falling into the "kakistocracy", the government of the worst, in society and in the brotherhood.
There are still brotherhoods that continue to take refuge exclusively in the traditional as a safe value; but this is not the way. Brotherhoods, which are called to "sanctify the world from within" (LG. n. 31; CIC c. 298), they cannot shy away from the battle of ideas by making themselves supposedly impervious to cultural changes, arguing that they are in another sphere, that theirs is not politics, taking refuge in tradition and in a misunderstanding of popular piety. This approach is fatal in the medium term, because the brotherhoods can only carry out their mission in a free society.
The ethics of the Grand Inquisitor (Dostoyevsky) assumes that citizens are incapable of bearing the burden of their own morality and freedom and must be supplied with uniform models, in the form of totalitarian ideologies. Assuming such an approach and trying to annul the freedom that Christ won for us is fatal for society and for the brotherhoods. It is urgent to fight the cultural battle from the "moral superiority" and in that effort must be the brotherhoods, constituted in intellectual elites.
D. in Business Administration. Director of the Instituto de Investigación Aplicada a la Pyme. Eldest Brother (2017-2020) of the Brotherhood of the Soledad de San Lorenzo, in Seville. He has published several books, monographs and articles on brotherhoods.
