Julio Meinvielle

Julio MeinvielleBorn Julio Meinvielle

31 August 1905Buenos Aires,Argentina

Died 2 August 1973(aged 67)

Nationality ArgentineEducation Doctor of Philosophy

and TheologyOccupation PriestKnown for WriterNotable work(s) From Lammenais to

MaritainPolitical party Tacuara Nationalist

MovementOpponent(s) Jacques MaritainReligion Roman Catholic

Church

Julio MeinvielleFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaFather Julio Meinvielle (31 August 1905- 2 August 1973) was an Argentine priestand prolic writer. A leading RomanCatholic Church thinker of his time, hewas associated with the far right tendencywithin Argentine Catholic thinking.

Contents1 Background2 Catholic orthodoxy3 Antisemitism4 Later years5 Inuence6 References

BackgroundMeinvielle studied for his Doctorate inPhilosophy and Theology in Rome andsoon afterwards became a prolic writerof religious, historical and economic bookswithin the school of Thomism.[1] He came to see history as a process of decline inCatholic values, as determined by three events that he saw as catastrophic i.e. thework of Martin Luther, the French Revolution and the October Revolution.[2]

Catholic orthodoxyMeinvielle was a staunch critic of what he perceived as slipping standards inCatholic teaching. On this basis he had a well publicized feud with JacquesMaritain during the late 1930s. The conict had begun in 1936 when Maritainvisited Argentina for the rst time and was initially well received by a number ofleading Catholic gures.[3] As editor of the integralist journal Critero Meinvielleattacked Maritain as the 'advocate of the Spanish Reds', sparking o a war ofwords between the two.[4] His book From Lammenais to Maritain was actually anattack on the ideas of Jacques Maritain, claiming that Maritain was defending the

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faithlessness of modern society by his endorsement of liberalism.[5] Tracing theorigins of Maritain's work to Hugues Felicit Robert de Lamennais as well as thatof Marc Sangnier and Le Sillon, he argued that the humanism of these writerswas incompatible with the Catholic faith.[6]He took as the basis for his Catholicism bot the works of Thomas Aquinas and thePapal encyclicals Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno, contrasting themwith his twin political hates of liberalism and communism.[7]

AntisemitismHe was also critic of capitalism and Marxism and he sought to draw parallelsbetween the two by arguing that materialism was the basis for both. Instead hesought an economic system based on Roman Catholicism in which consumptionregulated production and in which wealth creation was ne as long as the wealthwas re-invested.[8] In common with Rodolfo Irazusta he was a stern critic of usuryand he blamed this practice on the Jews, citing Werner Sombart as his inspirationfor this conclusion.[8]He further contended that Judaism had the destruction of Christianity as its basisand therefore argued that whatever ills befell the Christian world were inherentlythe fault of the Jews. As part of this critique he repeated the blood libel as well assuggesting that capitalism and communism were both Jewish constructs as part oftheir plan for world domination.[9] Whilst his ideas owed a lot of the Protocols ofthe Elders of Zion, Meinvielle did not explicitly endorse that document, as anumber of contemporary court cases had found it to be a fraud.[9] He added aChristological dimension to his anti-Semitism by arguing that the grand sturgglebetween Christianity and Judaism was a parallel to that between Jesus Christ andSatan.[7] He did however feel that it was possible to defeat the Jews by unity and,where necessary, violence, drawing on the notions of Nimio de Anqun thatviolence in service of 'truth' is justied.To this end he applauded the rise of fascism, for which he saw a Christianmission.[9] He was particularly enamoured of the falangism variant as he was abeliever in the virtues of Hispanidad and Spain playing a leading role in thefortunes of Latin America.[7] His 1936 book El Judio distilled these fascist viewsand gave his thinking an Argentine dimension as he argued Buenos Aires was thearchetype of 'Babylon', dominated as he felt it was by international Jewishnancial interests.[10]Politically he was associated with a coterie of young Catholic intellectuals,including Mximo Etchecopar, Ignacio Anzoategui and Matas Snchez Sorondo,who produced the 1937 document Programma Nacionalista.[7] He subsequently


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joined the Nueva Politica group when Snchez Sorondo established it in 1941.[7]

Later yearsMeinville taught philosophy at Catholic institutions for much of his life and hewould also serve as the chaplain at Santa Casa de Ejercicios.[7] He continued towrite widely and from the late 1940s to the 1960s he published three journals,Balcon, Dialogo and Presencia, in which he expressed his religious and politicalviews.[7]Meinville initially supported Edelmiro Julin Farrell and his successor Juan Pern,but began to have doubts about Peronism, feeling that socio-economic concernshad become too prominent at the expense of the initial hard-line nationalism thatattracted him.[7] He was particularly critical of Pern's attempts to woo the tradeunion movement to his side and in 1952 became a leading gure in the UnionFdrale, a post-Pern party of the right.[7] Continuing to be outspoken in hiscondemnation of those who did not meet his standards, Meinville was nallysuspended from the Catholic Church in 1961 by Antonio Caggiano, theArchbishop of Buenos Aires, after he stated that President Arturo Frondizi was acommunist agent.[11]

InuenceMeinvielle's inuence was strong throughout the far right in Argentina.Practically, he served as advisor and spiritual inspiration to the highlyanti-Semitic Tacuara Nationalist Movement.[12] However on a wider level he hada deep impact on the nationalist intellectual strand, with the likes of Jordn BrunoGenta heavily inuenced by his words.[13] Other future government gures suchas Mario Amadeo, Alberto Baldrich and Samuel Medrano were also inuenced byhis works to an extent.[14] Similarly Colonel Mohamed Al Seineldn, who wasarrested in 1987 for plotting a military coup also declared himself a disciple ofMeinvielle.[15] The diplomat Mximo Etchecopar had also written for Meinvielle'sjournal Balcn during his formative years.[16]He was also inuential on the Argentine scouting movement as he was founder ofthe Union Scouts Catlicos Argentinos.[11]

References^ Graciela Ben-Dror, The Catholic Church and the Jews, 2009, p. 491.^ Graciela Ben-Dror, The Catholic Church and the Jews, 2009, pp. 49-502.^ Carlos Alberto Torres, The Church, society, and hegemony, p. 1833.


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^ David Lehmann, Democracy And Development, 1992, p. 1054.^ William T. Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist, 1998, p. 1555.^ Darrell Jodock, Catholicism contending with modernity, 2000, p. 3316.^ a b c d e f g h i Philip Rees, Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since1890, Simon & Schuster, 1990, p. 261

7.^ a b Sandra McGee Deutsch, Las Derechas, 1999, p. 2258.^ a b c Sandra McGee Deutsch, Las Derechas, 1999, p. 2269.^ Graciela Ben-Dror, The Catholic Church and the Jews, 2009, p. 5110.^ a b Rees, Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right, p. 26211.^ Sandra McGee Deutsch, Las Derechas, 1999, p. 32512.^ Graciela Ben-Dror, The Catholic Church and the Jews, 2009, p. 5713.^ Graciela Ben-Dror, The Catholic Church and the Jews, 2009, p. 9414.^ Graciela Ben-Dror, The Catholic Church and the Jews, 2009, p. 5815.^ Rees, Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right, p. 11816.

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Julio Meinvielle

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