the main instrument

I have been arguing that Catholic societies are utterly conservative societies. For the last four centuries at least they did not create, with very few and largely irrelevant exceptions, any new social or political institutions. Contrary to Protestant countries, they did not create any social, political, philosophical or scientific thinking of their own. Their constant calls for modernizing are usually steps to imitate what is being done abroad, mainly in Protestant countries.

On the other hand, it has been observed by several authors that, contrary to Protestant countries, there are strong elements of anarchism in Catholic societies. And it is quite true that over the last few centuries, Catholic countries such as Spain, Portugal and the nations of Latin America have often lived on the border of anarchy.

My question in this post is the following: how to reconcile these two apparently contradictory features of Catholic societies, namely, their utter conservatism and their propensity for anarchism? The answer is that in Catholic culture anarchism is the main instrument of radical conservatism.

A true, radical conservative must be prepared to destroy whatever is new and foreign in terms of institutions or social and political thinking. It is this readiness to destroy what is new and foreign that gives utter conservatives the appearance of anarchists. One should not think of Catholic anarchists, though, as aiming to live in that state of utopia where there is no coercion at all. Rather, their anarchism is only a tool to clean society of what is foreign and new, so as to leave traditional institutions shining in all their purity.