The modern world, intoxicated by its own technical advancements and seduced by the illusion of absolute autonomy, has deliberately forgotten the most accurate diagnosis ever pronounced on its illness. We find ourselves in the midst of an architecture of deception, a colossal and systematic structure designed not to govern man, but to usurp his dignity and strip him of his ultimate purpose. As General Director of the Santa Jacinta Editorial, I consider it a moral and journalistic imperative to scrutinize the roots of this contemporary pathology. To do so, I have turned to the most lucid voice of the 19th century: Supreme Pontiff Leo XIII.
In an unprecedented journalistic exercise, we have structured a simulated interview, where the answers come entirely from the magisterial corpus of his encyclical Humanum Genus, promulgated in 1884. The words of this document, far from perishing in the Vatican archives, resonate today with the surgical precision of a fulfilled prophecy. Intellectual rigor obliges us to abandon concessions and tepid diplomacy against an adversary that shows none. The Masonic sect and its naturalistic branches are not a club of enlightened thinkers, but the philosophical engine of the destructive secularization we suffer.
Dr. Alejandro de la Garza: Your Holiness, the fragmentation of today's society seems incomprehensible if we analyze it solely under economic or sociological parameters. You, from the highest chair of moral authority, drew a metaphysical watershed that is essential to understanding the present conflict. What is, in your judgment, the fundamental division that governs the history of the human race?
Leo XIII (Humanum Genus): The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, "through the envy of the devil," separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other for those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God.
Dr. Alejandro de la Garza: This dichotomy, masterfully summarized by Saint Augustine when speaking of the two cities built by two loves—the love of God and the love of self to the contempt of God—seems to have reached an unprecedented belligerence in our days. We are not facing a simple clash of opinions, but a perfectly oiled machinery. Who leads, in contemporaneity, this systematized assault against the natural and revealed order?
Leo XIII (Humanum Genus): At every period of time each has been in conflict with the other, with a variety and multiplicity of weapons and of warfare, although not always with equal ardor and assault. At this period, however, the partisans of evil seems to be combining together, and to be struggling with united vehemence, led on or assisted by that strongly organized and widespread association called the Freemasons. No longer making any secret of their purposes, they are now boldly rising up against God Himself. They are planning the destruction of holy Church publicly and openly, and this with the set purpose of utterly despoiling the nations of Christendom, if it were possible, of the blessings obtained for us through Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Dr. Alejandro de la Garza: It is chilling to contemplate how what was once denounced as a plot in the shadows now operates in broad daylight in parliaments and supranational organizations. However, we cannot say that the Apostolic See has kept silent. How did the Magisterium act before the first outbreaks of this infection that threatened the very fabric of Christendom?
Leo XIII (Humanum Genus): The Roman Pontiffs, our predecessors, in their incessant watchfulness over the safety of the Christian people, were prompt in detecting the presence and the purpose of this capital enemy immediately it sprang into the light instead of hiding as a dark conspiracy; and, moreover, they took occasion with true foresight to give, as it were on their guard, and not allow themselves to be caught by the devices and snares laid out to deceive them. The first warning of the danger was given by Clement XII in the year 1738, and his constitution was confirmed and renewed by Benedict XIV. Pius VII followed the same path; and Leo XII, by his apostolic constitution, Quo Graviora, put together the acts and decrees of former Pontiffs on this subject, and ratified and confirmed them forever. In the same sense spoke Pius VIII, Gregory XVI, and, many times over, Pius IX.
Dr. Alejandro de la Garza: And despite these warnings, the rulers of the nations often looked the other way, underestimating the dissolving capacity of this philosophy. We have reached a point where the State itself has assimilated the naturalistic germ, operating, as you rightly pointed out, "in contempt of God". The result is a crisis of authority and a tyranny disguised as philanthropy and progress. How was it possible for Freemasonry to infiltrate so deeply into the spheres of global political power?
Leo XIII (Humanum Genus): The provident and paternal care of our predecessors did not always and everywhere meet with the success that was hoped for; and this, either because of the simulation and cunning of some who were active agents in the mischief, or else of the thoughtless levity of the rest who ought, in their own interest, to have given to the matter their diligent attention. In consequence, the sect of Freemasons grew with a rapidity beyond conception in the course of a century and a half, until it came to be able, by means of fraud or of audacity, to gain such entrance into every rank of the State as to seem to be almost its ruling power. This swift and formidable advance has brought upon the Church, upon the power of princes, upon the public well-being, precisely that grievous harm which our predecessors had long before foreseen.
Dr. Alejandro de la Garza: This capitulation of the socio-political order to the Masonic offensive presents us with a heartbreaking paradox: false piety. The sect presents itself wrapped in the mask of tolerance and emancipatory secularism, but in practice demands of its proselytes a blind obedience and a complete annulment of their moral judgment, something that repulses human reason and natural right. The deception is in its very operational foundations, and it is our duty, as defenders of the Logos, to tear off that mask.
This initial dialogue with the Humanum Genus lays the metaphysical and historical foundations of our combat. In subsequent installments, my colleagues, Dr. María Victoria Ibáñez-Soto and Lic. Juan Pablo Torres-Lozano, will dissect the specific assault on scientific truth, on natural morality, and on the vital cell of the family. The battle of the two cities continues, but the lie, no matter how elaborate its architecture, can never prevail against the majesty of the Truth.
Legal Note: This critical analysis is carried out under the protection of Art. 28 (news of general interest) and Art. 10 (right to quote) of Law 11.723 of Intellectual Property of the Argentine Republic. The fragments in the mouth of Leo XIII belong to the encyclical Humanum Genus (1884), a public domain document.