REVOLUTION. – There still exists considerable uncertainty regarding the precise definition of the term. The revolutionary event is so complex in its causes and constituent elements that it is extremely difficult to determine the constants to be included in a single, unambiguous concept. The word is not always used in the same sense, and its similarity to other related terms further complicates scientific inquiry. Nevertheless, it seems that at present there is a certain consensus in understanding revolution, not in the sense of any political upheaval, but rather in the more specific sense of a movement that aims substantially to alter the social, political, and legal order of a country, replacing it with a new one, which, in the preparatory phase, represents the goal toward which the movement is directed.
I. GENERAL CONCEPTS AND RELATED TERMS
According to this concept, which appears to be the most scientifically accurate, a revolution presupposes a political and social order no longer corresponding to the needs of the community; a movement destined to overthrow it; and a new order, once achieved, in which the movement settles into equilibrium. Thus, it is not difficult to distinguish revolution from other similar social events, which generally lack the specific element of establishing a new order. Sedition, for instance, may arise from particular causes and be resolved in the solution of limited problems without affecting the existing order. A greater distinction separates revolution from rebellion, which is the uprising of popular masses or discontented segments of the population against the authorities’ decrees, and thus essentially an act of violent insubordination. Undoubtedly, these forms may be mingled with revolutionary movements, but they do not constitute the dominant or characteristic feature of revolution itself.It is now commonly held that the use of violence, which always accompanies sedition and rebellion, is not intrinsic to revolution, which may unfold in peaceful forms no less transformative of the social order. Such was, indeed, the Christian revolution. However, outside this singular case, in political revolutions an act of force almost always accompanies their assertion and is usually the instrument by which to break the resistance that the old order opposes to the rising tide of new currents. It may therefore be affirmed that, although violence is not intrinsic to the concept of revolution, it is rarely found entirely absent from II. A revolution without the use of force could be realized, in the political sphere, only if social transformation occurs through the work and influence of a strong personality who employs legally held political power to effect it, as, for example, PETER THE GREAT did in Russia.
The expressions passive and active resistance, commonly used by Catholic writers, do not coincide with the modern meaning of revolution. The former includes only a refusal to obey unjust laws, which in certain cases is not only licit but even obligatory; the latter bears greater resemblance to revolution and could almost be reduced to it when active resistance opposes the powers of the State. However, although this marked similarity must be taken into account when proceeding to a moral and juridical evaluation of revolution, among Catholic theorists the expression has a limited sense derived from the particular question of tyranny, in connection with which it is employed.
Revolution is not yet a coup d’état, a transformation of the order effected by an act of force on the part of the public authorities themselves, which act beyond the limits permitted by the existing constitution. A coup d’état may indeed form part of a revolutionary process, but in itself it is not a revolution, from whose specific characteristics one must perhaps still exclude the suddenness and rapidity of the movement. The fact that it usually manifests itself as a sudden explosion of long-suppressed forces may indicate only that, in ordinary cases, this is the culminating point of a vast process that has passed through a period of psychological preparation and will undergo one of consolidation for the establishment of the new order. The moment of organized violence is overwhelming, yet this does not belong to the intrinsic elements of the concept of revolution.
II. CAUSES AND MORAL AND LEGAL CONTENT OF REVOLUTION
The causes that usually produce these abrupt turns in the history of peoples are manifold and of diverse nature. One must guard against adopting a monovalent system in their investigation, as occurs when their emergence is attributed solely to the economic factor.The French Revolution, for example, was chiefly the work of the Enlightenment, which first undermined the moral and juridical foundations on which the old regime rested and propagated the new ideals of liberty and equality. As in every social phenomenon, so too in revolution the ideological and spiritual element can never be absent, since a new political and social order cannot be established unless there exists a nucleus of ideas, perhaps dimly and vaguely perceived at the outset of the process, but always present at its core. In general terms, it may be said that a revolution is not prepared nor does it enter its propulsive phase unless a profound rift has opened between the ruling class and the social body.
Opinions differ regarding the moral and legal content of revolution. The revolutionary theory based on the concept of popular sovereignty, as imagined and described by Rousseau, must be considered outdated. By configuring the holders of social authority as mandataries of the people, removable by an opposing expression of the so-called general will, it declared every revolution legitimate in which it saw nothing more than the exercise of political power by the sole subject that, by nature, would be invested with it in an inalienable manner. Starting from different principles, Fichte arrived at the same conclusion. According to him, the people can never be rebellious, since it represents, in fact and in law, the supreme power. Any form of historicism, and particularly the idealistic variety, is compelled to legitimize every revolutionary movement as a moment in which the rationality of history is realized or the physical and biological forces of society are affirmed. Sound criticism has now dispelled the myth of popular sovereignty in the sense attributed by the philosopher of Geneva, and has opposed historicism by showing that it destroys moral values and denies any trace of normative virtue to the essential principles governing human coexistence. Against the revolutionary consequences of such currents, the condemnation pronounced at the time by Pius IX in the Syllabus remains valid: “To deny obedience, or rather to rebel against legitimate princes, is permissible” (prop. LXIII).
The solutions currently prevailing regarding the problem of the ethical content of revolution can be schematically reduced to two: the first is fundamentally sociological, the second of a rather juridical nature. Some believe that revolution finds its justification in that law which, in a subterranean manner, is continually renewed in social consciousness and which, at a given historical moment, comes into irreconcilable conflict with the political form and institutions in force. Revolution would heal this discord, a sign both of a serious illness in the social organism and of its remedy. The second solution, however, claims to rest on purely juridical elements. Revolution itself would be nothing more than a juridically unassessable fact, since it opposes the law then in existence, namely the law of the State. In the event of success, however, the entire revolutionary process would be legalized by a kind of reaction that the effect exerts upon the cause, or by a kind of retroactive efficacy that the new order would have upon the acts to which it owes its origin. Revolution itself would elaborate within itself a law of its own, imperfect, vague, and defective—a law, if you will, unjust, but true law, like that which arises in any association on the margins of the State’s order.
Regarding these theories, it must first be observed that the sociological origin of law is debatable. Although it must be admitted that social consciousness continually refines the norms of coexistence, it cannot be maintained that it is the true source of law, or at least of all law, without falling into moral and juridical relativism. The proximate source of the most fundamental norms of social life is human nature, and its herald is individual conscience. In this case, in a supposed law that varies in time and space, the criterion for evaluating revolution must be sought; otherwise, one returns to the thesis of its unconditional legitimacy. It must also be noted that in the second opinion, the justification of revolution is based solely on the fait accompli, on victorious force, to which law affixes its seal of legitimacy only because it has succeeded in triumphing. A mere fact, however, does not transform itself into law, nor can it give rise to law by virtue of the principle requiring proportion between cause and effect. A contradiction in terms remains in that unjust law which revolution would elaborate within itself, since law and justice are ontologically conjoined and correlative.
III. CATHOLIC DOCTRINE
Catholic doctrine is not unanimous in its solution to the problem outlined. Particularly after the French Revolution, some theorists began to adopt rigid positions, excluding in all cases and suppositions the legitimacy of revolutionary insurrection against constituted authority. Among these was, for example, Taparelli, according to whom, even in the case of unbearable despotism, the citizen would have no recourse but to turn to God, in whose hands lie the will and life of tyrants. This solution was favored by Leo XIII in the encyclical *Quod apostolici muneris* of December 28, 1879, where he wrote: “Nevertheless, if it sometimes happens that public authority is exercised by princes in a capricious and excessive manner, Catholic doctrine does not permit private individuals to rise up against them at their own discretion, lest the tranquility of order be further disturbed and greater harm befall society. And when matters have reached such a point that no other hope of salvation remains, it desires that the remedy be sought through the merits of Christian patience and through earnest prayers to the Lord.”Nevertheless, the majority of Catholic theorists have remained faithful to the old tradition, which goes back to John of Salisbury and, following his line, includes the names of St. Thomas Aquinas, Suárez, Bellarmine, De Lugo, and in more recent times Cathrein, Meyer, and Cardinal Zigliara, among others (cf. D. Bañez, *In Sum. Theol.*, II-II, q. 64, a. 3, concl. 1; Sylvius, *In Sum. Theol.*, II-II, q. 64, a. 3, concl. 2; C. Billuart, *De iure et iustitia*, diss. X, a. 2 ad 3; R. Bellarmine, *De conc. auct.*, lib. II, cap. 19; F. Suárez, *Defensio fidei*, lib. VI, cap. 4 § 15, etc.). The problem they debated concerns specifically the liceity or lack thereof of active resistance against tyranny and despotism, but the principles they established can be very well adapted to revolution accompanied by the use of violence, which is the most frequent case. Schematically, their thought is as follows.
Social life, the juridical and institutional order, and authority are nothing other than means ordered to the good of the human person, so that it may attain the highest degree of temporal well-being. Their immanent end and reason for being thus consist in the common good of the body politic, to which the social activity of individual citizens and of smaller associations, as well as that of the organs of the State, is organically directed. Now, the common good, besides having a stable aspect corresponding to the most universal and profound needs of human nature, also has a mutable aspect deriving from the incessant movement to which collective life is subject. According to the thought of St. Thomas (*De regimine principum*, lib. I, cap. 6), a dynamic social life must therefore correspond to a dynamic order and a flexible authority capable of interpreting its needs. The tendency of these latter, however, is to harden into static forms, so that gaps open between new exigencies and existing institutions. As the gap widens due to the rigidity of the system, the danger of conflict between citizens and the power of the State looms. When such circumstances arise, the first duty of citizens and of authority is to provide, through ordinary and peaceful means and with the legal resources at their disposal, for the structural reforms necessary to prevent the widening of the conflict, adapting the social order to the pressing demands of political reality.
If, instead, authority persists in defending institutions that have become, in whole or in part, anachronistic, the specter of a violent rupture of the false equilibrium arises. Even in this supposition, revolution does not yet become licit if there remain possibilities for legal reform and the evils are not so grave as to pose a serious danger to the common good. Revolution can be compared to war, the use of violence in the international sphere, to which morality and law grant recourse only as an *extrema ratio*, when peaceful means have been exhausted and no other way presents itself to obtain the reparation or respect of a certain and proportionate right while serious harm is threatened. Thus, if society is threatened with ruin due to the serious prejudice inflicted upon the common good by the unjust conduct of the ruling class, and if there remains no possibility of bending it through legal means, revolution may be considered licit, provided—it must be added among the conditions of such liceity—that it does not portend more harm to the community than it intends to repair.
The older writers based this conclusion on the democratic conception of power, according to which the people, as the original subject of authority, transmit it to those who must exercise it through an explicit or implicit pact, on the condition that it be used
For the promotion of the common good. If this good, instead of being promoted, is gravely compromised by the inertia or ill will of those in authority, and every legal avenue is barred from preventing social collapse, political power reverts to the people, who retain it fundamentally, and they have the right to provide for their own destiny. Some more modern moralists, not accepting the theory of the democratic origin of power, base the same conclusion on the right of legitimate defense. The social entity as a moral person possesses the right to defend its life and integrity, and therefore, if the unjust resistances of authority or its oppressive measures reduce it to such extremes as to place its essential goods in serious and grave danger, even to the brink of ruin, it has, by natural law, the faculty to repel the unjust aggression arising from the abuse of political power.
According to the most common Catholic doctrine, therefore, not every revolution is intrinsically illicit. However, its justice or injustice does not depend on its triumph or on a false posthumous legality, but on the motives upon which it is based from its very inception, that is, on its conformity or lack thereof with the natural and rational juridical order, to whose norms every social action must conform. Now, this order does not always and in every instance protect authority: it defends it when it fulfills the function for which it exists; it abandons it when it betrays that function through incapacity or malice. The recent Spanish revolution, declared legitimate by the entire episcopate of that country, offers the freshest example of the value of the principles and conclusions thus far expounded.
Upon the principal of these, namely the primacy of the common good considered as a permanent norm of social life, is founded the solution of another question, no less important than the preceding one from the moral and juridical standpoint, raised by the triumph of an unjust revolution and the consequent establishment of a de facto government. However the speculative problem may be resolved, our law arrives at the certain conclusion that citizens are obliged to obey its injunctions, directed to maintaining order for the regular development of collective life, provided that they are not illicit. Nor does such submission imply a recognition of legitimacy of the de facto government. This, however, may in time be transformed into legitimate by the very injustice of the fundamental norm of the primacy of the common good. For this good requires, indeed, that, so as not to disturb the order established by the revolutionary government, now consolidated in power, it continue to guide the community with full faculty to dispose of its welfare, and therefore either by a kind of pre-science, as some have called it, or by custom, or better still by virtue of a moral exigency whose precise nature it is not possible to determine, it confers effective sovereignty with all the rights connected therewith. When the moment arrives—one which cannot be determined mathematically—at which the common good demands the stability of the political and social order achieved by the revolution, natural law seals the de facto government with the seal of legitimacy, not by converting the mere fact into law, but by superimposing upon the fact a juridical faculty deriving from another source.