Evola and Catholicism

A MAY 1945 letter written by Julius Evola to a Catholic friend, Father Clemente Rebora (1885-1957), provides a fascinating insight into the mindset of the Traditionalist philosopher in the immediate aftermath of the injuries that he had sustained in the Vienna bombing-raid.

Although the Rosminian priest and former atheist poet had visited Evola in hospital just four days earlier, to enquire whether the Baron would like to accompany him by train to Lourdes - something that later gave rise to the erroneous speculation that Evola was on the verge of converting to Catholicism - the latter wrote to say that whilst he was grateful for the offer of undertaking such a journey it would imply that all he was interested in was obtaining the kind of grace that would lead to nothing more than the possibility of his physical injuries being healed. Although, to many people, this would seem like a perfectly understandable reason to visit the famous Pyrenean shrine, he continued by explaining that

“If grace were to be asked for, it would rather be to understand the spiritual meaning as to why this has happened - whether it remains this way or not; even more so, to understand the reason for continuing to live.”

After all, the precise reason that Evola had exposed himself to the full horror of a sustained Allied attack was to answer that very question. The outcome, of course, suggesting that despite his being confined to a wheelchair for the next twenty-nine years a crucial role still lay ahead of him. As he later explained in the pages of his autobiography, Il cammino del cinabro (1963):

“Nothing changed, everything was reduced to a purely physical impediment that, aside from the practical annoying concerns and certain limitations of profane life, it neither affected nor effected me at all, my spiritual and intellectual activity not being in any way whatever altered or undermined.”

Evola's recovery, therefore, was of considerably less importance than his ability to continue the Great Work.