The “Fairy-Tale” Prince and the Five Surprises

by Stephen Masty

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Here comes the first surprise: on the morning after the wedding, the groom turned to his bride and declared; “Now we must help each other to get to Heaven.” Not to win military battles or accede to thrones, or revel in luxury or bask in the world’s most elegant High Society with their movie-star good looks; for even coming from religious families, Karl and Zita were uncommonly committed Christians.

(...) As Karl bade farewell to Zita, he declared, “I am an officer with all my body and soul, but I do not see how anyone who sees his dearest relations leaving for the front can love war.”
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Comes the third surprise. Not yet thirty years old, with no experience of civilian leadership especially in war-time, the young emperor may have been excused for prudently leaving practical duties to the experienced men who served his predecessor. He did the opposite; launching what may be the world’s most dramatically wide-ranging, and rapid, Christian-inspired reforms since the convert Roman Emperor Constantine the Great. 

Moving swiftly and dynamically, Karl ordered his imperial fleet of glamorous fairytale carriages to be filled with coal and food, distributed daily to the poor. He put himself, his family and retainers on the same strict regimen that his people suffered under war-time rationing: aristocrats and top civil servants complained of missing the elegant Viennese breads served in elite restaurants while, dining at the palace, they got the same coarse brown peasant loaves eaten by the Emperor and his poorest subjects. He started firing top generals and revered statesmen for corruption, and undertook even more sweeping reforms of government. He began wide-ranging talks to empower and federalize his empire’s many kingdoms, regions and ethnicities. As imperial coffers shrank, he spent his own family funds to run the soup-kitchens and shelters and to build even more.

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 Meanwhile he established a wholly new branch of government, the world’s first Ministry of Social Welfare, “based on Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and other papal social encyclicals.” At least a whole generation ahead of its time, it struggled for “youth welfare, war disabled, widows and orphans, social insurance, labour rights and job protection, job placement, unemployment relief, and emigration protection and housing.” Unlike communist-inspired experiments in ruthlessly centralized social-planning, Karl’s reforms were based on the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, giving the lowest levels the maximum power and flexibility. One suspects the Empress Zita’s hand in this, for their marriage was a full Christian partnership, but her diplomatic involvement grew undeniable.

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But even by 1917, too many powers still thirsted for slaughter: Italy and France lusted after more of their opponents’ land, Britain shared their hope that President Woodrow Wilson would break his campaign promise and bring America into the war, while after a few temporary victories the bellicose German Kaiser wanted an even bigger fight with Russia. The young Emperor and the old Pope were outnumbered; their peaceful hopes destroyed. As the Austrian Armistice began in late 1918, nearly 1.5 million Austro-Hungarian soldiers lay dead. Not even two years after the dynamic youth was thrust into power, his dreams were ashes.

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His primitive local doctors injected him with turpentine and bled him as if in the 18th Century. His wife and children gathered at his bedside for daily Mass, where he explained, “I must suffer like this so my people will come together again.” Calling for Last Rites he insisted that his eldest son watch, saying “I would have liked to have spared him… But I had to…show him…how one conducts oneself at times like this–as a Catholic and as an Emperor.” At the end he laid his hand on the stomach of Zita, pregnant with their eighth, as together they prayed for their unborn child. His last words to her were “I love you so much.” Then, too weak to even kiss the crucifix she held out to him, he slipped into a dialogue with the invisible, pausing between replies: “I can’t go on much longer. Thy will be done… Yes… Yes… As you will it… Jesus!” Then he died, with the Holy Name on his lips, leaving the fifth surprise to come.

As news spread, the novelist Anatole France said, “No one will ever persuade me that the war could not have been ended long ago. The Emperor Charles offered peace. There is the only honest man who occupied an important position during the war, but he was not listened to… The Emperor Charles had a sincere desire for peace, so everyone hates him.” Just the powerful; not everyone, as we’ll see.

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Pope John Paul the Great beatified The Blessed Karl in 2004. The global campaign had begun in 1949 Vienna, Karl was declared a Servant of God in 1954 and one of the two officially-identified miracles needed for canonization has been recognized so far (several more claims are under investigation). His late widow, now The Servant of God Zita, received Vatican assent in 2008 through her abbey. Their power to inspire grows larger every year.

The Blessed Karl’s feast is celebrated neither on the day of his birth, nor his imperial accession, nor his death, but on his wedding day – October 21st – the happiest in his brief life. Reunited already, Karl and Zita may yet share the same Feast Day as saints. So a sixth and seventh surprise may lie ahead.

Were there ever a pair of saints needed now, it is surely they. Sharing the holiness, simplicity and zeal of Pope Francis, standing for European unity through subsidiarity (not centralization and remote bureaucracy), fearless against injustice and corruption, stalwart for children born or unborn, unshakably and traditionally moral yet compassionate and unafraid of change, they represent the best ideals of Christian leadership across our imperiled Western Civilization. Their canonizations would invigorate the good, point the way forward to the lost and embolden the disheartened.

Let us pray for them, and they for us.

Fonte: http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2013/10/karl-von-habsburg.html