1958–1974: The Balance Sheet – “Folha de S. Paulo,” July 14, 1974

by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

This week, I received new statements from senior ecclesiastical figures on the subject—until recently rarely discussed in Brazil—of the Vatican’s relations with communist regimes. Their Eminences Cardinals Agnelo Rossi and Eugenio Salles addressed the subject in interviews with the press on various issues. I understand that Cardinal Avelar Brandão also spoke on the matter. O São Paulo, the organ of our Archdiocese, prominently published Cardinal Vicente Scherer’s speech on the subject. From the city of Quito, I received an extensive argument on the same issue, published by Cardinal Pablo Muñoz Veja.

The new pronouncements would warrant my comments, especially since, because of their content or timing, they seem closely related to the TFP’s Declaration of Resistance. However, I do not consider it necessary to do so, because, without wishing to flatter anyone, the work of Cardinal Scherer encompasses and surpasses that of his illustrious colleagues in terms of the value of its content and the breadth of its exposition. So, having studied it, one has, ipso facto, studied the rest.

Thus, I will limit myself today to concluding the comments I presented last Sunday on the address given by the prelate from Rio Grande do Sul.

* * *

I will now turn to the matter at hand.

According to Cardinal Scherer, “it seems curious” that criticism of the pope’s initiative to negotiate with communist regimes, which has arisen here and there, “originates from groups generally located within the Church itself and professing love and fidelity to it.”

Why “curious”? The distinguished prelate explains: “In our time, practically all countries, especially the so-called capitalist nations, celebrate all kinds of agreements … with Russia and other Marxist states.” In a sense, we would thus be more royalist than the king and more capitalist than capitalist governments.

Last Sunday, I showed that we are not against negotiations per se, but against the exorbitant, uncompensated price the Vatican pays to pursue its Ostpolitik. Catholic détente is sweeping the world, breaking down barriers that once impeded the spread of the red creed. What do communist governments pay in return? Nothing.

The same complaint was raised in Germany against Willy Brandt and is now being raised in the US against Nixon and Kissinger. At a time when German and American détente is so vigorously contested, their example cannot be cited as a decisive contribution to the Vatican détente.

As for being more capitalist than capitalism, the accusation is singular, at least if we consider capitalism in its most refined and reprehensible form, namely supercapitalism. The latter usually operates in the shadows. But some of its actions that have become public amount to enthusiastic support for détente. Just look at the galaxy of supercapitalist stars who accompanied Nixon to Moscow. This behavior aligns with the logic of supercapitalism. How, then, can we be “more royalist than the king” by diverging from this logic?

Let it be said in passing that we do not understand how the respectable Archbishop of Porto Alegre can feel comfortable shielding Vatican détente behind German and American détente, when he himself recognizes that “the free world, and notably Western Europe,” was “the one that softened its resistance to the spread of the communist danger.” So is Vatican détente not also a “softening”?

One more argument from His Eminence remains for us to analyze. The prelate asserts that the Vatican’s Ostpolitik’s essential objective is to improve the living conditions of Catholics behind the Iron Curtain. I do not see that such an improvement has been achieved so far. In a lengthy speech on the occasion of his name day (cf. Osservatore Romano, June 23, 1974), H.H. Paul VI briefly refers to the conditions of Catholics behind the Iron Curtain. What a world of horrors it reveals! The pontiff states that his heart “is wounded” whenever he thinks of the “sufferings, limitations, and pressures” the Church endures there. He then refers to the “oppression and silence” that weigh upon it and “the darkness that surrounds it.” This is the situation as His Holiness sees it in 1974. It brings to mind what Solzhenitsyn and other dissidents have said. Now, détente began with John XXIII in 1958…

What good did this détente do for Catholics behind the Iron Curtain, that worthy Church of Silence upon which, according to the melancholy joke of an Italian journalist, “the silence of the Church has descended”?

This is what I had to ponder with veneration, affection, and sadness.