“The Legionário was born to fight.”150 From 1933 to 1947, the courageous and often solitary voice of the Legionário, directed by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, raised high the flag of the Church and of Christian civilization against modern totalitarianism in all its expressions and forms. He thus summarized the position of the magazine:
“Above all, let us always love the Roman Pontiff. Not a single word of the Pope did we leave unpublished, without explanation, or without defence. Not one right of the Holy See was left undefended with the greatest ardour a human creature is capable. In our words, thanks be to God, no concept or nuance ever swerved from the Magisterium of Peter whether in a comma or even a line. In every aspect, we were the men of the Church Hierarchy, whose prerogatives we defended with strenuous ardour against the doctrines purporting to tear the direction of the Catholic laity from the Episcopate and the Clergy. There have been no mistakes, no misunderstandings, nor tempests that were able to put the slightest stain on our standard in this regard. Let us entirely defend the spirit of hierarchy, of spiritual formation, of mortification and of rupture with the ignominies of the century. Let us fight for the doctrine of the Church against the grim excesses of statist nationalism that dominated Europe; against nazism, fascism and all its various forms; against liberalism, socialism, communism and the famous ‘policy of the extended hand’. No one in the world has ever raised itself up against the Church of God without the Legionário (…) protesting. Likewise, we never lost sight of the obligation of stimulating in every way devotion to Our Lady and to the Blessed Sacrament. There was never any genuine Catholic initiative that did not receive our enthusiastic support. Never were the doors closed on someone having the glory of God as his sole aim without finding friendly and welcoming support. There is a good fight to be fought in this life. We are exhausted and bleed from every part of the body. This was the fight that tired us out and in which we were wounded. In return, we only dare to request as a reward pardon for everything inevitably fallible and human in this work that should be all for God and only for God.”151
Ten years before the outbreak of the war, in a letter to a friend, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira had written:
“I increasingly have the impression that we are in the vestibule of an era full of sufferings and struggles. Everywhere, the suffering of the Church becomes more intense and the struggle draws closer. I have the impression that the clouds of the political horizon are becoming denser. It will not be long before a tempest will break, having a world war as a simple preface. But, this war will spread such confusion throughout the world that revolutions will appear everywhere, and the putrefaction of this unfortunate ‘Twentieth century’ will reach is apogee. Then, will be raised those forces of evil that, as worms, only appear at the moments of final putrefaction. Society’s underlying philosophy will then appear and the Church will be persecuted everywhere. But… ‘et ego dico tibi quia tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam, et portae inferi non praevalebunt adversus Eam’. Consequently, we will either have a ‘new Middle Ages’ or we will have the end of the world.”152
Notes:
150. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “365 dias em revista”, O Legionário, no. 595, 1 January 1944.
151. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “17 anos”, O Legionário, no. 616, 28 May 1944.
152. Cf. in J. S. Clá Dias, Dona Lucilia, vol. II, p. 181.
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