Statue of Saint Peter (in the Basilica of the same name, in the Vatican) dressed in ceremonial robes
On 19 March 1937, three days after Mit brennender Sorge, Pius XI also solemnly condemned Communism with the encyclical Divini Redemptoris. Next to National Socialism, Communism was the other great enemy constantly denounced by Legionário, especially after the civil war in Spain71 had shown the world its true face, arousing a “flame of hate” and of “ferocious persecution”.72
“The contention in Spain is whether the world should be ruled by Jesus Christ or by Karl Marx. The whole of Catholic civilisation, all the principles of morality, all the traditions, all the institutions the West holds dear, will irremediably disappear if communism wins.”73
“A day will come when, standing on the ruins of Hitlerism, of communism, of Mexican Obregonism, we will triumphantly ask: ‘Calles, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Lunatcharski, where are you?’ And only the silence of the tombs will answer us.”74
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira’s criticism of totalitarianism was quite different however from the individualistic and liberal criticism that shared in the same errors it claimed to denounce. Liberalism, in full decline, could never have been an authentic alternative to Nazism or Communism.
“Both the liberal error of giving freedom to evil as to good, and the totalitarian error of oppressing good and evil are grave and have the same root. In the presence of the Truth which is the Church, both the liberal State and the totalitarian State assume the attitude of Pilate, asking ‘quid est veritas’—’What is truth?’ Agnosticism, indifferentism between Truth and error, Good and evil, is always a source of injustice. Catholics cannot come to terms neither with one nor the other.”75
“Whoever exaggerates the role of the State will necessarily be a socialist, whatever the masks he tries to cover his face with. And at the bottom of the socialist slope is communism.
“Whoever exaggerates the rights of the individual or of other groups will necessarily be an individualist, and at the bottom of that slope is anarchy.
“We should free ourselves from complete anarchy (nihilism) or from the stable and organized anarchy that is totalitarianism by forming for ourselves a vigorous and firm Catholic conscience, where there is no place for complacency toward errors of any kind.”76
“Catholics should be anticommunist, anti-Nazi, anti-liberal, anti-socialist, anti- masonic, etc…. simply because they are Catholics.”77
In Brazil, the “integralist” movement, founded by Plinio Salgado, had begun to develop as of 1933.78 With its “green shirts” it imitated the troops of European Fascism. Basing themselves on the premise that “the human spirit progresses at the rhythm of revolutions”, its leader defined its conception as “integral [total] revolution”79 and proposed a reorganization of Brazil based on the model of a trade association-corporatist State similar to that of Mussolini.
Integralism, which claimed to be anti-Communist and anti-liberal, had a fundamental agnosticism in common with liberalism.80 “Integralism, then, is neither Catholic nor anti- Catholic. It is theist, viewing all religions through a supposedly neutral prism.”81 Faced with
what even then he defined as the “false right”, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira repeated that the only solution was authentic Catholicism.82
He expressed a similarly negative judgement with regard to Fascism which had by then in Brazil, even among the Catholics and the clergy itself, a great number of supporters and sympathisers. Even if, in 1929, Pius XI had signed the Lateran Pacts with Mussolini, in his encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno, dated 29 June 1931,83 the Pope openly criticized the totalitarian tendencies of the regime and declared as unlawful the oath of loyalty to the Duce and to the “Fascist Revolution”. The criticisms by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira of the statist doctrine of the Fascist regime were similar to those of the Pope.84 He however pointed out that “in practice Mussolini departed from it more than once”85 and that “one of his great merits”86 was to be found in this detachment, as happened with the signing of the Lateran Pacts.87
From as early as 1937, he observed, with increasing anxiety, the progressive radicalization and decline of Fascism towards Nazism,88 which had been restrained, up to then, in its totalitarian tendency, by the presence of the Monarchy and, above all, by that of the Papacy. Dr Plinio’s criticisms caused a certain reaction among the Catholics of Italian descent residing in Brazil, who perceived these articles to be an attack on their country.89 His response to these objectors was:
“Legionário will always be on the side of the Pope. For this very reason, it will never be against Italy. Because the cause of the authentic Italy, the Italy of Dante, of Saint Francis of Assisi and of Saint Thomas, can never be separated from the cause of the Papacy.”90
Today it is not easy to understand the importance of the intellectual independence of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, in comparison to the conformism of those whom Jean-Louis Loubet del Bayle referred to in one of his books as “the nonconformists of the 30s”,91 at a time when the European intelligentsia allowed itself to be attracted by the red star of the Kremlin or by the “immense red Fascism” sung by Robert Brasillach.92 On the left, the glories of Soviet Humanism were celebrated by the French Romain Rolland, Louis Aragon, André Malraux, André Gide, the Germans Heinrich Mann and Bertolt Brecht, the English Aldous Huxley and E. M. Forster.93 Other famous intellectuals such as Giovanni Gentile, Ezra Pound, Pierre Drieu-La Rochelle, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger took the side of Fascism and Nazism.
Notes:
71. On the Spanish civil war, Léon de Poncins, Histoire secrète de la Révolution espagnole, Paris, G. Beauchesne, 1938; José M. Sanchez, The Spanish civil war as a Religious tragedy, Notre Dame (Indiana), University of Notre Dame Press, 1987; Mario Tedeschi (care of), Chiesa Cattolica e guerra civile in Spagna, Naples, Guida, 1989; Javier Tusell, Genoveva Garcia Queipo de Llano, El catolicismo mundial y la guerra de España, Madrid, BAC, 1992.
72. Pius XI, Address to Spanish refugees of 14 September 1936, in IP, vol. V (1958), La pace internazionale, p. 223.
73. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Reflexões em torno da Revolução Hespanhola”, O Legionário, no. 224, 27 December 1936.
74. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “A margem dos factos”, O Legionário, no. 187, 22 December 1935.
75. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “A liberdade da Igreja no dia de amanhã”, O Legionário, no. 549, 14 February 1943.
76. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Comunismo”, O Legionário, no. 552, 7 March 1943.
77. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Pela grandeza e libertade da Ação Católica”, O Legionário, no. 331, 13 January 1939.
78. Plinio Salgado (1895-1975), after being fascinated in his youth by historical materialism and by the Bismarck model, in the 1920s he participated in the “aesthetic revolution” of modernism, making a name for himself as a novelist and man of letters with Nationalist leanings. Elected congressman of the State of São Paulo in 1928, in 1930 he supported the candidacy of Julio Prestes against Getúlio Vargas. After having distributed a Manifesto da Legião Revolucionária (1931), he founded, at the beginning of 1932, the Sociedade de Estudos Políticos (SEP) and in October of the same year the Brazilian “integralist movement” (AIB) of which he was “national head” until its dissolution, by Vargas, on 2 December 1937. Exiled in Portugal from 1939 to 1945, upon his return to Brazil he entered political life, without ever reaching the important role that he would have desired. the term Salgado by Paulo Brandi, Leda Soares, in DHBB, vol. IV, pp. 3051-61. On integralism cf. also Helgio Trindade, Integralismo. O fascismo brasileiro na década de 30, 2nd edn., São Paulo, Difel, 1979; ID., La tentative fasciste au Brésil dans les années trente, Paris, Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1988; ID., term Integralismo, in DHBB, vol. II, pp. 1621-8.
79. H. Trindade, term Integralismo, p. 1624.
80. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “E porque não o Catolicismo?”, O Legionário, no. 189, 19 January 1936; ID., “A margem de uma crítica”, O Legionário, no. 153, 2 September 1934. “Different from the liberal State, the integralist State ‘affirms the spirit’. Nevertheless, it does not dare to break all at once with the worst of liberal presuppositions that is official agnosticism” (ibid). Cf. also “Três rumos…”, O Legionário, no. 157, 28 October 1934; “Extremismos”, O Legionário, no. 160, 9 December 1934.
81. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Na expectativa”, O Legionário, no. 206, 23 August 1936.
82. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, E porque não o Catolicismo?
83. Pius XI, Encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno of 29 June 1931 in Giordani, Le encicliche sociali dei Papi, quote, pp. 353-74. Cf. also Pietro Scoppola, La Chiesa e il fascismo. Documenti e interpretazioni, (Bari, Laterza, 1971), pp. 264-70; Gianni Vannoni, Massoneria, Fascismo e Chiesa cattolica, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1979.
84. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Mussolini”, O Legionário, no. 241, 25 April 1937; “Mussolini e o nazismo”, O Legionário, no. 296, 15 May 1938.
85. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Mussolini”. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira’s distinction between the doctrine and practice of Fascism seems to me to have a certain analogy with that of the historian Renzo De Felice between “Fascism as regime” and “Fascism as a movement”. “Fascism as a regime made the concordat with the Church, but fascism as a movement was anticlerical, and put itself against the most profound values of Christianity.” (R. De Felice, Fascism. An informal introduction to its theory and practice, edited by Michael A. Ledeen, (New Brunswick (N.J.), Transaction, 1976), p. 105. Also be De Felice, cf. the monumental biography of Mussolini, especially the volumes devoted to Mussolini il Duce (Turin, Einaudi, 1974-6). And, in English, Interpretations of fascism, translated by Brenda Huff Everett, London, Harvard University Press, 1977.
86. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Mussolini”.
87. On the Lateran Pacts cf. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Fides Intrepida”, O Legionário, no. 50, 12 January 1930; Date a Cesare, no. 52 (9 February 1930); “No X.° anniversario do tratado de Latrão”, O Legionário, no. 335, 12 February 1939. “Fascism was a very bad regime. The Lateran Treaty brought about invaluable results for the Church and for Italy” (P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “A Questão romana”, O Legionário, no. 603, 27 February 1944.
88. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “A Itália em via de ser nazificada?”, O Legionário, no. 306, 24 July 1938; “Para onde caminha o fascismo?”, O Legionário, no. 308, 7 August 1938; “Ainda o fascismo”, no. 330, 8 January 1939.
89. On 27 January 1939 Count Rodolfo Crespi died in São Paulo. He desired to be buried in a black shirt and he left 500,000 cruzeiros to Mussolini.
90. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “O exemplo dos russos brancos”, O Legionário, no. 322, 22 January 1939.
91. Jean-Louis Loubet del Bayle, Les non-conformistes des années ‘30, Paris, Editions du Seuil, Cf. also R. Rémond, Les catholiques dans la France des années 30, Paris, Editions Cana, 1979.
92. Bernard George, Brasillach, (Paris, Editions Universitaires, 1968), pp. 99-100.
93. Cf. F. Furet, Le passé d’une illusion, pp. 189-364.