In January 1951, Bishop Antônio de Castro Mayer founded, in Campos, the cultural monthly Catolicismo. The editorial group was co-ordinated by José Carlos Castilho de Andrade, former secretary of the editorial staff of the Legionário. Old contributors of the combative magazine were also Fernando Furquim de Almeida, who edited the section devoted to the history of the Church; Adolpho Lindenberg, author of the comments on international economy and politics; José de Azeredo Santos, who looked after philosophy and sociology in the column “Nova et Vetera”. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira opened the first issue of Catolicismo with an unsigned article destined to become the manifesto of the Catholic Counter-Revolution.116 Underlining the meaning of the feast of Christ the King, he wrote:
“A heavenly King above all. But a King whose government is already exercised in this world. A King who by right possesses the supreme and full authority. The King makes laws, commands and judges. His sovereignty becomes effective when his subjects recognize his rights, and obey his laws. Jesus Christ has rights over us all: He made laws, he governs the world and will judge men. It is our responsibility to make the kingdom of Christ effective by obeying its laws. This kingdom is an individual fact, if it is considered in regards to the obedience every loyal soul gives to Our Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, the kingdom of Christ is exercised over souls; and therefore the soul of each one of us is a part of the territory under the jurisdiction of Christ the King. The kingdom of Christ will be a social fact if human societies obey him. It can therefore be said that the kingdom of Christ becomes effective on earth, in its individual and social sense, when men in the intimate of their souls and in their actions conform to the law of Christ and societies do so in their institutions, laws, customs, cultural and artistic aspects.”117
Between 1951 and 1959, with comprehensive essays in Catolicismo, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira cast the doctrinal foundations of what was to be his masterpiece: Revolution and Counter-Revolution. His view of the social sovereignty of Christ is antithetical to the Maritainian view which was gaining ground at the time and which the Brazilian thinker continued to make the object of much criticism. Originally, the intellectual contribution of Dr Plinio, apart from his editorials, was also expressed in a column entitled “Ambiences, customs, civilizations”, where, through the analysis of pictures, photographs, drawings, fashions, he emphasized the values of Christian civilization and the process of dissolution that had struck at them by showing aspects that until then had been scarcely or never considered by the Counter-Revolutionary writers.118
Meanwhile Catolicismo began to extend its battle against Catholic Progressivism well beyond the confines of the diocese of Campos. The new magazine differed from the Legionário in a fundamental point: The latter was just a newspaper; the new publication began to become the organ of a movement.
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira and his collaborators had begun to travel to various countries of South America and Europe to make contact with the Catholic and Anti-Communist circles of the whole world. We can only imagine Dr Plinio’s emotion when in Rome for the first time, in the summer of 1950, on the occasion of the Jubilee. In the eternal City, he saw Father Castro e Costa, his old professor at the São Luiz School; he was welcomed with affection by the now Cardinal Aloisi Masella; he frequented the best Roman aristocratic society; finally he was received by the Holy Father and by Archbishop Giovanni Battista Montini, Substitute Secretary of State. During the audience, turning to him and to Bishop de Castro Mayer who was with him, Archbishop Montini said: “Professor, I want you to know that the letter I wrote you was not out of mere politeness. Each word was attentively weighed. I have the pleasure of declaring this here in the presence of Bishop Mayer.”119 He returned to Rome, and to Europe during the summer of 1952. On that occasion, he was invited to lunch by Otto von Hapsburg, in his house at Clairfontaine in France.120 The son of two extraordinary parents such as the Emperor Karl and his wife Zita, the young Otto was a prince of great charm and intelligence, who failed to comply with the hopes of many Counter-Revolutionaries by subordinating the Catholic commitment to his political career, that culminated in his election to the European Parliament.121
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira was united by a great affinity of thought to prince Pedro Henrique of Orléans-Braganza, head of the Brazilian Imperial House.122 Every time he came to São Paulo, Dom Pedro Henrique went to visit the “group of Catolicismo” always accompanied by one of his sons. Two of them, Dom Luiz, the eldest, and Dom Bertrand, joined the circle of the disciples of Dr Plinio. Because of their names so laden with historical memory, and their piety and exemplary lives, they would distinguish themselves among the prominent members of Catolicismo and, later, of the TFP.
From 1953, the Catolicismo group began to promote “study weeks” for friends and propagandists of the newspaper. These managed to gather hundreds of young people from various states of Brazil. That same year saw the appearance of an important pastoral letter, dedicated to the Problems of the modern apostolate,123 prepared by Bishop de Castro Mayer with Dr Plinio’s collaboration. It was one of the first texts of formation for young people who identified themselves with the newspaper’s way of thinking.
In January 1954, São Paulo celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of its foundation. It had become a city of 2,700,000 inhabitants expanding at a dizzy rate. On 25 January, the archbishop Carlos Carmelo Vasconcellos Mota inaugurated the new cathedral that had been begun forty years previously by Archbishop Leopoldo e Silva, in the Praça da Sé. In August of that year, the president, Getúlio Vargas, committed suicide. After the provisional presidency of João Café Filho, he was succeeded by Juscelino Kubitschek, the “presidente bossa nova” who promised to achieve “50 years in 5”.124 Catolicismo tried to dissipate that atmosphere of superficial optimism, denouncing the growing influence of Communism in Brazil and in the world, as well as the increase of immorality, which the world epidemic of “Rock and Roll” appeared to be the most obvious symptom.125 While underlining the limits of liberal Anti-communism126 Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira continued to indicate Catholicism as being the only solution to the problems of the present time. At Christmas 1955, he wrote:
“What is Catolicismo? What is its place in the House of God? By answering this question, we will have found our own place next to Jesus. Our task is principally one of myrrh. A journal written for militant and practising Catholics… we want them to be very salty salt, a light placed on the mountain top and very bright. Lord, this is how we collaborate. This is the Christmas present we gather during the whole year to offer Thee. Others will give Thee the incense of their innumerable works, capable of an inappreciable good. We fit into this great work by abundantly burning, in this beloved Brazil, the austere, but odiferous myrrh of the ‘yes, yes; no, no’.”127
In 1958, with the death of Pius XII an era came to an end. Catolicismo however did not deviate from the line of absolute loyalty to Catholic tradition that had formerly been that of the Legionário.
“Our ‘leit-motiv’ should be that there is no salvation outside the Church for the temporal order of the West. We should desire a civilization that is totally, absolutely, minutely Roman, Catholic and Apostolic. The demise of intermediary political, social or cultural ideals is patent. One cannot stop along the way back to God. To stop is to retreat, to stop is to play the hand of confusion. We desire only one thing: complete Catholicism”.128
The great goal that Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira had indicated in the first issue of the magazine brightened the horizon of the approaching years.
“And this is our purpose, our great ideal. We advance toward the Catholic civilization that may arise from the ruins of today’s world, as the civilization of the Middle Ages was born from the ruins of the Roman world. We advance to the conquest of this ideal with the courage, the same perseverance, the same will to face and overcome all obstacles with which the Crusaders marched toward Jerusalem. For, if our forebears were capable of dying to reconquer the Sepulchre of Christ, how could we — sons of the Church as they — not want to struggle and die to restore something that is infinitely more valuable than the most precious Sepulchre of the Saviour, that is, His Reign over the souls and societies He created and saved that they may love Him eternally?”129
Notes:
116. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “A cruzada do século XX”, vol. 78, Catolicismo, no. 1, January 1951.
117. Ibid.
118. A complete collection of “Ambientes, Costumes e Civilizações”, containing 185 articles, was published in São Paulo in 1982 by the Artpress Papéis e Artes Gráficas.
119. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, … “E sobre ti está edificada a Igreja”, Catolicismo, no. 151, July 1963.
120. Cf. J. S. Clá Dias, Dona Lucilia, vol. II, p. 52.
121. An outline of his political view in Otto de Habsbourg-Lorraine, L’idée impériale. Histoire et avenir d’un ordre supranationale, with a Preface by Pierre Chaunu, Nancy, Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1989. To the archduke Otto, who in his book criticizes “the longstanding alliance between throne and altar” (p. 218) and denies the existence of an Islamic threat for Europe (pp. 207-09), the ideas of “Christianity” and “Revolution”, typical of the counter-revolutionary vision, are essentially foreign.
122. His Imperial and Royal Highness Pedro Henrique of Orléans-Braganza (1908-81), married to the Princess Mary Elizabeth of Bavaria, had twelve children. The first, Prince Luiz, born on 6 June 1938, is the current head of the Imperial House of Brazil and the legitimate dynastic heir to the rights of the Crown; he is followed in order of succession by Prince Bertrand, born in 1941, and Prince Antonio, born in 1950. The latter is married to Princess Christine de Ligne, by whom he has had four children, heirs in their turn to the Brazilian throne: Prince Pedro Luiz (1983), Prince Rafael (1986), Princess Amélia (1984) and Princess Maria Gabriela (1989). Cf. A. A. dos Santos, Quém é quém na Família Imperial, in Parlamentarismo sim!, São Paulo, Artpress, 1992, p. 259. “Considering the sombre and threatening panorama in which the country finds itself — Armando Alexandre dos Santos writes (…), Prince Luiz does not only represent the nostalgias of a glorious remote past, about which serious historians today unanimously agree, but he is also the depository of better days yet to come” (A Legitimidade monárquica no Brasil, p. 38).
123. Cf. Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer, Carta pastoral sobre problemas do apostolado moderno, contendo um catecismo de verdades oportunas que se opoêm a erros contemporaneos, Campos, Bôa Imprensa Ltda., 1953.
124. Maria Helma Simões Paes, A década de 60., 2nd edn., (São Paulo, Editora Atica, 1993), p. 31. On Juscelino Kubitschek (1902-76), president from 1956 to 1961, Cf. the entry for Silvia Pantoja and Dora Flaksman in DHBB, vol. II, pp. 1698-717. Cf. also Juscelino Kubitschek, Meu caminho para Brasilia: cinquenta anos em cinco, Rio de Janeiro, Bloch Editores, 1978; Edgar Carone, A quarta República, São Paulo, Difel, 1980. Brasília, the new capital, begun in 1955, was inaugurated by Kubitschek and his deputy João Goulart, on 21 April 1960. With them was Archbishop Hélder Câmara who praised it as a “dream come true”. J. Kubitschek, Por que construi Brasília, (Rio de Janeiro, Bloch Editores, 1975), pp. 284-5.
125. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Primeiro marco do ressurgimento contra-revolucionário”, Catolicismo, no. 86, February 1958.
126. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “O anti-comunismo e o reino de Maria”, Catolicismo, no. 62, February 1956, pp. 1-2; ID., “Covadonga, monumento de uma epopeía negativista? “, Catolicismo, no. 66, June 1956, pp. 1-2.
127. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Apparuit benignitas et humanitas salvatoris nostri Dei”, Catolicismo, no. 60, December 1955.
128. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “A grande experiença de 10 anos de luta”, O Legionário, no. 666, 13 May 1945, then Catolicismo, no. 173, May 1965.
129. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “A cruzada do século XX”.