Revolution and Counter-revolution offers first of all a view of our age that can be assumed in a word that is today dramatically topical: crisis.46
“The many crises shaking the world today — those of the State, family, economy, culture, and so on — are but multiple aspects of a single fundamental crisis whose field of action is man himself. In other words, these crises have their root in the most profound problems of the soul, from whence they spread to the whole personality of present-day man and all his activities.”47
Thus it is man who is at the centre of Dr Plinio’s work; man, the rational creature composed of body and soul who is today in the throes of a profound crisis.
For all the multiplicity of the factors of this crisis, it still preserves five essential characteristics:
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It is universal, in as much as there is no people who is not affected by it, to a greater or lesser extent.
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It is one, in the sense that there is not a series of autonomous crises that have no connection with one another, but a same crisis today affects the whole of what was once
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It is total, because it takes place in a whole series of problems so profound as to spread to all the forces of the soul and to all the fields of action of man.
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It is dominant, because it is like a queen who controls forces and events that are apparently chaotic.
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It is a process, that is, a long system of causes and effects, born in the deepest areas of the Western soul and culture, that, from the fifteenth century to our days, have been producing progressive convulsions.
Notes:
46. “During our time — John Paul II affirmed in Santo Domingo on 12 October 1992 — a cultural crisis of unexpected proportions is observed. Certainly today’s cultural foundation offers a good number of positive values, many of them the fruit of evangelization; but at the same time, it has eliminated fundamental religious values and introduced deceptive conceptions, that are not acceptable from a Christian point of view” (John Paul II, Speech Nueva Evangelización, Promoción humana, Cultura cristiana. “Jesucristo ayer, hoy y siempre” of 12 October 1992, in suppl. to “L’Osservatore Romano” no. 238 of 14 October 1992, IV, pp. 21-22).
47. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, p. 9.