In September 1970 the Marxist Salvador Allende rose to power in Chile, thanks also to the collaboration and complicity of the Christian Democrats and large sectors of the clergy. What was happening in Chile had a meaning that extended well beyond the boundaries of that country and was to constitute a precedent of world importance. Since 1967 a young leader of the Brazilian TFP, Fabio Vidigal Xavier da Silveira (1935-71), in a book dedicated to Frei the Chilian Kerensky,62 had denounced the role played by the leader of the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei,63 and by his followers, in the Communization of Chile. On the same theme a series of important articles by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira appeared in the Folha de S. Paulo and, in 1973, a manifesto of the Chilean TFP was published. It developed a central idea: Communism would not have come to power in Chile if Catholic public opinion had not been ideologically intoxicated and confused.
In 1977, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira had the summary of a book of the Chilean TFP prepared. This book denounced the collaboration of a large part of the Chilean episcopate and clergy with the Marxist experiment of Salvador Allende. The first part of the study, published under the title The Church in face of the rise of the communist threat. An Appeal to the Silent Bishops,64 written by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, analyzed the positions taken by the Brazilian ecclesiastical hierarchy in favour of Communism. The work of the Brazilian thinker showed how Communist infiltration of Catholic circles had begun forty years previously. Symptoms of the drama of the situation were the scandalously pro-Communist poems of Pedro Casaldáliga, bishop of São Felix de Araguaia. The book concluded with a passionate appeal to the “silent bishops”, that they abandon their reserve and speak out. “In the hands of the Silent Ones” wrote Corrêa de Oliveira “God gave all the means to still remedy the situation: they are numerous, and hold well-placed and prestigious positions.”65
Silence was once again the only eloquent answer!66
Towards the end of the 1970s the political atmosphere in Brazil changed profoundly following the gradual liberalization of the regime, the so-called Abertura Politica.67 The process began under the government of President Ernesto Geisel and was completed under that of General João Batista Figuereido. In this phase the Catholic left renewed its attempt to conquer the society under the leadership of new personages, among whom figured the cardinal-archbishop of São Paulo, Paulo Evaristo Arns68 and the cardinal-archbishop of Fortaleza, Aloísio Lorscheider.69
Notes:
62. Fabio Vidigal Xavier da Silveira, Frei o Kerensky Chileno, São Paulo, Editora Vera Cruz, 1967.
63. Eduardo Frei (1914-82), disciple in Paris of Maritain, tried to put into practice the Christian Democrat political utopia through a “Revolution in freedom” which had one of its main supports in “Land reform”. Pierre Letamendia, Eduardo Frei, Paris, Beauchesne, 1989; Fabio V. da Silveira, Frei o Kerensky Chileno.
64. Cf. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, A Igreja ante a escalada da ameaça comunista. Apelo aos Bispos Silenciosos, São Paulo, Editora Vera Cruz, 1976. Published in June 1976, the book had four editions totalling 51 thousand copies.
65. Ibid, p. 86.
66. During the same period, the contributor to O Estado de S. Paulo in Rome, the Italian journalist Rocco Morabito, made known in an article that: “it was possible to find, on tables in the Vatican, some copies of the book by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira”. O Estado de S. Paulo, 8 April 1977.
67. President Geisel revoked the Institutional Act 5 (Al-5) which he himself had promulgated, which guaranteed control of Parliament by the military. He abolished the death penalty and censorship on radio and television and permitted the return of some political exiles. A clear analysis of the factors that influenced the process of Abertura Politica was presented by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira in Sou católico: posso ser contra a Reforma Agraria?, pp. 47-55. President Figuereido subsequently proclaimed an amnesty for political crimes and promulgated a law on the reorganization of the parties.
68. Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, a Franciscan, was nominated by Paul VI archbishop of São Paulo on 22 October 1970 and cardinal on 2 February 1973. In May of the same year he sold the Episcopal palace of São Paulo, moving to the area of Sumaré. From the beginning of his episcopate he made “Land reform” and the campaign for human rights his banner. He considered the legalization of the Brazilian Communist Party “inevitable” and promoted the creation of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) which united the exponents of left-wing trade unionism. He always supported the most progressivist theologians of Brazil and of Latin America. After the publication on 30 October 1975 of the Declaração de Itaicí, an Episcopal document with an open Communist tendency, the TFP had a message published in the press, Não se iluda, Eminência, in which Professor Corrêa de Oliveira thus addressed the archbishop of São Paulo: “However, do not fool yourself, Eminence. The people continue to fill the churches and to frequent the sacraments. (…) Attitudes like those of the signatories of the Itaicí document open up an increasingly larger gap. This gap is not between Religion and the people, but, rather, between the Paulista Episcopate and the people. The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, exactly in the measure in which it omits fighting communist subversion, isolates itself from the national context”. Catolicismo, nn. 299-300, November- December 1975.
69. Bishop Aloísio Lorscheider, a Franciscan, was secretary general (1968-71) and president (1971-9) of the Nominated by Paul VI as archbishop of Fortaleza (1973) and cardinal (1976), from 1975 he was both president of CELAM and the CNBB.