The Vatican Ostpolitik had numerous critics all over the world, beginning with those who should have been its beneficiaries and who rather stated that they were its victims: the Christians of Eastern Europe. The most significant demonstration of public dissent in the Catholic field was however, without a doubt, the historical declaration of resistance published in 1974 in 21 daily papers of various countries by the TFPs then in existence in Europe and in the world. The author and first signatory of the historical declaration was Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira.
In 1972 “détente” had received an extraordinary impulse from Nixon’s journeys to China and Russia.78 The aim of the policy developed by the American president and his secretary of state Kissinger at world level was identical to the policy that Willy Brandt, the German Socialist Chancellor, was developing at the European level: the idea of a “convergence” between the Western and Communist blocs. The sole result of this policy of collaboration, based on the privileged axis Washington-Moscow, was to postpone for twenty years, thanks to economic aid, the inevitable crumbling of the Communist empire, while Soviet aggressiveness continued to increase in proportion to the assistance received from the West.
In the ecclesiastical field, Archbishop Agostino Casaroli,79 “minister of Foreign Affairs” of Paul VI, followed a policy of entente with Communism similar to that of Brandt and Kissinger. One of the most illustrious victims of Vatican Ostpolitik was Cardinal Mindszenty, primate of Hungary and hero of the anti-Communist resistance who, in 1974, was removed by Paul VI from the archdiocese of Esztergom and exiled to Rome, to facilitate the approaches between the Holy See and the Hungarian Communist government.80
“In view of the general devastation” wrote Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira “Cardinal Mindszenty has risen as the great non-conformist, the author of the great international case, of an unbreakable refusal that saves the honour of the Church and of the human race. By his example — with the prestige of his roman purple intact on the robust shoulders of a courageous and abnegated shepherd — he showed Catholics that it is not licit for them to go along with the multitudes than bend their knee to Belial.”81
A few days later, on 10 April 1974 an extensive declaration of the Brazilian TFP appeared as an advertisement in the Folha de S. Paulo entitled The Vatican policy of détente towards the Communist governments. For the TFP: to withdraw? or to resist?.
That same year, on the occasion of a journey to Cuba, Archbishop Casaroli had affirmed that “the Catholics who live in Cuba are happy under the Socialist regime” and that “the Catholics and, in general, the Cuban people, haven’t the least difficulty with the Socialist government”.82 This episode is recalled in the declaration of the TFP next to others that are no less significant: the journey to Russia in 1971 of Mgr Willebrands, president of the Secretariat for the Union of Christians, to meet the “Orthodox” bishop Pimen, a man trusted by the Kremlin; and the support of Cardinal Silva Henríquez, archbishop of Santiago of Chile, for the Marxist leader Salvador Allende.
Faced with these facts, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, in the name of the TFP, wrote with respectful, but, at the same time, very strong language:
“The Vatican policy of détente toward the Communist governments creates a situation which affects anti-Communist Catholics deeply, but much less, however, as anti- Communists than as Catholics. For at any moment a supremely embarrassing objection may be put to them: Does not their anti-Communist action lead to a result that is precisely opposed to the one intended by the Vicar of Christ? And how can one consider a Catholic to be consistent if he moves in an opposite direction from the Pastor of Pastors? This question leads all anti-Communist Catholics to a consideration of these alternatives: To cease the struggle? Or to explain their position?
“To cease the fight, we cannot. And we cannot cease it because of a duty of our conscience as Catholics. For if it is a duty of every Catholic to promote good and fight evil, our conscience imposes on us the responsibility of propagating the traditional doctrine of the Church, and of fighting Communist doctrine. (…)
“The Church is not, the Church never was, the Church will never be such a prison for consciences. The bond of obedience to the successor of Peter, which we will never break, which we love to the depth of our soul, to which we give the best of our love, this bond we kiss at the very moment at which, triturated by sorrow, we affirm our position. And kneeling, gazing with veneration at the figure of His Holiness Paul VI, we express to him our fidelity.
“In this filial act we say to the Pastor of Pastors: Our soul is yours, our life is yours. Order us to do whatever you wish. Only do not order us to stay idle in face of the assailing red wolf. To this, our conscience is opposed.”83
The obedience of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, imposed on us by the catechism and by our very faith, is not unconditional; it certainly has limits, as all theologians affirm. The Dizionario di Teologia Morale edited by Cardinals Roberti and Palazzini explains as an example:
“It is clear that it is never lawful to obey a Superior who commands something that is contrary to divine or ecclesiastical laws; in that case the words of St Peter should be repeated: we must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29).”84
This legitimate “disobedience” of an order unjust in itself in matters of faith and morals can be extended, in particular cases, even as far as public resistance to the ecclesiastical authorities. Arnaldo V. Xavier da Silveira, in a study dedicated to the Résistance publique à des décisions de l’autorité ecclésiastique,85 proved it well, offering examples of saints, doctors of the Church and illustrious theologians and canonists that demonstrate how — in the case of “imminent danger for the faith”86 (St Thomas Aquinas) or of “the aggression of souls”87 (St Robert Bellarmine) in the doctrinal field — it is legitimate for the faithful to exercise a right of even public resistance to the ecclesiastical authorities.
Hence the lawfulness of a position of “resistance”: “This resistance is not separation, it is not revolt, it is not harshness, it is not irreverence. On the contrary, it is fidelity, it is union, it is love, it is submission.”88 Referring to the position of St Paul towards St Peter when St Paul “resisted him to his face”,89 Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira wrote: “In the sense in which St Paul resisted, our state is one of resistance”.90 This position of resistance was expressed publicly by all the Associations for the Defence of Tradition, Family and Property, and sister associations then in existence in America and Europe.
Twenty years after the Council, the Instruction on some aspects of “liberation theology”, of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,91 which defined Marxism as “a shame of our time”, seemed to prove the validity of the position of “resistance” to the Ostpolitik of the TFP and of the anti-Communist Catholics of the whole world.92
Notes:
78. According to Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, “it can be said without exaggeration that, from the time of the Bolchevization of Russia, Communism had not had a victory comparable” to that granted it by the détente: “even the catastrophic concessions of Roosevelt at Yalta were not equal in harmfulness to the deepest results of the ‘collapse of the ideological barriers’ brought about by the Nixon-Kissinger team”. “A crise louca”, Folha de S. Paulo, 18 August 1974.
79. Born near Piacenza in 1914, Agostino Casaroli was ordained to the priesthood in 1937 and in 1940 entered the service of the Secretariat of State, where he spent his entire ecclesiastical career. In 1963 he received from John XXIII the order to go to Budapest and to Prague to explore the possibilities of re-establishing contacts with those governments. This was the beginning of a long series of journeys in the Eastern Communist countries that led him to effect, especially under Paul VI, the Vatican policy known as Ostpolitik. In 1979, John Paul II nominated him cardinal, prefect of the Council for the Public Affairs of the State and his Secretary of State, a position he occupied until 1 December 1990. Cf. Alleste Santini, Casaroli, l’uomo del dialogo, Cinisello Balsamo, Edizioni São Paulo, 1993.
80. Of Cardinal József Mindszenty le Erinnerungen, Frankfurt,Ullstein and Berlin, Propyläen, 1974. When on 5 February 1974, the news of his removal was made public, Cardinal Mindszenty issued a communiqué in which he declared that he had never renounced his role of archbishop nor his dignity of Primate of Hungary, stressing that “the decision had been taken solely by the Holy See” (ibid, p. 372).
81. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Ao grande criador do caso imenso”, Folha de S. Paulo, 31 March 1974. Cf. also ID., “La gloria, la alegria, la honra”, Folha de S. Paulo, 10 February 1974; “Ternuras que arrancarian lágrimas”, Folha de S. Paulo, 13 October 1974; “Conforme queira Budapest”, Folha de S. Paulo, 20 October 1974.
82. Cf. “O Estado de S. Paulo”, 7 April 1974. During the journey, that took place between 27 March and 5 April 1974 at the invitation of the Cuban episcopate, Archbishop Casaroli had talks with members of the government and with Fidel Castro. The next year he was in the German Democratic Republic and from 30 July to 1 August 1975 he participated, as special delegate of Paul VI, in the Conference on “security” of Helsinki, signing the final act in the name of the Holy See.
83. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “The Vatican Policy of Distension Toward the Communist Governments”, Crusade for a Christian Civilization (New York), Vol. 4, no. 3, September 1974. The document was published in full, Catolicismo, no. 280, April 1974, and in 36 Brazilian newspapers and then copied in 73 more between newspapers and magazines of eleven countries, without receiving the slightest objection concerning its orthodoxy and its canonical correctness.
84. D. Gregorio Manise O.S.B., entry Obbedienza, in DTM, p. 1115.
85. Arnaldo Vidigal Xavier da Silveira, La nouvelle Messe de Paul VI: qu’en penser?, (Chiré-en-Montreuil, Diffusion de la Pensée Française, 1975), pp. 319-34.
86. According to St Thomas Aquinas, there exists a right to publicly resist, in given circumstances, a decision of the Roman Pontiff. In this regard the Angelic doctor states: “if the faith were endangered, a subject ought to rebuke his prelate even publicly. Hence Paul, who was Peter’s subject, rebuked him in public, on account of the imminent danger of scandal concerning faith, and, as the gloss of Augustine says on Gal 2:11, ‘Peter gave an example to superiors, that if at any time they should happen to stray from the straight path they should not disdain to be reproved by their subjects.’”. Summa Theologica, II-II, 33, 4, 2.
87. Another great theologian, the Jesuit cardinal St Robert Bellarmine, champion of the rights of the Papacy in its struggle against Protestantism, affirms: “just as it is lawful to resist the Pontiff who attacks the body, so it is also lawful to resist him who attacks souls, or who disturbs civil order, or, above all, he who should attempt to destroy the Church. I say it is lawful to resist him by not doing what he orders and preventing the implementation of his will; it is not however lawful to judge him, punish him and depose him because these acts belong to a superior”, De Romano Pontefice, II, 29.
88. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “The Vatican policy of distension”.
89. Gal. 2:11.
90. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “The Vatican policy of distension”.
91. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Instruction Libertatis nuntius.
92. The declaration was greeted by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira as “the jet of cold and benevolent water of a firemen’s hose. (…) For those who felt distressed in face of this spectacle, for the moment tragic but which can soon become apocalyptic — commented Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira — to see that a body such as the Holy Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declare, in black and white, the incompatibility of Catholic Doctrine with Marxism is like for someone who is inside a fire to feel unexpectedly the jet of cold and benevolent water from a fireman’s hose. And I who, as the president of the national council of the Brazilian TFP, was the first to sign the mentioned declaration of resistance to the Vatican Ostpolitik, have in justice to demonstrate, at this moment, the joy, gratitude and above all the hope that I feel from within the fire at the arrival of this relief. I know that there are brothers in the faith outside the ranks of the TFP, especially outside Brazil, who abstain from demonstrating similar sentiments, mainly because they think that just one hose is insufficient to quench the fire. I too think that one hose will not quench a fire. But this does not prevent me from greeting it as a benefit. All the more because I do not have proofs of the fact we will remain with only this hose. Was the instruction of Cardinal Ratzinger not unexpected? Does not one unexpected step invite us to expect others in the same direction, they too more or less unexpected?”, P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Un primo ostacolo agli errori diffusi dalla ‘teologia della liberazione’ “, Cristianità, 117, January 1985.