If it is true, as Cardinal Ratzinger affirms, that “a theology and philosophy of history are born above all during periods of crisis of the history of man”,7 it can be understood how Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira’s uninterrupted reflection on his own era is in proportion to the size and depth of the contemporary crisis.
This reflection, like every Christian theology of history, takes shape according to two historical dimensions: one natural, founded on the freedom of man; the other supernatural, based on the intervention of Providence in human facts. “In truth, from the Catholic point of view” observes Donoso Cortés “there is only one general reason for all human facts, and this is divine Providence.”8
For Christianity, history is not only magistra vitae, but historia salutis, sacred, universal history, that embraces the future of all mankind.9 It is “sacred”, because its author is God himself and its centre is Jesus Christ and his Mystical Body, the Holy Catholic Church, in a course of events that begins with Creation and concludes with the Judgement at the end of time.
The first great Christian theology of history was, as Leo XIII affirms, the Augustinian theology:
“First of all Augustine, the great doctor of the Church, conceived and perfected the philosophy of history. Those who came after him, worthy of being remembered in this branch of studies, took Augustine as their author and their teacher.”10
In this perspective, the history of mankind appears as a struggle between the City of Satan and the City of God, described in the De Civitate Dei: “two societies have issued from two kinds of love. Worldly society has flowered from a selfish love which dares to despise even God, whereas the communion of saints is rooted in a love of God that is ready to trample on self.”11 The love of God and the love of oneself are also for Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira the poles that offer the ultimate cue for reading historical events.
“In other words, either the world converts and faithfully reproduces the Augustinian vision of the ‘civitas Dei’, where each nation takes the love of God to the point of renouncing everything that harms other nations; or otherwise the world will be that city of the devil where everyone takes love of self to the point of forgetting about God.”12
The theology of history of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, before having its ideal reference point in the Augustinian vision of the two cities, was however concretely experienced in the practice of the Ignatian meditation on the two standards, “one of Christ, our supreme leader and lord, the other of Lucifer, the deadly enemy of our human nature”.13
“St. Ignatius was right” he wrote “to expect great fruit from his meditation on the two standards. Since the panorama of the world was crystal clear, it was as good as a page of apologetics.”14
This theological vision of Dr Plinio is born of and can especially be related to the famous and not less profound work Treatise on the true devotion to the Blessed Virgin written by a great saint of the eighteenth century St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort.15
Commenting on the words of Genesis quoted in the Treatise:
“I will put enmities between you and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush your head, and you will lie in wait for her heel”, St Louis Marie de Montfort teaches: “God only ever made or formed one enmity, but one that is irreconcilable, and that will last, indeed will increase until the end of time: that between Mary, his worthy Mother and the devil; between the children and servants of the Holy Virgin, and the children and followers of Lucifer”.16
For Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, as for St Louis Marie de Montfort the antithesis between these two spiritual families is destined to unrelentlessly divide mankind until the end of history. This war is none other than the historical extension of the opposition between the Virgin and the serpent, between the spiritual descendants of Mary and the spiritual descendants of the devil.
“The suppression of this struggle for an ecumenical reconciliation between the Virgin and the serpent, between the line of the Virgin and the line of the serpent” comments Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira “leads to the regression (or rather the retrogression) to the proud tower of Babel, that Neo-Paganism tries in every way to rebuild.”17
For St Louis de Montfort, as for St Ignatius and St Augustine, it is a case of moral and not ontological dualism, according to which history cannot be explained without the action of evil, which with “infernal strategy, uses every means and commits all its forces to destroying the faith, morals, the Kingdom of God”.18 God in fact “judged it better and more in accord with His power to bring some greater good even out of evil than to permit no evil whatsoever”.19 It is against this background, according to Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, that “the struggle between the Church and the Revolution, a struggle that would be mortal if one of the contenders were not immortal”,20 is situated.
Notes:
7. J. Ratzinger, La théologie de l’histoire de saint Bonaventure, Fr. tr. (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1988), p. 1.
8. J. Donoso Cortés, Estudios sobre la Historia, in Obras, vol. II, p. 234. “Prorsus divina Providentia regna — St Augustine had written — constituuntur humana”, St Augustine De Civitate Dei, book V, chap. 1, no. 1.
9. On Christian theology of history, always authoritative is the great sketch by Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Discours sur l’histoire universelle, Paris, Flammarion, 1966 (1681); cf. also C. Fabro C.P.S., La storiografia nel pensiero cristiano, in GAF, vol. V, 1954, pp. 311-40; R.-T. Calmel O.P., Théologie de l’histoire, Paris, Dominique Martin Morin, 1984 (1966).
10. Leo XIII, Letter Saepenumero considerantes of 18 August 1883.
11. St Augustine De Civitate Dei, book XIV, chap. 28. On the Augustinian concept of the two cities, cf. Mgr Antonino Romeo, L’antitesi delle due Città spirituali di sant’Agostino, in Sanctus Augustinus Vitae Spiritualis Magister, (Rome, Analecta Augustiniana, 1959), vol. I, pp. 113-46; Michele F. Sciacca, Interpretazione del concetto di storia in S. Agostino, Tolentino, Edizioni Agostiniane, 1960.
12. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Um remédio que agravará o mal”, O Legionário, no. 491, 8 February 1942.
13. St Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, nos. 136-8.
14. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “3° Acto? “, O Legionário, no. 419, 22 September 1940.
15. St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, A treatise on the true devotion to the Blessed Virgin (1712), London, Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1937. This work, composed in 1712, remained hand-written and buried “in the darkness and silence of a trunk” for over a century, as its author had foreseen. Found in 1842, it had a widespread distribution, with over 300 editions in about thirty languages. In England it was translated and spread by Fr. Frederick William Faber of the Oratory, in 1862.
16. St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, A treatise on the true devotion, no. 52.
17. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Volta à Torre de Babel? “, Folha de S. Paulo, 12 August 1980.
18. Pius XII, Radiomessage Bendito seja o Senhor, of 13 May 1946, in DR, vol. VIII, p. 89.
19. St Augustine De Civitate Dei, book XXII, chap. 1, no. 2.
20. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, p. 167.
21. Among the numerous biographies of St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, the best remain the Cf. especially P.-J. Picot de Clorivière, La vie de M. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, Paris- St.Malo-Rennes 1785. The main works of the Saint are: The Love of Eternal Wisdom (1703-04), Letters (1694-1716), Hymns (1700-16), True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin and The Secret of Mary (1712), The Secret of the Rosary (1712), Prayer for Missionaries (1713), Letter to the Friends of the Cross (1714), Original Rule of the Daughters of Wisdom (1715), now collected in God alone. The Collected Writings of St. Louis Marie de Montfort, New York, Montfort Publications, 1987. The Daughters of Hope, the Missionaries of the Company of Mary, the Brothers of Christian Education of St Gabriel refer to Montfort as their founder or spiritual inspirer. On 8 June 1981 the superiors general of these religious families addressed an appeal to John Paul II that St Louis Marie de Montfort be declared a ‘Doctor of the Church’ “considering his great holiness, the importance of his doctrine, the remarkable influence that he continues to exercise over the universal Church” (Personal letter to the Holy Father).
22. Marco Tangheroni, Introduction to St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, Il segreto ammirabile del Santo Rosario, It. tr. (Siena, Edizioni Cantagalli, 1975), pp. 7-8.
23. P. Hazard, The European mind.