From the Pages of the Press to Those of History – II, Folha de S. Paulo, August 20, 1968

by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

Shortly thereafter, a new letter to Cardinal Rossi arrived, signed by 40 archbishops and bishops. This third document is a summary that addresses most of the factors contributing to the immense unrest prevailing in the nation’s religious circles. With a dignity and prudence that even the most passionate opponents cannot deny, this document denounces the authoritarianism of a minority of bishops and their respective technicians, imposing solutions a majority of the CNBB does not want, their silence in the face of the rising tide of modern immorality, and the infiltration of heterodox ideas and subversive tendencies.

Those who have eyes to see can clearly perceive that the 40 valiant prelates are not alone, and that their pronouncement has caused undisguised joy among large sections of the episcopate and clergy.

One more progressive mirage has been shattered. The Church in Brazil is not, as imagined, a huge ship passively steered to the left by the leftist minority’s small but dynamic tugboat.

It has become clear that the progressive movement does not enjoy the overwhelming popularity its advocates boasted of, neither among the country’s masses nor the clergy and hierarchy.

This has spared the country an immense drama of conscience. “I don’t understand anything anymore,” “I’m going crazy,” were expressions heard everywhere in response to religious innovations far beyond the line of the Second Vatican Council, or to scandalous events such as that of a Congregation of Religious that allowed its nuns to be photographed in shorts and very revealing swimsuits by a widely circulated magazine. Or even Boletim Telepax, published under CNBB auspices, which, in its issue no. 125, carried this statement by Fr. Guido Logger, director of the Catholic Cinema Center: “I accept profanity in the theater, nudity in the cinema, and bedroom scenes when this makes sense within the work, a necessity for internal dramaturgy or the psychological characterization of the character or situation. There is a healthy, clean eroticism in theater and cinema. Eros is part of human life and must appear where you portray man; otherwise, the image of man, contemporary or not, would not be complete. It would be false and less convincing.”

What so many good people “did not understand” or could not conceive was that the entire Church had changed its position on moral principles that, until then, it had proclaimed as eternal. With the courageous stance taken by the 40, the crisis has been averted. There are pillars to lean on. There are teachers whose immortal light continues to shine, which darkness cannot circumscribe.

Several television debates, including those of Bishop Sigaud in Rio and Minister Passarinho with the Archbishop of João Pessoa in São Paulo, stand out. They achieved what was still missing in making the public aware of Catholic leftism’s true face and its weaknesses.

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The 40 bishops saved Brazil from a political and social catastrophe and a crisis of conscience. If leftist tendencies had prevailed at the CNBB meeting and if, on the other hand, as proposed there, the Episcopate had opted for Mr. Celso Furtado’s political-economic line against that of the Superior School of War Studies, we would have headed toward a dramatic conflict between the Armed Forces and the Church. This conflict would have been absurd since, given their respective missions, everything invites them to mutual harmony and cooperation. But since one absurdity can lead to many others, in the event of such a crisis, countless Brazilians would have suffered a Pavlovian reflex: good Catholics could not approve of any violence against the hierarchy; and good patriots could not applaud the country’s shift to the left or support the Church’s intervention in an area that extends far beyond the considerations proper to the spiritual power. This conflict would have transformed Brazil into a huge and dramatic South American Vietnam.

However, led by the benevolent 40 to a majority vote, the CNBB refused to move toward socialism and judiciously avoided taking a position on an issue largely outside its field of action. Once again, the weakness of progressivism has been laid bare, and Brazil was spared an immense catastrophe.

These memorable events must be clearly and coherently exposed in the press so they may reach the pages of history.