Harshly or Cordially, as You Wish – Folha de S. Paulo, June 13, 1971

by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

To my knowledge, a whole week has gone by without anyone disagreeing with the core assertion of my last article. However, this assertion will likely upset many people about issues of transcendental importance, such as the so-called Catholic progressivism. Therefore, I am revisiting the topic to clarify its meaning.

In doing so, I encourage anyone interested in the topic to join a wide-ranging discussion.

* * *

I start by concentrating on the tangible part of the issue.

Progressives—especially the large and highly influential group involved in secretive organizations like the “prophetic groups” and the “IDOC”—view three phases in the history of the Church. The persecution phase runs from its start until the time of Constantine. After the Emperor granted freedom of worship to Catholics in 313, Catholicism quickly became the Empire’s official religion. According to progressives, the second phase, beginning with Constantine, lasted until the pontificate of John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council. Then, the third phase started, marked by a democratized, evolved, and secularized Church, with no clear end in sight.

Again, according to progressives, the Church would have had its own characteristics in each of these stages.

Initially, the Church was an obscure, despised, and persecuted community of believers. It was truly a poor Church, entirely focused on helping the impoverished and detached from worldly possessions. Free from pretensions to academia or desires for power, it formed a spiritual and mystical unity, almost without rigid dogmas, and with immature and unclear legal structures. It was a conciliatory Church, approachable, adaptable to different times, places, and situations, guided by the movements of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the faithful.

In the second phase, Constantine flooded the Church with wealth and power. An oligarchy of theologians, philosophers, and canonists took control of it and transformed it into a queen ruling over all Christian nations. It became like a fortress surrounded by a wall of ever-growing dogmas and a shell of defined legal structures and strict laws. Its popes assumed the airs of monarchs, its bishops of princes, and its priests of well-established nobles or bourgeoisie. Its churches shone like palaces. The poor? The Church still cared for them, inspiring countless acts of charity and encouraging the rich and powerful to act justly and charitably toward the helpless and weak. But it did this without itself being poor. It kept the common people in submission, rather than inspiring them to fight for redemption against the powerful. In short, it did not lead the world toward an ideally just society based on human dignity—a society without inequalities, limitations, or classes—toward which humanity naturally tends.

This Church was supposedly a follower and imitator of the feudal lords in the Middle Ages, of absolute kings in the “Ancien Régime,” and of the bourgeoisie after the French Revolution.

John XXIII, Paul VI, and the Second Vatican Council then ended the Constantinian era and restored the Church to its original and authentic face, clearly adapted to the present day. Therefore, it became a Church with flexible legal structures and the most adaptable doctrinal boundaries imaginable. A proletarianized Church for the proletarianized days ahead. A Church as secular and profane as possible for today’s desacralized man. An “understanding” Church toward today’s erotic excess. In short, a Church guided by man rather than guiding him.

In short, after slandering the Church of the past, progressives seek to distort the current Church by transforming it into a populist spiritual republic modeled after Yugoslavia.

Anyone familiar with Protestantism will quickly recognize Protestant influences throughout this presentation of progressive doctrine: free examination, opposition to the papacy and the entire hierarchy, liberalism, naturalism, a tendency toward desacralization, criticism of the Church’s wealth and power, and complicity with impurity, among others. Alongside these Protestant elements, there are also communist aspects, including proletarianization, a classless society, and class struggle.

I do not aim to point out what is false here. I want to emphasize that the task of “de-Constantinization” of the Catholic Church represents a major religious revolution with profound consequences across almost all areas of culture, civilization, and life. It is also crucial to recognize that this revolution faces a significant challenge along its course.

In fact, claiming that the Constantinian era deeply disfigured the Church and caused a continuous process of religious distortion over its 1,600-year history is a serious charge against the hierarchy since popes, bishops, and clergy were the main forces behind this growing deviation. So, where is the Church’s infallibility? And if we accept that she is not infallible, what remains of her?

The only way for progressives—if they want to keep up the appearance of being Catholic—is to accept that the Church is infallible only in the documents of the extraordinary magisterium. This happens when a pope or Council clearly states that they are teaching an infallible truth. Since such dogmas are rare, all the teachings of the popes and bishops before John XXIII and Paul VI can be easily questioned because the Church did not commit its infallibility to them. Therefore, progressives can simply dismiss them as wrong, outdated, or anything else. This paves the way for “de-Constantinization” and also for “Protestantization” and “Communistization.”

So, everything is settled, they think…

* * *

Conversely, their paths are blocked, and nothing is settled. As my clear-minded and cultured friend Arnaldo Vidigal Xavier da Silveira demonstrated (cf. Catolicismo, October 1967), truths shared without a dogmatic nature in common teaching documents by a long and continuous line of popes automatically acquire a dogmatic nature. Thus, there is a whole wall of indestructible doctrines also outside the documents of the Church’s extraordinary magisterium. And not only doctrines but laws, insofar as these are necessarily deduced from doctrines.

The Church envisioned by progressives, as I just described, isn’t the Church entering a new phase. It is simply an anti-Church.

As a result, all the benefits communists seek from the Church disappear.

* * *

Since this is a key point in the widespread controversy raised by progressivists, I ask if there isn’t even one of them willing to contest the solid and unshakeable thesis Mr. Arnado Vidigal Xavier da Silveira has upheld.

If that happens, we’re here, ready for conversation, whether tough or friendly, as you prefer.

Or would progressives prefer to remain silent and admit that the principle Mr. Arnaldo Xavier da Silveira so aptly highlighted is true?