by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
This is a “sui generis” article. It is not a dissertation on a single theme in the classical mold but a confetti of information on various facts, each accompanied by a “minimum” of commentary.
The common thread running through the entire article is that either the facts or the commentary have not been reported domestically. Almost all of these facts concern communist China. Preceding these news items from so far away are two comments on news from home. Widely reported, to be sure, but crying out for a quick gloss.
-
The unexpected result of the French elections – so different from what public opinion polls had predicted – showed the world that people’s genuine aspirations are often misrepresented or presented in a biased way.
In fact, we don’t need to look far to see this for ourselves.
June 1977: The Brazilian Congress is about to vote on a divorce bill. Some people in Catholic circles talk about calling a referendum, hoping the people will reject this catastrophic measure. A rumor soon spreads: above all, do not mention a referendum, because the defeat of indissolubility is likely and would bring even greater discredit to the Church.
As for the public, they watch the debates with apathy.
Finally, divorce legislation is approved. In the House’s overcrowded galleries, there is an uproar of applause for Senator N. Carneiro, who, on the surface, is largely responsible for the result. General comment: The people really wanted a divorce bill.
The law has been enacted. Everywhere, registry offices are preparing to handle a flood of divorce applications expected soon.
In reality, the number of requests is minimal, and there is widespread disappointment in the pro-divorce camp.
People’s apathy was just… apathy. That inexplicable apathy with which people today “absorb” what they want and what they don’t.
But the low divorce rate shows that people did not want the reform sought by the senator from Bahia. Only “the people”? For the most part, even dissatisfied and poorly constituted couples, tormented by the marital bond (as many had imagined), did not want divorce. This means more than the plebiscite that so many feared.
We are on the eve of the Brazilian episcopate’s meeting in Itaici. Since pro-divorce senators and representatives have claimed the will of the people as their main argument for abolishing the marital bond, the episcopate now has a formidable weapon to ask Congress to revoke the measure, because the primary reason presented by divorce advocates does not exist.
Will the CNBB do so? Or, as at previous meetings, will it place all the emphasis on promoting class struggle?
-
I have been meaning to comment for some time on the strong, healthy lesson in common sense that our public owes to “Joãozinho Trinta” of the Beija-Flor Samba School, a three-time Rio de Janeiro Carnival champion.
Accused of squandering money in the last carnival contest, Joãozinho Trinta retaliated with a pithy phrase I read in Folha de São Paulo’s columns: “People like luxury. Intellectuals like misery.”
That’s exactly right. The people rejoice in all the pomp and circumstance. They have a sense of the marvelous. Only a certain demagogic mindset leads many intellectuals to rail against luxury, believing it will please the people.
For example, how wrong is the “miserabilist” movement, which, allegedly to make the Church popular, diminished religious pomp after the Council and thereby caused it to fade?
If only the proponents of this trend had Joãozinho Trinta’s common sense!
-
Let us move on to China, which, according to some media, is a sleepy, indolent lake stagnating under communist tyranny.
How wrong this impression is! Here is a somewhat belated piece of news from the Free China Review (Taiwan, May 1977) that remains fresh in Brazil. The magazine reports that, according to Taiwan’s premier, Chiang Ching-Kuo, 183 anticommunist organizations of various kinds operate in mainland China. In 1976, they carried out 1,866 uprisings and acts of sabotage.
These are the tragic death throes of a great nation in revolt. Brazilian public opinion must be aware of these throes.
-
The same issue of Free China Review cites information from Fr. Angelo Lazzarotto to the Italian newspaper L’Avvenire, reporting that in Red China, six Catholic bishops are imprisoned and three others are under house arrest.
Does the reader think the Vatican is unaware of this fact? Obviously not. So why does it remain silent on the matter?
-
The news published by the US Catholic weekly The Wanderer (on September 1, 1977), deserves our full attention:
Chinese Bishop Joseph Cheng Tien-siang of Kaoshiung declared in Memphis, USA, that “there are far fewer human rights for the people today in Communist China than in Russia and other countries dominated by communism. … The Church is totally and radically destroyed on the Chinese mainland today.”
According to some priests and laypeople who have fled the country, “priests are killed or imprisoned or forced into labor camps.” “But many remain in hiding and celebrate Mass clandestinely.”
The bishop does not know how many of the three million Chinese Catholics who existed before the communist revolution still practice their faith today.
The Chinese bishop concluded, saying, “They [the communists] left a church open in Beijing… to deceive tourists who are allowed to go there.”
-
Despite the Hong Kong authorities’ policy of returning fugitives from mainland China, an average of ten to fifteen fugitives from communism still arrive in the British colony each day, according to Washington Post columnist Jay Matheus.