Lightning, Fireflies, Silence – Folha de S. Paulo, December 29, 1979
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
The sky was so dark, so unbearably heavy, that no one on earth could fathom how the clouds refrained from unleashing a universal storm. The meteorological crisis seemed mysteriously smothered. This stable instability had endured so long that, in the conscious and the subconscious alike, a strange impression began to form: that the atmosphere, exhausted by endless centuries of upheavals and laden with pollution, had finally lost the strength—or the will—to change.
Suddenly, lightning tore across the sky, echoing from one horizon to the other. On earth, a few spectators—those not submerged in the general drowsiness—waited for the consequences. In the murky lethargy that weighed on all souls and all things, a lone firefly traced a brief, wandering arc through the air. Nothing else stirred. No second lightning bolt broke from the clouds. No bird, frog, or serpent moved upon the earth. Not yet.
This, then, is how I try to convey what I felt when I saw the publication of the letter from Most Rev. Luciano Duarte, Archbishop of Aracaju and Vice President of CELAM—the highest body of the Latin American episcopate—to Most Rev. Ivo Lorscheiter, Bishop of Santa Maria and President of the CNBB, the highest body of the Brazilian episcopate. It was a bolt from the blue in the polluted, leaden sky of Brazilian religious life. Days later, a statement signed by Most Rev. Luciano Mendes de Almeida, auxiliary bishop of São Paulo and CNBB secretary general, ‘flashed’ across the press (why did Bishop Lorscheiter not sign it?). It was a brief text, narrow in scope and uncertain in direction. And then everything fell silent. Will it remain so? For how long?
In this uncertainty, I cannot help but share my thoughts.
According to Fr. Antonio Vieira, the most difficult word to say is “no.” Conversely, the most gratifying word is “yes.” I like to say yes. I miss saying yes, agreeing, and applauding. For this reason, when I read the letter from the Archbishop of Aracaju, I felt compelled to call or write him to say “yes” and express my solidarity. This, despite an essential passage in his letter that left me somewhat perplexed on the doctrinal level. Now, if I am pleased to say “yes,” I am delighted to do so to a member of the holy Hierarchy.
But common sense kept me silent. I know Bishop Luciano Duarte only by name; does he even know mine? Would he favor what I have been saying and doing in this poisoned climate? I have no answers. Would he welcome my congratulations, or would they fall into a void? I cannot tell. In such moments, silence is not merely prudent — it is golden.
Not always, however. There are moments when speaking is an act of courage and silence is cowardice. The heavy quiet into which everything seems to have sunk again could suggest that I, too, have yielded to the prevailing lethargy—or worse, that I am calculating, waiting for the winds to shift. But the general lethargy has not touched me. I fear no one but God, and opportunism has never been my trade. Therefore, I speak.
All this came to mind as I read the statement with which Bishop Luciano of São Paulo attempted to answer Archbishop Luciano of Aracaju. His text leaves matters in such a state that, if the situation was already perplexing before the letter from the vice-president of CELAM, it will become more inscrutable than the Sphinx of Giza, should everything remain unchanged after the CNBB secretary-general’s vague explanation. If this silence persists, it will oblige John Paul II, as he honors Brazil with his visit, to offer a public and solemn clarification. Without such a word, we Brazilian Catholics will be left in a night so deep, so mephitic, so lethal that I can scarcely imagine anything darker—save, perhaps, the last night of history before the end of the world.
Am I exaggerating? Let us consider the facts.
The Church’s great hope for the twenty-first century is Latin America—those vast expanses of peoples, lands, and resources stretching from northern Mexico to the glacial reaches of Patagonia. Everything there is Catholic, at least in name and aspiration. And just as the twentieth century belonged to the United States and the nineteenth to colonial Europe, the twenty-first will be ours.
In 1979, the new pope sets foot on this “psychocontinent.” He meets the representatives of the episcopates of the twenty-two Latin American nations and, amid greetings and gestures of affection, delivers a grave warning: liberation theology has become a cancer lodged in the very bowels of Ibero-American Catholicism. Like every cancer, it gradually spreads its metastases.
The new school even contests the divinity of Jesus Christ and spreads subversion even among the clergy. It inculcates, as much as possible, a pastoral approach that tends to secularize the Church’s action and pushes into the background what should be in the foreground: catechesis, the moral formation of the Christian people, the distribution of the sacraments, in short, the salvation of souls. In the foreground is the class struggle that Marxists desire. The Pontiff recommends that the bishops take action. Then some events take place:
a) On February 1, 1979, John Paul II returns to Rome. The bishops, gathered in Puebla, draft a collective document and submit it to the Pontiff. They then close their meeting on February 13.
b) From March 27 to 31, authorized representatives of the bishops meet in Los Teques, Venezuela, to review the text returned by Rome. The text includes certain modifications. CELAM naturally accepts the amended text.
c) The CNBB is tasked with disseminating the text from Rome in an impeccable vernacular translation. Three publishers are responsible for this dissemination, but they are free to precede the text approved by the Pontiff with whatever comments they deem appropriate.
d) Two of the publishers’ comments appended to the book interpret (and critique) the text in a way that again plays the liberation theology game John Paul II rebuked. These editions circulate in Brazil for six months, and no one moves. The sleepy, polluted atmosphere weighs heavily on Brazil more than ever.
