They say the flu is a São Paulo affliction. More precisely, a São Paulo City affliction, especially at the height of winter. Still not completely over it, I feel motivated to resume my contributions to Folha de S. Paulo. I do so by venting my feelings about the controversy among Bishops Sigaud, Casaldáliga, and Tomás Balduino.
Personally, I am out of the dispute. However, this does not take away my right to say a word about the course it is taking.
It is true that no one has the right to interfere when three people argue on the street in a normal tone of voice. But if they start shouting, what they say becomes public knowledge and is thus subject to public judgment. For nothing can prevent a man from forming his own opinion about what has been brought to his attention and from commenting on it with his neighbor.
As an outsider, a mere passerby, I cannot help but comment on the latest developments in this controversy that has drawn so much interest throughout Brazil.
With that in mind, I will now address the topic.
One of the country’s most widely circulated daily newspapers, Jornal do Brasil, published three full pages of the report—transcribed here in its entirety by O Estado de São Paulo—where Archbishop Sigaud argues in support of his accusation that the bishops of São Félix do Araguaia and Goiás Velho are communists.
I’ve already taken a position on the merits of this matter in a previous article, so I need not revisit it.
For today, I will limit myself to emphasizing that even the most ardent defenders of those two bishops cannot deny that Bishop Sigaud’s document has genuine merit. It presents serious arguments grounded in impressive facts, linked by vigorous reasoning, and developed with meticulous clarity and correctness.
Consequently, if I disagreed with the reasoning of the Archbishop of Diamantina, I would feel obliged to respond in kind. That is, I would seek to contest the facts and syllogisms he presented with equal seriousness and rigor.
If I felt unable to respond appropriately, I would remain silent.
Indeed, vel taceas vel meliora dic silentio — “be silent or say things more interesting than silence” – was the classic golden rule. I cannot forget reading it inscribed on artistic ceramics next to the threshold of the house of my late friend Monsignor Castro Nery. It comes back to my mind on certain occasions, such as this one. To respond summarily, lightly, with gratuitous and even absurd statements to a well-thought-out and well-formulated argument is to fall short, saying things far inferior to what even the most feigned silence would say.
It was precisely this norm, so dear to Msgr. Castro Nery, that numerous Brazilian bishops violated with disconcerting abandon when they spoke to the press about Archbishop Sigaud’s report.
I have on my desk newspaper clippings that the TFP Documentation Service provided to me on this subject.
For example, Cardinal Vicente Scherer, Archbishop of Porto Alegre, and Most Rev. Afonso Niehues, Archbishop of Florianópolis, in justifying their disagreement with Bishop Sigaud that Casaldáliga and Tomás Balduino were not communists, argued that it is unbelievable that a bishop could be a communist.
That’s all. Yet any Catechism student knows that, individually, a bishop can fall into heresy and, therefore, be a communist. Moreover, any person moderately informed about Church history knows of numerous cases—I insist: “numerous”—of bishops who have fallen into heresy over the centuries. Why couldn’t the same have happened to some bishop in Brazil in the 1970s? Do the two authors of these “refutations” of Bishop Sigaud really expect anyone to be convinced by them?
Other bishops, including Cardinal Aloisio Lorscheider, Archbishop of Fortaleza and CNBB President; Ivo Lorscheiter, Bishop of Santa Maria and CNB Secretary General; José Maria Pires, Archbishop of João Pessoa; João Batista da Motta e Albuquerque, Archbishop of Vitória; José Brandão de Castro, Bishop of Propriá; Quirino Adolfo Schmitz, Bishop of Teófilo Otoni; Jaime Luís Coelho, Bishop of Maringá; Frederico Didonet, Bishop of Rio Grande; Moacyr Grechi, Bishop of Acre-Purus; Alano Pena, Auxiliary Bishop of Marabá; and Lelis Lara, Auxiliary Bishop of Itabira, reacted differently. I don’t know whether with even more distaste or less. Maybe it depends on each reader’s taste.
I don’t have enough space to transcribe their statements individually. In general, they limited themselves to saying that Bishop Casaldáliga and Bishop Tomás Balduino are not communists, simply because they aren’t.
I repeat: the controversy has descended to this level: “The two bishops are not communists because I say so.”
Most Revs. Aloisio Lorscheider, José Maria Pires, and Frederico Didonet added a slight variation: The two bishops in question should not be considered communists because Lorscheider, Pires, and Didonet know them personally and are certain they are not.
Therefore, what Bishops Tomás Balduino and Casaldáliga would have said in private conversations with Bishops Lorscheider, Pires, and Didonet would suffice to overturn all of Archbishop Sigaud’s serious, even impressive, arguments.
What audience in the world could such arguments persuade?
I make this comment regardless of my personal opinion of the merits of the case. I would do so even if I were convinced of the innocence of the two bishops accused by Archbishop Sigaud, because in this case, innocence could not be more poorly served.
My comment—or rather, my lament—is simply a response to the devastating cultural gap evident in certain ranks of our episcopate.
In fact, none of this is news to me. Months ago, when I published my study, The Church Facing the Escalating Communist Threat, which contained many criticisms of members of the episcopate (including Bishop Casaldáliga), I was the target of five episcopal pronouncements issued by 20 bishops. Their entire argument boiled down to stamping their feet and saying, “No, no, no!”
For some members of our religious world, debating ideas, analyzing attitudes and situations, and clarifying public opinion in 1977 Brazil seem to have been reduced to this. At least according to the habits of the Catholic left, or of personalities who, without saying they are affiliated with it, simply do not tolerate any criticism of it.
