Part IV
The Brazilians: Bishop Geraldo de Proença Sigaud and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer
Bishop Geraldo de Proença Sigaud
Note from our PCOI website: We have only used a few excerpts from this publication. To read the full text, click here.
The two Brazilian (and only non-European) members of the five-man steering committee of Coetus Intertionalis Patrum – the group of doctrinally conservative Council Fathers who sought to save what could be saved at Vatican II – were similar men in both their cursus and in their theological and political outlooks on the eve of Vatican II. Their responses to Rome’s letter soliciting their vota (wishes and suggestions) for Pope John XXIII’s ecumenical council mostly overlap. These were Archbishop Geraldo de Proença Sigaud of Diamantina and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer of Campos. While the latter became better known after the Council for being the only Latin-rite bishop not to implement Pope Paul VI’s order of the Mass in his diocese, the former did accepted Paul VI’s liturgy and implemented it in his archdiocese.
Both men obtained their doctorates in theology from the Gregorian in Rome (Castro Mayer in 1927, Proença Sigaud in 1932) and taught at the Major Seminary in São Paolo at the same time from 1932 (where Castro Mayer had been teaching for five years) until the mid-1940s.
While professors at the Major seminary they contributed, from 1934 on, to O Legionario, a periodical founded and edited by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira (1908–1995), a writer and politician of the Brazilian Catholic anti-Communist Right. (…)
In 1943, Corrêa de Oliveira published a book to decry the influence of progressivism in Brazilian Catholic Action; he blamed it on the influence of French theologian and political philosopher Jacques Maritain. This was In Defense of Catholic Action (Em Defesa da Ação Católica, Ave Maria, 1943), a publication event that caused a fracas in Brazilian Catholic circles, where Jacques Maritain was popular. Castro Mayer and Proença Sigaud publicly defended their friend’s book at the cost of their seminary positions: in February 1945, Castro Mayer, who had granted the book’s imprimatur, was reassigned as vicar of a small rural parish (although he was given a position as lecturer at the Catholic University of São Paolo) and Proença Sigaud was packed off to Spain the next year, in March of 1946.
These exiles were not to last: Cardinal Benedetto Aloisi Masella (apostolic nuncio to Brazil, 1927–February 1946, who had written the preface to Corrêa de Oliveira’s Defense of Catholic Action) intervened to have Proença Sigaud recalled to Brazil in the summer of 1946 and named bishop of Jacarezinho on October 29 (he was consecrated on May 1, 1947, and made archbishop of Diamantina on December 20, 1960); the same cardinal caused Castro Mayer to be named coadjutor bishop of Campos in 1948; he became its bishop on January 3, 1949. In 1951, Castro Mayer founded the monthly Catolicismo, with Corrêa de Oliveira as its editor-in-chief; this review regularly published Castro Mayer’s pastoral letters.
Both bishops, then, were men of deep integrity and conviction, even to the point of exile for their ideals and friendships. They were also in positions of stability and power after the intervention of a Roman Cardinal to elevate them within the hierarchy of Brazil. Roughly a dozen years into their episcopates, they received their copy of the letter that Cardinal Tardini, Secretary of State and the man whom Pope John XXIII had put in charge of the Antepreparatory Commission for Vatican II, had sent out on June 18, 1959 to the bishops of the world to solicit their vota (wishes) for the upcoming Council.
These vota closely reflect the preoccupations of the Brazilian Catholic Right that the bishops had matured in. Unsurprisingly from men with such similar trajectories and outlooks, their responses to Tardini’s letter overlap a great deal. Since Castro Mayer’s contribution was the shorter and less organized of the two, we shall first follow the order of vota that his confrere Proença Sigaud presented in his response, after which we will show to what extent Bishop Castro Meyer’s vota overlapped and completed them. This will put us in a position to assess the Brazilians’ recommendations for the Council.
A. The Vota of Bishop De Proença Sigaud
In his cover letter, Bishop De Proença Sigaud indicated that he did not intend to broach dogmatic or juridical questions, as he surmised that his confreres in the global episcopacy would do so anyway. No: he intended to turn only to “certain practical and fundamental issues for the future of the Church.”
He organized his vota in a structured outline:
I. “Our Enemy” (Freemasonry, Communism, International Judaism, the Revolution);
II. “The Catholic Struggle Against this Enemy” (principles and the Syllabus of Pius IX);
III. “The Trojan-Horse Strategy” (doctrine of the lesser evil, the spirit of accommodation with non-Catholics, cooperation with non-Catholics, good faith, vehicles of corruption, books);
IV. “Internal Difficulties” (stagnation of scholasticism, pedagogical naturalism);
V. “Counter-Revolutionary Struggle” (principles, rebuilding a Catholic society, attacking Communism, socialism, State interference in life);
VI. “Epilogue.
Let us review these, following Proença Sigaud’s outline.
Before entering into the meat of his presentation, Proença Sigaud lays down his overarching concern: that the principles of the revolutionary spirit had been taking over the clergy and the Christian people. The trouble was that the broad mass of clergy were too blind or apathetic to resist the spread of the Revolution, some of them were openly or covertly committed to the Revolution, while those who did resist it were persecuted and called “Integrists.” The rot had spread even to Roman seminaries, which produced “Maritainians,” “disciples of Teilhard de Chardin,” “Catholic Socialists,” and “Evolutionists.” These were the men who were being promoted as bishops; too few of those who knew the actual score (presumably Proença Sigaud himself and his confrere Casto Mayer) were ever elevated to the episcopate.
The Church needed to organize “a systematic fight against the Revolution” on a global scale).[7] He summarized his program as follows:
In my humble opinion, if the Council wishes to produce salutary effects, it must in the first place consider the current state of the Church. She is, in the likeness of Christ, in a new Good Friday, handed over defenseless to her enemies. . . . We need to see the fight to the death that is being waged against the Church in all fields; we need to get to know the enemy (“hostem cognoscere”); we need to work out the strategy and tactics of his battle; we need to see clearly his logic, his psychology, and his dynamics, so that we may securely interpret each of this war’s skirmishes, organize war against it, and securely wage it.
I. The Enemy: Revolution
For Proença Sigaud, this enemy had been at work against the Church for six centuries: it had been seeking to replace the Kingdom of God with that of Man. Its goal:
To build up the whole order of human life, Society, and Humanity without God, without the Church, without Christ, without Revelation, upon Human Reason alone, upon Sensuality, Cupidity, and Pride. For this, it must overturn, destroy, replace the Church root and branch.
The enemy was confident of his victory; Catholics remained blind to the danger. (…)
Proença Sigaud had no dearth of material with which to condemn Freemasonry: he cited Clement XII (1730–40) and his Bull In eminenti apostolatus specula (April 28,1738), which condemned and prohibited Freemasonry and called for the secular arm to punish its members. Yet the Braziliam prelate bemoaned the silence of the Church since the last pope to condemn the lodges explicitly was Leo XIII:
Since Leo XIII, no further Encyclical on this Sect. In the Universities and Seminaries, what is taught about it? In Sociology, what is said about this most grave question? In the world-wide and national government of the Church, this problem is always ignored: there is a sort of truce (tregua). In priestly studies and further education sessions, there is not a word of the program, method, and system of the whole masonic sociology, of its ends, of its spirit, of its means, of its tactics and strategy.
In the bishop’s view Communism had the same goal as Freemasonry: “a socialist, rationalist, Godless and Christless society.” The difference was in the social class to which it appealed: Masons were “Bourgeois” while the Communists turned to the “Proletarians.”
How was the Church to react to such a danger? Naturally, the way of hatred is out of the question:
Should this lead to hatred? No! But to vigilance, clarity, a systematic and methodical fight to opposed the systematic and methodical fight of this ‘Enemy Man’ [Mt 10:36] whose secret weapon is the ‘Leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy’ [Lc 12:1].
At this point in his presentation, Bishop Proença Sigaud took a step back to consider the broader sweep of history. He outlined the trajectory of the Revolution from the end of the Middle Ages to twentieth-century Communism, going through the Renaissance, the so-called Reformation, the French Revolution, the Risorgimento and its attack on the Papal States, the seizure of monastic property by various modern States, and Modernism. The strength of this revolutionary process was that it was directed by a central government, a tool of Satan, and rested upon human passions, particularly Sensuality and Pride:
These disordered and forceful passions are scientifically directed towards a precise end, and are subject to the iron discipline of the leaders for the thorough destruction of the City of God and the erection of the City of Man. They accept Totalitarian tyranny itself, and they tolerate poverty for this purpose: that the Order of the Anti-Christ may arise.
Clearly, Bishop Proença Sigaud felt he was sounding an alarm bell. But how was the Church to respond to this well-organized attack from the Revolution as directed by International Judaism through its two main instruments, Freemasonry and Communism? In the next section, he made concrete proposals, including the publication of an updated Syllabus.
II. Organizing the Counterrevolutionary Fight
While condemning perverse doctrines was a necessary first step, Bp Proença Sigaud saw that it was not sufficient. There had to be an “organized fight” against both the errors themselves and those who promoted them; modern means of communication ought to make this fight easier.
In the first place, there ought to be a new Syllabus. While the original as promulgated on December 8, 1864 by Pius IX was as relevant as ever, it ought to be fleshed out with errors that had arisen since his time. It ought also to be expanded with the “practical organization” of the fight against error and its promoters both within and without the Church.[17] As it was, partisans of precisely the errors that Pius IX’s original Syllabus had condemned were being promoted even as those who combatted those errors were sidelined in the Church. This was particularly alarming in the case of seminaries:
In the Seminaries there are instructors who spread errors and are filled with love for the Revolution. Priests who remain neutral in this fight are promoted. Those who fight in a detailed and clear manner against the Revolution are kept away from such positions; they often endure persecution and are silenced. Pastors do not keep the wolves away from their flocks, and they prevent the sheepdogs from barking. I’ve already come across such a monstrosity as “I am a Maritainian priest”; “I am a Maritainian bishop.”
The errors that Bishop Proença Sigaud recommended for condemnation in this updated Syllabus were the following: the errors of Socialism; the errors of Marc Sangnier of Le Sillon;[19] Jacques Maritain’s whole social heresy; the idol of Christian Democracy; the errors of “Liturgism” (“Liturgicismus”); the errors of “the priesthood of the Laity” in Catholic Action; errors on obedience and on religious vows; the errors of Communism on property; those of universal pantheistic evolutionism.
III. The Trojan Horse in the Church
Under this heading, Bishop Proença Sigaud presented the ways in which all these errors found their way into the Church. The first of these was the pernicious doctrine of the “lesser evil,” which was often invoked to break down resistance on the part of Churchmen:
In this struggle, it plays the role of the famous horse in the Trojan war. Catholic doctrine teaches: if one is unable to avoid an evil, one may allow a lesser evil to avoid the greater one, so long as one does not positively commit the evil. In practice, Catholic resistance often caves under this pretext.
What he meant is that some Catholics considered the Revolution as a small evil that did not justify any kind of fight against it, while others thought that such fight would cause more harm than good to the Church. This let them, under the cover of apostolic charity and acumen, to allow for evil without a struggle. Proença Sigaud recalled that a lesser evil remained an evil, as the separation of Church and State, and the legalization of divorce, plainly showed.
The next “Trojan Horse” in the Church, or as he called it “the second secret gate through which the enemy has stolen into the Catholic citadel,” was the spirit of accommodation towards non-Catholics. The future Council should therefore repeat that no such accommodation was permissible at the level of principles, and that even when the principles remained intact, any accommodation with the world tended to be pernicious for the Catholic cause merely because of the scandal it might provoke. He added that the irritation felt by the enemy at this lack of accommodation was not in itself bad and might even turn out to be of great benefit: “Without a painful conflagration there is no war, and no victory is won.” For this reason, and the dangers involved in prolonged collaboration with non-Catholics, he concluded that “from such intercourse the non-Catholics derive little benefit, and the Catholics lose much.”
In all things, vigilance was of the essence, especially within the ranks of the Church. While Proença Sigaud granted that in times of peace one might generally assume the good faith of people and entrust important functions to them according to the principle that “none is evil unless proven to be such,” under the current circumstances of “a city under siege, no one is suited to guarding danger spots unless his fidelity has been proven: ‘none is good for it unless proven to be such.’”
At this point, Proença Sigaud listed the instruments of corruption. (…)
IV. Difficulties within the Church
Under this heading, Bishop de Proença Sigaud pointed out couple of weaknesses within the Church that left her vulnerable to the Revolution: the stagnation of Scholasticism and pedagogical naturalism. (…)
What was needed was a new vigor in Catholic thinking.
First, useless and false schools of thought should be condemned. (…)
Second, Catholics needed to relearn the art of disputation, i.e., discussion on the quaestiones disputatae. Of course, charity should reign in such disputations, and if conducted properly, such debate will help foster the love of truth among the people.
In “pedagogical naturalism,” Bishop Proença Sigaud was principally deploring the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s theories in Catholic education. In this respect, the Bishop insisted on two points: that the innocence of children with respect to sexuality ought to be preserved, even as they ought to be taught the proper principles in the matter; and that the concupiscence of children ought not to be abandoned to its appetites on the grounds of avoiding inflicting “complexes” on them.
V. How to Fight the Revolution
This would involve specific doctrines and the Church’s approach to them. In practical terms, Bishop Proença Sigaud proposed that the Church take a page from the Communists’ playbook. Just as International Communism had a centralized leadership that assessed what accorded with its goals and publicized the tactical value of things in terms of their promotion or delay of the Revolution, so too ought the Church to devise a “Catholic strategy and a center of the methodic counterrevolutionary fight in the whole world, to which Catholics are to be summoned. Then there would be the hope of a dawn of a truly better world.” From an organizational point of view, it made sense for the Holy See to direct this offensive with the assistance of a “Capitol” (“Capitolium”) of proven counter-Revolutionary clerics and laymen. Just as there was a science of Revolution, so too must there be a “science of the counter-revolutionary war.”
Nor was such a counter-Revolution to be a mere reform of defects: it must amount to “something like a new creation.” The Holy See had the means to stop the Revolution and inaugurate the reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the salvation of souls.
Naturally, in this way of seeing things, there could be no cooperation between the Church and Communism, as there is between them an “essential, radical, perpetual, total opposition.” He saw this opposition in spiritual terms going back to St. John’s Apocalypse:
Communism is the son of the Synagogue. Until the conversion of the Jewish people, the Jewish Synagogue will be the “Synagogue of Satan” [Apoc 2:9; 3:9]. And Communism will be the Communism of Satan. It is the work and the prefiguration of the Antichrist.
The appeal of Communism, its secret weapon as it were, was twofold: its hatred of Christ and its promise of a socialist utopia, an earthly Paradise. Here he gave his exegesis of the French Republic’s motto: “Without God: liberté. Without King and Father: égalité. Without Property and social Classes: fraternité.” Such a motto was seductive to those Catholics who had allowed themselves to be convinced that the early Church was socialist: the forthcoming Council needed to condemn such a fool’s errand, because earthly life is not meant to be a paradise, because such a socialist paradise would never come, and because the different social and economic classes were essential components of a normal society. Lastly, Socialism was to be shunned because it fostered hatred of Christian virtues: humility, charity, poverty, and chastity.
The last danger against which Bishop Proença Sigaud warned was the ever-increasing interference of the State in the lives of individuals and groups. He saw its origin in the collapse of traditional collective life, destroyed by liberalism. The Church could only admit of such interference in grave circumstances, and never on a permanent basis. Indeed, he estimated that most social problems had a moral cause; if society, the family, and the individual were once again focused on Christ, most of these problems would resolve themselves:
If God and His Christ were placed at the foundations of individual, family, and national life, the very forces of nature, which ought to find assistance in the human intellect and humble good will, would find their own connatural solutions.
VI. Epilogue: A Proposal for Counter-Revolutionary Action
(…) Next, the institutional Church needed to take in hand actual leadership in the fight against the Revolution. The trouble was that although the majority of Catholics were united in longing for a concrete program of action, this unity dissolved as soon as a group of laymen proposed a program. In part this was because such programs tended to present a socialistic component (he must have been thinking of various Fascist or Phalangist movements). If, however, an Ecumenical Council were to summon Catholics to the fight against the Revolution and the building of Christendom with a concrete program, then there would be success. Under such leadership, “I believe that the dawn of the Reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary would rise.” (…)
ASSESSMENT
The first thing that leaps off the page when reading the vota of these two prelates is that – whatever one thinks of the content – they speak with a clarity and a conviction to which most contemporary bishops have no longer accustomed us.
Now regarding the contents: it is obvious that the two Brazilian bishops’ political outlook here owes much to their intellectual collaboration with Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, which is why we devoted a few paragraphs to him at the outset. This is more evident in the case of Bishop de Proença Sigaud, but only because he went into more detail than did Bishop de Castro Mayer. Besides that difference, and the few details pointed out above, they are in fundamental agreement in matters of fact. Presumably, their years of collaboration as seminary professors and as collaborators in Corrêa de Oliveira’s periodical O Legionario had occasioned frequent exchanges of views in person. Research in their respective chanceries’ archives, if their correspondence is kept there, might flesh out the limits of their agreement in content and in form. (…)
The sources used for this article are the following: Yves Chiron, “Mayer, Antonio de Castro,” in id., Histoire des traditionalistes suivie d’un dictionnaire biographique (Tallendier: 2022) , 522–23; id., “Oliveira, Plinio Corrêa de,” ibid., 532–34; id., “Sigaud, Geraldo de Proença,” ibid., 557–58; Philippe Roy-Lysencourt, Les Vota préconciliaires des dirigeants du Cœtus Internationalis Patrum (Institut d’Étude du Christianisme, 2015), 51–87.
