No to a Collegial Dictatorship – Folha de S. Paulo, December 4, 1985

by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

Many supporters of convening a Constituent Assembly hold a misconception. They view it as a cure-all: a supreme body with the authority to govern and make decisions freely—including the Federation, states, municipalities, families, and individuals. In their perspective, it would be able to address every national issue: culture and education, morality, social and economic concerns, public health, and even matters of peace and war.

These illusions might cause one to think that convening the Constituent Assembly would automatically create a collegial dictatorship, where the term “collegial,” now popular in the media, would make the disliked word “dictatorship” seem less serious.

Indeed, the protest would be widespread if the nation were called to give so much power to a single individual. Strangely, as long as the same amount of power is given to the two or three hundred congressmen in the Constituent Assembly, the protest would fade into just a whisper.

You would say that, for such mindsets, the evil isn’t dictatorship but that a single individual exercises it. Once many people exercise it, they suddenly applaud it!

As if history has not recorded abuses by legislative bodies that were just as severe as those committed by individual dictators! One need only think of the Constituent Assembly of the French Revolution, which ultimately led to the madness, despotism, and bloodshed of the following decade of revolution.

While dictators generally tend to remain in power longer than Constituent Assemblies, much of their dictatorial nature can remain embedded in the Constitution they approve, even after those Assemblies are gone.

Therefore, it is important to remember that the power of Constituent Assemblies is limited. Every person has rights that come from their nature as rational beings with free will. These rights come from God Himself, the Creator of the universe.

Examples? First and foremost, the right to know, love, and practice the true Religion—that of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. Likewise, the right not to profess or practice any religion other than the one that, in each person’s innermost conscience, they believe to be true. Also, the right of a person to form a family based on a monogamous and indissoluble marriage, and for that family—under the leadership of the husband and father—to have the right to educate its children, provided this does not harm public order or morality. And, in the same way, the right to free enterprise and to individual property.

All this is because the monogamous and indissoluble family—centered on the pater, with due respect for the role of the woman as wife and mother—upholds the right to educate one’s children, the right to practice the religion one believes to be true, and the rights to free enterprise and property. All of these arise from the natural order of things: an order established by God, which no one can abolish.

The State has no authority to act against God’s Law. In fact, if the State or a Constituent Assembly does so, it can only cause harm. Since everything that defies God’s Law disrupts the natural order, it damages the very realities it affects. Following God’s will is the foundation of all true success.