by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
The TFP is launching a nationwide book to inform the public about the widely debated Basic Christian Communities— their aims, ideology, methods, and overall orientation. The work shows that these entities function essentially—and even paradigmatically—as instruments of the CNBB for sowing discontent among the population, especially among manual laborers; then converting that discontent into unrest; and through that unrest, pressuring public authorities to enact the “basic reforms” demanded (sometimes openly, sometimes by insinuation) in the deplorable documents issued at the episcopal meetings of Itaici. These include land reform, urban reform, business reform, and their various corollaries. In other words: the confiscation of cultivated and uncultivated land; rental properties—residential, commercial, or industrial; commercial or industrial enterprises; and so forth. All of this appears to be aimed at establishing in Brazil a self-managing regime more or less similar to the model pursued under Mitterrand.
CNBB’s action among manual workers in both city and countryside is reinforced by the work of a veritable torrent of priests and nuns who, operating among other social classes, seek to instill—again in the name of religion—scruples of conscience regarding the moral legitimacy of the property rights these classes exercise over their own assets.
It is now clearly evident that the CNBB is using every resource within its extensive national reach in this country, which has the world’s largest Catholic population, to promote a bloodless yet vast social revolution.
Voices are raised on the left wing of the CNBB (a strange body without a right wing, only the center and the left) to suggest that if this revolution doesn’t proceed peacefully, the “oppressed” will be justified in using violence to push it forward. “By law or by force,” as the old saying goes.
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What I affirm and sign in this article, as president of the TFP National Council, is incomparably more substantial—and far broader in scope—as a reverent yet unflinchingly controversial dissent than anything that may appear in the falsified issue of O São Paulo, of which I possess only partial knowledge. This is the very issue that Bishop Luciano Mendes, together with the former president of the Justice and Peace Commission and attorney for the Metropolitan Curia of São Paulo, Mr. José Carlos Dias, carried—amid ostentatious publicity—to the Minister of Justice, Dr. Abi Ackel, and, through him, to President João Batista Figueiredo. If I say this about the falsified O São Paulo, then a fortiori I say it of certain articles of the same ilk that have been, are being, or will be circulated—I know not by whom.
If the TFP book only contained accusations, that would still be minimal. However, it is supported by extensive documentation listed on its final pages: no fewer than 707 books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, and various publications. I can confidently say this documentation is extensive because, although I am one of the three authors, I did not gather or analyze it. This was done by the other two authors, the sharp and vigorous intellectuals and TFP members, brothers Gustavo Antônio Solimeo and Luiz Sérgio Solimeo.
In the first part of the book, which I authored, I outline Brazil’s current situation and highlight the role the CNBB is playing by developing a subversive inversion of the entire good order established by Our Lord Jesus Christ when He founded the Church as distinct (though not separate) from the State. In this Republic, where the three branches of government—Executive (1st), Legislative (2nd), and Judicial (3rd)—are weakening and fading each day, we are witnessing what Carlos de Laet aptly called the fourth branch: the media, including written, spoken, and televised outlets. I also demonstrate that an even more powerful Fifth Branch is emerging behind the fourth, with broad support from the existing four branches. This Leviathan, this fifth power, is the CNBB, which is increasingly eager to interfere in matters it shares responsibility for with the State, and even in others that fall solely under the State’s jurisdiction. The CNBB is also becoming less willing to exercise the supreme, unparalleled power that Our Lord Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to the Church in spiritual matters.
It’s clear how this panorama could worsen the CNBB’s standing in the public’s view.
But there is more. Thanks to the peaceful and heroic young men on the TFP caravans that have traveled all across Brazil, the reader and the public know that—in this country where pleasure houses multiply and bookstores decline—I have been writing book after book from 1943 to 1982, each with undeniable documentation and print runs of tens of thousands of copies (except for the first one), showing the birth of the “Catholic left” from its earliest days and its rise to gain complete control over the CNBB, and now the State.
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All this said, the reader can imagine how shocked I was when I read in two issues of this newspaper (dated the 8th and 9th of this month) uninhibited statements in which Mr. José Carlos Dias (the former president and current member of the Archdiocesan Justice and Peace Commission) claims to have clues that might eventually prove that the forgeries of O São Paulo and other texts originating from the “Catholic left” could come from the TFP!
Someone must be completely unaware of what it truly means, of the natural weight it carries in the realm of ideas, currents of thought, and actions that influence a country’s direction—whether it’s a challenge, a document, or a book—to think that an organization, which has provided the “Catholic left” with a loud, united, and extensive doctrinal opposition like a mountain range, would somehow benefit from now splashing a few drops of dirty water on that same left, or, in other words, a small newspaper and some forged pamphlets.
One must be utterly unaware of what a challenge, a document, or a book represents—of the natural weight such things carry in the life of ideas and in the currents of thought and action that shape a nation’s course—to imagine that an organization which has long offered the “Catholic left” a loud, compact, and extensive doctrinal opposition would have anything to gain by now splashing a few drops of dirty water upon that same left through the forgery of a small newspaper and a handful of pamphlets.
This hypothesis falls apart “a priori” for those with a clear and calm understanding of the cultural importance of books and the real significance of culture in a people’s thinking spheres.
Mr. José Carlos Dias doesn’t see things this way. Despite this, he ignores the obvious impossibility and eagerly follows the police investigations at Artpress, a printing company owned by Mr. Fausto Borsato, a TFP associate.
According to newspapers, it has been confirmed that Artpress has no machines capable of printing either genuine or counterfeit versions of O São Paulo. The press also fully explained the case of the Catholic Yearbook, which served as a clue for the religious man who falsely accused the TFP to the police. This Yearbook was requested by Bishop Antônio de Castro Mayer to be sent to two thousand Brazilian priests. The same Yearbook was soon afterward returned to the aforementioned religious figure, so the previously weak “evidence” is now dismissed.
However, insensitive to all this, Mr. José Carlos Dias continues to hold his suspicions. Does he understand what the sin of rash judgment involves? And that this sin is far worse when the rash judgment is published twice in the newspaper with the largest circulation in São Paulo, the city with the biggest population in Brazil? I prefer to think that Mr. José Carlos Dias does not know this. Otherwise, I would fear falling into the sin of rash judgment by suspecting that this citizen (presumably a practicing Catholic) does not go to confession… or makes poor confessions.
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But my conversation isn’t with Mr. José Carlos Dias. It is with the public that he tried to turn against the TFP at the very moment we were releasing a bombshell book about the Basic Christian Communities. As bloodless as any book, as devastating as any bomb.
There are definitely many non-practicing or uninformed Catholics among Folha’s readers, and an unknown percentage of people who, with or without the appearance of Catholicism, are not truly Catholic.
Do all these people want to understand what a rash judgment is? Instead of offering an abstract definition, I’ll give an example.
The BCCs are organizations closely connected to the diocesan or archdiocesan Justice and Peace Commissions. Now, I suppose that, based on this, I speculated that Mr. José Carlos Dias, motivated by bad faith, had begun to cast suspicion on the TFP. Suspicions that he knew were offensive and absurd. And this only to protect the BCCs from a book that neither the said Justice and Peace Commission nor they—the BCCs—dare to refute. It would be slander replacing fair argumentation, spreading through the countless voices of the Fourth Branch, and then the Fifth Branch.
Should I conclude—merely because the BCCs, the Justice and Peace Commission, and Mr. José Carlos Dias himself, now thrust into the limelight of sensationalism, make use of these falsifications—that it is out of such motives and interests that Mr. José Carlos Dias disseminates against the TFP his absurd allegations, which, clouded by passion, he would know to be false yet imagines to be true? Certainly not.
Indeed, I knew nothing about Mr. José Carlos Dias until I learned he had been appointed president of the Justice and Peace Commission. He is a human being, baptized in the Holy Catholic Church, a Christian whom I feel justice and love toward, not the injustice and lack of love that accompany rash judgment. How could I spread such suspicion without knowing anything about his background?
Now then, Mr. José Carlos Dias is aware of TFP’s background because the entire country of Brazil knows about it, as does the entire Western world (cf. Tradition Family Property: Half a Century of Epic Anticommunism, The Foundation for a Christian Civilization, Inc., Mount Kisco, NY 10549, 1981). Additionally, its message opposing self-managing socialism has gained worldwide recognition, with letters of support arriving from as far away as the Fiji Islands, Christmas Island, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Pakistan, Thailand, Nepal, Tunisia, Cameroon, and Botswana.
The ongoing silence of TFP opponents perhaps speaks even louder than anything else. No one has dared to confront any of its books with anything resembling an argument.
Imagine, then, Mr. José Carlos Dias—who, viewed from this angle, would be more fittingly cast as president of a Commission of Injustice and Aggression than of Justice and Peace. What possible advantage could the TFP gain by hurling a small newspaper or a few forged pamphlets against the so‑called Fifth Branch, which, besides its own formidable mouthpieces, commands those of the Fourth Branch as well, ready to refute such trifles copiously, torrentially, and resoundingly throughout Brazil and beyond? Oh, Mr. former president of the Justice and Peace Commission!
The reader will ask me how I explain the role of the latter. I don’t know, nor is it my place to do so. I am specifically addressing this to tell the reader that I would be committing the sin of rash judgment if I tried to explain it with a baseless hypothesis.
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Would you like another example of rash judgment? Last Friday, Father Charbonneau wrote an article in the Trends/Debates section of Folha that was so aggressively hostile toward the esteemed Bishop Antônio de Castro Mayer and the TFP, that I feel compelled to ask why he launched this verbal attack, devoid of doctrine, against us—supposedly based on doctrinal disagreement. Imagine, dear reader, that it occurred to me that this name-calling was done so that some leftists could later carry out a harmless, “false-flag” attack on the priest to trigger another publicity stunt against the TFP. The entire scenario would aim to minimize the damage caused by our explosive book. Imagine further that I traveled to Brasília (without Bishop Luciano Mendes de Almeida, who would never accompany me for this purpose) to share my suspicions with the President and the Minister of Justice. It would be an act of rash judgment. I am certain that Most Rev. Luciano Mendes, who clearly understands what rash judgment is, agrees. It is more reasonable to assume that Mr. José Carlos Dias does not know what rash judgment is.
This is what I needed to say as president of the TFP National Council.
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I will now conclude my commentary, but first I want to acknowledge how much I appreciate the consistency of Folha de S. Paulo in its liberalism (which I disagree with) in publishing this article today, just as it has, for about fifteen years, published my articles that often diverged from the usual tone of others. This only enhances my respect, as well as that of the 13 TFPs and their worldwide family of souls, for the exceptionally clear, agile, and elegant intelligence that guides it.
Note from this site: Archbishop Paulo Evaristo Arns loyally defended the TFP by stating, “I don’t want to blame anyone without proof. The TFP has always had the courage to present its signed documents, and for that reason, I have always respected this organization” (Folha de S. Paulo, 8/25/82).