| Introducing Historical Insight
on the Contemporary Crisis Revolution
and Counter-Revolution
by Plinio Corrêa
de Oliveira
Foreword
Since its first publication in the Brazilian
cultural journal Catolicismo in 1959, Revolution and Counter-Revolution
has gone through a number of editions in Portuguese, English, French, Italian,
and Spanish.
The present edition is the first to be published digitally
in the United States. It includes recent commentaries on Revolution and Counter-
Revolution's third part, which was added by the author in 1976.
Revolution
and Counter-Revolution, the basic book and inspiration of the many autonomous
Societies for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property and like organizations,
contains principles of wisdom that can efficaciously stop the disintegration of
civilization in the world today.
The author of this work is the world-famous
Brazilian Catholic philosopher Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira. Over the years
he has written numerous works that have received noteworthy ecclesiastical approbation.
For example, in the late 40s, his Em Defesa da Acão Catolica,
denouncing the danger presented by leftists encysted in the Catholic Action movement,
prompted a letter of praise from Msgr. Montini, then substitute for the Vatican
secretary of state, written on behalf of Pius XII.
In another work, The
Church and the Communist State: The Impossible Coexistence (1963), the author
proved that a Catholic could not view the establishment of a communist regime
in his country as morally acceptable. The Vatican's Sacred Congregation of Seminaries
and Universities called this work "a most faithful echo of all the Documents
of the supreme Magisterium of the Church, including the luminous encyclicals Mater
et Magistra of John XXIII and Ecclesiam Suam of Paul VI."
In
1992, he wrote Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elitesin the Allocutions
of Pius XII contrasting two models of society. The first model is Christian,
founded on the idea that God wills proportional and harmonic inequalities among
the social classes, all of whose members are entitled to at least sufficient living
conditions. The second model is based on the erroneous idea that all inequality
is unjust. The book has been acclaimed in eloquent letters by Silvio Cardinal
Oddi, Mario Luigi Cardinal Ciappi, Alfons M. Cardinal Stickler, theologian Fr.
Raimondo Spiazzi, Thomist Fr. Victorino Rodriguez y Rodriguez, and canonist Fr.
Anastasio Gutierrez.
Yet, the most significant of Professor Correa de
Oliveira's works is Revolution and Counter-Revolution. Its significance
was quickly recognized. Eugene Cardinal Tisserant wrote: "The theme of this
study is of the highest importance for the time in which we live.... The analysis
made by Professor Correa de Oliveira is clear, precise and accurate. . . . It
will be of interest to a considerable number of our fellow citizens. I congratulate
the author of this magnificent work." Thomas Cardinal Tien, of China, stated:
"Those of us who personally suffer from the effects of communism are well
able to calculate the accuracy and urgent necessity of such a study."
All the editions of Revolution and Counter-Revolution have concluded with
these words: We have
not the slightest doubt in our heart about any of the theses that constitute this
work. Nevertheless, we subject them all unrestrictedly to the judgment of the
Vicar of Christ and are disposed to renounce immediately any one of them if it
depart even slightly from the teaching of the Holy Church, our Mother, the Ark
of Salvation, and the Gate of Heaven.
Over forty years have passed since this statement was first published. In the
meantime, Revolution and Counter-Revolution has been spread throughout
the world without any of its theses being challenged as contrary to the Church's
Magisterium. This fact corroborates the earlier approbations and testifies to
the integrity of this enduring work.
To this must be added another fact
of enormous gravity. In the third part of the present work, the author states
that the main battleground of the struggle between anti-order (the Revolution)
and order (the Counter-Revolution) is no longer civil society but the Holy Church
herself.
Such a terrible state of affairs is of first concern to Catholics.
But it is also of concern to all men of good will, for without the influence of
the Church, temporal society will never rise from the prostration to which it
has been reduced by the same enemy: the Revolution.
People seeking the most
effective way to combat this enemy will welcome a book that provides the principles
needed for the pursuit of this struggle.
-The
American Society for the Defense of
Tradition, Family and Property ~ TFP
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of the page
Introduction
To Original Edition
Today, Catolicismo
publishes its hundredth issue.
To mark the event it wished to give this number a special note that might deepen
the already profound communication of soul between it and its readers.
For this, nothing seemed more appropriate than the publication of an essay on
the subject of Revolution and Counter-Revolution.
The selection
of this subject is easy to explain. Catolicismo is a combative journal.
As such, it must be judged principally in relation to the end toward which its
combat strives. Now, whom, precisely, does it wish to combat? A reading of its
pages may provide an insufficiently defined impression in this regard. One frequently
finds therein refutations of communism, socialism, totalitarianism, liberalism,
liturgicism, "Maritainism," and various other "isms." Nevertheless,
one would not say that any one of these has been emphasized over the others to
such an extent that Catolicismo could be defined by it alone. For example, it
would be an exaggeration to affirm that Catolicismo is a specifically anti-Protestant
or anti-socialist paper. One would say, then, that our journal has a plurality
of ends. However, one perceives that, in the perspective in which it places itself,
all of these aims have, as it were, a common denominator, and this is the objective
our paper always has before it.
What is this common denominator? A doctrine?
A force? A current of opinion? Clearly, an elucidation of this point would help
explain the depths of the whole work of doctrinal formation that Catolicismo
has been doing in the course of these one hundred months.
* * * However, the benefit that can
be derived from the study of Revolution and Counter-Revolution goes far
beyond this limited objective.
To demonstrate this, we need but glance
at the religious scene of our country. Statistically speaking, the situation of
Catholics is excellent: According to the latest official data, we comprise 94
percent of the population. If all of us were the Catholics we should be, Brazil
would now be one of the most admirable Catholic powers to have arisen in the course
of the twenty centuries of the life of the Church.
Why, then, are we
so far from this ideal? Can anyone truthfully say that the main cause of our present
situation is spiritualism, Protestantism, atheism, or communism? No! It is something
else, impalpable and subtle, and as penetrating as a powerful and fearful radiation.
All feel its effects, but few know its name or nature.
As we write these
words, our thoughts transcend the frontiers of Brazil, to our dear sister nations
of Hispanic America, and thence to all Catholic nations. In each, this same evil
exerts its undefined but overwhelming sway, producing symptoms of tragic grandeur.
Consider this example among others. In a letter written in 1956 regarding the
National Day of Thanksgiving, Msgr. Angelo Dell'Acqua, substitute for the Vatican
secretary of state, said to Carlos Carmelo Cardinal de Vasconcellos Motta of Sao
Paulo: "Because of the religious agnosticism of the states," there has
been "a decline or almost loss of the sense of the Church in modern society."
Now what enemy struck this terrible blow against the Bride of Christ? What is
the common cause of this and so many other concomitant and like evils? What shall
we call it? What are the means by which it acts? What is the secret of its victory?
How can we combat it successfully?
Obviously, it would be difficult to
find a more timely subject.
* * * This terrible enemy has a name:
It is called the Revolution.
Its profound cause is an explosion of pride
and sensuality that has inspired, not one system, but, rather, a whole chain of
ideological systems. Their wide acceptance gave rise to the three great revolutions
in the history of the West: the Pseudo-Reformation, the French Revolution, and
Communism.2
Pride leads to hatred of all superiority and, thus, to the affirmation that
inequality is an evil in itself at all levels, principally at the metaphysical
and religious ones. This is the egalitarian aspect of the Revolution.
Sensuality, per se, tends to sweep aside all barriers. It does not accept
restraints and leads to revolt against all authority and law, divine or human,
ecclesiastical or civil. This is the liberal aspect of the Revolution.
Both aspects, which in the final analysis have a metaphysical character, seem
contradictory on many occasions. But they are reconciled in the Marxist utopia
of an anarchic paradise where a highly evolved mankind, "emancipated"
from religion, would live in utmost order without political authority in total
freedom. This, however, would not give rise to any inequality.
The Pseudo-Reformation
was a first revolution. It implanted, in varying degrees, the spirit of doubt,
religious liberalism, and ecclesiastical egalitarianism in the different sects
it produced.
The French Revolution came next. It was the triumph of egalitarianism
in two fields: the religious field in the form of atheism, speciously labeled
as secularism; and the political field through the false maxim that all inequality
is an injustice, all authority a danger, and freedom the supreme good.
Communism is the transposition of these maxims to the socioeconomic field.
These three revolutions are episodes of one single Revolution, within which
socialism, liturgicism, the politique de la main tendue (policy of the
extended hand), and the like are only transitional stages or attenuated manifestations.
* * *
Naturally, a process so profound, vast, and prolonged cannot develop without encompassing
every domain of human activity, such as culture, art, laws, customs, and institutions.
A detailed study of this process in all its areas of development is much
beyond the scope of this essay.
Here - limiting ourselves to one vein
of this vast matter - we attempt to sketch summarily the outlines of the immense
avalanche that is the Revolution, to give it an adequate name, and to indicate
very succinctly its profound causes, the agents promoting it, the essential elements
of its doctrine, the respective importance of the various fields in which it acts,
the vigor of its dynamism, and the mechanism of its expansion. In a similar way,
we then treat analogous points pertaining to the Counter-Revolution, and study
some of the conditions for its victory.
Even so, in each of these themes,
we had to restrict ourselves to explaining what in our view are presently the
most useful elements for enlightening our readers and assisting them in the fight
against the Revolution. We had to leave out many points of capital importance
but of less pressing urgency.
This work, as we have said, is a simple
ensemble of theses by which one may better know the spirit and program of Catolicismo.
It would go beyond its natural proportions if it included a complete demonstration
of each affirmation. We have limited ourselves to developing the minimum argumentation
necessary for showing the relationship between the various theses and giving a
panoramic view of a whole side of our doctrinal positions.
* * * This essay may serve
as a survey. What exactly do the readers of Catolicismo in Brazil and elsewhere
(who are certainly among those most opposed to the Revolution) think about the
Revolution and the Counter-Revolution? Although our propositions encompass only
part of the subject, we hope they will lead each of our readers to ask himself
this question and to send us his answer, which we would welcome with great interest. Top
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