The
TFP Affirms That The Bishops Are Misinformed
Brasilia
— “I note that those participating in the current debate about land reform are
lacking information and don't admit it. This is the case, first of all, with
the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil, as I have noticed while putting
the finishing touches on a study of their document The Church and Problems of the Land," affirmed Prof. Plinio
Corręa de Oliveira, President of the National Council of the Brazilian TFP.
Prof. Oliveira added that "misinformation about Brazil's current
situation permeates the document from one end to the other." "The
meager sources they mention do not cover the wide-ranging affirmations
made" in the document approved by 170 Bishops of the CNBB. "The
document shuns the real facts and overflows with gratuitous presuppositions as
well as vague and ambiguous generalities, all made in a vain effort to
`conscientize.' I say vain because our people, who are much more intelligent
than the authors of the document think, won't swallow foolishness unless they
want to make jokes out of it," he went on.
Influence
After affirming that he noted various traces of
Marxist influence in the document, Prof. Oliveira added that "it also
implicitly reveals a lack of information about Catholic doctrine. These
uninformed blabbers are perhaps unaware of the fact that they are playing with
the future of Brazil."
Maybe they don't realize that "a land reform made in the clouds with
merely artistic aims can be more risky for us economically, and consequently
socially and politically, than a hydrogen bomb."
"The land reformers want only one type of
property for Brazil:
small holdings worked preferably only by the owner and his family. And they
want to apply this to both farming and ranching. They don't make any distinction
between all the different kinds of soils to be found in our 8.5 million square
kilometers."
The Catholic thinker further stated that the
progressives want "Brazil,
a country rich in differences that have arisen from almost 500 years of
persistent ingenius and successful experiences, to
give way to a country carved like a huge block in which everything must be
equal, whether it be wealth, power, education or anything else. Now this is
exactly what Marxism prescribes."
Proofs
But the question is "what experiments and
statistics are there that can demonstrate that this
tyrannical equalization can produce results better, or at least equal, to those
of the present system? The land reformers don't say."
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Translated from an article in the Diario
de Pernambuco, Brazil, 6/13/80.