Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

December 1985 (*)

“Cet animal est très méchant: quand on l’attaque il se défend” (“This animal is very mean: it defends itself when attacked”) – says a popular song currently quoted by the French (La Menagère, 1868). This is the strange position of certain TFP critics who find it très méchant for its members and volunteers, for the sake of their own dignity, to take a distance from ambiences in which they are disconcertingly reviled. This is all the more disconcerting as we live in an increasingly permissive society in which even the right of citizenship for homosexuality finds ardent advocates.

Though ambiences that reach this extreme are not rare, they are fortunately not the general rule. Nevertheless, there are other factors that explain why TFP members and volunteers will take a greater or lesser distance from them depending on the circumstances. Not only members and volunteers, but also supporters of the Society (*) spread all over Brazil – mostly fathers and mothers who, by an undeniably respectable imperative of their consciences, firmly intend to remain faithful to the practice of the traditional morals of the Church.

Over the last twenty or thirty years, an impressive number of social ambiences have gradually driven away from that practice; in them, topics of conversation, liberties in social relations between sexes, television sets constantly turned on and so often showing immoral scenes, could not fail to have a profound discrepancy with the consciences of non-progressive Catholics.

Rather than adapting as needed to the convictions and moral sensibility of non-progressive Catholics, such ambiences, in their presence, keep exactly the same attitude as if they were absent.

That is tantamount to telling them: "You are a backward bunch of dislikable, narrow-minded people. We will accept you among us only if you consent to trample underfoot the moral principles you profess.”

 With that kind of “welcome,” what could non-progressive Catholics do?

- Break with their consciences? – Were they to do so, they would deservedly receive the mute scorn of those to whom they surrendered.

- Protest? – By that they would unleash the irate indignation of the ambiance’s masters, giving rise to arguments and dissension. Paradoxically, the fame of intolerance would befall those whom the despotic modern mentality failed to tolerate.

- Withdraw? – The heralds of modernity would brand them as “weirdoes.”

The end result of this situation is that often times it is better for a non-progressive Catholic to simply keep his distance.

Few people have the courage to write everything we said here in capital letters and with so much frankness and detail.

But, once and for all, it needed to be said. And it has been.

(*) TFP supporters are persons from both sexes who, solidary with the entity’s thought, goals and methods, habitually lend it their support by helping carry out, with dedication, different tasks to promote the entity and make it known, an indisputably useful help.

Supporters propose to distribute the entity’s bulletins and communiqués to the local press, radio and television and – when the occasion naturally presents itself – to spread TFP principles and ideals among their family, social and professional relations etc. At present, the TFP has supporters in more than one hundred cities in Brazil.

Guerreiros da Virgem - A Réplica da Autenticidade, A TFP sem segredos, December 1985, Chap. V, n. 2, A, pages 105-107