Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

Catolicismo, n. 452, August 1988

Note: This article is in response to a question posed to several prominent Brazilians by the São Paulo daily “Folha de S. Paulo”, the paper with the largest circulation in Brazil. 

The question: Do you agree with censuring scenes of nudity on television?

Without any hesitation, I answer "yes" to this question.

Actually, the matter does not concern the morality of clothing, but of total nudity, without distinction of sex or age. The freedom from any censure of nudity on television obviously extends not only to the exhibition of one or another nude person, but also to an indefinite number of persons in this situation.

With censure totally abolished, could a bacchanal exhibition on TV be forbidden   even for children at the age of their most delicate innocence?

What is more, relieved of any obstacle on television, nudity would soon be recorded on video for everyday viewing. This would mean the implantation of amorality into customs.

It is almost unnecessary to add that such a fact would bring about, in its turn, the extinction of matrimony and the implantation of free love.

I even see that there are many in numerous areas of influence in modern society who actively strive to reach such an extreme. This long road toward the abyss does not date from our century, but from the very beginnings of romanticism in the nineteenth century, if not even farther back.

Any concession even incipient and timid made to immorality in the time of our great grandparents brought about greater concessions in the time of our grandparents. These, in their turn, dilated appreciably in the time of our parents, breaking loose through out the twentieth century into manifestations of ever more scandalous moral liberalism. In consequence, many of our contemporaries are highly pleased to predict that the passing of the present millennium to the next will be celebrated by a humanity grown accustomed to nudism.

If it were only ("only" . . .!) this. But worse can be predicted.

The free scope given to nudism is but one aspect of an absolute moral permissiveness. The latter, in its turn, is bringing about the implantation of other forms of immorality that the customs and the laws of the West are systematically accepting. Such is the case with divorce, which in fact is being transformed into free love, with marriage annulments scandalously available in the religious courts themselves in certain countries such as the United States; with abortion openly permitted by law in many modem states; with homosexuality equally permitted in many states and, in fact, going unpunished in almost all the others. Moreover, tendencies are even being developed here and there to consider incest with "indulgence."

And the generalized penchant along this entire long road is obviously toward the complete negation of Christian morals enjoined by the Decalogue: V Thou shalt not kill; VI Thou shalt not commit adultery; IX Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.

The facts thus confirm those words of Scripture: "Deep calleth on deep" (Ps. 41:8).

It is opportune to add that nothing will be able to shield the world from failing into the final extremes of a still conceivable immorality, such as bestiality, for example, while awaiting the day in which a certain science will discover yet more inconceivable moral abominations ...

"How inexorable these predictions are!" some optimistic reader will cry.

"It's Dr. Plinio as always, with his inflexibly conclusive and characteristically radical reasoning!"

To this reader, I immediately retort: "That's just like you, with your supine inconclusiveness taken to its ultimate extremes."

Throughout my life, it has always seemed logical and inevitable to me, that in the natural order of things if mankind did not convert to the integrity of the Catholic faith and to the exact observance of the Commandments, it would, upon reaching the year 2000, be crossing the threshold of the ultimate degradations.

"In the natural order of things," I say, because one must take into account the predictions Our Lady made in 1917 in Fatima for a humanity that would not step away from the road of perdition: "The war [of 1914 1918] is going to end, but if they do not stop offending God, another even worse war will begin.... Behold, a night illuminated by an unknown light will be the great sign that God shall give you that He is going to punish the world for its crimes by means of war, hunger, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.... Several nations will be annihilated. Finally, my Immaculate Heart will triumph" (Antonio Borelli, Our Lady at Fatima: Prophecies of Tragedy or Hope for America and the World? American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, 2d ed., 1986, pp. 51 52).

War will not be avoided by shaking Gorbachev's hand or by singing his praises, but by paying heed to Our Lady of Fatima.