Extra meeting, 15 January 1964 (click here for the original text in Portuguese)
By Plinio Correa de Oliveira
“A Roman and Apostolic Catholic, the author of this text submits himself with filial devotion to the traditional teaching of Holy Church. However, if by an oversight anything is found in it at variance with that teaching, he immediately and categorically rejects it.”
The words “Revolution” and “Counter-Revolution” are employed here in the sense given to them by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira in his book Revolution and Counter-Revolution, the first edition of which was published in the monthly Catolicismo, Nº 100, April 1959.
Caricature depicting a typical decadent bourgeois
Historic fatality of the Revolution
When we find ourselves among the revolutions and everyday events, we have a strange sensation, almost that of a historic fatality, of a sad consummated fact. This weighs heavy on the good causes of our day. Whenever there is a fight between the good and the bad, we see the good losing. Always when there is a fight between revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries, the former wins, if not always, at least most of the time.
The elections, generally, concede victory to the left, and when this does not occur, the left ends up taking advantage of it, even though it had not come out victorious. Great men, great personalities, and authors of much renown are habitually leftist.
The course of political events inexorably favors the left. For example, when an American and a Russian meet, the Russian is from the left and- paradoxically- the American is rightist. Now, there is not an international situation between the two in which the Russians do not come out with an advantage and the Americans leave at a disadvantage. And so on and so forth, the facts indicate a type of inexorable fate seems to weigh upon good causes.
The conservative parties- which have our sympathy, naturally- give the impression of a tropical tree, a rubber tree from the Amazons, for example, being cultivated in Alaska. The climate is so hostile, the circumstances, the environment, everything is so adverse, that we have the impression the tree is forcing itself to fight against the climate which, inexorably, saps and extracts the vital forces of the tree. We fear the tree will succumb and die at any moment.
Inevitably of the three revolutions
This phenomenon is very old. When we study history from the end of the Middle Ages to our days, when we look at the three revolutions- that is, Protestantism, the French Revolution, and Communism- we always have the impression that the situation was so black, it made the Revolution inevitable.
For example, when Protestantism exploded, the climate was already so infested against the Catholic Church, that the Papal Legate in Germany, on the occasion of Luther’s apostasy, wrote the Pope saying: “Holy Father, ninety-five percent of Germany shouts ‘Long live Luther!’ The remaining five shout ‘Down with Rome!’” This was the panorama in Germany when Lutheranism exploded.
The French Revolution gives the same impression. An analysis of a painting of Louis XVI, in all the pomp of a majesty, with the assurance of a king, resplendent in jewels and with magnificent robes, the idea one has is of a great monarch, firmly established on his throne. However, when the French Revolution is studied, the first impression received is that when Louis XVI assumed the throne, twenty years before the Revolution, the Revolution was more or less already inevitable.
When we study political events, we ask what could have been done to avoid the revolution. And we conclude that maybe the only solution was the notorious tactic of pre-empting the revolution. Doing it ourselves before someone else did it. But this revolution really should not be done. It is as if we were to commit suicide for fear of death. It would be to fall in the same error. For fear of a Communist revolution in Brazil, let’s say, we would impose Communism so as to avoid a Communist revolution.
We felt this sensation of the inevitable in the Communist revolution in Russia. When we study the situation of the Czar and the sprouting of Communism, we have the impression that the pressure of the circumstances was such that the czarist regime necessarily had to fall. It was condemned. It was burdened with a type of fatality.
The politics of concession: to cede so as not to lose
We have the same impression today when we analyze the fight against Communism. Countless are the people who say: “Sooner or later communism is going to win. Give in a little now, otherwise it will take power right away. Making certain concessions, maybe it will not be so irritated, and may come more smoother and tranquilly.”
The communist or socialist revolutions happen like this. People give in here, then somewhere else, then again somewhere else. After some time so many concessions have been made there is nothing else to give. If I have a loaf of bread, and I give one piece of it, later another and much later another piece, pretty soon the loaf will not exist anymore. This conviction that we have to give in is a reflex of the belief that the struggle is already lost, so that there’s no way out. There are in Sao Paulo numerous farmers, businessmen, industrialists who think that it is better to give in until the moment is finally reached when no reaction is possible.
Profound reasons of the apparent inevitability
So we must ask ourselves: Does this “fate” or “destiny” really exist? If it exists, we must ask ourselves what is the reason that whenever great revolutions appear on the horizon, the situation already appears lost to those who represent the good cause. What is the profound reason for this? Some answer must exist, and we must analyze it, for it is the only means by which we can fight efficaciously and understand the nature of this phenomenon and oppose it. As long as we do not have a notion of the nature of this phenomenon, our struggle will be useless.
Look at the Brazilian Catholic movement. You can see splendid things. The number of Catholic works is enormous and spreading fast. They do great good, aid many sick, benefit many destitute people, and spread religious instruction. The good that they do is so great, that we don’t know what Brazil would be like without them. We could say that they prevent the Catholic block from collapse.
Nevertheless, even though those works do an enormous good, we have to recognize that Brazil will slowly succumb to paganism. If the paganization of Brazil is the anathematizing of ideas, of customs, of institutions. We can conclude that these works do a great good, but this good is not as great as the circumstances demand. More is needed. And what more should be done? What is the point that should be reached?
To respond to this question, we must know the profound reasons of this process of paganism, of this process of the revolution. What is the interplay of souls, what is the profound movement of spirits, what are the organisms that move this process ahead. Thus, knowing the enemy and his ways of doing things, we will not only do good, but will be effective in the combat against evil. It is not enough to do good; it is necessary to fight the evil.
Construct with one hand and fight with the other
When Jerusalem was reconstructed, after the Babylonian captivity, the workers built it with one hand and with the other held a sword for combat. We must act like this. However, many times we construct with both hands and leave the sword far away. The result is that we construct a wall here and the adversary knocks it down there. Since we are only thinking about what we are building, we do not realize that the rest of the wall is already knocked down and we are surrounded. For this reason, we have an extraordinary set of works, but the process of paganization is not detained. And at times this process of paganism infiltrates our very works. This is inevitable.
Let us imagine the best of priests, a saint who founds a Catholic school in a Brazilian city. Can he avoid the bad influences of cinema, television, radio, and newspapers from entering his school? He forms the students, but the ambience outside deforms them. The consequence is that his results are much less than they could have been, for were he builds someone else destroys.
It is not enough to construct. We must know how to destroy. We hear talk of “constructive attitudes,” which is the habit of constructing without fighting, of doing positive things without doing the negative ones. They say “destructive attitudes” should be avoided, the habit of destroying things without rebuilding. However, unilateral “constructive attitudes” should also be avoided. We should work using one hand to build and the other to grasp the destructive sword.
Lack of combativity in the Brazilian temperament
The Brazilian spirit, inherited from the Portuguese, is of a sweet, mild temper. To have a good idea of the difference between a Portuguese and Spaniard, and therefore of a Luso-American and a Hispano-American, let us analyze a symbolic example, a Portuguese and Spanish bullfights. The Spanish one is a fight of life and death between the bull and the bullfighter. The bull wants to kill the bullfighter, to the degree that a animal can want something. And the bullfighter has a positive desire to kill the bull. For their part, the spectators want the bullfighter to kill the bull, because they do not have pity it. In the Portuguese bullfight the public and the bullfighter feel a little sorry for the bull. And even the bullfighter takes the bullfight less seriously. We even have the impression that Portuguese bulls are not as fierce as Spanish ones. Moreover the Portuguese saw off a little of the animal’s horn so as not to injure man. It is a fight between friends…
When we Brazilian Catholics, or Brazilians of any kind, have to fight, we always fight like a Portuguese bullfight, due to our temperamental mildness characteristic throughout our history. The proclamation of the Republic of Brazil in 1889 reminds us well of this aspect in the life of Brazilian politics and of the Portuguese style of our bullfights. When we see how the French Revolution was done, when we think of a Spanish republican, capable of throwing bombs at Alfonso XIII, and we compare them to the republicans of Brazil, we are astonished.
Let us illustrate with a fact. When the leaders of the republican coup deposed the Emperor, they were, at the same time, worried about the conditions of his exile. They voted a budget of 5,000 reis- a large sum- for him to move and live comfortably. The Emperor had the dignity to reject this offer. But such an attitude shows us well what type of republicans they were, who overthrow the Emperor from the throne but help him down, so that he does not get hurt.
All this is bullfighting Portuguese style, and is contrary to the principle in Genesis: “I will put enmities between thou and her, between thy seed and Her seed.” (Gen. 3:15) St. Louis Marie-Grignion de Montfort, the great theologian of Our Lady, comments that God said inimicitias ponam, plural not singular. Not one enmity, but enmities, many enmities. Since God made these enmities, they are indestructible. Likewise, the enmities between the sons of light and the sons of darkness is permanent.
So with Brazilians we must insist on the destructive aspect, because it is exactly that which we have a tendency to forget. We almost do not insist on the constructive side, because this goes by itself. It is enough to close ones eyes and everything goes constructing itself. We need, therefore, to say the forgotten truths, because the known truths have other advocates.
Let us place ourselves in the presence of our adversary and let us find out how he is, how he works, how he achieves those results that, when the battle lines itself up, but before it is fought, he has already partially won. This is the problem that we must undertake.
To act over the State is not the main step
Many have the impression that if we were to make a State entirely Catholic, with laws according to the Church, we will have placed an obstacle to this phenomenon, therefore, our principal actions should be to exercise ourselves over the State. Taking power, reforming it through fair and just laws, we will have solved the problem. It would be sufficient to give it a good police force. They would prohibit the bad films, the bad media, immoral diversions, and the rest will turn into a convent. When the church bells ring, everyone will go piously to pray, and the good customs shall flourish…
To act over the State is, no doubt, very important. It is indispensable, but it is far from being the only measure, and very far from being the main one. Beyond acting over the State, and above acting over the State, there is a whole series of problems more important which we should consider.
The concrete proof of this we shall find in a historic fact that cannot be denied. In the 8th-century, in the apogee of the Middle Ages, the Church had everything, or almost everything, to exercise an action of this type; the laws were Catholic, the institutions likewise, and the actions of the State reprimanded heresies, it reprimanded the bad. Like this, the Albigensian heresy was toppled, and like this Manicheans were persecuted. In this epoch, an institution functioned that was much calumniated yet it was splendid: the Sacred Inquisition against the perfidy of the heretics. Like everything in the world, it had abuses, but the institution itself was magnificent.
In spite of the State being in hands of Catholics- St. Louis, king of France, and St. Ferdinand, king of Castile, who governed two of the main countries of Europe in that era, and saints who sat of the thrones of England, of the Holy Roman Empire, Germany, and Hungary- in a determined moment these organizations began to deteriorate. And what was the result? Neither the laws nor the public authority of State found a way to block the deterioration, that continues till today. If the State could do everything, what has happened never would have occurred. From this we infer that the State cannot do everything, and that there is an action subtler and more important than that of the State, which we should consider here.
Let us see a more profound explanation of these constant failures, born of the victory of the passions, of pride and of sensuality, and analyze the enormous transformations that operate in the human soul through the passing of the centuries.
The connecting thread between the revolutions
St. Louis died in 1270, in 1517 the Protestant revolution exploded, in 1789 the French Revolution, and in 1917 the Russian one. At first glance, the impression received is that the three revolutions have no connection amongst themselves. Having in mind what was shown, we could ask ourselves: What is the thread that connects them all? By what means did one reach the other? What was the phenomenon that conduced this? This is the study that should be done.
When we examine the decadence of the Middle Ages, we note that St. Louis died in 1270, and in 1284, Boniface VIII assumed the papacy, who died in 1303. From 1270 to 1303, thirty-three years elapsed. In this short period the famous slap of Agnani occurred. (Philip the Fair), nephew of St. Louis IX, occupied the throne of France, and shortly thereafter had a confrontation with the Pope, because he wanted practically all power over the French clergy. At that time, the French king affirmed, the Pope did not have universal jurisdiction over Christianity and was in disagreement with Catholic doctrine. It was a king’s revolt against the Pope. Like this, thirty-three years after the death of St. Louis, this horrendous fact occurred: representatives of his successor entered the city of Agnani, where the Pope was, and, after injuring him before a mob, they slapped him. Boniface VIII, who maintained himself with extraordinary dignity, died of disgust shortly thereafter.
It was an attitude of a king’s revolt against a Pope. But it showed the existence of a current of thought, which we shall examine later, which brought forth the atmosphere for this insubordination, in spite of there being a St. Louis. And it is the existence of this current of thought that explains the first explosion of the Revolution. What was this current of thought? In the answer to this question we shall see how a great order of things, like the Middle Ages, could have died because of the consequence of little facts.
The first explosion of the Revolution
In the law faculties, especially in Paris and Bologna, the professors- that is, those studious of Roman law and probably linked amongst themselves by some secret association- established the affirmation that Roman law is the true principal of government organization. They were absolutists, affirming that that which was a principal had to have the force of law. Because of this, they were contrary to the whole organic and Christian structure of medieval political thought and in favor of a system both inorganic and pagan.
The Middle Ages, as we know, consisted of a State composed of autonomous organisms in relation to the king, in everything that consisted of its proper sphere of action, and seeking the royal authority only in matters of common interest. The professors wanted an order of things in which the king could command like the Roman emperors. They, therefore, began to combat the influence of the Church, which established a limit to authority. On another side, the fought the nobility, that also constituted a limit to absolute power. The proposed a return to the pagan state.
At the same time that the professors fought for this new state of things, they found in the kings a grateful and attentive audience.
The transformation of the attitude of the kings
The attitude of medieval kings was not always like this. The cause of this we shall find in the following phenomenon.
There is an enormous difference between the chivalrous romances at the end of the Middle Ages and during its apogee. The knight of the golden epoch was a crusader. He fought for a cause, always relating in some way to the Catholic Church. At times it was a wandering knight, who went traveling through valleys and mountains defending orphans and widows, with a spirit of practicing a work of mercy. Or it was a knight who goes crusading to liberate the Sepulcher of Christ. But what always characterizes his spirit is abnegation, renunciation. He fights, but for love of the Cross.
The chivalrous romance slowly changed. The knight ceased to be an idealist and started to be vain. They relate absurd fables, like a knight who slays five Moors with the same sword, as if they were so many sausages. Or another man who fights a large rock, and shatters it with only one lance. It is this spirit and others that Cervantes ridicules in the character of Don Quixote.
At the same time that the ideal was no longer to serve the Cross, but to show off force and courage, another figure appears in the romance, the lady. Still very pure and diaphanous, she is already the romantic lady, for whom he has enthusiasm, for whom he fights to attain her love. And the cause of chivalry is no longer Christ but sentimentalism and sensuality. The lady substitutes the cross. Chivalry begins to be an part of life’s enjoyment.
The passions of pride and sensuality
The two main passions of man- pride and sensuality- are thus put in motion. Pride manifests itself in vanity, in the demonstration of strength, in the pomp of life. Sensuality, in the birth of the spirit of courtesy and love.
Let us imagine a young king imbued with these ideas, and a legist tells him, “Your Majesty has the right to command all.” This affirmation sounds like music to his ears. To himself he thinks, “This legist is right.” It is easy to understand how one attracts the other, and how they fit together, constituting but one state of spirit.
At the same time, Gothic architecture changed appearance. In the thirteenth century it was austere. In the fourteenth, it begins to smile. The style called flamboyant Gothic appears, decorated everywhere with flowers, taking on the air of a toy. It could be said that Gothic began to dance. During the paganization of institutions and customs, architecture also becomes all joyful and jolly.
It is a profound change of spirit. It is a deviation. The idea of serving God, living for an ideal, for the Cross, disappears, and is substituted, in the innermost layers of man, by the concern for pleasure. Man no longer has the notion of duty but of pleasure. He wants to enjoy life. And from this moment he starts to have, naturally, friction with the old institutions. There nests in his soul an ardent desire for something new and different. This inclination is not a strong idea, but an unchained passion, alive in a convoluted interior, which gives rise not only in Protestantism but a phenomenon that affects all Catholic nations, the Renaissance.
The Renaissance and the joy of life
Protestantism and the Renaissance are intimately married. The Renaissance brought with it the satisfaction of a furious desire to enjoy life. Certainly, there was a Christian Renaissance, but we shall speak about it further on. The points in which the Renaissance differs from medieval culture all obey this impulse: the desire to enjoy life.
Let us take the first characteristic of the Renaissance: naturalism. We all know that human reason becomes greatly inflamed, and quite irritated with the fact it has to accept the supernatural. A proud man characteristically rejects it. Obviously, when a man gives himself to the pleasures of life, he wants to reject all manifestation of the supernatural, and to affirm the domination of his reason. The opposite demands a fighting effort, and this struggle irritates him excessively. So he becomes a naturalist.
Now, when we compare Renaissance art with the medieval one, we see artists of the Middle Age profoundly imbued with the supernatural. In the canvases of Fra Angelico, of Giotto, one almost has the impression that the supernatural is represented there. In the paintings of the Renaissance- even in Rafeal, the artist of the “Madonnas”- the sense of the supernatural is incomparably less, much more tenuous, and many times does not even exist. Frequently Renaissance paintings make no effort to disguise a pagan character.
A certain church ordered a painting of St. John the Baptist from a great Italian Renaissance painter. In three days the artist delivered the painting. How did he paint the whole thing so quickly? The picture was already painted. It was the god Baccus altered to include the symbols of St. John the Baptist. This Baccus playing the St. John of Baptist symbolizes well the Renaissance ambiguity. To a good analyst, this was not a mistake, but a basis of paganism that is surging, springing forth and imposing its spirit.
However, we cannot say the same thing of the Spanish Renaissance. In the works of Zurbaran, for example, it is impossible not to notice their great spiritual fragrance. But we should say that the Spanish Renaissance was only more moderate than the others.
Society on the vespers of the French Revolution
On the vespers of the French Revolution, society presented a human type profoundly different than the Renaissance and even more different than the medieval. The work of absolutism and legism was complete. Royal power took hold of and absorbed almost all manifestations of the country’s life. Everything was centralized. France had only one head containing everything. Once beheaded, everything fell apart.
Renaissance naturalism evolved into deism. What is this deism? Due to the rejection of the supernatural, they had to form a new type of religion. It affirmed that god exists, but only the god of reason, the god that human reason can comprehend. Any other form of religion does not exist. Jesus Christ is not god. There is only some vague god, about whom no one knows what to think.
Voltaire, for example, is a deist who said he believed in God but denied Jesus Christ to be God. His letters always ended with the expression écrasons l’infâme– let us crush the infamous. He meant, we have to crush Jesus Christ, the great author of superstitions. To him, the clergy lived by exploiting public credulity. The nobles lived by exploiting the poor. No form of hierarchy exists.
Besides this we find the encyclopedists. These were wise men who met in to write an encyclopedia, that is, a compilation of all knowledge of the time, but totally modeled by the idea that nothing could be known about God and that all religions were false.
Deism, therefore, generates a atheistic culture. Since there is always a middle ground, we find Jansenists and Gallicans. These are Catholics who without being deists, live inside the Catholic Church like a type of fifth column. Jansenists were disguised Protestants and Gallicans denied papal authority over the French Church.
The transformation of the noble
Later we shall study the revolt against religion. For now, we shall see how the enjoyment of pleasure showed in the transformation of the human type.
What is the human type of the noble on the vespers of the French Revolution? The opposite of those before him. The medieval noble was a strong warrior, zealous to fight. His descendant, the small marquis at the twilight before the French Revolution, seems more like a bibelot* than a warrior. His first concern is neither courage nor heroism, but graciousness. He is delicate and uses well varnished high-heeled shoes. Small feet, and very white thin hands are fashionable. He uses a lace collar, silk clothes, powdered hair. His clothes are full of flowers, his buttons are precious stones. His perfumed walk smacks of a feminine air. No one can bow, smile or be amiable like he. He looks like a little toy, sent to the earth like a ray of moonlight. He goes about in a carriage, which appears more like a bombonnière, made to hold chocolates, not people. Everything is golden, crystalline, feathery. He uses a tri-cornered hat, with more feathers. In the back ride two feathered footmen, in the front, two others. The horses are well-trained to ride just so. Like this he travels about.
It is easy to understand that this type of man, after a long historical evolution, ended up being modeled almost entirely for pleasure. He no longer has combative ideals nor principles to serve. His only and great concern is to enjoy life. And, to enjoy it, he is elegant, handsome, agreeable and endearing.
The consequence is that when the storms appear on the horizon, he does not impose respect on anybody. A man can respect another man, but not a toy. He may think it very nice. He may be sorry to break it. But no one obeys it or serves it like a superior.
Before the revolution the nobles no longer lived on their lands but in Paris. They lived far away from their field laborers. In only one region of France the noble preserved the ancient role of the workers father, living in their midst, trying to resolve their problems, the Vandée. This was the only region to later fight the revolution, and where there was a cohesive counter-revolution. Except for this region, all of the French provinces just collapsed. Because the enjoyment of pleasure had absorbed all virtues, all qualities. The genteel man, agreeable, gracious, should have been the natural support of the throne, but was in no condition to face the revolution. What had happened? The enjoyment of pleasure.
The transformation of the bourgeoisie
At his side was the bourgeois, whose outlook was quite different from the nobles’. The bourgeois was at home in his business and business related things. For this reason, while the noble sought elegant thinness, the middle-class sought fat well-nourishment. The bourgeois and his belly appeared quite related. This is not so strange, for Scripture tells us of those whose god is their belly. The bourgeois was a stable man: well-made shoes, durable clothes, strong and thrifty. He was healthy, calm, simple, a hard worker, but, at the same time, content with himself. Compared to the noble, he was like a duck to a rooster.
This type of man wanted to rise because he thought he had everything and the only thing lacking in order to be on top of society was to be noble. We see him, then, rise up against the noble, in order to overthrow him, for the same reason that Philip the Fair tried to overthrow the Pope. The noble wanted to enjoy life and to be first. But he weakened himself so much that, after some centuries, it was the bourgeois who wanted to enjoy life and be first. The middle-class then organized a revolution, carried along not only by the ideas of Voltaire – which are seductive, for they please the human reason- but also by the desire to command, by the desire to dominate. We have, therefore, a revolt of the bourgeoisie against the nobility.
So strong is this movement of ideas, so strong is this transformation of the bourgeoisie and its desire to rule, that when the French Revolution began, we could say the cards were already played. The old institutions, lived by men who no longer had the spirit, appeared already inexplicable. The bourgeois appears in the world scenario as strong firebrands. As soon as he resolves to shake society, all the institutions fall, as if they were the backdrop in a theater play. It is the presence of a new spirit and of a new mentality that overthrows everything.
Final transformation of the bourgeoisie
We pass now to another phase that, by several movements, linked the French Revolution to the Communist.
The years pass. And the bourgeois, who had been in the first sphere, is himself devoured by the desire to enjoy life. This desire transforms him. Before the French Revolution, or in the beginning of the 19th-century, he was a stable, reasonable, hard-working man. But his son would be a happy-go-lucky. He would try to have a dandy, elegant look. As he begins to look like this, he becomes superficial, empty, losing the qualities that made his ancestors great.
The grandson of the bourgeois is the playboy. Now with this one we have the impression that he has totally lost stability and importance. His velocity is crazy. He does not walk, he runs. Or he then lies down and sleeps. He does not have calm pace, not even in ideas. His sense of thought coordination disappeared entirely. He jumps from one expression to another without the least connection. He does not have habits. Every day he overhauls his way of life and being. His life is a endless chain of pleasures. He throws himself into sports, then rock-and-roll. He just tries to entertain himself.
The longing for pleasure explodes in the working-class
The playboy is an extreme phenomenon, but the fact is that most bourgeoisie tend toward what we can call “playboyism.” For most of the working class and proletariat it gives the inebriating spectacle of a happy life, glittering on the outside but all made of frustration inside. What is the result? Simplifying quite a bit, we finally arrive at the thorough discredit of the bourgeois by the worker. But it enkindles in him the desire to enjoy the bourgeois life. From this comes that so-familiar longing of the masses, to grasp the pleasures that make up the life of the bourgeois.
On the other hand, a certain modernization of some clergy hones this eagerness even more. In his writings, Pius XII makes more than ten important affirmations of sorrow for this deviation of some elements of the clergy. So this tendency is a fact, verifiable in Papal documents.
And today we still have these different tendencies to atheism, pantheism, liturgicism, and socialism. Moreover, the insane art forms like cubism or Dadaism express this longing for pleasure, for wild desires. This constitutes a transformation before which all political and social upheavals are nothing but mere consequences.
The dynamics of this anxiety for pleasure
So the great problem is how to uphold something, precisely when this tremendous paganizing spirit and longing for pleasure blows strongest and freest. This perplexity is enormous. This neo-pagan tendency is colossal, only satisfied by pride and sensuality. And so, when somebody defends theses that favor pride he is praised. But when he turns to hierarchy, to humility, his words sound melancholic, like factors of sorrow and discouragement. This longing for pleasure takes mankind to the side of the Revolution.
Take a novel, moral, beautiful and elevated. How can the author attempt to compete with an immoral book? The immoral novel will win because it satisfies certain passions avid for nourishment and growth. The moral novel, speaking only to reason, reminding one of duty, does not please. Because this appetite only applies to pleasure, to sensuality.
A speaker delivers a conference favoring divorce. Great applause. Because numberless passions are let loose, seeking free love. Let him speak against divorce and he will find an auditorium that might even agree with him, but leaves sad for having to do it, claiming that the speaker’s logic has tied them. The listeners leave feeling they were robbed of something.
A lecturer might show how beautiful and noble it is to relieve suffering. And therefore how beautiful it is for a man to lower himself to console those lesser than he. And that a man, taken up by a sublime spirit of Christian charity, knows how to make himself equal and level to everyone. The whole auditorium claps. Why? Because everyone longs for the elimination of these barriers, which cause so much friction in the world. Precisely because of this they already have an ear prepared for these ideas.
For example, let us found a political party called Radical Progressive Revolutionary Party. A thousand snakes eagerly rise up. But if we christened it Party of Regenerative Reaction, we would find the votes of but a few old ladies, a few sensible men, half a dozen outdated farmers, a minimum part of the electorate. Because the majority was already previously conquered by the other side. The Radical Progressive Revolutionary Party drags all the votes. Why? Because a political determination, an ideological determination is already in the public spirit before the ideas.
The appetite of pleasure in Catholics
How can we explain the fact that we are stuck in the greatest moral crises but at the same time are a nation with a great Catholic majority and insignificant minority of Protestants, atheists and schismatics? The Brazilian people are Catholic, profoundly linked to Christian traditions received from the past. Nevertheless, the unleashed forces of neo-paganism are united by a movement more dynamic than its soul. It is an appetite of pleasure and an appetite of unbridled, explosive pleasure. This appetite longs to destroy all order, all hierarchy, all our Christian past.
What is the result? While we are beating our breast at Church, filling our “Catholic” in the census, our very soul is being emptied of its Catholicity. This is Brazil’s great problem. And we agree that the same goes for all Catholic nations. The problem is not to convert Protestants. We shall solve the problem if we “Catholicize” the Catholics of these nations.
What is the use of converting the Protestant 5% if the division within our own souls, stemming from the first Revolution, gets worse and worse. It is the double inheritance of faith and Revolution, received from Portugal and Spain. What will come of this? By an appalling phenomenon in our soul, everything that represents the faith to us fades weaker by the day, and everything that represents the Revolution grows stronger?
The bottom line of this crisis is a problem of soul. In this internal struggle, the forces of the immoderate passions represent the Revolution. They are dynamic forces. However, the forces that represent tradition, virtue, faith, are waning forces, tired and enfeebled. And when we have dynamism on one side and inertia one the other, life on one side and death on the other, only one thing can happen. The living eat the dead.
Prepare the Counter-Revolution of the Cross
So what is the practical actual situation we are in? The Revolution cunningly prepared the decay of the West using special rules, based on the principle that to induce man to wrongdoing, his passions need to be excited. We can apply the principles developed in Revolution and Counter-Revolution. We can study how the Revolution breathes a moderate enjoyment of pleasure in a given place. Then it brings forth enjoyment of impiety. Then it proceeds to propagate this desire to other points. And like this it prepares an immense fire encompassing all aspects of society.
What should we do? Exactly the opposite. We should prepare the Counter-Revolution, first of all, by promoting the Counter-Revolution of the Cross.
Today we are in maybe the best time to make a Counter-Revolution. The Gospels tell us the parable of the Prodigal Son. He left his father’s home carried away a spirit which we could call revolutionary, to enjoy city life, no longer tolerating his father’s authority. In the city he squanders his patrimony and manages survive off the acorns thrown to the swine. This parable of Our Lord is extremely psychological. While this man had money he did not remember his father. But when he felt the bad taste of the pig’s acorns in his mouth, and the growling of his empty stomach, he then remembered his father. In other words, the time of suffering is the time for amendment and penance. The world today exactly matches this situation. It is the time of suffering and penance.
In the great modern cities, we feel that heavy atmosphere. With somber faces, people rush to work. There is hunger. Life is hard. Above all, the souls are all empty. They do not feel empty, but this means nothing. The fact is they are empty. The soul’s frustration produces neuroses, psychotic disorders, desperation, so characteristic of the great cities. We all feel we are in one of those moments of history in which a catastrophe menaces humanity. And a nuclear bomb is least of them. Really the whole world trembles and feels an indefinable interrogation.
This pain comes from the devil’s promises. He promises pleasure, but delivers acorns from the swine because the devil always lies. However this pain gives rise to entirely new, indications of a great opportunity for the Counter-Revolution.
Twenty-years ago a counter-revolutionary movement was considered a dream. Anyone who followed the Catholic movement from then till now could say that never before were the possibilities of a counter-revolutionary movement so great. Not because the crisis is not at its apogee, but precisely because it is at its apogee. For this also brings the beginnings of despair and then the beginnings of a reaction.
This is the reason for that type of bitterness and profound disillusion visible in everyone, above all the youth. However it also leads to a surprising fact. When we made plans for the book Agrarian Reform- Question of Conscience we calculated printing 5,000 copies. But 12,000 copies went out in two months. And all over Brazil it was in so much demand that we printed another 18,000 copies. So a total of 30,000 copies were printed. Almost all sold. This is a true record for a so-called “furiously reactionary” book.
What does all this mean, if not precisely an appetite, something new, that we never found before? It is something that happens in the upper levels of Revolution “A,” much more important than a mere institutional event. It is a phenomenon inside the soul of a multitude, inside the collective life of a people. It consists in an appetite of passing from a Revolutionary extreme to something positive, idealist and suffering.
This is why we find so many youth, who could be splurging about Europe entertaining themselves, purchasing comfortable cars, drinking splendid champagne, living it up without a care in the world, consecrate their lives to fight the Revolution. This is also why many others not so rich, who could be trying to make money, the great worry of modern man, but are spending their time and committing their economic future to a counter-revolutionary work.
The dawn of a new Middle Ages
They are people who live in search of the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. They like to hear about duty, ideals. But they know that the words “duty” and “ideal” only have a meaning when joined with His words. Because Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Supreme Good, is the only ideal perfection. All the ideals that lead to Him are true, and all the ideals that turn away from Him are lies, abomination, and sin.
We ought to understand the profound meaning of this movement of souls, and why it has what we could call mystical. It is the mysticism of following Our Lord with the spirit of sacrifice and renunciation, accomplishing our duty, opposed to all we have done till now. From men imbued with this spirit the dawn of a new Middle Ages shall spring forth. When men have another spirit- of pleasure, of enjoying life- there could only be abomination and paganism.
In the moment that Christian civilization is on the road of death, but also to rebirth, we do not want to disguise anything that is admirably true, logical, coherent, profound, and sincere in the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We have to live a life of duty, struggle, work, and seriousness, for love of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
These are terrible words!
Our Lady of Good Success (Quito, Ecuador)