When heresy was "blasted with execration"  

by Miguel Martinez

In the coming 'Kingdom of Mary' which this peculiar organization sees as being just around the corner, there will be little room for "professional study" of what Introvigne calls "new religious movements". 



According to Plinio, the "Order born of the Counter-Revolution must shine out" for its 

"constant care in discovering and fighting evil in its embryo and hidden forms, blasting it with execration and branding it with infamy, punishing it with inflexible rigour, especially as far as any attempts on orthodoxy and purity of customs are concerned; all of this in opposition to the liberal metaphysics of Revolution and its tendency to give free rein and protection to evil" 


These words are taken from Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Rivoluzione e Contro-Rivoluzione, p. 126, Italian edition, advertised of course in Cristianità, the magazine of Alleanza Cattolica. As Cristianità tells us, "Revoluçao e Contra-Revoluçao, written in 1959, is the basic text of TFP, and provides it with the foundations of its doctrine and action" (Cristianità, Nov.Dec. 1995, pp. 5). At least, unlike Introvigne when discussing New Acropolis' "controversial texts", they do not claim this book was a "forgery" drawn up by "anti-cult movements".  

In a school run by TFP in France, 

"Before every Mass, some TFP militants would march up to the altar of the chapel carrying Dr Plinio's book Revolution and Counter-Revolution. The same kind of ceremony was also practised in Brazil. The book was generally preceded by a militant who carried a cushion bearing a chalice, followed by another militant who carried another cushion bearing a crown of thorns." 
 
(Tradizione Famiglia Proprietà: Associazione cattolica o setta millenarista?, Rimini 1996, p. 63)
 


Quite similar words to those expressed in Cristianità appear in Lepanto (June 1991), organ of AC's sister-group: 

"Kings and governors must make sure everybody observes the Divine and evangelical law […]. Authorities must make sure the laws of the Church are obeyed as well […]. This means that rulers must abhor and persecute no vice more than heresy in their States […]. Since the spiritual arms of the Church are not always sufficient to achieve this result, rulers must help the Church to drive this idol out of the Temple of God, cutting off the head and the palms of both hands, as with a dragon (1 Kings 5:4), so it can no longer speak, act or prevail".


One of Plinio's works is called Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Speeches of Pius XII to the Roman Patricians and Nobility. This essay was of course published in Cristianità (In "Genesi, sviluppo e declino della 'nobiltà della terra'", in the May 1994 issue of Cristianità, on p. 15 ff., and following issues). The same May issue also contains a 9 page essay of Introvigne defending Opus Dei against the "anti-cult movement", which "reveals, often in detail, the plot of the struggle against religion in the present hour", as the cover advises us ("the present hour" is a catchword of Doctor Plinio). 

The word "analogous" in Plinio's title is due to a basic problem with Plinio's Brazilian chivalry (his followers call themselves "soldier monks" - cfr. Tradizione Famiglia Proprietà: Associazione cattolica o setta millenarista?, Rimini 1996, p. 27): the lack of any authentic aristocracy in a country where the élites mainly had the function of making their black slaves work to grow coffee for the breakfasts of the real élites around the world. This leads the Master to proudly claim that the old Brazilian society was a full-blown feudal one. 

Giovanni Cantoni, co-author as we have seen with Introvigne on a book against "anti-cult movements", presented Plinio's essay in an international congress in Rome on October 30, 1993: a picture on page 21 shows Cantoni, looking something like Siegmund Freud, speaking, next to "His Imperial Royal Highness", the Archduke Martin of Austria. Cantoni quotes the typical expression of the Doctor - economic differences "encourage and often oblige people to be generous, magnanimous and to share". 

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