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Sources
by Miguel Martinez Very little critical material exists on TFP ("Tradition Family and Property"), and we would be glad for any suggestions. Of course, there are the TFP sources themselves, for example works by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira,
but also some written by his admirers, for example the biography of Dona Lucilia written by Joâo Scognamiglio Clá Dias,
a glossy two-volume piece where, for example, the reader may admire colour pictures of "the tin soldiers which used to enchant little Plinio so much".
On our site, you can read - in Italian - the excellent essay
Tradizione, Famiglia e Proprietà: Religione e politica ai tropici by Jesús Hortal Sánchez,
Rector of the Pontificia Universidad Católica do Río de Janeiro.
Another useful academic source on TFP is Thomas Niehaus & Brady Tyson,
"The Catholic Right in contemporary Brazil: the case of the Society for the Defense of
Tradition, Family and Property", in "Religion in Latin America", Markharm
Press Fund, Texas, 1989; also, a few articles have come out in specialized reviews.
Only a few articles come from where criticism
would be most likely: the political Left. An Internet page in Portuguese
by the "landless" movement, some critical material from Spain and an excellent
but sectorial study by a professor of Durban University in South Africa
(where, under the apartheid regime, TFP 'celebrated religious freedom',
as Introvigne would put it, by having the progressive Catholic review New
Nation outlawed), are all that a quick search through the Web could
place. There have also been a few interesting articles in the French press.
Mention should also be made of two booklets published by Catholic traditionalists:
1) Tradizione, famiglia, proprietà:
associazione cattolica o setta millenarista?, 1996
2) Carlo Alberto Agnoli e Paolo Taufer,
TFP: la maschera e il volto.
The first booklet is a very interesting
analysis of the organization and includes testimonies of several former
TFP members.
The second is heavily conditioned by the
authors' conspiracy theories, with which I personally disagree. However
the booklet contains many interesting quotes from TFP material.
Several very well-documented articles were
published in the traditionalist Catholic review Sodalitium, as a
reaction to Introvigne locating these ultra-orthodox Thomists in an article
on "new religious movements", somewhere between the Moonies and the Satanists.
Introvigne had the bad taste of doing so in an article in the Italian Masonic
publication, Ars Regia, published by the "brother" Mauro Mugnai
(Sodalitium n. 35, Oct.-Nov. 1993); a review where Introvigne's
name figures as "scientific consultant" for the publishers.
Other interesting material came out in
a debate in Orion, an Italian magazine generally labelled as "right-wing",
where both pro and anti-TFP voices can be heard (Orion, c/o Libreria
del Fantastico, via Plinio 32, 20129 Milano, Italy).
However the most interesting material on
TFP comes from the horse's own mouth:
Roberto de Mattei, Il crociato del secolo
XX: Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, PIEMME, Casale Monferrato, Italy,
1996 (a book which I believe has been translated into several languages).
This biography of the Leader proudly boasts
of what most people would consider the most disreputable aspects of TFP:
even the photographs in this book alone are enough to put Introvigne out
of business. A look at the footnotes will show that de Mattei, besides
being the leader of AC's sister-organization, Centro Lepanto, is
also a great Introvigne-quoter. And the quotes he quotes go to the point:
they all defend Master Plinio.
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