Since its first publication in the Brazilian cultural journal Catolicismo in 1959, Revolution and Counter-Revolution has gone through a number of editions in Portuguese, English, French, Italian, and Spanish.
The present edition is the first to be published digitally in the United States. It includes recent commentaries on Revolution and Counter-Revolution’s third part, which was added by the author in 1976.
RCR in Portuguese
Revolution and Counter-Revolution, the basic book and inspiration of the many autonomous Societies for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property and like organizations, contains principles of wisdom that can efficaciously stop the disintegration of civilization in the world today.
The author of this work is the world-famous Brazilian Catholic philosopher Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira. Over the years he has written numerous works that have received noteworthy ecclesiastical approbation.
Revolution and Counter-Revolution second English edition.
For example, in the late 40s, his Em Defesa da Acão Catolica, denouncing the danger presented by leftists encysted in the Catholic Action movement, prompted a letter of praise from Msgr. Montini, then substitute for the Vatican secretary of state, written on behalf of Pius XII.
Special mention should be made of his book, In Defense of Catholic Action (1943), honored with a letter of praise sent to the author, on behalf of Pope Pius XII, by Msgr. G. B. Montini, then substitute to the Vatican Secretary of State and later Pope Paul VI;
In another work, The Church and the Communist State: The Impossible Coexistence (1963), the author proved that a Catholic could not view the establishment of a communist regime in his country as morally acceptable. The Vatican’s Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities called this work “a most faithful echo of all the Documents of the supreme Magisterium of the Church, including the luminous encyclicals Mater et Magistra of John XXIII and Ecclesiam Suam of Paul VI.”
In Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites, best-selling author Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira ambitiously argues the contrary. Drawing on papal and other classic sources, Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira demonstrates the natural necessity of social hierarchy.
In 1992, he wrote Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII contrasting two models of society. The first model is Christian, founded on the idea that God wills proportional and harmonic inequalities among the social classes, all of whose members are entitled to at least sufficient living conditions. The second model is based on the erroneous idea that all inequality is unjust. The book has been acclaimed in eloquent letters by Silvio Cardinal Oddi, Mario Luigi Cardinal Ciappi, Alfons M. Cardinal Stickler, theologian Fr. Raimondo Spiazzi, Thomist Fr. Victorino Rodriguez y Rodriguez, and canonist Fr. Anastasio Gutierrez.
Yet, the most significant of Professor Corrêa de Oliveira’s works is Revolution and Counter-Revolution. Its significance was quickly recognized. Eugene Cardinal Tisserant wrote: “The theme of this study is of the highest importance for the time in which we live… The analysis made by Professor Corrêa de Oliveira is clear, precise and accurate… It will be of interest to a considerable number of our fellow citizens. I congratulate the author of this magnificent work.” Thomas Cardinal Tien, of China, stated: “Those of us who personally suffer from the effects of communism are well able to calculate the accuracy and urgent necessity of such a study.”
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Foreword, Page xv – xvi.
Born at, Vich in Catalonia, 29 September, 1591; died at Valladolid, 10 April, 1625. At the age of twelve years he came to Barcelona, and asked to be received into the monastery of the Trinitarians, in which order, after a three years’ novitiate, he took vows in the monastery of St. Lambert at Saragossa, 5 Sept., 1607. When one day a Discalced Trinitarian came to St. Lambert’s to receive Holy orders, Michael felt himself drawn to this more austere congregation. After mature deliberation, and with the permission of his superior, he entered the novitiate of the Discalced Trinitarians at Madrid, and took vows at Alcalá; he became priest and was twice elected superior of the monastery at Valladolid. He lived a life of prayer and great mortification, was especially devout towards the Holy Eucharist, and is said to have been rapt in ecstasy several times during Consecration. He was beatified by Pius VI, 24 May, 1779 and canonized by Pius IX, 8 June, 1862. His feast is celebrated on 5 July. He is generally represented kneeling before an altar where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed.
