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COMMENTARY

Astonishing Calamities in the Church’s Post-Conciliar Phase

The historic declaration of Paul VI in the Allocution Resistite fortes in fide, of June 29, 1972, is fundamental for a better understanding of the calamities in the post-Conciliar phase of the Church. We quote the Poliglotta Vaticana.

Referring to the situation of the Church today, the Holy Father affirmed that he had the feeling that “the smoke of Satan has entered into the temple of God through some crack.” There is doubt, uncertainty, complexity, restlessness, dissatisfaction, confrontation. People no longer trust the Church; they trust the first secular profane prophet who speaks to us through some newspaper or social movement, running after him and asking him if he has the formula of true life. We do not realize that we are already owners and masters of it. Doubt has entered our consciences through windows that ought to be open to the light….This state of uncertainty also reigns in the Church. It was thought that after the Council the history of the Church would enter a sunny day. It entered instead a cloudy, stormy, dark, skeptical, and uncertain day. We preach ecumenism and yet we ourselves are farther and farther apart. We seek to dig abysses instead of filling them.

How did this happen? The Pope confided one of his opinions: An adverse power has intervened. His name is the devil, the mysterious being to which Saint Peter also alludes in his Epistle.^8.
The same Pontiff, in an Allocution to the students of the Pontifical Lombard Seminary on December 7, 1968, had affirmed:

The Church finds herself in an hour of disquiet, of self-criticism, one might even say of self-destruction. It is like an acute and complex interior upheaval, which no one expected after the Council. One though of a blossoming, a serene expansion of the mature concepts of the Council. The Church still has this aspect of blossoming. But since “bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu,” the aspect of sorrow has become most notable. The Church is also being wounded by those who are part of her.^9.

His Holiness John Paul II also painted a somber picture of the Church’s situation.

One must be realistic and acknowledge with a deep and pained sentiment that a great party of today’s Christians feel lost, confused, perplexed, and even disillusioned: ideas contradicting the revealed and unchanging Truth have been spread far and wide; outright heresies in the dogmatic and moral fields have been disseminated, creating doubt, confusion, and rebellion; even the liturgy has been altered. Immersed in intellectual and moral “relativism” and therefore in permissiveness, Christians are tempted by atheism, agnosticism, a vaguely moralistic illuminism, a sociological Christianity, without defined dogmas and without objective morality.^10.
In a similar vein, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine for the Faith, later stated:

Results since the Council seem to be in cruel contrast to the expectations of all, beginning with those of John XXIII and Paul VI….The Popes and the Council Fathers were expecting a new Catholic unity, and instead one has encountered a dissension that — to use the words of Paul VI — seems to have gone from self-criticism to self-destruction. A new enthusiasm was expected, but too often there has been boredom and discouragement instead. A new leap forward was expected, but instead we find ourselves facing a process of progressive decadence….It must be clearly stated that a real reform of the Church presupposes an unequivocal turning away from the erroneous paths that led to indisputably negative consequences.^11.

A. The Second Vatican Council – Continued

History narrates the innumerable dramas the Church has suffered in the twenty centuries of her existence: oppositions that germinated outside her and tried to destroy her from outside; malignancies that formed within her, were cut off by her, and thereafter ferociously tried to destroy her from outside.

When, however, has history witnessed an attempted demolition of the Church like the present one? No longer undertaken by an adversary, it was termed a “self-destruction” in a most lofty pronouncement having world-wide repercussion.^12.

From this resulted an immense debacle for the Church and what still remains of Christian civilization. The Ostpolitik of the Vatican, for example, and the massive infiltration of communism into Catholic circles are effects of all these calamities. And they constitute additional successes of the psychological offensive of the Third Revolution against the Church.

 

COMMENTARY

The Vatican Ostpolitik

On reading these lines about Ostpolitik, someone could ask if the enormous changes that took place in Russia resulted from an ingenious move by the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

Perhaps the Vatican, on the basis of the best information, foresaw that communism, corroded by internal crises, would begin in its turn to self-destruct. And to encourage the world headquarters of materialistic atheism to this autodemolition, the Catholic Church, situated on the other extreme of the ideological spectrum, feigned her own destruction. Perhaps this is what led communism to markedly diminish its persecution of the Church. After all, if both were moribund, and arrangement would be understandable. In other words, it is to the flexibility of the Church that we should attribute the conditions for the flexibility of the communist world.It would be fitting to reply that if the members of the Sacred Hierarchy knew that indigence and ruin would force communism to self-destruct, they should have denounced the misery and convoked all the peoples of the West to prepare the way for rehabilitating Russia and the world as soon as communism effectively collapsed.

They should not have remained silent, letting the phenomenon evolve without benefiting from Catholic influence and the generous and solicitous cooperation of Western governments, since only this denunciation could have prevented the Soviet collapse from reaching its present dead end, wherein everything is misery and imbroglio.

In any case, it is false to say that the self-destruction of the Church has hastened the self-destruction of communism – unless there were a secret treaty between the two in this regard.

But such a treaty — or suicidal pact — would lack any legitimacy and usefulness for the Catholic world, not to mention everything in this mere hypothesis of offense to the popes in whose pontificates this double euthanasia was supposedly arranged.

B. The Church: Today’s Center of Conflict Between the Revolution and the Counter-Revolution

In 1959, the year we wrote Revolution and the Counter-Revolution, the Church was considered the great spiritual force against the worldwide expansion of the communist sect.

In 1976, innumerable ecclesiastics, including bishops, figure as accomplices by omission, as collaborators, and even as driving forces of the Third Revolution. Progressivism, installed almost everywhere, is converting the formerly verdant forest of the Catholic Church into wood that can easily be set afire by communism.

In a word, the extent of this change is such that we do not hesitate to affirm that the center — the most sensitive and truly decisive point in the fight between the Revolution and the Counter-Revolution — has shifted from the temporal to the spiritual society.

The Holy Church is now this center. In her, progressivists, cryptocommunists, and procommunists confront antiprogressivists and anticommunists.¹³

C. Reactions Based on Revolution and Counter-Revolution

Has the efficacy of Revolution and Counter-Revolution been annulled by these numerous changes? On the contrary.

In 1968, the TFPs then existing in South America, inspired in particular by Part II of this essay (“The Counter-Revolution”), organized national petition drives addressed to Paul VI, requesting measures against leftist infiltration into the Catholic clergy and laity of South America.

Altogether, 2,060,368 people in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay signed the petition during a 58-day period.

To our knowledge, it is the only mass petition – on any subject – signed by the sons of four South American nations. And, as far as we know, it is the largest petition in the history of these four countries.¹⁴

The answer of Paul VI was not merely silence and inaction. It was — how it pains us to say it — a series of acts whose effect continues to give prestige and facility of action to many promoters of Catholic leftism today.

At the sight of this rising tide of communist infiltration into the Holy Church, the TFPs and like organizations did not become discouraged. And in 1974 each of them published a declaration¹⁵ expressing their inconformity with the Vatican Ostpolitik and their resolve “to resist to the face.”¹⁶

One of the declaration’s passages, referring to Paul VI, expresses the document’s spirit:

On our knees, gazing with veneration at the person of His Holiness Pope Paul VI, we express all our fidelity to him. In this filial act we say to the Pastor of Pastors: “Our soul is Yours, our life is Yours. Order us to do whatever you wish. Only do not order us to cross our arms in face of the assailing Red wolf. To this our conscience is opposed.”

Not stopping at these efforts, the TFPs and like organizations in their respective countries promoted during the course of 1976 nine editions of the Chilean TFP best-seller, The Church of Silence in Chile: The TFP Proclaims the Whole Truth.¹⁷

In almost all countries, the respective edition included a prologue describing numerous and impressive national events analogous to what had occurred in Chile.

The response of the public to this great publicity effort can be termed a victory: 56,000 copies were printed in South America alone, where, in the most populous countries, the total pressrun of a book of this nature, when successful, is usually 5,000 copies.

In Spain, more than 1,000 secular and regular priests from all regions of the country signed an impressive petition giving the Sociedad Cultural Covadonga¹⁸ their firm support for the courageous prologue of the book’s Spanish edition.

D. The Usefulness of the Action of the TFPs and Like Organizations Inspired by Revolution and Counter-Revolution

In this specific battlefield, what has been the practical effect of the counter-revolutionary activity of the TFPs, inspired by Revolution and Counter-Revolution?
By denouncing the danger of communist infiltration to Catholic opinion, the TFPs have opened the eyes of Catholics to the snares of unfaithful pastors. Consequently, the latter are leading fewer and fewer sheep along the paths of perdition onto which they themselves have wandered, as even a summary observation of the facts leads one to conclude.

This is not a victory in itself, but it is a precious and indispensable condition for one. The TFPs give thanks to Our Lady for being able, within the spirit and methods of the second part of Revolution and Counter-Revolution, to do their share in the great struggle in which other wholesome forces — one or another of great scope and capability for action — are presently engaged.

5. An Assessment Of Twenty Years of The Third Revolution According To The Criteria Of Revolution and Counter-Revolution

The situation of the Third Revolution and the Counter-Revolution has been outlined herein on the basis of how they appear shortly before the twentieth anniversary of the publication of this book.

On the one hand, the apogee of the Third Revolution makes a success of the Counter-Revolution in the near future more difficult than ever.

On the other, the same anti-socialist allergy that presently constitutes a grave obstacle to the victory of communism creates medium-term conditions that are decidedly favorable for the Counter-Revolution.
The various counter-revolutionary groups spread throughout the world have the noble historic responsibility of making good use of these conditions.

The TFPs have strived to contribute their part to the common effort, having spread during the last twenty years across the Americas, with a new TFP in France, giving rise to a similar dynamic organization in the Iberian peninsula, and projecting its name and contacts in other countries of the Old World with the strong desire of working with all the counter-revolutionary groups fighting there.¹⁹

Twenty years after the launching of Revolution and Counter-Revolution, the TFPs and similar organizations stand shoulder to shoulder with the front-line organizations in the counter-revolutionary struggle.

<sub>8. Insegnamenti di Paolo VI, vol. 10, pp. 707-709.
9. Ibid., vol. 6, p. 188.
10. John Paul II, allocution to the religious and priests participating in the First Italian National Congress on Missions to the People for the 80s, February 6, 1981, L’Obsservatore Romano, February 7, 1981.
11. From Vittorio Messori, Vittorio Messori a colloquio con il cardinale Joseph Ratzinger-Rapporto sulla fede (Milan: Edizioni Paoline, 1985), pp. 27-28.</sub>
<sup>12. Allocution of Paul VI to the Lombardy Seminary, December 7, 1968.
13. Since the 1930s, with the group that later founded the Brazilian TFP, we have been employing the best of our time and possibilities of action and combat in the battle leading up to the great battle inside the Church. Our first extensive undertaking in this struggle was the publication of the book Em Defesa da Ação Católica (São Paulo: Editoria Ave Maria, 1943), denouncing the resurgence of modernist errors in Brazils’s Cathoilc Action movement. It is also fitting to mention our much more recent study A Igreja ante a escalada da ameaça communista-Apelo aos Bispos silenciosos (São Paulo: Editora Ver Cruz, 1976), pp. 37-53. [Click here for the English e-book of In Defense of Catholic Action] Today, after more than forty years, the struggle is at its height, permitting one to foresee developments of an amplitude and intensity difficult to measure. In this struggle we are gladdened by the presence in the ranks of the TFPs and like organizations of so many new brothers-in-ideal, in over twenty countries on six continents. It is legitimate also on the battlefield for the soldiers of the good to say to one another: “Quam bonum et quam jucundum habitare fratres in unum” (“Behold how good it is and how pleasant where brethren dwell together in unity”) (Psalm 132:1).</sup>

<sup>14. In 1990 the TFPs surpassed this record with the largest petition drive in history. They gathered 5,212,580 signatures for the liberation of Lithuania, then under the Soviet yoke.
15. Titled “The Vatican Policy of Distention Toward the Communist Governments — The Question for the TFP: To Take No Stand? Or to Resist?,” this declaration, a veritable manifesto, was published, beginning in April 1974, in 57 newspapers in 11 countries. – Ed.
16. Gal. 2:l1.
17. This work — monumental for its documentation, its argumentation, and the theses it defends — had a truly epic forerunner even before the installation of communism in Chile, namely, Fabio Vidigal Xavier da Silveira’s Frei: El Kerensky Chileno. It denounced the decisive collaboration of the Chilean Christian Democratic party and its leader Eduardo Frei, then president of the country, in paving the way for the Marxist victory. Published in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Italy, and Venezuela, the book went through seventeen printings, with more than 100,000 copies.
18. Today the Spanish TFP: Sociedad Espanola de Defensa de la Tradicion, Familia y Propiedad-TFP Covadonga.19.  There are now TFPs and like organizations in Argentina, Australia. Bolivia, Brazil. Canada, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, France, Germany, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, the United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela. They have representation offices in Rome, Paris, Frankfurt, London, Edinburgh, San José de Costa Rica, Sydney, and Wellington (New Zealand). In addition, a dynamic group of TFP friends recently formed in the Philippines.</sup>

CHAPTER III

The Aborning Fourth Revolution

The panorama presented here would be incomplete were we to fail to mention an internal transformation in the Third Revolution. It is the Fourth Revolution that is being born of it.

It is being born, yes, in the manner of a matricidal refinement. When the Second Revolution was born, it refined,¹ overcame, and dealt a mortal blow to the First Revolution. The same occurred when, by an analogous process, the Third Revolution sprang from the second.

Everything indicates that the Third Revolution has now arrived at the moment, at once culminating and fatal, when it generates the Fourth Revolution and thus exposes itself to being killed by it.

In the clash between the Third Revolution and the Counter-Revolution, will there be time for the process that generates the Fourth Revolution to develop entirely? Will the latter effectively open a new stage in the history of the Revolution? Or will it be simply an abortive phenomenon, which will rise up and disappear without having a major influence in the clash between the Third Revolution and the Counter-Revolution? The greater or lesser space to be reserved for the Fourth Revolution in these hurried and summary notes would depend on the answer to this question — an answer that only the future can give completely.

Since what is uncertain should not be treated as if it had the importance of what is certain, we will devote a very limited space to what seems to be the Fourth Revolution.

1. The Fourth Revolution Foretold By The Authors Of The Third Revolution

As is well known, neither Marx nor the generality of his most notorious followers (whether orthodox or heterodox) considered the dictatorship of the proletariat to be the final phase of the revolutionary process. This dictatorship is, according to them, nothing but the most refined, dynamic aspect of the universal Revolution. And, in the evolutionist mythology inherent to the thinking of Marx and his followers, just as evolution will develop to infinity over the centuries, so also the Revolution will be endless. From the First Revolution, two other revolutions have already been born. The third, in its turn, will generate another. And so on…

It is impossible to predict within the Marxist perspective what the Twentieth or Fiftieth Revolution would be like. However, it is possible to predict what the Fourth Revolution will be like. This prediction has already been made by the Marxists themselves.
This revolution will necessarily be the overthrow of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a result of a new crisis. Pressured by this crisis, the hypertrophic state will be victim of its own hypertrophy. And it will disappear, giving rise to a scientistic and cooperationist state of things in which — so the communists say — man will have attained a heretofore inconceivable degree of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

2. The Fourth Revolution And Tribalism: An Eventuality?

How shall this come to pass? We cannot but wonder if the tribal society dreamed of by today’s structuralist currents provides the answer to this question. Structuralism sees in tribal life an illusory synthesis between the height of individual liberty and of consentaneous collectivism, in which the latter ends up devouring liberty. In this collectivism, the various “I’s” or the individual persons, with their intelligence, will, and sensibility, and consequently with their characteristic and conflictual ways of being, merge and dissolve in the collective personality of the tribe, which generates one thought, one will, and one style of being intensely common to all.

Of course, the road to this tribal state of things must pass through the extinction of the old standards of individual reflection, volition, and sensibility. These will be gradually replaced by forms of thought, deliberation, and sensibility that are increasingly collective. It is, therefore, principally in this field that the transformation must take place.

In what manner? In tribes, the cohesion among the members is assured mainly by a way of thinking and feeling common to all, from which result common habits and a common will. Individual reason is reduced to almost nothing, in other words, to the first and most elementary movements that this atrophied state permits. “Savage thought,”² the thought that does not think and is turned only to what is concrete — such is the price of the tribal collectivist fusion. It belongs to the witch doctor to maintain, on a mystical level, this collective psychic life by means of totemic cults charged with confused “messages” but rich in the ignes fatui or even fulgurations emanating from the mysterious world of transpsychology or parapsychology. By acquiring these “riches,” man would compensate for the atrophy of reason.

Reason — formerly hypertrophied by free interpretation of the Scriptures, Cartesianism, and other causes, divinized by the French Revolution, used to the point of the most unabashed abuse in every communist school of thought — would now be atrophied and enslaved by transpsychological and parapsychological totemism.

A. The Fourth Revolution and the Preternatural

“Omnes dii gentium daemonia” (“All of the gods of the gentiles are devils”), say the Scriptures.³ In this structuralist perspective, in which magic is presented as a form of knowledge, to what degree may a Catholic perceive the deceitful flashes, the canticle (at once sinister and attractive, soothing and delirious, atheistic and fetishistically credulous) with which, from the bottom of the abysses where he lies eternally, the Prince of Darkness attracts those who have denied Jesus Christ and His Church?

This is a question that theologians can and should discuss. We mean the real theologians, that is, the few who still believe in the existence of the devil and hell, especially the few among these few who have the courage to face the scorn and persecution of the mass media and to speak out.

B. Structuralism and Pre-tribal Tendencies

To the extent that one sees the structuralist movement as a more or less exact (but, in any event, precursory) figure of the Fourth Revolution, one must view certain phenomena generalized over the last decade or two as preparing and driving the structuralist impetus.

Thus, the overthrow of the traditions of dress in the West, increasingly eroded by nudism, obviously tends toward the appearance and consolidation of habits that will tolerate, at most, the cincture of feathers worn by certain tribes, substituted, where the cold demands it, with coverings somewhat like those used by the Laplanders.

The rapid disappearance of the rules of courtesy can only end up in the absolute simplicity (to use only this qualifier) of tribal manners.

The growing dislike for anything that is reasoned, structured, and systematized, can only lead, in its last paroxysms, to the perpetual and fanciful vagabondage of jungle life, alternating, likewise, with the instinctive and almost mechanical performance of some activities absolutely indispensable to life.

The aversion to intellectual effort, notably to abstraction, theorization, and doctrinal thought, can only induce, ultimately, a hypertrophy of the senses and of the imagination, resulting in the “civilization of the image,” about which Paul VI felt duty-bound to warn mankind.⁴

Also symptomatic are the ever more frequent idyllic eulogies of a cultural revolution that will generate a postindustrial society, still ill-defined but whose first specimen would be — some say is — Chinese communism.

C. An Unpretentious Contribution

We know full well that panoramic views — always vast and summary — lend themselves to many objections.

Necessarily abbreviated due to the constrictions of the present chapter, our overview is but an unpretentious contribution to the studious reflections of people gifted with that daring and unique finesse of observation and analysis which, in all epochs, enables some men to foresee tomorrow.

D. The Opposition of the Banal

Others, instead of using foresight, will simply do what banal and timid souls have been doing throughout the centuries. Smiling, they will term such transformations impossible. Why? Because they clash with their mental habits; these transformations violate common sense, and for banal men, history normally follows the path of common sense.

So, in face of these perspectives, they will incredulously and optimistically smile, just as Leo X smiled about the trivial “quarrel of friars,” which was all he saw in the nascent First Revolution. Or they will smile like the “Fenelonian” Louis XVI smiled when he saw the first ferments of the Second Revolution in splendid palace salons, lulled at times by the silvery sound of the harpsichord, or glittering discreetly in bucolic ambiences and scenes like his wife’s Hameau. His smile was no different from that of many high — and some of the highest — dignitaries of the Church and of Western temporal society before the manipulations of smiling post-Stalinist communism or the upheavals announcing the Fourth Revolution.

If one day the Third or Fourth Revolution, aided by ecumenical progressivism in the spiritual realm, takes over the temporal life of humanity, it will be due more to the carelessness and collaboration of these smiling optimistic prophets of common sense than to all the fury of the revolutionary hosts and their propaganda.

COMMENTARY

Opposition From the Prophets of Common Sense

These are strange prophets indeed, since their prophecies invariably amount to affirmation that nothing will happen.

Eventually their various forms of optimism conflicted so flagrantly with the post-1976 facts that, to retain them, their adepts adopted the fallacious and totally hypothetical hope that the recent events in Eastern Europe will lead to the definitive disappearance of communism and therefore of the revolutionary process it spearheaded until recently.⁵

E. Ecclesiastical Tribalism and Pentecostalism

Obviously, it is not only the temporal realm that the Fourth Revolution wants to reduce to tribalism. It wants to do the same with the spiritual realm.

How this is to be done can already be clearly seen in the currents of theologians and canonists who intend to transform the noble, bone-like rigidity of the ecclesiastical structure – as Our Lord Jesus Christ instituted it and twenty centuries of religious life molded it – into a cartilaginous, soft, and amorphous texture of dioceses and parishes without territories and of religious groups in which the firm canonical authority is gradually replaced by the ascendancy of Pentecostalist “prophets,” the counterparts of the structuralist-tribalist witch doctors. Eventually, these prophets will be indistinguishable from witch doctors. The same goes for the progressivist-Pentecostalist parish or diocese, which will take on the appearances of the cell-tribe of structuralism.

COMMENTARY

The “Demonarchization” of the Ecclesiastical Authorities

 

In this historical/conjectural perspective, certain modifications in themselves alien to this process could be seen as steps in a transition between the pre-Conciliar status quo and the extreme opposite indicated here.

An example of this would be the trend toward a collegiality viewed as (1) the only acceptable means for exercising power inside the Church and (2) an expression of a “demonarchization” of ecclesiastical authority, whose different levels would become ipso facto much more conditioned by the levels immediately below them.

All this taken to its last consequences could tend toward the stable and universal establishment of popular suffrage inside the Church — not that on occasion she did not use it to fill certain hierarchical offices. In keeping with the dream of the advocates of tribalism, it could eventually result in an indefensible dependence of the whole hierarchy on the laity, as supposedly the only voice of God. Of God? Or of some witch doctor, whether a Pentecostalist guru or a sorcerer, who feeds his “mystical revelation” to a tribalistic laity? Would it be by obeying this laity that the Church hierarchy would fulfill its mission of obeying the will of God Himself?

3. The Duty of the Counter-Revolutionaries in Face of the Aborning Fourth Revolution

When innumerable facts grouped in a reasonable way suggest hypotheses like this one on the beginning of the Fourth Revolution, what can the counter-revolutionary still do?

In the light of Revolution and Counter-Revolution, it behooves him, first of all, to emphasize the preponderant role that the Revolution in the tendencies⁶ has in the generative process of this Fourth Revolution and in the world resulting from it. He should prepare to fight, not only alerting men against this preponderance of the tendencies, which is becoming the rule today even though fundamentally subversive of good human order, but also using all legitimate and appropriate means in the tendential field to combat this same revolution in the tendencies. The counter-revolutionaty should also observe, analyze, and foresee the new steps of the process in order to erect as soon as possible every obstacle against the supreme form of tendential revolution and of revolutionary psychological warfare: the aborning Fourth Revolution.

If the Fourth Revolution has time to develop before the Third Revolution attempts its big adventure, the fight against it might call for another chapter of Revolution and Counter-Revolution. Such a chapter, all by itself might take up as much space as that devoted to the three previous revolutions. Why? Because processes of decadence tend to complicate everything almost infinitely. This is why each phase of the Revolution is more complex than the preceding one and obliges the Counter-Revolution to make efforts that are likewise more detailed and complex.

 *  *  *

With these perspectives on the Revolution and the Counter-Revolution and on the future of the work that must be done in face of both, we end these considerations.

Uncertain, like everyone, about tomorrow, we prayerfully raise our eyes to the lofty throne of Mary, Queen of the Universe, while addressing her in a paraphrase of the Psalmist’s words to Our Lord:

Ad te levavi oculos meos, qui habitas in coelis. Ecce sicut oculi servorum in manibus dominorum suorum, sicut oculi ancillae in manibus dominae suae; ita oculi nostri ad Dominam Matrem nostram donec misereatur nostri. (Unto thee I lift up my eyes, unto thee, who dwellest in the heavens. See how the eyes of servants are fixed on the hands of their masters, the eyes of a handmaid on the hand of her mistress! So our eyes are fixed on Our Lady and Mother, waiting for her to have mercy on us.)⁷

Yes, we turn our eyes to Our Lady of Fatima, requesting of her the contrition that will obtain for us the great pardons, the strength to wage the great battles, and the abnegation to be detached in the great victories that will bring the establishing of her Reign.
We desire these victories with our whole heart, even if to reach them, the Church and the human race must undergo the apocalyptic — but how just, regenerating, and merciful — chastisements she predicted in 1917 at the Cova da Iria.

Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Part III, Ch. II & Ch. III, pg. 146-165.

 

End of Part III

<sup>1.  See Part I, Chapter 6, 3.
2. Cf. Claude Levy-Strauss, La pensee sauvage (Paris: Plon, 1969).
3 Psalm 95:5.
4. “We well know that modern man, overwhelmed by speeches, gives signs of being increasingly tired of listening and, worse still, of being irresponsive to words. We are also aware of the opinions of numerous psychologists and sociologists who affirm that modem man has already transcended the civilization of the word – which has become practically inefficacious and useless – and lives today in the civilization of the image” (Apostolic exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi, December 8, 1975, Documentos Pontificios, 6th ed. [Petropolis: Vozes, 1984], no. 188, p. 30).
5. Regarding this hope, see the commentaries added to Chapter 2 of this Part III.
6 See Part I, Chapter 5, 1-3.
7. Cf. Psalm 122:1-2.</sup>