FOREWORD

            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 third to be published in the United States. It includes recent commentaries on Revolution and Counter-Revolution's third part, which was added by the author in 1976.

            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.

            For example, in the late 40s, his Em Defesa da Acao 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.

            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 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."

            All the editions of Revolution and Counter-Revolution have concluded with these words:

"We have not the slightest doubt in our heart about any of the theses that constitute this work. Nevertheless, we subject them all unrestrictedly to the judgment of the Vicar of Christ and are disposed to renounce immediately any one of them if it depart even slightly from the teaching of the Holy Church, our Mother, the Ark of Salvation, and the Gate of Heaven."

            Over thirty years have passed since this statement was first published. In the meantime, Revolution and Counter-Revolution has been spread throughout the world without any of its theses being challenged as contrary to the Church's Magisterium. This fact corroborates the earlier approbations and testifies to the integrity of this enduring work.

            To this must be added another fact of enormous gravity. In the third part of the present work, the author states that the main battleground of the struggle between anti-order (the Revolution) and order (the Counter-Revolution) is no longer civil society but the Holy Church herself.

            Such a terrible state of affairs is of first concern to Catholics. But it is also of concern to all men of good will, for without the influence of the Church, temporal society will never rise from the prostration to which it has been reduced by the same enemy: the Revolution.

            People seeking the most effective way to combat this enemy will welcome a book that provides the principles needed for the pursuit of this struggle.

The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property

(TFP)