POSTFACE - THE FIRST SIGNS OF A COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY REBIRTH

            The following excerpts are taken from an article written for the 100^th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady in Lourdes and was published in the monthly magazine Catolicismo (no. 86, February 1958). Here the worthy Brazilian Catholic leader and thinker Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira analyses the mission of Mary Most Holy in the restoration of Christian Civilisation and the defeat of the Revolution. We use this word as it is used by this same author in his masterly work Revolution and Counter-Revolution. In this work the word ‘Revolution’ means a centuries-long process during which the Western world has deviated from Christian principles.

            His commentaries regarding humanity’s state of unease due to sin and the profound yearnings it has for something different are intimately related to the third part of the Secret of Fatima published four decades after this article.

            After referring to the proclamation of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and of Papal Infallibility, as well as to St. Pius X’s steps to encourage frequent reception of the Holy Eucharist, Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira writes:

The enemy is stronger than ever

            But, one could ask, what has come as a result of this for the fight of the Church against its external enemies? Could one not say that the enemy is stronger than ever, and that the age the illuminati of days gone by dreamed of is upon us? Are we not indeed in an age of stark and total scientific naturalism that is dominated by materialistic technology? Are we not in an age of a ferociously egalitarian universal republic that has a somewhat philanthropic and humanitarian inspiration and from which will be swept all remnants of supernatural religion? Is this not in fact communism? Is it not also here that lies the danger by which Western society, supposedly anticommunist, will slip towards the realisation of this “ideal”?

The whole world groans in darkness and in pain

            Yes. And this danger is closer than is usually imagined. However, no one pays attention to a fact of primordial importance: as the world is modelled according to this sinister design, a profound, an immense, an indescribable uneasiness is overwhelming it. Sometimes this uneasiness is subconscious and, even when conscious, is still vague and ill defined. In any case, no one contests its existence. One would say that humanity is being violently forced into a mould that is not according to its nature and against which all the fibres of its existence writhe and resist.

Humanity also yearns longingly for something else it does not yet know how to define. This may be a new phenomenon since the decline of Christian civilisation began in the 15th Century. The whole world now groans in darkness and pain just like the prodigal son when he reached the depths of shame and misery far from the paternal home. At the very moment when iniquity seems to triumph, there is something frustrated in its apparent victory.

            Experience shows us that from discontent such as this emerge the great surprises of History. As the writhing increases, so does the unease. Who can tell what magnificent surprises may result?

            Many times the hour of divine mercy comes for the sinner when at the extreme limits of sin and pain.

            Now this healthy and promising uneasiness is, in my view, the fruit of a resurrection of the Catholic fibre coming from the great events mentioned above. This resurrection has had favourable repercussions over what was left of life and sanity in the cultured areas of the world.

The great conversion

            It certainly was a great moment in the life of the prodigal son when his spirit, immersed in vice, once again acquired new life and his will new vigour, as he meditated upon his miserable state and the turpitude of all the errors that had lead him far from the paternal home. Touched by grace, he found himself, more clearly than ever, in face of the great alternative: either to repent and return, or to remain in error and accept the tragic consequences. Everything a good education had taught him was as if marvellously reborn at this providential moment; while, on the other hand, the tyranny of his bad habits affirmed themselves possibly even more terribly than ever. The internal struggle had begun. He chose the good. And we know the rest of the Gospel story.

            Are we not possibly close to this moment?