Trad Godfathers at Vatican II ~ The Brazilians: Proença Sigaud and Castro Mayer

Most people are familiar with Bishop Castro Meyer because he was co-consecrator with Abp Lefbebvre at Econe. Less well-known is Msgr Geraldo de Proença Sigaud, Archbishop of Diamantina, another valiant defender of Tradition from Brazil.

From One Peter Five

By Jerome Stridon

I. The Coetus: Trad Godfathers at Vatican II
II. Lefebvre on the Eve of the Council
III. Bishop Carli

Part IV

The Brazilians: Bishop Geraldo de Proença Sigaud and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer

The two Brazilian (and only non-European) members of the five-man steering committee of Coetus Intertionalis Patrum – the group of doctrinally conservative Council Fathers who sought to save what could be saved at Vatican II – were similar men in both their cursus and in their theological and political outlooks on the eve of Vatican II. Their responses to Rome’s letter soliciting their vota  (wishes and suggestions) for Pope John XXIII’s ecumenical council mostly overlap. These were Archbishop Geraldo de Proença Sigaud of Diamantina and Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer of Campos. While the latter became better known after the Council for being the only Latin-rite bishop not to implement Pope Paul VI’s order of the Mass in his diocese, the former did accept Paul VI’s liturgy and implemented it in his archdiocese.[1]

Both men obtained their doctorates in theology from the Gregorian in Rome (Castro Mayer in 1927, Proença Sigaud in 1932) and taught at the Major Seminary in São Paolo at the same time from 1932 (where Castro Mayer had been teaching for five years) until the mid-1940s.

While professors at the Major seminary they contributed, from 1934 on, to O Legionario, a periodical founded and edited by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira (1908–1995), a writer and politician of the Brazilian Catholic anti-Communist Right.[2] Among Corrêa’s theses was the notion that the Jews, whose dispersion and separateness were a divine punishment for their deicide, were able to use their immense wealth to influence the course of business.[3] He also saw the Jews as the originators and leaders of world Communism, “the enemies of the social order and much more dangerous” than card-carrying Communists since the latter could be surveilled and checked, while the Jews were subversive qua Jews, irrespective of formal political affiliation.[4] Setting aside the merits of these positions, what is clear is that these ideas were not uncommon in Brazilian right-wing circles in those days, and educated Catholics held them without any unchristian hatred toward the Jews; we shall see that Proença Sigaud explicitly shared them, while Castro Mayer spoke more vaguely of an antichristian plot.

In 1943, Corrêa de Oliveira  published a book to decry the influence of progressivism in Brazilian Catholic Action; he blamed it on the influence of French theologian and political philosopher Jacques Maritain. This was In Defense of Catholic Action (Em Defesa da Ação Católica, Ave Maria, 1943), a publication event that caused a fracas in Brazilian Catholic circles, where Jacques Maritain was popular. Castro Mayer and Proença Sigaud publicly defended their friend’s book at the cost of their seminary positions: in February 1945, Castro Mayer, who had granted the book’s imprimatur, was reassigned as vicar of a small rural parish (although he was given a position as lecturer at the Catholic University of São Paolo) and Proença Sigaud was packed off to Spain the next year, in March of 1946.

These exiles were not to last: Cardinal Benedetto Aloisi Masella (apostolic nuncio to Brazil, 1927–February 1946, who had written the preface to Corrêa de Oliveira’s Defense of Catholic Action) intervened to have Proença Sigaud recalled to Brazil in the summer of 1946 and named bishop of Jacarezinho on October 29 (he was consecrated on May 1, 1947, and made archbishop of Diamantina on December 20, 1960); the same cardinal caused Castro Mayer to be named coadjutor bishop of Campos in 1948; he became its bishop on January 3, 1949. In 1951, Castro Mayer founded the monthly Catolicismo, with Corrêa de Oliveira as its editor-in-chief; this review regularly published Castro Mayer’s pastoral letters.

Both bishops, then, were men of deep integrity and conviction, even to the point of exile for their ideals and friendships. They were also in positions of stability and power after the intervention of a Roman Cardinal to elevate them within the hierarchy of Brazil. Roughly a dozen years into their episcopates, they received their copy of the letter that Cardinal Tardini, Secretary of State and the man whom Pope John XXIII had put in charge of the Antepreparatory Commission for Vatican II, had sent out on June 18, 1959 to the bishops of the world to solicit their vota (wishes) for the upcoming Council.

These vota closely reflect the preoccupations of the Brazilian Catholic Right that the bishops had matured in. Unsurprisingly from men with such similar trajectories and outlooks, their responses to Tardini’s letter overlap a great deal. Since Castro Mayer’s contribution was the shorter and less organized of the two, we shall first follow the order of vota that his confrere Proença Sigaud presented in his response, after which we will show to what extent Bishop Castro Meyer’s vota overlapped and completed them. This will put us in  a position to assess the Brazilians’ recommendations for the Council.

A. The Vota of Bishop De Proença Sigaud

In his cover letter, Bishop De Proença Sigaud indicated that he did not intend to broach dogmatic or juridical questions, as he surmised that his confreres in the global episcopacy would do so anyway. No: he intended to turn only to “certain practical and fundamental issues for the future of the Church.”[5]

He organized his vota in a structured outline:

I. “Our Enemy” (Freemasonry, Communism, International Judaism, the Revolution);
II. “The Catholic Struggle Against this Enemy” (principles and the Syllabus of Pius IX);
III. “The Trojan-Horse Strategy” (doctrine of the lesser evil, the spirit of accommodation with non-Catholics, cooperation with non-Catholics, good faith, vehicles of corruption, books);
IV. “Internal Difficulties” (stagnation of scholasticism, pedagogical naturalism);
V. “Counter-Revolutionary Struggle” (principles, rebuilding a Catholic society, attacking Communism, socialism, State interference in life);
VI. “Epilogue.

Let us review these, following Proença Sigaud’s outline.

Before entering into the meat of his presentation, Proença Sigaud lays down his overarching concern: that the principles of the revolutionary spirit had been taking over the clergy and the Christian people. The trouble was that the broad mass of clergy were too blind or apathetic to resist the spread of the Revolution, some of them were openly or covertly committed to the Revolution, while those who did resist it were persecuted and called “Integrists.” The rot had spread even to Roman seminaries, which produced “Maritainians,” “disciples of Teilhard de Chardin,” “Catholic Socialists,” and “Evolutionists.” These were the men who were being promoted as bishops; too few of those who knew the actual score (presumably Proença Sigaud himself and his confrere Casto Mayer) were ever elevated to the episcopate.[6]

The Church needed to organize “a systematic fight against the Revolution” on a global scale).[7] He summarized his program as follows:

In my humble opinion, if the Council wishes to produce salutary effects, it must in the first place consider the current state of the Church. She is, in the likeness of Christ, in a new Good Friday, handed over defenseless to her enemies. . . . We need to see the fight to the death that is being waged against the Church in all fields; we need to get to know the enemy (“hostem cognoscere”); we need to work out the strategy and tactics of his battle; we need to see clearly his logic, his psychology, and his dynamics, so that we may securely interpret each of this war’s skirmishes, organize war against it, and securely wage it.[8]

I. The Enemy: Revolution

For Proença Sigaud, this enemy had been at work against the Church for six centuries: it had been seeking to replace the Kingdom of God with that of Man. Its goal:

To build up the whole order of human life, Society, and Humanity without God, without the Church, without Christ, without Revelation, upon Human Reason alone, upon Sensuality, Cupidity, and Pride. For this, it must overturn, destroy, replace the Church root and branch.[9]

The enemy was confident of his victory; Catholics remained blind to the danger.

Such an enemy was not abstract: it manifested itself in human organizations. The Brazilian bishop made no bones about naming them with a bluntness that may jar twenty-first century sensibilities: Freemasonry; Communism; International Judaism.

Proença Sigaud had no dearth of material with which to condemn Freemasonry: he cited Clement XII (1730–40) and his Bull In eminenti apostolatus specula (April 28,1738), which condemned and prohibited Freemasonry and called for the secular arm to punish its members. Yet the Braziliam prelate bemoaned the silence of the Church since the last pope to condemn the lodges explicitly was Leo XIII:

Since Leo XIII, no further Encyclical on this Sect. In the Universities and Seminaries, what is taught about it? In Sociology, what is said about this most grave question? In the world-wide and national government of the Church, this problem is always ignored: there is a sort of truce (tregua). In priestly studies and further education sessions, there is not a word of the program, method, and system of the whole masonic sociology, of its ends, of its spirit, of its means, of its tactics and strategy.[10]

In the bishop’s view Communism had the same goal as Freemasonry: “a socialist, rationalist, Godless and Christless society.” The difference was in the social class to which it appealed: Masons were “Bourgeois” while the Communists turned to the “Proletarians.”[11]

Freemasonry and Communism had the same head, however: International Judaism. After recalling that, of course, the Church condemns antisemitism (doubtless referring to a 1928 decree of the Holy Office),[12] Proença Sigaud added that she must not ignore the very proclamations of International Judaism, whose leaders conspired against the “Catholic Order” with a view to destroy it and build up in its stead the “Global Order of the Jewish empire.” International Judaism had the means to promote this empire, and in fact had been doing so in recent history. Furthermore, its headship of both Freemasonry and Communism explained some twentieth-century paradoxes:

Money, print media, world politics in large part lie in the hands of the Jews. While they are the greatest capitalists, and for this reason ought to be the greatest adversaries of Russia and Communism, they do not fear it; on the contrary, they help it along to victory. Those who betrayed American atomic secrets were Fuchs–Golds–Rosemberg: all Jews. The founders of Communism are Jews; they propagate it, organize it, and back it financially. It’s all about them. That is the reality.[13]

How was the Church to react to such a danger? Naturally, the way of hatred is out of the question:

Should this lead to hatred? No! But to vigilance, clarity, a systematic and methodical fight to opposed the systematic and methodical fight of this ‘Enemy Man’ [Mt 10:36] whose secret weapon is the ‘Leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy’ [Lc 12:1].[14]

At this point in his presentation, Bishop Proença Sigaud took a step back to consider the broader sweep of history. He outlined the trajectory of the Revolution from the end of the Middle Ages to twentieth-century Communism, going through the Renaissance, the so-called Reformation, the French Revolution, the Risorgimento and its attack on the Papal States, the seizure of monastic property by various modern States, and Modernism. The strength of this revolutionary process was that it was directed by a central government, a tool of Satan,[15] and rested upon human passions, particularly Sensuality and Pride:

These disordered and forceful passions are scientifically directed towards a precise end, and are subject to the iron discipline of the leaders for the thorough destruction of the City of God and the erection of the City of Man. They accept Totalitarian tyranny itself, and they tolerate poverty for this purpose: that the Order of the Anti-Christ may arise.[16]

Clearly, Bishop Proença Sigaud felt he was sounding an alarm bell. But how was the Church to respond to this well-organized attack from the Revolution as directed by International Judaism through its two main instruments, Freemasonry and Communism? In the next section, he made concrete proposals, including the publication of an updated Syllabus.

II. Organizing the Counterrevolutionary Fight

While condemning perverse doctrines was a necessary first step, Bp Proença Sigaud saw that it was not sufficient. There had to be an “organized fight” against both the errors themselves and those who promoted them; modern means of communication ought to make this fight easier.

In the first place, there ought to be a new Syllabus. While the original as promulgated on December 8, 1864 by Pius IX was as relevant as ever, it ought to be fleshed out with errors that had arisen since his time. It ought also to be expanded with the “practical organization” of the fight against error and its promoters both within and without the Church.[17] As it was, partisans of precisely the errors that Pius IX’s original Syllabus had condemned were being promoted even as those who combatted those errors were sidelined in the Church. This was particularly alarming in the case of seminaries:

In the Seminaries there are instructors who spread errors and are filled with love for the Revolution. Priests who remain neutral in this fight are promoted. Those who fight in a detailed and clear manner against the Revolution are kept away from such positions; they often endure persecution and are silenced. Pastors do not keep the wolves away from their flocks, and they prevent the sheepdogs from barking. I’ve already come across such a monstrosity as “I am a Maritainian priest”; “I am a Maritainian bishop.”[18]

The errors that Bishop Proença Sigaud recommended for condemnation in this updated Syllabus were the following: the errors of Socialism; the errors of Marc Sangnier of Le Sillon;[19] Jacques Maritain’s whole social heresy; the idol of Christian Democracy; the errors of “Liturgism” (“Liturgicismus”); the errors of “the priesthood of the Laity” in Catholic Action; errors on obedience and on religious vows; the errors of Communism on property; those of universal pantheistic evolutionism.[20]

III. The Trojan Horse in the Church

Under this heading, Bishop Proença Sigaud presented the ways in which all these errors found their way into the Church. The first of these was the pernicious doctrine of the “lesser evil,” which was often invoked to break down resistance on the part of Churchmen:

In this struggle, it plays the role of the famous horse in the Trojan war. Catholic doctrine teaches: if one is unable to avoid an evil, one may allow a lesser evil to avoid the greater one, so long as one does not positively commit the evil. In practice, Catholic resistance often caves under this pretext.[21]

What he meant is that some Catholics considered the Revolution as a small evil that did not justify any kind of fight against it, while others thought that such fight would cause more harm than good to the Church. This let them, under the cover of apostolic charity and acumen, to allow for evil without a struggle. Proença Sigaud recalled that a lesser evil remained an evil, as the separation of Church and State, and the legalization of divorce, plainly showed.

The next “Trojan Horse” in the Church, or as he called it “the second secret gate through which the enemy has stolen into the Catholic citadel,”[22] was the spirit of accommodation towards non-Catholics. The future Council should therefore repeat that no such accommodation was permissible at the level of principles, and that even when the principles remained intact, any accommodation with the world tended to be pernicious for the Catholic cause merely because of the scandal it might provoke. He added that the irritation felt by the enemy at this lack of accommodation was not in itself bad and might even turn out to be of great benefit: “Without a painful conflagration there is no war, and no victory is won.”[23] For this reason, and the dangers involved in prolonged collaboration with non-Catholics, he concluded that “from such intercourse the non-Catholics derive little benefit, and the Catholics lose much.”[24]

In all things, vigilance was of the essence, especially within the ranks of the Church. While Proença Sigaud granted that in times of peace one might generally assume the good faith of people and entrust important functions to them according to the principle that “none is evil unless proven to be such,” under the current circumstances of “a city under siege, no one is suited to guarding danger spots unless his fidelity has been proven: ‘none is good for it unless proven to be such.’”[25]

At this point, Proença Sigaud listed the instruments of corruption:[26]

Dances in which a men and women held each other tight should be condemned, as well as modern dances (“Rock ’n’ Roll”), and even ballet because of its sensuality and worship of the body.

Regarding fashion, objective norms ought to be promulgated for women’s dress, since modesty is an integral part of a country’s moral health; primitives in mission countries must be taught modesty, and bikinis and backless ensembles were to be forbidden.

Beauty contests were absolutely to be condemned (“absolute damnandi sunt”); all participants, organizers, and promoters of such human-meat markets (“nundinas carnis humanae”) needed to be excommunicated.

Cinema was an occasion of scandal. While documentaries might be a precious tool for education, most films were analogous to novels and romances, which “stir up the imagination and the passions without a sound reason.” Films shown in parishes were often immoral or perverse and habituated parishioners to watching films; they then went on to frequent secular cinemas indiscriminately with much spiritual harm. Catholic Action in particular was guilty of showing art house films under the guise of art education; for the bishop, this was the devil’s subtle work. The solution was for the Holy See to found and direct a “Roman Center for the Critique of Cinema,” which would judge not only the morality of films on their surface, but also whether they amounted to revolutionary propaganda.

Regarding pernicious books, Proença Sigaud underscored the usefulness of the Holy Office’s condemnations (although he regretted their delays in being promulgated). The urgent task of the moment was to condemn the works of Jacques Maritain, which had been “infesting” the younger clergy in Latin America. The bishop’s summary of Maritainism, at least as it manifested among Brazilian politicians, was: “The Revolution was evil in its method, but is good in itself. Let us adhere to it sincerely. Let us Catholics make the Revolution, before the Communists do.”[27]

IV. Difficulties within the Church

Under this heading, Bishop de Proença Sigaud pointed out couple of weaknesses within the Church that left her vulnerable to the Revolution: the stagnation of Scholasticism and pedagogical naturalism.

By stagnation, he meant that since the Roman university reforms of 1930, students there were encouraged to investigate historical and positive questions (the thought of one or another philosopher or theologian, e.g.) as opposed to having discussions about disputed questions to arrive at the truth of the matter. Furthermore, the thinkers whom students studied tended to be the likes of Sartre, Freud, Dostoyevsky, and so forth, with the result that one ran into articles about “Existentialist Mysticism” and the like.

What was needed was a new vigor in Catholic thinking.

First, useless and false schools of thought should be condemned. The list is broad: Christian Socialism; Nominalism; Kantian Idealism; Hegelianism; Sartre’s Existentialism, Maritain’s teachings; absolute Evolutionism; philosophical and juridical Positivism; Manichaeism and Gnosticism (as expressed in modern art); Theosophism; the Rotary Club; the Lions Club, etc.

Second, Catholics needed to relearn the art of disputation, i.e., discussion on the quaestiones disputatae. Of course, charity should reign in such disputations, and if conducted properly, such debate will help foster the love of truth among the people.[28]

In “pedagogical naturalism,” Bishop Proença Sigaud was principally deploring the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s theories in Catholic education. In this respect, the Bishop insisted on two points: that the innocence of children with respect to sexuality ought to be preserved, even as they ought to be taught the proper principles in the matter; and that the concupiscence of children ought not to be abandoned to its appetites on the grounds of avoiding inflicting “complexes” on them.

V. How to Fight the Revolution

This would involve specific doctrines and the Church’s approach to them. In practical terms, Bishop Proença Sigaud proposed that the Church take a page from the Communists’ playbook. Just as International Communism had a centralized leadership that assessed what accorded with its goals and publicized the tactical value of things in terms of their promotion or delay of the Revolution, so too ought the Church to devise a “Catholic strategy and a center of the methodic counterrevolutionary fight in the whole world, to which Catholics are to be summoned. Then there would be the hope of a dawn of a truly better world.”[29] From an organizational point of view, it made sense for the Holy See to direct this offensive with the assistance of a “Capitol” (“Capitolium”) of proven counter-Revolutionary clerics and laymen. Just as there was a science of Revolution, so too must there be a “science of the counter-revolutionary war.”

Nor was such a counter-Revolution to be a mere reform of defects: it must amount to “something like a new creation.”[30] The Holy See had the means to stop the Revolution and inaugurate the reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the salvation of souls.

Naturally, in this way of seeing things, there could be no cooperation between the Church and Communism, as there is between them an “essential, radical, perpetual, total opposition.”[31] He saw this opposition in spiritual terms going back to St. John’s Apocalypse:

Communism is the son of the Synagogue. Until the conversion of the Jewish people, the Jewish Synagogue will be the “Synagogue of Satan” [Apoc 2:9; 3:9]. And Communism will be the Communism of Satan. It is the work and the prefiguration of the Antichrist.[32]

The appeal of Communism, its secret weapon as it were, was twofold: its hatred of Christ and its promise of a socialist utopia, an earthly Paradise. Here he gave his exegesis of the French Republic’s motto: “Without God: liberté. Without King and Father: égalité. Without Property and social Classes: fraternité.”[33] Such a motto was seductive to those Catholics who had allowed themselves to be convinced that the early Church was socialist: the forthcoming Council needed to condemn such a fool’s errand, because earthly life is not meant to be a paradise, because such a socialist paradise would never come, and because the different social and economic classes were essential components of a normal society. Lastly, Socialism was to be shunned because it fostered hatred of Christian virtues: humility, charity, poverty, and chastity.

The last danger against which Bishop Proença Sigaud warned was the ever-increasing interference of the State in the lives of individuals and groups. He saw its origin in the collapse of traditional collective life, destroyed by liberalism. The Church could only admit of such interference in grave circumstances, and never on a permanent basis. Indeed, he estimated that most social problems had a moral cause; if society, the family, and the individual were once again focused on Christ, most of these problems would resolve themselves:

If God and His Christ were placed at the foundations of individual, family, and national life, the very forces of nature, which ought to find assistance in the human intellect and humble good will, would find their own connatural solutions.[34]

VI. Epilogue: A Proposal for Counter-Revolutionary Action

The first thing to do was to reject the notion put forward by some Catholics that a New Man was about to be born and free himself from the natural and moral law:

Man was once a monkey. He will be able to evolve and become superior to the human nature of today: a Super-Man. At that point, there will be a different natural law, even moral law, which thereby becomes relative.

Such notions must be rejected by our side.[35]

Next, the institutional Church needed to take in hand actual leadership in the fight against the Revolution. The trouble was that although the majority of Catholics were united in longing for a concrete program of action, this unity dissolved as soon as a group of laymen proposed a program. In part this was because such programs tended to present a socialistic component (he must have been thinking of various Fascist or Phalangist movements). If, however, an Ecumenical Council were to summon Catholics to the fight against the Revolution and the building of Christendom with a concrete program, then there would be success. Under such leadership, “I believe that the dawn of the Reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary would rise.”[36]

B. The Contribution of Bishop de Castro Mayer

While Bishop de Castro Mayer’s cover letter was relatively boilerplate, his vota center on the restoration of the Civitas Christiana, a term which closely corresponds to Proença Sigaud’s Augustinian “City of God.”

Like his Brazilian confrere, Castro Mayer saw this City as under siege: there was an “antichristian conspiracy” which amounted “to a veritable intention of establishing a new conception of life that brings with it a manner of thinking and acting contrary to Christian teachings.”[37] Unlike Proença Sigaud, however, at no point does Castro Mayer invoke international Judaism or Freemasonry as the minds behind this conspiracy.

Castro Mayer also called for updating Pius IX’s Syllabus, as did Proença Sigaud: “In my humble opinion, a new and solemnly proclaimed condemnation of the propositions in the Syllabus, with those adaptations and additions that our age requires, would be most useful the faithful.”[38]

He then proposed specific errors to condemn, suggestions for a program of action, and definitions that ought to be made.

The overarching error was, in Castro Mayer’s view, a universal naturalism that ignored human nature and relied on strictly natural means to achieve good ends. This led to secular organizations undertaking to unify humanity in a syncretistic enterprise without reference to natural law or revealed religion. Like Proença Sigaud, he listed the Rotary Club and the Lions Club (adding UNESCO to the list) as such organizations, which “constitute cunning and most efficacious means to corrupt the authentic notion of the Civitas Christiana.”[39] The Council could not afford to ignore them.

In this connection Castro Mayer joined Proença Sigaud in deploring the misuse of the notion of the lesser evil:

Generally speaking, the ‘lesser evil’ is simply considered an evil of little importance, which may therefore be permitted for any reason, for example to avoid unpleasant disagreements. Hence this idea that any fight is bad in itself and must therefore be avoided at all costs under the guise of charity or apostolic concern. Result: in our days, the lesser evil is at least implicitly considered normal.[40]

Castro Mayer also adduced the separation of Church and State (again citing Pius IX’s Syllabus for its condemnation) as an example of a lesser evil that had been normalized among many Catholics –the very example that Proença Sigaud had put forth, along with divorce.

With respect to the relationship the Church ought to have with the world, Castro Mayer used nearly the same terms as Proença Sigaud to condemn regular cooperation, or even socialization, with non-Catholics, speaking even of “irritations” caused by polemical doctrines.[41]

He also noted the corrupting influence of Naturalism in the education of children, as it considered that human nature was good in itself and that, therefore, discipline and revealed Religion were harmful to children. The Council ought to oppose this “madness” and teach that children were born with Original Sin and needed the discipline and guidance of adults. As for sexual education, it merely depraved morals; parents and teachers ought to oppose it at all costs.[42] Here again, Castro Mayer and Proença Sigaud were in agreement.

In the field of solutions, Castro Mayer picked up the suggestion that Proença Sigaud had made regarding promoting churchmen of proven fidelity. For the bishop of Campos, such men ought to be formed as militant priests to fight against the antichristian conspiracy. As it was, programs of priestly formation were insufficiently clerical-specific and tended to blur the distinction between clergy and laity by de-emphasizing the cassock, separate studies, and reserve with respect to women. In this last respect again, Naturalism led to dismissing the consequences of Original Sin and downplaying formation to chastity.[43]

We have seen that Bishop Proença Sigaud proposed emulating the Communists in their centralized planning and action; Bishop Castro Mayer said as much, adding that just as the Communists proposed a concrete idea of what the workers’ paradise looks like, so too the Church should teach “what the God-willed order of things is in the present dispensation; what means are to be used to bring about such an order.” The Church “ought to indicate this to the faithful in order that their action may be coordinated, become more efficient, and that they bravely devote themselves to action.”[44]

Part of this program ought to involve better training in scholastic philosophy as a guarantee against existentialism and evolutionism. Just as Proença Sigaud had done, Castro Mayer, far from recommending the simple proclamation of ready-made theses in theology, promoted polemics and controversy as a means to achieve clarity in the ecclesiastical sciences:

From a fear of controversies, in catechesis the truths of Faith are taught to the people only in a general way, and indeed nearly without explanation. As a result, the faithful remain alien to a large part of the very life of the Church, namely theology, and they exhibit a superficial piety that contributes nothing to the progress of Theology. Hence there is a divorce between the Christian life of the faithful and the science of the Church, from which it follows that the life of Christians becomes less and less sacred. Means ought to be proposed, as the opportunity arises, for the spirit of the faithful to be actively fed by Sacred Theology.[45]

Proença Sigaud had refrained from making any dogmatic proposals. Castro Mayer, at his point in his exposition, did: he thought that the upcoming Council should flesh out what Vatican I had taught regarding papal infallibility by proclaiming the force and obligation of the pope’s ordinary Magisterium. He also proposed that the Council should promulgate the doctrine of the Universal Mediation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, on the grounds that the common misunderstanding of Christ’s redemptive mission often went hand-in-hand with a lack of a “filial, tender, and trusting devotion” to Our Lady.[46]

He also – and in this he agreed with a votum of Archbishop Lefebvre – feared that regional and national conferences of bishops might sever the direct link between individual bishops and the pope:

The conclusions of such assemblies, established by the vote of only the majority, impose a certain moral constraint upon the others. Now, although – rightfully – the force of the Roman Pontiff’s authority over individual bishops is not extinguished by such assemblies, nevertheless it is diminished by their position as intermediaries, at least in my humble opinion.[47]

With respect to bishops, he added that there ought to be serious background checks before promoting anyone to the episcopacy to determine where they fell regarding the errors promoted by the antichristian conspiracy and how committed they were to combat them; this again concords with Proença Sigaud’s position.

In the last part of his proposals, Castro Mayer focused on what definitions the Council ought to provide in the political sphere, so that her teaching in this field might be clear and actionable. Much of what he said here rejoined what Proença Sigaud had proposed, but he did add some precisions.

First, regarding the cooperation of Catholics with different regimes: no such cooperation was possible with Communism, which “not only does not permit professing what is opposed to Communist teachings but even imposes explicit belief in the dogmas and principles of Communism.” Any Communist toleration of the Church is necessarily tactical, short-lived, and untrustworthy.

On the other hand, in a classically Liberal regime, in which there is separation of Church and State (under the “hypothesis” that such a separation can be conceded as a lesser evil under the circumstances) as opposed to the “thesis” of their union, some cooperation is permissible. Under this hypothesis, the faithful can do good and are not compelled to do or profess evil.[48]

Socialism, which pretended to propose the type of egalitarian society found in the Early Church – Proença Sigaud had made the same point – went against Providence, since social inequality was not an evil but a good: “the inequality among men not only does not constitute an evil, but actually better manifests the perfections of God in the present hierarchical order of things and men, especially since under the absolute equality of all men certain Christian virtues that are most necessary to salvation, such as humility, obedience, mercy, etc., would become nearly impossible.”[49]

Likewise, where Proença Sigaud had warned against excessive interference in private life by the State and saw in a properly ordered moral society the solution to most social problems, Castro Mayer proposed that the Council teach the limits of the State’s intervention and preferability of relying on a properly ordered Christian way of life. The State should only intervene where the independent efforts of the citizenry have failed: “Let the action of the government therefore be prudent and not be exercised unless no other solution to the problem can be found as provided by the members of civil society.”[50]

ASSESSMENT

The first thing that leaps off the page when reading the vota of these two prelates is that – whatever one thinks of the content – they speak with a clarity and a conviction to which most contemporary bishops have no longer accustomed us.

Now regarding the contents: it is obvious that the two Brazilian bishops’ political outlook here owes much to their intellectual collaboration with Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, which is why we devoted a few paragraphs to him at the outset. This is more evident in the case of Bishop de Proença Sigaud, but only because he went into more detail than did Bishop de Castro Mayer. Besides that difference, and the few details pointed out above, they are in fundamental agreement in matters of fact. Presumably, their years of collaboration as seminary professors and as collaborators in Corrêa de Oliveira’s periodical O Legionario had occasioned frequent exchanges of views in person. Research in their respective chanceries’ archives, if their correspondence is kept there, might flesh out the limits of their agreement in content and in form.

Otherwise, their difference is one of style: Castro Mayer is more reserved, more diplomatic, and his Latin is careful and stylistically unimpeachable. Proença Sigaud is more choleric, forthright, and his Latin is midcentury workmanlike with a few Romance-language words thrown in (e.g. “tregua” for “truce,” a word common to Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, instead of the pure Latin “indutiae”). This difference of temperament may explain the difference in the treatment they received when punished for their support of Corrêa de Oliveira’s book Defense of Catholic Action in the mid-1940s: Castro Mayer was offered a university position whereas Proença Sigaud was sent all the way to Spain to cool off.

We noted above that while both Brazilian bishops explicitly took on Communism, Castro Mayer did not voice any overt concerns about International Judaism or Freemasonry. This may be chalked up to his tact: as Proença Sigaud noted, the Vatican had not said much about Freemasons since Leo XIII, and after World War II, few people, Catholic or otherwise, spoke of the power of the Jews in world affairs.

The reader may have been surprised, therefore, that the cool Castro Mayer should join the fierier Proença Sigaud in attacking, of all things, the Rotary Club and the Lions Club. The reason for their attack is that these clubs provided a non-religious alternative to the Church in providing charity and good works while excluding the spiritual aspect of these activities. The reason for which Castro Mayer felt free to call them out by name is that the Holy Office had cast some suspicion on them early in the 1950s: the front page of the January 12, 1951 issue of the New York Times proclaimed “Vatican Instructs Catholic Clergy To Quit Rotary, Cautions Laymen.”[51] Unsurprisingly, American clerics were taken by surprise and expressed their dismay publicly.[52] By the next day the New York Times had interviewed an anonymous source within the Holy Office who not only confirmed the Rotary Club ban, but also explained that it applied to the Lions Club and Kiwanis Club as well and that such bans explicitly included the USA.[53]

Anyone with a passing knowledge of the documents of Vatican II knows that the religious-political proposals of Bishops de Proença Sigaud and de Castro Mayer were doomed. Even within the steering committee of the Coetus Internationalis Patrum, their warnings against the fraternal clubs (Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis) are unique, while the explicitness of Proença Sigaud regarding the Jews and the Freemasons is specific to him alone.

Both Brazilian bishops called for an updating (by way of expansion) of Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors. This does not occur in the Vota of Lefebvre and Carli, although there is no doubt that Lefebvre at least, in light of his writing after the Council, agreed.

On the other hand, some of the Brazilians’ concerns appear among the vota of other bishops would form the steering committee of the Coetus Internationalis Patrum. These are the agreements that led them to gather; certainly, the vociferous Proença Sigaud was not prevented from becoming its secretary.

For instance, while Proença Sigaud and Castro Mayer were explicit in their requirements for promotion to the episcopate (men aware of the war against the City of God), Lefebvre too had, in broader terms, decried the poor choice of bishops, who tended to operate according to “considerations that are foreign to the Church.” These were not the men to help reform seminaries where “priests and religious were teaching manifest errors in the social, liturgical, and even dogmatic fields” (Lefebvre); “the rot had spread even to Roman seminaries, which produced ‘Maritainians,’ ‘Disciples of Teilhard de Chardin,’ ‘Catholic Socialists,’ and ‘Evolutionists’” (Proença Sigaud).

Castro Mayer followed Lefebvre in his view that Episcopal Conferences would limit the authority and scope of action of individual bishops: for the Brazilian, they would weaken the link between them and the pope; for Lefebvre, such assemblies paralyzed the bishops.

Lefebvre’s vota ventured into the field of politics by decrying the destructive effect of “Communism, Socialism, and liberal Capitalism” on the proper, hierarchical organization of a Christian society. In due course we shall see how the CIP, with support from many bishops at the Council, sought to have Communism condemned, and how the effort was thwarted.

We have seen that the Italian Bishop Carli had called for greater modesty in women’s dress at least in sacred spaces; Proença Sigaud followed the same line, although with application within society at large as an integral part of a country’s moral health. His concern for the modesty of primitive women is doubtless due to his country including the Amazon forest. The extension to dancing, beauty contests, the cinema are the Brazilian’s alone, however.

Proença Sigaud and Lefebvre were both concerned with the condemnation of specific authors. The more political Brazilian went after Jacques Maritain while Lefebvre, here more theological, focused on Yves Congar’s 1953 study, Lay People in the Church: a Study for a Theology of Laity. In this respect, Proença Sigaud’s endorsement of Corrêa de Oliveira’s book on the errors that had seeped into Catholic Action may flesh out Lefebvre’s unspecified “erroneous notions . . . that have caused considerable damage” to Catholic Action.

There is a point of doctrine that Castro Mayer and Lefebvre shared: the definition of the Blessed Virgin Mary as Mediatrix of All Graces, for the Frenchman a “great consolation for the hearts of all her children” and for the Brazilian the expression of “a filial, tender, and trusting devotion” to Our Lady. There was a global movement in favor of such a definition, which had been picking up steam since Belgian Cardinal Mercier’s appeal in 1921; Vatican II would abstain from any such definition, however.

Lastly, a consideration of the two Brazilian members of the steering committee of the Coetus Internationalis Patrum would be incomplete without a mention of their differences after the Council. Bishop de Castro Mayer famously allied himself with Archbishop Lefebvre after the Council: he never imposed the Novus Ordo Missae of Paul VI in his diocese (the only territorial bishop to abstain from doing so) and was among the co-consecrators of the four SSPX bishops in 1988, whereas Bishop de Proença Sigaud announced his implementation of the reformed Missal in 1970 and never collaborated with the SSPX.

As for their connection with Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira and his Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP), Bishop de Proença Sigaud’s was severed in 1970 (over the new Mass and his agreement with the then-government’s agrarian reform)[54] while Bishop de Castro Mayer ended his support for Corrêa de Oliveira and the TFP in the early 1980s over a disagreement on the spiritual life of the faithful in Catholic Action.[55]

Our next (and last) installment on the preconciliar vota of the steering committee of the CIP will analyze those of Dom Jean Prou, OSB, abbot of Solesemes, who responded to Cardinal Tardini’s letter soliciting them in a letter dated September 8, 1959. As a monk and theologian, his answers have a different cast to that of the four bishops we’ve looked at so far.

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[1] The sources used for this article are the following: Yves Chiron, “Mayer, Antonio de Castro,” in id., Histoire des traditionalistes suivie d’un dictionnaire biographique (Tallendier: 2022) , 522–23; id., “Oliveira, Plinio Corrêa de,” ibid., 532–34; id., “Sigaud, Geraldo de Proença,” ibid., 557–58; Philippe Roy-Lysencourt, Les Vota préconciliaires des dirigeants du Cœtus Internationalis Patrum (Institut d’Étude du Christianisme, 2015), 51–87.

[2] In 1960 he would found the Society for the Defence of Tradition, Family, and Property [TFP], to this day famous for its capes, banners, and brass instruments at the annual Washington, DC, March for Life. His best know work is Revolution and Counter-Revolution (TFP, 1974), first published in Portuguese in 1959.

[3] Plinio Correa de Oliveira, “A Igreja e o judaismo,” A Ordem (January 1931): 46.

[4] Idem, “O verdadero perigo comunista,” A Ordem (July–December 1933): 555.

[5] “Quaedam practica et fundamentalia pro futuro Ecclesiae vertam,” Acta et Documenta Concilio Œcumenico Vaticano II apparando (henceforth AD), I.II.VII, 180–81; Roy-Lysencourt (henceforth R-L), 52.

[6] “Raro sacerdos qui Revolutionem impugnat ad Episcopatum evehitur; frequenter ii qui ei favent,” AD I.II.VII, 181; R-L, 54.

[7] “. . . pugnam systematicam contra revolutionem,” ibid.

[8] AD I.II.VI, 181–82; R-L, 54.

[9] “Totum ordinem vitae humanae, Societatem et Humanitatem construere sine Deo, sine Ecclesia, sine Christo, sine Revelatione super solam Rationem Humanam, super Sensualitatem, Cupiditatem et Superbiam. Ad hoc  necesse est Ecclesiam funditus evertere, destruere, substituere,” AD I.II.VII, 182, R-L, 54.

[10] AD I.II.VII, 183; R-L, 55. Leo XIII dealt with masonry in his Encyclical Humanum genus (April 20, 1884) and Apostolic letter Praeclara gratulationis publicae (June 20, 1894).

[11] “Massonica Secta congregat ‘burgenses’; Communismus organizat ‘Proletarios.’ Finis amborum idem est: Societas socialista, rationalista, sine Deo et sine Christo.” AD I.II.VII, 184; R-L, 55–56.

[12] After recalling that the Church has always prayed for the Jews and their conversion, this decree adds: “Moved by this charity, the Apostlic See has protected the same people against unjust vexations, and just as it reproves all ill-will and animosity among peoples, so also does it condemn, in the strongest possible terms, hatred against the people that was once chosen by God, namely that hatred that is now usually termed ‘Antisemitism’.” Sacra Congregatio Sancti Officii, Decretum de consociatione vulgo “Amici Israël” abolenda, March 25, 1928, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 20 (1928): 104.

[13] “Pecunia, media informationis periodicae, politica mundialis in magna parte in manibus Iudaeorm iacent. Quamvis sint maximi capitalistae, et propter hoc deberent esse maximi adversarii Russiae et Communismi, eum non timent immo eum ad victoriam adiuvant. Proditores secretorum atomicorum U.S.A. fuerunt Fuchs-Golds-Rosemberg: omnes Iudaei. Fundatores communismi sunt Iudaei, propagatores, organizatores, ‘financiatores.’ De eorum re agitur. Haec est realitas.” AD I.II.VII, 184; R-L, 55–56.

[14] Ibid.

[15] “Gubernatio quaedam Centralis, energica et Intelligentissima totum processum dirigit: Centralis humana, quae est instrumentum ipsius Satanae.” AD I.II.VII, 185; R-L, 57.

[16] “Hae passiones inordinatae et vehementes diriguntur scientifico modo in finem praecisum, et sese subiciunt disciplinae ferreae directorum suorum, ad destruendum funditus Civitatem Dei, et construendum Civitatem Hominis. Ipsam tyrannidem Totalitariam accipiunt, paupertatem tolerant eo fine ut construatur Ordo Anti-Christi.” Ibid.

[17] AD I.II.VII, 186; R-L, 58.

[18] “In Seminariis adsunt Magistri qui errors divulgant, et pleni sunt amore Revolutionis. Sacerdotes qui neutri manent in hac pugna, promoventur. Illi qui modo illustri contra Revolutionem pugnant, ad his muneribus arcentur. Saepe persecutionem patiuntur, et prohibentur loqui. Pastores lupos ad gregibus non arcent, et prohibent canes latrare. Iam inveni monstrum tale: ‘Sum sacerdos Maritainista.” “Sum Episcopus Maritainista.” Ibid.

[19] Marc Sangnier (1873–1950) founded Le Sillon (“The Furrow”) in 1894 as a movement to implement the rapprochement (termed “Ralliement”) between the French republic and the Church that Leo XIII had urged in his Encyclical Au milieu des sollicitudes (February 16, 1892). Although St. Pius X initially supported it, he ultimately condemned it in his letter Notre charge apostolique (August 15, 1910) for its egalitarian and ecumenical leanings. It then dissolved.

[20] AD I.II.VII, 186; R-L, 59. These were errors condemned by Plino Corrêa de Oliveira in his Defense of Catholic Action, where he defined “Liturgism” as the notion that assistance at Mass was sufficient for the spiritual life, to the disregard of asceticism and private devotions.

[21] AD I.II.VII, 186; R-L, 59.

[22] “[S]ecunda porta secreta, per quam inimicus in arcem catholicam penetrat.” AD I.II.VII, 187; R-L, 60.

[23] “Sine dolorosa conflagratione bellum non fit, neque victoria obtinetur.” Ibid.

[24] AD I.II.VII, 187; R-L, 60.

[25] “Certe, in tempore pacis, ‘nemo malus nisi probetur.’ Sed quando civitas obsidetur, nemo es aptus ad loca periculosa custodienda nisi eius fidelitas sit probata: ‘nemo bonus ad hoc, nisi probetur’.” AD I.II.VII, 187; R-L, 60..

[26] AD I.II.VII, 188–89; R-L, 60–62.

[27] “Revolutio fuit mala in methodo, sed est bona in se. Sincere ei adhereamus. Faciamus nos catholici Revolutionem, antequam communistae eam faciant.” AD I.II.VII, 189; R-L, 62.

[28] “Populus debet disputare ut habitum cogitandi et amorem doctrinae acquirant.” AD I.II.VII, 190; R-L, 64.

[29] “Mihi videtur creanda strategia catholica et centrum pugnae contrarevolutionariae in toto mundo, et catholici ad hoc convocandi sunt. Tunc esset spes aurorae veri mundi melioris.” AD I.II.VII, 191; R-L, 65.

[30] “[N]on significat correctionem defectuum partialium, sed fere novam creationem.” Ibid.

[31] AD I.II.VII, 192; R-L, 66.

[32] AD I.II.VII, 193; R-L, 66.

[33] Ibid.

[34] “Si Deus et Christus eius poneretur in fundamento vitae individualis, familiaris et nationalis, ipsae vires naturae suas connaturales solutions quaererent, quae ab intellectu humili bona voluntate humana coadiuvandae essent.” AD I.II.VII, 194; R-L, 67.

[35] “Homo aliquando fuit simea [sic]. Poterit evolve et fieri aliquid superius hodierna naturae [sic]  humanae [sic]: Super-Homo. Tund [sic] leges naturales Iuris erunt aliae: moralis etiam, quae sic fit relativa. Haec a nostris reicienda sunt.” Ibid.

[36] “[P]uto auroram Regni Sacri Cordis Iesu et Immaculati Cordis Mariae esse futuram.” AD I.II.VII, 194–95; R-L, 68.

[37] AD I.II.VII, 156; R-L, 73.

[38] AD I.II.VII, 156; R-L, 74.

[39] “[S]ubdola et efficassima media constituent corrumpendi germanam civitatis christianae notionem.”AD I.II.VII, 157; R-L, 75.

[40] AD I.II.VII, 157; R-L, 75.

[41] AD I.II.VII, 158; R-L, 76.

[42] AD I.II.VII, 158; R-L, 76–77.

[43] AD I.II.VII, 158–59; R-L, 77–78.

[44] “[Q]uisnam sit ordo rerum in praesenti statu a Deo volitus, et quaenam media ad talem ordinem in mundo instaurandum adhibenda sint, fidelibus omnino ut indicentur oportet ut eorum action ordinata sit, efficacior fiat et ipsi magno animo actioni se voveant.”AD I.II.VII, 159; R-L, 78.

[45] AD I.II.VII, 161; R-L, 79.

[46] AD I.II.VII, 161; R-L, 83.

[47] AD I.II.VII, 162; R-L, 79–80.

[48] AD I.II.VII, 159–60; R-L, 81.

[49] AD I.II.VII, 60; R-L, 82.

[50] AD I.II.VII, 160–61; R-L, 82.

[51] Arnaldo Cortesi, “Vatican Instructs Catholic Clergy To Quit Rotary, Cautions Laymen,” New York Times (January 12, 1951): 1. The article reports that Laymen were merely instructed to be on their guard, and that while the Rotary in the USA was harmless enough, the Rotary clubs in other places had an “anti-Catholic tinge and pronounced Masonic connections.” The relevant text of the decree of the Holy Office reads: “Members of the clergy may not give their name [i.e. subscribe] to Rotary Club associations or attend their meetings; laymen are to be urged to comply with provisions of Canon 684 of Canon Law.” The (1917) Code said that laymen “should be cautious about joining secret, damned, seditious, or suspect associations or those that seek to distance themselves from the legitimate vigilance of the Church,” The 1917 or Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law, Ed. Peters trans. (Ignatius Press, 2001), 241.

[52] Bishop John F. Noll of Fort Wayne, Indiana, said that “he felt certain that the Vatican had been misinformed”; he added that “he was a charter member of the Huntington (Ind.) Rotary Club,” ibid., 21.

[53] “VATICAN BROADENS BAR AGAINST CLUBS; Official Implies That Decree on Rotary Also Affects Groups Like Lions and Kiwanis,” New York Times (January 13, 1951): 16.

[54] Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, “Dentro e fora do Brasil…,” Folha de S. Paulo (October 11, 1970).

[55] This disagreement reflects an evolution in approaches to Catholic Action between two schools of thought: the school of “Priestly Spirituality” (represented by the SSPX) according to which all graces depend on the Mass, and the “Spiritual School” (represented by the TFP) according to which there is a spirituality proper to laymen who fight for Christian civilization. See Roberto de Mattei,  Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira: Prophet of the Reign of Mary (PCP, 2019), part II.