The editor responds:

Dear Misses J.LB. & R.LB.,

Re: A Girondin Reaction against the Synod - Book review of The Synodal Process Is a Pandora's Box by José Ureta & Julio Loredo

Now that the Synod on Synodality is over and its final document – The Synthesis Report – has been released, I am at ease to answer your objections.

Before answering each of these objections in the order you made them, I want to praise your knowledge of the works of TFP, even the very old ones. If you were not assisted by any TFP veteran who might have encouraged young ladies to write while preferring to stay in the shadows, I must acknowledge that you have an admirable counter-revolutionary acumen. My compliments!

Since your first letter was quite extensive and it was followed by two other not-short impertinent missives asserting that I was afraid to answer you, our correspondence is not brief. For this reason, I am posting the entirety of our correspondence in a PDF file, which TIA readers can access here. Below, I am summarizing your objections and printing them in blue so that my answers, which will follow each objection, can be recognized.

Objections – Answers
You accuse TFP of entering the barque of Progressivism by hiding the real enemy and the good doctrine to not displease its new allies – Cards. Burke, Pell and Muller, shelter the enemy and dissemble the truth. This is not true because:

Objection 1 - The authors of Pandora's Box quoted those Cardinals and other authors following the teaching of Dr. Plinio, who said it is legitimate to quote semi-contra-revolutionaries or persons who have counter-revolutionary clots, as he wrote in his book Revolution and Counter-Revolution.

Answer to objection 1 – I did not criticize the authors of Pandora's Box for quoting revolutionaries; on the contrary, I praised their good work. I criticized their naïveté in believing that Cardinals Burke, Pell and Müller could be counted as counter-revolutionaries – or even semi-counter-revolutionaries or revolutionaries with counter-revolutionary clots, as described in the book Revolution and Counter Revolution by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira. Those Cardinals as well as the other authors they quoted cannot be included in any of these categories. They are in absolute agreement with the fulfillment of the ideals of Progressivism, like Pope Francis. They disagree with Francis only in the method used to reach the same end. Like generals disputing about the best way to conquer a city, they differ only in how to entirely destroy Holy Mother Church.

Objection 2 – This principle is confirmed by the fact that Dr. Plinio quoted Paul VI, despite his revolutionary tendencies.

Answer to objection 2 – Yes, Dr. Plinio quoted Paul VI, John Paul II and John XXIII many times. He also quoted Fidel Castro, Lenin, Sun Tzu and other enemies, using their texts to confirm his theses. We are on the same page regarding quotes. No dispute here.

Objection 3 - TFP has made no concessions to Progressivism nor is it afraid to speak against it. The proof is that TFP published Dr. Arnaldo Xavier’s book on the New Mass and Heretic Pope; as well as Mr. Julio Loredo’s book on Liberation Theology which included a condemnation of Müller.

Answer to objection 3 – You are absolutely wrong in this supposition. I believe that TFP is afraid to speak against Progressivism. I present the following proofs of my affirmation:

1. In the Introduction to Pandora's Box, the authors attribute the errors of Synodality to the heresy of Conciliarism. Now, everyone knows that what is behind the Synods is Progressivism as a current of thought, Vatican II as an institutional landmark, and Paul VI as their founder. When Paul VI announced to the Bishops gathered at the Council on September 15, 1965, that he would establish the synods on that same day, he commented that Patriarch Maximus IV would be very pleased with this action. Now then, that Melchite Patriarch was one of the most radical proponents of Progressivism at the Council. So, Paul VI wanted to initiate the Synods under the aegis of Progressivism. Therefore, the acrobatics of the authors of Pandora's Box to find the root of the Francis’ Synods in that 16^th century heresy of Conciliarism is an obvious attempt to cover for a present day enemy they do not want to attack.
   
   
2. In the 28 years that followed the death of Prof. Plinio in 1995, the TFPs have not made any direct attack against Vatican II in any circumstance. I do not consider an exception to this rule the fact that some TFPs promoted a book of Prof. Roberto de Mattei The Second Vatican Council – An Unwritten Story, because in it the author defends Vatican II as being in its essence in continuity with the previous Magisterium of the Councils. He pretends – as he did later in a series of talks delivered in Krakow promoted by the TFP – that the bad fruits of the Council were due to the bad-intentioned interpretation made by the media (here, here, here, here, here, here and here). This long silence of the TFPs is an obvious expression of a decision to not speak against this important landmark of Progressivism, which was Vatican II.
   
   
3. The attacks on Progressivism you mentioned – the book on the New Mass/Heretic Pope by Dr. Arnaldo Xavier and the one against Liberation Theology by Mr. Julio Loredo – were good and both attacked important aspects of Progressivism. However, there are circumstances that condition the anti-progressivist character of these books. I will spell them out.
   1. The book on the Novus Ordo Mass/Heretic Pope was written in 1970 and in that same year it was published in Portuguese for restricted circulation, as you mentioned. Then, in 1975 it was published in French for the public. At the time – 48 years ago – it was a blow against Progressivism. Then, it became a classic reference work, since it is the best work available on those two topics, although in need of updating today.
      
      So, the recent publication of this book in English by the American TFP is certainly an attack against that old initiative of Progressivism, but it comes in a time when the progressivist Vatican has already approved other much more radical changes in the Mass, such as the Zaire Rite, and is preparing more changes in the Mass – an Ecumenical Rite (here and here), an Amazonian Rite (here and here), the Mayan Rite and the coming Brazilian Mass, which should start this Advent. If TFP were really against Progressivism, it should be criticizing these new changes as well.
      
      
   2. The book Liberation Theology by Mr. Julio Loredo is also very old. It was written more than 30 years ago at the request of Dr. Plinio, who wanted it to be published at that time in the United States. Had that happened, it would have been a great blow against Progressivism, since then Liberation Theology was at the height of its momentum. However, one of the TFP directors in the U.S. was opposed to that publication. He was afraid to attack Progressivism and suffer a backlash that could cause the TFP here to be closed. It was necessary to wait more than two decades until that person died of old age to have the book published. Again, it is good to have it published, but it is not an expression of a great eagerness to fight against Progressivism, but rather the opposite.
      
      Also, in the meantime, Mr. Loredo himself, its author, had “evolved” from a clear position of resistance to the Vatican Ostpolitik with Communism – a position that Prof. Plinio had adopted and was followed by all the TFPs until his death – to a position of collaboration with the progressivist religious authorities and the “orthodox” religious authorities in Moscow. If you take the time to read Mr. Loredo’s declarations to the press in 2007, duly criticized by a valorous Argentine TFP member, Mr. Alberto Aprea, you may reach an analogous conclusion: He compromised with Progressivism and Ecumenism; he abandoned the authentic Counter-Revolution and entered the Gironde.
      
      
   So, your “indisputable proofs” that TFP attacked Progressivism by publishing those two books should be taken with granum salis – a grain of salt. They are not as indisputable as you were informed.
   
   
4. I know of a letter dated 1995 that the directors of Brazilian TFP sent to the Cardinal Primate of Brazil – at that time Card. Lucas Moreira Neves – giving him their guarantee that the TFPs would not raise any public polemic on Vatican II. The letter was signed by Msgr. José Luiz Villac as a representative and emissary of the Brazilian TFP directors. The letter was written to answer the Cardinal who had publicly affirmed that TFP was against Vatican II. You may read excerpts from this letter here. If this letter is creditable – the secretary who wrote the letter for Msgr. Villac to sign, Mr. José Messias Brandão, confirmed to me its authenticity – you can find in this fact evidence of a compromise by the TFP Brazilian directors who agreed to not attack Vatican II.
   



This book caused the expulsion of the author from TFP - Directors were afraid of controversy

5. I myself wrote an 11-volume Collection analyzing the documents of Vatican II, the current of thought – Progressivism – that inspired it, and many of its fruits. Prof. Plinio asked me to write that Collection, and gave me a close orientation in my work on those volumes. He himself edited the first volume – In the Murky Waters of Vatican II – and was preparing to edit the other volumes when he died in 1995. Following his orientation, I tried to publish that Collection and, with the help of good friends in the U.S., the first volume came to light in November 1997 when Dr. Marian Horvat and Tradition in Action published its first edition.
   
   Soon after the book was printed, the Brazilian TFP directors sent me a letter signed by its president giving me an ultimatum to withdraw the book from circulation or be expelled from the TFP. I had been a member of the Brazilian TFP since 1964. In 1998 I was expelled. The reason? It was because those directors were afraid to open a public debate with the religious authority on Vatican II. They were scared that a polemic could bring as a consequence the closing of the TFPs. If you would like to know all the details of this case, you may read my defense refuting their accusations here.
   
   During the 25 years that have passed from that expulsion to this date, in none of the TFPs has this rule been broken: No direct attacks on Vatican II; no position taken that could raise a public polemic with the Church Hierarchy. It appears very much as strong evidence of a deliberate omission.
   
   Partial objection: You may object that in Pandora's Box as well as in the book Pope Francis’ Paradigm Shift the TFP attacks Pope Francis, who is the head of the Hierarchy and the main representative of Progressivism today.
   
   Answer: Yes, TFP is doing this, but only after a large part of the middle-of-the-road Catholics also began to attack Francis or express suspicions about him. The two mentioned TFP books are sailing in the wake of the five Cardinals who openly criticized Francis. As I explained in my review of Pandora's Box, this criticism is not in continuity with the fight of Prof. Plinio, but is a compromise with a progressivist moderate position, which I call the Gironde position (referring to the principal conservative political party in France at the time of the French Revolution which opposed the radical course that led to the Reign of Terror, but approved the general reform.) It is a term well known in the TFP and one strongly criticized by Prof. Plinio.

Objection 4 - Dr. Plinio was discreet in his criticism of Vatican II, but never compromised.

Answer to objection 4 – Dr. Plinio did not act against Vatican II not because he was fearful and wanted to be discreet, but because he did not have at his disposal a specific study on the Council that would back his denunciation. This is why he did not criticize it publicly. This is also why he asked me to write the Collection analyzing Vatican II.

When he became aware of the content of my first volume on Vatican II, he asserted:

“To make the Revolution inside the Church is strategically the heart of the Revolution, because the Church is the place of the Counter-Revolution. To expel them [the progressivists] from inside the Church and define her as what she has always been is the heart of the Counter-Revolution. If we do not make the Counter-Revolution inside the Church, there is no use doing it outside of her.

"Hence a conclusion: There is no one to make this Counter-Revolution in the world. No one! Unless Our Lady arouses the Basils, Athanasius, Augustines, etc., there will be no one. And so she asks the following of us: to raise the standard, which is ready here [with the work on the Council], because this is raising our standard against them. ...

"Historically, before the Council, they [the progressivists] were hiding and did not dare to raise their standard. In a panorama where their standard was absent, we [the TFP] also were inexplicable to everyone. Well, now as they raise theirs [the standard of the Revolution], our standard explains itself and, by explaining itself, the R-CR fight is explained before the eyes of all. It is the great dilemma at the center of the modern world. If you like, I can try to express myself better. I consider it very important [to deal with this] in parallel. Atila's work was not written to demonstrate this, but these are things that are demonstrated in the flanks of his work. I think it is very important to make this clear" (Symposium for EVP, March 2, 1987, morning, pp. 15f, apud Defense, pp. 70-71).

You can see that he was planning a full confrontation against Progressivism.

Objection 5 - Pandora's Box understands the full picture of how Progressivism developed as shown in Q29 and Q34.

Answer to objection 5 – I am not sure how your affirmation opposes what I said. It seems that you young ladies imagine that the responses to the mentioned questions made by the authors of Pandora's Box represent a full attack against Progressivism. Let me analyze them.

Question 29, in which the word “progressive” was used once, refers to the radical progressivists who were present at the Council and are still present today. The comments of the Bishop of Chur are meant to save the moderate progressivist wing inside which he situates himself. The followers of Prof. Plinio, different from that Prelate, apply Progressivism to both wings – the radical and the moderate – and thus take a more encompassing perspective than Msgr. Eleganti. The consequences are that: 1) Q.29 does not represent the full picture of Progressivism, and 2) the authors of Pandora's Box, by identifying themselves with that Prelate, included themselves in the moderate progressivist wing.

Question 34 characterizes the radical progressivists – without using the word progressivist – as followers of Liberation Theology. Yes, the authors are correct. I do not see in what point they deny what I affirmed. Rather, by declaiming the radical progressivists and not showing the complementary game of the moderates, they implicitly placed themselves among the latter.

Objection 6 - In the conclusion of the book the authors of Pandora's Box recognize elements of Progressivism that Dr. Plinio combated in In Defense of Catholic Action.

Answer to objection 6 – It is true that they paid homage to the work by Prof. Plinio In Defense of Catholic Action. I am glad they did this, but they did not use the word Progressivism to characterize the fight of that prophetic book. Now then, I accused them of not identifying Progressivism as the backdrop of the Synod and of even avoiding the use of the word Progressivism. My accusation remains intact, since the authors used “neo-modernism,” as if they were forbidden to give the correct name to the current that Prof. Plinio attacked.

Soon after, they insisted that the Synod is a repetition of “old errors” – that is the errors of Conciliarism – trying to take the blame off of the conciliar Popes prior to Francis.

You did not, but you could have argued that the authors of Pandora's Box in their conclusion referred to a list of several other initiatives in which they took part, which had some anti-progressivist tones. All of those initiatives were questioning Francis on this or that point of his radical agenda. So, you could say that the TFPs are valiant fighters against Progressivism.

I would answer: Yes, I agree that it was good for them to attack Francis on those points. However, you should acknowledge that the TFPs are sailing in the wake of a handful of Prelates who would be the ones to receive the responding blow should Pope Francis choose to answer. This position of shielding themselves in the shadows of others is no longer the habitual heroic and uncompromised leadership we were accustomed to see the TFPs take when Prof. Plinio directed it prior to 1995. Instead the mentioned list included good initiatives, no doubt, but timorous and compromised ones.

Objection 7 - The authors of Pandora's Box kept the book concise and focused on the Synod; this is not the place to discuss other issues.

Answer to objection 7 – If this statement is meant to dismiss my accusation regarding the TFPs connivance with the progressivist moderate wing, I think it is very weak. Anyone can write a short essay and keep his positions crystal clear.

Besides, the statement is not objective since the authors dealt with a wide range of subjects that would purportedly amount to a Vatican III.

Objection 8 - The authors understand that the Synod is meant to prepare public opinion and this is the importance of their book: to help crystallize people against Progressivism They surfed on the wave of the propaganda as an opportune moment to warn people of the danger.

Answer to objection 8 – I accused the authors of not seeing the maneuver of the Synod, which is more to prepare public opinion to accept democracy in the Church than to make important decisions on the dramatic issues they supposed the Synod would make. You objected that it was good for the authors to publish the book to orient public opinion.

Yes, it was good to do so. But the input of the authors was greatly exaggerated. They swallowed the bait and helped to spread the bad electricity the Synod wanted to generate. They imagined that the Synod would be so encompassing a deluge that it would completely destroy the Church. After the first session of the Synod ended, the authors’ dramatic concerns revealed that they did not understand the maneuver of the enemy that was right before their eyes. Their previsions were not fulfilled, they were not objective; their warnings appear more like expressions of panic.

In principle it is good to orient public opinion when the orientation is correct. To spread panic is not good; especially when the authors pictured themselves as being great warriors. Normally warriors enter the fight in perfect calm with an objective view of the enemy’s aims. This was not the case with Pandora's Box…

Objection 9 - To speak strongly against the Synod does not imply an acceptance of everything previous to it.

Answer to objection 9 – I am not sure what accusation you are trying to refute. You say that to attack the Synod does not mean that the authors accepted everything before it. I agree. But in the case of Pandora's Box, the authors are strongly attacking Francis, but are indirectly saving the papacies of Benedict XVI and John Paul II, and remotely those of Paul VI and John XXIII. That is, they are aligned with the moderate wing of the Conciliar Revolution, which does the same. It is precisely the opposite of what Prof Plinio always did: He constantly attacked the moderates as the more efficient agents to stabilize the conquests of the Revolution.

Objection 10 - It is unjust for you [Atila] to attribute motives of self-glorification to the authors without a proof; we are acquainted with TFP members and can affirm your accusation is false. They are sincere in wishing the Reign of Mary.

Answer to objection 10 – You say that I am unjust to affirm without proofs that the authors are prey to self-glorification. If you read carefully what I said, you will see that I did not accuse them of this. I raised a hypothesis: If the Synod were not to give any result, they could attribute that failure to their Pandora's Box' influence. So, you are interpreting a hypothesis to be verified in the future as an accusation. It was not.

Now that the future has become the present and the Synod did not accomplish what they predicted, are they attributing to their action the empty results of the Synod?

You, who are in much closer contact with TFP than I, can answer this question better. I have no elements to check it. I simply left a lasso around their neck. Should they walk in this direction, they strangle themselves. If they attribute to their work the result of the Synod they are megalomaniacs, if they do not, then they are not.

Objection 11 - You are wrong in believing TFP is not suffering persecution.

Answer to objection 11 – In principle everyone who is alive suffers some type of persecution since we live in a valley of tears as a consequence of original sin.

But what counts in this case is the type of persecution: There are two kinds. The Revolution persecutes the real counter-revolutionaries to morally or psychologically kill them or, if it cannot kill them, to keep them from having any influence by placing them under a mantle of silence, as it did with Dr. Plinio.

The Revolution attacks the compromised counter-revolutionaries, aka false-rights, only to give them a few scratches, which results in giving them prestige.

As far as my nonchalant observation could register, since the launching of Pandora's Box the book was mentioned by a Vida Nueva Spanish journalist who was travelling with the Pope on his way back to Rome from Mongolia. He asked the Pope his opinion about the book’s claim that calamities for the Church will come from the Synod. The Pope commented that Card. Burke and those authors were defending “a doctrine like distilled water that has no taste and is not true Catholic doctrine,” The result for the book was a great prestige because it was addressed by the Pope.

The book was also criticized four or five time by the National Catholic Reporter and Crux, media organs that represent the left wing. All these criticisms were to give prestige, not to kill. To receive these criticisms from enemies was a great success. It confirms for me that they compromised.

Here you have my answers to your objections, Misses J.LB and R. LB. I choose to maintain your anonymity and use only your initials as a courtesy to two idealistic young ladies, whose zeal I admire and would desire be directed toward a non-compromised cause.

     Cordially,

     Atila S. Guimarães