I-THE CHURCH TURNS ITS COAT
Woodrow, Alain
I-THE CHURCH TURNS ITS COAT 11 NEW FRCS EMERGES 1N PARIS ALAIN WOODROW Two reports from a...
...which explains why cluding priests and university professors, were arrested everyone suddenly discovered that he was Gaullist...
...And when the results are known the I have seen men and women crushed and losers are excommunicated from political life until the broken by violence and treachery, disfigured and following crusade...
...And I am reminded of so "Might I suggest that we create in France an authentic many others, all sharing in the Passion of Christ to statute for the opposition, so that it will not be excluded the extent that their suffering was a result of their from its right to speak and act...
...And yet, lacking natural resources and with which the bishops turn their (purple) coats is quite only two good ports, not only did Portugal found Chrisstaggering...
...But, in 1972 for having organized a "peace vigil" in a church, paradoxically, just when everybody was busy out-de etc...
...Portugal is a small country, scarcely larger than ScotThe second is an extract from the statement of the land, with a population about as large as that of LonPortuguese hierarchy, published after General Spinola's don...
...Father Mario Oliveira...
...And this election is a particularly striking exof a social order founded on truth, justice, free- ample of it...
...What has disintegrated, however, is the Brigades," which carried out attacks on military ob- coalition inspired and held together by de Gaulle, and jectives, with limited success...
...With over twelve and a half million votes, Mitterand The first of these quotations is taken from a letter achieved the highest score ever made by the left-wing in sent last Easter to a friend by a Portuguese Catholic France (two million more votes than in the second ballot who has long been a victim of the fascist regime, and against General de Gaulle in 1965...
...It is also widely known that he was It should be added that the French electoral system sympathetic to the document drawn up in 1972 by the tends to encourage this bi-polarization, with its two suc"Justice and Peace" commission in his diocese (although cessive ballots...
...The document was not a candidate...
...In Portugal, the junta has paid from 1962-1967 under de Gaulle and from 1969-1974 lip-service to the ideals of freedom and democracy, but under Pompidou, Giscard d'Estaing is an exceptionally their words have yet to be proved by deeds...
...These overseas territories, which were history has made of us the Lord's instrument for the considered as "parts of the Portuguese nation," cover evangelization of a considerable part of the world...
...The main colonies a time when the West seems to have lost its sense of are the three African countries: Guinea-Bissau, Angola purpose, Portugal remains conscious of its evangelizing and Mozambique [See "Liberating Portuguese Africa," and civilizing mission...
...It is certain that the votes cast for the other allowed to be published or circulated...
...The couragement or support from the official Church workings of divine grace are indeed wondrous...
...At an area 22 times the size of Portugal...
...resounding defeat in the first ballot marks the end of the General Spinola's coup has opened a new era where governing coalition, if not of the U.D.R, party itself...
...Or the Pastoral Letter published by This emigration has had an effect on the Church in the Portuguese hierarchy in 1962, calling on the nation's Portugal...
...What Already in the 1950s, Bishop Gomes had criticized, had been regarded, for forty years, as a "providential on several occasions, the oppression of the workers, 14 June 1974: 328 the lack of political freedom and the sending of army wagon is not only premature but irresponsible...
...The new regime has recognized Valerie Giscard d'Estaing centered his campaign on publicly that the solution to the colonial problem is not the slogan of a new enlarged majority, and it will be military but political, but will its leaders be able, and interesting to see, now that he has been elected, how courageous enough, to achieve a peaceful transition lead- "new" and how "large" it will be...
...Two priests from Oporto, heirs of de Gaulle...
...In 1958, Portuguese friend wrote to me: "Instead of simply turnthe Bishop had written, in a pastoral letter: "Let us be ing its coat, the Church should rather fashion itself a frank, even brutal: the Portuguese corporative system new one, and one that matches the reality of Portuguese serves as a means of depriving the workers of their life which has been unmasked by the military putsch...
...authorities...
...in Lisbon, 14 people, in- who were the most ardently wooed...
...Gaulling de Gaulle, it looked as though Gaullism, as a Faced with this recurring scenario: minorities trying political movement, was at an end...
...a growing number of committed Christians nor those The one episcopal exception in Portugal-like that exerted externally by the Vatican or the World Council of the Bishop of Nampula in the colonies-is the case of Churches succeeded in troubling the clear conscience of Msgr...
...ten contenders in the first ballot were sought by the two It is the Portuguese clergy and laity, however, who remaining candidates, in between the two ballots, with have become increasingly critical of the regime...
...based on the executive, participation, etc.-are by no 1972 saw the creation of a number of "Revolutionary means dead...
...to arouse public opinion, the political police arresting Gaullism is a notoriously vague concept, however, and and imprisoning them and the bishops (except for the it is evident that de Gaulle's great ideals-national indetwo honorable exceptions already mentioned) remaining pendence, a strong personal method of government silent, certain Christians opted for revolutionary action...
...party...
...the obligatory four-year military service (and the risk Have their Excellencies forgotten the "Pastoral Ex- of being sent to fight in Africa) and to find work in hortation" signed in 1961 by the (Portuguese) bishops Europe's richer industrialized countries (there are an estiof Angola, which recognizes that the authorities have mated 800,000 Portuguese workers in France...
...Huyghe, in his diocesan bulletin before the guese nation...
...We share the desires and hopes of the first ballot of the Presidential election on May 5, goes people, at this time, and pledge our collaboration, to the roots of one of the major problems in French insofar as we are competent, for the construction politics...
...mission is under attack, that there are people in the world who oppose the union of our missionary action Emigration and War and the mission of the Portuguese State, a union which has always been declared indissoluble...
...Valerie Giscard dom, love and peace...
...Since his return in 1969, Bishop Gomes has been France (font...
...In France, there are the good and new meaning for me this year...
...The laconic tranquillity with of France...
...But, offiJoaquim Pinto de Andrade (brother of the nationalist cially, the Church has done little to renew its attitude leader of Angola), who was imprisoned six times, or the and spends most of its energy trying to maintain the Vicar General of the archdiocese of Luanda (Angola), church-going statistics...
...Many such eagerness that not only were promises showered were content with the subservient but well-rewarded role on all social classes and categories, but we learned, with offered by Salazar, and then Caetano, to the Church, some surprise, that Giscard had always dreamed of but a growing minority have found the Concordat helping the workers, the aged, the sick, widows, the regime more and more intolerable: in Father Hastings' physically disabled (in spite of the fact that during the words, "privileged bondage...
...For, a President of the love...
...for example, refused to serve as military chaplains and Indeed, it was above all the almost four million voters were imprisoned...
...which has clung to this empire longer than any of its "For many centuries, the providential guidance of our imperial rivals...
...robbed of their humanity...
...The contact of emigrants from rural districts youth "to serve those great ideals for which it is noble with urbanized life, and especially the possibility for to die...
...instrument of civilization and evangelization" was suddenly recognized as a "dictatorship" whose overthrow A militant layman, he never received the slightest en- was "in the interests of the Portuguese nation...
...And his leaders...
...much more discreet, in public, although the first statement he made was to call for the freedom of the press, usually favors abstention), with 87.78 percent of the which he described as "much more important than a voting population participating...
...Alvim, Archbishop of Louren- tion of pilgrimages to the Virgin of Fatima...
...It is often said that in the first ballot one he did not sign it), condemning the Portuguese wars in votes for a candidate, and in the second one votes against Africa in no uncertain terms...
...he must govern for the good of all...
...It is symptomatic that it was aries...
...co Marques (Mozambique) of the massacre of 400 With regard to the colonial wars, which drain more Africans by Portuguese troops revealed by Father Adrian than half of the country's meager resources, the official Hastings in the London Times, the Archbishop dismis- line taken by the hierarchy, as we have seen, has been sing the affair as "a story invented by Marxist mission- one of silent complicity...
...last 11 years he has repeatedly refused such social Since 1963, there appeared the first clandestine groups measures, put forward by the opposition) and that the of and publications by Catholics, denouncing the re- Socialists, and especially the Communists, are the true gime and the colonial wars...
...We "We call upon all Portuguese Catholics and other must invent a means (which certainly exists in other men of good will to support the new military lead- countries) of allowing everyone to work together...
...Emigration has especially spread over different continents-and it is this Father- hit the young male population, who seek both to avoid land which it is their duty to love and serve...
...Or guese Mission in Paris limits its activity to the organizathe public denial by Msgr...
...ers...
...Its standard of living is four times lower than that successful coup d'etat...
...Could the authors of this statement be the tendom's first colonial empire, but it is also the country same men who in 1961 proudly wrote the following...
...And it pains us to see that this Mar...
...Our mis- But, in recent years, Portugal's forces have been insionaries are Portuguese citizens who work on the soil of creasingly sapped, internally by emigration and externally their own Fatherland-a single Fatherland which is by the African colonial wars...
...Minister of Finance ing to independence...
...He was violently attacked in a pamphlet inspired by Salazar himself, and exiled shortly after...
...As a chaplains to serve those fighting in the colonies...
...Or the ostracism of the only liberal bishop in laymen and not bishops who protested publicly to Salazar the Portuguese territories, Msgr...
...Certain details have the wicked (the wicked obviously being the others...
...In France, they insults, the isolation in front of one's persecutors are a crusade...
...Other Christians, such as then Georges Pompidou, by means of the Gaullist two university professors Cintra and Moura, formed an U.D.R...
...In become all too real: the scourging, the blows and other countries, elections are a contest...
...We are glad that the dictatorship has been This extract from an article written by the Bishop of overthrown, as this is in the interests of the Portu- Arras, Msgr...
...Or the numerous priests and laymen, aban- their children to receive secondary education, has done doned to the "secular arm" to be imprisoned, tortured much to overcome the more obscurantist and reactionary and killed, like-to give but two examples-Father aspects of traditional Portuguese Catholicism...
...record turnout (in spite of the glorious weather which (Continued on page 328) (Continued on page 329) Commonweal: 327 Portugal (Cont...
...the right to kill...
...And it was also a who was again imprisoned last November and tortured...
...Das Nevas, who died in Portugal in 1966, after as French priests speak to the Portuguese immigrants of six years of exile, and who was only allowed by the working-class solidarity and trade-unionism, the PortuChurch authorities to be buried secretly at night...
...anything is possible...
...parish priest (15.10 percent) who the first time round had supported in the diocese of Oporto, was sent to prison twice for Jacques Chaban-Delmas, the official Gaullist candidate, preaching "pacifist"' sermons...
...Francois Mitterand at the laity carry out their rightful tasks freely, with- 49.38 percent of the votes cast, one can say that Gaul out passively waiting for the directives of the is no longer divided into three parts, as in Caesar's time, hierarchy...
...I-THE CHURCH TURNS ITS COAT 11 NEW FRCS EMERGES 1N PARIS ALAIN WOODROW Two reports from a Commonweal correspondent PORTUGAL FRANCE "The Passion of Christ, which I have listened to so "In every election, throughout the world, there are often, recounted as a historical event, has taken on a winners and losers...
...Even in Paris, for example, whereMsgr...
...Republic is not the President of only a part of the French people...
...Catholic press...
...It was this party (forming the governmenopposition party in 1969 called the "Democratic Elec- tal majority, together with a number of "centrist" formatoral Commission," which included members of the tions, such as Giscard d'Estaing's Independent Republiclandestine Communist Party and certain Catholic Action cans) that chose Chaban-Delmas as its candidate...
...With the final score of Mr...
...Ferreira Gomes, Bishop of Oporto, whose of the Portuguese Church, the overthrow of the Salazar- courageous and lonely stand cost him 11 years exile...
...natural rights...
...but in two equal halves...
...The Council recommends that d'Estaing at 50.7 percent and Mr...
...Manuel Vieira Pinto, in 1964 against the insults addressed by the Portuguese Bishop of Nampula (Mozambique), after his expulsion government to Paul VI for having accepted an invitation last month by Caetano's secret police...
...The official intelligent economist who has been compared with the Church's unceremonious leap onto the winning band- bright scholar-technicians found in the entourage of PresCommonweal: 329...
...Caetano regime converted the bishops overnight...
...to visit India, because three years before India had anWhereas neither the pressures exerted internally by nexed the Portuguese colony of Goa...
Vol. 100 • June 1974 • No. 14
