Some badly understood attributes are added to the thoughts about goodness today…

– “Spontaneity”, “naturality”, “sincerity”: these dispositions of soul lead one to avoid making an effort, thinking, employing the will and maintaining self control. They Induce free rein to sensation, fantasy, extravagance and in the end give free rein to everything! The television, that excites, by its nature kills the book that invites one to reflection. Ideas will become weakened and with them so does vocabulary. Speaking is reduced, in certain circles, to recounting so many elementary facts in so many basic words. Amusement becomes jumping and shouting in distress. And to laugh… to laugh a lot, but without much reason to laugh. Of course with sexual topics, but in others also, any contention is rejected. The “sexual morals” of certain people consist in legitimizing all disorders to avoid complexes. In this way, serious chastity, is the great enemy of morals. Licentiousness is the way to normality.

– “Free ideas”: who holds them, must agree with everything. Bishops or governors, professors or parents who do not sanction all the absurdity that I just finished delineating, are despots of rigid ideas, that wish to maintain the yoke of preconceptions that in this day are unsustainable.

But some may say, this way of being, is it not an extravagant minority and not the majority? Is it not true that one who sees this is not desolate and shocked with these excesses? Desolate and shocked, yes, I agree. But I immediately add: crushed and submissive also.

For the history of all “progress” in this decade has been thus:

a) a minority launches a “crazy” extravagance;
b) the majority are shocked and protest;
c) the minority persists;
d) the majority accustomize themselves, adapt and subject themselves;
e) meanwhile, the minority prepares a new scandal;
f) and this scandal will have equal success.

In this way, the majority enter this new world, spell bound, shocked, hypnotized, like a little bird entering the mouth of a snake.

The more politeness diminishes, it will die. The more clothing is shortened, it will disappear. The more fundamental values of culture and spirit are silenced, they will desert the earth. The more disorders are stimulated and unleashed, these will end up invading and submerging everything.

Is there a means to avoid this, other than fighting for our Tradition, carrier of all are authentic Christian values, or simply our human values, that this hurricane is destroying?

Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
Folha de Sao Paulo, 20.03.69
*Unofficial translation