To the extent any awareness still exists around Salazar and his reign in Portugal, said recognition centers on three inter-related matters: anti-communism, opposition to decolonization, and political Catholicism. Salazar was the prototype of the “Catholic dictator” – he served as the model and inspiration for Franco in Spain, Petain in Vichy France, and Dolfuss in Austria.[1] Under the tagline “Deus, patria, familia”[2] Salazar’s policy of national reinvigoration centered heavily on the promotion of Catholicism, especially a devotion to Our Lady of Fatima;[3] indeed, Sister Lucia, the last living Fatima seer, wrote explicitly that “Salazar is person chosen by Him to lead our Fatherland…to him will be conceded the light and grace to guide our people through the paths of peace and prosperity.”[4] Unsurprisingly, Salazar was lionized within the hard Right of Catholicism: Irish nationalist newspapers referred to Salazar’s Portugal “the most Christian state in the world” and French reactionaries made annual pilgrimages for many years to interview the aging dictator.
To the Catholic Left, however, Salazar was an insufferable tyrant. After the “winds of change” that swept through Church at the Second Vatican Council, Salazar became a man marked for opposition from the very the highest levels of the Church. At the heart of the conflict was a fundamental disagreement on doctrine: “If there is a single key to Salazar, it probably has to do with the fact that he is a pre-Conciliar Catholic: one for whom philosophy ended with Aquinas, and for whom Pope John and the Council had no message.” This animus was mutual – whether it was via progressive pastoral letters and encyclicals that incited Salazar’s opposition, insufficient discipline of bishops and other clerics challenging the Estado Novo, or directly opposing the regime’s policies to preserve its overseas provinces, the liberal papacies of John XXIII and Paul VI marked the beginning of open hostilities between Lisbon and the Vatican.
This piece will cover six distinct events in the life of the Estado Novo that track both the deterioration of the relationship between Rome and Lisbon, as well as the domestic political upheaval caused by the leftward reorientation of the Church after the Council. While the levels of hostility vary within the cases, one can nonetheless track a shift in the balance of power among the principal players: the regime in Lisbon, the Vatican, the local Portuguese Church, and the progressive Catholic opposition to Salazar. This piece will cover Lisbon’s attempt to defend itself in the face of the increasingly adversarial positioning of the Holy See as the Vatican’s progressive ideology empowered and expanded a new opposition force against Salazar. This series will showcase the unabashedly political nature of the Council and the papacies in question, as well as demonstrate the travails involved in maintaining rightist rule amidst leftist overhaul of religious institutions. As both the Church and the state in Portugal grew increasingly compromised, the predictable result was that the post-Conciliar NewChurch merely hastened the transition of Catholic Portugal into yet another secular leftist state within Western Europe.
Catholic Party Suppression and the Signing of the Concordat
Not long after his recruitment into the military dictatorship as its Finance Minister, Salazar moved to consolidate power and eliminate prospective challenges to his preeminence. All partisan politics would be suppressed, including the Catholic parties that initially propelled him into national recognition. While on the surface distasteful, the rise of political Catholicism was unimaginable sans Salazar[5] and therefore one can argue depended on his supremacy. Additionally, any path forward needed to account for the inter-group rivalry within the Portuguese right under the Republic[6] (partisan strife also afflicted Catholic groups).[7] In the imagination of Portuguese Republicans, Catholics were indistinguishable from monarchists,[8] meaning that the numerous conservative republicans within the military establishment would always view overtly Catholic politicians with suspicion.[9] Interestingly, the monarchists themselves had their own fallout with the Catholics, after many Catholic groups jettisoned the monarchist cause following an abortive monarchist coup attempt in northern Portugal.[10] Rounding out the rightist opposition to political Catholicism were the Portuguese proto-fascist groups[11] who clashed with the Church in their pursuit of a more secular, authoritarian state. While this general state of division within the Portuguese Right gave Salazar a path forward to supremacy, it nonetheless ultimately constrained his ability to fully identify with any one of those groups if he wanted to preserve his power.[12]
Within the Portuguese Catholic Church, Salazar had his match in his close friend, Cardinal Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira, Patriarch of Lisbon. While at university together in Coimbra, both men had been part of a rightist student group that was targeted for suppression during the Republic,[13] the Centro Acadêmico a Democracia Cristã, which included future Estado Novo luminaries Santos Costa, Salazar’s longtime Defense Minister, and Mario de Figueiredo, Leader of the National Assembly and president of the National Council on Education.[14] The two men attended seminary together for a time and afterwards both joined the faculty of Coimbra – during which time they shared a home on Rua dos Grillos from 1915 to 1928.[15] A few days after Salazar became Minister of Finance, Cerejeira was elevated to Archbishop.[16] While the two men met sparingly after ascending their respective apexes of power – Cerejeira said it was never more than once a year[17] – Church and state in Portugal had the happy situation of being led by two men who shared much in background and personal rapport.
Two big fish in a small Lusitanian pond, Salazar and Cerejeira clashed openly, beginning in 1930 when the Cardinal lobbied for a political amnesty that Salazar was loath to grant.[18] The suppression of Catholic party politics would create a major crisis, however, that only subsided after the intervention of the Pope:
But in 1932, as the new prime minister and dictator of Portugal, Salazar had already declared the Catholic political party—a party he had been closely involved in at Coimbra as a student and professor—to be unnecessary, as would be all political parties, now abolished in Portugal. The role of the Church should be social and not political, he argued. With the dissolution of the Catholic Center Party, Cardinal-Patriarch Cerejeira founded Acção Católica in 1933 as a way for the Catholic laity to organize in a not specifically political way, a concept suggested by Pope Pius XI in 1931 in his encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio. Despite founding Acção Católica, Cerejeira continued to agitate for political power until 1934, when Pope Pius XI told Cerejeira that he should focus on social, not political, issues.[19]
Cerejeira ultimately acquiesced in the fait accompli dealt by Salazar and Rome. Salazar went on to not only suppress Catholic party politics, but to also drive an aggressive bargain in the protracted[20] negotiations over the pending Concordat with the Vatican. Salazar made precious few compromises[21],[22] to Rome beyond what his less anticlerical predecessors[23] had done; perhaps burned by his prior conflict, Cerejeira “saw the wisdom of not asking for material concessions.”[24] Indeed, the Concordat stood in contrast to what would emanate from Spain, since “[w]hile in Spain, the 1950 Concordat granted the Church essentially everything it could ask for, the 1940 Concordat did not turn Portugal into a confessional state, nor did the Church receive considerable educational or financial privileges.”[25]
Exemplifying the conservatism of the pre-Conciliar papacies, the Vatican’s decision making centered on two Realpolitk assessments. The first was the harsh reality that the Portuguese regime was by no means invincible, and too much pressure from Rome could lead to its demise and a return to the anti-Catholic governments that plagued the Republican years. The second consideration was more geopolitical: an agreement with Lisbon was mostly a precursor to a future agreement with Madrid.[26] While the Vatican treaded softly in its negotiation with Salazar, it was much firmer with Franco.
Nonetheless, what resulted was a clear public relations win for both the regime and the Churchmen. Salazar reaffirmed his mantle as Europe’s preeminent Catholic leader. Cerejeira remained a star in the Church for another decade – leading Church criticism against National Socialism[27] and even getting his name in the running for the Papacy[28] (at a time when the Church had gone centuries in only selecting Italians). Finally, the Vatican secured a volatile situation while laying the groundwork for a more important future negotiation. The major losers, obviously, were the Catholic Portuguese politicians who saw their political careers effectively evaporate; it is not for nothing that the leader of the future progressive Catholic opposition was none other than the son[29] of a former leader of the Catholic Centre Party.
The Bishop of Oporto’s Letter of Protest
By the late 1950s, the regime’s domestic footing had grown more precarious. The 1953 and 1957 legislative elections showcased growing criticism from centrist elements including many Catholics.[30] As discussed in prior installments in this series, the 1958 election for prime minister showcased an unexpectedly spirited anti-Salazar crusade led by General Humberto Delgado, whose base of elite support comprised the Americanist military men as well as the nucleus[31] of what would become Salazar’s “Catholic opposition.” After the contested election, Salazar was left facing a second flank of opposition – a center-left contingency in the military and the Church on top of the original Marxist flank led by the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP).
In the wake of the Delgado campaign came an explosive protest from the Bishop António Ferreira Gomes of Oporto, the second largest urban area in the Metropolitan. In a scathing letter that was widely disseminated, the Bishop rallied against the Estado Novo both for the lack of both civil reforms and a social safety net – the two demarcations of a “modern” European state. Bishop Gomes asked the regime when it would unwind the multitude of restrictions on Catholic political discourse, and went into a scathing critique based on the plight of the underclass within Western Europe’s poorest nation:
I cannot say how grieved I am by the now exclusively Portuguese privilege of the beggar, the barefooted, the man in rags and tatters, and indeed by our melancholy distinction of having the highest rates of malnutrition, defiled (enxovalhadas) and anemic children, and pale faces – from hunger? From vice?[32]
Bishop Gomes and his diatribe reflected the era’s latest philosophical fad, the personnalisme of the leftist French philosopher Emanuel Mounier, publisher of Espirit Magazine. Mounier characterized the society he opposed as “capitalistic in structure, liberal in its ideology, bourgeois in its ethics”[33] and sought to create a society that was vaguely described as “aim[ing] to guarantee human rights and prevent[ing] the state and other institutions from violating the personal domains of human life.” On a more operative level, Mounier had a strong aversion to fascism and was not beyond working with communists to secure its defeat:
As long as Communism receives so largely the confidence of the working class, as long as Socialism is so inconsistent and unfaithful, as long as the M.R.P. (Popular Republican Movement) remains dominated by the conservative right, to speak of resisting Fascism without the Communists is pure foolishness.[34]
In this respect, his Portuguese followers did not deviate far, as there had been some alleged collusion between the PCP and the Catholic opposition in the distribution of the Bishop’s letters. The PCP organs publicly praised the Bishop, saying that his letter marked the start of a new potential era of cooperation between Catholics and communists:
For there exists today two really relevant confrontations: The confrontation that divides Portuguese into exploited and exploiters, and the one that opposes Salazar and his regime of financiers and monopolists against the whole nation – and which is today the principal confrontation. Neither is capable of turning Catholics and Communists against each other. Quite the opposite: there is brotherhood of interests among Catholic and Communist workers.[35]
Salazar himself seems to have been at least partially shaken by the event: A copy of his hand-written response to the letters showcase a myriad of revisions[36] that betray an uncharacteristic lack of confidence – “to have a bishop question his judgement, months after a serving general had done so, was too much to bear.”[37] The regime did extract its revenge on the Bishop; coaxed or more likely “encouraged”[38] into a foreign trip in the immediate aftermath, the Bishop was denied reentry to Portugal when he attempted to do so and would remain in exile for another decade.
The national church took Salazar’s side, cooperating with censorship of Bishop Gomes’ materials and going so far as refusing to even meet with him years later while all were in Rome for the Second Vatican Council.[39] The Vatican response, however, was more nuanced. Initially, perhaps under the influence of Rome, the Bishop back tracked slightly and lamented the public scandal.[40] Salazar remained indignant, threatening a less favorable implementation of the Concordat[41] and a repression of Catholic Action,[42] the main lay apostolate, should the Vatican not follow through with formal disciplinary action against the Bishop. Rome, however, stood firm and “rejected Salazar’s premise that he knew what was best for the Portuguese Catholicism, as well as his interpretation of the Concordat…Finally, the Church refused to deliver an exemplary punishment to the Bishop of Porto, something Salazar began to ask in late 1958.”[43]
What had changed from the cordial days of deference just a decade prior? The ascendency of Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli to the Papacy marked a sea change for regimes like Salazar’s with the Vatican, as:
[A] new generation of young priests, and certain bishops, has emerged to criticize right-wing governments. This quite untraditional tendency [had] been noticeable in Spain and South America, but the ‘renewed’ Catholic Church in Portugal also [had]its clergy and active laity whose consciences owe much to the social encyclicals of John XXIII: Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris; to the Vatican Council’s Constitution Gaudiem et Spes, and Pope Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio.[44]
Bishop Gomes’ home diocese continued his progressive tradition in his absence and “saw important innovations [including] a progressive weekly newspaper … and a Council of Justice and Peace [which] provided socio-political criticism up to 1974″[45] — a sign of what awaited the Portuguese Church in the post Conciliar years.
Paul VI’s Ecumenical Excursion to India
Historians examining the Council and the impact that it had on the Salazar regime seize upon its apparent promotion of democracy as the central conflict. The words of Gaude et Spies provide a pithy encapsulation of the new ethos:
With integrity and wisdom, [the State] must take action against any form of injustice and tyranny, against arbitrary domination by an individual or a political party and any intolerance. . . . It is very important, especially where a pluralistic society prevails, that there be a correct notion of the relationship between the political community and the Church, . . . The Church, by reason of her role and competence, is not identified in any way with the political community nor bound to any political system. She is at once a sign and a safeguard of the transcendent character of the human person.[46]
Nonetheless, the first major diplomatic clash between the Apostolic See and the Portuguese Empire centered on the core doctrinal ideas of Vatican II: religious liberty and ecumenism. Much to Salazar’s chagrin, Pope Paul VI planned to attend a Eucharistic Congress held in Bombay in 1964. Only a few years prior, in the week preceding Christmas of 1961, Salazar faced a humiliating loss when the nationalist New Delhi government seized Goa and the remainder of the Estado da Índia. In granting a visit to the Indian government, Paul VI was both negating Portugal’s territorial claims and approving of Catholic Indians now living under a non-Catholic state. By performing this visit marked by outreach to the secular Indian State—a state world renowned for its religious diversity as well as its position as both the largest democracy and the champion of the so called non-aligned Third World (including the African Marxist Groups in Portuguese Africa)—Paul VI was sending a clear message to Lisbon.
Salazar’s response to the Vatican provides a singular insight into his reactionary worldview:
In Rome, perhaps, they ignore the difficulties faced and the greatness of the work carried out by this regime in order to allow the Catholic Church the right of expansion, since I became, in some measure, responsible for the course of public life. In the Vatican, much is thought about Christian Democracy, and about liberalism, and progressivism is permitted. May God not allow me to see the result of such doctrines and attitudes applied in Portugal. Since the advent of liberalism [in Portugal] Catholics have endured a lot, and even more since the founding of the Republic, with its Jacobinism. If the Church desires its return, it is because it no longer wants saints, preferring instead to have martyrs.[47]
Capturing the imagination of the Estado Novo leadership was the inflow of Goan refugees[48] into the Metropolitan and the Ultramar – harbingers of a much larger dislocation to come should the African provinces ever gain their independence.
Meanwhile, the significance of this event was not lost on the Catholic opposition, for whom Vatican II represented a major windfall. Playing the same role that Straussianism played for the budding neoconservative movement in the 1970s United States, the new Modernism emanating from the Council increased unity, organization, and coordination among the Catholic opposition forces in Portugal. This Conciliar ideology subsumed the Catholic opposition publisher Livraria Morais Editora.[49] Having met little success in publishing books—its most popular publication, the ominously titled “Christian Humanism Circle,” sold a mere 400 copies—the publisher instead transitioned to newsletters. O Tempo e o Modo, its first newsletter, was modeled after the aforementioned Esprit magazine and specialized in reporting on the events at the Council and translating some of its seminal works into Portuguese. Paul VI’s visit to the Hindustani subcontinent, however, offered it the chance to grow bolder in its coverage:
Information on the visit of Pope Paul VI to the Eucharistic Congress of Bombay in 1964 fell victim to government censorship, but it was reported by the Catholic underground press, giving the latter much public exposure…, The [opposition] newspaper stressed the ecumenical position of Paul VI, who met with leaders of Muslim and Hindu communities, along with other oriental religions, in contrast to the official ideology of Portuguese colonialism which attributed to Catholic missionaries the function of civilizing the indigenous population and moving them into the orbit of Portuguese culture.[50]
The Portuguese Church was left on awkward footing. The regime was in open opposition to the Vatican’s new Credo as expressed in the Council, and more and more of the clergy grew in its opposition to Salazar as “security and censorship policies began to be questioned by clergy who had clearly been influenced by the liberalism and ecumenism that underscored the Council.”[51] Cardinal Cerejeira, loyal still to the state, was left with the difficult job of having to keep discipline within his ranks. In one incident, he had to remove a priest, Father António Ribeiro, from the official Catholic radio station for defending Paul VI’s visit.[52] That this Father Ribeiro would one day be his successor did not bode well for the relations between the Estado Novo and the Portuguese Catholic Church.
Paul VI’s trip to Fatima
Oscillating between victories and stalemates, the Guerra Colonial, by the late 1960s, had exhausted much of the patience of the Portuguese public. From this position of relative weakness, Salazar – survival instincts intact despite his advanced age – shifted gears and extended an olive branch to the same Pope Paul VI who was so often the object of his ire. As the 50th anniversary of the Our Lady of Fatima Apparitions loomed, the Portuguese Church (likely on Salazar’s behalf ) lobbied hard for the Pontiff’s inclusion in the event.[53] Despite the fact that the Holy Father’s progressive encyclical Populorum progressio had been censored in Portugal for “security purposes” only a few weeks before,[54] Salazar and team were unexpectedly successful, and in May of 1967, Paul VI became the first Holy Pontiff to visit Portuguese soil.[55]
Salazar’s gains from this event were twofold. First, via his regime’s shaping of the international media coverage,[56] Salazar ensured that his nation was portrayed in a relatively favorable light, a key propaganda victory for the leader of a nation obsessed with how it is viewed from the exterior. Second, Salazar was able to put the opposition in a tailspin: the same progressive Pope who had been such a source of inspiration to so many leftists in the opposition deigned to visit Salazar’s Portugal and hold (admittedly brief) audiences with various luminaries of the Estado Novo. The visit severely weakened the moderate branch of the Catholic opposition, and further empowered the more extreme wing of the movement.
To the extent there was any proper victor, however, it was undoubtedly the Vatican itself. For a clue as to why, one need only hearken back to the days of the Concordat; then, too, the Vatican went softly with Lisbon so as to facilitate more stringent negotiations with Madrid:
Pope Paul VI wanted to end the close association of the Church with the Franco regime. The key instrument at his disposal was the naming of new bishops in Spain. After Vatican II, the Pope began to reject the candidates recommended by Franco for positions in the Spanish Church, avoiding direct conflicts by making ‘interim’ appointments. Paul VI named Vicente Enrique y Tarancón, as Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain in 1969, and later named him Archbishop of Madrid. Under Tarancón’s leadership, the Church started to implement the teachings of Vatican II, and adopted a more politically moderate tone.[57]
By extending his own “peace offering” to Salazar, Paul VI’s likely goal was disarming any budding suspicions in Franco. While Paul VI was known to harbor antipathy for both regimes,[58] the reality remained that Portugal was always of secondary concern for the Romans, who were always more focused on the conditions within Portugal’s larger Iberian neighbor:
Conservative papal nuncios were sent to Lisbon, where they bolstered the position of the reactionary clerical establishment by nominating conservative bishops. In Madrid during the late Franco era, the papal nuncio was vital in promoting reform in the Spanish Church, but Rome seemed to prefer a static Portuguese Church and made no effort to really aid Catholics who got into trouble under Salazar.[59]
For Cerejeira, unfortunately, Paul VI’s visit did little to quell the veritable revolt that continued seemingly unabated amongst the lower clergy: “Seventy-eight priests wrote to Cardinal Cerejeira in December 1968 pointing out that the malaise of the clergy was great, indicating problems in religious education, in the lack of innovation in pastoral care, referring openly to damaging clerical compromises with the state.”[60] The protests expanded to the nation’s seminaries; the Rector and several professors at Olivais, one of Portugal’s most storied, retired en masse after Cardinal Cerejeira began exerting more disciplinary control.[61] One of its professors of theology, Fr. Felcidade Alves, who was also served as the chaplain to President of the Republic, went rogue and “distributed a document among the parishioners that addressed the need to radically change the Catholic Church.”[62] Fr. Alves was an “outspoken critic of social injustice” and “was said to favor a non-institutional Church and to be interested in the ‘theology of revolution.’”[63] Cerejeira ultimately suspended the priest, who went on to live as a layman – but that even priests close to the regime’s orbits of power were susceptible to the new ideology highlights the travails faced in the new post-Conciliar world.
By the close of the decade, however, one notices a shift in Cerejeira’s approach. Whereas he had heretofore shown dependable exterior unity with his old friend Salazar, he now felt the need to respond more publicly to the mounting criticism of the post-Conciliar years:
In response to attacks from progressive Catholics, Cardinal-Patriarch Cerejeira wrote and published In the Hour of Dialogue: Responses to Many Questions in 1967. Cerejeira … insisted on the [continued] separation of Church and state in Portugal, and quoted an eleven year old speech of his; the hierarchy never made official pronouncements about the political regime, either of approval or condemnation.[64]
A rupture between Church and state was brewing and would come more to the fore in the subsequent period.
Marcelismo and the Failure of Moderate Catholicism
For Salazar’s successor, Marcelo Caetano, the Catholic question was never a priority. Though a practicing Catholic[65] and having been associated early in his career with Catholic politics,[66] Caetano’s private correspondence with Salazar showcases some annoyance with the premier’s exterior piety. Criticizing Salazar’s reactionary political tendencies in 1948, Caetano hoped for public decisions that showcased “less despotic actions, less visions of Our Lady of Fatima”[67] and more seemingly modern governance. In 1955, complaining about a religious procession where he felt too much pomp was directed towards the religious hierarchy than Salazar, Caetano screeched that “all of the diplomats’ present […] will inform their governments that Portugal is the most Catholic government in the world. In truth, in Spain, where the Church has a great deal of power, the head of State is received [more reverently].”[68]
To understand the confusion that would arise from Caetano’s policy towards the Catholic opposition, one need only look at the clues available elsewhere in domestic and foreign affairs. Inheriting a war in Africa raging on three fronts, Caetano chose to purse a “half way between Salazar’s integrationism and decolonization as preached by the left.”[69] Caetano’s foray into Hegelian dialectics was, to the detriment of the Império, met with unhappiness among both traditionalists and leftists as his “indecisiveness and weakness of character”[70] encouraged activism from ideological partisans within the Estado Novo. Similarly, while his indecision[71] originally gave an opening to proponents to economic liberalism backed by Euro-centric industrialists, the lack of authoritative direction allowed a firm reaction from economic groups anchored in Salazar’s original policy of autarky.
Notwithstanding these internal battles, Caetano’s initial ascent showcased considerable time and energy expended on the reform agenda. Critical to these efforts was the centrist portion of Catholics progressives[72] previously shunned by Salazar. Aligned with modernizing elements in both the military and the business elite,[73] these Catholic leaders played a key role in launching Caetano’s agenda:
During December 1968 Jose Guilherme de Melo e Castro, a progressive Catholic who belonged to the most liberal section of the political establishment, was appointed head of the [official State] party and was charged with revitalizing it in readiness for National Assembly elections in October 1969. Known to favor political pluralism and a free press, Melo e Castro brought young progressive elements into the UN [the state party] and his appointment coincided with a new electoral law which enabled all Portuguese who could read and write, including literate women (hitherto mostly barred from voting) to take part in future contests.[74]
Most of the reforms ultimately took place before the quasi-open elections of 1969, but the pace of reforms was nonetheless sufficient to encourage broad optimism among those favoring modernization:
The ballot was extended to women; censorship of the media and official control of appointments and admissions to the universities were relaxed … As a gesture to the opposition, the leader of the Social Democrats, Dr. Mario Soares, was released from house arrest on the island of São Tomé and allowed to return to Portugal to organize politically. The special privileges of the special police were curtailed in 1969 and the organization was renamed the PGS.[75]
Arguably, the most important long term legislative change occurred in 1969, when “government approval ceased to be obligatory for elected representatives of the state trade unions (the sindicatos) something which enabled PCP militants significantly expand their influence in the labor movement.”[76]
However, as this moderation arose from the desire to both appease the Left and corral otherwise contradictory groups, it was not the firm grounding that could have encouraged unity. Catholic progressives split into two rival parties, and the ensuing muddled messaging ultimately dampened voter turnout.[77] Different progressive Catholics reacted disparately to Caetano’s appeals; whereas some joined the state party, others “denounced the electoral act as such as a fraud, declaring that the dictatorship could only be overthrown by revolutionary means.”[78] The net effect of Caetano’s moderation was to splinter what existed of the Catholic opposition into further rivalries:
Marcelism brought with it the diversification and growing complexities of relations with the Catholic opposition: some were attracted by the hope of a peaceful transition to democracy involving the Liberal Wing, or evolving towards a position of critical support; other Catholics militated in the opposition with non-Catholic socialists (the CEUD/ASP/PS), royalists (the CDE), or in the extreme left organizations (the LUAR, the PRP/BR).[79]
Caetano’s rise, based on divided power, inevitably encouraged a reaction it was in no position to control. The reactionary elements—the old guard Salazaristas in the military[80] as well as the business interests aligned with the status quo in the Ultramar—would combine to frustrate Marcelo Caetano’s reform agenda and considerably arrest the pace of the reforms in the later years of his reign.
If the political scene suffered from disunity and poor leadership, the religious one was not meaningfully different. Not long after Salazar’s departure, Cerejeira, too, would retire from his position. Paralleling the situation in the state, moderate weak leadership would take the helm of Church. Far from the shared history and warm personal connection, the cold nature of the working relationship between Caetano and Cardinal Ribeiro would add to the weakening of both of their respective positions.
Catholic Protests and the Final Days of the Estado Novo
While the Catholic center-Left continued its ill-fated legislative efforts, the Catholic hard-Left focused on more revolutionary programs. With the long term Catholic social justice goal of increased access to the labor movement finally realized, the stage was set for wide-scale leftist infiltration and the creation of more militant groups:
Some trade unionists, who were Catholics or of Catholic origin, trained by the JOC, the LOC, or the CCO, founded, along with the communists, the trade union federation Intersindical on 1 October 1971, taking advantage of a law issued by the Marcelo Caetano government that allowed the presentation of lists of candidates for the leadership of the single legal regime-authorized unions without prior government authorization.[81]
The most explosive issue, however, would prove to be the colonial question. In some respects, this was at the heart of the animosity and disagreements between Salazar and Paul VI. Seeking what amounted to appeasement of the Marxist rebels, Paul VI “encouraged a negotiated end to the hostilities”[82] and peace at all costs. This suspicion was more than confirmed when Paul VI had an audience with the leaders of the African rebellion movements in Rome in July of 1970.[83] The Soviets themselves noted how monumental this was, calling it “a shattering blow to Portuguese colonialism, to the policy of the Portuguese branch of the Catholic church … it signified the recognition of the legitimacy of the liberation struggle waged.”[84]
As had been the case previously, these signals were noticed “down market” and helped increase the militancy of the local Portuguese Catholic constituency. While the Communist party helped mark a sea shift in Portuguese politics by being the first political entity to back anti-colonialism, the embrace of liberal Catholic constituency did much to normalize a position that had been consistently branded as unpatriotic going back to the days of the monarchy.[85] With each passing year after the Conciliar revolution, however, more and more priests and Catholic laypeople felt empowered to speak out and take a radical stand:
It was the Catholics and the forces to the left of the Socialists and Communists that would take more forceful positions against Portuguese colonialism. The colonial war was a factor which radicalized the Catholic Left, bringing it closer to Marxism and often leading Catholics to cooperate with or to join forces with the Far Left. There were Catholics in all organizations engaging in armed struggle against the Estado Novo: the League for Unity and Revolutionary Action (LUAR), Revolutionary Armed Action (ARA) linked to the PCP, and the Revolutionary Brigades (BR).[86]
The situation came to a head on New Year’s Eve of 1972. Showcasing the then existent Catholicity of the Portuguese people, the so-called Capela do Rato was set for a Holy Mass to consecrate the new year to God, as was the tradition in many countries. Following excitement from Paul VI’s promulgation of World Day of Peace, Catholic university students agreed to commence a hunger strike inside said chapel. Coordination for the event relied heavily on communist elements, as “[t]he initiative was organized by Catholics in collaboration with the BR, a Marxist-Leninist group which set off powerful firecrackers and distributed leaflets calling for solidarity with the participants in the vigil.”[87] The following day, however, saw the events grow much more dramatic:
In the afternoon of that day, the police gathered around the chapel, with riot vans and dogs, and the leaders were imprisoned in Caixais jail. The police had intended to close the chapel, but midnight Mass was held anyway, leading to the incarceration of the [celebrant of the Mass] Father Janela. He was taken to the headquarters of the PIDE/DGS, and was only released after the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon intervened on his behalf. The repression of the activists who had joined the demonstration continued in the months that followed. Many were fired from civil service jobs. As a result of the public image of the New State was tarnished, particularly after the Patriarch of Lisbon condemned the regime for the first time ever, deeming it unacceptable that ‘police forces should intervene in the sacred place as they did.[88]
Like his predecessor Cerejeira, the new Cardinal Ribeiro found himself in a trying situation. For him though, the calculus was much easier—Rome’s position was clearer than ever before, the heads of state were now much weaker men, and the domestic Church was much more radical than what it was in the past. Some commentators have suggested that Ribeiro disagreed with the regime on the course of the war[89] on an outright basis. Regardless, the Portuguese Church had turned its back on the what remained of the Estado Novo, and the consequences would be hard to understate:
It was the acid test for the new Cardinal-Patriarch D. António Ribeiro, who had succeeded Cardinal Cerejeira in 1971. D. António Ribeiro did not support the protesters of the Capela do Rato, but he condemned the police action and went to the police station demanding the release of a priest. In the National Assembly, Miller Guerra, a Catholic Member of Parliament from the so-called “liberal wing”, wanted to discuss the case of Capela do Rato. As it became clear that the subject could not be discussed in parliament, he resigned from his seat. This was a decisive factor weighing in the decision of all the members of the so-called ‘liberal wing’ in Portuguese politics, who supported a liberalisation of the regime and a peaceful transition to democracy, not to stand in the 1973 elections to the National Assembly. The illusions of a peaceful transition faded on the eve of the revolution. No-one now believed it was possible to liberalize an authoritarian regime in the context of war.[90]
Conclusion: The Carnation Revolution and its Aftermath
While the Portuguese center-Right failed to learn certain critical historical lessons, fortunately so did the communists. In the immediate aftermath of the Carnation Revolution, the PCP overstepped its bounds with the Church – dispensing with PCP leader Alvaro Cunhal’s longstanding policy of “hand outstretched to Catholics”[91] and prioritizing the suppression of potential rival bastions of power rather than purported social justice ends.[92] Predictably, the reaction from the Portuguese populace was swift, especially from the more conservative north of Portugal:
Such utter confusion encouraged the noncommunist parties, the Church and men of affairs in the north to launch a counterattack against the left-MFA coalition and the PCP in particular. Half a century of Salazarism had never produced as much anticommunism as north central Portugal witnessed in 1975. More than 200 PCP offices were burned in a rural jacquerie coordinated mainly by two right wing underground movements, the Portuguese Liberation Army (ELP) and the Democratic Movement for the Liberation of Portugal (MDLP).[93]
Some members of the Church hierarchy participated in this offensive to stave off the leftist onslaught, much to the chagrin of many leftist international observers.[94] The true king makers of the era were the Socialist Party, whose long-term efforts[95] to build relations with the Catholics paid off in the subsequent legislative elections.
If one finds rule by socialists to be an uninspiring consolation, the results within Portuguese culture are even more disheartening. The final years of the Catholic opposition saw great efforts to subvert traditional sexual morality, on a scale hither unseen in Portugal – as evident in the publications of Livraria Morais in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.[96] The mild[97] degeneracy in Republican Portugal paled in comparison to what came a mere year after the Revolution; even a correspondent from The New York Times could not fail but to notice that the bookstores in 1975 featured large stacks of communist literature interspersed with publications with pornographic content.[98]
None of this political and social tumult would have ultimately surprised Salazar in the slightest. A pre-Conciliar Catholic fundamentally believed that his duty was to preserve the grand inheritance of the faith for future generations; Salazar believed it, too, was his solemn duty to preserve the achievements of Portuguese history for posterity. That Portugal’s grandest days were many centuries behind it did not matter in the slightest to Salazar; the duty remained all the same to preserve the glories of yesteryear and make them palpable in the present day. Just as the Church’s hierarchy existed to preserve Tradition, so should the state be ordered in a similar fashion:
The medieval Church saw temporal civilization as a force in the service of God, a function of the sacred. God’s relation to the world was that of the sacrum imperium, and this demanded an organic unity in society … Because the role of the temporal was to minister to the spiritual, it followed that spiritual leaders could invoke the apparatus of temporal government in holding society’s spiritual unity fast. There arose a paternalist concept of monarchy, the king as the paterfamilias of the state, a reflection of divine fatherhood … [this] ‘monarchical’ concept of the Church and religion exactly describes the mind of Salazar. The Council accepted the growing role of the state in an age of increasing complexity, but held to the limitations of the subsidiarity principle. Though never exposed to Jesuit influence, Salazar’s own instincts were undoubtedly Ignatian: the emphasis on authority, obedience, hierarchy, the dread of national fragmentation, the attempt to recapture the ideal through a closely-knit discipline.[99]
Given the deleterious effect of the Council on Portugal’s social and moral cohesion, it is not surprising that one of Salazar’s greatest defenders was none other than the most vocal bishop in the opposition at Vatican II, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Society of Saint Pius X. The late Archbishop described Salazar as “exceptional, admirable, and profoundly Christian of a leader” who set a model for the entire world:
What Portugal did, there is no reason at all why we could not also do too. There is no reason that impedes reconstructing the Christian society, the Christian family, the Christian school, the Christian business, the Christian professions, and the Christian State. It would have to be our lack of faith. If our perhaps successors could have the opportunity to do this, nothing else would matter![100]
Citations:
[1] Tiago de Azevedo Mafra Jones, Haydn. “Salazar and Catholic Regeneration in the 20th Century” Angelus Online. August 2006. http://www.angelusonline.org/index.php?section=articles&subsection=show_article&article_id=2462 Accessed 22 March 2018
[2] “A lição de Salazar” Salazar – O Obreiro da Pátria. http://oliveirasalazar.org/imagem.asp?id=1004. Accessed 23 March 2018
[3] http://visualizingportugal.com/religion-texts/2014/2/9/portuguese-film-1930-1960-the-staging-of-the-new-state-regime
[4] De Meneses p614
[5] Gallagher p523
[6] Wheeler, Douglas L. Republican Portugal: A Political History, 1910-1926. University of Wisconsin Press, 1999: p69
[6] Schwartzman, Kathleen C. The Social Origins of Democratic Collapse: The First Portuguese Republic in the Global Economy. University Press of Kansas, 1989: p147
[7] Gallagher p522
[8] Machado, Diamantino. The Structure of Portuguese Society: The Failure of Fascism. Praeger, 1991: p72
[9] De Menses, Felipe. Salazar: A Political Biography. Enigma Books, 2009: p62
[10] Wheeler, Douglas L. Republican Portugal: A Political History, 1910-1926. University of Wisconsin Press, 1999: p69
[11] Burleigh, Michael. Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, From the Great War to the War on Terror. Harper Collins, 2007: p140-2.
[12] Gallagher, Tom. “The Catholic Church and the Estado Novo of Portugal.” Disciplines of Faith: Studies in Religion, Politics, and Patriarchy, ed. by James Obelkevich et al. Routeledge, 2013: p523
[13] Wheeler p142
[14] Fryer, Peter. Oldest Ally: A Portrait of Salazar’s Portugal. Praeger, 1982: p116
[15] Garnier, Christine. Salazar: An Intimate Portrait. Farrar, Straus & Young, 1954: p159
[16] Garnier p162
[17] Garnier p161
[18] Gallagher p525
[19] Sales-Lee p3
[20] Simpson p331
[21] Historical Dictionary of Portugal, p81
[22] Gil Ferreira p17
[23] http://www.fatimacrusader.com/cr25/cr25pg10.asp
[24] Kay p359
[25] Herr, Richard. The New Portugal, Democracy & Europe. University of California Press, 1992: p84
[26] Manuel, Paul Christopher. “Religion and Politics in Iberia – Clericalism, Anticlericalism, and Democratization in Portugal and Spain.” Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective – The One, the Few, and the Many, ed. by Ted Gerard Jelen and Clyde Wilcox. Cambridge University Press, 2002: pp82-3
[27] https://books.google.com/books?id=_UtuDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT36&dq=cardinal+cerejeira&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjd0Kjh6YTYAhVLNd8KHZfxAHU4ChDoAQgmMAA#v=onepage&q=cardinal%20cerejeira&f=false
[28] Sales-Lee p4
[29] “Obra sobre António Lino Neto evoca acção de um católico no Parlamento da I República.” Secretariado Nacional da Pastoral da Cultura. http://www.snpcultura.org/id_antonio_lino_neto.html. Accessed 17 April 2018
[30] Kay p341
[31] Almeida p67
[32] Fryer p210
[33] Zwick, Mark. “Emmanuel Mounier, Personalism, and the Catholic Worker movement.” Houston Catholic Worker. 1 August 1999. https://cjd.org/1999/08/01/emmanuel-mounier-personalism-and-the-catholic-worker-movement/. Accessed: 20 March 2018.
[34] Rauch, R. William. Politics and Belief in Contemporary France: Emmanuel Mounier and Christian Democracy, 1932-1950. Martin Nijhoff, 1972: p283
[35] De Meneses p443
[36] De Meneses p442
[37] De Meneses p445
[38] Friedheim, Daniel. “António de Oliveira Salazar of Portugal,” Contemporary Leaders of Western Europe. ed. by David Wilford. Greenwood Press, p397
[39] Gallagher p128
[40] De Meneses p444
[41] Freyer p211
[42] De Meneses p449
[43] De Meneses p446
[44] Kay pp356-7
[45] Gallagher, Tom. Portugal: A Twentieth Century Interpretation. Manchester University Press, 1983: p128
[46] Gaudium et spies: “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Promulgated by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on December 7, 1965.” http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html. Accessed: 20 March 2018
[47] De Meneses p571
[48] Tiago de Azevedo Mafra Jones
[49] Almeida, João Miguel. “Progressive Catholicism in Portugal: Considerations on Political Activism (1958-1974)”, Histoire@Politique 2016/3 (n° 30), p. 60-74. DOI 10.3917/hp.030.0060 p65
[50] Almeida p70
[51] Tiago de Azevedo Mafra Jones
[52] Ibid
[53] Simpson, Duncan. “The Catholic Church and the Portuguese Dictatorial Regime: The Case of Paul VI’s Visit to Fatima.” Lusitania Sacra, January 2008: p341
[54] Tornelli, Andrea. “Fatima, Paul VI’s journey of peace” La Stampa – Vatican Insider. 12 May 2017. http://www.lastampa.it/2017/05/12/vaticaninsider/eng/the-vatican/fatima-paul-vi-journey-for-peace-C7O7lcGvSLJqJoBV3yjGFJ/pagina.html Accessed 22 March 2018.
[55] Simpson 358
[56] Simpson p367-8
[57] Manuel p86
[58] Journal of Conflict Studies. No. 43, January 1974. Current Affairs Research Service: p26
[59] Gallagher p128
[60] Ibid
[61] Kay p362
[62] Almeida p71
[63] Kay p362
[64] Sales Lee, Brook. Cerejeira com ou sem Salazar: A Reexamination of Political Catholicism in Portugal’s Estado Novo. New Frontier Graduate History Conference, 2013: p6
[65] Kay p417
[66] Kay pp416-7
[67] De Meneses p384
[68] De Meneses p441
[69] van der Waals, W.S. Portugal’s War in Angola. Protea Book House, 2011: p199
[70] Robinson, Richard A. H. “The influence of overseas issues in Portugal’s transition to democracy.” The Last Empire: Thirty Years of Portuguese Decolonization. ed. by Stewart Lloyd-Jones & António Costa Pinto. Intellect Books, 2003: p4-5
[71] Pinto, António Costa. “The transition to democracy and Portugal’s decolonization.” The Last Empire: Thirty Years of Portuguese Decolonization. ed. by Stewart Lloyd-Jones & António Costa Pinto. Intellect Books, 2003: p32
[72] Gil, Hugo Gil & Michael W. Marshall. Portugal’s Revolution: Ten Years On. Cambridge University Press, 2010: p17
[73] Nataf, Daniel, & Elizabeth Samis. “Classes, Hegemony, and Portuguese Democratization.” Transitions from Dictatorship to Democracy: Comparative Studies of Spain, Portugal, and Greece. ed. by Ronald H. Chilcote et al. Taylor & Francis, 2015: p85
[74] Gallagher p167
[75] Van der Waals p196
[76] Gallagher p166
[77] Gallagher p167
[78] Almeida p68
[79] Accornero, Guya. The Revolution before the Revolution: Last Authoritarianism and Student Protest in Portugal (Protest, Culture and Society). Berghahn Books, 2016: p122
[80] Robinson pp5
[81] Almeida p68
[82] Manuel p147
[83] Faria, Paulo C. The Post War Angola: Public Sphere, Political Regime and Democracy. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013: p114
[84] Hot Cold War p13
[85] Wheeler p42
[86] Almeida p71
[87] Almeida p72
[88] Accornero p122
[89] Manuel p147
[90] Almeida p72
[91] Almeida p67
[92] Porch, Douglas. The Portuguese Armed Forces and the Revolution. Croom Helm, 1977: p186
[93] Wheeler p92
[94] https://www.nytimes.com/1975/08/24/archives/the-relationship-with-salazar-was-satisfactory-portugals-church.html
[95] Almeida p64
[96] Almeida p74
[97] Fryer p210
[98] Davies, John Patton. “The Revolution of the Red Carnations – Portugal” New York Times. 13 July 1975. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/07/13/archives/revolution-of-the-red-carnations-portugal.html
Accessed: 20 March 2018
[99] Kay p432
[100] “D. Marcel Lefebvre: Como Portugal, Reedifquemos a Cristinadade.” Ascends Blog. 23 July 2016. http://ascendensblog.blogspot.com/2016/07/d-marcel-lefebvre-como-portugal.html. Accessed 20 March 2018