1 Note to the Reader This file includes the following documents: 1. The letter from the President of the Brazilian TFP sent to Atila Sinke Guimarães. This docu- ment presents Atila with an Ultimatum, demanding that he stop the dissemination of In the Murky Waters of Vatican II and the publication of the rest of his Collection or face expulsion from the TFP (pp. 1-6); 2. Two Declarations from TFP members supporting the arguments of the President's letter (pp. 7-10); 3. The Defense by Atila Guimarães, in response to the accusations of the aforementioned doc- uments. (pp. 11-253). The Letter of the President of the TFP to Atila Sinke Guimarães Brazilian Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property National Council São Paulo, November 20, 1997 Mr. Atila Sinke Guimarães Eremo de Elias Itaquera – São Paulo Dear Mr. Atila, Salve Maria! I was shocked at the news you gave to Dr. Plinio Xavier on Saturday, November 8, saying that a book under your authorship would be published in the United States (under the title The Murky Waters of Vatican II) and that a text of Prof. Plinio would be used in its Preface. In the last two years, Dr. Plinio Xavier had several conversations with you about this study of yours. In these conversations he insisted especially on the fact that our late and dear Founder did not de- sire this work to be published before he himself reviewed it in its entirety and that, with Prof. Pli- nio’s absence, we were against its publication without an assurance that your writing was secure and the occasion timely. In a letter addressed to Dr. Plinio Xavier, dated last February 27, you wrote at length about our con- cerns and, in particular, of the need for consulting professional theologians and philosophers. In effect, a review to be made by high caliber theologians, after Prof. Plinio himself had made one, was already desired by him still in life (in the mentioned letter, you even provide the norms he had given in this respect). The death of our Founder made this [review] even more necessary than in his life, as well as an evaluation – in the tactical-political field – to be made by members of the TFP cho- sen by us and recognized as capable of issuing an opinion. Our desire for a double review grew after you published a manifesto in The Wanderer on a talk giv- en by Archbishop Quinn about new ways of exercising the Papacy. On that occasion, we were ob- 2 liged to write to you to demand that the TFP not be involved in this initiative and we noted impor- tant lacunas in that manifesto, calling particular attention to a forced interpretation of the words spoken by Archbishop Quinn. You even previously acknowledged this fact in conversations with Mr. Alfredo MacHale, alleging this to be a strategic resource to raise a polemic. In a later conversation you had with Dr. Paulo Brito, you also accepted some critical remarks he made about the anti-Quinn manifesto, even agreeing to insert his proposals into it. We, therefore, had reasons to fear that the work on Vatican Council II, incomparably more delicate and vast than the analysis of Archbishop Quinn's conference, could present similar problems. In the aforementioned letter of February 27, 1997, you were prepared to provide the work to mem- bers of the TFP that Dr. Plinio Xavier would choose, thus putting into execution the consultations with professional theologians and philosophers. But you advised him that, from then on, you would deal with the matter of your work only by letter, thus interrupting the verbal dialogue maintained until that date. This demand of a contact only by letter was reaffirmed in a later letter, dated last March, in which you made a complaint that, in a conversation with Mr. Leo Horvat, I had vigorously criticized initia- tives that you were taking independent of the direction of the TFP, even to the point that we might be forced to execute drastic sanctions. In effect, as you relate in this second letter, you favored starting an international campaign against the "We Are Church" movement, which even included a judicial process for fraud against the pro- moters of that revolutionary initiative, as well as the dissemination of a manifesto of your making. Given the urgent character you gave your campaign proposal, Dr. Plinio Xavier responded to you two weeks later in an extensive letter, dated last March 16, showing the inconvenience of making that campaign against the WAC, at least in the way proposed. What led us to make that decision were the symptoms of failure that that revolutionary initiative was encountering in Catholic milieus. The complete lack of success of the WAC recent delivery of its petition to the Vatican only confirmed the accurateness of our proposal to abstain from the mentioned campaign. In that letter, Dr. Plinio Xavier said nothing about the review of the book, the subject of the first of your letters. But it was implicit in this silence that he would also write you on this topic. He did not do so immediately because there was not a serene climate to deal with such a delicate matter after the friction raised regarding the Quinn manifesto and my telephone call to Mr. Leo Horvat (proof of this climate is your demand to deal with the matter only in writing). This prudent delay to allow the dust to settle would not gravely harm a work that had taken 13 years to be written and would take still more time to be reviewed. Incidentally, you have never asked Dr. Plinio Xavier for an answer. In this context of a dialogue that had only been postponed, you (secretively) continued negotiations with the aim of publishing your work in the United States without waiting for our reply on the sub- ject of a prior review. And now you surprise us with the imminent launching of the book, aggravated by the insertion of the already mentioned text of Prof. Plinio. It is painful for us to say this, but such a procedure does not conform to the ideal of chivalric ob- edience practiced in our family of souls. Hence my shock at your recent communication. 3 As for the publication itself, it raises a question of supreme importance. In the preface of Dr. Marian Horvat – according to what you told Dr. Plinio Xavier – words of Dr. Plinio about the work underta- ken by you were inserted. Here are some questions: Wouldn't those words, justly praiseful of your person, imply the disre- garding of a personal editing of Prof. Plinio that he still hoped to make in France in 1993? Wouldn't it also imply disregarding the editing by qualified theologians that he also desired? Another question: Wouldn't the insertion of said words be taken by many as a supposed seal of approval of Prof. Plinio for your work just as it comes to light at the present moment? If so, what confusion could this generate? What inconveniences – perhaps even grave ones – could this bring to our sister organization, the American TFP? And for the other TFPs? If a polemic were raised over your book, wouldn't people think that the TFP was engaged in it also, despite our disapproval of the initiative? Can we, the older ones, allow the legacy of our Founder to run these risks? Upon whose shoulders would the diplomatic leadership – tactically and intellectually delicate – of such a polemic fall? In effect, a precipitous and large publication of this work, if it were to appear to be inspired by us, would substantially change the nuanced position of the TFPs left by Prof. Plinio regarding the grave problems raised by the post-conciliar crisis. Now then, it was not in the plans of Prof. Plinio to embark spear in hand on a public polemic about the problems of conscience that certain conciliar documents raise. According to the testimony of the closest friends of our Founder, as well as those who helped you in the research, Dr. Plinio intended that a study be made that would expose the basis of our perplexity over the conciliar texts that are apparently incompatible with the traditional teachings of the Church. Such a study would be submitted to the Holy See for its consideration and circulated strictly in mi- lieus specializing in Theology (at most, an edition of some 200 copies, thought Dr. Plinio). This publi- cation would serve as a shield to protect us from the open or veiled persecution that we suffer from members of the Hierarchy in various countries because of our attitude of passive resistance to the application of post-conciliar aggiornamento. It seems that you did not understand the plan in the same way because, from the beginning, you began to give it a much larger extension. According to a testimony of Mr. Fernando Antunez, Dr. Plinio wanted a summarized analysis of the conciliar texts to provide a base for the expression of our perplexity. Instead of this concise work, based substantially on the actual words of the conciliar documents – a difficult work because of the ambiguity of some of them – you chose to write a global critique of the contemporary theological currents that inspired the writers of those documents. From this re- sulted a collection of thousands of pages in 13 volumes. Now then, already in the editing of the first volume at a Symposium held in Serra Negra in 1986, Prof. Plinio was not at all satisfied with the quality of the writing.