Tradition, Family and Property

Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) is a group of lay Catholics.

His links with ultra-conservative groups of the Catholic Church have earned him rejection by liberal and progressive sectors. The Holy See has never made a pronouncement on it.

Conference of the founder of TFP Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

Origin

Founded in São Paulo, Brazil, on July 26, 1960, by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira under the name Sociedade Brasileira de Defesa da Tradição, Família e Pridiade. The TFP program, as it is popularly known, is based on Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira's thesis, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, in which he analyzes the spiritual decline of the " Western Christian Civilization" from the Middle Ages to the present day.

The first TFP began with Plinio Corrêa's book, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, and it inspired the other TFPs.^{[citation needed]}

Controversies

TFP has not stopped pointing out the positions of some prelates in favor of Liberation Theology and other ideas that for the group are considered deviations. These remarks have earned him the public animosity of some ecclesiastical officials, which was manifested in an unsigned communiqué dated April 18, 1985, in which the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB) expressed "(the) esoteric character, the religious fanaticism, the cult rendered to its boss and progenitor» of the organization. But a few days later, having produced the slight sanction by the Holy See against Friar Leonardo Boff for his theological positions, he was supported by 17 Brazilian archbishops and bishops, who expressly declared themselves dissatisfied with such "interference" of the Vatican in affairs. of the Church in Brazil, a fact that did not cause the CNBB to issue any disapproval for such prelates, as would have been expected.^{[citation required]}

In the 1970s, TFP launched campaigns against Marxism and Liberation Theology in Latin American countries such as Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. Doctrinally relevant element of the TFP movements is the criticism, according to these very documented, to the social-communist infiltration in the ranks of the Catholic clergy, activity whose theoretical foundation would be the affirmation of the Italian philosopher and Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci that there is no need to confront to the Church, but to infiltrate it. This is clearly evident later in almost all of Latin America. In 1999, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia affirmed that TFP supported paramilitary groups. In Colombia, one of the basic ideas for the beginning of liberation theology arises from the life and theology of the Colombian priest Camilo Torres Restrepo (1929-1966), who was co-founder, along with Orlando Fals Borda, of the first Colombian Sociology Faculty at the National University of Colombia and later joined the communist National Liberation Army of Colombia as a guerrilla, being killed in his first combat against official troops of the regular army.

The same course was taken by other priests and common Catholics, in Colombia and throughout the Americas. Among them may be mentioned the Asturian priest Gaspar García Laviana in Nicaragua, the Aragonese priest Manuel Pérez Martínez (the priest Pérez) who became the commander of the Communist National Liberation Army of Colombia ELN, the priest José Antonio Jiménez Comín, the priest Domingo Lain, and the priests Rafael Yacuzzi and Jorge Adur, who were part of the Montoneros organization in Argentina.

At the end of the 1960s, the Golconda group was famous in Colombia, made up of the so-called "red priests", which was an association of Catholic clergy who decided to work together in the late 60s and early 70s, under the guidance of what would become known as Liberation Theology.

Regarding Chile, TFP (through the Brazilian farmer and journalist Fabio Vidigal Xavier da Silveira, who traveled as a correspondent to the Andean country) published in 1968 the work Frei, the Chilean Kerensky, which denounces to the government of the Chilean Christian Democratic Party as an attempt by leftist Catholic sectors to introduce Marxism in Chile. The commotion caused by the book was such that, by order of the government of Frei Montalva, the circulation of this book in Chilean territory was prohibited.

In Venezuela, TFP was banned by the government of Jaime Lusinchi, accusing it of organizing a plot to assassinate then-Pope John Paul II in 1984, according to reports in the progressive press. It was a famous, confused and politicized case, in which the Venezuelan justice finally acquitted TFP, on May 15, 1986.

TFP has subsidiaries in numerous countries in the Americas and in Spain, Italy and France.

The movement has experienced several divisions, after the death of the founder, so that it cannot be spoken of in a monolithic sense. For example, the Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira Institute, founded by Plinio's cousin, Adolfo Lindenberg; with the same ideology as the foundations of TFP and the Heralds of the Gospel, led by João Scognamiglio Clá Dias, who for decades was Correa de Oliveira's assistant, secretary and confidante.

Activities

Activities include:

• The ideological struggle against agrarian reform;
• The ideological debate with the progressive sectors of the Catholic Church;
• The categorization of “Marxist” to the Theology of Liberation and European progressive persecution, as well as other liberal currents;
• I repudiate books, films and television series that, according to the organization, attack Christian moral principles and values.