ORIGINAL ARTICLE
PAULA, Sérgio Peres de [1]
PAULA, Sérgio Peres de. Authority, authoritarianism, politics, power, freedom and violence at the Instituto de Filosofia e Teologia (IFT): an analysis through Hannah Arendt and Norberto Bobbio. Revista Científica Multidisciplinar Núcleo do Conhecimento. Year. 07, Ed. 07, Vol. 05, pp. 64-92. July 2022. ISSN: 2448-0959, Access link: https://www.nucleodoconhecimento.com.br/philosophy-en/authority , DOI: 10.32749/nucleodoconhecimento.com.br/philosophy-en/authority
ABSTRACT
Through a discussion of some concepts such as “Authority”, “Authoritarianism”, Politics, Power, Freedom and Violence, from Hannah Arendt and Norberto Bobbio, an approach is made on the Instituto de Filosofia e Teologia (IFT), which existed In Sao Paulo Brazil. Inter-congregational institution, which emerged as a proposal to adapt priestly formation to the novelties of the Second Vatican Council, in 1965, within a context of polemics and political contests external and internal to the Catholic Church, the IFT was extinguished in 1969. The way H Arendt and N. Bobbio address the concepts of Authority and its correlates helps to better understand the facts.
Keywords: Authority-Authoritarianism, Freedom-Violence, Catholic Church in Brazil, Church-State, Post-Vatican Council II.
1. INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this article is to approach some related concepts such as authority, authoritarianism, politics, power, freedom and violence, with reference to the authors Hannah Arendt and Norberto Bobbio. The reason for the approach is a historical research still in preparation on the Instituto de Filosofia e Teologia, also called in a second moment of Institute of Theological Formation, always preserving the acronym IFT, which existed in São Paulo between 1965 and 1969. At the IFT, Augustinian Recollects from the then Province of Santa Rita de Cássia studied theology and took an active part, especially in the Academic Directory XI.X (October 11) during the institute’s existence.
The research around the IFT involves an institution formed by a group of religious orders and congregations, created by the Conference of Religious of Brazil, with links of subordination to a larger institution that is the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in São Paulo, in the person of the then Cardinal Archbishop D. Agnelo Rossi. The activities of the IFT began in 1965, operating in the former Colégio Des Oiseaux, of the Cônegas de Santo Agostinho, in the central region of São Paulo. From 1968 onwards, the IFT began operating at the Carmelitas convent, on Rua Martiniano de Carvalho, in the Bela Vista district. In 1969, after conflicts with the cardinal, the IFT was dissolved.
The context of the short existence of this institution falls within the period of the military regime in Brazil. IFT students were linked to student movements and resistance to the regime at the time. The period marks the beginning of a tense relationship between the Catholic Church in Brazil and the State governed under the military regime.
In the research, several concepts and analyzes of a sociopolitical nature are involved in question for the institutional functioning, be it the IFT, be it the Catholic Church, be it the State and the military regime. An institution is marked by an internal organization that presupposes relations of power, authority, strength of its representatives, traditions and discourses that form an ideological “corpus”. For the research, it is important to analyze the forms of organization of the various institutions involved, how power and authority relations took place and which traditions and discourses were in conflict at that time. The military regime in force at that time, with increasing restrictions on civil liberties and with increasingly authoritarian characteristics, was the target of contrary demonstrations and resistance from a significant number of IFT students. Thus, not only in this context, but expanding to a larger context that questioned authorities and traditions, it is necessary to seek an understanding of what a political institution is, how power and authority relations were characterized, which motivated the use of violence with the who resisted the regime and whether the actions of the Cardinal Archbishop of São Paulo at the time that led to the extinction of the IFT were arbitrary and authoritarian.
For this article, some works by H. Arendt and Norberto Bobbio were used to seek an understanding of the concepts referred to above. The thought of Hannah Arendt, a Jewish writer, born in Hannover, Germany in 1906, from a rich and intellectual family, is quite interesting in relation to the aforementioned period. She entered the university in Marburg in 1924, and then in Heidelberg, where she was a student of Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers. With the rise to power of the National Socialist German Workers Party and a series of persecutions of Jews, Hannah Arendt, after fleeing a concentration camp, takes refuge in the United States in 1941, living as a “stateless person” until 1951, when he got US citizenship. With a vast academic culture, she wrote several works, especially political analyses. She died at the age of 69 in New York in 1975.
Norberto Bobbio (1909-2004), political philosopher, historian of political thought, writer and Italian senator, has as one of his works the “Dictionary of Politics”, which was used in this work, in its entries “Authority”, “Authoritarianism” and “Violence”. One of the characteristics of N. Bobbio is to write in a clear, concise, logical, precise and dense way, treating each theme in different aspects and considering many recent thinkers, when he wrote, related to the theme.
We begin with an approach to the question of totalitarianism and its relationship with the historical narrative in H. Arendt, since in the 1960s, in a climate of the cold war, the imminence of the predominance of totalitarian thoughts was always a real danger, whether due to the advance of communism, whether by the military regime or by the protest movements of the period. An offshoot of totalitarianism are the concepts of “radical evil” and “banal evil”, whose effective manifestations were present in the acts of violence and brutality in the various groups in shock. Then, the concepts of “authority” and “authoritarianism” will be synthesized according to the approaches of H. Arendt and N. Bobbio and, through the contextualization of the Church in the 1960s, it will be possible to perceive how these concepts were severely questioned. Finally, the present relationship between politics, as a space for debate and freedom, and the use of violence always as a transgression of the political sphere will be briefly highlighted. Some aspects of the history of the IFT show the disastrous consequences that an undue understanding of authority, the unilateral exercise of power and the absence of dialogue or free debate can have.
2. HANNAH ARENDT: TOTALITARISM AND HISTORICAL NARRATIVE
Karin A. Fry, a scholar of Hannah Arendt’s thought, says that “the integrality of Arendt’s theory defends the importance of different opinions and seeks to avoid repression of the free exchange of ideas, common in totalitarian governments” (FRY, 2010, p. 11). Still according to this author, Hannah Arendt states in her work “The human condition” that her intellectual project is concerned with “nothing more than thinking about what we are doing” (FRY, 2010, p. 11; ARENDT, 2007, p. 13 ). Understanding theory and its relationships with everyday practices in the world constitute the essence of Hannah Arendt’s work. Among the main concepts discussed and deepened by Hannah Arendt are: “totalitarianism”, “banality of evil”, “freedom and political practice”, authority, power and violence. Hannah Arendt also analyzes the demands and student movements of the 1960s.
Hannah Arendt’s approach to “totalitarianism” is interesting not only to understand the military regime in Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s, but also to analyze resistance movements against it. Both the military regime claimed for itself a “guarantee of freedom” and the protest movements against it claimed the pursuit of freedom. The military regime used violence against the resistance, through imprisonment and even the practice of torture, just as it cannot be neglected that many resistance groups, especially armed urban guerrillas, generally Marxist, also used violence, torture, the practice of “justices”[2], theft and robbery, especially of banks, attacks on institutions and public places, kidnappings and various forms of guerrilla warfare, in the name of a supposed “democracy”, whose discourse hid , however, projects to impose a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. What we have there are the conflicts between two “dictatorships”, both with “democratic discourse”. What are the ideological elements present in the military regime and in the resistance movements that the concepts of “totalitarianism”, “banality of evil”, authority, “freedom and politics”, power and use of violence, Hannah Arendt’s thought, make more comprehensible?
When Hannah Arendt deals with the origins of totalitarianism, the name of one of her works, she intends to show “how totalitarianism emerged politically and what political and individual failures allowed its emergence” (FRY, 2010, p. 19). In “Origens do Totalitarismo” (1951) and “Eichmann em Jerusalém” (1963), H. Arendt examined the conditions that allowed the emergence and brutalities of totalitarian regimes. In her analysis of the trial and forcible conviction of Adolf Eichmann, responsible for the deportation of millions of Jews to concentration camps, H. Arendt theorizes about the mechanism that, inside each person, allows totalitarianism to flourish. In understanding this phenomenon, she seeks to find meaning in the “meaninglessness” of totalitarianism and tries to define the essence of this political system as a new phenomenon, which is not planned or structured, characterizing itself, however, as a chaotic movement of destruction, non-utilitarian, insanely dynamic, attacking every attribute of human nature and the human world that might make politics possible (FRY, 2010, p. 21-23).
In “As Origens do Totalitarismo”, especially at the revised end, entitled “Ideologia e Terror” (ARENDT, 198, p. 512-531), H. Arendt criticizes the relationship between totalitarianism and certain theories of history and nature: the theories modern teleological theories of history or theories that assert that human history is a universal process that is moving towards a specific end, goal and purpose, a “telos”. The central idea in these theories is the claim that the human species is progressing throughout history and increasing over time. Hegel and Marx affirm not only an end to history, but the possibility of knowing the content of that end. Marx even suggests that something can be done to “hasten” the end, which implies the emancipation of the worker. History is something that can be managed, controlled and refers more to the future than the past. “Acting” is what brings about the end of history, which implies a policy rather than a simple summary of the past.
Modern totalitarianisms in the 20th century presuppose the belief that leaders can have access to the secrets of history and nature; and control them. The focus is more on understanding the movement and process of history and nature than on the goal; this, in turn, is unattainable. Thus, the concepts of “development” and “progress” become keys to understanding the processes. History is then seen from the perspective of how processes take place, how they can be controlled and reproduced. Human beings are not simple observers, but “manufacturers” of historical processes. The methodology of totalitarian regimes thus consists in fabricating the processes of history or nature. In the totalitarian view of nature and history, “intervention in nature” or “intervention in history” are implied to indicate the political effect of such ideological beliefs.
Nazism consisted of a totalitarian regime guided by a forging of the law of nature with a commitment to create a pure race of human beings. His aim was to assist the process in nature in order to maintain the law of nature which had somehow failed to maintain itself. Stalinism, in turn, consisted in the falsification of the law of history due to its commitment to the infinite creation of a Marxist/Stalinist society.
In its mode of operation, totalitarianism places unparalleled power in the hands of a single individual or ruler, who sacrifices immediate interests in favor of an extreme and fictitious reality to be realized in the distant future. The aim is to speed up the laws as quickly and expansively as possible. Classes deemed “dying” or decaying by “history” or “nature” will be given over to destruction. There lies the possibility of “killing” portions of society because, after all, they are already in decline.
The infallibility of the leader’s strength to control society and history shows the powerlessness of the common person. The success of the regime comes from moving and expanding towards the goal never reached with the sacrifice of everything for ideology. A rigid gauge of thought is thus established that does not encourage free questioning of the regime. The atmosphere of paranoia and fear discourages free political action and aims to put an end to any dissent. “When totalitarian movements begin to take effect, it is extremely difficult to put an end to them, unless the leader is somehow removed or killed” (KARIN, 2010, p. 41).
H. Arendt’s theory of history is in contrast to totalitarian ideology: history consists of narratives and stories that recall the actions of singular individuals and give them meaning for the community. The origin of the story lies in the legends, which are significant because they explain the true meaning of an event for a community. They do not consist of factual representations of what happened in the past, but serve as late corrections of real facts and events, because they underline the true meaning of the event for the community regardless of the facts. The pre-political and pre-historic condition is the fact that each particular life between birth and death can, after all, be narrated as a story with a beginning and an end. After death, all that remains of a life are the stories that others can tell about that person. Thus, historian, poet, artist, writer and monument builder are people who build narratives about the past, which can reveal human action.
Historical narratives can be constructed because political actions always produce stories that are retrospectively created and such stories can be shared publicly. It is not a conclusive tale of one person’s actions. They can be reworked and their meaning changes over time. Just as the meaning of the story can be revised, the art of storytelling reveals the meaning without making the mistake of defining it and allows for different interpretations of the meaning of an action in the future. History celebrates individual actions and does not treat the person as superfluous, but as an important contributor to the community.
In teleological and totalitarian theories of history, negative events can be justified as unfortunate but necessary side effects due to the grand scheme of history. The person is sacrificed to the ends of history or nature. Thus, entire segments of society can be eliminated in order to make way for the ideological laws of nature or history.
Narrative in H. Arendt does not establish the goals of the story, but interprets the action after the fact. It conserves meaning for particular events without constructing a metanarrative and avoids the smug sense of control that is at the core of totalitarian theories of history and nature (KARIN, 2010, p. 21-44).
As resistance to the regime by various groups, from student movements to armed guerrilla movements, increased its performance, within a global context of the cold war and, in Brazil, an exceptional regime that increasingly was characterized as an internal war, summary arrests and torture on the one hand became recurrent practices. On the other hand, however, on the part of the resistance groups, the practices were no less frightening and criminal: kidnappings, robberies, attacks on public places such as airports and military entities, cruel deaths of civilians and soldiers.
From 1967 onwards, a portion of IFT students progressively engaged in student movements. Up to the present moment, 34 names, some still dubious, others clearly belonging to IFT members, especially in its student body, were located with medical records in the archives of the “Department of Political and Social Order” – DEOPS[3] of São Paulo, a public safety agency of State. Of these names found, some appear as active members in movements of resistance to the military regime such as Ação Popular, AP, later, from 1971, called Ação Popular Marxista-Leninista do Brasil (APML do B), the Vanguarda Popular Revolucionária (VPR) or underground political parties, such as the Partido Comunista do Brasil (PC do B). All these groups were Marxists who aimed at an armed struggle with the intention of implanting the dictatorship of the proletariat in view of a communist society.
3. HANNAH ARENDT: “RADICAL EVIL” AND “BANAL EVIL”
In 1963, H. Arendt accompanied the trial and conviction of Adolf Eichmann and about which he wrote a work: “Eichmann in Jerusalem”. In it, H. Arendt seeks to understand the mental process at play in those who transformed themselves from ordinary citizens into people who actively participated in the mass murder of other citizens and the impact of totalitarian ideology on the criminality of a particular individual.
In “Origens do Totalitarismo”, H. Arendt addresses the concept of “radical evil”, which is based on the belief in the superfluity of certain human beings. In the case of Eichmann, she developed the concept of “banality of evil”, considering that he was not a diabolical, perverse, calculating and sadistic monster. For H. Arendt, totalitarian regimes often engender people incapable of thinking for themselves and of understanding the immorality of their actions, since everything they did was sanctioned by law and supported by the current regime. Thus, evil is not trivial because it is unimportant, but because it can happen without diabolical intent and is often the result of a colossal failure of thinking. Totalitarianism promotes a breakdown in people’s way of thinking. Eichmann was an unintelligent man whose most significant character flaw was his inability to look at anything from another’s perspective, his callousness and willingness to participate in the brutal practices of the Nazis. Eichmann’s great deficiency was his unwillingness to commit himself to moral thinking. He defended his immoral practices by acting within the law, doing his best to fulfill his task of obeying the law. For H. Arendt, perverse political actions are not always carried out by monsters, but can happen through extreme insensitivity and lack of reflection, even among people who, in the beginning, are not particularly bad. Since critical thinking skills are fostered in a totalitarian society, people are able to adhere to codes or rules of behavior. The totalitarian regime, however, can change the content of the codes of conduct at any time and the new orientation gains acceptance because of the lack of moral knowledge to evaluate the change. Thus, totalitarianism generates a new type of criminal: one who kills as part of his career and does not even know that doing so is wrong. Political judgment is another faculty that atrophies in totalitarianism.
Since totalitarianism works to promote the superfluity of people, a description of evil as “banal” seems to condense the superfluity of the individual, inherent in the concept of “radical evil” (ARENDT, 1989, p. 45-50).
O totalitarismo surge parcialmente porque o livre pensar e falar são negados, e devido a isso, o bom-senso perde seu gancho com a realidade. O governante totalitário oculta ou torna inacessível a prova dos horrores cometidos pelo regime, de modo que, até mesmo para o mundo exterior, o senso comum se nega a crer no que deveras está acontecendo na comunidade (ARENDT, 1989, p. 51).
The truncated common sense in a significant portion of society, as well as the restricted capacity to properly assess the political situation, allowed new customs to be adopted among such groups and promoted political passivity among those whose moral thinking was not so compromised.
H. Arendt develops a political vision that highlights the primacy of individuality and the uniqueness of the human actor, therefore, opposed to all politics that consider citizens as superfluous (ARENDT, 1989, p. 52-53).
The existence of any and all institutions is a socio-political fact that requires concepts such as freedom, power, authority that, in turn, delimit the justifications for the use of coercion and violence. The IFT existed as a philosophical and theological training institution, organized by a group of religious orders and congregations. Within this institution there was an academic directory which, in turn, defined the actions of students integrated into it and in an organized way promoted demonstrations against the military regime in force. The Catholic Church, which had promoted an ecumenical council with new perspectives for Christian and ecclesiastical action, also brought with it a strong weight of tradition and internal discipline, strongly questioned at the time. The Brazilian State, politically marked by great institutional instabilities, in a cold war context, with an anticommunist tradition, was marked at the time by great internal divergences between the socialist proposals, animated by the recent victory of the Cuban revolution, and the continuity with a capitalist alignment. In State violence under the military regime, with progressive traits from authoritarianism to dictatorship, and resistance groups, the concepts of “radical evil” and “banal evil” help to understand the bestialities committed in acts of torture, attacks and of brutal deaths both by some and by others. The trend in historical studies in recent decades is focused on violence committed by the State. Little is studied and published about the violence committed by armed resistance groups. If there was a “banal evil” in the State under the military regime, this was also manifested in the guerrilla groups, both urban and rural, and it was no less cruel.
3.1 AUTHORITY AND AUTHORITARIAN
In many essays H. Arendt investigates relevant political concepts such as authority, power and freedom. Among his most widespread works in this investigation are “Entre o Passado e o Futuro”, “Sobre a Revolução” and “Sobre a Violência”. In her work “Entre o Passado e o Futuro” she addresses her investigation in chapters such as “What is authority?”, “What is freedom?” and “Truth and Politics”. The focus of the following approach is on the concept of “Authority”, from the perspective of H. Arendt and N. Bobbio.
According to H. Arendt, the modern world is characterized by a constant, growing and deepening crisis of “authority”, resulting from the political regimes or movements themselves, such as the tension between totalitarian regimes and political party systems. This crisis of authority even affects “pre-political” areas, such as child-rearing and education, where it was understood as a “natural necessity” for the survival of both the child-individual and the social group. This way of thinking has traditionally been the basis for many authoritarian forms of government. “Both practically and theoretically, we are no longer in a position to know what authority really is” (ARENDT, 2011, p. 128).
One of the ways that N. Bobbio treats the concept of authority as “stabilized power”. The term derives from the Latin “auctoritas”, which originally maintains a close relationship with the notion of “power”, being used sometimes as synonyms or distinguishing itself as a species or a source of power. Thus, authority can be understood as “stabilized” and “institutionalized” power, to which subjects render “unconditional obedience”. Generally, such an understanding applies quite clearly in the realm of administration, often implying subjection to orders without evaluating their content. Obedience there is understood as reception of an order or signal issued by someone, who transmits the message without giving the reasons for it, and expects it to be accepted unconditionally (BOBBIO, 1998, p. 88).
The notion of authority, both for H. Arendt and for N. Bobbio, contrasts with the notion of power by persuasion, that is, the use of arguments in favor of duty or the opportunity of a certain behavior in the relationship of authority (BOBBIO, 1998, p. 89). For H. Arendt, not only does it contrast, but for her authority and persuasion are incompatible, since the latter presupposes equality and operates through argumentation. “Where arguments are used, authority is suspended” (ARENDT, 2011, p. 129). This is because, according to her, the egalitarian order of persuasion is not compatible with the authoritarian order, which is always hierarchical.
As a “stable and institutionalized power”, N. Bobbio makes use of some distinctions of types of power, such as “coercive”, “remunerative” and “normative”; and the orientation of subordinates in relation to power, such as “alienated”, “calculating” and “moral”. As in H. Arendt, understood in this way, authority relations are frequent and diffuse in society, as in the relationship between parents and children, teacher and student, religious leader and faithful, businessmen and employees, military leader and soldiers, government and citizens. In this way, authority forms the basic structure of any type of organization whose relations are asymmetrical, maintains a hierarchical order and aims at a social unit. Such an understanding is based on the hierarchical and stable character of authority, not being free of conflicts between “established authority” and “emerging authority” (BOBBIO, 1998, p. 89-90).
Another approach presented by N. Bobbio is that of authority as “legitimate power”, since there is often an apparent contradiction between “coercive authority” and certain forms of power by usurpers, conquerors and tyrants. Thus, not all stable power would be “authority”, giving rise to the notion of this as “legitimate power”. As “legitimate power”, authority maintains a positive value in its relationship with power, implying a value judgment and the participation of individuals or groups in the same power relationship. The value judgment refers to the very source of power, defining the scope of the right to command and the duty to obey. This notion of authority, which considers the acceptance of power as legitimate, produces stability and willingness to obey, which may be “durable”, but not permanent (BOBBIO, 1998, p. 90).
For H. Arendt, a definition of authority requires opposing coercion through force and persuasion through arguments. An “authoritarian” relationship between the one who commands and the one who obeys is not based on common reason, nor on the power of the one who commands, but on the hierarchy itself, recognized as legitimate by both and which predetermines the place of each one. For her, the loss of authority in the modern world is the final phase of a process that for centuries has undermined religion and tradition. With the loss of tradition, the security thread of past domains was lost. The loss of religion was due to doubting religious truth, which does not necessarily imply a “loss of faith” (ARENDT, 2011, p. 129-130).
H. Arendt understands tyranny as the form of government exercised according to the will of the tyrant, while authoritarian government is limited by laws and has its authority originated in an external force and superior to power itself, which gives it legitimacy and confirmation (ARENDT, 2011, p. 134; ARENDT, 2011, p. 278).
Translating into images, H. Arendt uses the “pyramid” and the “onion” to talk about authoritarian character models. In the pyramidal form, the seat of power is at the top, from which “authority and power filter down to the base”, in layers with less and less power in relation to the upper layers, but which are interrelated with the common point: the top of the pyramid; and to the transcendent source of authority above it. Such is the Christian model of authoritarian government. The “onion structure”, according to her, is the image for the totalitarian government and organization. In the center is the leader. Whatever he does, be it integration of the body politic or oppression of subjects, he does it from within, not from without or from above. This structure presents itself as a “fiction of a normal world”, where fanaticism and extremism are supposedly absent (ARENDT, 2011, p. 135-136). From these structures, it addresses some trends in the Western world, such as liberalism, focused on freedom, conservatism, centered on the question of authority, and the “Social Sciences”, characterized by the functionalization of concepts and ideas. In all of these, violence is often seen as a function of authority (ARENDT, 2011, p. 138-140).
The relationship with violence determines, for both H. Arendt and N. Bobbio, the ambiguity in the notion of authority, as “other means to exercise power”, considering its use on “dissidents” to be legitimate. “The use of violence becomes possible to a greater or lesser degree, based on the belief in the legitimacy that transforms power into authority” (BOBBIO, 1998, p. 92). Belief is a psychological factor with a strong ideological character. A minor belief in the legitimacy of power and the use of violence establishes a deep conflict, being one of the characteristics of authoritarianism: claiming a right to command without the consent of subordinates; claiming unconditional obedience when subjects intend to discuss the content of orders received; having power as legitimate by those who hold it, but not recognized as such by those who are subject to it (BOBBIO, 1998, p. 92-94).
A autoridade é muitas vezes contaminada e apresenta, sob vários aspectos, uma característica de ambiguidade. Ela pode ser geradora de violência, na medida em que a crença na legitimidade de alguns consente o emprego da força em relação a outros; pode ser “falsa”, na medida em que a crença na legitimidade não é uma fonte mas uma consequência psicológica, que tende a esconder ou deformar; pode ser apenas “aparente” , na medida em que o titular legítimo do poder não detém o poder efetivo; e pode transformar-se em autoritarismo na medida em que a legitimidade é contestada e a pretensão do governante em mandar se torna, aos olhos dos subordinados uma pretensão arbitrária de mando (BOBBIO, 1998, p. 94).
When talking about “authoritarianism”, N. Bobbio does so from three contexts, namely: in political systems, characterized above all by the annihilation, reduction and emptying of the opposition; in the psychological dispositions of personalities with extreme attitudes of adulation of “superior” and contempt for hierarchically or socially “inferior”; and, finally, in ideologies, as a denial of equality among human beings, with emphasis on the hierarchical principle and the exaltation, as a virtue, of authoritarian personality traits.
Authoritarianism maintains the “principle of authority” as centrality, but under a specific bias: the relationship between “apodictic command” and unconditional obedience; the reduced sense and conditioned by the deeply hierarchical structure supported by the vision of inequality among men; the exclusion or reduction to a minimum of the participation of the people in power; the remarkable use of coercive means that impose obedience, dispense with the consent of subjects and oppress freedom. Often, terms such as authoritarianism, dictatorship and totalitarianism are used in opposition to democracy, however, the boundaries between them are unclear and unstable in different contexts. The term authoritarianism normally applies to non-democratic systems, with a low degree of mobilization and penetration in society (BOBBIO, 1998, p. 94-95).
“The opposition between authoritarianism and democracy lies in the direction in which authority is transmitted, and in the degree of autonomy of political subsystems (parties, unions and all pressure groups in general)” (BOBBIO, 1998, p. 100) . Thus, authoritarian regimes and institutions are characterized by the absence of Parliament and popular elections, by the merely ceremonial character of institutions, by the absence of freedom of subsystems and suppressed or obstructed opposition. Three forms of authoritarian regimes are observable: non-party, single-party and multi-party regimes. A feature common to all of them is the limited penetration and mobilization of society. Regarding democracy, says N. Bobbio: “A democratic political system presupposes a democratic society” (BOBBIO, 1998, p. 103). The simple congruence between society and the political regime does not necessarily imply “isomorphism”.
Studies on authoritarian personality and attitude show their presence both in “fascist” ideologies and in left-wing ideologies, and there is a tendency to minimize the application of the term to the latter, which can at least be included within “totalitarian” ideologies. Authoritarian personalities and attitudes are usually characterized by sensitivity to anti-democratic propaganda; by belief in authority and obedience toward superiors and contempt for inferiors; by the willingness to attack weak people; by the acute sensitivity for power in a rigid and conformist way; by “thinking” aimed at power; by ambiguous intolerance, which seeks refuge in an order structured in an elementary and inflexible way, under stereotypes of thought and behavior; by ambivalence towards authority with submissive attitudes on the one hand, and hostility and aggressiveness on the other.
Authoritarian ideologies not only defend a hierarchical organization of society, but make this organization the exclusive principle for achieving order, considered a supreme good. In general, authoritarian doctrines are anti-rationalist and anti-egalitarian, with an obsessive concern for order (BOBBIO, 1998, p. 95). For H. Arendt, modern ideologies constitute the current “opium of the people”.
“Modern ideologies, whether political, psychological or social, are much more qualified to immunize the human soul against the traumatizing impact of reality than any traditional religion we know” (ARENDT, 2011, p. 179).
The IFT was an ecclesiastical institution and, as such, undemocratic. The ecclesiastical organization is based on a sense of authority, with a complexity of different levels and weights, ranging from collegial instances, such as councils, synods, episcopal conferences, religious conferences, chapters in religious orders and congregations, diocesan, parish and communities, up to the hierarchical levels of bishops, priests and deacons. The image of the pyramid, much less that of the onion, used by H. Arendt, does not give an exact view of the dimension of the sense of authority and exercise of power in the Church, being too simplistic. The 1960s, however, is a period in which the rigid forms of understanding authority and the exercise of power were incisively questioned in search of new forms of institutional organization. What happened was a tension between the established forms and the search for new experiences in the midst of a legal vacuum after the Second Vatican Council, whose code of canon law was undergoing revision and was only granted in 1983.
4. ECCLESIAL CONTEXT IN THE 1960’S: BREAK WITH TRADITION?
The abandonment of the Tridentine era and the encounter with modernity led many sectors of the clergy and seminaries to an identity crisis in the 1960s and 1970s. This period was marked by a widespread protest against what was considered the “obsolete Tridentine order”: theology mechanical, lukewarm pedagogy, authoritarian discipline and sexual repression. Both seminarians and priests committed themselves to building a new model of priesthood; reassessed the priestly and religious vocation and its social function; they modernized, politicized, and professionalized the priesthood through new forms of theology, pedagogy, and spirituality.
Seminarians, during this period, tried to organize themselves at the national level, challenging bishops and even the military government of Brazil. Student radicalism among seminarians and religious, in a kind of “ecclesiastical counterculture”, manifested itself as a political protest, a demand for greater openness to the world and a clamor for social justice. “The choice of paths was not always clear to them, and it was certainly not inevitable” (SERBIN, 2008, p. 157). Between 1961 and 1967, representatives of seminarians from Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Guanabara, Ceará, Maranhão, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Sergipe, Bahia, São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul and Colégio Pio Brasileiro in Rome, they organized and met several times, trying to create the “National Union of Major Seminarians of Brazil”.
The convening of the Second Vatican Council “opened the floodgates of innovation”; produced ambivalence and paradoxes: joy, jubilation, disappointment, confusion, anger and insecurity; and, in Brazil, it coincided with the political turmoil that led to the overthrow of President João Goulart in 1964, the repression and use of torture by the military regime, with the subsequent crisis between Church and State, Church and Armed Forces. In that same period, sectors of the Church presented themselves as “Church of the Poor” or “Progressive Church”, with new pastoral and religious expressions.
The reform of the seminaries was based on the criticism of the Tridentine system, however, its program lacked clarity. The complexity of the moment, the criticism of a single program for all the seminars, the requirement to adapt to the local context boosted, on the one hand, “aggiornamento” and generated other harsh criticisms such as “anti-discipline”. For those who defended seminary reform, the “isolation of the Tridentine system” distorted reality and the emotional, affective, social and cultural development of seminarians; “optional celibacy” was demanded and Catholic conceptions of sexuality and gender relations were questioned.
The freer behavior of the seminarians in terms of hours, use of the cassock, community prayer, bothered the superiors, who tried to preserve some “old customs”. The fierce opposition to authoritarianism and “blind obedience” emphasized the search for “dialogue” and the experience of an “adult Catholicism”. The search for a more practical and pastoral character even provoked the intention to eliminate Philosophy from ecclesiastical studies, replacing it with the human sciences, such as Sociology, Anthropology, Economics, History or Psychology, and the intention to de-intellectualize Theology, making it a more understandable pastoral instrument for the laity.
Instead of large seminars, efforts were made to form small communities in peripheral neighborhoods. The effort to “humanize” the priesthood moved many towards political causes, nationalism and the rejection of Romanization. “When the student movement erupted around the world, the seminarians’ movement had already adopted the humanism of Vatican II” (SERBIN, 2008, p. 186).[4]
Tensions were such that many seminaries were closed in Brazil. In São Paulo, the IFT, active since 1965 and whose board was made up of religious from different congregations, fell out with Cardinal Agnelo Rossi and the military authorities. The participation of IFT students in demonstrations against the regime and the criticism of the director, Fr. José Freitas Neves, Paulo VI and “Humanae Vitae” on television were arguments that induced its closure at the end of 1969.
The Book of Minutes of the Academic Directory XI of October, also written in the form D.A.XI.X, official representative body of IFT students, consists of a bound set with black cover, lined and numbered pages on the front and back, in a total 100 pages, with 98 written pages; pages 39 and 40 are missing (you can see that they have been torn out); pages 52, 53 and 84 are blank. It contains the Founding Minutes and the Statute, both dated April 23, 1966, the results of the elections and a list of 102 candidates. In all, 27 minutes of meetings were counted. Attached to the book, on separate and loose sheets, is a copy of a letter addressed to Cardinal D. Agnelo Rossi, dated September 23, 1968, in which the D.A. invites him to a visit of “dialogue” with the students; and a list of questions to put to the cardinal and other questions for D.A. This document opens perspectives for further research on the relationship of religious students with the ecclesiastical hierarchy, with the military regime and with the student organizations of the time. Everything indicates that the word “dialogue” between the cardinal and a group that questioned his methods and procedures was a novelty that had not yet been well assimilated.
In general, the students’ relations with the National Union of Students (UNE)[5] and the State Union of Students (UEE)[6] are discussed in the minutes. Many themes dealt with refer to the relationship between Christian values and the capitalist and socialist systems; the involvement of Christians in political and social movements; and resistance to the military regime, including forms of demonstrations against the regime and means for the Church hierarchy to position itself more clearly in the face of the country’s political situation[7]. One of the presidents of the D.A. was Fr. Tito Alencar, Dominican, arrested, tortured, exiled. He suffered from psychiatric disorders and committed suicide in France on August 8, 1974. The minutes also show an active role of students who joined the IFT from its founding in 1965 until its closure in 1969.
The nebulous discourse on the priestly vocation after the council provoked many studies, generated numerous texts and research. For K. Serbin, the transition between pre-conciliar uneasiness and post-conciliar confusion was excessively rapid, leading to a crisis in the clergy. Elder priests did not understand the reforms and young people were impatient with the delay in putting the intended reforms into effect. He points to three alleged causes for the exodus of priests and seminarians in the late 1960s: mandatory celibacy; the absence of a firm stance by the bishops against the regime; and the disappointment regarding expectations about the Second Vatican Council.
In K. Serbin’s opinion, the modernization of the Church was nothing more than a “timid democratization”, since “Trent has not disappeared”; the seminarians of the 1960s and 1970s constituted an idealist generation. “Perhaps they hoped to revolutionize all facets of the priesthood in the blink of an eye” (SERBIN, 2008, p. 200). Those young people shared the aspirations of other young radicals in other parts of the world. Many sought an authentic national identity among the less favored classes, but they were not exempt from another paradox: veneration for the poor on the one hand and rejection of popular religiosity on the other. Only a few decades later would a counterbalance to this paradox be sought (SERBIN, 2008, p. 78-201).
In another work, based on secret documents that became public in the 1990s, Kenneth Serbin analyzed the relationship between the Church and the Army, seeking to discuss their common elements, their differences and incompatibilities, in what moments they cooperated with each other and the reasons that led to the conflict between the “cross” and the “sword” after 1964 (SERBIN, 2001, p. 79). For him, both the Church and the Army were institutions that sought to influence the process of establishing the Republic in the country, given the tensions between “tradition” and economic development, rapid and massive urbanization, intermittent attempts at democracy and the slowness in social reforms.
Both institutions maintained a dialectical relationship of collaboration and competition and sought to present themselves as representatives of the Brazilian national ideology, religious tradition, patriotism and social order. The Church did it through the idea of “Christian Brazil” and the Military, through the positivist ethics of “order and progress”. Church and Armed Forces were the only institutions scattered across the national territory, for whose “national integration” they collaborated by emphasizing hierarchy, obedience and discipline. In both, the male element predominated, however, they also contained ideological differences: one with spirituality, preached peace; another held in readiness for war; one was constituted as a transnational organization and the other as a national institution. Training in academies and seminars brought with it contrasting visions of society.
During the republican period, the military constantly intervened in the country’s politics, with harsh criticism of the government’s negligence in relation to the Army and the incompetence of civilian politicians. Cultivating a rigid respect for authority, it sought to maintain national unity, redefine its purpose and its mechanisms of social control. This allowed for institutional and disciplinary strengthening. From the 1950s, in an international context of “cold war”, the military joined the discourse of “national security”.
The Catholic Church, which suffered from a chronic institutional weakness, after the tense relationship with the monarchy at the end of the Empire and with the Army at the beginning of the Republic, in a process of internal restoration under the direction of the Roman See, strengthened itself institutionally. Cultivating an ideology of neo-Christianity, from the 1920s onwards, he sought religious monopoly and acquired greater political weight under the leadership of Cardinal Leme, the “moral concordat” with the government of Getúlio Vargas and which continued informally with successive governments until the beginning of the military regime.
Several factors had also favored the approach of the Church to the Army: the decline of positivism, the Church’s collaboration in military recruitment, the restoration of military chaplaincies in the 1930s, the Church’s adherence to the anticommunist discourse, the sending of chaplains along with the expeditionaries during World War II. The 1950s are characterized as the apogee of the neo-Christianity model and the “good neighbor” policy between the Church, the State and the Army. What held them together were the anticommunist discourse, economic development projects and mutual collaboration in social works.
According to Kenneth Serbin, the Catholic Church and the Armed Forces in Brazil, between 1955 and 1974, carried out a “double Revolution”, that is, they undertook a modernization effort and developed new ideologies in response to new challenges. From the 1960s, internal differences polarized and both carried out the “double revolution”, not social, but institutional, political and religious.
The Armed Forces, with the deposition of João Goulart, intended to avoid the “communization” of the country. The Catholic Church supported the coup, as it also feared communism. The use of violence in the radicalization of the coup, however, polarized relations between the Church and the Armed Forces.
The Catholic Church, in a process of “religious revolution”, emphasized Social Justice in its speech and increased political and social militancy in the new generations. Under the “National Security Doctrine”, Christian militancy and the State collided.
Kenneth Serbin also pointed to another factor: the competition for political influence between the Escola Superior de Guerra, the CNBB, the Partido Comunista Brasileiro, and the Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros. For him, it is also necessary to consider that within the Army there were several tendencies, but the “hard-liners” predominated from 1968, with Ato Institucional nº 5 (AI5), the antiguerrilla policy of the Armed Forces and police and the use of torture.
Beginning in the late 1940s, several Brazilian bishops called for reform of the land tenure system. During the following decade, a large sector of the Catholic Church adhered to economic nationalism and the discourse of social transformation, questioning the model of “neo-Christianity”. With the creation of the CNBB, starting in 1952, the episcopate was able to better coordinate Brazilian Catholicism and acquire greater internal and external political weight. In the early 1960s, a vigorous Catholic left emerged, particularly within the Brazilian Catholic Action. Changes in pastoral orientation with the Second Vatican Council emphasized the dialogue between political ideologies, human rights and the search for a new Catholic identity, which generated uncertainty. Within the Church itself, trends polarized between social and religious conservatives and militants who supported social and religious reforms.
Before the military coup, in March 1964, the CNBB made a confused and contradictory statement, thanking the Armed Forces for “saving” Brazil from communism and asking for an end to attacks on Church activists and protection against “liberal capitalism”. Until the early 1970s, the bishops remained very wary of military rule and were silent on the arrest and torture of “radical” Catholics. Some bishops collaborated in denouncing and arresting “subversive priests”.
Referring to the “Kissinger Report”, prepared in the early 1970s, the Church was identified as the “only politically viable institution left in Brazil”, with great moral strength and the only one capable of supporting or challenging the government. The report also indicated the existence of four groups within the Catholic Church: the reactionaries, the moderate conservatives, the progressives and the radicals.
At the end of the 1960s, repression by the military regime aggravated tensions between ultraconservatives and progressives. Some bishops began to denounce torture and violence. The Army command sectors saw the Church as a nest of subversion. For them, the Church had abandoned its religious functions and exaggerated in the intervention of state affairs. In 1967, Army soldiers invaded the house of D. Waldyr Calheiros, in Volta Redonda, Rio de Janeiro. This fact provoked a great indignation in the national clergy and exacerbated the tensions between the bishops and the generals. During the Medici government (1969-1974), state security agencies ostensibly monitored the Church. Between 1968 and 1974, more than 100 priests were arrested, seven were killed, several were tortured, some foreign priests were expelled from the country, many religious buildings were invaded. Threats, indictments, kidnappings, infiltration by government agents, censorship, falsified and forged documents to compromise priests and religious became frequent. About 30 bishops suffered the repression. Several priests have faced prosecution for criticizing the government in sermons, for alleged participation in subversive organizations, for collaborating with fugitives and for defending human rights. Verbal attacks by the authorities of the military regime against the Church became frequent. Government security agencies, such as the Department of Political and Social Order (DEOPS) and the Army, such as the Department of Information Operations and Internal Defense Operations Center (DOI-CODI)[8] carried out data collection and prepared several reports of bishops and priests.
Kenneth Serbin also stated that the military regime’s strategies against the progressive Church consisted of discrediting radical priests through defamation; in granting greater space to competing religions (Umbanda and Pentecostal movements, for example); and in denouncing the sexual immoralities of the clergy.
The Catholic Church increased its criticism of the regime, especially after the arrest of Fr. Nathanael de Moraes Campos, in Volta Redonda. The Church’s reaction, for K. Serbin, occurred through the promotion of human rights and the denouncement of the regime’s atrocities; encouraging social and ideological changes that contested the military’s development strategy; of a peaceful but extremely active movement of resistance with its own schemes to avoid repression, such as: priests and leaders should carry only the Bible. The Church’s reaction strategy also implied setting up its own information service and supporting intellectuals, with the aim of undermining the military regime. The work of intellectuals such as Alceu Amoroso Lima, Paul Singer, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Ruth Cardoso were relevant in this regard.
According to K. Serbin, the tension between the Church and the Armed Forces occurred as a consequence of the Church’s painful effort to “modernize”. The unidimensional view of the concept of “national security” in the Armed Forces faced the changes brought about by the Second Vatican Council and the new engagement of some sectors of the clergy with the popular layers of society as a threat to the class structure and the social and political prominence of the military. Still for the Brazilianist, the deterioration of relations between the Church and the Armed Forces occurred due to different ways of analyzing issues related to Social Justice and subversion (SERBIN, 2001, p. 79-133; MAINWARING, 2004, p. 101- 134).
According to José Oscar Beozzo, priest and historian of the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council tried to overcome the secular rupture between the Christian East and West and promote the unity of the Church through a dialogue with the other Christian churches (BEOZZO, 2005, p. 43-62). The complexity is evident in the very semantics of the “Catholic Church”, with its variety of rites, and in the nomenclatures of the Churches. Likewise, it tried to overcome the break with the modern world that began with the Council of Trent in the 16th century. For him, the Second Vatican Council “[…] broke the naive view of a monolithism of positions within the Catholic Church”, opened a broad debate for the episcopate, a review and deepening of the internal structures of the Church and its relations with the other Churches, non-Christian religions and even with non-believers. Among the main changes made by the council, he highlighted:
- Reformed the internal structures of the Church; it remodeled its liturgy; altered the linkage of the Western Catholic Church with the Latin language (in studies and liturgy); shifted the axis of the mass from the celebrant to the assembly of the faithful and their participation; he gave equal importance to the table of the Word and the table of the Eucharist;
- In ecclesiology, he stressed the concept of “People of God”; the equal dignity of all the baptized, grouped in local churches, in which the hierarchical ministry is structured as a service to the baptized;
- In the doctrine of collegiality, he sought a point of convergence and balance between the Petrine primacy (papal primacy) and the recognition of the “college of the twelve” and their successors, the bishops, as an authority with local responsibility and over the Church as a whole;
- On ecumenism, he emphasized communion and the search for unity among Christian Churches and dialogue with non-Christian religions, highlighting the need for cooperation and mutual respect;
- He reformulated the Church’s relations with the world.
During the council, the Brazilian episcopate was shocked by the diversity of languages, cultures, races, rites, customs, theological and ecclesiological currents, often conflicting, within the Catholic Church itself. Both during and after the council, there was an intense theological production and the appearance of many magazines and bulletins, which showed the intellectual and religious effervescence of the moment. Within the episcopate itself, pockets of resistance, traditional theologians and part of public opinion contrasted with the novelties proposed by the council.
De toda forma, o Concílio abriu um período de incertezas, de redistribuição do poder interno, de surgimento de novos organismos e experiências eclesiais, de acolhida ao ecumenismo e ao diálogo inter-religioso e de reformulação da tradição anterior, com uma volta às fontes e à grande tradição dos primeiros séculos (BEOZZO, 2005, p. 52-53).
And not only uncertainties, but also a period of attrition, disputes, disappointments in the implementation of reforms, aggravated by legal uncertainty. For about 20 years the Catholic Church has lived a “legal vacuum”, an intense internal debate about the possibilities of eliminating the traditional canon law, replacing it with a “Lex Fundamentalis” of the Church, with practical application in the Particular Churches, and supporters of the elaboration of a new “Code of Canon Law”. The second tendency prevailed, with the approval of the new code in 1983.
5. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
“Freedom” is a decisive category for H. Arendt. For her, political action is an expression of spontaneity and the beginning of freedom. The manifestation of freedom requires communication with other people and contrasts with the “inner freedom of the Will”, a common theme in the philosophical tradition. If people want to be free, they must relinquish sovereignty precisely, as their actions are inherently unpredictable and cannot be faked. Freedom exists between people and is external to the individual spirit (FRY, 2010, p. 89-91).
“The suppression of the public space for the exchange of opinions changes politics, and the government begins to function as an institution that ensures the public discussion of opinions” (FRY, 2010, p. 92). Violence is always a transgression of the political sphere; it is always external to it and, in the case of revolution, it is pre-political. Violence remains outside politics because it lacks discourse.
Authority, for H. Arendt, implies an obedience in which people maintain their freedom. She, authority, balances the relationship between freedom and the need to obey, a relationship necessary for a government to function. In addition, it provides a sense of durability, stability and connection to the past.
Authority requires free consent. In a government, it cannot be identified with “authoritarianism”, as it is freely given and necessary for a stable government. Thus, to think of all instances of authority in terms of authoritarianism is to confuse legitimate power with illegitimate power.
It is impossible to enforce true authority through violence because authority exists outside of those in power and must be granted at the option of citizens. Totalitarian regimes took advantage of the modern loss of authority to interfere when government authority was no longer recognized (FRY, 2010, p. 105-107).
When addressing student movements in the 1960s, H. Arendt discusses the political use of violence and its negative role in politics as suppression of freedom, in contrast to the violence that may be necessary for revolutions aimed at freedom. In general, however, violence is the opposite of freedom, as it is used by those in charge of government in order to pressure and coerce, resulting in the suppression of the freedom of the people. While political action is loquacious, violence is mute, silencing the exchange of opinions and being used as a means to obtain certain ends by force. Violence is ineffective as a political instrument for maintaining sovereign power, because the means can totally override the end.
The use of violence is inherently unpredictable and dangerous because it never guarantees the proper outcome. Once violence is introduced, pain and suffering spread to levels that cannot be faced or controlled, and therefore any long-term goals pursued through violence become shaky at best. Thus, the practice of violence, like any action, changes the world, but the most likely change is towards a more violent world.
H. Arendt disagrees with the combination of the term “power” with “violence”, because for her power arises in groups through free choice. Tyrannical and despotic governments lack power, because power is between people who speak and act together, in the harmony necessary to make one’s will appear in the world, and is not about brute force. She makes a distinction between power and vigour, force and authority (ARENDT, 2011, p. 60-61; FRY, 2010, p. 98-99).
Vigor concerns a single person, or belongs to an object; power is about people in the plural, working together. Stamina is an independent property of an individual; power arises among many.
Force is characterized as energy released by a physical reaction or by a social movement. Authority involves unquestioned recognition on the part of those who have freely chosen to obey governmental norm.
Power is not power over others, but arises with others; it is not maintained within the agent, but resides between agents when they act together. Power is always “relational”.
For N. Bobbio, violence is understood as the physical intervention of an individual or group against another individual, group or oneself, voluntarily, with the purpose of destroying, offending and coercing, such action always being against the will of the victim. It is distinguished from power, since power is the modification of the behavior of the individual or group, endowed with a minimum of will of its own, and affects the will of the other. Violence, however, is characterized as a harmful change in the physical state of individuals or groups; affects the state of the body or its environmental and instrumental possibilities. Violence can be distinguished as coercive power based on sanctions or as violence under threat or in the act. For N. Bobbio, other forms of coercive power with sanctions other than force are characterized more specifically as “manipulation” (BOBBIO, 1998, p. 1291-1292).
A power based solely on violence cannot exist because all governments need a support base of believers to act. Thus, the use of violence signals the impotence of rulers who cannot convince the people through normal means of their cause, and the emergence of violence indicates that power is at risk. Tyranny is constituted as the abortive attempt to replace power with violence; This attempt is frustrated, as the consensus of the people cannot be authentically obtained through violence. Violence can destroy power through intimidation and fear, but it cannot create it to generate support for a cause. Terror arises when all power is destroyed in a political community and violence then never declines, as in the case of totalitarianism.
Power and violence are opposites because, in a power-driven state, violence is absent, as it is unnecessary; while in a violent state, power is absent and cannot be forcibly generated. The decline of power in a community becomes an open invitation to violence. Leaders mistakenly think they can maintain control through violent means (FRY, 2010, p. 99-100).
H. Arendt is skeptical of student militancy in the 1960s because they advocated the use of violence, as in the case of the black movement in the US, or, as in the case of the “new left”, advocated the political use of violence to put an end to to oppression.
Revolutions often require violence to establish new laws and new government to secure freedom. Thus, if the revolution arises linked to the cause of freedom, with the consent of the citizens, violence can be admissible. Power, however, is not something to be imposed through the will of a single individual, but arises between people who reach a consensus. Politics opens the space for free discussion and divergence. Thus, violent methods become unnecessary because the process of politics produces the power of the people, who have reached an agreement through persuasion (FRY, 2010, p. 100-102; ARENDT, 2011, p. 63-74).
All these concepts of totalitarianism, radical evil and banal evil, authority, freedom, power and political practice, as investigated by H. Arendt and N. Bobbio, are illuminating instruments for the IFT and its institutional relations on several levels. At a time when the notion of authority was put in “check”, both within the scope of State policy and in the ecclesiastical and university world, the forms of organization and internal discourses in each of these at a given moment collided: the IFT with the military regime and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in São Paulo; the Catholic Church with the military regime itself later. The use of physical violence or other forms of manipulation came into play, resulting, among other much more harmful consequences, in the extinction of the IFT. “Keeping authority requires respect for the person or the position. The greatest enemy of authority is, therefore, contempt, and the surest means of undermining it is laughter” (ARENDT, 2011, p. 62).
REFERENCES
ATA DO D. A. X. I. X. Diretório Acadêmico Onze de Outubro, p. 100.
ARENDT, H., A Condição Humana, 10.ed., Rio de Janeiro, Ed. Forense Universitária, 2007.
___________, Entre o Passado e o Futuro, 7.ed., São Paulo, Ed. Perspectiva, 2011.
___________, Origens do Totalitarismo. Anti-semitismo. Imperialismo. Totalitarismo, São Paulo, Companhia das Letras, 1989.
___________, Sobre a Revolução, São Paulo, Cia das Letras, 2011.
FRY, K. A. Compreender Hannah Arendt. Rio de Janeiro, Vozes, 2010.
BOBBIO, N. Dicionário de Política, Brasília, 11.ed., Ed. UnB, 1998.
BEOZZO, J. O. A igreja do Brasil no Concílio Vaticano II (1959-1965). São Paulo: Paulinas, 2005
MAINWARING, S. Igreja católica e política no Brasil: 1916-1985. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 2004.
SERBIN, K. P., Diálogos na sombra: bispos e militares, tortura e justiça social na ditadura. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2001
_________________, Padres, celibato e conflito social: uma história da igreja católica no Brasil. São Paulo: Cia das Letras, 2008
APPENDIX – REFERENCE FOOTNOTE
2. Act or effect of giving justice; to punish with death or severe physical punishment, through illegal trials conducted by exception governments or justice groups. Source: https://www.dicio.com.br/justicamento, accessed on July 1, 2020 at 6:15 pm.
3. Departamento de Ordem Política e Social (DEOPS).
4. Some direct sources come against the whole approach treated by K. Serbin, such as the Decree Optatam Totius in COMPÊNDIO DO CONCÍLIO VATICANO II, Constitutions, decrees and declarations, 25th ed., Petrópolis, Vozes, 1996, p. 507-525; others that can be found in the archives of the Order of Augustinian Recollects, in Ribeirão Preto, referring to the Provincial Chapter of 1966, such as: List of questions for the Chapter, prepared by Br. Felix Pardo; Minutes of chapter sessions; Chapter decisions on formation; Report of the Father Provincial, Fr. José Gonçalves; Reports on the IFT presented by Fr. Augustine Borges and Fr. Adaury Fiorotti; the annexes: “Responses to the questions presented by Br. Lauro about the IFT and our theologians who study there” and “Reflection in terms of formation” (document prepared by the seminarians and forwarded to the chapter).
5. União Nacional dos Estudantes (UNE).
6. União Estadual dos Estudantes (UEE).
7. MINUTES OF THE D.A.X.I.X., Academic Directory Onze de Outubro, 100 p.
8. Departamento de Operações de Informações e Centro de Operações de Defesa Interna (DOI-CODI).
[1] Graduation and Masters in History by Unesp – Campus de Franca/SP. PhD candidate in the Graduate Program in History at PUC-SP – Campus Monte Alegre, Perdizes, São Paulo. ORCID: 0000-0001-5897-6610.
Submitted: March, 2022.
Approved: July, 2022.
