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Action, Reaction and Protest by Publishers in1960s Portugal: Books and Other Publications inthe Catholic Opposition

Nuno Medeiros

To cite this article: Nuno Medeiros (2015) Action, Reaction and Protest by Publishers in 1960sPortugal: Books and Other Publications in the Catholic Opposition, Politics, Religion & Ideology,16:2-3, 137-153, DOI: 10.1080/21567689.2015.1059762

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Action, Reaction and Protest by Publishers in 1960sPortugal: Books and Other Publications in the CatholicOpposition

NUNO MEDEIROS∗

Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa, and Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

ABSTRACT The authoritarian regime of the Portuguese Estado Novo (New State), the longestdictatorship in twentieth-century Western Europe, suffered one of its most serious threats duringthe late 1950s and the whole of the following decade. An array of events and dynamics of oppo-sition to the regime and condemnation of the political and social situation in Portugal appearedat that time. One of the core groups that displayed their dissidence in the 1960s, with the awa-kening of their critical conscience, originated in Catholic sectors that rallied the laity and theclergy to express their disagreement or even break with the government of Salazar (and,later, Marcelo Caetano). This article aims to establish the role of print culture and, in particu-lar, publishing in the opposition’s mobilisation of Catholics who criticised the Estado Novo. Itwill also closely examine the contribution of certain publishers to the formulation of the terms ofthis mobilisation, in publishing new authors and topics and creating new printed forums (e.g.periodicals) for discussion and reflection. The most detailed case will be that of the publishinghouse Livraria Moraes Editora, under the command of the publisher António Alçada Baptista.

Introduction

For a large part of the rule by the authoritarian and dictatorial regime that governed Por-tugal – a mainly Catholic country – for almost half of the twentieth century (which, forterminological convenience, will be termed the Estado Novo [New State]1), there was anappearance of stability and unity in the political manifestations of disagreement, criticism

∗Email: nuno.medeiros@fcsh.unl.pt1For reasons of economy in the discussion, I will use the term Estado Novo here to refer to the political regime thatcame into being with the overthrow of the First Republic on 28 May 1926 and ended with the Carnation Revolu-tion of 25 April 1974. It consisted of three periods: the Military Dictatorship [Ditadura Militar] (1926–1933), NewState [Estado Novo] or Salazarism [salazarismo] (1933–1968), and Marcelism [marcelismo], after Marcelo Caetano,the head of government after António Oliveira Salazar (1968–1974). In total, the dictatorial regime lasted foralmost 48 years. For an introduction to contemporary Portugal and the Estado Novo dictatorship, see RichardA.H. Robinson, Contemporary Portugal: A History (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979); Tom Gallagher, Por-tugal: A Twentieth-Century Interpretation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983); Douglas L. Wheeler,Historical Dictionary of Portugal (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1993); Fernando Rosas (ed), O Estado Novo, Vol.7 of José Mattoso (ed), História de Portugal (Lisbon: Estampa, 1994); António Costa Pinto, Salazar’s Dictatorshipand European Fascism: Problems of Interpretation (Boulder, NY: Social Science Monographs, 1995); KennethMaxwell, The Making of Portuguese Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); PhilippeC. Schmitter, Portugal: Do Autoritarismo à Democracia (Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 1999); ManuelBaiôa, Paulo Jorge Fernandes, and Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, ‘The Political History of Twentieth-Century

Politics, Religion & Ideology, 2015Vol. 16, Nos. 2–3, 137–153, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21567689.2015.1059762

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

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or confrontation inside the Portuguese Catholic church with regard to the circumstances ofgovernance, social events and the hierarchy’s close relationship with the structures andideological position of the power holders.2 At the end of the 1950s and especially in the fol-lowing decade, this was clearly eroded and fragmented.3 It is undeniable that there wasalways internal criticism and a dissident view among Portuguese Catholics, from the begin-ning of the dictatorship, with both condemnation of political repression and reactionagainst the persistent social inequality. Furthermore, Catholic participation in the universeof social and political action could already be seen in the interconnection between theworking class, trade unionism and the organised, unreservedly Catholic presence. Thishad its roots in the nineteenth century and saw further developments in the 1930s,1940s and 1950s, inclusively in the universe of the working class and trade unions.4 Butthe dissonant voices and their capacity to be amplified were continuously controlled anddissipated with a reasonable success on a public level, both by the apparatus of churchpower and the regime itself. The latter took firm action to remove political independencefrom the Catholic movements that showed themselves capable of politically and ideologi-cally organised activity.5

A series of events took place in the transition from the 1950s to the 1960s, with the elec-toral defeat – marred by widespread fraud – of the opposition’s presidential candidate,Humberto Delgado, in 1958, the outbreak of the Colonial War and the political and diplo-matic crisis preceding and accompanying it, the conspiracies – for example, of BotelhoMoniz, the minister of defence, in 1961 – or spectacular stands – such as the hijackingof the steamer Santa Maria by Henrique Galvão in 1960 or, again, the violently repressedacademic crisis among the students in 1962. These were the most perceptible echo of atorrent that originated in the ‘accumulated tensions [since the mid-1940s] in a societythat was changing but subjected to political, institutional and ideological obstacles ofevery type’.6 This is the background against which ‘at the beginning of the 1960s, a ‘Cath-olicism of opposition’, in a minority, in contrast to a ‘Catholicism of the prevailing situ-ation’, in the majority, for whom legality was greatly important, increased and grewprogressively more active’.7 The tendency towards Catholic unity was fractured beyondthe possibility or capacity of reversal. That tendency supported the regime and favoured

Portugal’, e-Journal of Portuguese History, 1:2 (2003), pp. 1–18, available at http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Portuguese_Brazilian_Studies/ejph/html/Winter03.html.2On the ability of the hierarchy to build a lasting alliance with the dictatorship and contain or eliminate internalsources of protest, see Duncan Simpson, ‘The Catholic Church and the Salazarist New State’ (PhD dissertation,King’s College London, 2010). According to António Costa Pinto and Maria Inácia Rezola, ‘the compromisebetween the Roman Catholic Church and the Portuguese state formed the basis for the institutional frameworkof Salazar’s New State’. António Costa Pinto and Maria Inácia Rezola, ‘Political Catholicism, Crisis of Democracyand Salazar’s New State in Portugal’ in Matthew Feldman and Marius Turda with Tudor Georgescu (eds) ClericalFascism in Interwar Europe (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 141–156 (p. 141).3Maria Inácia Rezola and António Costa Pinto, ‘Political Catholicism, Crisis of Democracy and Salazar’s New Statein Portugal’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 8:2 (2007), pp. 353–368. In Spain, too, Franco’s dic-tatorship began to encounter a clearer and more continuous expression of Catholic dissidence from the 1960s. SeeFeliciano Blázquez, La Traición de los Clérigos en la España de Franco (Madrid: Trotta, 1991).4Maria Inácia Rezola, Sindicalismo Católico no Estado Novo 1931–1948 (Lisbon: Estampa, 1999).5Paula Borges Santos, ‘The Question of the Political Organization of Catholics under the Portuguese AuthoritarianRegime: The ‘Bishop of Porto Case’ (1958)’, Portuguese Studies, 30:1 (2014), pp. 94–111.6Rosas, Ibid., p. 523.7António Matos Ferreira, ‘Catolicismo’ in António Barreto and Maria Filomena Mónica (eds) Dicionário de His-tória de Portugal, Vol. VII (Lisbon and Porto: Figueirinhas, 1999), pp. 257–269 (p. 265). It should be mentionedthat the social inclinations that were ideologically rooted in Catholicism were not new, although their political reg-ister, motivation and extent could not be compared to the dynamics that blazed in the late 1950s and the followingdecade. See, for example, Marie-Christine Volovitch Tavares, ‘Le Catholicisme social au Portugal, de l’encyclique

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the idea of freedom not so much as a political or constitutional right,8 as, essentially, theprinciple that the Church could carry out its doctrinal work without political interferenceor restrictions. In the decade in question, this trend gave place to a process of reform andthe internal diversification of experiences that resulted in a crisis of renewal and protestwith the clear profile of a political and ecclesiastical turning-point.9 The long-desiredand – to a certain point, at least in appearance and in its most general expression on apublic level – the long-upheld unity among Catholics crumbled on account of the succes-sive emergence of dissident positions and trends, which were increasingly associated andconnected with criticism or even opposition, if not participation in initiatives and move-ments to bring down the regime.

In the decade before 1960, a number of positions were taken that presaged a certain criti-cal awakening among the Catholic masses, and not just the laity; for example, the socialcriticism marking some of the contributions by the participants at the Congresso dosHomens Católicos [Congress of Catholic Men] organised by Father Abel Varzim inLisbon in 1950.10 The Estado Novo’s response was intended to suppress or eliminate thesituations and demonstrations of discontent or reserve with regard to the direction thatevents in the country were taking (e.g. the closure in July 1948 of O Trabalhador [TheWorker], a Catholic periodical that had operated since 1934 as the publication of theLiga Operária Católica [Catholic Workers’ League],11 or the order banning the publicreading of the closing motions of I Congresso da Juventude Operária Católica [First Congressof Young Catholic Workers], held in Lisbon in 195512). This did not succeed in suppressingor reversing the trend. There was an increase in the number of Catholics who decided, stea-dily, to distance themselves from the regime, or at least from certain aspects of its doctrineor practice. They made their critical voice heard by various means: from the manifesto tothe underground pamphlet, in addition to the use of institutional associations and the vigil,a singular method of objection that was reappropriated for protest in the 1960s and 1970s

Rerum Novarum aux débuts de la République (1891–1913)’ (PhD dissertation, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle,1987).8Manuel Braga da Cruz, ‘O Estado Novo e a Igreja Católica’ in Fernando Rosas (ed) Portugal e o Estado Novo(1930–1960), Vol. XII of Joel Serrão and A.H. de Oliveira Marques (eds) Nova História de Portugal (Lisbon: Pre-sença, 1992), pp. 201–221. See also Manuel Braga da Cruz, O Estado Novo e a Igreja Católica (Lisbon: Bizâncio,1988).9Regarding the rise of the ‘new Catholicism’ in the 1960s, underpinned by the pillars of humanism, vanguardism,progressivism and crisis, see Jorge Revez, Os ‘Vencidos do Catolicismo’: Militância e Atitudes Críticas (1958–1974)(Lisbon: Centro de Estudos de História Religiosa da Universidade Católica Portuguesa, 2009); see also Paula BorgesSantos, Igreja Católica, Estado e Sociedade (1968–1975): O Caso Rádio Renascença (Lisbon: Imprensa de CiênciasSociais, 2005).10Domingos Rodrigues, Abel Varzim: Apóstolo Português da Justiça Social (Lisbon: Rei dos Livros, 1990); AntónioCerejo and Manuel Braga da Cruz, Abel Varzim: Entre o Ideal e o Possível (Lisbon: Multinova, 2000).11António Cerejo, ‘A Liga Operária Católica: Origem, Consolidação e a Crise do Jornal O Trabalhador’ in MariaInácia Rezola and Nuno Estêvão (eds) A Igreja no Mundo Operário: Contributos para a História da Liga OperáriaCatólica e da Liga Operária Católica Feminina (1936–1974) (Coimbra: Gráfica de Coimbra, 2002), pp. 41–74. Theorganisation Acção Católica Portuguesa [Portuguese Catholic Action] itself, whose statutes prevented it from inter-fering in politics since 1933, the year in which it was institutionalised in Portugal, witnessed a case of social inter-vention that exceeded regulatory limitations via one of its affiliates, Liga Operária Católica. From the early 1960s,the monthly publication of the latter, O Lutador Cristão [The Christian Battler], later renamed Voz do Trabalho[Labour’s Voice], adopted a tone that was openly critical, and not unusually emphatically critical, of theworkers’ social situation and, especially, the situation of female workers. In this respect, the periodical presenteditself ‘as the ideological successor of O Trabalhador’; see Sandra Duarte, ‘A Imprensa Católica Durante o EstadoNovo: O Caso da Voz do Trabalho (1953–1974)’, Estudos do Século XX, 7 (2007), pp. 255–269 (p. 260).12Paulo Fontes, Elites Católicas em Portugal: O Papel da Acção Católica (1940–1961) (Lisbon: Fundação CalousteGulbenkian and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, 2011).

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on a more devotional basis.13 Cutting loose from a past of silence (and not unusually ofsilencing, as it was imposed), they broke with Salazarism and challenged its legitimacy asthe political interpreter of the Church’s social doctrine; they questioned the Church hier-archy’s agreement and even conformity with the Estado Novo’s positions in areas such associal justice, civil rights and colonial policy.The increasingly undeniable upsurge in Catholics who, under these circumstances, raised

a voice criticising Salazarism – or even, from a certain time, one of conspiratorial and con-frontational resistance to it – found, then, various modes of expression to channel, configureand publicise this discontent. Book publishing was one of the examples of political partici-pation by a Catholic opposition that took shape and multiplied in the 1960s. Take theexample of the so-called Ala Liberal [Liberal Wing], members of the Assembleia Nacional[National Assembly], the Portuguese House of Parliament then. This group formed whatTiago Fernandes termed democratic semi-opposition within the authoritarian regime,14

trying to bring about a modernisation and democratisation of the Estado Novo from theinside of the regime’s own institutional frame. The Ala Liberal members were stronglyembedded in Catholic movements, from Acção Católica Portuguesa [Portuguese CatholicAction], fromwhich they became progressively distanced, to JuventudeUniversitária Católica[Catholic University Youth] and even toMovimento de Resistência Cristã [Christian Resist-ance Movement], a group of Catholics increasingly disapproving of the regime, linked toCentro Nacional de Cultura [Culture National Centre] and to the magazine O Tempo e oModo [The Tense and the Mood], aimed at a renewed and more open Church. The typogra-phical channels for circulating ideas were crucial to the Ala Liberal political activity. Groupmembers such as Francisco Pinto Balsemão, Francisco Sá-Carneiro, João Miller Guerra andJoaquimMagalhães Mota were deeply entrenched in the press, writing newspapers columnsand even owning a newspaper: the Expresso [Express], founded in the end of 1973 and prop-erty of Pinto Balsemão. The group also resorted to the book as a way to participate in thepublic arena, publishing extensively in the final years of the 1960s and in the beginning ofthe 1970s in publishing houses such as Livraria Moraes Editora, Livraria Telos Editora, Liv-raria Figueirinhas, Ática, Arcádia, Livraria Athena and Jornal do Fundão.15 It is impossibleto write the history of publishing in Portugal in these decisive years without paying attentionto a series of Catholic-based projects involving publishing and cultural and civic programmesthat, in spite of their heterogeneity, displayed a politically inclined social dynamism that wasclearly at odds with the autocratic regime in power.

Portuguese Catholics in the 1960s and the Estado Novo: From Criticism toDissidence

Though its first blossoming was irregular, scattered and easily neutralised, Catholic protestwas galvanised by the electoral campaigns of 1958, with Delgado’s candidature and the

13Jorge Revez, ‘Rezar ou Agir? A Oração Como uma Experiência Social e Política nos Anos 60 e 70’ in AntónioMatos Ferreira and João Miguel Almeida (eds) Religião e Cidadania: Protagonistas, Motivações e DinâmicasSociais no Contexto Ibérico (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos de História Religiosa of Universidade Católica Portuguesa,2012), pp. 635–642.14See Tiago Fernandes, Nem Ditadura, Nem Revolução: A Ala Liberal e o Marcelismo (1968–1974) (Lisbon: Publi-cações Dom Quixote, 2006). For a deeper exploration of the concept of semi-opposition in authoritarian regimessuch as the Portuguese, see Juan Linz, ‘Opposition In and Under an Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Spain’ inRobert Dahl (ed) Regimes and Oppositions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), pp. 171–259; Nancy Bermeo,‘Redemocratization and Transition Elections: A Comparison of Spain and Portugal’, Comparative Politics, 19:12(1987), pp. 213–231.15See Fernandes, op. cit., especially pp. 130–131.

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subsequent outcome: it organised itself and expanded, launching initiatives and establish-ing places to socialise and methods for raising awareness. It spread and the expression ‘pro-gressive Catholic’ even became institutionalised. The – ambiguous – roots of this equivocalterm may be found in various situations: in the French experience of resistance to Nazism,which favoured cooperation between the Christian and Communist sectors (and later inthe Union des Chrétiens Progressistes [Union of Progressive Christians], which between1947 and 1951 sought unified action with the French Communist Party); also in France,in the meeting of the ‘red Christians’ for the weekly publication Temps Présent, and,again, in the attempts by intellectuals and militants, imbued with a new missionisingspirit, to reinvent the Church on the basis of the universe of the workers.16 As a rule,the Catholic movements of the 1960s did not recognise themselves in Marxist ideas butrather derived the attitude of protest from the teachings of a deep-rooted doctrine thatthey called the Christian conscience. The radicalisation of certain sectors only occurredon the eve of the revolution of 25 April 1974, although the option of a coup was notheld in contempt, as witnessed by the ‘Cathedral Plot’. This conspiratorial movementaimed to overthrow the regime by force of arms in the wake of the electoral fraud of the1958 presidential elections. The participants met at the Patriarchal Cathedral of Lisbon,where the parish priest was Father João Perestrelo de Vasconcelos, one of the conspirators.The movement was thwarted by the PIDE, the Portuguese political police, in March 1959. Itwas the first coup d’état against the Salazar government that was clearly Catholic-inspired,involving various Catholics and leaders of Juventude Operária Católica [Young CatholicWorkers]. Manuel Serra, a merchant navy officer and former director of the CatholicYouth, was its head figure.

What moved the new motors of dissidence was a plan to revitalise the Church based onan evangelical propensity to construct a society that could attain the goals of peace andsocial justice. Resistance to the action of the government, which was moving in the oppositedirection, corresponded to the need felt by an expanding group of church members –

especially lay people – to intervene more in the public sphere by taking political positionsoutside the axis and control of the Catholic hierarchical structure. This transformation con-solidated earlier episodes, giving greater solidity to the rise, with a new vehemence, of anactor from the social and political universe, whose action – plus the effects of that action– could no longer be ignored: the Catholic opposition.

It is true that terms such as ‘Catholic opposition’, ‘Catholic resistance’ or ‘Catholic dis-sidence’ are not conceptual formulations whose scope as recognised categories facilitatestheir empirical and automatic application to specific groups. They were inspired by avariety of intentions in particular circumstances.17 This article will not attempt to limit

16For an introduction to the discussion of progressive Catholicism and its history, centred in continental Europe,and especially France, see Yvon Tranvouez, Catholiques et communistes: La crise du progressisme chrétien (1950–1955) (Paris: Le Cerf, 2000); Gerd-Rainer Horn and Emmanuel Gerard (eds) Left Catholicism, 1943–1955: Catholicsand Society in Western Europe at the Point of Liberation (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001). The association ofprogressivism with Catholic doctrinal tradition has reflected various nuances in its historical and institutionalappearance and consolidation outside Europe, e.g. in Brazil; see Scott Mainwaring, The Catholic Church and Politicsin Brazil, 1916–1985 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986); José Oscar Beozzo, A Igreja do Brasil de JoãoXXIII a João Paulo II, de Medellín a Santo Domingo (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1996). One of the suggested routes of pro-gressive Catholic expansion on the South American continent was that of a counter-position to growing neo-Pen-tecostalism; see Anthony Gill, Rendering unto Caesar: The Catholic Church and the State in Latin America (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1998).17João Miguel Almeida draws attention to the methodological problems raised with regard to the diligence of thedefinition of ‘Catholic opposition’, despite the mainly institutional perspectives of his arguments; see João MiguelAlmeida, A Oposição Católica ao Estado Novo: 1958–1974 (Lisbon: Edições Nelson de Matos, 2008). Jorge Revezframes these categories in the light of the problematisation of a crisis in Catholicism in the 1960s, though the

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the concepts or discuss their heuristic potential but, rather, simply recognise that, in theirundeniable internal differences and different forms of action, the opposition and resistanceof a Catholic hue were underpinned by a package of practical, persevering and coherentinitiatives. Moreover, these gave form to an observable activity of political non-acceptanceof the prevailing situation in Portugal. There was a proliferation of movements, organis-ations, meetings, pamphlet petitions, programmes and political initiatives both withinthe framework of the country’s political Constitution and outside it.Manifestos were among the first and most extensive methods used to express public

criticism and protest, reflecting positions that were progressively more distant from thetack of the Estado Novo. Among the multiplicity of open letters, public declarationsand petitions that circulated, probably the one later referred to as the ‘document of the101’ had the greatest impact. Dated in an election year, 25 October 1965, and signedby 101 Catholics, the manifesto aimed to represent a moral castigation in support ofthe democratic opposition movement. It addressed burning problems, stating the issuesin the fundamental chapters ‘The Protection of Human Rights’, ‘The Need for a NewInternational Policy’ and ‘The Complex and Urgent Problems Raised by Portuguese Over-seas Policy’.A series of positions were subsequently taken, with a higher or lower degree of subtlety,

involving the most diverse opinion-makers and social agents of opinion. In 1958, theBishop of Porto, Dom António Ferreira Gomes, set the tone in the memorandum of 13July that he sent to António de Oliveira Salazar, the head of government. This textbecame famous and raised Catholic protest against the dictatorship to a new level, inthat its author was responsible for one of the largest dioceses in the country. It levelledsharp criticism against the regime for its lack of social-Christian authenticity, attackingthe corporatism of the state as a perversion that stifled civil rights and claiming thefreedom of education and organisation for Catholics, with the independent possibility ofcivil and political activity.18 This missive cost the bishop a decade of exile, as he was for-bidden to enter Portugal after a trip abroad, a ban that lasted until the government ofMarcelo Caetano. Only in July 1969 was he allowed to return home.19 Even before this,in May 1958, a letter had come to light, signed by a group of Catholics and sent to Novi-dades [News Bulletin], the official publication of the Catholic Church: in a clearly criticaltone, its content mentions that newspaper’s support for the regime’s official candidate inthe presidential elections.Pope Paul VI’s trip to Bombay in December 1964 had a chastising effect on the Portu-

guese Estado Novo, as it represented support, in the public sphere, for the Indian Union’sannexation in 1961 of Goa (hitherto a Portuguese colonial possession). On the first Sundayof the Pope’s visit to India, though the surveillance apparatus of the state had tightened itsrepressive grip so that nothing would be published on the papal visit, it failed to stop the

focus is more on the idea of a crisis than exactly a detailed exploration of the categories mentioned; see Jorge Revez,‘Crise dos Católicos ou Crise do Catolicismo? As Motivações Religiosas da Crítica Católica ao Estado Novo nasDécadas de 60 e 70’ in Ferreira and Almeida, op. cit., pp. 149–162. José Barreto, however, seems to go farthestin the exploration and systematisation of taxonomical differences and the variations in terminological suitabilityfor the analysis of these phenomena, especially on the basis of the dyad resistance/opposition, which German his-toriography introduced; see José Barreto, Religião e Sociedade: Dois Ensaios (Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais,2002).18On this memorandum, and its resonance, see Centro de Estudos de História Religiosa da Universidade CatólicaPortuguesa, D. António Ferreira Gomes: Nos 40 Anos da Carta do Bispo do Porto a Salazar (Lisbon: Multinova,1998).19Augusto José Matias, Católicos e Socialistas em Portugal (1875–1975) (Lisbon: Instituto de Estudos para o Desen-volvimento, 1989).

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extensive distribution of the newspaper Igreja Presente [Present Church] at the church door.The paper was printed underground in Spain by a team led by Maria Natália and NunoTeotónio Pereira. This couple played a fundamental role in the design and printing ofthe unreservedly Catholic newspaper Direito à Informação [Right to Information], whoseobjective was emphatically displayed in its title. Direito à Informação was published andreproduced underground, circulating ‘important news and documents that had been cutby the censors’.20 In addition to Nuno and Natália Teotónio Pereira, the coordinationwas in the hands of Friar Bento Domingues and Father António Martins. Eighteen issuesof Direito à Informação were published between 1963 and 1969, with a print run of 4000copies. In February 1969, Cadernos GEDOC [GEDOC Notebooks] (from the Grupo deEstudos e Intercâmbios de Documentos, Informações e Experiências [Study and ExchangeGroup for Documents, Information and Experiences]) began publication, only to be har-assed by the censors and publicly banned by Cardinal Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira. He wasthe patriarch of the Diocese of Lisbon and, therefore, the highest authority in the CatholicChurch in Portugal between 1929 and 1971, practically the whole of the authoritarianperiod. Moreover, encouraged by Nuno Teotónio Pereira, Father Abílio TavaresCardoso, Manuel Mourão and Father José da Felicidade Alves,21 who was removed fromthe position of parish priest in Belém in November 1968 (in the course of the awkwardprotest sermons in which the presence of South American–inspired liberation theologywas detected), Cadernos GEDOC initiated its existence with a discussion on ‘authoritarian-ism in the Church’ and the ‘the enfeoffment of the Church to the established power’.22 Itceased publication in 1970.

The colonial question and the endlessness of a conflict being fought on three fronts(Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau) were to be the essential elements of disagree-ment and division.23 The objections to the established power gravitated increasinglytowards the topics of the war in the overseas territories and the emancipation of the colo-nised peoples. In 1971, the Direito à Informação group drafted and distributed the SeteCadernos Sobre a Guerra Colonial [Seven Notebooks on the Colonial War], always under-cover. This team formed itself again in a new project under the coordination of LuísMoita: the BAC, Boletim Anti-Colonial [Anti-Colonial Report], a publication that pro-moted the positions of the independence movements – and thus remained outside thelaw. Nine issues were put together and circulated in 1972 and 1973. It can be said,indeed, that this period was abundant in projects in which the press was pivotal, inline with the expansion seen in the Catholic press as a whole, even before the 1960s.24

So, the logic of the events in the publishing field was closely connected with thechanges that were taking place in the political and social spheres. Alongside the press,the book world played its part in this transforming surge in a Catholic awareness of inter-vention, amplifying it and helping to formulate the rules by which the discussion wasshaped and circulated.

20Nuno Teotónio Pereira, Tempos, Lugares, Pessoas (Matosinhos: Contemporânea and Público, 1996), p. 125.21See João Miguel Almeida, ‘A Oposição Católica ao Marcelismo (1968–1974)’, Lusitania Sacra, 2nd ser., 16(2004), pp. 273–293 (p. 287).22Richard Robinson, ‘Igreja Católica’ in António Barreto and Maria Filomena Mónica (eds) Dicionário de Históriade Portugal, Vol. 8 (Lisbon: Figueirinhas, 1999), pp. 220–233 (p. 232).23Nuno Teotónio Pereira, ‘O Movimento Cristão Contra a Guerra Colonial’, Vértice, 62 (1994), pp. 90–101.24According to Paulo Fontes, ‘[t]here is not a Catholic association… or movement that has not already created itsnewsletter, bulletin, newspaper or magazine’. ‘Imprensa Católica’, in Barreto and Mónica, op. cit., Vol. 8, pp. 247–252 (p. 249); see also Paulo Fontes, ‘Imprensa Católica’, in Carlos Moreira Azevedo (ed) Dicionário de HistóriaReligiosa de Portugal, Vol. 3 (Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores, 2001), pp. 423–429.

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The Emergence of Catholic Publishing as a Political Actor of Protest andEstrangement

In effect, the world of books and publishing had not remained indifferent to the issuesemerging in the field of the new doctrinal approaches to the extent of the Church’scivic, pastoral and even political activity.25 Whether on a less regular basis, such as self-pub-lication,26 or one that was more organised and collective, these times witnessed the creationor advancement of publishing projects that steadily produced a catalogue that contrastedwith the more traditional positions of pious spirituality. It also included theologicalsubject-matter and theses reflecting innovation, new directions and non-conformity,which were rejected by the publishing sectors aligned with more conservative andregime-friendly positions, such as Editorial Aster, the publishing branch of Opus Dei,União Gráfica and Livraria Apostolado da Imprensa.27 Publishers appeared who distancedthemselves from publishing houses like those three and ceased publishing books that legit-imised the state of affairs. Their catalogues reflected the will to publish authors, titles andtopics that were more closely related to critical ideas and were politically involved and com-mitted, or even voiced social criticism from a Christian stance. An example was EditorialLogos, a religious publisher with a limited but interesting output, where, alongside worksof a more conventional ecclesiastical tone, there was no shortage of publications on layactivities, the transformation of society, the Catholic faith or the social vocation of Chris-tianity. In this publisher’s catalogue, the period that perhaps most reflects certain issueswith connotations of a certain proactive Catholicism, in terms of the titles published,seems to be concentrated between the late 1950s and the mid-1960s. These years saw thepublication of books such as Adérito Sedas Nunes’ Princípios de Doutrina Social [Principlesof Social Doctrine], prefaced by Dom António Ferreira Gomes (1958), Sylvain Pidoux de laMaduère’s Por que se Alheia a Igreja do Progresso Social? [Why Does the Church Turn awayfrom Social Progress?] (1960) and Yves Congar’s Igreja Serva e Pobre [Power and Poverty inthe Church] (1964).At the beginning of the decade, more precisely in 1963, Afrontamento appeared – a pub-

lisher that has marked the recent history of books in Portugal. It was originally founded inPorto as a series – not a publisher – by a group of young people connected with the pro-gressive areas of Catholicism and with the left outside the sphere of the Communist Party.In the early years, its activity was very discreet, with only five books being publishedbetween the year of its foundation and 1968, the result of an essentially artisanal structure.Under the coordination of Pedro Francisco (with close links to Juventude UniversitáriaCatólica), it published anthologies such as Ao Encontro da Pessoa [Towards the Person],with texts by Emmanuel Mounier and Jean Lacroix (the inaugural publication, 1963),and Do Integrismo ao Nacional Catolicismo: Os Católicos e as Direitas [From Integrism toNational Catholicism: Catholics and Right-Wing Tendencies] (1965). The group sought toparticipate in the debate on the need to reorient the actual bases of the relationsbetween individuals in contemporary societies, assuming an unambiguously critical

25For a broader vision of the relationship between the publishing field and the changes in Catholic protest againstPortugal’s political and social orientation in these years, see Nuno Medeiros, Edição e Editores: O Mundo do Livroem Portugal, 1940–1970 (Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2010).26Note the case of Católicos e Política [Catholics and Politics], self-published by Father Felicidade Alves in 1969, abook compiling various documents on the relationship between Catholics, the Church hierarchy and the state.27The Livraria Apostolado da Imprensa publishing house, although having an overall conservative catalogue, pub-lished works by authors like Jean Lacroix, one of the founders of the personalist magazine Esprit, and Angelo Bruc-culeri, an anti-communist and anti-capitalist Jesuit strongly devoted to the social doctrine of the Church and to theproblems of the working classes.

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stance towards the Portuguese regime. This intention was even reflected in the name of itspublishing activity: Afrontamento,28 coined after a phrase by Mounier cited on the backcover of that first series of anthologies. The group expanded in 1967, with variousmembers of its staff belonging to the cultural cooperative Confronto [Confrontation],which was set up in Porto in 1966. Like other cooperatives such as its sister organisationPRAGMA, Cooperativa de Difusão Cultural e Acção Comunitária [PRAGMA, Cooperativeof Cultural Diffusion and Community Action] (founded by Catholics in 1964, with a mem-bership that ranged from intellectuals to members of Accão Católica’s workers’ organis-ations), Confronto acted as an institutional platform on which Catholic elements fromcritical sectors coexisted with non-religious elements from the non-communist left, inte-grating their members into an organisational structure with the capacity to organise andmobilise.29 These cooperatives produced a variety of initiatives, such as colloquia,debates, explanation sessions, film cycles, exhibitions, courses and lessons. The publisherbecame progressively more professional, abandoning the more amateur form of pro-duction in 1971, when it changed to Edições Afrontamento, thus emerging as a fully-fledged publishing house. At that point, the publication of books on topics directlyconnected with Catholicism no longer existed or was minimal, though the critical, politicaland even anti-regime component of the publications steadily increased.30

The end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s saw the rise of other important focalpoints in publishing, involving positions marked by varyingly close connections with Chris-tian ideas of denouncement or Catholic opposition groups. Such was the case of Ulmeiro, abookshop, publisher and distributor set up in 1969 by a collective led by José AntunesRibeiro. It began publishing in 1970. From the beginning, its cultural activity was anchoredin the strict combination of a publishing and bookselling drive, with sessions offering read-ings, music, debates and book presentations. It did not precisely publish books related tothe Church or its activity, although, in their publishing activity, its promotors were unre-servedly progressive Catholics who were clearly integrated politically into that activity.

But it is equally worth mentioning the bookshop Livraria Telos Editora, a religious pub-lishing house with connections to the Diocese of Porto and the Bishop of Porto, who hadnow returned. It began publishing in 1971. Earlier, during the episcopate of Dom AntónioFerreira Gomes, Casa da Boa Imprensa, the diocese bookshop and the workshop that pub-lished the catechism and material for religious education, became part of Livraria TelosEditora. There, in 1973, the Bishop of Porto published the book, and proclamation, Pazem Portugal pela Reconciliação entre os Portugueses [Peace in Portugal for Reconciliationamong the Portuguese People]. Ernst Käsemann’s Jesus Cristo é Liberdade [Jesus MeansFreedom] was also published in 1973. This publisher produced a catalogue throughwhich, even before 25 April, social, political, economic and labour issues were discussedand circulated and from which works exploring the many relationships between Christian-ity and Marxism were not excluded (Marxismo/Cristianismo [Marxism/Christianity], byvarious authors, and Esperança Marxista e Esperança Cristã [Marxist Hope and ChristianHope], by Battista Mondin, both published in 1972). For example, even before the revolu-tion (published February 1974), a book appeared whose very title made a statement: Os

28Afrontamento means to vehemently provoke and confront someone or something, but not necessarily insultingthem.29On the subject of Catholic cultural cooperatives founded in Portugal in the 1960s, see Almeida, op. cit., andMário Brochado Coelho, Confronto: Memória de uma Cooperativa Cultural, Porto 1966–1972 (Porto: EdiçõesAfrontamento, 2010).30See Flamarion Maués, Livros que Tomam Partido: A Edição Política em Portugal, 1968–80, Vol. 1 (PhD disser-tation, University of São Paulo, 2013).

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Direitos do Homem em Portugal, no 25.° Aniversário da Declaração Universal [Human Rightsin Portugal on the 25th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration]. It was written by variousauthors, with an introduction by Francisco Sá Carneiro, a future prime Minister of Portugalunder a fully democratic system.This set of publishing projects included publishers such as Livraria Multinova,31 a reli-

gious publisher established in 1970, which completed its apprenticeship in publishing in1973 with the Gustavo Gutierrez’ striking book Os Explorados e a Teologia da Libertação[A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation], and the publisher Edições Base,which also started up in 1973. The latter had its origins in the activities of militant Catholicsoperating in the Centro de Cultura Operária [Centre for Workers’ Education], which waslinked with Liga Operária Católica.32 It was within Centro de Cultura Operária that, inthe 1960s, Cadernos de Cultura Operária [Workers’ Education Notebooks] (published from1967) and brochures on the economic situation and the history of the workers’ movementwere set up for publication.33

It was with Livraria Moraes Editora, however, that Christian theological and political con-cerns and the topic of ecumenical dialogue found a platform with the will and ability tosupport a book publishing project that would resonate throughout the country andmark the 1960s. With António Alçada Baptista, this publishing house and bookshop under-went a profound change that transformed it into one of the main agents of cultural andpolitical activity in these fundamental years in the history of books in contemporary Por-tugal. Alçada Baptista, who defined himself as a Catholic who defended an open and proac-tive kind of Christianity, criticised the regime and the aspects of Catholic practice anddoctrine that he considered most atavistic and inward-looking. He had been a DemocraticOpposition candidate in the elections for the National Assembly. His entry to the world ofpublishing was accompanied by a group of university students and recent graduates, whowere 10 years younger. They all had a relationship with Encontro [Encounter], a periodicalof Juventude Universitária Católica, under the aegis of Canon António dos Reis Rodrigues,and with CCC (Centro Cultural de Cinema, also stemming from Juventude UniversitáriaCatólica),34 one of the film clubs that proliferated in the 1960s and were normally identifiedwith cultural activity against the situation. Alberto Vaz da Silva, Nuno Bragança, PedroTamen, João Bénard da Costa and José Domingos de Moraes, all prominent members ofAcção Católica Portuguesa, formed a generation of non-conformists originating in theCatholic movements, thus demonstrating the internal unevenness of the formation ofsuch movements as well as its perviousness to the transformations resulting from politicaland social change, from Second Vatican Council and from the growing tension betweenlaity and clergy within Acção Católica itself.35 The group was heavily influenced by I Con-gresso da Juventude Universitária Católica [First Congress of Catholic University Youth] andthe banned congress of Juventude Operária Católica. It broke with the dictatorship andsought to establish a means of expression that would channel and amplify this

31Manuel Bidarra, one of its founders and the most vital force in the publishing and bookselling activity of Multi-nova, already had experience of publishing. At the beginning of the 1960s, he helped to set up Livraria São PedroEditora publishing house and bookshop. Maués, op. cit.32Ibid., pp. 332–333.33On Centro de Cultura Operária, see Fernando Moreira de Abreu, ‘O Centro de Cultura Operária’ in Rezola andEstêvão, op. cit., pp. 189–214.34See Paulo Fontes, ‘Juventude Universitária Católica/Juventude Universitária Católica Feminina (JUC/JUCF)’ inBarreto and Mónica, op. cit., Vol. 8, pp. 347–350.35See António Matos Ferreira, ‘A Acção Católica: Questões em Torno da Organização e da Autonomia da Acção daIgreja Católica (1933–1958)’ in O Estado Novo: das Origens ao Fim da Autarcia (1926–1959), Vol. 2 (Lisbon: Frag-mentos, 1987), pp. 281–302. Fontes, Elites Católicas em Portugal, op. cit.

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estrangement. ‘The mood was right, there were ideas, there was supposedly an audience forthe books that had to be published, and there were young volunteers’.36 The fact that therewas a publisher willing to carry out this project provided the opportunity to be grasped inthose years of change.

Livraria Moraes Editora had its origins in a small bookshop established in the capital byJoão de Araújo Moraes in 1922, with origins, in turn, in the nineteenth century, in theformer Livraria Sampaio & Moraes of João de Araújo Moraes and Francisco José deAraújo Sampaio. It specialised in law books. However, it acquired a truly national dimen-sion when António Alçada Baptista bought it in 1958, three years after the death of João deAraújo Moraes. The editorial philosophy changed profoundly, conforming to a programmesketched out by Alçada Baptista: the intent was to create a place to sell books where titlesfrom the French Personalist movement, as well as from social and political Progressivismlinked with Christian thought, would constitute the centre of the works published. Thisinvolved a publishing programme based on the publisher’s analysis that the changes in Por-tuguese society had encouraged the rise of a reading public ready to receive these works. Ata later stage, Alçada Baptista himself admitted that his prediction had been wrong: the con-sumer market for the books he intended to publish was decidedly narrower than he hadthought.

The series with which the project got under way was Círculo do Humanismo Cristão[Circle of Christian Humanism], divided into subseries such as Pessoa e Mundo Contempor-âneo [The Person and the Contemporary World], Pessoa e Família [The Person and theFamily], Pessoa e Cultura [The Person and Culture] and Pessoa e Religião [The Personand Religion]. The first volumes in the series reflect the intentions and concerns of thegroup that organised the publishing house. After making its début in 1958 with GilbertKeith Chesterton’s Disparates do Mundo [What’s Wrong with the World], the subseriesPessoa e Mundo Contemporâneo presented works such as A Igreja e o Mundo Actual [TheChurch and the World of Today], by Yves de Montcheuil (1960), Introdução ao Ecumenismo[Unity: A History and Some Reflections], by Maurice Villain (1962), and O Drama do SéculoXX: miséria, subdesenvolvimento, inconsciência, esperança [The Last Revolution: The Destinyof Over- and Underdeveloped Nations], by Louis-Joseph Lebret (1963). In the subseriesPessoa e Família, there were titles that clearly registered a distance from pious conservatism.They revealed an agenda to make Catholic spirituality compatible with an openness to theknowledge and discussion of sexual and conjugal topics in moulds that were often innova-tive and liberating for women. The collective volume Moral Sexual e Dificuldades Contem-porâneas [Sexual Morals and Contemporary Difficulties] appeared without delay, in 1959, tobe followed by others such as Marc Oraison’s A União Conjugal [Union in Marital Love: ItsPhysical and Spiritual Foundations] (1962) and Sacha Geller’s A Temperatura, Guia daMulher [The Temperature Guide for Women] (1963).

The driving force behind the publisher and his supporting group was not a plannedsearch for a turning-point in writing, motivated by a need to provoke. The object was essen-tially to surpass the idea that there would be no debate within the bosom of the Churchitself, whether in theological terms or in relation to laypeople’s daily practices and spiritualoptions. The search for openness and counter-positions to theological and ecclesiasticalstances proceeded in series such as Teologia Nova [New Theology], Convergências [Conver-gences], Linha de Risco [Line of Risk], Aventura Interior [Inner Adventure], Marca doTempo [Sign of the Times], Obras de Pierre Teilhard de Chardin [Works by Pierre Teilhard

36Guilherme d’Oliveira Martins, ‘Dos Sinais dos Tempos e dos Seus Modos’ in O Tempo e o Modo: Revista de Pen-samento e Acção: Antologia (Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and Centro Nacional de Cultura, 2003), pp. 9–23 (p. 11).

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de Chardin] and O Pensamento da Igreja [The Thought of the Church], and even in thepublishing of the encyclicals of Pius XII and John XXIII. In the series O Tempo e oModo [The Tense and the Mood], which appeared in 1960, the first title wasO Personalismo[Personalism], by Emmanuel Mounier, one of the group’s intellectual and spiritual patronsand founder of the magazine Esprit and the Christian Personalism movement.37

The catalogue on offer by Livraria Moraes Editora displayed a concern to bring the views,inclinations and projects of Alçada Baptista and a more limited circle from the early days ofthe magazine O Tempo e o Modo (to be discussed later) to their imagined market, explicitlyconfiguring the patronage of the discussion and the development of the reflection. Thebooks published reflected a desire and mission to shake up the mentality that predominatedwithin the Portuguese Catholic community at both a doctrinal and social level.38 The aimwas to introduce a climate of free debate similar to that which the rest of Catholic Europewas experiencing.Alçada Baptista and the younger generation that joined him rejected simultaneously, on

the one hand, the ideological bases of Salazarism and, on the other, the left-wing orthodoxyof the Portuguese Communist Party and the Jacobin tradition of a republican opposition.They opted to endow Livraria Moraes Editora with an activity whose publishing output ofbooks and magazines was transformed, according to Eduardo Lourenço, into an authentic‘aggiornamento [updating] of our Catholic discourse’.39 With no revolutionary pretensions,this publisher’s output transmitted ‘hermeneutics, apologetics and Christian exegesis…with a provocative interpretation of our traditional experience of Catholicism’.40 One ofLivraria Moraes Editora’s objectives was to present a set of indispensable genres, topicsand titles that would introduce various authors to Portuguese readers. Many were pub-lished for the first time in Portuguese. Its activity exemplifies a publisher’s social role inthe construction of print culture41 and in the forms in which that print culture can interferein the context and be influenced by it – in sponsoring debate and fostering reflectionthrough the works published and the way in which it publishes and distributes them.This is illustrated by Alçada Baptista’s proclamation in the publisher’s catalogue, still in1969:

Livraria Morais Editora envisages its publishing programme as the instrument of aplanned cultural initiative in the world of the Portuguese language… [this is thereason why] the series presented are not merely a set of titles that the fortune ofsuccess or the organisers’ taste legitimately caused to be published. They are partof the general framework of a progressive conception of history and human beingsand are defined, through their cultural values, in an openly declared option, bystudy, information, research and critical attention to all the forms of religious, pol-itical, cultural or social alienation in the man of today.42

37See, for example, Michel Winock, Histoire politique de la revue ‘Esprit’, 1930–1950 (Paris: Seuil, 1975); ThomasRourke and Rosita Chazarreta Rourke, A Theory of Personalism (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2005).38Medeiros, op. cit.39Eduardo Lourenço, ‘Sob o Signo da Esperança’ in Maria Helena Mira Mateus and Guilherme d’Oliveira Martins(eds) António Alçada Baptista: Tempo Afectuoso. Homenagem ao Escritor e Amigo de Todos Nós (Lisbon: CentroNacional de Cultura and Presença, 2007), pp. 62–64 (p. 63).40Ibid., p. 63.41For an introduction to the concept and complexities of print culture, see Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The PrintingPress as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1979); Eve Patten and Jason McElligott (eds) The Perils of Print Culture: Book, Printand Publishing History in Theory and Practice (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).42Cited in Isabel Tamen, ‘Introdução’ in A Aventura da Moraes (Lisbon: Centro Nacional de Cultura, 2006), p. 8.

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Under the title of the series with the same name that had appeared almost three yearsearlier, the magazine O Tempo e o Modo: Revista de Pensamento e Acção [The Tense andthe Mood: A Periodical of Thought and Action] was founded on 29 January 1963, withAlçada Baptista as its first editor. The editorial in the first issue announced its programme.The basis of its purpose was the endeavour ‘to formulate certain questions and attemptcertain answers, which would polarise the general anxiety that hangs over ordinarytime’.43 The target of the struggle was the ‘established disorder’,44 an expression citedfrom Emmanuel Mounier and obviously applied to the government and thinking ofSalazar. The editor dearly wanted the periodical to expound a kind of thinking that was‘strong enough to challenge many years of apathy and non-belief’.45 But, above all, themagazine commended an ecumenical point of view, represented by a spirit and practiceof ‘close cooperation between Christians and non-Christians, united in the same struggleand the same adventure’ and an ‘insistent [call] for dialogue, which we shall never relin-quish’.46 In this way, the pages of the publication sought to embody Mounier’s teachings,rejecting dogmatic and sectarian points of view and vigorously defending the route of dia-logue as the way to the primacy of human beings and their dignity.

As with the pages of O Tempo e o Modo, the bookselling and publishing premises of Liv-raria Moraes Editora seem to have been a privileged stage for dialogue – though not necess-arily consensus – between believers and non-believers.47 In its first phase, the magazinemobilised a range of Catholic intellectuals who were critical of Salazarism. Without reject-ing contributors such as Manuel José Homem de Melo, a former member of the NationalAssembly for União Nacional [National Union] (the sole party, tied to the regime), OTempo e o Modo also recruited people from within certain left-wing fields, ranging fromthe nucleus that would found the future Socialist Party (of a social democratic persuasion)to known members of the Communist Party, as well as from within the universe of studentactivism. In Alçada Baptista’s view, this openness to the participation of a variety of affi-nities and affiliations ‘resulted from the need, apparent to us, to have an active publicationthat showed our commitment to maintaining alliances and a dialogue with the traditionalopposition’.48 In 1970, in a hegemonisation process mounted by more radical left-wingsectors, following the entry of a new wave of personnel, the magazine became one of thevoices of Maoism in Portugal.49 João Bénard da Costa was one of the first participantsin Livraria Moraes Editora’s publishing project. He was also one of the keenest enthusiastsin the creation of O Tempo e o Modo, as well as the person who had run it until then. But atthat point, he abandoned the publication completely, maintaining the position of editor asa mere formality, a sham aimed at avoiding the risk of the pure and simple suspension andconsequent winding-up of O Tempo e o Modo. This was a real fear as it was predictable thatthe Portuguese government and its censorship structures would not accept any name putforward to substitute him, a name that would certainly be aligned with far-left sensibilitiesin tune with the direction that had been impressed on the magazine.

43‘Editorial’, O Tempo e o Modo, 1 January 1963, pp. 1–2 (p. 1).

44Ibid., p. 1.45Ibid., p. 2.46‘Editorial’, O Tempo e o Modo, 2 February 1963, pp. 1–2 (p. 2).

47On the topic of dialogue as the conceptual and operational foundation of the magazine O Tempo e o Modo, seeNuno Estêvão Ferreira, ‘O Tempo e o Modo. Revista de Pensamento e Acção (1963–1967): Repercussões Eclesioló-gicas de uma Cultura de Diálogo’, Lusitania Sacra, 2nd ser., 6 (1994), pp. 129–294.48António Alçada Baptista, A Pesca à Linha: Algumas Memórias (Lisbon: Presença, 1998), p. 66.49Miguel Cardina, Margem de Certa Maneira: O Maoísmo em Portugal, 1964–1974 (Lisbon: tinta-da-china, 2011),89.

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Alçada Baptista recognised that he was positioned in and belonged to a community ofpeople who were united by an action plan that brought together the Christian faith, acivic and cultural call to lay Catholics, and the growing uneasiness with, and even intoler-ance of, the political and social direction that Portugal was taking. The publisher and thegroup around him hoped to stimulate this community to read, leading it to interpret, rep-resent and recognise itself on the basis – precisely – of its publishing efforts.50 It would thusbe setting in motion a project of cultural and political activity and marking the transition‘from a stage of abstract speculation by authors and entrepreneurs to one of concrete acqui-sition by a… public of interested readers’.51 It was also for this reason that, from the outset,the publishing activity of Livraria Moraes Editora sought to support itself by means of sub-scriptions, a method that was tried in the very first series. The aim was clearly to gain andkeep the reader-purchaser-subscriber’s loyalty. The system was based on fixed monthlypayments, for which subscribers were sent a book every two months. This fixed pricewas always lower than the retail price.In that decade of the 1960s, there was an awareness that the social fabric and cultural

sphere needed a kind of activity that went beyond the interior of the ecclesiastical field, reg-ularly seen as restricted and closed, and showed the ability to summon up a mentality ofchange. However, this awareness ‘[n]ever became a conception of the Portuguese Catholicmajority’, developing ‘in circles of a limited size, though at times with a fair impact sociallyand politically’.52 Although the promoters of the Livraria Moraes Editora’s project failed togenerate enough followers/customers for the successful sale of its publications and, there-fore, for its commercial viability, they were not discouraged. In spite of the large number ofcopies accumulating in the warehouse and a list of subscribers totalling at most 400 sub-scribers, a figure too tiny for the business to continue operating, the publisher’s sponsoringgroup did not let their enthusiasm wane. In a ‘snow ball process, we steadily publishedmore and more books in the face of the indifference of Portuguese society’.53

Inspired and set in motion by a collective effort, as in other cases, the publishing andbookselling activity of Livraria Moraes Editora stretched over more than a decade. Itmarked a project that truly gave form to the motto of the magazine O Tempo e o Modo,as it combined thought and action for the purpose of moral, political and artistic agitationand renewal. The group that Alçada Baptista assembled was distributed over very differentinitiatives. These included the publication between 1965 and 1969 of the Portuguese-language version of the magazine Concilium (which reflected the ideas that reached theheart of the discussion made possible by the Second Vatican Council and, in its pages,endorsed the renewal theologians’ theses). Against this background, the group decided‘to make the publisher the instrument for the updating and implementation’54 of a setof common concerns. The orientation and planning of the editorial direction that thegroup progressively impressed on Livraria Moraes Editora’s activity was sketched outjointly, producing and reinforcing an activity of apostleship that echoed strongly, at leastwithin circuits with a fairly narrow range. It thus helped to develop and consolidate the

50For an examination of the relationship between communities united by collective forms of interpretation,reading and publishing, see Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980); Janice Radway, ‘Interpretive Communities and Variable Litera-cies: The Functions of Romance Reading’, Daedalus, 113 (1984), pp. 49–73.51Robert Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775–1800 (Cambridge,MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 520.52Nuno Estêvão, ‘Os Meios Católicos Perante a Guerra Colonial: Reconfigurações da Questão Religiosa em Por-tugal’, Lusitania Sacra, 2nd ser., 12 (2000), pp. 221–265 (p. 224).53Baptista, op. cit., p. 64.54Ibid., p. 62.

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desire for change that made itself felt within – and outside – the Catholic world in Portugalduring the whole of the 1960s. In this way, according to Alçada Baptista himself, the heroicjourney of the publisher took form, ‘an epic and apostolic attitude’,55 for which he main-tained a willing spirit that the book market received rather indifferently: the print runs nor-mally ranged an average 3000 copies; most of them were left unsold.56 Ultimately, alongwith the constant repressive harassment of the censors aimed at the magazines published(especiallyO Tempo e o Modo), this represented one of the clearest reasons for the commer-cial failure and the desperate pre-bankruptcy situation encountered in the year 1970.

Concluding Notes

The Catholic-based publishing movement directed at criticism of the dictatorial regime ofthe Estado Novo, condemnation of the social and political situation in Portugal, and anopening-up to new religious and theological positions in relation to 1960s customs, leftan indelible mark on the panorama of Portuguese books in the second half of the twentiethcentury. As in other settings (such as non-conformist Catholic publishing in fascist Italybetween the wars),57 the activity of publishing and disseminating dissident texts alignedwith innovative and even anti-conservative points of view (from the angle of politics andcustoms) attracted essentially, though not exclusively, groups of Catholic intellectualswho were normally highly politicised and often came from within the institutional struc-tures of the Church itself. Expressing and expanding an intrinsically Christian world-view and reflecting the dynamics internal to Catholicism inside and outside Portugal(with roots stretching well before Second Vatican Council), this publishing movementbrought new topics to the debate and retrieved formulas from the past, contributingboth to a renewal of the publishing system set forth in the 1960s58 (unprecedentedlymore open and politically acute,59 more technologically and commercially advanced andmore contemporary and internationally driven than ever before) and to an awarenessamong various Catholic sectors, with an obvious political and cultural impact, despitethe fairly limited market that it represented. In this way, publishing played its role in thedynamism that ran through Portuguese Catholicism,60 which became more politicisedand ready for action after the presidential elections in 1958, the beginning of the ColonialWar in 1961 and the grinding on of that war for 13 years.

Of course, all this took place within an authoritarian framing. Dealing constantly with allkinds of prohibitions, such as the lists of banned authors and titles, the institutional screen-ing of a vast number of organisations (from libraries to the postal services) set up to enforcea limitation on the circulation of certain forbidden readings or the threat of imprisonment,

55Ibid., p. 63.56See ibid., especially pp. 59–77; Medeiros, op. cit.57Nicola Tranfaglia and Albertina Vittoria, Storia degli Editori Italiani: Dall’Unità alla Fine degli Anni Sessanta(Rome: Laterza, 2007), especially pp. 394–403.58See the figures and the trends related to the process of change underwent by the Portuguese book universe of the1960s and its ever-growing complexity in Medeiros, op. cit, especially pp. 205–259.59See Flamarion Maués, ‘A Edição Política e a Denúncia dos Crimes da Ditadura em Portugal (1968–1977)’ inMaria Inácia Rezola and Irene Flunser Pimentel (eds) Democracia, Ditadura: Memória e Justiça Política (Lisbon:tinta-da-china, 2014), pp. 397–418.60And not just within the dissident sectors of Catholicism. For example, Brotéria, a science-oriented journal with astrong cultural outlook that was published by the Jesuits since 1902, includes, mainly from 1965 on (with FatherManuel Antunes as director of the periodical), growing numbers of contributors clearly inclined to find faults inthe action of the Portuguese government. See Hermínio Rico and José Eduardo Franco (eds) Fé, Ciência e Cultura:Brotéria – 100 anos (Lisbon: Gradiva, 2003).

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both publishers and editors got used to an undoubtedly authoritarian system, based on sup-pression and oppression of the printed word. Although books could be confiscated theywere not generally subject to prior censorship, regardless several exceptions related tospecific publics (e.g. children’s and young adult books) and themes (e.g. books on political,economic and social topics). Things were different, however, with periodical publications.These were forced by Estado Novo to manage page reorganisation before printing in orderto disguise any traces of censorial activity, which frequently raised costs unbearably.61

Despite the repressive context and all cultural smothering and intoxication led by theEstado Novo, the publishing dynamics of the Catholic opposition – notwithstanding itsdiversity – clearly illustrate the regime’s non-totalitarian nature and how it is possible toobserve a pulsating dissident activity in a consolidated and unyielding authoritarian state.Publishing by dissident Catholics, or by publishers whose condition as Catholics was a

fundamental element of their identity, engendered highly diverse projects that produceda fairly heterogeneous field within itself. It acted as a cultural, civic, ecclesiastical and pol-itical mediator, embodying the industry’s main dimensions as an agent of mediation: cul-tural gatekeeping and prescription.62 In the work of its promoters, book publishing, asundertaken by the publishers mentioned, called on one of the characteristics most essentialto the nature and purpose of that work – that publishing operates as an element that for-mulates the world, contributing, precisely, to the way in which that world is seen and dis-cussed. Through this, it encourages or brings up to date the formation of reading groups orcommunities, often more imagined and anticipated than real. This bears consequences forthe forms and models of book-related work as it is carried out and, therefore, in the finalanalysis, for the very survival of the publisher as an organ of cultural prescription. Withinthe framework of this dissident Catholic publishing in Portugal during these years and theirchosen authors and topics, books truly emerged as the ‘yeast’, to use the expression coinedby Henri-Jean Martin and Lucien Febvre.63 These two authors state that books are mer-chandise, constituting a market that can reproduce itself and guarantee its expansion –

one to which the logic of the calculation and setting of prices and targets is not andcannot be alien. If this is so, then they must also be fertile ground for the appearance, con-figuration and circulation of ideas – an instrument that must often, ultimately, exist outsidethe axis of commercialisation and submit to a social logic that, the reverse of commercialprofit, is motivated by other (e.g. aesthetic, spiritual or ideological) gains.64

61For an overview of censorship in Portugal during the Estado Novo period, see Cândido de Azevedo, A Censura deSalazar e Marcelo Caetano: Imprensa, Teatro, Cinema, Televisão, Radiodifusão, Livro (Lisbon: Caminho, 1999).62For an introduction to publishing as an activity of cultural gatekeeping, prescription and mediation, throughprocesses of selecting and filtering the text to become public and physically and graphically generating theprinted object and allowing it to circulate with specific forms and features in accordance to the publisher’s inten-tions, see Michael Lane, Books and Publishers: Commerce Against Culture in Postwar Britain (Lexington, KY: Lex-ington Books, 1980); Robert Darnton, ‘What is the History of Books?’, Daedalus, 111th ser., 3 (1982), pp. 65–83;Lewis Coser, Walter Powell and Charles Kadushin, Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing (New York:Basic Books, 1982); Richard Ohmann, Politics of Letters (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1987);Roger Chartier (ed), Les usages de l’imprimé (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1987), transl. Lydia Cochrane,The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989);Roger Chartier, Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer (Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995); John Brewer, ‘Authors, Publishers and the Making of Literary Culture’in David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery (eds) The Book History Reader (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 241–249.63Henri-Jean Martin and Lucien Febvre, L’apparition du livre (Paris: Albin Michel, 1958), especially pp. 376–496,transl. David Gerard, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450–1800 (London: Verso, 1976).64On the subject of the inverted economic logic that often rules in publishing, which operates an economy of sym-bolic goods, see Pierre Bourdieu’s two publications: The Field of Cultural Production (Cambridge: Polity Press,1993); and Les règles de l’art: Genèse et structure du champ littéraire (Paris: Seuil, 1992), transl. Susan Emanuel,The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996).

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An understanding and analysis of how the movements within the Portuguese Catholicworld operated in the 1960s, and how there was a recognised awakening of a critical andeven clearly dissident awareness of the Estado Novo’s conduct of the country’s destiny,must include the study of the publishing component and the role of the print culture ininspiring the groups that embodied this awakening, which was eminently cultural, civic,ideological and political in character.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Flamarion Maués and Colin Archer for debating the manuscript withme and for helping me to improve it. I am also indebted to the four anonymous referees fortheir helpful suggestions and comments.

Notes on contributor

Nuno Medeiros is an adjunct professor of sociology at the Instituto Politécnico de Lisboaand a researcher in sociology and history at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Lisbon,Portugal). He has published on print culture, publishing, reading and bookselling. He isthe author of the award winning book Edição e Editores: O Mundo do Livro em Portugal,1940–1970 (Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2010) [Publishing and Publishers: TheBook World in Portugal, 1940–1970]. His current research is centred on mass publishing,popular culture and the study of publishing house archives as means of exploring the intri-cacies of the contemporary book in the Portuguese speaking world.

Jean-Yves Mollier states that analysis of the publishing world cannot reduce books to either of these components,merchandise and yeast, isolating them from each other. Jean-Yves Mollier, Édition, presse et pouvoir en France auXXe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2008).

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