If someone met you at church and brought up the TFP, what would you tell the person about them?

Most people react -- "Oh, THAT group..." but I forgot what exactly was fishy about them.

I am afraid my response would be, "Who?"

Okay, I did a search on this and found this post a few years ago:

America Needs Fatima/TFP, A cult?

To be clearer, Plinio and the TFP embrace the traditional Catholic view of reality as hierarchical. To cut off the head is thus to kill the body.

In R & C-R, he traces the erasure of this reality to the Revolution - one revolution - which consists of these stages: 1) the pseudo-Reformation, 2) the pseudo-Enlightenment and the French Revolution, 3) Communism. With the 1976 and 1993 additions to the book, he speculates whether we're now in the fourth phase, tribalism. Fascinating reading.

Matthew, this is a counter-revolutionary site. As you're its father, I think you'll like that book a whole lot.

I know some member of this group(men who dedicate there lives to the group) and have contact with some supporters (people who are not official members but help in there areas) so I will tell you a little of what I know.

The TFP was founded by Professor Pilinio.  He originally was involved in politics in Brazil and even was elected to the Brazilian Senate.  He was the editor for a Catholic newspaper in Brazil called Leginario until he wrote a book called In Defense of Catholic Action where he criticized the group for many liberal tendencies.  After that he was sort of shunned and had few followers.  When Castro de Mayer was made Bishop he picked Prof. Plinio to edit his newspaper for the diocese El Cathlicismo (the name may be misspelled as I do not speak Portugese).  Being in the graces of the Bishop he founded the group TFP which stands for Tradition Family and Property since there are things the Communists all fight against, so to fight Communism you have to support these three things (at least that is there motto).

The above everyone who knows about the TFP will agree with.  However after the consecration of the Bishops by the SSPX and Castro de Mayer there was a rift between the TFP and Castro de Mayer and the SSPX.  After this I have heard many different stories about why these groups began to not like each other.  During this process they were labeled as a cult, but I have seen nothing cultish about the group from my experience.  

There are also some splinter groups from the TFP: Heralds of the Gospel and Tradition in Action.


The people I know from the TFP are about as traditional as any Latin Mass goers in my area.

TFP was founded by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, a layman, Brazilian, Catholic intellectual and professor. Corrêa de Oliveira organized the Cœtus Internationalis Patrum, which was the biggest orthodox faction at Vatican II (~70 bishops), whose famous members included Abp. Lefebvre, Bp. Castro Mayer, Card. Ottaviani, et al. He also helped write and distribute many pamphlets the Cœtus sent to all the Vatican II fathers.

Corrêa de Oliveira's famous works are Revolution & Counter-Revolution (which is a sort of "TFP manifesto") and Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII: A theme illuminating American social history.
TFP also promotes their excellent Defending a Higher Law: Why we must resist same-sex "marriage" and the ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ movement.
(All the above-linked books are freely downloadable.)

De Mattei wrote a biography of Corrêa de Oliveira: The Crusader of the 20th Century: Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira (with a preface by Card. Stickler)

The Institute of Christ the King is a big supporter of TFP.

TFP Student Action does a lot of very good work on college campuses.

They have their own saints. They call the mother of the founder a "saint" and even call her "Saint (can't remember her name now.)" They take good men, and tell them they have a vocation, and don't lead them to any vocations since they don't have any "order," basically making these strong, young men, slaves to them, and threaten then if they leave. It's kind of an "Opus Dei" of traditional Catholicism. Stay away from it. IOW, a cult.

PFT, none of what you said about TFP (lol, playing on reversing the letters) is actually true; it's disinfo spread by groups hostile to TFP (some of it started with The Heralds groups in Brazil that's been engaged in a lawsuit trying to take TFP Brazil property, logos, etc.)  I've known many high ranking members of the American TFP.  I've known many parents who sent their kids to St. Louis De Montfort, parents who weren't TFP members themselves, who indicated that these allgations are false.

He also said that privately De Castro Meyer called them a "cult." So I'm going to go with his suspicions, as evidenced by what he said, and what Father Bolduc warned us about, as well as a couple people that had close dealings with them, including one man who had a vocation, but due to the anti-clerical attitude of the TFP, he ended up basically being one of their slaves and being too old to join an order once he woke up and figured out what their real agenda is.

Young men that have a vocation, beware of the TFP.