| Editor : Abbé Georges de Nantes | N° 87 – December 2009 |
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TOMORROW, VATICAN III
ANTIDOTE
The Church not only has the promises of eternal life, she also received from God the means to provide for it actively. Thus it is that in extraordinary situations, this society, which is more divine than it is human, has the extraordinary remedy of the Ecumenical Council. Ten times, the great Councils have saved at one stroke the Church and the world by an intelligent and courageous recourse to the unchanging and sacred Tradition. The Fathers worked and the Holy Spirit assisted them in a manner that was almost palpable.
The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) broke with this long series of miraculous recoveries. Far from being a divine act for which one prepares in the silence of prayer, in the fervour of penance, from the first day it took on« an all too human aspect as a colossal news item », so much so that the Abbé de Nantes was able to write on the very day of its opening:
« I admit that to the same extent that this Council is turning into a big church bazaar and a house of deputies, my dispositions of obedience have declined. When people come to ask me if I am ready to obey to all that the Council will decide, even if it is marriage of priests, abandoning the cassock, the apostolate in factories, the suppression of Latin, the secularisation of Christian schools, Europe, the Collegiality of bishops, promotion of the laity, and other crazes, I reply with anger that I will disobey. I am not the only one.
« For them, not us, to have reached this point is a great evil. It is, I say, a great evil to talk of a Roman Catholic Council as if God did not exist, as if Truth and Goodness were totally unknown or up for grabs or capable of being reformed by decrees, as though we had to wait for this Council’s decisions in order to know whether the Catechism spoke truly, and to know who was right. John XXIII is not de Gaulle. This attitude, this frame of mind is unworthy. »
« On the pretext of total obedience, this frame of mind constitutes a general doubt as regards the faith and morality. As a priest, I have made a vow of chastity; a Council would order me or give me permission to get married? Are you crazy? And all the rest was in keeping with it. It is deplorable that authorising the Roman collar and clerical suit can appear as an indication of the Council’s orientation, the first fruits of the reforms that will be decided there. This sets imaginations onto a really bad path. By it subversion gains a sort of possible legitimacy in the future. If tomorrow the Church changes, then Truth and Goodness are not so sure; they are shaken. As for Evil and Error of all sorts, they are perhaps already tomorrow’s Truth? » (Letter to My Friends no 120 of 11 October 1962)
« I do not say that the Council will follow these distressing ways », the Abbé de Nantes added. Alas! It followed them deliberately, since the Fathers refused the assistance of the Holy Spirit when they accepted the Doctrinal Commission’s declaration: « Given the practice of Councils and the pastoral objective of the present Council, the latter defines as having to be held by the Church only those points on Faith and morals that it will clearly declare to be so » (6 March 1964), and there was none. The fruits of this refusal to “produce infallible teachings” are apparent: forty-five years later, the Church is comparable to the « great city half in ruins » that was prophesied in the Third Secret of Fatima. But to rebuild it, the programme of a Council of reparation is already inscribed in the following lines that have not aged.
« Let us live on truth. The Catholic religion is fully contained in our little catechism. The Council will change nothing in it; it will add a little, and this little will go in the direction of known truth, practiced discipline, and holy custom. The Holy Spirit is not an agent of subversion. Then to prepare oneself to accept all the Council’s decisions is tantamount to fostering the more in us the cult of truth and tradition, of supernatural virtues, of horror of evil in all its forms: the world, money, the flesh, and the Devil. Because the fight is beyond each one of us, because everything has become more murky, more aggressive in the very bosom of the Church, a new Council convenes. Either nothing will come of it, or things that are difficult for nature will issue from it, declarations that are truly supernatural. This Council will not come to spare us effort, but will give us the means for our effort. »
What will the Third Vatican Council of our hope do? Unlike the Second Vatican Council, it will not be a session of illuminism. It will have the intention to express the Faith infallibly:
« In it, the Fathers will examine our times in the light of the Gospel and of holy Tradition in order to determine what is appropriate and what is alien to them. The Holy Spirit will be there to prevent the Fathers from following individual views and whims in this work, and to help them to express the unchangeable doctrine in total fidelity, in a manner that responds, not to the demands, but to the needs of the time. This means that God and His Rights will be sovereign there, whilst everywhere else the rights of men and their passions carry the day. That is precisely why this Council is a hope of salvation for the whole of mankind. In all our democratic assemblies, the most vital questions are up for discussion and thus are subjected to the wills, ideas and interests of particular persons. See how the world turns. This liking for democracy guarantees the triumph of the revolution every time. “Conservatives” know how to conserve only those democratic institutions that serve uniquely the forces of disorder and subversion. Look at the United Nations. Here we shall have an assembly where God alone will be sovereign. Its very institution makes it an instrument of salvation, contrary to the revolution. The Council will either recall what we already know, without touching burning topics, or else it will be “counter-revolutionary” in every decree that it promulgates. It cannot be anything else. »
The objective of this Council of Counter-Reformation will be threefold: « To bring Christians back to seriously jeopardised discipline and virtue ». After having thrown Gaudium et Spes in the fire, « considering the throngs of Christians corrupted by the unprecedented depravity, the slackening of morals, the impure licentiousness of Western society, denouncing modern means of entertainment, the social pressure of dehumanising, materialising and secularising forces that penetrate as intruders into the family and private life of Christians, it will be necessary to call upon the Fathers to take up again the anathemas of Jesus Christ, the vehement condemnations of St. Paul, the vigorous decrees of past Councils in order to wage a concerted and implacable struggle against Satan. »
But this reform “in capite et in membris” can only be based on rejecting the misrepresentation of the Faith that the Acts of Vatican II contain. In them « Man, his rights, his dignity, take the place of God and His Majesty, the earthly city substitutes itself for the heavenly one in the hope and projects of Christians themselves, the Progress of the cosmos, the evolution of peoples become the driving forces of History, on behalf of the Gospel of Salvation. »
The Church would then be able to face the formidable exterior dangers, the most threatening that she has ever encountered from the beginning: “Islam,” which is on the verge of conquering not only the African continent, but Europe as well; and “Communism”, which at China’s behest is already advanced in its conquest of the world.
It is not a question of levying armies but of condemning the Second Vatican Council’s unholy alliance, its institutional connivance not only with Communism but with the Mohammedan adversary, in the name of the Declaration Dignitatis humanæ and the Decree Nostra ætate.
« Then a wind of terror will sweep down on the mitred heads, the hour for courage will have struck, Christianity will have appeared in its heads, true confessors of the Faith! »