He will return with his immense heart, with his heart of fire, his poor man's soul
and his smile. He will return! And the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph!

FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE « LETTERS TO MY FRIENDS »
1956 –2006

Fifty years ago, the Abbé de Nantes inaugurated a work, which today fills forty volumes, by writing a “Letter to My Friends” destined for his spiritual sons and daughters who were gathered together in the course of the first years of his priestly ministry.

Addressed to seventy correspondents who formed a veritable “family” around their spiritual Father, at that time philosophy professor at the College of Normandy, and the priest in charge of the small parish of Anceaumeville after having been our professor at St. Martin’s College at Pontoise, the first Letter to My Friends, dated October 1956, is a complete programme: « In the evening of life, only one thing is left: love. Everything must be done through love. » The author was thirty-two years old. Fifty years later, he has fulfilled this programme, as a true disciple of Father de Foucauld of whom the Abbé Huvelin used to say: he is a man who makes of his religion a love.

The corollary is: « God is good when He breaks one’s career. » That is to say,  no ambition had any place in this loving heart… and that he would not have many friends since he added: « To all of you, I wish such a break. » Not only does he wish for it, but he brings it to all those who faithfully follow him… A few years later, in 1963, there were a thousand readers. We, his disciples, however, were refused admission to Holy Orders and he himself was expelled from his parishes… What had happened?

I. FROM THE DEFENCE OF THE COUNTRY
TO THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY

In truth, the Letters to My Friends are not the beginning of his career as a writer. This began in 1949. He was twenty-five. A young priest, fresh from the seminary, he contributed to Aspects de la France under the pseudonym Amicus.

This year, the young people from our “Permanence” of Paris studied his articles in which the events of the post-war years are passed in review with such a sound judgement that these analyses are still not outdated!

« LIKE A SUNDAY SERMON » (1956 – 1959)

During his first years of ministry, the young Abbé de Nantes made “friends”. For three years, the letters that he addressed to them from the parish of Anceaumville in Normandy, then from Villemaur, taught them « love » of God and neighbour. He taught them the ways of perfection in all truth, that is to say, with all their consequences, as he did for his adopted parishioners, at the school of the saints, with preferences: St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, Father de Foucauld and St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, the Curé d’Ars, St. Pius X… Above all else was holy Scripture, omnipresent, the object of continual meditation and scholarly study.

In 1957 he met Fr. Théry, the brillant initiator of a scientific study of the Origins of Islam, who urged him to write a Rule: a hundred and twenty articles, written in one go, of a “Provisional Rule” under which we are still living.

In 1958 Mgr Le Couëdic, the Bishop of Troyes, agreed to sponsor in his diocese the foundation of the Little Brothers of the Sacred Heart, “missionary monks” in imitation of Father de Foucauld. In the evening of 14 September 1958, the Abbé de Nantes and his first brothers sang vespers in the stalls of the church of Villemaur, so permeated with prayerful atmosphere. The next day, 15 September, the feast of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, for the centenary of the birth of Father de Foucauld, the new parish priest took possession of his three parishes of Villemaur, Pâlis and Planty.

At the end of the last Mass at Villemaur on 14 September 1958.

In 1958, however, imitation of Father de Foucauld consisted in defending French Algeria, « a historic community to be saved », not by taking up arms against the fellagha, a task for which our army was more than sufficient, but by denouncing « progressivism », a new heresy devoted to the destruction of the old colonial order, that considered communism not as an enemy of our civilisation and religion, but as a sister movement.

In fact, progressivism is nothing other than the intrusion into the Church herself, of what Our Lady of Fatima called « the errors of Russia », spread throughout the world after World War Two. This reveals the surprising consonance of these cries of alarm of the Abbé de Nantes, unmasking the heresy that was in the process of infiltrating  the very heart of the Church, with the second part of the Secret entrusted by Our Lady of Fatima to the seers on Friday, 13 July 1917, and which Sister Lucy interpreted « as a preparation with a view to liberating the people of God from what Pius XII called the greatest heresy of all times  ever to appear in the world, as far as the ends of the earth; and with a view to liberating us from the danger of a nuclear (atomic) war, which would destroy a large part of His creative and redemptive work: the people of God chosen for eternal life. » (Sister Mary Lucy of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart, How I see the Message through Time and Events, 2006, p. 57)

« The doctors of this heresy, wrote the Abbé de Nantes,  are still in the Church; they share her faith and her worship, but concealed under these identical appearances, the inner content of their faith, of their hope and of their charity is quite other. » (Letter n° 58, October 1959)

THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH AND ANTICHRIST

In 1959, after the death of Pope Pius XII and the accession of John XXIII, at a time when « it was practically forbidden to denounce anything as the enemy of the true Faith or to condemn anything as contrary to Christian morals », the Abbé de Nantes, who had been the parish priest of Villemaur for a year, decided to attack this evil, far worse than Communism or « Muslim fanaticism, which is expanding at a formidable rate […], a much more agonising form of diabolical domination at the very heart of the Church and as St. Pius X foretold, it is acting insidiously in the name of the Church through her ministers and her institutions, often under cover of authority but always in agreement with and favouring the Church’s outside enemies. I say these things not lightly but with fear and trembling. » (ibid.)

After ten years of priestly ministry, « I now see the evil in its depth », he wrote, and « once you have seen that, you cannot remain silent! »

What is it? « It is a doctrine apparently inspired by faith but which in reality is the corruption of the Faith, namely Progressivism, a new heresy, far more serious than the worst heresies of former times and which continues to attract souls simply for lack of having been clearly defined and condemned outright. »

« Let no one take me for a fool », he added, quoting St. Paul who was also at odds with false apostles, even at that time! What followed would prove that he was no fool: what he denounced at that time, three years before the opening of the Council, became fully apparent in all its malice… under cover of the Council itself and spread throughout the entire world. It suffices to read the thirty-two Letters of this series to discover the exact description of what we are enduring today. It is gripping in its prophetic clear-sightedness.

At the time, it was seen as going too far to raise the banner of the Crusade against what could be considered as isolated excesses that did not call into question the common opinion and universal practises of the Church. As it happened, however, the Abbé de Nantes warned in the second Letter on the subject (n°59), « the art of progressivism consists in never allowing the whole plan of campaign to be seen in its entirety [...]. There is the campaign against Catholic Schools, against torture in Algeria,  against the Legion of Mary, for the renewal of Church music and for liturgical changes; suppression of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, the campaign in favour of worker priests, in praise of Protestantism and of Islam [...]. Who would think that all these things, absolutely all, serve only one design and are part of one line of rigorous  action that is never abandoned? »

Who? No one! except for him, the Abbé de Nantes, who consequently was regarded « as a fool ».

The Council would, however, both agree and disagree with him: agree with the analysis of progressivism, and disagree with opposing, since it imposed precisely this  “unique design”, and just as he had described it in advance, throughout the whole Catholic Church, as the new compulsory religion.

« It is an understatement to say that they want to rejuvenate the Church, in order to make Her more acceptable to the men of our times [that would, in fact, be the theme of the opening speech of the Council, given by Pope John XXIII, that can be summed up in a single word: aggiornamento!], for they attack things and people with a kind of hatred and unhealthy delight. »

This detestation of the traditional religion would manifest itself throughout the Council and in the first years that followed it.

« The catechism is no longer capable of forming Christians; it needs remodelling, and everything must be presented in a different perspective!

« Tabernacles must be removed from altars and altars need turning round; the statues of the saints will have to go!

« The priest takes off his cassock and wants to be taken for a proletarian!

« Real Christian life is to be found in the trade union movement (on the workers’ side, of course) and in temporal commitment (on the Left) and so on and so forth. »

In short, religion is being changed, he warned, but by tiny steps.

« We are at the critical point now when everything still seems to be sufficiently Catholic for those who see or hear nothing not to be alarmed… », that is to say, all right-thinking people hostile to “polemics”, though it is clear that « ways of feeling and judging are changing in an alarming way… » (n°60) This would be the exact programme assigned to the Council by Pope Paul VI, successor of John XXIII in 1963, and in these precise terms in the speech at Bethlehem on 6 January 1964. The Abbé de Nantes denounced it in  Letter n°250, one of the last, which gives extraordinarily unity to this series of Letters to My Friends that would be followed by the Catholic Counter-Reformation in the Twentieth Century:

« Thus, whether they be victims or accomplices of this « new way of feeling, desiring and behaving », all Catholics, even the best of them, are becoming habituated to a religion which is no longer that of Jesus Christ and the saints. Should they be reminded of this religion, they will suddenly realise that they have lost it and will no longer want it. » (25 August 1967)

The reader of the Letter to My Friends finds his eyes opened in an extraordinarily vivid way to this abandonment of all the treasures of traditional religion. It is impossible to be exhaustive. Let us take three examples.

1. THE ABANDONMENT OF LATIN

« The other day I went to confession to a fellow priest. I was scarcely surprised that in his little exhortation to me, he should have represented Jesus as simply “the servant of all” for I was aware of his progressive tendencies. I was shaken, however, when after having murmured the opening words of the absolution formula, he continued in a tone so familiar that it was indecorous saying: « .... and now I pardon you in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit »....in French! He had all the air of one kindly pardoning me for the trouble I had caused him, or rather caused the human community, of which he had previously invited me to be a part along with Jesus the Servant!

« Such a way of doing things is plainly illicit, and it strikes at the validity of such an absolution. »

It is no longer so now that the rite has been changed. What does remain, however, is the « Counter-Reformation » lesson that the Abbé de Nantes drew from it a year before the opening of the Council, and which we must hear again, at the moment when the erection of the Institute of the Good Shepherd revives this quarrel regarding Latin:

« It did make me reflect on the usefulness of Latin as a barrier against the socialisation and progressivist humanisation of the Faith and of the sacramental life. By its hieratic or sacred character, Latin is a strong reminder that we are entering into the domain reserved to God. That is why the progressivists are so much against it. After all, was it his concern for adaptation that made him give me, a priest, an absolution in the vernacular? so that I might know and understand? or was it that he wanted, unconsciously, to make things more fraternal and human? Does the use of more direct language allow for the progressive transformation of a confession to God into a form of communitarian self-criticism or “review of one’s life” with the priest acting as representative of the social body, which has been wounded by our failings, and granting pardon to the militant for his errors of thought and deed?

« The root of the matter is not that the liturgy should be made more accessible to the people […]. We must never forget that the essential pastoral concern for progressivism is to incarnate the Church, which means adapting her to the world and making her espouse the world’s modes of thought, hopes and desires. Having been outflanked in so many fields, the traditional Church is still strongly resistant in her liturgy, her “Lex Orandi^”, thanks to the unchangeableness, precision, centuries-old and almost exclusive use of Latin, which is opposed to any uncertain or shadowy transposition. »

The Abbé de Nantes continued by explaining how certain words no longer belong to the same world, depending on whether they are said in English or in Latin: « “love”, “justice”, “freedom”, and “peace” have a spontaneous content, particular to and marked by our background, upbringing and dispositions […]. The same words in Latin are part of another world that we reach more slowly and with more difficulty, but with more objectivity – and this other world is the world of religion, of Holy Scripture, of the liturgy and of ecclesiastical Tradition. »

« The Latin word caritas unhesitatingly evokes a pure, generous and essentially supernatural love; justitia has the mark of wise moderation, of Roman equity, while preserving the Hebrew and Evangelical savour of a strictly religious virtue, namely that of the just and humble man. The word pax touches the things of the soul and speaks to us of a state of grace and of union with God. This is the word that shines down from the gateway of a monastery. The word libertas appears frequently in our prayers but always in the context of the struggle against and victory over the Devil; never does it evoke licence.

« On a tomb, for example, you will see the magnificent and potent words Miles Christi. Would you replace them with the words Partisan of Christ? The translation immediately tears us away from the pure world of the martyrs and confessors and throws us into another world, a dangerous and nebulous world, that of party conflict and of modern ideologies where we are invited to “bear witness”, as they say. »

By this return to the earthly horizons that were those of original Judaism and from which Jesus had snatched us in order to show us Heaven, the word “Love” once again becomes carnal, “Beatitude” is no more than the happiness we hope for on earth, « the “peace” that God alone gives is dangerously confused with the peace proclaimed in pacifist slogans.

« “Justice” is no more than an urgent social claim and no longer requires the conversion of the militant, but rather his commitment to the struggle, a struggle, moreover, which is quite foreign to the spiritual combat! »

In short, « in claiming to restore ancient practice they will recover the very thing that Jesus had condemned as carnal and void […]. As for the literal meaning of the Beatitudes, the cries for revenge in the Psalms, and the reversal of fates in the Magnificat – these words have not been heard in their carnal meaning for centuries. Latin and Gregorian chant invited us to rise above to the sacred world where they belonged.

« Those who have returned to the flesh, after having tasted and been the depositaries of the things of the Spirit, intend to make use of this very patrimony in order to secure their own preaching and to spread their own doctrine. » (Letter to My Friends n° 94, October 1961)

2. THE ABANDONING OF THE CASSOCK.

The permission for priests to exchange the cassock for the Roman collar and suit was granted by the diocese of Paris on 1 July 1962, the day when the French government abandoned Algeria, and for all the other French dioceses in the following weeks:

« Our attention was taken up by our desertion of Algeria; our hearts were crushed by the account of the appalling convulsions that were taking place in that unfortunate country. The permission given to priests to exchange the cassock for the Roman collar and suit only made us shrug our shoulders: it seemed to be a disgusting childishness, an almost sacrilegious diversion, to have extorted this authorisation from their bishops at such a moment. This repudiation of a Habit with a glorious past, in this July that was full of misfortune, was analogous  to the odious condemnation of colonists and “colonialism”. “Let’s make a clean sweep of the past…” Will the odious revolutionary song become a hymn of the Church?

« For twenty years now, the progressivist members of the clergy have also been asking for « decassocking » (all of these words are ghastly!) and adopted the practice in advance, without any regard for the warnings of good bishops; the “course of history” was bound to triumph and would justify the revolt of the moment after the fact. In the end, the hierarchy signed the Évian agreements and acknowledged, without having consulted anyone or tolerated protests, that the claim was legitimate and had to be satisfied. As a question of convenience, it was very substantive, and if claimed for reasons of apostolate, it was very noble… »

« From then on, the situations were reversed. Those who had been disobedient were able to flaunt their three-piece suits in a perfectly impudent manner, as though they were the arch-apostles of tomorrow. Religious, disciplined men, however, the priests who were proud of their clerical attire, suddenly became old-fashioned, awaiting the moment that was imminent when their reserve in the face of novelty, their most justified criticisms would seem like so many proofs of their insubordination and even like manoeuvres to divide the clergy […].

« Certainly the bishops only wanted to give evidence of their liberalism by authorising various modes of dress instead of the uniformity that was the practice until then […]. By forgetting that the clergy is a constituted Body and that its members, even the bishops, are not free to act as they please regarding all that concerns the dignity and the union of the whole, they have struck it a blow  from which it will not recover. Clerical attire was the sign of this unity and of this mutual respect. They did not have the right to authorise a change in it in order to yield to the demands of a clique. This was tantamount to submitting the entire clergy to the whims of a few, and it inevitably created among us a principle of division...

« There will nevertheless be no end to the raising of all sorts of objections to this modification. They annihilate the trivial reasons that have been put forward to justify this hasty and unexpected measure. To make oneself comfortable is secondary and cannot be compared to the pursuit of dignity, respect and uniformity that had led to the compulsory wearing of  clerical garb with which ten generations had been satisfied. As regards reasons of apostolate, this only manifests the lunacy of the progressivist clan, which is ignorant of everything concerning the people among whom it lives, or rather, whose tenacious will is to remodel along the lines of its own views the popular mentality that does not agree with it.

« For the appearance of the Roman collar and suit throughout France and in all classes of society has been an immense and profound scandal. Children are bewildered by it, good Christians are grieved and distraught, the enemies of the Church take supreme satisfaction in it, although they are somewhat flabbergasted to see priests falling so willingly into discredit and even glorying in it. And what is more, this ridiculous black garb, the ugliest that has ever been invented, was imported from abroad and makes our “apostles of the proletarian masses” out to be insignificant shop assistants in their Sunday best. If the goal was to be shocking, it succeeded. »

« I am told that it is a secondary question, that it should be overlooked. This is said so as to stifle the criticism on our lips. What a surprising contradiction. If it was secondary, why does progressivism make it into a question of outstanding importance? And why did our bishops yield? It is on the contrary most important. For them, it is the sign of a victory of Progress in the Church; for us, it is the death knell of the French clergy, this clergy that enjoyed universal admiration for its piety, its doctrine and the dignity of its way of life. Only those who mould future priests, those who are concerned with awakening vocations, can make known what a fundamental symbolism “taking the cassock” involves. Relinquishing secular attire, « the livery of the world », in order to don the “holy habit” was an essential religious act that gave an impetus to profound feelings of conversion, separation, consecration. These feelings were themselves supported by a comprehensive mysticism of renunciation of the world and its vanities, and irrevocable attachment to God. In this way, one’s entire being, interior and exterior, personal and social, took the step that crossed a boundary. A man enters into a new world and is incorporated into a Body: the clergy, whose law, honour and dignity he has adopted at the same time as its livery. And the least among the faithful was thoroughly conscious of this elevation, of which the distinguishing mark was the cassock.

« Away with all that. Taking the cassock thus loses all its meaning. A man no longer passes from one world to another; he aspires to remain merely a man among other men. This “strange and repugnant” garment (sic) puts people ill at ease. Whatever is said and claimed, all this undermines at its base the spirituality of the priesthood, and works against the essence of the priestly vocation, which is, through its renunciation of the world,  to become a man of God by wearing the hallmark of that vocation.

This permission, purposely given just before the opening of the Council, was meant to appear as a harbinger. This has been done so as to produce unease, for the true reason for this revolution in attire is of an unprecedented gravity […].

« In this way “decassocking” ends up becoming of secondary importance, when it is in fact decisive, in the context of the progressivist Sect’s great secularisation, humanisation, and naturalisation of religion. To be a secular person like the others, to work in a factory, join a Party, get married, these are the steps foreseen by the apostles of the Modern World, by the World pure and simple. First of all show yourself to be a man, collaborate on human Tasks, and then plead God’s case. »

While « supernatural work is done through supernatural means and under the different types of  sacred ministry,  progressivism persists in wanting to do divine work with human means. » (Letter to My Friends n° 123, 8 November 1962, published in He is Risen no 17, January 2004, p. 3)

3. THE ABANDONING OF HOLY IMAGES

Iconoclasm is the name of a conflict that tore apart the Eastern Church throughout the eighth century, concerning Holy Images, the Icons. « The “Iconoclasts”, like the Moslem Arabs and the Old Testament Jews, wanted them proscribed and broke up these tangible religious objects  wherever they found them. This battle lasted for a hundred years. Orthodoxy triumphed in 843. The doctrine admirably developed by St. John of Damascus – the last of the Eastern Catholic Doctors – established once and for all the legitimacy and benefit of these sacred statues and pictures. They direct our souls towards things eternal; they sustain our meditation by refreshing and focusing our senses. Through visible realities God calls men to rise to the invisible, but these works of Christian art speak to us better of the revealed mysteries than do the works of nature: indeed, nature is of the first order of creation and knows nothing of sin or Redemption, whereas Christian art refers to the Second Creation and bears the imprint of the God-Man. Nature speaks of the Invisible God, but Sacred Art evokes Christ in all His Mysteries.

« Progressivist iconoclasm is even more dangerous still, because it never declares, and does not even know, except very  obscurely, its own true motives. »

Well! In the same way that St. Pius X explained Modernism to the Modernists themselves, who were astonished to have been thus seen through, the Abbé de Nantes explained this madness, this haste to break statues in observing that « if the statues disappear together with their haloes and heavenly symbols, the lives of the saints with their words and examples likewise disappear from Christian preaching as well as from Catholic newspapers, books and periodicals… »

« Holy Scripture must replace everything else! Fine; but it is surprising to notice how often Bernanos, Mauriac and Ghandi, for example, and not the canonised saints, are used by these same iconoclasts  to comment on and illustrate the Scriptures. Apparently they find much better things in the questionable lives and witness of these modern militants  than in the virtues and miracles of the saints.

« There is another disturbing sign. The same people who destroy images and are eager that obviously religious pictures should disappear from printed books and even from works of piety never warn against or criticise the profusion of pictures on which the pride and lust of our decadent West feeds. A priest will feel ashamed at the statues of St. Sulpice but will never cease praising television? If you look in Church bookshops you will find that the books on sale are no longer illustrated with Holy Pictures but with photographs of the wonders of nature, the creations of human industry or even the beauties of the human body.

« The reason given for their choice of earthly representations and their exclusion of Holy Pictures is that it is better to approach the invisible mysteries suggested by these photographs and their captions through reflection and reasoning rather than impress them on the mind by poor representations, thus depriving the religious spirit of the freedom to adore the unknowable. The really honest reason, however, is that the pious pictures are “not part of life” while the others are more “real”...

« That is the true impulse behind this vast campaign, and it is the inverse of what inspired the ancient iconoclasts. Our modern iconoclasts refuse these images not because they represent the invisible realities of Heaven badly but because they represent them too well, and they draw the thoughts and imaginations of the faithful towards Heaven too much. This modern iconoclasm is aimed then at overturning just one more solid bastion of the True Faith. Faith in men must replace faith in God; the taste for earthly goods must replace the taste for Heavenly Bliss; concern for temporal affairs must replace the quest for union with God, and how can that be done unless these statues smiling up at the angels and these pictures impregnated with a light from Beyond are made to disappear? » (Letter to My Friends n° 89, July 1961)

These lines bear witness to an extraordinary premonition. At that time, all the right-thinking people told us: “It is obvious that the Abbé de Nantes is exaggerating! It will never be a question of substituting faith in Man for faith in God.” Well! On 7 December 1965, four years after this Letter n° 89, Pope Paul VI proclaimed urbi et orbi that the Church, more than anyone else, has the cult of man. For twenty-seven years, « faith in Man » was the main theme of all of the teachings of John-Paul II (1978-2005).

THE REVELATION OF FATIMA : A REMEDY FROM HEAVEN

On 29 May 1930, Our Lord revealed to Sister Lucy that among « the five types of offences and blasphemies committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary », the fifth contains « the offences of those who outrage Her directly in Her holy images », Making amends for these offences is the aim of the practice of the five First Saturdays of the month. Thus, it is not surprising that, from 1962 on, each time a Letter to My Friend was sent to a new reader it was accompanied by the transcription of the conversation between Sister Lucy and Fr. Agostino Fuentes, at that time the postulator for the cause of beatification of Fransisco and Jacinta. This “parlour conversation” took place on 26 December 1957; it was made public in 1958. Therein, Sister Lucy shows herself to be a “prophet” and “prophet of woe” ... like the Abbé de Nantes.

1. The punishment is imminent.

« Father, the Madonna is very sad because we have not paid attention to Her message of 1917. Neither the good nor the wicked have taken any notice. The good continue on their way without giving a thought to it, without heeding the heavenly instructions. »

Pope John XXIII belonged to this category of the “good” who did not want to heed: « This does not concern  my pontificate », he used to say about the “Third Secret,” after having read it. Today we are able to measure to what extent this “prophecy of woe” in fact frustrated his great plan for the Reform of the Church.

« The wicked march down the wide road to perdition, by not taking into account the chastisements that threaten them. Believe me, Father, God will chastise the world very quickly. Punishment from Heaven is imminent, material chastisement will arrive very quickly. »

We now know that Sister Lucy has in mind « an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; it flashed and gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire. »

« Think, Father, of all the souls who will fall into Hell, and this will happen because we do not pray enough and we do not do penance. This is the reason for the sadness of the Blessed Virgin » contemplated on 13 July 1917 and never forgotten, after the vision of Hell, an ocean of fire into which souls fall “as though sucked into a whirlpool”, Lucy said to someone who asked her if there are really souls in Hell!

« Father, tell everyone that the Madonna announced it to me very often: many nations will disappear from the face of the earth; Russia will be the scourge chosen by God to chastise humanity, if we do not obtain the grace of her conversion through prayer and the sacraments. »

That is the reason why Our Lady asks for both the consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart on order to obtain this « conversion », and the reparatory devotion of the five First Saturdays of the month, with the « prayer » of the Rosary, and the practice of the « Sacraments »of Penance and the Eucharist.

« Say it, Father, say that the Devil is engaging in the decisive battle against the Madonna because what grieves the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Heart of Jesus is the fall of religious and priestly souls. »

It is enough to remember the crisis of religious and priestly vocations, and the unparalleled wave of defections that followed the Council to understand which “spirit” prevailed there: that of the Devil. The tree is known by its fruit.

« The Devil knows that the religious and priests who are unfaithful to their beautiful vocation lead many souls to Hell. There is just enough time to stay the punishment from Heaven. Two very effective means are at our disposal: prayer and sacrifice. The Devil does all that he can to distract us and to take away our taste for prayer; we will save or damn ourselves together. »

2.THE CRY OF THE ANGEL

« Nevertheless, Father, you must tell the people that they should not keep hoping for an appeal to do penance from either the Sovereign Pontiff, or from the bishops, the priests, or the superior generals. It is high time for everyone, on his own initiative, to perform good and holy works and to reform his life [not the Church!] according to the desires of the Madonna. »

We understand the outcry that such a declaration raised. In spite of all guarantees of authenticity, Fr. Fuentes was accused of lying and was relieved of his charge as postulator of the cause of Francisco and Jacinta. Today, however, thanks to the Third Secret, we know that the call to “penance”, repeated three times, comes from the Angel with a flaming sword, and not from the hierarchy, which is in the process of disappearing: « and in the same way there died one after another the Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people, men and women of different ranks and positions. »

3. DIABOLICAL DISORIENTATION

« The Devil wants to take hold of consecrated souls; he tries to corrupt them in order to lull the others to sleep and lead them to  final impenitence. » One would think that he was reading the warning given by Abbé de Nantes in his letters on “The Mystery of the Church and the Antichrist” against « priests and Christians alike who dream of an earthly city of Justice and Fraternity as a necessary first concern before bothering with the Heavenly City » This “earthly city” appears in the Third Secret as « half in ruins ».

« Bad shepherds, as they are, they are blind to the appalling barbarity aroused by such rationalist dreams throughout the world and they have forgotten the incomparable sweetness and beauty of the Heavenly Jerusalem where the Lamb that was slain is enthroned. » (Letter n° 87, May 1961)

The Devil « employs all tricks, Sister Lucy continued, even going so far as to suggest delay of entrance into religious life. Resulting from this is the sterility of the interior life, and among the laymen, coldness regarding the subject of renouncing pleasures and the total immolation of themselves to God

« Father, say that two things were the root of the sanctification of Francisco and Jacinta: the affliction of the Madonna and the vision of Hell. The Madonna is as though She is placed between two swords: on the one side, she sees humanity obstinate and indifferent to the announced punishments; on the other, she sees us, who desecrate the Sacraments and scorn the approaching chastisement, by remaining incredulous, sensual and materialistic. »

In November 1961, the Abbé de Nantes denounced progressivism as responsible for this dreadful blindness: « Those who begin by reducing our hoped for happiness to earthly dimensions and transpose the Christian Faith into purely natural humanist terms will one day come to know the excesses of the flesh too, as though by some implacable necessity. It is a constant fact that all heresies sooner or later hold Christian virginity in horror and, exalting marriage,  they end by perverting it to the level of brute satisfaction of the selfish instincts of the flesh. Progressivism must follow the same path as that taken by so many ancient heresies. » (Letter n° 97)

The new heresy is nevertheless unprecedented, and with good reason:

« The Madonna said specifically: “We are approaching the last times”. »

The first sign of it is that: « the Devil has engaged the decisive battle, that is, the final battle, from which one of the two will emerge either the victor or the vanquished: either we are with God, or with the Devil ».

Here is the second sign of the coming of the last times: « The holy Rosary and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary are the final remedies given to the world. Final means that there will be no others. » The Blessed Virgin « tremulously offers the last anchor of salvation to us.

« The Madonna also said that if we did not heed Her and if we still offended Her, we would no longer be forgiven. Father, it is urgent for us to realise the terrible reality. We do not want to terrify souls, but this is an urgent appeal to reality. Since the Most Blessed Virgin gave such effectiveness to the Rosary, there exists no material, spiritual, national or international problem that cannot be solved by the holy Rosary and by our sacrifices. Saying it with love and piety will permit us to console Mary and to efface the so numerous tears of Her Immaculate Heart. »

Nevertheless, the progressivist is resistant to this devotion. In fact, « this progressive transformation of ways of thinking and acting is accompanied by a further, truly scandalous, transformation, namely, that of the heart’s inclinations. » (Letter n° 60)

II. FROM THE DEFENCE OF CHRISTENDOM
TO THE  DEFENCE OF THE CHURCH

In August 1961, on the feast of the Transfiguration, Mgr Le Couëdic clothed us in the monastic cowl. This was the last mark of paternal kindness. Then there was confrontation: at the end of its October meeting, which had been held in Paris from 11 to 13 October, the Assembly of the French bishops and archbishops published an absurd condemnation of all use of force, called “violence” for the purpose in hand, in the defence of French Algeria. According to this Episcopal Declaration on “violence before the Law of God”, « Peace is supposed to fall on us from above by dint of a unilateral truce and  unconditional “love” of an unrepentant cutthroat. What sheer folly! The surest way to enforce it would be to serve an arrest warrant on the most pure, the most innocent of our colonists and our soldiers, and to accord a clerical amnesty to Yousef Saadi and his gang of cutthroats. » (Letter n° 109, 1962)

The horrible “repression” perpetrated against hundreds of thousands of innocent people handed over to exile, torture and death by General de Gaulle, a lying and perjuring head of State, abandoning Algeria to the fln, confirmed this forecast.

Only one man stood up to the tyrant, like John the Baptist before Herod, and found himself in prison …in the Major Seminary! After an understanding between the prefect and bishop of Troyes…One year later, he was expelled from his parishes, and we, his disciples, were refused advancement to Holy Orders:

« I cried my eyes out when I was thrown out of Villemaur, my parish, but already faith was telling me that an other one was awaiting me, one more vast, more populous, more quivering with holy ardour, but not more cherished or well-served, because that would be impossible! » (CRC n^o 6, March 1968, supplement, p. 20)

On 15 September 1963, we moved to “Maison Saint-Joseph”, in Saint-Parres-lès-Vaudes, to live there as a community in prayer and work, but determined to carry on with all our might the counter-revolutionary fight…which was going to take an unexpected turn.

AGAINST THE REFORM OF THE CHURCH

In July 1964, our Father wrote: « At the moment, I am the advocate of the vanquished, the tortured and the outlawed before the tribunal of the Church. I am ready to reopen their files, to re-examine, in total liberty and charity, of course, in the light of our unchanging and impeccable Catholic morality, the great file of  French Algeria, of its settlers, its soldiers, and its Harkis. Against the Abbé Davezies, Denise Walbert and Fr. Congar, who were helping the fln in the name of the Gospel, I would present my friend Captain Le Pivain, certainly the purest hero of the oas; ¹ his comrades have no doubt about it. Betrayed by one of his own, captured by anti-riot police in a roadblock, he was killed there, unarmed, the prisoner of his own brothers, in accordance with superior orders.

« There are men that a State cannot allow to be properly judged, out of fear of their purity, their grandeur! He pulled his Rosary beads out of his pocket, and then with a calm countenance, his soul in peace with God, he slowly collapsed on this ground that he had vowed to keep for France. He was banner-bearer of the Legion.

« Fr. Congar and I could publicly plead the two causes of France and the Revolution before God and History, before the Church and for future French generations. I am prepared to assume the religious and moral defence of these new Chouans ², who rose up for the legitimate protection of their Faith, their land, and their liberties, against a new terror » (Letter to My Friends n^o 175, p. 4)

In his major book “True and False Reform in the Church” (1950), Fr. Congar developed a theory of the Church, according to which the structures of the Church are unalterable, because they are willed by Christ Himself and are thus divine, while her living tradition is subject to continual renewal: a “permanent reform”. The Abbé de Nantes protested: The Church, the spouse of Christ, one, holy, Catholic, apostolic and Roman, is completely perfect in her entire self; It is not her “skeleton” that I love, it is the hair  that streams down her neck… it is her flesh and her muscles: the Algerian Christian community, for example.

Now, in his encyclical Ecclesiam suam, 6 August 1964, Pope Paul VI showed himself to be in  support of the reformism of Fr. Congar: « This is a date in the history of the Church. » The novelty mainly consisted in this: formerly the Church used to identify with  civilised society, which formed Christendom. Her first concern was to evangelise peoples. After Ecclesiam suam, the Church is no longer the dispenser of truth, but she « becomes conversation », dialogue with other religions. Of course, Paul VI puts himself within a certain “pastoral” continuity by referring to Leo XIII, Pius XI, and John XXIII. Yet by not quoting either Pius IX or Pius X, he signals a rupture.

In the “dialogue” established with Judaism, Islam and Communism since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and encyclical Ecclesiam suam (1964), everything becomes equivocal, truth and falsehood mixed together; interfaith is the “confluence of all the heresies” as St. Pius X used to say about Modernism. The Abbé de Nantes, however, had cautioned his friends about it since 1959:

« The essence of the Christian Faith can be summed up in three words that define a progress and a unique supernatural direction of history, he wrote. After the fall of original sin, came the deliverance wrought by Jesus Christ Crucified in order to merit the grace of the renewal of all things in life eternal. » (n° 70)

« Fall, Redemption and Salvation: this  drama in three ages is of such  power,  it enlightens the intelligence and warms the heart so strongly, that all the great religious movements and all the world’s philosophies have borrowed from its general lines. » (n° 61)

« This great design of God, the whole development of  our Faith, is fixed and held high, as it were,  at a supernatural level, by these three golden nails », historical events on which the whole mystery of our destiny depends:

• The sin of Adam and Eve who ate the forbidden fruit in the earthly Paradise, at the beginning of history, the principle of human misery.

• Jesus offering his sacrifice on the Cross, having close to Him Mary His Mother, and St. John the Evangelist, for our Redemption, at the centre of history.

• The return of Jesus, at the end of history, and the blessed restoration in heaven, for ever and ever and ever.

« One or the other of the elements of this drama may be denied or they can be all be rejected. This engenders atheism or negligible heresies. One can, however, also retain from this triptych its admirable movement of fall and recovery  while depersonalising it and transposing it into another series of historical events. » (n° 65)

This is what Talmudic Judaism, Islam and Marxism do.

1. JUDAISM.

« Some will exclaim: but the Jews are our brothers! Their religion has the same physiognomy as ours. They know of the Fall, Redemption and Salvation just as we do! No doubt they do. »

Yet there is a radical difference:

« The Jews know them in the flesh and we  in the Spirit.

« The only fall they wish to know of is that of their race exiled, dispersed and reduced to the ranks of other peoples whom they despise, rather than to understand this whole outdated history as the symbol of another fall, the original, universal and spiritual fall in which all men come under the same reprobation.

« The only promises they read of in the Prophets are of their return to their Land and its joys, of a ruthless revenge and of world domination – even recently, on their tanks in pursuit of the Egyptians of Nassar!...  and us Christians they hate for having dispossessed them of these exalted visions for the sake of some heavenly hope open to all peoples.

« Hence they are now caught by their own misinterpretations, only wanting to hail a temporal and racial Messiah. They reject the ignominious submission of the Cross in horror and are impatient at not seeing the coming of him whom they are awaiting, the man of vengeance who will crush the peoples and strike the name of Jesus out of history. »

« How mysterious is this fixed parallelism of the carnal mystique of the renegade people and the spiritual mystique of the Church. »

The parallelism is antithetical: between the Synagogue and the Church, the opposition is total.

« There is as it were only one revealed Word but in one place it is understood according to the flesh and in another place it is understood in a completely heavenly and spiritual manner. Lucifer turns the very material of God’s Word,  abandoned to the manipulations of His enemies, against God, as if he knew that there he finds, as he finds in no other part of the works of man, the sufficiently powerful weapon for his own combat! » (Letter to My Friends n° 65, 1960)

2. ISLAM.

Islam offers another example, imitated from Judaism, of this confrontation between the mystery of the Church and the Antichrist. In Letter n^o 67, the Abbé de Nantes wondered: « Is it from earth, is it from Heaven? a brother of Judaism or of Christianity? »

« Disturbing though it may be, we have to recognise in Islam the younger brother of Judaism in the great family of Antichrist […]. The Arab peoples are persuaded that they alone are the depository of a divine revelation, that they alone have sincerely understood the sacred Book, and that they alone are pleasing to God. They came to think that the world should belong to them. Islam inherited these carnal hopes and appetites from the Jewish religion by a wholly exterior mimicry, and because every biblical religion that does not lead to the Gospel can only degenerate into racial fanaticism and a carnal mystique, it exalts pride and human covetousness to the point of incandescence. »

What is the difference between Islam and Judaism?

« Islam in its faith and race did not strike against Jesus, the Teacher of Eternal Life. It honoured Him even in its ignorance as one of the prophets. It has no overriding need to crucify Him in order to justify itself, nor any need to annihilate His Church in order to find security in its terrestrial faith. This explains the different attitude that Islam has adopted, since its rupture with Judaism, towards Christians.

« There has even been for long an understanding: Muslims would dominate the earth and leave Heaven to the Christians. Alas, it brought about the death of Christianity in Islamic lands. Another attempt succeeded, first by the Crusaders and later through our colonisation: to allay Muslim covetousness, to declare its unrealism, without direct collision. The earth belongs to the Christians; they are stronger and God seems clearly with them. This Muslim faith gone into hibernation may, one day or another, be reawakened by a fiery breath.

« The only definitive work remains to be done – liberate the Muslims from this terrestrial religion, wean them from it in order to introduce them into the spiritual, universal religion of Jesus Christ! That will be possible the day we truly desire it.

« Islam is locked in an inevitable and savage war with the Jewish people. They are enemy brothers who both claim world dominion in the name of the One God. The Torah on the one side and the Koran on the other are two irreconcilable religious fanaticisms that can only find themselves united in war  on the religion of Jesus Christ. »

3. MARXISM OR « THE ERRORS OF RUSSIA ».

Marxism has taken « over from the Jewish religion,  prisoner of an exhausted race » and « transposed it into terms of social revolution», after having completely detached it from its religious roots (Letter n° 68).

« There is a poster, for example, of Jesus carrying His Cross together with a group of workers pulling painfully at a cable in exactly the same attitude. Jesus becomes simply the symbol of the working class. » (Letter n° 78)

Well! « Christian progressivists » only want « to see in these religions, currents of thought, or political movements  simply a faith in Progress by which they formally resemble Christianity.

« For the progressivists, being a Christian means believing in Progress and since Jews, Muslims, Marxists and others believe in and work for Progress too, they must be our brothers without realising it and they therefore deserve our assistance, our esteem and our charity. » (Letter n° 70, Easter 1960)

Three years later, this “progressivism” prevailed at the Council itself, right from the first session:

« This prodigious mutation of our faith is more or less accomplished now. For many, the Church now identifies with the modern world and her hope fits marvellously into the “aspirations of the masses”. There has only to arise now from among a people or in the world, a Man, a Movement – who seems endowed with such power that he can dominate everything and draw it after him, and the theologians will preach him as the Saviour of the world, that is to say, the Man-Christ. Then you will see Pastors dragging their flocks after them by force and persuasion... and who will resist other than the lovers of Jesus and His Cross? » (Letter n° 141, 10 May 1963, Ascension)

III. THE GREAT CONCILIAR CONTROVERSY
(OCTOBER 1963 - DECEMBER 1965)

« Shortly after the last session of the Council, the Abbé de Nantes told us: « It seems to me that if we are a little thorn in the foot of Holy Church when she runs towards the infidels, although we are trampled underfoot, we are useful in that we slow down her flight by displaying our disapproval. »

To build a fraternal world with the help of all religions, the Church had to recognise the right of every man to the full liberty of his convictions and actions, both interior and exterior, both private and public, in religious matters.

On this point, the opposition of the Abbé de Nantes remained unwavering. The unique truth of the one Catholic religion was at stake. The other religions, being deprived of all historical proofs and of all supernatural marks of truth, have no specific authority of their own to give to their followers a social right, for error constitutes no basis for a real right: « Thus, today as yesterday, liberty of conscience and religion is an error, insulting to God and pernicious for human societies. » (Letter n^o 209, 22 July 1965)

In the spring of 1965, when Mgr Pailler, coadjutor of Rouen, announced that the Abbé de Nantes would foment a « right-wing schism » after the promulgation of the texts on religious liberty that he considered accepted in advance, our Father merely answered:

« Mgr Pailler announces to us that there will soon be a rearrangement of error and truth; this leaves us indifferent. If he thinks he will be inside the Church and we outside, after the presumed decisions of the Council, we are entitled to conclude while waiting for these hypothetical decrees, that he is the one on the outside, and we inside! »

As “religious Liberty” was finally the object of a “Declaration”, the whole question was to know the exact degree of authority this document had. Is not an ecumenical Council the highest court of the Magisterium? Does it not possess  supreme, infallible, and universal authority? When the fourth session opened, on 15 September 1965, in his Letter n° 212, the Abbé de Nantes examined this question: « From our Faith we draw certitudes that are superior even to the demonstrations of reason and the perceptions of our senses. Should we not then reject every shadow of criticism, of free-thinking, and even renounce the evidence of disorder and decadence to convince ourselves blindly that this Council is good and holy, its convocation edifying, its acts providential, and that its fruits will be wonderful? »

In order to answer this question, there are three aspects to consider: juridical, historical and theological.

1. Juridically – Does the Second Vatican Council enjoy supreme power over the Universal Church?

– Yes, undoubtedly.

« The canonical regularity of the present Council is absolutely certain and indubitable. No other Council has so perfectly fulfilled all the conditions required by Canon law. It was convened by the Sovereign Pontiff without the intervention of any political power. (Can. 222-223.) Its programme, subject matter and the preparation of its schemas were all closely followed, regulated and approved by the Pope (Can. 226) Its solemnisation took place under his authority and on its more solemn days in his actual presence. A notable fact is that he himself resolved procedural difficulties, interpreted or modified the regulations by his full sovereign authority, with  the unanimous consent of the Assembly (Can. 222, § 1).

« No other Council has ever appeared to be so universal. All those who were summoned replied; a negligible number excused themselves; those from Communist countries were prevented. Its legitimacy, however, was contested by no one and no one refused to attend; no one walked out during the proceedings to signify opposition. The Council is truly ecumenical according to the norms of Canon Law. (Can. 223, 224, 225.) Interrupted by the death of John XXIII, it was reconvened and pursued by his successor, (Can. 229.) Finally and most importantly, its acts were approved by almost unanimous votes; they were decreed by the Pope, promulgated on his order, in his presence, and in the most solemn manner according to law. (Can. 227).

« This impressive legal perfection leads one to conclude that, according to Canon 228, the Council “enjoys supreme power over the universal Church”. Having agreed that the Council was constituted by the Sovereign Pontiff, who is its head and leader, and by the Bishops convened by him, with him and under his authority as a Sacred College, we know that there exists no other court in Heaven or on earth to which we can appeal against its decisions. Judge of everything and everyone, it can in no way be judged by any person. Its authority is from Christ, the Son of God, in whose Name it holds that: “He who hears you, hears Me. He who despises you, despises Me”

« 2. Historically – Did the Second Vatican Council intend to exercise Supreme and infallible authority in matters of dogma and morals?

– No.

« Unlike all the other councils, Vatican II renounced the exercise of its infallible doctrinal power and of the necessary canonical power that follows therefrom, in contradiction, to what history and theology have taught concerning the unfailing exercise of this extraordinary Magisterium. »

It did so in order to give preference to « an entirely different work, that of aggiornamento, ecumenism, and opening up to the world – which are original and vague works – the real authority and legitimacy of which, and the degree of Divine assistance it can enjoy, are difficult to estimate according to the norms of law […].

« This surprising decision, doubtless prepared in obscurity and suggested to the Sovereign Pontiff, was imposed on the Council by John XXIII on 11 October 1962, in his opening speech. It was then that the Fathers learned that they were not gathered for any dogmatic work, for the definition of Divine truths and the denunciation of contemporary errors, and above all not to condemn anyone […]. This Council would choose the path of mercy rather than that of severity commonly taken in the past: it would be open, pastoral and ecumenical. »

In order to adopt such a supple attitude, the Council necessarily had to free itself from the  strong dogmatic and disciplinary tradition of the age-old Church. To this end, « John XXIII offered it this oblique device invented by the Modernists fifty years before: “the substance of the ancient doctrine contained in the deposit of the Faith is one thing, but the formulation in which it is clothed is another thing.” In a lower key and seemingly less offensive, it meant inviting the Council to rediscover “the authentic doctrine” beyond the explicit, infallible body of doctrine within which it has come down to us. »

It is thus that, « freed by John XXIII from all scrupulous docility to the actual expression of the Faith, the Council thereby voluntarily deprived itself of any infallible exercise of its Magisterium. And from that day on no one has been able to say for sure the exact degree of authority with which its decrees and debates are marked. »

We must ask ourselves then in the name of what did a reformist minority finally impose on the whole Church an “evangelical reform” in the breath of a “New Pentecost”, by a immense, radical, and revolutionary aggiornamento. To reform the age-old Church and her traditions in the pure light of the Gospel, in order to offer the World a new, regenerated countenance that would be attractive to it, the Council improperly gave itself « an entirely new mission, which is to express the ineffable mystery of Christ in a way not merely infallible and historical, but as a new and living synthesis, liberated from ancient dogmatic forms, with the aspirations and mentality of Modern man. Thanks to this new pastoral approach, the Church will appear more youthful and more brilliant, as Christ  wishes her to be and as the world, under the operation of the Spirit, expects her to be. »

Conclusion: « By reason of the fundamentally equivocal nature of the term aggiornamento, the Second Vatican Council appears to us as “too strong for its weaknesses, too weak for its strengths”. Its power of the Solemn and Infallible Magisterium is too strong if the Council is to be a matter of apologetic discourse and multiple edifying or persuasive declarations aimed at the faithful and unfaithful alike. Similarly, it is too strong as an instrument of those secondary adjustments of the Church’s daily life. Vague terms like friendly dialogue and pastoral experience, more curious than brilliant, receive from the Authority promulgating them a disproportionate importance and binding character, which is quite unjustifiable.

« Inevitably, therefore, the work of the Council has had to be overrated so that it is seen as a monumental renovation of the Faith and of the Church’s constitution. In that case the authority of the Council is too weak for such a sweeping reform. A reform of that nature would require the Divine omnipotence of another Christ and the prophetic illumination and inspiration of a New Apostolic College, which cannot be. »

The clearest result of this illuminism is that, since 7 September 1965, « two religions have been fighting it out within one Church » (Letter to My Friends n° 219, 11 December 1965).

« 3. Theologically – Are the Acts of the Second Vatican Council the infallible and sovereign expression of Catholic Faith and Law?

– Yes and No. »

« No, because contrary to its right and, it would seem, to its duty, the Council as such has not willed and therefore could not exercise its power of jurisdiction in that “solemn and extraordinary” form proper to a Supreme Court of this nature. Its Acts, therefore, are not guaranteed by the absolute infallible assistance of the Holy Spirit.

« Yes, however, because the Council, as an effective gathering of the Catholic Magisterium, could actually neither renounce nor withdraw itself from the exercise of its indelible and inalienable power in its “ordinary” form. Its acts are therefore guaranteed by the infallible assistance of  the Holy Spirit, although only in a partial and relative manner […], in strict proportion to their fidelity in following the Tradition. The Acts of the Council, being works of equivocation and compromise, do not enjoy an outright entitlement to our assent and obedience. As works of the “Ordinary Magisterium”, they must undergo interpretation by theologians and pastors in order to sift what is infallible in them from the confused ideas and projects associated with them. […].

« It will be our duty, when all is finished, to enter into the detail of this immense question that is a real torment for us: How to obey the Council? »

The French bishops claimed to forbid him to engage in this discernment. There is no liberty for the enemies of liberty… Mgr Le Couëdic ordered the Abbé de Nantes to leave the diocese and to stop publishing the “Letters to My Friends”, under pain of a suspension a divinis, that is to say deprived of the power to administer the sacraments. Our Father replied.

« If I surrendered, not to your reasons – you do not give me any; no one from official sources gives me any – but to the terrible threats of your spiritual power, if I yielded to your order to remain silent and submit to this evolution, this mutation of the Church, if I agreed to enter lucidly into this mystification that is its protective smoke screen, I would be unable to do so without losing my faith in the Holy Church of Jesus Christ… » (Letter to My Friends n° 220, 6 January 1966)

He therefore demanded a doctrinal judgement, after which it would be known « what is the exact teaching of the Council and of the Sovereign Pontiff, where is the Faith and where is error ». The entire question was to know whether the Church taught and wanted the cult of Man proclaimed by Pope Paul VI on 7 December 1965 in Saint Peter’s, to the unanimous applause of all the bishops from the whole world, or whether, on the contrary, she condemns it and denies ever having advocated or supported it.

THE TRIAL BEFORE THE HOLY OFFICE

The doctrinal examination of the Letters to My Friends was thus decided on after difficult negotiations. Mgr Le Couëdic began by refusing all explanations:

« A priest, whoever he may be, cannot claim to be right against the entire