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!

LETTER FROM THE ABBÉ DE NANTES
TO HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI

This year we are celebrating several anniversaries: the centenary of the encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis, which St. Pius X promulgated 8 September 1907 and in which he condemned Modernism; the ninetieth anniversary of the Apparitions of Our Lady at the Cova da Iria; the fortieth anniversary of the Catholic Counter-Reformation in the Twentieth Century that followed the Letters to My Friends.

In the editorial of the first issue, the Abbé de Nantes placed this new periodical under the patronage « of the greatest saint of modern times, the greatest pope of the twentieth century, him whom Pius XII exalted in the glory of Heaven, St. Pius X ». He quoted the encyclical E Supremi Apostolatus of 4 October 1903, « the charter of his pontificate, which we want to make our entire programme, by the grace of God and the aid of Our Lady:

« We proclaim that we have no other program in the Supreme Pontificate but that of restoring all things in Christ, so that Christ may be all and in all… We never shall be aught before human society but the Minister of God, of whose authority we are the depositary. The interests of God shall be our interest, and for these we are resolved to spend all our strength and our very life.

« For in truth, the nations have raged and the peoples imagined vain things against their Creator, so frequent is the cry of the enemies of God: “Depart from us”. As might be expected we find extinguished among the majority of men all respect for the Eternal God, and no regard paid in the manifestations of public and private life to His sovereignty – nay, every effort and every artifice is used to destroy utterly the memory and the knowledge of God…

« When all this is considered there is good reason to fear lest this great perversity may be as it were a foretaste, and perhaps the beginning of those evils that are reserved for the last days; and that there may be already in the world the Son of Perdition of whom the Apostle speaks. Such, in truth, is the audacity and the wrath employed everywhere in persecuting religion, in combating the dogmas of the Faith, in brazen effort to uproot and destroy all relations between man and the Divinity! While, on the other hand, and this according to the same apostle is the distinguishing mark of Antichrist, man has with infinite temerity put himself in the place of God, raising himself above all that is called God; in such wise that although he cannot utterly extinguish in himself all knowledge of God, he has contemned God's majesty and, as it were, made of the universe a temple wherein he himself is to be adored…

« To this, then, it behoves us to devote our care - to lead back mankind under the dominion of Christ…

« Nevertheless, if our desire to obtain this is to be fulfilled, we must use every means and exert all our energy to bring about the utter disappearance of the enormous and detestable wickedness, so characteristic of our time – the substitution of man for God; this done, it remains to restore to their ancient place of honour the most holy laws and counsels of the Gospel; to proclaim aloud the truths taught by the Church, and her teachings on the sanctity of marriage, on the education and discipline of youth, on the possession and use of property, the duties that men owe to those who rule the State; and lastly to restore equilibrium between the different classes of society according to Christian precept and custom… »

In October and November 1967, the first two issues of the CRC published the First Letter of the Abbé de Nantes to His Holiness Pope Paul VI. It has gone unanswered to this day, this Letter nevertheless remains amazingly topical, to such an extent that it seems to have been written for His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. We therefore address it to him with renewed insistence owing to the urgent necessity of remedying the evils « announced for the last days ». St. Pius X already perceived their « foretaste » a hundred years ago, and today we see them ravaging the Church and the world:

Most Holy Father,

The pride of the reformers who, in past centuries, always came up against the holy fidelity of the apostolic Magisterium to Christ her Founder, has received today from the supreme Authority full scope to « renovate » our traditional Church and, by means of a conclusive « aggiornamento », to bring her back to the Gospel, to purify her of all in her that bore the trace of age-old imperfection, to correct all that repelled the modern world and contravened its demands. Thus, the glorious pioneers of this reform of the Church plan to present her at last to men in conformity with the Utopia of which they have long dreamt. The modern pioneers have succeeded the alleged Reformers of the sixteenth century, Protestants driven out of the Church on account of their schism and heresy, and thus reduced to attacking her from without. They have succeeded the Modernists who secretly plotted to change the Faith and the institutions of the Church by acting from within, but against a Hierarchy that reproved them – in the encyclical Pascendi (1907), in the Letter on the Sillon (1910), and in the encyclical Humani Generis (1950). Since 11 October 1962 these commissioned Reformers have succeeded. The work of these conciliar Fathers or periti (theologians) consists of reinterpreting the dogmas, revising morality, and modernising rites and discipline, and the Hierarchy itself considers it in its principle and in its most general form of « renewal » as inspired and directed by « the Spirit ». The Roman Church, which yesterday was still « one, holy, Catholic and apostolic », is thus « in a state of permanent reform ».

In this drift that is carrying her far from her place of origin, in this transfiguration (or disfigurement) of her historical being, in this opening to the world, one fact requires the attention of Your Holiness, that of the division of the Church, in hearts and in minds. The understanding of a concept cannot evolve without its extension varying to the same degree. The « people of God » of the New Reform is no longer exactly the same as the faithful Catholic people of not so long ago. Those who claim to find the rule of their mentality and of their new habits in Man’s Future necessarily separate themselves from those who have forever and fully found it in the Christian Past. Let us leave the indistinct mass of the flock that accepts everything – the old and the new – with blind obedience and blind faith. Their unthinking consent, whether passive or solicited by the authorities of the hour, proves nothing significant. The fact of the division is blatant at the extremes.

At the one extreme there is our community of Little Brothers and Little Sisters of the Sacred Heart, surrounded by a Phalange of faithful Catholics who adhere fully to the pre-conciliar Church but who are loath to enter into post-conciliar novelty.

At the other extreme, there are the unfaithful, the schismatics or heretics, the excommunicates who, notwithstanding their formal refusal to adhere to the visible Church of Christ, are considered by this New Church to be their own. Let us take an example:

While wholly faithful to the Catholic Faith and (still) officially considered to be a member of the Church in the full sense of the term, I condemn, however, with all my soul the present Reform, its demolitions as well as its innovations, and for this reason I am considered as a sort of renegade of the « living », post-conciliar Church. On the other hand, Pastor Schutz, although formally a heretic in the eyes of the Roman Church proper, is publicly considered by the pastors of the Church in a state of reform as one of their own, as a brother in whom indwells the New Spirit of God! Here I am prevented by ecclesiastical Authority because of my opposition to the novelties from celebrating holy Mass in the diocese where I reside, although I am a Catholic priest, but Roger Schutz was seen being given sacramental Communion of the Body of Christ by Your Holiness on the day of John Paul II’s funeral, without a public abjuration of his Protestantism. Would it be shameful to join the unique Church of Christ publicly? Are those whose heresy or schism formally exclude them from Catholic Communion thus members of the new Church? For how long will the Little Brothers and Little Sisters of the Sacred Heart and the members of our Phalangist Communion who refuse the Reform still be counted among the members of the Mystical Body of Christ?

This division is not material or superficial. It is spiritual and formal. There exist among us two religions in a single Church: the unchangeable dogmatic one and the modern pastoral one, that of Catholicism and that of ecumenism, that of the cult of God in Jesus Christ and, in the words of Paul VI, your predecessor, that of the cult of Man in the world. These two religions are not identical; the latter does not emerge from the former by logical development. Moreover, it claims to manifest better than the other one the true and pure Gospel.

Despite all your denials, we must acknowledge the fact that there is a rupture in historical Tradition, by the superimposition or substitution of one religious faith for another. No « hermeneutic of continuity » can preclude the fact that there is a dramatic split in Catholic society between the adherents of the ancient allegiance and the devotees of the new. Your Holiness, himself does not have the power to force opponents to embrace the conciliar reform in the name of the Catholic Faith. That exceeds the holy needs of our religion. Nor yet did you require Pastor Schutz to abjure publicly his heresy and to enter into the Unique Church in order to live in Your communion and Your fraternity. This twofold failure, this powerlessness to convince us and hesitation to convert them is of utmost gravity. It calls into question the four divine marks of the Roman Church, which has been driven by her Pontiffs to mutate, a mutation that tears her and undermines her apostolic foundations.

Before the Council, the reformist faction attacked « the integrism » of the Magisterium, but the latter was not swayed and remained faithful to its unique duty. After 11 October 1962, the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Your Predecessors, John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II, as well as Yourself, consider the two roles of conservation and reform, of governing the Church and creating a new ecumenical society, as two linked functions of the power of the Hierarchy. The bishops have apparently all accepted to follow You in this twofold concern. Yet, the predecessors of Your Holiness were, up to Paul VI exclusive, the Vicars of Jesus Christ, the Pastors of the faithful of the whole Church and of them alone. Your Person appears partly as the legitimate head of the apostolic Church and partly as that of a new community invested with another Spirit.

Pope Benedict XVI, the 266^th successor of St. Peter, is Our Sovereign Pontiff, and we fully recognise his divine authority in accordance with the ancient canons; but he is also trying to be the leader of reformism, the successor of Paul VI, the pioneer of a new and strange religion, the promoter of this universal community that must reassemble « all men of goodwill » on the basis of a « transcendent humanism » inherited from the Revolution of 1789 and from its Masonic philosophy. They are two disparate, contradictory functions and it is too much for a single man. I spoke here of Benedict XVI and there of Joseph Ratzinger, attributing to the civil person all that cannot come from the ecclesiastical Magisterium, in order to give substance to this necessary distinction. Some have judged this manner to be irreverent. Yet it would be a greater mistake to confuse with the Authority of the Apostolic See the prophetic initiatives of some « Movement for the Spiritual Animation of Universal Democracy » ( m. a. s. d. u.) that has nothing in common with the Church! The Prince of this Masdu is not, as such, the Successor of St. Peter. Notwithstanding the unity of the individual person, the two powers do not have the same source, the same end or the same authority. The Muslims who are welcomed by You as brethren in humanity, who are invited to collaborate in the world-wide construction of peace, only recognise the Prince of Masdu, the colleague of Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, not the Head of the Church of Christ. On the other hand, we bow before the latter and submit to his authority, without in the least recognising the former.

A three-week long « seminar » in fact was held in Rome last May, which was organised for about twenty diplomats from Muslim countries. They had been invited, all expenses paid, under the aegis of “The Gregorian” Foundation, from the Roman university that bears the same name: « It was a question of showing them why the Church is interested in the world, without, for all that, engaging in proselytism », explained Fr. Imoda, S. J., the president of “The Gregorian” Foundation. « Above all, the contributors came from the high spheres of the Vatican: the seminar was opened by a speech from the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the twenty “students” were received by the official for foreign relations, Mgr Dominique Mamberti, “only a few metres from the Pope’s offices”, and they met with several heads of dicasteries. The ever effective “Jesuit address book” also allowed for speeches by Italian politicians. » (La Croix, 12 September 2007)

As for Ban Ki-Moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, he invited Pope Benedict XVI, « Prince of Masdu », to participate in the general assembly of the United Nations that will be held in April 2008. Pope Benedict XVI, Head of the Church of Christ, will take advantage of it to go to Washington and to Boston, a diocese that has been harshly affected by the pedophile priests’ affairs. (La Croix, 20 September 2007).

Long before April 2008, Benedict XVI, « Prince of Masdu », will go to Naples next 21 October to take part in the interfaith meeting that the Sant’Egidio community has organised. His “peers” will figure amongst the attendees»: the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, Metropolitan Kirill, who is in charge of exterior relations for the Patriarchate of Moscow, the so-called Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the chief rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger, and Ahmed At-Tayyeb, the commissioner of education of Al-Ahzar University in Cairo.

Benedict XVI will once again become the « Successor of Peter » in order to celebrate Mass and meditate before the relics of Saint Januarius in the Cathedral of Naples.

In this situation, for which the two-thousand year history of the Church offers no precedent, what is our duty? Where must we seek salvation?

We who refuse this deplorable, this extremely baneful aggiornamento, have no reason, no obligation, and no desire to leave the unique Church of Christ, who alone has the words of eternal life. The malady that presently afflicts her, in her Head and in her members, only makes her dearer to us. Some of those who have invited us to leave, because we hinder them in their work of reform, have strangely misunderstood our feelings: we will be neither schismatics nor apostates, even if they push us to the limit. The most finicky Inquisition will not find grounds to try our faith for heresy, which is wholly and simply the Faith of the « antediluvian » Church, to talk like the new theologians. For the conciliar Reform, as we know, imposed nothing of what it innovated on our religion. Excommunication is all that remains. It is this easy weapon that is being used to ruin our reputation, at lower levels.

But Your Holiness cannot excommunicate the true faithful of the Roman Church without posing as the head of a party and no longer as the Common Father, without putting the projects and the interests of a sect before the Faith and the law of the Church herself. One cannot excommunicate true Catholics, even those who are rebels to the opinions and directives of the moment, especially when he opens his arms to obstinate heretics and infidels as sons.

Thus we are and we will remain Roman Catholics.

This resolution has been kept for forty years. Will it be a “partition”, then?

Would the solution be to separate within a single « People of God » two communities, one of « old Catholics » and another of « neo-Christians »? Would this segregation be the solution, leaving freedom to those who remain alien, indifferent, or hostile to the post-conciliar innovations to live according to their faith, their century-old rites, and their discipline? Thus, the Catholic religion of the strict observance and the mitigated religion of aggiornamento would live side-by-side. Each branch would be judged according to its fruits. Here indeed is where « pluralism » should seem legitimate to the innovators. They should not fear this confrontation of doctrines and liturgies, this emulation in the apostolate, since theirs are so much more adapted to the modern World!

Alas! Your Holiness will never grant this freedom to us who do not believe in « the spirit of the Council » and who denounce its errors without ever having been refuted, any more than our bishops leave us this freedom presently. For this would amount to admitting, point-blank, to the arbitrary, improvised, useless, and uncertain nature of this immense overhaul of the Church that the masses and many of their pastors only endure out of slackness, obedience, or constraint. In contrast with the disorder and divisions, the general malaise and the decadence that the council produces everywhere, before long there would appear the excellent, miraculous fruits of grace that the strict observance of the ante-conciliar Roman Church obtained without fail, by virtue of the divine promises. We must be wrong for the Reform to be right. For it to triumph, we must be reduced to naught, and we almost are. Our survival alone is unbearable to the Modernist sect that holds the Church in its hand to smother her.

Thus, today as yesterday, before as after this new Flood, or this « New Pentecost », there exists, there can exist only one, indivisible Church, that of Jesus Christ, never reformed, to which belong ipso facto each and every person who confesses the Faith of the Apostles and submits to the Authority of the Roman See. On one side and the other there are schisms and heresies, innovators and dissidents. If the reform that was decided by your immediate predecessors and this Council is the logical, supernatural development of what has been professed and practiced always and everywhere, let it be said and proven by first reducing to silence those who teach contempt for the Church’s past, of which they make a tabula rasa. And let us no longer speak of the « Reform of the Church »! Then we will once again recover the peace and unity of yesteryear. This solution is impossible! Modernism cannot be brought into conformity with the deposit of the Faith; the New Church is built on the ruins of the Ancient one. This Reform is opposed in general and in detail to Tradition, just as its so-called new “good” and pastoral “perfection” is opposed to the age-old “evil” and ancient “sin” of the Church. Thus, there is salvation only in casting into oblivion, abolishing, retracting all these worldly fashions and fables that will have momentarily overshadowed the divine Mystery of the Holy Church.

Retract the Second Vatican Council? Yes!

Sooner or later and at whatever cost, your sovereign Magisterium will have to resort to these extreme measures. Every day that passes worsens the confusion and compromises the future…

This forecast was amply confirmed in the course of the forty years that have followed the Council.

When I come in this manner to the conclusion that this « second Reformation » must purely and simply be rejected, my hand does not tremble. What has taken place in the Church since the opening of the Council is a work of propaganda, and it imposes itself like a futile craze, the whim of a day. The worldly powers that these novelties enchant acclaim them with much fanfare. This apparently general adherence, this seemingly universal enthusiasm contributes to driving the flock along, and to many Pastors it even seems to be « a sign from God », but this cannot have an impact on thoughtful minds. On the contrary, many things appear suspect in this strange Council, and perhaps the bishops were victims of a sort of « robbery », few examples of which can be found in the history of the Church.

This is, in fact, what the thorough study of the Acts of the Council shows, which we will publish this year chapter by chapter. Last month we already recalled how the “robbers” triumphed on 13 October 1962, two days after the opening of the Council (The Second Vatican Council, a Radical Rupture, He is Risen n° 60, September 2007, pp. 3-12).

Taking advantage of the old age of a Pope, they used his voice to lay down for the Ecumenical Assembly the most unusual, the most unexpected programme: the Reform of the Church herself, instead of the repression of the errors and faults of her members.

The Abbé de Nantes had to recognise his error on this point and face the facts: this absurd programme was that of Pope John XXIII himself (The Eight Heresies of John XXIII, Prophet of Joy, Resurrection n°7, July 2001, pp. 13-20).

From that moment on, the whole work of the Council was warped. Theologians, a council, even a pope, St. Paul would say “an angel”, no one has the inspiration nor the grace to reform what Jesus Christ Himself instituted and to abolish what the Holy Spirit created throughout the centuries. The religious power of the hierarchy ends at the threshold of this sacrilege, which in itself is null and void. Guardians and Doctors of the Faith, Pastors entrusted with bringing about the salvation of souls through the grace and the law of Christ, the reigning Pope and bishops alive today are not, according to St. Francis of Sales, the landlords of the Church but its administrators. They have not received, nor will they ever receive the mission to carry out the metamorphosis of her, and the revolutionary formula repeated everywhere of a “new Church for a new world” does not come from God. Christ is the cornerstone of the Church, and no one else. A single Pentecost sufficed; any other one could only come from another Spirit, from an Antichrist.

Surprisingly, no one could be found from the beginning to oppose such a programme. They all accepted to undertake this work for which they had no legal competence or divine lights, a work that should not have been attempted or desired. Thus, they were lost in paths of perdition, and with them the whole Church up until today. The new doctrines are not in keeping with the revealed dogmas; the so-called pastoral innovations undermined the century-old institutions and did not replace them. Nothing good or strong came out of such self-criticism; there are some who say « self-destruction » of Christianity. With the end of the Council, the habit of universal and perpetual change has spread everywhere, which has produced heaps of ruins. Thus, we must at last oppose this subversive orientation, this frenzy for reform. The consequences are all too visible, even if the error of principle were less so. It is high time to recover from this immense mistake that so seriously offends the divine aspect of the Church and the infallible character of her apostolic Hierarchy. It is urgent to rehabilitate the order of Catholic Tradition and to develop a doctrine of counter-Reformation, if we want to save the Church.

A bishop thought it good to inform me of the indignation of his French and even European colleagues when they read my criticism of the conciliar debates. « The Church does not need reformers but saints », he wrote to me. Paradoxically, this was exactly my own thinking, and that of a multitude of priests and members of the faithful who were frightened by the spectacle of general upheaval that the Conciliar Assembly was making. This is yet again the content of this Open Letter that I dare to address to Your Holiness. I am convinced that the good faith of the Council Fathers allowed itself to be caught unaware by a subtle theory of the necessary and continual reform of the Church’s institutions, like dogmatic formulas, a theory that learned theologians were able to present as being « the dialectic of life itself ». This is where the error lies. It consists wholly in the inversion of the maxim of this good bishop, or of another maxim that comes from the depths of time: « The Church, ever holy, must always be reformed ». That could be easily understood before the agitators had corrupted the common sense of the Church.

Holy in her institutions, infallible in her doctrine, the Church must constantly be corrected, purified in her sinful and fallible members. But here is the revolution of our times: now the Head and the members of the Church imagine themselves today to be wise, holy, inspired and infallible and decide to reform institutions and age-old doctrines that they judge to be sinful and faulty! The saints, the perfect men of this generation are going to purify the Church of her disorders and her ancient abuses in order to make her at last what she no longer was, a « sign raised up among the nations » the Light of the world!

The Abbé de Nantes then criticised the « main idea » of Paul VI’s pontificate and of the Second Vatican Council: « The Project for a reform of the Church ».

One should leave no room for revolution. The wind from so many speeches will soon raise a storm that no one will be able to boast that he can calm. All that remains is to retrace one’s way from this whole programme of reform in order to disavow and abandon it as an unprecedented, impracticable and, what is more, illegitimate endeavour.

One does not reform the Church.

1° On the unprecedented character of this « Reform of the Church ».

All the reforms that the Church undertook or recognised were reforms of abuses and moral disorders, decadence and deviations that had become customary sometimes for long periods but that had been reproved unremittingly by the best and the soundest part of the Hierarchy and the Christian people. In the same way, errors introduced in the speculation and preaching of the Church gave rise not to reforms, but to condemnations, as always having remained alien to the true Catholic communion. Thus it was that all the holy Popes and reforming Councils, before our « New Pentecost », took as their programme to condemn errors and reform abuses that had been introduced into Christian society by men’s malice or weakness.

At the Second Vatican Council, the reformist party did not want this kind of reform, which would have begun by condemning the reformist party itself. It carried out an entirely different “reform”, a veritable revolution. A few months before “May 1968”, the Abbé de Nantes announced it clearly to Pope Paul VI:

The present reformism was conditioned from the outset by a certain theory of the general evolution of human institutions, a Hegelian and Marxist theory, but not a Christian one. It originated from an awareness of this historical dialectic by the most intelligent and generous men of the Church. They wanted to seize control of it and conscientiously implement the transformations that the great changes of the modern world imposed on the Church. Thus, it was an « evangelical imperative » to carry out this new stage of the dialectical progress of the Church by a very profound reform of her structures. Otherwise, it was said, it would result in the failure, aging, and death of the Church.

Therein, this reformism falls within the provisions of the eightieth proposition that the Syllabus condemned: « The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilisation. » Anathema sit !

Here was exactly outlined in advance the programme of conciliar reformism: a « return to fundamental evangelical values », by abandoning archaic formulas and outdated institutions, for a « harmonisation » of the Faith and the life of the Church with our « renewed society ». But above all, here was the revelation of the philosophical base of this reform. The programme is unprecedented: never before has the Magisterium or any saint envisaged such an overhaul of all the Church’s « historical and concrete structures ». Even more unprecedented is the very idea of such a renewal. More than the conciliar and post-conciliar reformist activity, it is the theory that recommends and imposes it. We must affirm that it is alien to Catholic Tradition. It is unknown to Holy Scripture, the Fathers and the Magisterium. Or if they do know this evolutionism, it is to condemn it. Thus it is exorbitant that all this neo-Modernist system had been imposed on the episcopal Body as a series of obvious facts… recently discovered but absolutely indisputable! It is on this rotten foundation that the conciliar work is built. For the idea of a continual and progressive dialectical evolution of institutions and doctrines in the Church is fundamentally opposed to our Faith. The same can be said for the subsequent principle, according to which the temporal and concrete forms given to the pure Message of Jesus Christ in the course of the centuries would necessarily be obsolete and, furthermore, affected by the impurities of past eras. Also, the distinction between what is essential and accidental in Church traditions, the former must constantly be renewed and adapted to the present time, and the latter must remain unchangeable and inviolable. This entire corpus of Modernist bias was imposed on the bishops without discussion. Herein lies the abuse of authority … Finally, who could guarantee, from the height of his personal infallibility, that this indictment of the whole historical being of the Church, of all her living tradition, would not jeopardise the dogma, the sacraments, the divine constitution of the Church? Who could do so, when already the very principle of this reform constituted a positive violation and assault on the Holiness of the Church! Perhaps the innovators were « sincere » in their great dreams of universal renewal. But they did not have the right to conceal from the Fathers of the Council that their « aggiornamento » drew its inspiration from a sociology alien to the Catholic Tradition and condemned by the apostolic Magisterium.

Most Holy Father,

The subtle « phenomenology » that Father Congar developed, of « true and false Reform in the Church », certainly obscured in a deliberate way the clearest truths as it appealed to less well-informed minds, by presenting as normal, possible, and salutary a « reform of the institutions » that would in no way endanger the divine institution of the Church itself. This affirmation of the theologian is formally belied by the experience of the Second Vatican Council and its consequences. Thus, there are only two kinds of reform in the Church. The first is classical; it is a work of light, justice and holiness. It consists in condemning the errors and correcting the abuses of men of the Church. It brings them back to God’s Truth and Law as taught by Tradition. The other type of reform is that of the ancient schismatics and heretics. It is the reform of today’s Modernist innovators. It aspires to overhaul the Church’s institutions and overthrow her traditions according to the conceptions and desires of men of the Church or of the world today. From the day when the Council entered this disreputable path without discussion and without warning, she was desecrated and all the rest of her action remains without a doubt, null and void.

Novelty has always been reputed dangerous in the Church; how much more so should be the novelty that raises change to the height of a supreme principle of action, and novelty to the height of an absolute idea! But it was not necessary for the wise and the saints to experiment with it. It is an article of our God-given and certain Faith: everything that is unprecedented in the tradition of the Church is as insane as it is impious. This is what I propose to demonstrate to You now.

2° On the insane nature of this « Reform of the Church ».

A young Dominican novice, one, moreover, from a very good Catholic family, naively replied to someone who was surprised to see her so passionate an enemy of our traditionalism: « I feel that I would have been unable to live in the juridical Church of twenty years ago. » These words are surprising: she would have been unable to live! In such stale air! Before John XXIII opened the windows! This is the state of mind of our « reformed » generation. The innovations of the ancient heretics were sporadic, indeed serial. The present conciliar and post-conciliar Reform is global. It carries on from the aggressions that were perpetrated century after century against the Church. Even worse, it is their confluence. It is not one or another institution that is threatened; it is the totality, which they call stifling of our « mentality » and our « habits ». It is « the pre-conciliar spirit », as Cardinal Pellegrino declared, which Vatican II wanted completely renewed as an urgent, infallible and marvellous work. Luther and Calvin, in comparison were sweet and innocent!

If the Church intended to remedy one or another of these specific, recognised drawbacks, that inevitably causes the aging of human institutions, even the best, everyone would be pleased. Such improvements are dictated by the nature of things and are carried out according to the meaning of Tradition. But to undertake the reform of the visible Church in her entire liturgy, in all her dogmatic formulas and moral laws, in the corpus of her Canon Law, in the vast system of her monastic, missionary, educational, charitable institutions, in her general relations with the world and public authorities – Most Holy Father, I only write it because the truth constrains me – is an absurd dream, a baneful work, a monumental error.

a) It is an absurd dream.

The idea of such reform, Fr. Congar explained, springs up under the stimulus of « self-criticism » (Vraie et fausse réforme dans l’Église, p. 22-59) by which individuals, laymen or theologians, bishops or even the Pope, are annoyed at the fact that this real Church, in all that she is, does not correspond to their desires, is not up to the mark of their ideal. The difficulties of their apostolate fuel within them « a latent malaise » (p. 40). They impute their failures to the overall maladjustment of the Church of yesterday to the World of tomorrow. This opposition within the Church to the Church herself declares itself « prophetical ». Protestantism pursued the chimera of returning to the pure Gospel, and Modernism that of an openness to modern society. Our conciliar prophetism pursues these two objectives at the same time, as though they both lead in the same direction! In order to succeed, this prophetism seeks to change « the historical and concrete structures » of the Church, namely the centuries-old corpus of her thought, worship, and social life. In order to substitute what?... Something else that only yet exists as a dream: futuristic, abstract structures! To decree such a reform is to prefer what is conceptual to what is real, what is imaginary to what is concrete, what is artificial to what is traditional.

« There is, Fr. Congar states dangerously, a contact, which is, moreover, perfectly sound and normal between the current of reformist self-criticism and a certain “revolutionary” attitude: an attitude is revolutionary when one envisages to change the face of a “world”, to consider certain forms of life as outdated and to want to substitute others for them. » (p. 49) This is what « a fully militant history must be… For one of the laws of human temporality or of history, is that things only live and develop in and through contradiction. Hegel detected a profound truth… And this programme of dynamic realisation demands from the Church a corresponding attitude. » (Sainte Église, p. 149) That is an enormous admission to make! The present reformism is completely immersed in revolutionary illusion, this collective psychosis of universal upheaval that is at work in modern humanity and now invades a secularised and socialised Church. It is not a form of politics or theology; it is a mental illness.

Our Reformers – and hereafter, out of respect, I will refrain from giving any quotations – are discontent with everything, are content with nothing. Their incoherent criticisms of Latin, the Rosary, the Curia, the Syllabus, the tiara, etc., are derived from a universal « contestation ». It is possible that some bitter fruit is to be found in the garden of the Church. But that they all be so, no! We prefer to believe that those who are disgusted have malicious tongues. Furthermore, anxiety gnaws at them even before they have focused on some precise object. This accounts for the popularity of these idiotic slogans that substituted for « pastoral » principles in the Council: Constantinism! Triumphalism! Legalism! Immobilism! Formalism! Just as a vomiting of acid bile indicates a diseased liver, spewing out such vain terms of abuse – which lose all objective meaning and are not reliable tools – indicates a diseased faith. Disgusted by the real Church, for vague reasons, our Reformers have shown by the equally vague nature of their constructive propositions, and by the incredible dearth of their ideas, that they do not know any better what they want. They aspire to « authenticity »… What does this mean? Once again this is a malady of our times to imagine that everything that one wants and that one resolves will come true without fail as he dreamed it. The analysis of the conciliar programmes and subsequent works corresponds to the clinical observation of paranoia. Projects are theoretical, nebulous, impracticable, in short, non-existent. Anarchy is being organised. The subjective has obviously prevailed over the objective: the supreme value is novelty. It matters little what it is, provided that it is something else. The agreement of the conciliar Acts and Decrees with the Faith, with law, reason, tradition or experience mattered less that the lure of sensationalism. The only things that counted were aesthetic appreciation and sentimental enthusiasm for what was new and extravagant.

b) It is a baneful work.

Perverse men certainly oversee this entire insane adventure, and they know towards what apostasy they are headed. But the great majority of the flock is blindly subject to this collective psychosis: this revulsion for what is ancient, this taste for novelty, this frenzy for change. Such behaviour leads to absolutely absurd decisions. Caprice, the fashion of the day, outbidding of criticism can only lead to sure destruction, for doubtful reconstruction.

• Most of the time, life only presents simple alternatives: yes or no, the door opened or closed; the marriage of priests or celibacy; Communion kneeling or standing; the Canon of the Mass aloud or in a low voice. Reformist mythomania always imagines that there exists a large range of novel solutions to these eternal problems, that one can indefinitely renew the expression of unchangeable truths, that all sorts of institutions can rise from the ruins of the ancient ones. Nothing is more incorrect. The a priori rejection of the traditional solution leads most often, without further reflection or liberty, to the contrary solution. The other had been sought and chosen for its truth, its goodness. This one only has the gift of its novelty. Every time, the Reform is going to go astray. It is a frenzy! And what can be said when one prefers the void to being, when one abandons, for example, the incomparable treasure of Gregorian chant and the grandness of polyphony before having created anything to replace them other than sinister repetitive melodies. Such choices are absolutely insane and criminal.

• In the entire sphere of moral life, perfection lies half-way between the extremes. The Church by dint of tentative progress had found formulas of stable equilibrium, of prudent and firm compromises. The Reformer’s perfectomania was not long in calling this moderation mediocrity or sin, and it hastened to radical attitudes, to either too much or not at all, when it was not to both at the same time! Arbitrariness and demagogy together were then substituted for the serene and complex dispositions of « age-old legalism ». See how the same Reformers exalt the exuberance of the hieratic, secret, distant and fastidious oriental liturgy at the same time as the desacralised, distressing, vernacular and pragmatic Protestant austerity… against the masterpiece of harmony and discretion of our Roman liturgy. Only spite clings stubbornly to things of such trifling significance, which remains no less disastrous!

• In all specifically theological life, progress ascends and culminates with a summit from which it is impossible to move without falling. The intelligence of the Faith methodically defines the mysterious truth and fixes it in formulas more and more simple, satisfactory, and admirable. Likewise holiness discovers from experience, the stages of the Way of Perfection and describes the inevitable pilgrimage with more and more clarity and communicative fervour. As with sports records, the day comes when no one can do better, even by doing his best. But megalomania sets itself against the formulas and habits that were formed by the centuries. This scorn makes the innovators alien to the very movement of progress of which this wisdom is the fruit. Thus they want formulas other than « consubstantial » or « transubstantiation »; and they claim to « demythologise » the Resurrection of Christ or the Virginity of Mary; and they rethink missiology, etc. Let us see them try to do better, in the way of spirituality, than the Imitation of Jesus Christ or invent mystical ways contrary to St. John of the Cross! To move from these summits is to fall. And they tumble among countless precipices through their mania for change. This is indeed the adventure that characterises this Council: it claimed that it could reinterpret the dogmas and discover a religion for the Man of a new World! Nothing is new under the sun…

Thus, every plan for global reform, which springs from a pathological paranoia, is doomed to ugliness, error and vice, infallibly. In the imaginative void that follows disgust and scorn of what exists, it is the taste for things of the world, the appeal of facility, the contentment of the carnal being that prevails every time. However much M. Guitton repeats that the facilities of the conciliar Reform are more admirable than the difficulties of the laws that it overthrew, we smile at the sycophantic sophism. Every reform of this kind will end in decadence. In another climate, a highly traditionalist one, adaptation to the world could have meant some salutary apostolate, which would add a humanism, a « philanthropy » (Tt 3.4) to divine things that makes them accessible to everyone. But on such a terrain of revolutionary neurosis only conformity to the world could grow when everything that retained the divine substance of Christian religion has been evacuated. The much sought-after novelty ends up with the total loss of truth, good, beauty, which are eminently things that belong to tradition.

c) It is a monumental error.

But here is the most scandalous part. This war on all our Catholic traditions is carried out in the very name of the Church for the purpose of restoring her « spiritual authenticity » to her! It is out of love for her and out of concern for her evangelical purity that our Reformers put under the microscope every detail of her life! They are fascinated by her depths; they seek her in her source, not in the murky waters of today that carry the mud and alluvia of the centuries and of dead civilisations in their wake. Far from altering God’s plan for the world, the aggiornamento must restore it in its initial beauty. Thus, Your Holiness has assured a hundred times; change would affect only the visible and not the invisible, the historical institutions and not the essential structure, the work of men and not that of God, the sociological Church and her « body of sin » but never, under any circumstances, the divine foundation, the mysterious soul that is retained prisoner there. In two philosophical words, not the substance but the accidents. The Church is perfect, lovable, satisfying in her substance. She is impure, disappointing, maladjusted and declining in her accidents.

What strange zeal, what worrisome love! It is by way of one’s qualities that we come to love a person! For my part, I love the Church in her liturgy, in her dogmas and anathemas, I love her for her feasts and her saints, I love her in her laws and her code of Canon Law, even if her canons are turned against me. I love her in her catechism, her basilicas, her cloisters, in short, I love everything about her. There is nothing of hers that is not my sovereign good! My love of the Church is not hypocritical or sophisticated. I am attached to all these « historical and concrete » expressions that she offers me from her invisible and secret Heart. Is this not to love her for herself?

Here now are our reformers. They abhor so many things that appertain to the Church, even so far as the very word “Church” itself, that the list would be endless. All mixed up together, they abhor her monarchy, her devotion to the Sacred Heart, incense, Catholic schools, Communion rails, St. Thomas, Cardinal Ottaviani, Fatima. All the details? Of course! What is contingent and perishable? I grant that! But what then is the Church outside of all these chosen and consecrated signs of her centuries-old life? What Church do they love when they manifest their scorn and want to change all that she conceived, desired and created throughout the ages? Common sense replies with Pascal: an abstraction, an ectoplasm that everyone recreates according to his fantasy but that allows him to measure our Mother Church by his individual Gospel.

To help in this, « philosophic » theories are not lacking, and they are all equally false.

• Rationalism… This extravagant distinction between substance and accidents is here nothing other than a pedantic exercise. Or rather it has always been this system, a common characteristic of all the « protests » of the sixteenth century and of all the « contestations » of the twentieth. It is what allow us to reject what displeases us as matter of free opinion because we feign to keep the essential, the common, unchangeable and necessary basis. Theology indeed distinguishes degrees in certainty, but it knows that the truth is not to be cut up and carved according to individual reason. The Authority of the Church recognises the difference in the importance of her rites, in the obligation of her laws, in the necessity of her institutions. She nonetheless affirms the vital coherence and the fruitfulness of their entirety. Individual reason can never mark out the boundary between the essential and the secondary, the eternal and the out-dated. No one will ever know so well the Soul of the Church that he would be able to know that he must reject this and keep that in her Body. Nothing is useless; nothing is indifferent. But our Reformers find exactly everything that they have been unable to understand, savour, or admit to be parasitic, alien, and hostile to the « substance » of the Church. Poor Church, this is how she is brought back to her « essence », as computed by a thousand little human brains!

The Church’s mantle is not part of her? Well, undoubtedly! But she chose it, she wears it, and she is fond of it. Thus this mantle is somewhat a part of the Church! And this word and this deed are part of her, as well. And these memories of times gone by… She likes incense? She is Occidentalised? That is fine! She prays in Latin, she sings her prayers in Gregorian chant? Admirable! Are not this hair on her neck, these wrinkles and this light in her eyes moving? To want to tear off and change all that, is the worst attack that her sons can ever think against her. Who among us would dare to submit his mother’s face to a plastic surgery? He who does not love the face does not love the soul or the person.

• The Abbé de Nantes denounces also the dialectic materialism according to which the Council waged its reform in the name of Poverty, Justice and Peace, in close synchronisation with the world-wide Communist Revolution. We know today that this “philosophical” connivance was coupled with secret agreements made between the Vatican and Moscow. He could not have said it better than this, then.

• Biological evolutionism… They are the most unverifiable and the most preposterous thoughts that fascinate crowds the easiest. It is true that nature, in a few rare marvels shows us living beings passing through surprising metamorphoses. Like the caterpillar that becomes a butterfly and that seemed to the Fathers of the Church to be a symbol of the Resurrection. Well! Our Council convinced itself that the time had come for a grandiose mutation of the Church. Under the effect of her recreating breath, she was going to abandon her old skin and regenerate another one, a new one for a new world. Such a belief allowed them to throw overboard benedictions of the Blessed Sacrament, theology manuals, the social doctrine of the Popes, statues, and all sorts of things. Everything can disappear. Even the Pope… Life creates new forms! It invents them as time goes by. Our bishops, have thus become morons and have accepted, owing to their belief in a wondrous metempsychosis, to enclose the Church in the dead skins and funereal wrappings of Judaism, Protestantism, liberalism, Modernism, in all the errors and disorders that the ancient Magisterium had been able to push aside or break.

This is indeed the retribution for this foolish pride!

This Reform is, then, insane in its very essence. It has no experience of the incomparable, visible and mystical reality of the Church. It tears her apart by its violent dichotomy of substance and accidents, by the absurd contempt for the Letter that must be changed to rediscover a Spirit that would have deserted her! This dialectic is the matrix of all revolutionary errors. Undoubtedly Christ instituted the Church in her essential form and the rest came afterwards, in the course of history and through the work of men. But this pure Gospel that was embodied in this flesh of the Church can no longer be separated; it is no longer accessible to anyone, and those who claim to find it in « Scripture alone » only oppose a reconstruction of their own fantasy to the living and definitive construction of Catholic Tradition. The concrete realisations that the course of time contributed to the deposit were not tacked on from the exterior or imposed on the Church; they matured in her and were substantial, characteristic or singular manifestations of her profound Soul. Our Reformers forget that the Church was living before them and that she existed without them! She gave herself, from herself and in the continuity of her being, institutions that developed her divine potentialities. The forced renewal that they want to make her undergo marks, on the contrary, the invasion of a human and inert « letter » that bears no relation to her « living Spirit »!

The Church is one of these superior, living and spiritual substances whose nature only settles down or develops under the constant immanent orientation of a soul that eludes all observation and all influence. It is our reformists’ error to imagine the Church like a house that men build according to a plan. They claim to consult the plan in order to correct the errors of the ancient builders. All heretics have thus compared the historical reality of the Church to some evangelical plan reconstituted by their own mind. But the veritable divine plan is inaccessible to man; it is known only to the Soul of the Church, which assures the vital passage from the original evangelical institution to the present visible being. To attack this relationship of one to the other, all this space of the centuries that separate and rather unites the (preconciliar) Church to the Gospel is tantamount to contradicting all the apostolic Tradition, to sinning against the Holy Spirit, who is the Soul of the Church. It is the greatest of impieties, the irremissible fault.

3° On the impious nature of this wish to « Reform the Church »

The aggiornamento of religion has taken the place of the conversion of souls to Jesus Christ among the concerns of the Catholic hierarchy. It is a passion for novelty, an absurd fascination. We read about anything and everything: « For the first time, a Council… For the first time in history, the Pope… » It is simply infantile when it is a question of an airplane trip or a televised speech; it becomes serious when it is a question of reconciliation with Judaism, collaboration with Communist States, the collegial government of the Church, sex education in the schools of Nuns, etc. So, novelty is a mutation, and mutation brings about an alteration of the religion of the fathers; the bias for making novelties on a large scale necessarily leads to infidelity.

The conciliar Reform vowed to extinguish the spirit of traditional Catholicism. It is, thus, no longer a question of these logical developments, of the smooth progress that made the glory of the Church, which never suffered reverse, which was always waxing. It was a question of an abrupt modification of thought and behaviour, of a « conversion… to Man, to the World, to social Revolution », as Cardinal Léger advocated. The Church of yesterday was not only old-fashioned and outdated; she was thus impure, culpable. The Church must be adapted to the World, a thing that she neither was able nor wanted to do. But to do this it is apparently necessary to « recentre [her] on Christ »! Now for forty-five years, here are the men of the Church totally interested in the conversion of the Church!

The more the innovators exalt themselves, the more they correspondingly decry the Church of the past, to the point of begging forgiveness for her sins, begging not God but men – heretics, schismatics, Jews, pagans and even atheists. Our generation accuses the Church of past centuries of sin, both in her teaching and her institutions, but even more in the very loyalty she has always shown in upholding all her traditions, in the face of all the Reformers and rebels. The Pope and the Episcopal Body from this time of woe and shame have risen up against their Fathers in the Faith and their august Predecessors in Authority, accusing them of having lacked zeal for the Gospel and love for men. But their Second Reform has come to purify the Church of her age-old sin.

Anathema, Most Holy Father, anathemas on those who curse the Holy Apostolic Church!

In fact, the reformers accuse the hierarchical Church of sin in the name of a “prophetism” for which Fr. Congar became the mouthpiece. Now, on 11 October 1962, the Hierarchy rallied round to the Prophetism, a sudden about-face of incalculable consequences. The Magisterium that had dedicated itself to its functions of conserving the sacred deposit and developing the traditional institutions was replaced by « a new type » of bishops and Pope, Congar dixit, eager as he was for exercising in person this prophetic vocation of self-criticism and renewal of the Church. Not that the Hierarchy would abandon its prime responsibilities or that it would renounce maintaining the apostolic Tradition. It would, however, free itself from them sufficiently to be able to judge everything from above, to bring sin into the open, in the infused light of the prophetic Spirit.

Gradually – come from below or above, who can say? – this intoxicating « mission » excites clergy and laymen. To reprimand, to correct, to prune the age-old Church, what a fascinating game! As for those who do not participate in the game, they are soon considered guilty defenders of the age-old sin of the Church. To be traditionalist is the only sin that our conciliar era denounces. Attachment to the ancient formulas and rites is the only passion from which they still want to convert men! This is so because in the eyes of the reformers, the main channel of the original infection is the Tradition of the Church!

Yet the sin of the Church is today. And the sin of the Church for forty years now is the Reform! We turn against the present reformers all the terms of abuse that they heap on the men of the Church of the past. If the others have sinned, why not they? If others have had the pretension of imposing on the very structures of the Church their own errors and injustices, by declarations and decrees, what can be said of them, then? Fr. Congar affirms: « A temptation of men of the Church is certainly to identify de facto, in their mind, what they do concretely with the sacred function as such. » (vfr, p. 118) If this is true of the past, it is even more so now! Today more than ever in history, the men of the Church imprint the mark of their sin in the structures and institutions that they impose on us. But the main difference is that the heritage of the past centuries is now purified of all sins, while our sad today is still under the power of the sin of the men who govern us, as well as of their virtues. The contributions of each morning are still only the fallible work of people whose holiness is not certain and who are not at all indefectible. From this rough mixture, let us except the solemn definitions of the extraordinary Magisterium. Let is also except the official reminders that the ordinary Magisterium will make of the unchangeable doctrine and laws of the Church. In what remains, we see less clearly. And if Your Holiness as well as our Episcopal Colleges impose their novelties on us as necessarily holy, equally obligatory, happily infallible, this violence will only be the sign of the sin of men become sin of the Church.

The time that allows the selective activity of the Tradition is lacking! Where are the Athanasius, Hillary, Augustine, Thomas of our generation? Where are the Arius, Luther and Henry VIII, Lamennais and Loisy? No one has immediate discernment of them. Nothing has yet been sorted out and definitively decided on by the Church herself. How then can we act, how can we weigh and examine all the new things, except in relation to the traditions of our faith, to this « mentality » and these preconciliar « habits » that we know to be exempt of impurity and truly holy! The innovators push each person to choose and reject in Church traditions according to the prophetic lights of the individual conscience… and according to the present orientations of Authority. The world is turned upside down! If we must preserve ourselves from error and sin, it can only be from those of the present-day Church, and that can only be judged in relation to our holy traditions and age-old doctrines.

This is how it can be determined that, from among other uncertain or particular sins, the great sin of the modern Church is the Reform! If the sin of the Church in each epoch can be known by its opposition to the tried and true Traditions of the Fathers, is there a greater sin, a more essential sin, than this work of Reform brought against these Traditions? Insofar as a man, a group of men, I say even a Pope or a Council, even if it is ecumenical, comes forth as examiner, judge and accuser of ecclesiastical Tradition, he rises up against the Holy Spirit who is the Consecrator of this purified Tradition. Since it is true that the hierarchical Church is holy in her magisterial and Apostolic functions of discerning human works and thoughts according to God, it is just as true that those who claim to judge her, and to measure her according to their scientific or prophetic criteria, sin against the Church. Furthermore, if their personal authority has the power to impose their will on the faithful people, this is indeed the capital sin of the Church! We do not appeal from the age-old decisions of the Hierarchy to the judgment of Action catholique ouvrière, Mgr Elchinger, or Cardinal Béa. Nor do we even appeal from the decisions of Leo XIII concerning Anglican ordinations to the free judgment of Your Holiness, or from the teachings of Pius IX and Pius X to the assessment of Vatican II. The sin of the Church is perhaps here, perhaps there, and we do not know for sure if holiness was in Pius XII or in John XXIII, or in both. But the sin of the Church is certainly where her Tradition is systematically flouted; the Spirit of Satan is everywhere where the infallible works of the Holy Spirit of God are sifted and weighed by the judgment of innovating, revolutionary men.

Such is the unprecedented impiety of this reformism that has become the supreme law of « the new Church ». It shakes the apostolic Church to her foundations. Those who dare to judge the judgments of the Church attack the very judicial function itself, whether of the present or of the past. The present Authority repudiates itself from the moment when it contests the Authority from which it draws all its surety. Your apostolic Power only has legitimacy insofar as it is within this continuity and this dependence. Such is the divine mystery of the Church’s Magisterium, the permanent miracle of her unity, her holiness, her Catholicity, and her apostolicity. Every alleged Reform of the Church is, thus, sacrilegious, and this Reform is the sin of those who hold the teaching office, the sin of the Church in the twentieth century.

Most Holy Father,

It is forty-five years today, 11 October 2007, that the sin of these perverse men whom St. Pius X denounced, the Modernists, has become the official sin of the Church. This terrible conclusion dictates to us both our hope and our duty.

Our hope! We know, with Fr. Congar, to what summits the sin of the Church can climb and to what extremities it can go. For it to prevail a moment, it suffices that the majority of the bishops and – God forbid – the Sovereign Pontiff will to impose it on all the faithful, in virtue of their sacred Powers, to follow their own disorders or the whims of their own thought. This has happened and will happen again. But we also know, what the expert of the Council seems to have forgotten or no longer to believe, that when these doctrines and decrees are imposed by human violence on the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ they remain profoundly alien to It and that, It struggles with all the sacred instinct that gives It life against this invasion and suffers martyrdom as long as It has not rejected it. Sin is a spiritual corruption, a stain. A healthy and vigorous body eliminates what tends to corrupt it. A clean person washes himself of what makes him unclean. Thus the real Church, in her profound life, works obscurely to save her Tradition from this Reform that is ruining her, and obstinately dismisses all the errors, all the vices, all the disorders that teem in the open wound of the conciliar aggiornamento.

We have confidence, a confidence based on nineteen centuries of continuity in the same spirit, the same will, the same sentiments. The Church has already suffered a hundred times the attacks of this malady – the one most usually experienced by humanity, pride, as is also the other one that shamefully accompanies it, lust. She succeeded in reducing the dissent; she succeeded in refusing innovations and fighting all forms of decadence. Every time her true progress, delayed for a moment by these so-called Reforms and Renewals, resulted from the energetic quelling that she carried out of all schism and heresy. « The rule of antiquity excludes alteration, not progress » Cardinal Journet wrote in his treatise on “The Church of the Incarnate Word”, quoting St. Vincent of Lérins who praised those who, at the Council of Rimini, « preferred the ancient Faith to perfidious innovations and thus preserved themselves from the contagion of the scourge » (Vol. I, p. 690). From these upright traditionalists came and will come once again tomorrow the salvation of the Church.

Even if we do not see this energy of the apostolic Magisterium at work presently against the perfidious innovations of this Reform, we believe in it. It is certainly frightening to see the whole world rush into this apostasy and the official Church following almost without resistance. But our faith remains unshakeable: the Holy Spirit, the uncreated Soul of the Church, pours out His divine energies in Your Magisterium and that of the Catholic bishops, the created Soul of the Church. These energies infallibly repel the invasion of the heresy, schism and infidelity of the second Reformation as they did in the past for the other one in the sixteenth century. Already Your anguish and plaints are the sign of the Faith. Your holy action will encounter perfect adherence in us as in all true Christians.

Our duty! Because this Reform is Satanic in its essence, impious in its manifestations and its laws, we will firmly protect ourselves from it as from the greatest of sins. While awaiting your doctrinal and infallible judgment in our cause, still open before your tribunal of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, we will discern to our best, according to the infallible criterion of Tradition, what proceeds from Your customary and Catholic Magisterium in order to submit ourselves to it, and what comes from this usurped authority for the Reform of the Church, that we will always hold to be null and void. We are Your faithful and obedient servants in all that comes under the holy reform of morals and the condemnation of the errors that infest the Body of the Church, in her Head and in her members, in all of us sinners. Furthermore, we are your affectionate and confident sons for the great work of Counter-Reformation that will mark the miraculous recovery and progress of the Church in this first half of the twenty-first century. With this valorous Church that resists and struggles against sin, at our lowly place, according to our modest vocation, we will oppose the flood of errors and vices that are sweeping through under the aegis of three Popes and one ecumenical Council of Reform.

It is from Your prophetic Spirit, Most Holy Father, and through Your infallible Voice that we hope to hear soon the comforting word of Jesus to His Apostles in the night of the Agony: « Confidence, I have vanquished the world. »

Most Holy Father, I am the humble and obedient servant of Your Holiness.

Georges de Nantes, priest.