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!

COUNTER-REFORMATION CATHOLICS

On last 28 June in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, the Holy Father proclaimed a « year of St. Paul » on the occasion of the two-thousandth anniversary of the birth of the Apostle of the Nations, situated between 6 and 10 A.D. The third part of our Brother Henry’s oratorio, performed during the Camp of the Phalange, aims at contributing to this celebration.

This summer, in a meeting with the priests of the diocese of Belluno in the Dolomites where he spent his vacation, Benedict XVI answered the question of one of them who asked him if in the end he was not disappointed by the Second Vatican Council: « We must reread the texts. » Well, this is what we have done! Nevertheless, we did so as sons of the Roman Catholic Church, and thus as Counter-Reformation Catholics, our hearts full of filial love towards the Church and towards Her who personifies the Church in a perfect way: the Immaculate Virgin Mary

« The very thought of belonging to the Church is enough to renew our soul’s jubilation, for the Church is holy, like her Spouse Jesus Christ, whom she so resembles, so that there is nothing in the world so beautiful, so wise and so majestic as her face and her whole being. », our Father wrote on 19 March 1963 on the feast of St. Joseph, during the Council, between the first and second sessions. « She is our Mother and I add: she is the unique incomparable Spouse, alone holy, wise, and sublime, leaving false religions and deceptive philosophies far behind in their darkness. All that is best in the world is to be found gathered and flourishing in Her. So long as I am seized by this sacred emotion, this absolute conviction, this sovereign attachment with a love that passes understanding, and by the will to die as a martyr one day for the love of this admirable Mother, who will contest my character as a child of the Roman and Apostolic Church? It belongs to me and no one can wrest it from me. » (Letter n° 134)

This contentment, this joy of loving, this pride to serve, are the mark of the true children of the Church. On the contrary, our Father added, « it is neither good nor just for her children to become disgusted with their Mother and to talk of changing her. How can we follow them along such a path? To set what is newly invented against what is ancient and immutable; to set the latest idea against what is universal is an impiety. “Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus teneamus.” This old principle, enunciated by St. Vincent Lerins, still sings in our hearts after having been our light for fifteen centuries, since he phrased it. That is still the guiding hand that we cling to, like so many others before us who sought from it their security in the great vicissitudes of history. “What has been held everywhere, by everyone at all times, that is our faith!” He who refuses this sacred maxim is a heretic, an innovator or an apostate: he who holds to it is a son of the Church. »

This will be the maxim and the governing idea of our study of the Second Vatican Council, at the school of our Father, the Abbé de Nantes, who wrote in the same Letter n° 134: « Only the passionate love that I bear for my Mother leads me to tear down and snatch away from Her beautiful face and form magnificently adorned by God Himself, the tawdry tinsel and filthy rags with which the world and our century want to cover Her… I shall carry my cry to the end and never cease pleading for my Mother. We have too many little children inconsolable because their Mother has been taken from them and they are cast into the arms of a whore. They are expected to smile at this step-mother who has no love for them, and call her “Mummy”; but they weep and cry out for Her who gave them the life of their soul, who nourished, watched over and cared for them, educated and loved them… »

AUTO-DA-FE

It is this « passionate love » for the Church that led to our Father being snatched from his community in 1996 by the Bishop of Troyes, Mgr. Daucourt. During his exile in the Abbey of Hauterive in Switzerland, he resumed the study of the Acts of Vatican II:

« With hours of work alternating with the hours of divine office, he told us, I had to choose a vast subject to study that would put me on trial in God’s today and quite naturally, living peacefully on the margin of this community that finds no problem in accepting the conciliar reform, the idea occurred to me of confronting my ideas on the Council, well anchored for thirty years, with the texts of Vatican II themselves, in the light of their application in the life of this blessed monastery. I was not sure of succeeding; on the other hand, I was prepared to rally to every truth, even though contrary to my convictions, or feel sad to be right to the point where I could not conceive of any salvation for the Church today as yesterday but in a “Catholic Counter-Reformation”.

« The Most Reverend Father, therefore, lent me the book of the Acts of Vatican II, which I undertook to read without any other document. The better to penetrate their meaning, I slowly copied them out and as I proceeded I noted down my reflections, in praise or criticism, with equanimity. From the opening speech by John XXIII, I found myself captivated by an absorbing interest in this work. Apart from walks, accompanied by the recitation of the Rosary, and meal times, my days were entirely occupied either by the divine office or by this study, the latter supported by the former, without which my effort would have crumpled under the magnitude and difficulty of the task.

« By Christmas, I was half way through my programme, by far the most difficult half. Although the work was tiresome each time I resumed it, it soon became fascinating, and with the texts thus copied out, analysed and studied, I think I could say that I knew them thoroughly, their form, their declared intentions and even their authors’ most secret ulterior motives… As the days went by, an ever greater division became apparent between this certainly Catholic community, in good conciliar faith, with whom I felt myself to be in profound communion, and these Acts where everything about them put me off, making me suffer as a result and feel a boundless sense of indignation.

« The criticisms that I had made in the past came back to me, but so gravely reinforced that, from day to day, it seemed to me imperative for the salvation of souls, for the indefectible holiness of the Church, for God’s very Truth, or at least for the honour and credit of human and Christian intelligence, that these texts be revised and corrected, and for the most part or rather – dare I say it? – for the whole lot to be retracted by the very Fathers who promulgated them, or their successors. So humanly aberrant, dogmatically heretical and subversive are these documents that they make one cry out: The cause of the Church’s ruin is here, under my scalpel, and it has to be eradicated. » (CCR n° 292, January 1997)

The result was three notebooks filled with a small handwriting without deletions, under the provocative title of Vatican II, Auto-da-fe. Etymologically, the Portuguese word means: act of faith; it designates the ceremony during which heretics that were condemned to be burned at the stake by the Inquisition were solemnly invited to make an act of faith in order to make amends before appearing before God. The word is commonly used to designate the action of destroying bad books by fire. Thus the question is clear: what are we going to throw into the fire? The Acts of the Second Vatican Council, or the critique that the Abbé de Nantes made of them?

Brother Bruno of Jesus.