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!

A CONFERENCE BY BROTHER BRUNO OF JESUS
at Maison Saint-Joseph –  Sunday, 28 September 2008

THE CCR IN THE CHURCH

We are a religious order that celebrated its jubilee last 15 September. Of course there was no article in La Croix l’Événement… This fiftieth anniversary will pass totally unnoticed. It is also the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Father de Foucauld, under whose patronage our Congregation was founded. Combined with the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes, these anniversaries invite us to take a look at these past fifty years in order to discern the ways of Providence that have led us to where we are now. Where are we? What is our position in the Church and in the world?!

In the commentary on the conciliar decree Nostra ætate (He is Risen n^o 69, June 2008), you could read the causes for the disappearance of the missions. The same causes brought about the disappearance of religious orders. If we still exist as a de facto Catholic religious community, it is due to the fact that we are opposed to this Reform of the Church that has destroyed around us all that was involved in it, however slightly.

This summer we published the commentary on Gaudium et Spes, “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”, in which we find that all the bishops of the earth had decreed the opening of the Church « to the modern world ». In other times, before the Second Vatican Council, that is, for nineteen centuries, the Church was closed to the world for which Jesus did not pray… The characteristic of religious orders was to be separated from the world, with the monastic cloister as a symbol of this separation. What resulted from the “opening” of the Church to the world that was decreed by the Council in 1962? An invasion of the spirit of the world and its miasmas, like an enormous flood, a tidal wave, a “tsunami” that swept everything away. Even the Chartreuse did not resist, as was shown by a recent film.

What about us? By the grace of God, we stand firm. The “first” order, the brothers, the second, the sisters, and the third, you, the “Phalangists of the Immaculate”, our Third Order, faithful to our Rule, approved by the ante-conciliar hierarchy in 1958, before the Council: Mgr Le Couëdic, who even wanted to sponsor our foundation, but also other bishops who had been consulted including the head of the Congregation of Religious in Rome. We are a very small flock, but our strength is in being closely united, in accordance with article 37 of our Rule:

« They will re-create amongst them this cohesion and this tradition that produced the fruitfulness and the doctrinal soundness of the ancient Orders in a humility and a docility quite contrary to modern pride but very favourable to true wisdom and the service of the Church » (Art. 37)

We can say that we have succeeded in this, thanks to the Counter-Reformation, and on condition of being against the reform of the Church and her “opening to the world”, by virtue of this other article of our Rule:

« The brothers will not believe in the World nor in its enterprises; they will not hope in them, they will not have love for them… They will, however, believe in the Church, they will live on her hope and in her charity. She will constantly be the object of their prayers, but above all the object of their admiration. They will identify themselves with her and it is in her that they will experience mystical union with God thrice Holy. » (Art. 11)

This is the complete opposite of the Council which, in Gaudium et Spes, announced that it loved the World and had decided to reform the Church in order to please it!

When we began fifty years ago under the reign of Pius XII, many worrisome signs presaged this « Copernican revolution », but the Pope stood in the way. All the religious orders that had come from the great monastic and missionary tradition to which we wished to attach ourselves as “missionary monks” still existed, and those who entered them proclaimed that they wanted “to leave the world”, to turn away from it and from the Devil who is its Prince, in order to serve the Church. This is why our Father wrote in the Rule:

« They will never compare or oppose their Order to any other community. Only one exists for their heart, the one that contains them all: the Catholic Church. » (Art. 28)

Today I will have to depart from this article, for the comparison is obvious. Our habit is the very conspicuous symbol of it: it alone constitutes a sort of challenge to the institutes that claim to draw their inspiration from Father de Foucauld, but also to all the other religious orders that have abandoned their habits precisely in order to melt, to vanish into the world… What a debacle that caused!

The habit, however, does not suffice. Proof of this is that a congregation of sisters wears it also, but they are dissidents who abandoned us in 1989 (!), a highly symbolic date, in order to rally to Gaudium et Spes and the Reform of the Church, that they had begun by combating in the school of the Abbé de Nantes. They obtained official recognition for it. This is proof that “the habit does not make the monk” and that we need to get to the bottom of things in order to answer the question that I posed at the beginning: What is our position in the Church? I reply: In the middle, in the heart of the Church.

In the middle, In medio Ecclesiæ, as is said of the Doctors of the Church. In the “heart” of the Church, for the Church has a heart, as St. Thérèse understood when she resolutely placed herself in this heart: « in the Heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be love. »

My conference will thus have two parts: rebellious against the conciliar heresy, because « the truth is ours », the CCR is a work of Truth. The second part: enemy of schism, faithful to the law, to authority, to the unity of Holy Church, the CCR is a work of Charity.

I. THE CCR: A WORK OF TRUTH.
REBELLIOUS AGAINST THE CONCILIAR HERESY

Fundamentally, it is simple: we are members of the Counter-Reformation, that is to say quite explicitly, against the Reform of the Church that was undertaken by the Second Vatican Council in 1962, four years after our foundation. It is nevertheless important that we experienced beforehand, from 1958 to 1962, four years of tranquil possession of our place in the Church, during which we received from the hands of our bishop the monastic cowl, proof of the profound communion between this prelate and the Abbé de Nantes, our Father and founder.

CATHOLIC.

We can apply to this period what our Father wrote about the year 1943 when he entered the seminary during the rule of Marshal Pétain, before the “liberation” of 1944 that unleashed the French civil war:

« Because I lived in the Church of all time and received there my first Catholic heritage and my first clerical impressions, in the absence of all contestation and division, I can say that I am the legitimate child of this Church, I am her truthful and faithful witness. Had I entered a year later, I would not have had this opportunity, and I would not be able to vouch for anything. From the start, I would have been the member of a party, of a faction, and necessarily against the others. Most certainly, for my masters I would have looked like an opponent. They would have discouraged or expelled me. Had they kept me, I would today only be able to identify with one tradition, one school, one party in the Church, which would have left me powerless. »

Think about all the chapels that share the “traditionalist” public today, and which are designated by the generic word “tradis”. The Sacerdotal Fraternity of Saint Pius X, Fraternity of Saint Peter, Legionaries of Christ, Institute of the Good Shepherd, etc. We are not part of this scene because we came before. Besides, they do not know us… Why? The explanation follows:

« As it is, I identify with the Catholic totality wherein I was born into clerical life in that year of 1943-1944, simply, peacefully devoted to the Church and accepted by her unreservedly. » Thus is it that Mgr Le Couëdic welcomed us in 1958. « A certain party, which will soon dominate, may claim that it already existed and mistrusted me, but it was then “clandestine”. » Congar and de Lubac in France, Hans Küng in Germany, etc. « Nothing that is clandestine is Catholic, and there is nothing that is Catholic that must make itself clandestine in the Church. » (Mémoires et Récits, Vol. II, p. 30-31)

1958 was before the great divisions that were to arise in the Church among good Catholics because of the “Reform” decreed by Pope John XXIII on 11 October 1962 at the opening of the Second Vatican Council.

In his “Letters to My Friends”, however, we see this war being prepared as early as Letter n^o 58, the first of the series on “The Mystery of the Church and the Antichrist”. It is dated September 1959, less than a year after the death of Pius XII. It was the beginning of hostilities. Against whom? Who was the adversary?

« If it were simply a question of world Communism and its adepts, or of Muslim fanaticism, which is expanding at a formidable rate, then one could have said that the danger has long been discovered and the enemy sufficiently unmasked. But now we are concerned with 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 external enemies. I say these things not lightly but with fear and trembling, because at the end of ten years research I now see the evil in its depth. »

MEMBERS OF THE COUNTER-REFORMATION

« The evil in its depth » was a change in religion that was being prepared, a religious revolution comparable to the Lutheran “Reformation” because it would affect the Sacraments, piety, dogma, the exercise of authority in the Church, and finally the “social doctrine” of the Church, that is to say the doctrine that regulates her role in society, her relations with « the modern world ».

French Algeria was the first battleground of this war of religion – for this is what it was! – that would lead to the destruction of Christianity, and spread throughout the whole earth thanks to the Council: Africa (Portuguese Angola), Asia (the Philippines), North America (Canada) and South America (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay). Europe (Franco and Salazar)! Our Father would persevere in the defence of Christianity in spite of and in opposition to the Council! No one followed: he was really alone, and everyone told us that it was crazy to follow a man who thought that he was right against everyone else!

For Algeria, he was alone, and all “God-fearing people” condemned him for “getting involved in politics”. Rome tried to exert blackmail on him: Put an end to this political struggle in exchange for the approval of your Rule… Keep in mind now the reply that would determine everything that followed:

I do not know yet what the plan of God is regarding our Congregation. If it is of God, it is not you who will prevent it from existing. This has been borne out to the present: 1958-2008! – despite many pitfalls.

On the other hand, I am sure that it is my duty to defend our brothers of Algeria, with or without your permission…

The same reasoning was valid for subsequent events: to defend the faith and unity of the Church is essential; too bad for the brothers and sisters… It was in the end so much better… the hundredfold, in fact.

Nevertheless, he remained dramatically alone. This is true to such an extent that if he had not been there in 1965 at the closing of the Council, there would have been no opposition, and the Reform would have triumphed. At the camp this summer, we saw how he persisted after the Council in appealing to Rome against Rome, and how he succeeded in mobilising throngs in his Crusade against the new catechism, a poisoned fruit of the Council. For the sake of their children, people stirred themselves: in 1969.

THE DUPLICITY OF MGR LEFEBVRE

This is when « Mgr Lefebvre arrived », according to the bulletin of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet (a Lefebvrist church), which is celebrating an anniversary: “The Episcopal Consecrations twenty years ago: an answer to apostasy”. It was the wrong answer, against which our Father has not ceased to protest because it meant responding to heresy by schism. They are so aware of the fact at Saint-Nicolas that they are very careful not to quote the Abbé de Nantes; for them he is a living, well-argued, irrefutable reproach. Thus, they do not speak about him in a dossier the declared aim of which is to educate « those who were born at the time of the consecrations in 1988, who were ten years old on a certain 30 June, and today wonder and ask themselves what attitude to adopt in the face of sometimes veiled, sometimes open opposition between those who mutually call themselves rallied, ecclesiasdeists, traditionalists, integrists, Lefebvrists, schismatics… »

What about the CCR? It alone is not mentioned because it alone is truly and only “Catholic”… because it is of the Counter-Reformation.

In fact, the truth is that before Mgr Lefebvre there was the Abbé de Nantes, who saw everything and understood everything before everyone else. As our Father says, if the man who forecasts the weather is able to tell you that it is raining at the moment when it is raining, that is worthless. If I listen to the forecast it is in order to know what the weather will be like tomorrow and the day after. In 1970, five years after the closing of the Council where Mgr Lefebvre sat as a member and where in the end he did nothing but sign all that was asked of him – including religious freedom! – there was enough time to see that it was raining.

« Dumbfounded, we learned about the plot to penetrate the Catholic hierarchy by the liberal sect; we saw its progress to the highest posts and its triumph at the Second Vatican Council… Nevertheless, there was Mgr Lefebvre who could not resign himself to it. »

In what year? In April 1970, relates Tissier de Mallerais, who was consecrated a bishop by Mgr Lefebvre in 1988: in 1970, « Monseigneur revealed to us what he really thought. » What? His intention to found a seminary.

He had already revealed it to us, the elder brothers, in 1965 at Paray-le-Monial, by saying to us that he wanted to do as the Abbé de Nantes, begin again from scratch by training seminarians… and he invited us to follow him because, you see, the Abbé de Nantes was on the wrong track by openly criticising the Pope, whom God could call back to him whenever He willed, perhaps tomorrow… We need to leave things to the Good God.

Mgr Lefebvre, however, already had his plan. Was it the plan of God? In order to carry it through, he resigned from his charge of superior general of the Congregation of the Fathers of the Holy Spirit, thus leaving the Chapter full liberty to proceed with the aggiornamento of the Congregation in the spirit of the Council, in full submission to the Pope and the Council.

As for him, he prepared the foundation of a seminary in order to ordain priests there constituted into a priestly fraternity under the title of the Sacerdotal Fraternity of Saint Pius X « in order to save the Catholic priesthood and, with it, to give the faithful the means to save their souls by receiving a true Catholic teaching and authentic, unadulterated Sacraments ».

Very well! Nonetheless, in order to open his seminary in 1970 at Econe, Switzerland, with all the necessary permissions, “ad experimentum”, he had to prove himself, to show himself submissive to the Pope and the Council, the causes of the destruction of the Faith… Since these permissions had been obtained for five years, this contradiction evolved for five years under the scrutiny of the Pope and the Roman authorities. Our Father told us: « Since they say that they obey the Pope and that they are under the orders of the Congregation of Seminaries and that they are under the protection of Mgr Mamie, the day when these people will say: “Shut up the shop!” they ought to obey. »

This contradiction worsened with the New Mass. In fact, the seminary was founded before the great debate on the Mass, but they found in it the reason for their seminary. « What makes me laugh, our Father also said, is that for years they said at Fontgombault (a traditionalist monastery): “The raison d’être of Fontgombault is the preservation of the traditional liturgy of St. Pius V.” One fine day they were told: “Either you accept the New Mass or we shut you down!” Fontgombault said: We officially accept the New Mass. In our crypts, we can continue to say the Mass of St. Pius V! »

Mgr Lefebvre, on the other hand, refused the liturgical reform, the new rites, particularly the New Ordo of the Mass. He recruited vocations in order to fill his seminary and save the « true Mass », the « true priesthood », in short: in order to constitute a traditional Church, the « true » one, in parallel with the conciliar Church but without openly opposing it as the Abbé de Nantes had done. On the contrary! Officially, Mgr Lefebvre was submissive to Pope Paul VI and he accepted all the acts of the Council. This is what he affirmed publically:

« The texts of the Council, and in particular that of “Gaudium et Spes” and the one on religious freedom, were signed by the Pope and the bishops, therefore we cannot doubt their contents. » (Conference given to the Union of Independent intellectuals, 1969)

He can be believed, because he himself had signed everything at the Council! In private, however, he encouraged our Father: « The evil is above all at Rome and in the Pope », he wrote to him on 25 September 1967.

The following year, in 1968, in Rome, at the end of the preliminary proceedings of the trial during which the writings of our Father against the Council and Pope Paul VI had been examined, although the Roman judges had been unable to find any error for which to reproach him, the Pope nevertheless claimed to impose a formula of general retraction on the Abbé de Nantes.

Our Father then asked the advice of Mgr Lefebvre who replied: « You cannot sign such a formula; you do not have the right to do it. »

Mgr Lefebvre, however, did not accompany him to the Holy Office to support and make his own the accusations of heresy against the Second Vatican Council and Pope Paul VI, which he had formulated in private.

Because Mgr Lefebvre wanted to remain in a state of peaceful coexistence with Pope Paul VI, he feigned ignorance about his apostasy, about the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and about the fight of the one against the other. He convinced people that they could serve the Church very well by leading a quiet life, staying aloof, out of the fray! It was as though his « Church of Tradition », could be substituted, without anyone realising it, without fuss, for the conciliar Church that he foresaw was going to go downhill and disappear. In the meantime, his work, with others like the monastery of the Barroux of Dom Gérard, prospered and drew to them almost all the traditionalists, turning them away from the combat of the Counter-Reformation.

The apologue of our Father was: « A woman declares to her husband: “As long as you are living with this streetwalker, I will not return home.” » Is that a break-up? No! It is a battle to save the marriage and resume living together.

« Another woman in the same situation refuses to see reality, excuses it, finds pretexts for the presence of this streetwalker in the house, and frequently goes away with her children, pitches her tent in the back of the yard and continues to claim to be submissive to her husband… until the day when he orders her to return for good; then she divorces him without any apparent reason other than his temperamental incompatibility. » (Manuscript, G. de Nantes, Congress 1989)

Thus it was with Mgr Lefebvre, affecting total submission to Paul VI, but setting himself up on his own in order to preserve the ancient rites. This attitude was going to result in a tragedy: divorce, in other words: schism.

The guile was all the more disloyal because the bishop was under no illusion regarding the personality of Paul VI. On 9 June 1973, he wrote to one of his benefactors: « Your faithfulness to the thought of the Abbé de Nantes is quite just when all is said and done, and whatever results from the enterprise undertaken in Rome – this refers to the action taken in April 1973 in connection with the Liber accusationis that our Father brought to Pope Paul VI – one result has been obtained: the problem has been posed publically. There will not be an excommunication of the Abbé de Nantes. Have no fear of it. In any case, it would not be valid. A serious offence is required to justify it. What is the offence? That of speaking the truth »

In 1975, our Father knew that Paul VI had taken the decision to withdraw the canonical authorisations for the existence of his seminary from Mgr Lefebvre. « According to whether the confrontation with the supreme authority was based upon the Catholic Faith or upon ecclesiastical discipline, Mgr Lefebvre would be either the victor or the vanquished, exonerated of all condemnation or stricken with just sanctions. » (CCR n^o 77 August 1976) The bishop could still have effected a public, solemn rupture of communion, motivated by a complaint for heresy, schism and scandal against Pope Paul VI, who would thus be held in legitimate suspicion. These proceedings instituted against the Pope himself would have guaranteed him legal immunity.

II. A WORK OF CHARITY, AGAINST SCHISM

Our Father arranged a meeting and went to Econe in order to try to convince Mgr Lefebvre of this. Alas! On the same day, Thursday, 13 February 1975, Mgr Lefebvre was in Rome, having purposely omitted to inform our Father. He was questioned by cardinals who were members of an ad hoc commission designated by Paul VI. They flourished the editorial of the CCR “Strike at the Head”, which had been published a few days earlier. They enjoined Mgr Lefebvre to declare if, yes or no, he was going to oppose Paul VI:

« Are you going to break your communion with Paul VI? » « Oh, no! » Mgr Lefebvre exclaimed. Three weeks later, on 3 March, the bishop renewed his disavowal: « I am greatly displeased to be associated with the Abbé de Nantes. » Cardinal Garonne insisted: « In theology, the hypothesis of a heretical Pope is really expressed. » « If it is true, I am unaware of it », Mgr Lefebvre answered him!

Two months later, on 6 May 1975, Pope Paul VI suppressed the permissions that he had granted five years earlier on an experimental basis. He withdrew the canonical approbation for the Sacerdotal Fraternity of Saint Pius X. Because Mgr Lefebvre had not publically manifested any doctrinal disagreement with Paul VI, he had nothing more to do than to close his seminary.

He made no reply to the Pope but disobeyed him by ordaining fifteen priests at Econe on 29 June 1976, in spite of the ban. The Pope sanctioned him: on 22 July 1976, Mgr Lefebvre was suspended a divinis. Our Father publically denounced the terrible break, the schism. Instead of openly withdrawing his signature from the Acts of the Council in order to engage in a Counter-Reformation struggle, from 1976 on the bishop became entrenched in a process of indiscipline in which he was more and more gravely at fault, to the point of leaving the communion of the Church. « Schism, our Father wrote, declares itself by rebellion and the refusal of the doctrinal, pastoral and juridical authority of the Apostolic and Roman Hierarchy. » (Act of Union, 28 September1974, in CCR n^o 55, October 1974, pp. 1-2; cf. Pour l’Église, Vol. III, p. 442

Mgr Lefebvre assumed without right a universal jurisdiction that he did not and could not have. By implanting his priories in various countries, he carried out a « practical break in communion with the whole Church as a constitutional and hierarchic body ». He established himself as a supreme, universal, direct and immediate authority, distributing powers, jurisdictions and Sacraments for the whole world… as would a Pope. He substituted his own authority – not openly but surreptitiously – in matters of sacramental and canonical jurisdiction for the divine hierarchical authority of the reigning Pope, by arguing that, according to Law, the priests that he had ordained possessed powers of jurisdiction throughout the entire world, given the « extraordinary circumstances ».

These circumstances, which in fact are provided for in Law, presuppose that the local hierarchy has been destroyed, annihilated, or detained. To say that this condition has been met, « is tantamount to judging that today there is no longer an episcopal body on earth », the Abbé de Nantes noted, « and that Mgr Lefebvre alone exists, that he is the only successor of the Apostles, and that his authority alone subsists in the eyes of men and God as a source of law. On the other hand, if there still exists on earth a visible, hierarchical, Catholic, apostolic and Roman Church, the divine order of which is established and maintained in accordance with the rules of the Canon Law as it stands, the justification attempted by Mgr Lefebvre is worthless, the confessions and marriages performed without the ordinary powers of jurisdiction and, in the case of marriage, without the personal delegation of the parish priest, are unquestionably invalid and null ipso facto. »

With Pope John Paul II, as with Paul VI, Mgr Lefebvre began by feigning submission: « Mgr Lefebvre, our Father observed, constantly negotiates with the Lenin of Rome on this purely canonical or pastoral basis: Give us the liberty of “experimenting with Tradition”, and we will let you continue your experiment with the conciliar Church… by accepting the Second Vatican Council interpreted according to the tradition of the Magisterium of the Church. » (Congress 1989)

This is tantamount to saying: « I accept “error” , interpreted in line with tradition. »

As Mgr Lefebvre was growing older, he declared in 1987 that he was determined to consecrate bishops in order to guarantee the survival of “his” (schismatic) Church after his death. He based this decision on the aberrant doctrine – which he himself had refuted in the Council – of a universal power of jurisdiction that he possessed through his consecration, as though coming immediately from Christ Himself, independently of the Roman Pontiff.

On the strength of this, on 30 June 1988, without pontifical mandate and against the will of the Sovereign Pontiff, he gave episcopal consecration to four priests of his Sacerdotal Fraternity. Thus it was that he indubitably consummated his break with the Church, wounding by this very fact its unity, denying its holiness, betraying its apostolicity, and breaking the catholicity of the Church.

The Sacerdotal Fraternity of Saint Pius X formed an autonomous church, alongside the Church, usurping the powers of the Pope and the Roman Curia. In 1991, while Mgr Lefebvre was still alive, it instituted ecclesiastical tribunals in order to grant dispensations for marriage impediments, annul marriages, release from religious vows, and lift the censures of the Church, including excommunications…

III. THE CONCERN FOR THE COMMON GOOD

Our Father had foreseen the baneful consequences of an integrist schism:

« The schism of the right now risks compromising the future of the Church because it will act as a foil on the masses that are disgusted with Modernism who, out of detestation for schism and horror of secession, will pour back in disorder under the power of the reformers. » What neither the Pope nor the Council succeeded in imposing, the insane conduct of those who scorn the whole of the Church of today, in order to shut themselves up in their chapels or in their clandestine sect, will accomplish. (CRC n^o 30, March 1970, p. 3)

The schism of Mgr Lefebvre had the expected revulsive effect. It brought a great part of the integrists into submission to the Pope. « Cause for rejoicing then, our Father wrote, especially, as they tell us, they have been made to sign no formula. They will therefore join that vast crowd of holy monks and innocent religious of all countries and the multitude of sincere faithful Catholics who have never been asked to believe or to practice anything so novel that it seemed to them to contradict the Catholic Faith and morals of all time. These are the good people, the Good Shepherd’s faithful flock, whose good faith and morals, trusting obedience and sure orthodoxy are again saving the Church’s catholicity and holiness in our day. »

« Yet there is a big difference between these good people with their clergy traditionally faithful to the Creed and to the Church and these adventurers who, like lost sheep and prodigal sons, have returned to the fold to be welcomed with open doors and feted by our pastors and masters of the “two and two make five.” Why this great celebration? I am only too happy that they should be made to sign nothing. It is because they had already conceded all, denied all and again accepted all without quibbling! »

« In fervently – too fervently – submitting to those who have opened their arms to them, Cardinals Mayer, Ratzinger, Decourtray, Lustiger, and beyond them Pope John Paul II, after only recently protesting against their “two and two make five”, are they not showing their opposition to have been nothing but sheer treachery and capriciousness? Have they not renounced the “two and two make four”, which earned them so many pains but also much admiration… and profit, now taking with them their devoted followers, leading them back to the fold they should never have left in the first place, but also to the conciliar heresy which they make a show of refusing to embrace? » (CCR n^o 232, Aug.-Sept. 1990, p. 3)

Our Father foresaw that these people who had rallied would experience « a slow, silent, insidious slide into the soft general apostasy, where they will embrace the whole conciliar heresy that they rejected in their youth. I fear they will even go to great lengths to make us forget their origins. »

« At best, those who have been won over, and their friends, will be able to keep themselves from both heresy and schism by adopting a secret – or purely pastoral – “counter-reformist” position, but never an open or provocative one as is ours. They may save their souls and keep the original purity of their Catholic faith in the name of traditional freedom of conscience and religious liberty as recognised by the Council, but with these obligatory reservations they will never join us in demanding that the Church be purified of the venom of heresy that is killing her. What is more, their necessary hostility towards us will ensure that they continue the harm that the Lefebvrism and the other traditionalisms have done to our combat, our “broad daylight plot” against the Conciliar heresy, the prime cause of the Church’s decadence and of the apostasy of the masses. » (ibid.)

Cardinal Mayer, the President of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, which was created shortly after 30 June 1988, was charged by Pope John Paul II with flushing out the traditionalists, in order to get them to rally more or less explicitly to the Council.

He did not even attempt that with the Abbé de Nantes! It must be said though that our Father had taken the initiative without ambiguity: « Condemn me,” I said to them at the time of the Council. Twenty-five years later, I say again, “Condemn me according to the rules and in the correct form. You who are the sovereign doctors of truth and universal pastors, organs of the divine Word, assisted by the Holy Spirit, in these matters of faith and morals, solemnly define your “two and two make five” and anathematise our miserable selves for our “two and two make four.”. Thus you will have struck dead the error that mocks your truth and put an end to our rebellion. » (CCR n^o 232, Aug.-Sept. 1990, p. 2)

It is unassailable! Well! Far from lending a hand to such a good cause, the “tradis” proved themselves to be “ungovernable”. Our Father compared them to children playing hopscotch, and always jumping outside of the “magic circle”: sometimes to the far side of it to the point of declaring the pontifical see vacant because the Pope is heretical, sometimes coming back to the near side of it and rallying to the conciliar Reform, in a blind submission to the Pope. Nevertheless, they are always outside of the centre where the CCR stands, rebellious to the conciliar heresy, but faithful to the law, the authority, and the unity of the Holy Church: in medio Ecclesiæ.

To assess the denial that this represents, it suffices to read carefully the commentary on Gaudium et Spes that our Father brought back from Hauterive and of which we have undertaken the complete publication.

St. John of the Cross, persecuted by his own brothers, wrote his most beautiful mystical poems in his prison in Toledo. In his “prison” at Hauterive, our Father had the opportunity to produce, not his most beautiful Spiritual Pages, for they were written at Maison Saint-Joseph in the midst of his brothers, but his most decisive polemical work. « With a pen soaked in vitriol », he accuses the Council, thus the Popes of the Council and their New Catechism, with heresy, schism, and scandal. This reading introduces us into a sacred atmosphere: that of the Apocalypse, in the chapter dealing with the combat of the angels, through intermediaries, wrestling in the timeless cell of a monastery. The duel is implacable, dramatic, between our Father, armed with his Catholic Faith, and Antichrist determined to dethrone the Saviour of the world in order to substitute himself for Him, letting out his war cry: Non serviam! « I will not serve! »

The first words of the first chapter of Gaudium et Spes let the sugary words of the « cunning » Serpent be heard (Gn 3:1)!

« According to the almost unanimous opinion of believers and unbelievers alike, all things on earth should be ordered to man as to their centre and summit. » (12, 1)

« I am flabbergasted by it! »our Father wrote, observing once again the ordinary way the Council had « of flinging out in the first words some grand principle or singular affirmation, without reference, without proofs, without any supporting arguments. Nothing! »

One reference is imperative though: « You will be like God. » (Gn 3.5)

« Let us not forget that the title of the chapter indicates the reason for this sensational introduction: it is “The Dignity of the Human Person” that suddenly withdraws him from his dung, from his dust, in order to raise him up to the level of kings, wise men and heroes. This is the evil. The difficulty comes from the number of persons who have been charitably convinced of their “dignity”, in such a way that in the end they are promoted: centre and summit of creation! »

We must return to Holy Scripture in order to dissipate this folly by reminding man that he is dust and to dust he shall return (Gn 3.19).

To oppose this cult of man is truly to confront Satan, as Jesus did in the desert. In the recapitulation that the Abbé de Nantes gives of this first chapter, the admission of his metaphysical despair on 21 November 1996 on the feast of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary, then his recovery through Holy Scripture, is really an indication of this. In the book of the Apocalypse, the confrontation between Michael and the Dragon follows the apparition of the « great sign » of the Woman whom the sun adorns. After having compared his adversary, Karol Wojtyla, to Goliath, which the adulators of the « Polish giant » will not challenge, our Father, « a too small David before this gigantic Philistine », seizes, however, his sling and shoots a white stone:

« Catholic theology speaks first about God according to what God revealed about Himself and, descending step by step, ends up speaking about Creation, sin, and the work of preparing the salvation promised to man; then about the Incarnation of the Son of God, in accordance with the essential corpus of the Creed; finally about the sending of the Holy Spirit to his Apostles for the institution of His one Holy Church. »

Consequently, « it seems to me that a single consideration needs to be made from the outset. Did our bishops reflect that a man, one sole man in the world, did indeed claim this universal supremacy, this kingship over the earth, Heaven, and Hell, this superior authority and this central responsibility over everything, absolutely everything? It was Our Lord Jesus Christ, about whom Pilate derisively said: “Behold the Man!” Jesus Himself announced that this super eminent place belonged to Him and that it would be recognised when He would have consummated His redeeming Sacrifice, saying: “Now is the time of judgement on this world; now the Prince of this world will be driven out. And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to Myself.” (Jn 12:31-32)

« Then, universal man, who is “no one”, promoted to the centre and summit of the world by a universal acclamation to which a Roman Council joined its unanimous approbation, seems to supplant Jesus Christ, on the suggestion of the Prince of this world, who, driven out, seems to have regained strength. When the Council entitles this paragraph “man in the likeness of God”, this man without religion, stateless, without any other perfection than that of being man, seems to me to be the object here of a cult of self-worship, on the part of an apostate world! »

CONCLUSION

The doctors who examine our Father say that it is a “miracle”. It is at least a “mystery”. I will tell you what mystery:

He has had a fine “reign”, as our Canadian friends say. With all the strength of his genius, he struck at the head of the tremendous heresy of modern times, like David attacking Goliath. In a total abuse of authority, the civil and ecclesiastical authorities paid no heed.

God wants him to remain a living, silent reproach, but his face, moulded on the Holy Face of the Holy Shroud of which he was the humble defender, still speaks.

« Papa’s face told me so many things… » (St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus )

He said that he would see the renaissance of the Church, yet it is he, the renaissance of the Church! Our studies at Our Lady of Fatima Camp have demonstrated this. For he once again animated the Camp of the Phalange,

1^o by his simple presence, his serene, peaceful radiance;

2^o by the unmistakable comparison that can be made with St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort whose teaching we have meditated and sung;

3^o by his own teaching, the scope of which we have begun to assess by studying the period of the pontificate of Paul VI that followed the Council (1966-1978), a period of extraordinary fruitfulness during which the Church found herself attacked from all sides, but when he alone stood firm on all fronts!

The introductory conference recalled the circumstances of the trial held in Rome in 1968, before the Holy Office. Its dismantlement had been plotted by Cardinal Frings and Fr. Ratzinger but our Father demanded and obtained its reopening for him alone. During the preliminary proceedings, the defendant, our Father, turned into the prosecutor of the conciliar Reform. To the pure and simple retraction that the judges wanted to impose on him at the behest of the Pope, he responded with a magnificent profession of faith which the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was content to answer by declaring him « disqualified ». Thus no true canonical sanction, either doctrinal or disciplinary, hangs over him today: a « disqualification » released to the press for a priest who accuses the Pope and the Council of heresy, schism and scandal! They must really have nothing to reply to him because he is in the right!

In 1969, the crusade against the new catechism mobilised throngs, and it was in order to break this momentum that the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith « notified » the press that the Abbé de Nantes was « disqualified »! What broke the momentum of the CCR, however, was the bad break of the integrist schism. There were better things to be done: instead of separating from Rome either by claiming that the Holy See was vacant (sedevacantism) or by acting as though there was no longer a Pope (Lefebvrism), the Abbé de Nantes appealed from the Pope to the Pope!

In doing so, he strengthened his real communion with Rome.

Then he founded the League of the CCR in order to divert traditionalists from schism and keep them in the Church. It can be said that in that year, 1970, our Father saved the unity of the Church, torn between those who put their hope in the Masdu and those who, not wanting anything to do with it, left the Church in order to create their own chapel… He also proved the infallibility of the Pope… who not only did not condemn him, but did not reply to him, because… infallibly, Paul VI was in the wrong! If the Pope were not infallible, he would have replied no matter what, he would have condemned the Abbé de Nantes… Yet because he is infallible and nevertheless did not want to renounce his error… he did not reply!

What does it mean to be a member of the CCR? It means to hope in the Church – and not in the Masdu – and to have a global doctrinal project in all areas, including liturgical renewal, that a masterly study on the Sacraments led our Father to prepare, after having shown that by denying the validity of the new rites (not only of the Mass), the integrists were repeating the error of the Donatists, forgetting that in the person of the priest, it is Christ who acts. The simple reminder of this truth reopens the way to an intelligent traditionalism, the necessary highroad between the abysses of schism and heresy. The fruit of this supernatural wisdom is twofold.

First it is the immense work of our Father. In the end, thanks to this terrible fight of Counter-Reformation, he alone has proved himself to be the true reformer and bold creator of the Church of tomorrow, without having sought to do so, through his living faithfulness that was expressed in his courses of Kerygmatics, in 1972-1973, and Apologetics, in 1974, in which he developed the rational and historical proofs of Revelation.

This is poles apart from the charismatism that is the great temptation for our young people today. Yet, in order to withdraw with horror from this diabolical imitation, it suffices to remember what the holiness of the baptised is. The Abbé de Nantes outlined its program in his “A Mysticism for Our Times”, in 1978, the year of the death of Paul VI and the accession of John Paul I, the smiling Pope. Beauty is the privileged way to this mysticism since it is the very smile of God that would enlighten the face of the Common Father for thirty-three days…

The second fruit of this supernatural wisdom is to have maintained at all costs a living bond between the Catholics of the Counter-Reformation and the other Catholics of the parish, the diocese, the whole Church, saving us from confusing the Church with her cancer, the faithful people with their lying pastors.

« Thus is open the way that, tomorrow, will spread throughout the world the goodness of Jesus Christ, through the tender, omnipresent, maternal and ecclesial intercession of Mary Immaculate to all Her children. »

Amen!

Brother Bruno of Jesus.