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!

FORTY YEARS AGO, THE COUNCIL

II. THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH

Our second “session” at the “Permanence”, Thursday, 27 March, was spent in a critical study of the dogmatic Constitution De Ecclesia, also called Lumen gentium. This criticism of the Acts of the Council is the main axis of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. « It has so often been said, wrote the Abbé de Nantes already in 1972, that Vatican II was going to start the Church off again on new foundations that it is impossible for us not to find in this very novelty the primary reason for this crisis. It is therefore necessary to study the novelties of Vatican II if we wish to detect the evil and find a solution to the decline of the Church. And the Church will be more beautiful, at Vatican III. » (CCR n^o 23, p. 5)

One of our students had the difficult task of defending the conciliar novelty.

Alix: « For me, I would never have been able to live in the Church before the Council, too set in its institutional structures, its legalism, its hypocritical formalism! Today, the Church is love, liberty, spontaneity. It is a young, open, tolerant Church! At the World Youth Days of Toronto, for example, believers of all religions were invited to take part in the activities. We met young people from the entire world, shared their culture and their aspirations, exchanged and fraternised in a unique human and spiritual experience. We had the exciting feeling of forming one unique people, animated by the Spirit. Christ Himself called on us to be “the salt of the earth and the light of the world”… Our father Bishops were of course among us, with the concern of serving us, of accompanying us, we really felt that they were listening to us. This, in my opinion, is what the Church is and nothing else! »

A FAITHFUL WITNESS TO THE CHURCH

Let us return to the truth, at the school of our Father. Before our modern times, the Church never felt the need to justify herself. She was satisfied to exist, to be a permanent miracle, a “Sign” raised up among the nations, to the exact extent of her fidelity to her divine Founder. And her children vied with one another to delight in their Mother’s perfections:

« The very thought of belonging to the Church is enough to renew the soul’s jubilation, for the Church is holy, like Her Spouse Jesus Christ, whom She has been made to resemble to such an extent, so that there is nothing in the world so beautiful, so wise and so majestic as Her face and Her whole being... » wrote our Father on 19 March 1963 in his Letter to my Friends n^o 134 (in CCR n^o 59, February 1975, p. 1)

To stand in the way of Protestant heresy, then that of modernism, the Church of the Counter-Reformation presented itself, however, as a « perfect, visible and hierarchical society founded by Jesus Christ, whose members adhere to the same doctrine in submission to the same Roman authority, so as to obtain, by the grace of the Sacraments, eternal life ».

To this juridical and exact definition, that the First Vatican Council already wanted to develop, Pius XII added a more complete, dogmatic, allegorical and spiritual view in his encyclical “Mystici Corporis Christi” of 29 June 1943: the Church, he taught, is a social Body, living and life-giving, whose uncreated soul is the Holy Spirit and whose created soul is the hierarchy. This very year, our Father entered the seminary:

« During this first year, I entrusted myself to the Church like a child to his mother, in order to receive everything from her and from no one else… Because I lived, I received my first Catholic heritage and my first clerical imprint in the Church of always, in the absence of all contestation and division, I can say that I am the legitimate child of this Church, the truthful and faithful witness… A certain party, which will soon dominate, may claim that it already existed and mistrusted me, but it was then “clandestine”. 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)

A SACRILIGEOUS REFORMISM

In the years that followed the Liberation, this party of the contestation began to breathe a bad spirit into the Church of France. Its doctor was the Dominican Yves Congar, whose subversive doctrine the Abbé de Nantes had denounced as soon as his book “True and False Reform in the Church” was published in 1951. Challenging his distinction, harbinger of the great upheavals, between the « unalterable structures » of the Church and the « accessory, changeable superstructures », our Father protested:

« I do not love a skeleton nor vital organs, I love Her face, Her sparkling clothes and even Her sandals, Her entire being. With the spiritual canticle I will sing of the hair on Her neck that charmed us as well, her children, like it ravished the heart of her Spouse. Oh, may those who love the Church understand! In her features and her slightest gestures, something indescribably exquisite enraptures us to the summit of her essential Mystery. The liturgical movements, the hymns, the ornamentation of churches, the words of the catechism and the sermon, this flesh, this manner of walking, the sound of the voice, the colour of the eyes, revealed the very soul, immediately, and we were struck, intoxicated by it, for Her ancient and universal soul, Her intimate life that came to comfort us, was the Holy Spirit in Person! » (Letter to my Friends n^o 178, 6 August 1964)

Furthermore, the Biblical notion – so rich – of the “People of God” was from that time twisted by the progressivist theologians from its Catholic and reactionary context into a revolutionary and democratic sense, according to which people in the Church would have the right and the capacity to govern themselves, the hierarchy exercising only a supportive, service role.

Now, « order and the true faith can only be saved by the parish priests in their parishes, the bishops in their diocese and the Sovereign Pontiff surrounded by his ministers at the centre, at Rome. All that is done to the contrary serves disorder and confusion. God grant that the authority of the Pope and the bishops emerge strengthened from the great struggle that is brewing » wrote the Abbé de Nantes, on 1 December 1962. The same day in the conciliar aula, the progressivist minority succeeded in keeping out of the discussion of the Fathers, the traditional schema prepared long before by the Curia, and in substituting for it another one, of a totally different spirit.

A LUMINOUS MYSTERY

The first chapter of the Constitution “Lumen gentium” states from the outset that the Church is a Mystery. The traditionalists protested in vain that the Church was not, at first sight, a mystery, since her historical and hierarchical reality made her visible to everyone, a curtain of artificial fog spread over the precise and clear classical definition.

« Christ is the Light of nations. Because this is so, this Sacred Synod gathered together in the Holy Spirit eagerly desires, by proclaiming the Gospel to every creature, to bring the light of Christ to all men, a light brightly visible on the countenance of the Church. »

The Abbé de Nantes denounced in these first words of the Counciliar text a new sense given to the word of Jesus. « I am the light of the world » « Whereas the Ancients would have understood this term as an attractive perfection, justifying Christ and the Church to convert and recapitulate within themselves all men, our Moderns intend to suggest the idea of a service that the Church must render to the world in its secular progress… It is no longer the Light of the Burning Bush which attracts men to the contemplation of the Divine Presence in the Desert. It is the light of the street lamp, of the powerful floodlight that men of the Church hold above the building site of the world in construction in order to light up the labour of their brothers, believers or unbelievers. » (CCR n^o 23, p. 5)

The supernatural Catholic idea gave way to humanist ideology. The Church was no longer self-sufficient. « She is no longer oriented towards the service of God, drawing men to this superior life for which she holds the keys. She is busy, with a passion for the world, for its success, providing it vaguely with an energy said to be divine, a light of the Spirit, a Christlike unction, in order to allow it to attain its complete fulfilment on earth. One could soon come to the conclusion that wherever “spiritual” or “cultural” animation, generosity, liberating struggles take place among men, in a new form, the Church is there! » (ibid.)

A PEOPLE OF GODS

To assist this extension that the most revolutionary hoped for, the novelty was introduced surreptitiously by Cardinal Suenens. When the moment came to deal with the hierarchy, the Belgium prelate proposed that one attend first of all to the “People of God”, on the false pretext that the members of the hierarchy are a part of this people and that they are in their service. The majority of the Fathers exclaimed that this proposition was inspired by the Holy Spirit!

« It was a revolution. It was as though you defined the family as consisting of a certain number of real live children, some of whom are designated to be parents, because it is their role to be at the beck and call of the remaining children. What would you say of this? That this definition falls down through idealism: just what is this “life”, where do the children get it from, when and how is it able to persist? And it falls down through a major omission: it disregards the fact of generation, an initial and constituent fact without which all the rest is subverted. This collection of children no longer has to recognise any authority if the parents, whose essential role has been denied, see themselves reduced to the level of the domestics of their progeny! Isn't it absurd? This is precisely what was invented at the Council, by simple inversion of the order of the chapters of the constitution Lumen gentium. There is, first of all, the People, and this People is presented, already existing, already illuminated, sanctified, gathered together before the slightest intervention of the Hierarchy, by the direct, invisible, disinterested, unexpected, unlimited action of the Holy Spirit! The structure of the Church is inverted and its boundaries brought down. At last, we can breathe again! » (CCR n^o 23, p. 6)

And this people, created by the Spirit, is of course adorned with all the perfections, all its members are declared « prophets, kings and priests ». Luther had already advocated this in his time, recalled a Protestant observer at the Council, who did not hide his satisfaction in seeing the Catholic Church rallying to the key idea of the Reformation. This “People of God”, a marvellously friendly formula went beyond Catholic boundaries into heretical, schismatic and pagan lands:

« All men are called to be part of this Catholic unity of the people of God, which in promoting universal peace, presages it. And there belong [sic!] to or are related to it in various ways, the Catholic faithful, all who believe in Christ, and indeed the whole of mankind, for all men are called by the grace of God to salvation. » (Lumen gentium, n^o 13) Since then the Popes have taken it upon themselves to make endless, significant gestures in view of the great universal gathering in love Have no fear! Open boundaries to Christ, especially those of the Church, by destroying its ramparts!

« A CITY HALF IN RUINS »

To this people inspired by the Spirit, Chapter III of the Constitution conferred, all the same, a hierarchy, giving it the mission of exercising its powers of teaching, of sanctification and of government, insisting on its role of “service” to the aforementioned people.

Let it be understood: the Holy Roman Church has always been compared to the Jerusalem of the Old Covenant, « built as a city, in one united whole » (Ps 122.3) Consequently, it can be deduced that, wherever Her divine Constitution, Her traditional order and Her unchanging doctrine is safeguarded, the edifice will remain standing, somehow. Wherever they are called into question, there will be nothing but ruins and desolation.

This is what took place in the conciliar Church: the leaders of the “People of God” who forgot the duties of their function, pertaining to the good of their subjects, saw their authority destroyed in the storm that followed the Council. Others, such as Cardinal Luciani who became the holy Pope John Paul I, did not forget them and set as a line of conduct for himself the warning of his predecessor, Saint Gregory: « May the Pastor be close to the faithful with compassion. Forgetting his rank, may he consider himself to be the equal of his good faithful, but may he not fear to exercise against the wicked the rights of his authority. » (Homily at Saint John of Lateran, on 23 September 1978)

How can one’s mission be maintained, when collegiality – another epic battle of the Council – deprived the bishops of all personal authority, to the sole benefit of irresponsible assemblies, governed themselves by their bureaucracies. For the invasion of the democratic spirit into the Church with the help of the Council brought about the establishing of a parliament quite contrary to the traditional discipline of the Church. A new legalism was substituted to the former one, more demanding and more arbitrary, in the guise of good sentiments and of utopian “sheepfolds”. « Before the Council, our bishops, exercised a real and personal authority over a limited territory. They now exercise over immense regions and an unlimited universe, an appearance of power without real authority. »

Fortunately for the Church, a Nota prævia added to the text of Lumen gentium, made a last minute correction to what was too revolutionary in the new Constitutional Charter. But, as our Father pointed out, « what a strange idea to promulgate the poison in the conciliar Act and its antidote in an annexe »!

The promotion of the laity, to which Chapter IV is devoted, heralded many disorders as well. « The day when worship gives way to culture, the heavenly to the temporal, the day when politics encroaches on religion, the first role passes from the priesthood to the laity. To it falls, first of all, the task of “transforming structures in accordance with the Gospel”. The “ministers of the Gospel” hold the streetlight but it is the laity who do the work. » (CCR n^o 23, p. 7) Already Luther dreamed of such a secular Christianity, a faith without worship, that does not get in the way of “good business”.

We will come back to the last chapters of the Constitution: holiness offered to everyone, religious life, and individual last ends. They seem to maintain the ancient religion like erratic blocks of another age, in a context that seems quite unreal. The project is « a voyage to Venus, an invitation to dreamland, a good news born yesterday and still radiating with wonderful fire for the approaching happiness of all mankind. Old believers will not recognise in this language the gravity and humility of the true religion and of its austere preaching. » (Critical Analysis of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, CCR n^o 253, p. 16)

Finally, Chapter VIII, on the Virgin Mary, is added here as an appendix, without any connection with what precedes other than its insistence on showing the spirit of humility, of poverty and of service of She who called herself the “Servant of the Lord”. In the detestable democratic standpoint of Lumen gentium, one suffers from the abuse heaped on the Immaculate, Queen of Heaven, Mediatrix of all grace!

TOMORROW, VATICAN III

In the restoration of the Church through a Council of Catholic Reconciliation, the Virgin Mary will play an essential role. She will be at the centre and the origin of any renewal. Her apparitions of the XIX^th and the XX^th century have sufficiently demonstrated the intimate connection between God’s plans for Her and for the Church that she carries in Her Heart. Today, it is in this Immaculate Heart that our Catholic faith and our hope in the Resurrection find refuge, like on the day of Holy Saturday. Tomorrow, thanks to Her, everyone will understand that there is nothing better, nothing more true and more beautiful, than to belong to the Roman Catholic Church.

This Church is “One” and perfect, it is God’s only durable project in history, the only Ark of salvation for persons and societies. This Mother is “Holy”, an instrument of grace, the means and the place of the true religion. “Catholic”, she forms an organised whole, a mystical Body whose Head is Christ and whose Soul is the Holy Spirit, bringing His divine energy to strengthen her desire for fidelity. And since nothing good comes about without authority, she is “Apostolic”. It is through the Apostles and their legitimate successors that the work of God is accomplished. This is why, today like yesterday, the cry of the Abbé de Nantes and his children rise up towards our legitimate Pastors.

III. THE HOLY LITURGY

On Thursday, 3 April, the debate at the “Permanance” opened in the form of a “radio broadcast from Notre-Dame”:

Camille: Religious observance has undergone since 1962 a great change. In your opinion, does that result from the texts of the Council themselves or from the interpretation that was given to them?

Marie: The Council is not in question here, for her constitution on the Liturgy is a masterpiece. Only, you have to understand that “for a new world, you need a new Church”. I believe that worship should be renewed for a more conscious, a more active and a more spontaneous participation of the faithful. When you refer to the texts of the Council, nothing deplorable can be found, by way of reforms! It is later on that there were excesses and I am the first to suffer from them. The solution? It is simple: come back to the letter of the Council, and everything will get back to normal.

Sophie: For written letters kill, but the spirit gives life. Come now… we must not stop along the way but we must move forward in the direction indicated by Council. It created a movement; it would be an offence to the Spirit that animates the People of God to limit ourselves to a text that is already forty years old. The liturgy must become a high point of encounter between believers, of dialogue that touches men and women in what preoccupies them the most: work, sports, culture, love and education. I participated last December in a day organised by the new Archbishop of Lyon. We were a thousand young people gathered together on the theme of “An all-out celebration, for Fraternity and the Eucharist”. After a time of prayer, we participated in a treasure hunt in the city: “Hunt a treasure, find your brother!” It was a really nice day, rich in sharing and listening which ended with a Eucharist.

A PROMISING LITURGIC RENEWAL

The origin of the present liturgical reform does not go back to the Council, but to the XIX^th century! It was not due to malicious intent of a Protestant or modernist infiltration, but sprang from the very heart of the Church. The ancient maxim Lex orandi, lex credendi, that Bossuet translated by: « We believe as we pray », explains the fact that the Popes who were the firmest in the faith were the instigators of an authentic liturgical renewal, since Blessed Pius IX supporting Dom Guéranger in his restoration of the Roman liturgy, Saint Pius X “the Reformer”, who desired that « his people pray sure of beauty » and « participate in the holy mysteries as the indispensable source of life », up to Pius XII, recovering the enlightened zeal of his predecessors in order to promulgate in 1947 the encyclical Mediator Dei, « a firm, dogmatic, magisterial act but also a liberating and pastoral act » (CCR n^o 80, p. 5).

Under the direction of these Popes, not at all “fixist” or “integrist”, a team of scholarly Benedictines, driven on by a sound faith, honest in their service of the Church, worked at Solesmes, at Beuron in Germany, at Maredsous in Belgium, to promote this movement. One only has to think of the admirable reform of Holy Week, promulgated by Pius XII in 1955! The Council arrived just in time to sanction fifty years of studies and experiments.

A MOST BEAUTIFUL TEXT, BUT…

From the promulgation of the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium by the Fathers of the Council on 4 December 1963, the Abbé de Nantes had the impression that he was before a theoretically very beautiful text, coupled, however, with uncertain and disturbing “practical applications”:

« We find therein our faith, for which we suffer violence, oppression and persecution from the progressivists, our brothers, who have no other will than to lower the flame of Christian life from Heaven towards the earth, from the Spirit to the flesh, from contemplative adoration towards social struggle, from divine to human, a place of boredom, sin and despair. If they adopt the principles of this Constitution, if they organise their apostolate and their teaching around them, I maintain that we will all be reconciled! The discord lies in this essential point, and not elsewhere: religion is the service and the worship of God, not of man, but of man for God alone! » (Letter n^o 162, January 1964)

Our Father, one month after this promulgation, foresaw with anguish, the subversive use that would be made of the conciliar text by the active element of progressivism claiming to follow the “spirit” that blows at the Council:

« The adaptations authorised by the Council must not be made to seem to be a stage, already outmoded, finally accepted by the leaders who are always outdated, on route to a more radical evolution for which it maintains to be the brilliant and free instigator! This must be avoided at all costs. This would be a misunderstanding, a deception with tragic consequences. The Council must not take over from the revolution […]. When will we understand that heresy threatens the life of the Church, that it seeks to usurp all authority, divert from every wise measure, from every decision of reform to turn them to our ruin? As long as they are not denounced, rendered powerless, the faithful will seek their security in an integrism hostile to all change. So that the great program of liturgical and moral restoration and renovation may be peacefully accomplished in the Church of France, she must first of all be freed from the revolutionary threat. » (Letter n^o 163)

Alas! The conciliar revolution was already underway. Nothing would be able to stop the avalanche torn off of the mountain.

AN IMMENSE DEMOLITION SITE

Eight years later, the Abbé de Nantes explained that the main error of the Second Vatican Council was to have dealt, first of all, with the liturgy while the truths of the faith which must form its basis, which must throw light on and orient the entire work, were no longer certain, but on the contrary contested. » (CCR n^o 24, p. 9)

In the vagueness of the reforms in process, a bad spirit crept in, tinged with modernism, for which religion is no longer a divine work, revealed, imposed from on high, but a “real life” experience, either collective or personal, and with progressivism which considers worship to be a shameful escape, a selfish preoccupation compared with concern for apostolate of the masses.

The malfeasance consisted in, « after having changed the liturgy so as to make it into the expression of the new faith, forcing us to adopt it on the pretext that the Church has always proposed to the people its law of faith in and through the forms of her liturgy ».

The second error, just as fatal, was to have announced a complete revision of liturgical rites, « before defining the exact nature of the hierarchical constitution of the Church. On the contrary, to have dealt with it in a climate of demagogy and revolt. » This was to neglect the priestly character of the liturgy, « the most divine of human works ». Everyone was free to experiment, since the “Spirit” blows like a gale on the People of God! Then they began removing and simplifying, in the name of pastoral effectiveness, and more often than not, to demolish and entirely wreck havoc in the Sanctuary. To reconstruct, it was another question!

The liturgical reform was no longer a matter for the hierarchy alone, for the Apostolic See and its Congregation of Rites or for each bishop in his diocese, but for the assemblies appointed for that purpose, from the Council’s “Consilium” commission right down to the lowliest of parish committees, forming a new parallel hierarchical chain, a canker of our modern democratic and decadent societies, driven by a sectarianism hitherto unknown in the Church. « The liturgy was the first thing to fall into the hands of reform maniacs, erudite archaeologists, professionals of subversion and group dynamics. » (ibid., p. 8)

« Being no longer either a source of grace or sacred praise, the modern liturgy has become histrionic, fastidious, painfully trite, void of mystery, dead. » The decline of our parishes was rapid. « Paganism is at our doorsteps », announced the Abbé de Nantes, thirty years ago. This is where we now are.

TOMORROW, WHICH LITURGY?

How can one walk against such a current, reconstruct after such a cataclysm? On this point, our Father is cautiously and supernaturally optimistic: « Even though the feverish activity of the protagonists of the liturgical movement from the beginning of the century, has ended up transforming the Church into a heap of ruins, it has however, accumulated a large amount of material at the disposition of the wise builders of the future Counter-Reformation. (CCR n^o 24, p. 11)

The Third Vatican Council will, first of all, establish the divine faith of the Church, in opposition to modernist illuminism, which substituted the cult of man in the place of the cult of God. The holy Liturgy will become once again, something eminently sacred, a participation in the “Mystery of faith”. Is not the Mass the very Action of the Lord Jesus Christ, made present by his Church?

After having established the mystical and hierarchical nature of the Church, Vatican III will also recall that the liturgical function is a sacerdotal function. The priest acts in the Assembly “in persona Christi”. « This power reserved for the sacerdotal Body has always spared the Church the fixism of dead religions and, at the other extreme, the mobilism of worship handed over to the whims of any human power or to the masses. An admirable reality that Vatican II ruined, that Vatican III will restore: the regulating role of Church life taken up by the clergy. » (ibid., p. 10)

Finally, the liturgy will regain its pastoral character. « The disastrous confusion made at Vatican II between pastoral and liturgy destroyed the liturgy and devaluated the pastoral », wrote our Father. Divine worship must not be stifled nor concealed, but prepared by a well adapted catechesis, so as to be celebrated by the entire people in intimate union with its pastor.

« Once the dogmatic reality of the worship of God has been assured and defended against any offensive return of the cult of Man, obedience to the will of God clearly signified by the sacred responsibility entrusted to the clergy to administer holy things and by the docility of the faithful to accept them according to the unchanging rites, then liturgical life will return to normal and will once again become, by the grace of God, an edifying, fruitful, unanimous work. » Our Father has many projects on this subject. Already, as country parish priest, he practiced in his parishes a “pedagogical bilingualism”.

« Vatican III will embark, he wrote, and all of us along with it, on vast and grandiose restoration, in which the liturgical Tradition put back in honour, will breathe new life into a body of well studied pastoral reforms. Everyone will find therein such spiritual benefit, such enthusiasm that this synthesis of new and old will create unanimity and concord amongst us in a general amnesty. One must have a big heart, delivered from all narrow-mindedness and all a priori other than the faith. Every question deserves to be examined, going beyond systematic conservatism and blind reformism. Both of these are lazy solutions, cowardly and gregarious. True traditionalism is progressivist. It consists in conserving and enriching liturgical life by an effort of piety, intelligence, imagination and zeal. » (CCR n^o 24, p. 11)

But, it is the Virgin Mary herself who will work the miracle of breathing a new life into our poor Catholic liturgy, so that « our “conversation” may be in Heaven » (Ph 3.20), and that devotion to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary extend to the ends of the earth. » Is not the Immaculate, in the vision of Tuy, at the foot of the Cross, at the heart, therefore, of our ceremonies? It is She who will, once again, show us how to please God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and with what love we must carry out the prescribed rites, so that we may be assured that He gives Himself to us with his grace, and in return, our thanksgivings are accepted by his divine Majesty, in the joy of love and filial piety, the intoxicating drink of the Elect.

Brother Thomas