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

« A LARGE CITY HALF IN RUINS »

« Several other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious were climbing a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a large Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with its bark; before reaching there, the Holy Father passed through a large city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way » (Third Secret of Fatima)

VATICAN II CALLED INTO QUESTION

« What shall we do with Vatican II? » asked Jean Rigal in La Croix of 20 February 2003:

« Forget it gradually? Endeavour to extend the promising paths that it opened? Undertake studies on entirely new realities?

« These questions are in the hands of Catholics, replies a theologian, personally according to the responsibility of each, and collectively [sic!]. John Paul II took care, several times, to specify that “the teaching of the Council remains the path on which the Church must advance towards the future”. » And then he added: « Vatican II can not be properly “welcomed” if not from within its intrinsic dynamic, in the spiritual and institutional transition that it wanted to carry out, in the fervour that it instilled in the Church… A wide open worksite is offered to us. »

We see the dialectic that for forty years has brought into conflict the supporters of the Conciliar Reformation who refer to the letter of the texts and to it alone, with those of the Permanent Reformation, claiming to draw from their “spirit”, in order to forge ahead. In other words, the tardi, seeing the building « half in ruins », say: that is enough now! While the zelanti want to complete the work and destroy what remains standing. What a pity!

And if one saw fit to ask him who, for forty years, has not ceased to announce such « ruins » and who was opposed to this insane enterprise of autodemolition from the beginning, the first and the only one! –this autodemolition that assumed the flattering titles of “reformation”, “aggiornamento”, “openness to the world”? If only one went to the trouble of questioning the Abbé de Nantes, the founder of the Catholic Counter-Revolution, on the future of Vatican II, or rather on that of the Catholic Church, which alone matters?

He had already replied on 11 October 1965, to the journalist, André Giovanni who had asked him:

« Give us an undisputed, an absolute sign of the truth of your convictions, of the charity of your fight. A sign of hope!

– This sign, we all have it and it belongs to everyone of us, it is the Secret of Fatima. When the Blessed Virgin decided to enlighten her children, one can only fall to one’s knees to listen to Her. »

The “Permanence” of Paris has decided to resume the study of the criticism of the Conciliar texts. It was developed by our Father at the very moment when they were being elaborated, discussed, promulgated (volumes II and III of the Letters to My Friends [in French only] ), and then once again, ten years later, in a masterful way, in « Preparing Vatican III » (volume 1972 of the Catholic Counter-Reformation). Long extracts of these studies are found on our French Web Site (www.crc-resurrection.org).

THE SPIRIT OF A NEW RELIGION

On 11 October 1962, a new spirit raised a storm in the Church. A new religion attempted to substitute itself for the ancient one. To understand this, one only has to compare the opening discourse of the Council, which contains not less than eight heresies! with the Letter that the parish priest of Villemaur wrote the same day to his friends, in which one can sense the dawning of the angor Ecclesiae that seized him at the sight of the media hype that surrounded the Council:

« The Council has quickly ceased to be a divine fact prepared for in silence and prayer, in the ardour of penance, and has taken the very human shape of an enormous news item, a sort of National Radical Party Congress. In the eyes of the faith, it ought to be a thrilling mystery, a grandiose hope, because the Holy Spirit Himself should come to the aid of His Church to give her a clear and visible impulse. But in all the articles, discussions and surveys, open to exaggeration to make a greater impression, the Council has become a purely sensational human event… » (Letter to My Friends n^o 120 [French edition] )

In his speech, Pope John XXIII showed his « complete disagreement with the prophets of doom who always announce catastrophes » and promised that the Council would be « like a resplendent dawn rising on the Church ». As for him, the Abbé de Nantes, quoted the Prophet Jeremiah: « Without concern they dress my people’s wound, saying: Peace! Peace! whereas there is no peace. » (Letter n^o 118)

In their well known “Message to the World” of 4 November 1962, the Conciliar Fathers, at least the progressivist minority of those who had taken charge right from the start, called on men of good will to « build in this world a more just and fraternal city ». In their humanist project, they scandalously forgot the persecuted from the Soviet Goulag: « Never as much as in our present times have Christians, have civilised people been so indifferent to blood shed for our defence and our salvation », noted the Abbé de Nantes (Letter n^o 175) Yet at Fatima, Heaven took interest in the martyrs.

John XXIII convened the Council « somewhat like Louis XIV had convened the states general in 1789… We know how it turned into revolution, through the euphoria which swept over the Constituents… They wanted to create a new and rational world; all that they managed to do was to destroy the old one and amass ruins. » (Letter n^o 153, French edition only)

AMBIGUOUS TEXTS

The phenomena well known to our democratic societies functioned: « The procession of bishops penetrated into a dreadful mixing machine. The two thousand good willed conservatives that composed this mitred crowd, instead of being directed by the Pope towards the doctors of the faith, and there were some! were going to be continuously delivered up to the preaching and the pressure of the progressivist clan becoming every day more arrogant. The Council’s tribune gave it an authority, a means of propaganda which could never have been imagined! It floated its ideas, its mirages, its demands, in the face of Rome and its offices. The entire flock of bishops listened to these novelties, somewhat dumbfounded, then set themselves into motion, entered into this new game, while elsewhere, the same speeches taken up and amplified by the press went about rousing all the Catholic peoples of the universe. Progressivism came from Rome! The Curia? John XXIII had set it aside, cast suspicion on it from the first discourse. The doctors of the faith? Their opinions were still to be accepted, but like useless and regrettable complaints, which would be taken into account, but nothing more. From the start, they were unable to prevail. They were only allowed to make a gallant last stand » (Letter n^o 184, 25 September 1964, French edition)

The outcome was « compromise texts whose lack of realism was situated half way between true dogmatic definitions, impossible in such a climate, and practical decisions for which no one could guarantee the enforcement in the anarchy into which the Church was sliding; half way between the truth of some and the error of others, between good and evil, according to opportuneness and the strength of external pressures. Neither theology nor discipline would find much to glean in these long texts steeped in ambiguities. The great work that had been announced was stillborn. The innovators, certain that they would prevail, already saw even further and seized hold of the future. They lost interest in the texts that the compromising hacks were elaborating in the commissions. Already fixed before being promulgated, excessively tempered, they will have nothing but documentary interest; they will indicate the direction of the irresistible reformation which has already overtaken them, like beacons on the road of evolution. In the vanguard of progress, what is important is the speeches made by the leaders, their audacity, their extravagance. Uttered in Saint Peter’s they acquire the value of prophetic illumination. The innovators are preparing Vatican III, and this is not a joke. We must not remain idle » Everyone to their battle stations then!

I. THE SOURCES OF FAITH

The first constitution to be studied, the « cornerstone of Vatican II » is “Dei Verbum”, on the Sources of Revelation. During our first “session”, a student pleaded in favour of the novelty.

François-Xavier: « Well, yes! I dare to say it. My faith, I want it to be free, conscious and responsible. It is not worthwhile to learn ready-made formulas; if one does not “experience” them, then it’s all baloney! One has to know how to go back directly to the Word of God. The water of the spring is still better that water from the tap isn’t it? Then, make the connection Revelation-Life, since the important thing is to fully succeed in life, one’s life as a man or a woman, with others, all together, this is when one really feels like a people of prophets, etc. »

We had to stop him to come round.

THE SERENE POSSESSION OF THE FAITH

In our Fathers school, we are children of the Church. Such was the common law before the Council.

« When receiving an education from admirable parents, he related, then from numerous priests, Marists, Jesuits and Brothers of Christian Schools, in those incomparable colleges of former times in which piety, obedience and work harmoniously shaped children of all temperaments to solid natural and supernatural virtues, my faith revelled unfettered and untiringly in the best sources of the tradition of the Church. Commentaries of the catechism and the Gospels, the Imitation of Jesus Christ and the lives of the saints are treasures of truth that imprint on the faithful soul their indelible stamp. Do not say to me that I have fashioned for myself a certain idea of Jesus Christ, my own Christ! The bright lights that, at the best times of my sinful life, delighted my heart never produced any other result than to throw their ineffable rays onto the common teaching of the Church. The gift of Wisdom made me savour deep within myself that which was preached to me, without ever making me believe anything else. I am a son of the Church with every ounce of my being and with every fibre of my heart. » (Letter n^o 187)

We receive the treasure of the Revelation from our Mother the Church, it is through this channel that we drink from the Source. From the Church and Jesus Christ, from Revelation and Tradition, it is all the same:

« Divine Truth is a living water of which Jesus Christ is the historical earthly source and the Apostolic College is its resevoir. Church tradition, by its worship, its dogmas, its discipline, conveys it and throughout the centuries is its sole and continuous channel. Finally the distribution system is the teaching Church, the infallible Magisterium, from which we ask for nothing other than the water of the Source, and not the fetid or sugared water of their wells nor the wine of their barrels. The entire effort of the Innovators consists in attacking the joints of this Tradition, in order to dissociate its elements; then they advocate another marvellous way, the modernist way, of knowing the Word of God, a different faith! » (Letter n^o 186, 15 October 1964, French edition)

BREACHES IN THE CATHOLIC STRUCTURE

The first of the Innovators was Luther who, in order to justify his error concerning faith and works, appealed to Holy Scripture, the Word of God, which he claimed to understand better than anyone else, against the dogmas of the Magisterium. And, after him, « every Protestant is Pope, a Bible in his hand ».

Three centuries and a half later, a new heresy appeared within the Church, no longer opposing the individual to religious society, but the modern generation to the previous ones, the religious feelings of today’s men to the age old traditions judged to be anachronistic. It is modernism, which separates science from faith, diminishing the Church’s dogma and worship until it is but the expression of the religious sentiment of the community of believers, adapted to the mentality of their time. It must therefore be renewed century after century so as to respond to the aspirations of men of each generation. Pius X unmasked modernism, « the sewer in which all heresies collect », taking care to distinguish it from modern, legitimate and fruitful critical science.

Saint Pius X’s condemnations won for the Church fifty years of respite. But semi-modernism, secretly persisted, the doctor of which was Maurice Blondel, canonised today by Cardinal Poupard. If the form of dogmas must change with succeeding times and cultures, he said, the substance nevertheless remains identical. He called this “Living Tradition”.

« Through a dishonesty without equal in history, explained our Father, Blondel chose “Tradition” to refer to this Life of Christ in his resourceful and innovative Church, the very same word which until then had, on the contrary, served to refer to the faithful handing down of an unchanging and sacred deposit, established once and for all and received from the Apostles. Faith in the former was complete submission to Jesus Christ; the new faith in this “Living Tradition” is on the contrary the affirmation of novelties and evolution, banishing past dogmas and recreating, thanks to Christ living in us, a Word of God ever new! » (Lettre no 186, p. 4, French edition)

THE WORD OF GOD AT THE COUNCIL

In his opening discourse, Pope John XXIII set down a principal that smacked of heresy: « It is important that this certain and unchangeable doctrine, which should be faithfully respected, be studied more deeply and presented following the methods of research and of presentation used by modern thought. » At the same time as he announced the changing of the formulas, he added that the Church would no longer condemn anyone, since « errors scarcely born vanish like mist in sunlight » (!)

The Abbé de Nantes commented: « What would one think of a pharmacist who would order his employees to change the labels of all the flasks and assure them of impunity in case of error or crime? »

On 20 November 1962, the same John XXIII had the preparatory schema prepared by Cardinal Ottaviani put aside and entrusted the drawing up of a new schema to a commission composed by a majority of modernists. « This day, declared Father Gregory Baum, will enter history like the end of the Counter-Reformation. » Is this not clear?

Paul VI, in turn, in his opening speech of the second session, invited the Council to reform the face of the Church while contemplating the face of her Lord: « The Church wants to see herself in Him as in a mirror… » The Holy Spirit, whose illumination was becoming the rule of supreme faith, would have to assist. There as well, the Abbé de Nantes remarked, « this thought smacks of heresy and promotes it. No one can claim, not even a Pope, nor a Council, to contemplate Christ, by a direct illumination or with the assistance of Scripture and Tradition, above and against the constant teaching of the Magisterium, so as to correct it and improve it in accordance with this subjective vision. »

In October 1964, the constitution Dei Verbum was bitterly discussed in the Council. Our Father made an in-depth commentary in issue 51 of the CRC. This should be carefully re-read. Right from its introduction, the Conciliar text is a product of an unacceptable illuminism.

The Fathers of the Council therefore imitated Saint John, not so as to be « in communion » with him, according to his own recommendation, but so as to claim to be in direct communication with the Word of Life. But where had they « seen and heard » Him? With an amazing presumption, the Council thought that it was the Apostolic College, direct witnesses and inspired by Christ himself. « In referring to itself as “pastoral”, remarked the Abbé de Nantes, it had no intention of belittling its importance by comparison with the preceding dogmatic Councils, but wished rather to give the impression of being of greater worth than all the rest of them put together. For did it not pretend to be directly inspired by the Word of God, and endowed with a mandate to found the Church anew? »

Now, what message did our “inspired ones” deliver? If they had merely repeated « the authentic doctrine of divine Revelation », defined by the Councils of Trent and the Vatican, it would have been perfect! but it was not worth claiming to be inspired for so little. On the other hand, if they claimed to renew it, as was the case, then it was a second imposture. By going back before the common catechism, before the doctrine of the Church, before Tradition, before even Scripture and the Apostles’ teaching, to arrive at the Word of God Himself, spoken by the mouth of the Father – « God said and so it was » – and becoming incarnate in the Event, the Life, the History, the Fathers of the Council really prided themselves to much, and embarked on a path opposed to the age-old practice of the Church.

After having analysed the entire mechanism of this subversion, the Abbé de Nantes concluded: « From one pipe to the next, the entire channel of transmission of Revelation is dismantled, made useless. The People of God, having become a people of “witnesses”, are in direct touch with God, who speaks to it without any mediator and arouses in it “the Spirit”… This people gives witness through its entire life. It is a Word of God. »

How could such pretentiousness have been accepted, on 18 November 1965, by almost the unanimity of the Fathers (2344 against 6)? It is because in the meantime, the initial text had been interlarded with corrections that rectified it in the sense of the traditional faith, as in n^o 21, to which the minority had succeeded in adding what is indicated between brackets: « The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures… She has always maintained them, and continues to do so, [together with sacred tradition], as the supreme rule of faith, since, as inspired by God… they impart the word of God Himself without change, and make the voice of the Holy Spirit resound. The same is true of the excellent n^o 10, imposed after a hard fight by the traditionalists.

However, the poison was inoculated into the veins of the Church by means of this dogmatic Constitution which smacked of heresy. Do you want a proof of its virulence?

In 1983, our Father chose in the interview of John Paul II with André Frossard this confidence: « I have never regarded my faith as “traditional”, explained the Pope. It had nothing to do with any kind of conformism; it was born in the depths of my own “me” [sic!], it was also the fruit of my mind’s efforts in seeking an answer to the mysteries of man and of the world… With interior maturity came the evidence that it contained a personal and free response to the Word of God expressed in Jesus Christ, Word incarnate. » (cf. CCR no 157, p. 13)

John Paul II’s faith is a self-worshipping one: « When God reveals Himself, he went on, and when faith accepts Him, it is man who sees himself revealed to himself and confirmed in his being as man and as person. »

This is what he taught in August 2000 at the World Youth Days of Rome, asking his “dear young people” to enter into the “school of faith” like the Apostles surrounding Jesus at Caesarea Philippi and in the Cenacle:

« You can all sense in yourselves the process of questions and answers that we have just been talking about. You can all measure the difficulties you have in believing, and even feel the temptation not to believe. But at the same time you can also experience a slowly maturing sense and conviction of your commitment in faith. In fact, there is always a meeting between God and the human person in this wonderful school of the human spirit, the school of faith. » The two of them alone, without the mediation of the Church?

VATICAN III, A COUNCIL OF RECONCILIATION

After having condemned Vatican II’s illuminism, it will not suffice to recall the ancient truths, explained the Abbé de Nantes. It would be necessary to make the effort to set out new dogmatic definitions. He wrote the first lines:

« The next Council will be first of all a reaffirmation of the Church, for She has been vilified, disparaged, despised by the very men of the Church all through these ten years [forty years!] of Reform. It shall proclaim the Church as the Spouse of Christ, faithful, wise and loving, who alone is able to reflect the splendour of the Countenance – human and divine – of Jesus Christ. Yes, the affirmation of the Church as carrier of the Gospel... the genuine Gospel of Christ inflames men’s hearts with the desire to be converted and move forward along the Way, on the path to perfection. Thus each individual lets himself be docilely reformed by the Church, however painful the operation may be, in order to obtain Eternal life. » (CCR no 21, p. 12)

The Pope and the bishops are subject as well to the ordinary and common, traditional teaching of the Church. The Holy Spirit is only given to them so that they may better understand the doctrine of their predecessors, teach it in turn, and if necessary develop it, but in no case contradict it, under the pretext of adapting it to the modern world! When this submission is once again the norm, the harmony of the sources of the faith – Scripture, Tradition and the Church’s Magisterium – will be re-established on the basis of this fundamental principle:

« God’s revelation reaches us in and by the Church’s teaching, wherein are intimately mingled the living waters of all her sources. »

Do not imagine the Church’s teaching as an unchanging, lifeless monolith. « These sources form a sort of organism with thousands of interconnections, constantly developing. In her teaching, the Church draws continually upon her sources. They are so vast, so rich, and divine! that she is constantly seeking to better understand these treasures that she appraises, meditates, classifies, interprets and translates into languages. » (CCR no 22, p. 12) Our Father, for fifty years, and Brother Bruno, his faithful disciple, are daily proof of this! Tomorrow, the world will drink from these living waters, when She who « treasured all these things and pondered them in her Heart » (Lk 2.19) will be known, loved and obeyed everywhere. (to be continued)

Brother Thomas