Chapter 10

THE GLORIES AND EXCESSES OF INTEGRISM

"As soon as the Novelty makes its appearance, it comes up against the partisans of Tradition in all its integrity and immutability, those who are called integrists but who, initially at least, should be called the defenders of the faith. They are usually bishops, pastors and guardians of the flock, surrounded and accompanied by monks and humble unsophisticated lay people, those in fact to whom the Kingdom of God is promised and for whom Jesus gave thanks to His Father for having seen fit to choose them as the exclusive beneficiaries of His Revelation (Mt 11.25.) They are not hindered by science or human philosophy; they are indifferent, even hostile, to these things. They believe what the Church has always taught; they love and practise what she has always done and commanded to be done. They have no need of progress, no desire for change, because they already have everything in superabundance: saving truths, laws and rites, all equally venerated and loved.

"It is the sense of scandal and horror at the proud innovation which rouses them against the heretics. They want to protect the most precious gift in the world – the faith, the deposit of the faith! And they are right. To jeopardise the sure, exact and definitive knowledge of God and the mysteries of salvation, to risk losing this for the sake of some purely human doctrine or passing fashion, is all too culpable folly. Against this, the defender of the faith acts within his rights, nay his duty. In this respect it is he who is the man of the future. The longer the crisis lasts and the wider the heresy extends its death-dealing empire, the more vigorously will the ancient faith manifest its inextinguishable vitality and its power of resurrection. Whilst all around is collapsing and dying of exhaustion, the integrist mystically conserves the whole of God’s truth, the light of Heaven and the life of grace.

"But now comes the difficult moment, the decisive test of holiness. For the defender of the faith, heresy can be useful and he will draw advantage from it, if he lets himself be led by God’s inspirations and remains faithful to the Church. He must adapt his preaching to the error he is combating. In the first place, he must affirm more insistently what is being denied or neglected by the error, and then he must be prepared to recognise any good that the adversary may be teaching, sometimes in a new light. This good needs to be rescued and reset within the traditional framework of Catholic life and truth... This is where we come across a different reaction from those whom we must now distinguish as integrists and traditionalists. The integrists do not take advantage of the graces of the moment and they cut themselves off excessively from the common life of the Church, sometimes going so far as to separate from her communion. In the heat of the combat they have imperceptibly transformed the dogmas they were defending into a hard and cold ideology, an ideology reduced to their own measure and in its turn something quite novel, a kind of frantic contradiction of heresy. From that moment they cease to serve the Church and even end up causing her as much harm as they had hitherto done her good. The traditionalists, on the other hand, act in an increasingly different way and keep their distance from this sect. For them the defence of the faith comes as a providential opportunity to deepen and enrich their faith, an opportunity that is unexpected but fully accepted. The new elements brought by the controversy make them stay within the Church’s communion, at her most vibrant centre, where they make of these elements the instruments of an admirable reconciliation. That is the position of the saints.

"And so, when the actors in the drama have entrenched themselves in their final positions, everything is set for the denouement of the crisis. On one side, the victory of orthodoxy brings about a fruitful reconciliation of the two wings of the Catholic community, the ‘mystics’ and the ‘theologians’. The former are in love with pure faith, tradition and contemplation, whereas the latter are concerned for those human explanations and laws which mark out the mystery and assure its true meaning. Their union is effected, alas, by their common rejection of the two antagonistic extremes, one of which had started this rending of Unity by its heresy and the other of which had perpetuated the rent by its narrowness. The rationalism of the former had prevailed irremediably over the faith of the latter, who by carrying this faith to absurdity and indulging in a passion for contradicting their adversaries, were finally led into absolute schism.ť Is not that an eery analysis of the crisis in our twentieth century?

The Abbé de Nantes then gave "a striking example of integrist fury" by presenting the personality and career of Hippolytus of Rome in the third century.

"Hippolytus’ doctrinal rigidity", he remarked, "nourished his pride, his ambition and his jealousy. He came to think of himself as superior to his head and supreme pastor, the Pope. This lack of docility, of justice and even of charity, was responsible for locking him into a position of uncomprehending criticism and, with the help of circumstances, would soon thrust him into open revolt and schism. Now that the centuries have cast some light on the confused disputes of that time, we are in a better position to appreciate the supernatural wisdom, holy prudence and true pastoral charity of Saint Calixtus’ decisions and to reprove the bitterness, harshness, invented calumnies and insulting gossip of Hippolytus’ defamatory Libellus. That should be a warning to us, given our own position, to tread warily in our criticisms of the Pope and the bishops, and not to give way to exasperation against them, still less to jealousy, and never on any account to revolt, for we would thereby be risking our eternal life. For it is not everyone who can hope to end their schism in the Sardinian salt mines or the Gulag Archipelago, reconciled to the Pope or to their bishop or to their parish priest!

"Perhaps an opponent of our theses or even a simple hesitant reader will find that the present author’s Liber accusationis in Paulum sextum is in many respects just like the Ninth Book of Hippolytus’ Philosophoumena! One understands why this comparison alone is enough to make the prudent faithful tremble and to lead them to prefer obedience in all things. This is very excusable. For the simple uninstructed faithful, faced with problems beyond their grasp, a blind submission, or more precisely a trusting submission, is preferable to a stubborn integrism which refuses to examine itself or consider that it might be wrong on any given point. Let us make one final point on this subject : what was still innocent before the First Vatican Council is no longer so in our times. If Hippolytus were alive today, with his concern for Zephyrinus’ uncertain doctrine and his rebellion against the liberal decrees of Calixtus, he would no longer have any excuse were he to separate from them and create a schism on the grounds that they were heretical Popes. He would be obliged to appeal to them to act as sovereign and infallible judges in the matter of their own acts and teaching, without thereby separating from the unity of Holy Church and from her Catholic communion.

"In thinking of Hippolytus we shudder at the thought of imitating his blindness and following him in his aberration. We do well to shudder. Let the integrists beware lest, having waged a just war against the modernist heresy, they find themselves excommunicated and in schism when the Church – without them, regardless of them, and even perhaps against them – will already have rediscovered her peace and unity, far removed from their prejudices."

THE RICHES OF TRADITIONALISM

"What are we to do then to avoid so many pitfalls? If we approach these difficulties merely on a superficial level, it would seem wise to lean towards obedience and passive submission to authority, whatever its nature. But one can see today where that would lead, or rather has already led, the mass of the clergy and faithful! And though it is the simplest and easiest solution for the people, yet it must be said categorically that to trust without understanding is not Catholic. The Church does not order us to follow the crowd, but to believe with an act of the intellect which cannot be reformed or distorted at will. Without in any way sacrificing the humble submission we owe our pastors or our fidelity to the universal communion of the Roman Church, we shall find another principle of action in this present crisis – doubtless the worst of all crises by reason of its universality and thoroughness, affecting the whole of religion and all peoples –, namely the principle of the imitation of the saints. If our doctrine and rules of action can take their place in the great family of saints, if we can immerse ourselves in the Catholic theology as found among the saints throughout the many conflicts of the past, there is every chance that we shall keep the faith and remain in the unity of the Catholic Church."

ŤFlight From The Heresiarchsť

"Since all the saints have detested heresy and have fought the heresiarchs, denouncing their rationalism and stigmatising them as innovators, we shall make a point of detesting the partisans of heresy in every age as well as those today who are reverting to errors that have already been condemned. In this respect, we are aware that we shall be associating and collaborating with the integrists. It is the moment for anathemas and denunciations, for severity and rupture, and not all those who engage in this work are pure. But to begin with, it has to be done! Arius, Nestorius, Pelagius, Abelard, the Averroism of Siger of Brabant one hundred years later, then Erasmus, Zwingli and Calvin, not forgetting Molinos, Fenelon, Rousseau, Lammenais and their countless disciples or emulators in our own days, all effectively constitute the channel, indeed the very school of heresy. There is no salvation for those who subscribe to this agenda, with their absurd claim to novelty!"

ŤThe Rejection of Liberalismť

"It can easily be observed how throughout the centuries the great heresiarchs have always had their many protectors and accomplices. Their eternal type is Eusebius of Caesarea, who gave Arianism its opportunity and almost its victory. These people, of a sceptical or dilettante mentality, ambitious, unstable and changeable, sometimes generous and utopian, may offer a more presentable appearance than the heresiarchs, but they do immense harm to religion by smoothing the way for them, even in the very heart of the Church. No, we shall never be liberals. The saints inspire us with a profound horror for this class of men… Little matter if, here again, our separation from them causes us to pass for extreme radicals, wholly uncompromising in our reaction, integrists. It is not by accepting liberalism’s culpable complicity with heresy that we shall prove our Catholic spirit."

ŤDistrust of Integrismť

"At the other extreme, however, we have to be wary of those whose reaction against the innovators leads them into declared schism… The most original lesson to be drawn from our study – a study that did not descend into crying treason! – is this discovery of the integrist peril and the recurrence of integrist schism throughout the ages . Let us keep our distance from the Left. Let us also keep our distance from the Right! Let us remember Hippolytus, but also well before him the Judaeo-Christians who were opposed to the liberating solutions of the Gospel proposed by Saint Peter and Saint Paul and who rejected the pacifying decrees of the Council of Jerusalem in 49. They were extremists of James’s party, but went well beyond him! It was they who, in their exasperation and jealousy, mercilessly delivered Peter and Paul and thousands of other Christians to Nero’s persecution, if we are to believe Clement of Rome…

"Let us remember Lucifer of Cagliari and the chapel of Paulinus of Antioch, where our Saint Jerome was ordained priest... But Jerome is truly a special case, a 'borderline case', and it is only on account of the invective he will subsequently hurl against Lucifer’s integrist sect and his private chapels that he can be cleared of the charge of complicity with the worst, the most obtuse and the most envious sectarians of the time, those who, from their base in Antioch, misled Damasus and were passionately opposed to any reconciliation between East and West. Saint Jerome is certainly a problem!

"Let us remember the appalling Dioscoros and his 'robber council of Ephesus', a proud and jealous man who dramatically compromised in the East the wonderful development of the theology of the Word Incarnate after the Council of Ephesus in 431 – a council presided over by his glorious and holy predecessor Cyril of Alexandria, in accord with Rome. The party spirit prevailed and the break between East and West dates back to the foolish intrigues of this disastrous patriarch. God preserve us from the likes of Dioscoros!"

Then the Abbé de Nantes went on to explain how the integrist virus was dormant and inactive in the West during the thousand years of the Middle Ages. Next, after showing how Luther was the "type of the fanatical integrist", he continued:

"The Jansenists, reacting once again against the laxity of the Jesuits, the growth of indifference and the ease of life and morals, will not avoid slipping from integrism to an exaggerated pessimism, to a sectarian mentality, to a revolutionary cabal and finally to a resentment that was detrimental to the whole social order and the entire Church. And the greatest harm they did to our French Catholic tradition was undoubtedly to make an easy victory possible to those they were so rightly fighting, so that in the following centuries those who stood out against the humanists and libertines found themselves accused of Jansenism, even though they were simply recalling the most sound Christian doctrine, that of Saint Augustine, which is also that of Saint Thomas and Bossuet.

"We shall keep a prudent, nay uncompromising, distance from everything established along those lines and from this attitude of integrism. We do this because of the error and sectarianism into which this party spirit locks those who passionately abandon themselves to it, at the risk of their ruin. But perhaps even more because, by exaggerating the condemnation of heresy to the point of its contrary absurdity and by separating themselves from the communion of the universal Church judged guilty of being contaminated by this heresy, they drive public opinion back over to the other side and throw the whole Church into a desperate chassé-croisé. If the Jansenists had cultivated Saint Bernard along with Saint Augustine and the admirable Berulle rather than Saint-Cyran, they would not have introduced into the Church the spirit of division and sectarianism which provoked the religious rebellions leading up to the Revolution. Integrism has always lost what it has claimed, all on its own and against everybody else, to save."

ŤLet us walk in the footsteps of the saintsť

"Neither rationalist nor fideist, neither humanist nor illuminist, neither too broad nor too narrow, neither obsequious nor rebellious, such were the ranks of holy doctors and pontiffs, humble monks and virgins, or simple members of the laity, whose intelligent lucidity during the worst crises of the Church we have admired, as well as their loving indefectible fidelity to the Catholic communion in the midst of the worst dissensions.

"Let us not content ourselves with paying general homage to the saints. If order to be better instructed and to follow the saints more effectively, according to precise laws, we must carefully identify the schools, the dynasties, and the vocations – all admirable but diverse – from among which we are invited by grace to choose our own personal path.

"Without further reference to the terrible Jerome – a man who was irascible and jealous, narrow-minded and often petty, the extreme type of the mystic with inhuman manners –, we find that many saints have been sent by God to save the Church by going far, very far, indeed to the furthest extreme possible in opposing all humanism, all rational enquiry, and all complicity with sinful man’s carnal nature. One thinks of those giants Athanasius and Cyril, and nearer in time Saint Augustine and Saint Bernard… Today we again stand in need of these "reactionaries", mystics who are intransigent regarding the Truth, wholly intractable where liberalism or any kind of compromise is concerned. Terrible towards heretics, they reserve their infinite gentleness for their private circle and their brethren in the faith. Such were the truly great ones of the past.

"But if we make a close study of their often tragic lives, we discover that at a given moment they experienced the decisive test of submission to the sovereign authority of the Pope or of a Council and of fraternal communion in the Church, a test which they faced with heroic renunciation. By their piety, their virtuous moderation, their humble and supple wisdom, they surmounted the trial in a holy fashion. Remember Eusebius of Vercelli, that saint and martyr, who had the sense to leave Lucifer of Cagliari who was heading for schism, in order to rally to Athanasius and his Council of Confessors at Alexandria in 362. Being traditionalists, they rejected integrism with its sectarian and schismatic tendencies.

"On the other hand, we find saints who are much more closely associated with the world in which they live, with its researches and even its errors. Sometimes they may themselves have had a long share in these, tirelessly seeking to ‘baptise’, to correct and to purify them, in order to enrich the Church’s treasury with the elements of truth they contained. We have already referred to the innovative and liberal decisions of Calixtus, a wise and good pontiff. We have also alluded to the friendship of Basil, in the East, for the semi-Arians with their imprecise language, and his finally victorious struggle to get Rome to accept a new vocabulary, which Jerome and other integrists found suspect, but which was destined to win over numerous well-disposed Churches to the full clarity of dogma and to put an end to the schism with the triumph of orthodoxy.

"The test for these saints, unlike the other test, was the temptation to relativism, to irenicism, to an easy-going pacifism, but they nevertheless resisted it. Perhaps Peter of Montboissier, the Abbot of Cluny, is only a Venerable because he succumbed on several occasions, whereas Bernard is a Saint! But Peter the Venerable, who reconciled Abelard to the Pope and to his fierce adversary, the Abbot of Clairvaux, exercises a great attraction on many a gentle and peaceful soul who is repelled by the fury of the saints!

"No matter! All these saints stood together and gave fraternal support to one another. Both these types of traditionalist – excluding their allies who compromised at the two extremes, the liberals on the one side and the integrists on the other – understood and esteemed each other for the aid they brought to their common Church according to their different vocations and charisms.

"There are some saints who are remarkable for their balance and the ease with which they succeeded in reconciling conflicts in their short lives as well as in their doctrine. That is not something given to everyone! They are so human that they can form friendships with humanists, sometimes the most suspect and least commendable of them. At the same time they are so spiritual that the faith lives within them like a sure and dazzling beacon. We have already met Thomas More, who was the inspiration for In Praise of Folly and the unfailing friend of Erasmus, the most thoroughgoing humanist of his day. More will go far in his criticism of contemporary Christian society as well as in his Utopia, where he advocates another world, rational, free and fraternal... One might think that he would have had to repent of his early dreams and to retreat in horror before the Lutheran Reform, which excessive criticism, such as his, had provoked. But not at all! From his youth and at the height of his humanist period, his soul had been that of the Carthusian he had desired to be, totally devoted to Jesus, given up to the contemplation of His Passion, exiled from this world and indifferent to its vanities, its affairs and even its delights... It is impossible to find the least trace of integrism in him, yet it was he who will know better than anyone else – and in an entirely new, almost revolutionary manner, which even then seems wholly modern to us – how to defend Tradition in the traditions of the Church which he loved and venerated. It was for these traditions that he will give his life, without renouncing any of his serene humanism.

"I do not say: let us imitate Thomas More, let us imitate Bossuet… for such men are inimitable. But happy are those whom nature and the gifts of grace have made capable of such a fullness of perfection in the service of the Church. But doubtless only one or two men per century can be found like that, if any at all.

"Instead I say: by loving, admiring and praying to such saints, let us try to imitate their wisdom and their firmness, but also their charity and gentleness, remaining within the Church, loyal to her faith."

FOR AN INTELLIGENT TRADITIONALISM

"There is no question, and there never has been, of our condemning the entirety of the faithful who have allowed themselves to be led down the paths of heresy and laxity. The flock follows the shepherd, driven on by the dogs. It is difficult to reproach them for this. When the shepherds and their dogs are "in communion with Rome", such a reproach would cause scandal and be rejected.

"These people were not culpable at the outset, ten years ago. But they became active and consenting accomplices through their own intellectual and moral decline. They unburdened themselves of the weight of the cross with a cowardly sense of relief. How could these people, illumined by the Holy Spirit, not realise that they were tracing the three stages of the decline predicted by Saint Pius X to the reformers of his day: protestantism, modernism and atheism! In ten years under Paul VI, the Church has caught up with her convoy of heretics and has now arrived at the third stage, that of apostasy.

"Therefore integrists and traditionalists are right at every level. Faced with such a universally spread pestilence, infecting every part of the ecclesiastical system and making it oppressive and persecuting, the clumsily aimed blows of the integrists are excusable because, although they are in the right, they go unheeded.

"That having been said, and without in any way wishing to forget or attenuate it, it is urgent and absolutely essential today that the traditionalists separate from their fellow travellers, the integrists.

"For this other small band of the faithful, who have refused to follow the Reformers and who are opposed to the many suspect innovations, with reason and justice, in the name of what they have always heard and observed, is now turning bad. That is the fault of the Lucifers and the Paulinus’s, of the Dioscoros's, and perhaps even of the odd Saint Jerome! who have appointed themselves the ‘ringleaders’ of this group…. and we should not exclude the possibility of a Luther arising in the future! We do not judge their conscience, nor do we impugn their fundamental good faith and sincerity, but their insights are not equal to the role they have ascribed themselves. Their mistake – which is now only too obvious, not that they are repentant about it – is to have adopted the most retrograde positions on the pretext of better fighting progressivism, the narrowest positions to combat liberalism, and the most inept positions to counter modernism. They have confused everything in their blanket condemnation. Such are the habitual marks of integrist sectarianism.²"

As a disciple of Saint Pius X, the Abbé de Nantes did not automatically identify what was "modern" with modernism, rejecting both one and the other in the same movement³. With a free and truly open mind, he would make himself acquainted, without any prejudice, with the theories and activities of the reformers, some of which filled him with wonder, at least initially. For instance, take the time he studied the Dutch Catechism: "As for me", he will recount, "one fine morning I opened the Dutch Catechism. Very soon I was enthralled. Of course, I stumbled against the same points as the Roman theologians – I only noticed this later on – but I was captivated by this modern human perspective, this intelligence, both speculative and practical, which leaps out at one on every page, both for its theological and spiritual content as well as for its skilfully adapted pastoral form. I almost had to make an effort to tear myself away from the fascination of pages 334 onwards. It is there that one comes across the ruin of the essential Christian Mystery, that of our Redemption. I pursued my reading with a growing horror for this magnificent intellectual instrument for the perversion of souls, so dangerous that I myself had been enthralled by it.⁴"

In examining the conciliar and postconciliar novelties, in probing the works of the "moderns" to know how far they had been tainted by the modernist cancer and its metastases, the Abbé de Nantes accomplished a unique doctrinal labour, which gradually allowed him to construct "an original and just synthesis of tradition and progress"⁵.

"Before each new problem", recounts Brother Bruno, "we see him hesitate, pray, and work flat out in his search to correctly identify the very best solution, a solution based on a prodigious knowledge of the whole of tradition as well as of modern thought, and also on a profound study of the Holy Scriptures, which he meditates on each day.⁶"

A THEOLOGY FOR OUR TIMES: KERYGMATICS

It was during his campaign "Tomorrow, Vatican III", in 1971, that the Abbé de Nantes began to give public effect to the task of renewing theology. To this end, he formulated certain propositions regarding the development of dogma by deducing more precise expressions of truth, allowing one to set aside Vatican II’s equivocations and exclude its errors.

"Heresies", the Abbé de Nantes will write, "are not entirely without profit, and doubtless this is what justifies Saint Paul’s famous words to the Corinthians: ‘Oportet hćreses esse’, it is necessary that heresies arise (1 Co 11.19) ! Rarely if ever will heresy fail to make its own particular contribution and to suggest some progress in our understanding of the Mystery of God, even though it does so by casting an impudent and sacrilegious look at this mystery. The fact is that we are required to believe with all the strength of our intelligence. Christian theologians, moralists and philosophers have always had a recognised function within the Church: great heresies arise from time to time to shake them out of their apathy, often catching them unprepared and forcing them to define and explain more precisely the elements of Revelation and their interrelations.⁷"

Then, in magnificent fashion he will pursue the work of his earlier lectures at the Mutualité, in 1972-1973. He will in fact elaborate a theology that is both ancient and new, a theology termed "kerygmatic", one that is inspired by a concern to provide a true response to the enquiries of the men of our time⁸.

"It is no longer", he will explain, "a matter of simply setting out what the Church teaches and what she obliges one to believe: dogmatic theology, which the modernists accuse of simply repeating formulas without providing any real ‘communication’. Nor is it a matter of deducing intellectual systems from these dogmas to provide them with a logical explanation: speculative theology, which stands accused of stating truths which are lifeless. Nor is it a matter of demonstrating the preambles of the faith to unbelievers or agnostics: rational apologetics which deals with supernatural facts independently of the faith which provides their real meaning. Nor again is it a matter of attempting to persuade the heart: the apologetics of immanence, which we accuse of surrendering the faith to the whim of human desires.

"However, we refuse to fall into the double trap of contemporary ‘fundamental theology’, which is wholly dependent on Kant and Hegel: a hermeneutic theology which claims to reinterpret Christian events by reference to their religious significance and in accordance with the mentality of modern man, in order to make them ‘credible’. Such ‘hermeneutics’ are the product of a shameful indecisiveness about the revealed faith and of an idolatrous attitude to modern man, the measure of all things. It is this type of critique that opens the way to the likes of Cardonnel.

"The theology of our era must be kerygmatic. The preaching (Kérugma ) of the Word of God today should be the frank, unvarnished and paradoxical proclamation of evangelical salvation, without the rational, universal and timeless mediation of a philosophical system. Its locus should be in the particularity of human situations and in the questions raised by the listener who, whilst acting as the interrogator, will in his own turn find himself interrogated and pressed to reply to this Word which upsets his existence and his plans.

"Rather than the transcendental deduction of classical theology – which was surreptitiously enriched by a whole raft of human experiences via a series of individual inductions – here instead we have human induction, systematically directed, propelled and reoriented by the resonant appeals of evangelical preaching.⁹"

In his monthly lectures on "kerygmatics", the Abbé de Nantes would always devote the first part to studying the doctrine of one of the most audacious heretics of the twentieth century, men like Cardonnel, Xavier Léon-Dufour and Teilhard. He would assimilate their thought, going almost so far as to make it his own, and explaining it sympathetically in all its vigour, often in a manner that was clearer than the author himself had expressed it¹⁰. In the second part he would counter the novelty with the traditional point of view, at the same time remarking on the weak and narrow reactions of individual integrists or conventional conservatives. Then he would propose a fully Catholic solution, in the form of a synthesis integrating the original intuition of the heretic and revealing, in the freshness of the apostolic kerygma, the totality of the Christian mystery in all its immensity and truth, on offer to every soul searching for the truth.

With this kerygmatic theology, one could make excellent theological progress and at the same time return to the Church's origins. From the clash of contradictory theses in the Church, there resulted a fusion effected by a synthesis of a wholly new dialectical style, a fusion which in reality was nothing but the initial evangelical and apostolic revelation, better examined, better defined, and therefore better stated.

Furthermore, it is notable that his wholly original metaphysical thesis on The person and his relations proved itself to be extremely fruitful. It allowed him to resolve certain theological difficulties which until then had proved insurmountable and to compose a renewed body of Catholic doctrine. But let us not jump ahead to the teachings that the Abbé de Nantes will present later on, in the 80’s.

In 1977 he devoted himself to a systematic and in-depth study of each of the sacraments to "gain a serene appreciation of the precise value, or non-value, of the postconciliar innovations¹¹. Sapientis est ordinare: wisdom involves putting each thing in its proper place and appreciating everything according to its true worth, without defect or excess." At the end of this study, he was able to confide: "I believe I have learned much in the course of this study and that I have also taught my audience and my readers a good many things: about the tradition, which for the most part they had never suspected of being so rich and varied; also about the considerable work undertaken by a whole host of contemporary liturgical scholars; and finally about the solid foundations and excellent reasons for certain conciliar and postconciliar reforms or innovations.

"We are conscious of having assisted, in our own minimal way, in the distant preparation for that necessary and reconciling synthesis which will be the work of Vatican III. It will be then that the routines of the past will be definitively restored and corrected in the light of today’s novelties, which in their turn will be amended and purged of their disfiguring errors. Does that complicate the strategy of the opposing parties, by breaking the manichean dualism from whence they draw their militant strength? No more than it reinforces the only party to which we adhere, which is that of the Church. It is only by following this unique path that I can see any solution or light ahead.¹²"

Through his doctrinal labours the Abbé de Nantes was continuing the Church’s age-old struggle to explain her dogmas, develop her liturgy and preach her mysteries, convinced that the advances he was accomplishing – for example in teaching a new theology of the Eucharist – would make an effective contribution to the restoration of Catholic institutions and to a marvellous renewal of devotion, when the hour of the Renaissance should finally sound in the Church.

"In the future it will be seen", he wrote, "that, by the grace of God, the pioneers of the Counter-Reformation were, during those times of struggle, the true reformers and the bold creators of tomorrow’s Church. Not that they sought this. But simply because of their vibrant fidelity. So it was with the greatest saints of the Catholic Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth century, who paved the way for the wonderful and wholly new Catholic Reformation of the seventeenth century.¹³"