CATHOLIC COUNTER-REFORMATION GLOSSARY

ALL1CHILMOPY
• 1

• 150 Points (The) ◊ From 1975 on, Father de Nantes became more and more concerned about elaborating a doctrine for the restoration of the Church and the rebuilding of Christendom. From his reflection and studies, our Father developed a body of doctrine that he organised and summarised in 150 articles. These became known as the 150 Points of the Catholic, Royal, Communitarian Phalange.
  This doctrine was divided into three parts: 50 Catholic Points. Our Catholicism is integral. It ardently embraces the whole Faith, sacramentary discipline and moral teaching of the Roman Church. 50 Political Points. The science and art of politics are oriented towards maintaining the tranquillity of the temporal order and safeguarding the common good. Since Father de Nantes reflected especially on his own nation, France, this explains why he entitled this section ‘Royal,” as the traditional and only legitimate government of France is the monarchy of divine right. These principles, however, can either be applied directly or adapted to the political traditions of other nations. 50 Communitarian Points. These points describe the principles that allow the development of a spontaneous ecology. It encompasses in its natural harmony the whole secret of peaceful human happiness. Recently, to comply with the last wishes of our Father, these 150 points were revised by Brother Bruno to integrate into them the supereminent role that the Blessed Virgin Mary plays in our natural and supernatural existence as revealed by the message of Our Lady of Fatima. The text of The 150 Points of the Phalange can be read on our website.

• 1789 (The world of) ◊ The world of 1789 is the philosophy or new ideology that inspired revolutionary politics and gave a new direction to the course of human history. The French Revolution of 1789 was the event that allowed it to take hold. “The tragedy of the Church and the modern world then is the tragedy of the Church coming from the Ancien Regime and getting to grips with the new society founded on the political philosophy of 1789. If we were to enlarge the scope of this conflict we would see that 1789 proceeds from 1517, Luther’s heresy of ‘the revolt of the individual against the species’ as Auguste Comte described it, and that 1789 beckons 1917, the Russian Communist Revolution. We are thus thrown into the heart of the problem.
  Since 1789 relations between the Church and the modern world, between the Church and the Revolution have evolved – at least according to a generally accepted theory or working hypothesis, seemingly true – they have evolved from a total fierce opposition to a rapprochement in the hope of effecting some definitive sincere and total reconciliation in the near future. That is the basis of the thinking of fashionable historians […]. Notice how often the words used to describe this evolution are deliberately optimistic: it is always a question of ‘rapprochement’ and ‘reconciliation,’ whereas others would choose to describe this evolution in terms of ‘capitulation,’ or ‘subjection’ resulting in the final absorption and conquest of the Church by her hereditary enemy! Beware of the distorting opinions of self-styled impartial historians. Stripped bare of all opinions, the fact of the matter is that there has certainly been an evolution through successive crises from an attitude of condemning the modern world [of 1789] on the part of the Church to an attempt at establishing new relations and an ‘entente cordiale’ with the modern world. The Avant Guard even goes so far as to talk about ‘marriage,’ which is rather grotesque. Yet if this theme of rapprochement is constantly being repeated in our time with such passionate insistence, it is simply in order to persuade our generation to take the final and most important step. This proves that the game is still in play and can still end in defeat! Barriers have fallen, misunderstandings have been cleared up and the dialogue is mapped out, but the integration of the Church into the world of 1789 is still not complete, far from it. We need to know just how far the Catholic Church has gone in this ‘volte face,’ for it is the Church and not the world that causes movement and we need to be able to gauge the success or failure of this rapprochement in order to provide for the new conditions that the outcome of this will impose on our common service of country and of our threatened Western civilisation.” [The Church and the World (19651975) in Catholic Counter-Reformation no. 61, April 1975, pp. 1-14]

• C

• Cathedral of light ◊ Father Georges de Nantes waged a formidable battle to destroy both the heresies of the Modernists and Progressivists that were vitiating the Faith of the Church, and the schism of the Integrists that was tearing her asunder. At the same time he undertook a positive work of strengthening the doctrine of the Church with all the contributions of modern exegetical and archaeological sciences. To refer to this positive side of his work, in August 1995, our Father coined the phrase: ‘a cathedral of light.’ He wrote: “The retreats, lectures and meditations, our ‘Logia’, sessions and camps have furnished building stones, very diverse materials. We did not realise how well they had been preconceived to constitute one day a cathedral of light. Now we have reached the point where all this has to be fit together and cemented, to the glory of Mary, Our Lady of the Rosary, of Fatima, Whose message, like that of Paray-le-Monial, is a fundamental revelation of truth and love.”

• H

• Harki ◊ During what became known as the “ mess tent tour ” that General de Gaulle made in Algeria in August 1959, he declared : “As long as I live, the NLF flag will never fly over Algeria !” This was sheer treachery, for later on he confided: “If I had said in June 1958 that I wanted to give independence to Algeria, I would have been overthrown that very evening, and I would not have been able to do anything, but I always knew what I wanted to do.” De Gaulle acted with cunning from the day he came to power. Father de Nantes, in his Letter to My Friends no. 166, March 11, 1964, wrote: “For this task de Gaulle possesses the calculating coldness and the two powers that the Gospel recognises as characteristic of the Devil’s sons : the power of lying outrageously and of killing or crushing people once they have grasped his game clearly.” The Harkis are among those whom the General callously sacrificed to his ambitions.
  Harki is a generic term derived from the Maghrebi Arabic word: ḥarka, ‘military operation.’ The Harkis, therefore, were Algerian Muslims serving as auxiliary soldiers in military operations against the Communist inspired guerrilla terrorists of the NLF (National Liberation Front) and its NLA (National Liberation Army). They were extremely useful auxiliary forces in operations where discovery of the adversary was the main difficulty. In 1960, among the Muslim population, more and more young people were becoming auxiliary soldiers. About 3,000 of them were former rebels who had abandoned the NLF. Eventually, there were 210,000 Harkis, that is, eight times the number of rebels! Their main motivation was quite simply to protect their families from the terrorist violence.
  Here is a brief review of some salient facts. On October 23, 1959, General de Gaulle exclaimed: “To what hecatomb would we condemn this country if we were stupid and cowardly enough to abandon it!” Yet it was his firm intention to abandon it, to disarm the Harkis and leave them in Algeria. He was well-aware that the main political and military leaders of the NLF had been calling unreservedly for the murder of the Harkis and their families, despite their promise in November 1961 of non-retaliation. On March 18, 1962, the French government signed the Evian Accords with the rebels. It provided for a referendum on independence, to be held on July 1. On March 19, the day after the signing of the accords a cease-fire was put into effect. The killings began in the villages as the French army retreated from them. On April 3 1962, General de Gaulle declared that the Harkis were “a magma which has served no purpose and which must be got rid of without delay.” On June 21, the Algerian Affairs Committee and the minister Louis Joxe, applying General de Gaulle’s orders after the Evian Agreement, forbade the Army to rescue threatened Muslims. On July 3 France recognised Algeria’s independence, which became effective on July 5. Algeria then sank into anarchy. All those vying for power needed to prove their patriotism by being ruthless towards the Harkis. The massacres then became massive and were accompanied by unimaginable torments. These refinements of cruelty were intended to make the victim infamous. The number of Harkis killed in 1962-1963 has been estimated at between 60,000 and 80,000. Some say that they numbered 150,000. The minister Louis Joxe gave orders strictly forbidding French officers from bringing to France the Harkis who had served under them, and specifying punishment for anyone who disobeyed. Finally, after widespread international condemnation, France agreed to accept around 40,000 of the Harkis. Even then, when they arrived in France, they were imprisoned in miserable camps and subjected to forced labour. For more on the subject: The Algerian War.

• High ground ◊ Since the time of his seminary studies, Father Georges de Nantes, our Founder, had been fighting against heretical theories that finally triumphed in the Second Vatican Council. In July 1969, he was faced with a dilemma. In that month, he received two ultimatums. The first, an official ultimatum from the Prefect of the Holy Office enjoined him to withdraw his accusations of heresy against Paul VI and the Second Vatican Council, and thus to submit to every innovation and alteration of the Faith made by this Pope and his Council. He would thereby abandon his Catholic Counter-Reformation movement to these heresies. The second was an unofficial ultimatum presented by a group of priests who attempted to draw our Father into their schismatic plot of separating from the Church by giving the Sacraments outside of any jurisdiction, thus breaking their communion with the Pope and the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church whom they considered to have forfeited their offices by the very fact of their alleged heresies.
  Father de Nantes realised that many souls would become disoriented and be tempted with despair. He thus defined dogmatically for his Catholic Counter-Reformation movement a “high ground” that can be summed up in his aphorism “Neither schism nor heresy.” Our Father chose the image of a crest line flanked on each side by an abyss. He wanted to keep his disciples on this crest line, on the high ground of the true Faith. At all costs, the Catholic faithful had to avoid falling to the left into the abyss of the conciliar Church’s heresy, or to the right into the abyss of the integrist schism.

• I

• Integrism / integrist ◊ The meanings of words change over time. Such is the case for the word: Integrism. Originally a French term, it has either been directly borrowed or is translated into English, unfortunately by words that do not correspond well to its meaning in French. The term “integrism” must therefore be clearly distinguished from the English terms: integralism, traditionalism, and fundamentalism. To complicate matters, the semantic field of this term has been extended into now widespread improper uses, always with a pejorative connotation, i.e.: Muslim integrism.
  Let us study the evolution of the words integrist and integrism in Father de Nantes’ lectures on the great doctrinal crises in the Church. He remarked that all these crises take place in a similar way and involve the same eternal protagonists: heretical innovators and integrists. “As soon as 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 “defenders of the Faith.” It is in this sense of “defender of the Faith” that in his early lectures and writings, we sometimes find Father de Nantes saying: “I am an integrist,” or “we integrists […].” Then comes “the decisive test of holiness. The defender of the Faith must adapt his preaching to the error he is combatting: firstly, he must affirm more vividly what is being denied or neglected by heresy and then he must be prepared to recognise any good that the adversary may be teaching. This is where we find a different reaction between those whom we must now call integrists and those who are 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 (schism). 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, 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.”
  We find an insightful example of integrism in Holy Scripture itself. Originally the Pharisees were Jews who defended the Jewish laws and customs against the pagan Hellenistic customs that Syrian Greek King Antiochus Epiphanes was trying to impose by a bloody persecution. Unfortunately they soon “cut themselves off,” – the very name: Pharisee is derived from an Aramaic word literally meaning: separated – forming their own sect wherein they transformed the Law of Moses into “a hard and cold ideology.” Christ is often quoted as warning the multitude against them in scathing terms. For example: “You leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men. You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God, in order to keep your tradition!” (Mk 8-9)
  In the 20^th century, although both Father de Nantes and Archbishop Lefebvre reacted against the heretical innovators of the Second Vatican Council, they did so differently. In the end, for twenty years, Father de Nantes warned the Archbishop that he was heading towards an integrist schism, which was formally consummated in 1988 with the episcopal consecration of the four Lefebvrist bishops. “The intrinsic malice of schism,” Father de Nantes then wrote, “is to be found in the sacramental constitution of a church alongside the Church and of an intruding magisterium setting itself up as judge and supreme pastor over a part of the people in opposition to the Roman Magisterium.”

• Interpretive History ◊ People usually believe that historians write an impartial history free of preconceived ideas and that, by collating documents, they reconstruct the events as they unfolded in their naked truth, so that the reader becomes the onlooker, as though he had witnessed them personally.
  hat, however, is impossible. In the first place, there are so many accumulated events that the historian is forced to choose among them according to their explanatory value: they must be of decisive importance in the epoch that the historian is trying to bring back to life. To this judgement concerning the existence of the events the historian adds a judgement of moral value: did they have good political, economic, philosophical, religious effects on the course of our destinies or, on the contrary, harmful ones? The historian is obliged to “put a lot of himself into his work,” as we say today. The historian thus makes deliberate choices and interprets history. That is why Father de Nantes preferred to speak of “histoire volontaire,” which we translate as “Interpretive History.”
  Nevertheless, most historians, even though they claim to be impartial, expurgate a priori from their history every supernatural event. They deliberately interpret history to exclude from their science all that belongs to divine grace, its effects in the world, on ideas, on events, on providential men. These historians act as though there were no God in Heaven and no grace of God on earth!
  Father de Nantes deliberately and boldly interprets history by taking a stand in the name of his Faith, i.e. in the name of divine Truth and of the human moral good that proceeds from it. “For us who already accept the Catholic Faith and who are onlookers filled with wonder at the general {{orthodromy}} of the divine work in the universe and in the course of human history, what matters to us in this mass of events that form the history of our country, France, is not the evolution of fashions, of cooking, of traditions, etc. What matters to us is to discover what God wills in the history of France in order to consent to it, to approve its protagonists and to support God’s work.”
  Father de Nantes, therefore, was in search of the interventions of God in our history, on condition that they be proven and indubitable, for they gave him the key to events and to their sequence. This is the true and unique “course of history”, the orthodromy of God’s Plan that aims at the establishment of the Kingdom of His Son over the whole earth, in which France occupies a privileged and predestined place that distinguishes her from the other nations.
  Our Father’s Interpretive History is thus a persuasive discourse intended for those who share our faith and are already sure that it is the divine truth.

• L

• Letter To My Friends ◊ During the early years of Father de Nantes’ priestly ministry, he made “friends,” many of whom became his spiritual sons and daughters. He began writing each of them letters of spiritual direction. Soon, however, these friends became so numerous that Father was no longer able to address individual letters to each of them. Thus, for the first time, in October 1956, he addressed his first collective “Letter To My Friends” to seventy correspondents who formed a veritable “family” around their spiritual Father. A few years later, in 1963, there would be a thousand “friends” receiving these letters. Originally meant to teach them love of God and neighbour, and the ways of perfection according to Saint John of the Cross, Saint Teresa of Avila, Father de Foucauld, Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Saint John Mary Vianney (the curé of Ars) and Saint Pius X, the evolution of Church and world events broadened their content. They can be grouped roughly, according to their subject matter: Letters 1 to 57, October 1956 - October 1959, on spirituality; Letters 58 to 141, October 1959 - May 1963, on theology; Letters 109 to 116, May - August 1962, on political morality; Letters 153 to 175, October 1963 - July 1964, on the Church; Letters 176 to 220, letters of major controversy, July 1964 - December 1965; and finally, Letters 221 to 229, in 1966, on the Creed. When Father de Nantes created the Catholic Counter-Reformation movement, the publication of its first bulletin The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the 20^th Century in October 1967 brought an end to this series of letters.

• Liberation of 1944 ◊ “What a horrible future these sadists, these men of blood and death, these tigers with human faces, are calling down on us: years of legal or private assassinations, of torture and hatred; a slaughterhouse regime!” This is how Father Panici, the only man of the Church who dared to raise his voice, described the crimes of the Liberation, in his Lenten sermon at Notre-Dame de Paris on March 25, 1945, before being silenced.
  It was General de Gaulle who took advantage of the liberation of France from the Nazis in 1944 to set up this slaughterhouse regime, out of hatred for social restoration that Marshal Philippe Pétain, head of the French State, had achieved during the four years of the occupation. The General was aided and abetted by the French Communists and the Freemasons whose lodges and institutions the Marshal had suppressed. Astonishingly, even Christian Democrats joined in this outburst of hatred to suppress and replace all the embarrassing witnesses of the Vichy regime. Thus tens of thousands of good Frenchmen were purged, imprisoned, handed over to lynch mobs or executed after public show trials for the sole political crime of having obeyed the orders of Marshal Pétain, their legitimate leader.
  The purges of the Liberation were savage and there was nothing spontaneous about them. Already, in the autumn of 1941, in their newspaper Libération, the Communists began drawing up ‘black lists’ of ‘traitors,’ whom the Francs-Tireurs and French Partisans (FTPF), an internal resistance movement founded in 1942 by the French Communist Party, took charge of eliminating. Highly structured, the FTPF took immediate action. This meant that ordinary citizens were to be liquidated, without proof, without trial, without judgement. There was no question of a trial, since the facts denounced were presumed to be true, thus the suspect to be guilty. In February 1944, the FTPF, while retaining their autonomy, were merged into the French Interior Forces (Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur or FFI), which regrouped all the resistance organisations.
  The Allies landed in North Africa in November 1942. In May 1943, General de Gaulle went to Algiers. There, together with General Giraud, he created the French Committee for National Liberation (CFLN). By the end of the year, the CFLN was acting as though it were the recognised government of France. In May 1944, it proclaimed itself the provisional government of the French Republic.In the meantime, the CFLN planned a systematic purge of all sectors of French society. In each French department a committee was set up to execute the plan. The Communists quickly took over the leadership of these departmental committees. A new unprecedented category of culprits was invented for the cause: the Vichyite, defined as ‘anyone who actively or spontaneously served the internal or external policy of the Vichy government.’ To compensate for the lack of motives, a new retroactive offence was invented, ‘national indignity,’ sanctioned by a new penalty, ‘national degradation.’ The Communists went so far as to demand the confiscation not only of past and present property but also of future property. The existing laws were not enough, so a special jurisdiction was created: courts of justice presided over by a ‘magistrate’ assisted by a jury of four ‘Resistance fighters,’ all members of the Departmental Liberation Council.
  Less than two weeks after the Liberation, a Central Commission for the Purge of the Judiciary was created. The aim was to strike quickly and hard, to eliminate all institutional obstacles so that the purge machine could be set in motion rapidly. 266 judges were suspended from their duties in January 1945, most of whom were then dismissed.The purge of the Army had begun in Algiers. In July 1943, de Gaulle dismissed 400 officers of the French African Army, judged to be still too much in favour of Marshal Pétain. The War Commissioner waited until the Liberation of Paris in August 1944 before placing all the officers of the Armistice Army on standby. 26,779 officers of the three arms were dismissed or forced to retire to make place for 10,000 ‘Resistance fighters’ who wished to be integrated into the regular army. Two weeks after the Liberation, 700 Parisian policemen were arrested by the Communist cell already active within their own brigade. By the end of the year, 5,000 were suspended from duty.
  In June 1944, the Algiers legislation for a purge of the administration was applied to metropolitan France. The first to be affected were the prefects: they were all dismissed from their posts for the crime of loyalty to the Marshal. A number of them paid with their lives. 11,343 civil servants were condemned and 5,000 of them forced to resign. Commissions were formed to carry out purges in universities, high schools, colleges and even primary schools. 5,091 files were then forwarded to the Superior Council of Inquiry for Education. As the government had decided to nationalise certain sectors of the economy, it undertook a purge of entrepreneurs. They were brought to trial, the only purpose of which was to declare their removal and confiscate their property.
  In the end, nearly a million French citizens were affected by the purge of 1944. Of this total, one tenth were summarily executed.
  De Gaulle’s revolution, however, would never have triumphed in 1944 if treacherous Christians, in defiance of all right, all justice and all truth, had not sided with the enemies of God against their brothers. The Commission overseeing these purges was chaired by the Christian Democrat François de Menthon. The departmental committees for local implementing of the purges sometimes included Christian Democrat priests and religious. A list of clerics to be purged was drawn up in secret. Several of them were assassinated by the Resistance because of their support for the Marshal. The ‘Christian’ Resistance drew up a list of twenty-seven bishops, whose resignation it demanded. It was the Catholics of the Provisional Government who proved to be the most obstinate supporters of the episcopal purge. They even obtained from the Vatican the departure of the nuncio, Msgr. Valerio Valeri. Officially, de Gaulle had nothing to reproach him with, other than the fact that the nuncio’s testimony proved that Marshal Pétain had indeed been arrested by the Germans in August 1944 and forced to leave French soil despite his protests. This ruined the thesis of a collaborationist Marshal fleeing under the protection of the Third Reich.

• Logia ◊ Logia (plurial of the Greek word: logion) are the sayings or observations of a religious teacher that are retained by his disciples. When it became all too obvious that many of the faithful were no longer receiving the spiritual nourishment that their souls required in their parishes, Father de Nantes had his morning prayers, the homilies of community Mass, and spiritual readings with his commentary recorded on tape and sometimes on video. (Brother Bruno has since continued this practice.) These recordings became known as the “Logia.” People could subscribe to receive these logia on a regular basis. Since the creation of our Catholic Counter-Reformation VOD (video on demand) site, persons interested in these sermons and spiritual reading subscribe to the VOD site where the Logia are now accessible among all our other audio and video productions. Unfortunately they are available in French only. However, if you have a basic knowledge of this language, you will find abundant logia there to help you improve your understanding of spoken French.

• M

• Masdu ◊ At the beginning of 1965, Father de Nantes expounded the personal thought of Pope Paul VI, whose whole design was explained, analysed and denounced: it is a political-religious utopia, a new theory of religion. Father de Nantes called it the Movement for the Spiritual Animation of Universal Democracy [Mouvement d’Animation Spirituelle de la Démocratie Universelle], from which he coined the acronym Masdu. In fact, Father de Nantes found this name in a speech delivered by Pope Paul VI on January 30, 1965: “The Church cannot be disinterested in the ideological moral and spiritual animation of public life,” and in this sphere she invites us “to work with confidence, in those institutions which today are the democratic institutions.” In other words, the Church then makes herself the humble discreet servant of the new human society and generously aspires to rival the social ardour of other animators of human heroism.
  This system can be broken down into three parts, to which there is to be added one important corollary: 1° It is not simply the Church and Christendom that form the “unit of Salvation,” but mankind as a whole. 2° The new Gospel of this community is the Declaration of the Rights of Man, with its trilogy of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. 3° The building of a World Democracy is the analogy here on earth of the Kingdom of God, and it is to be attained through the coming of Justice and Peace, in Truth and Love. The system’s Corollary: that the function of Religion – by which is to be understood a union of all the existing religions – is to provide inspiration and Spiritual Animation for mankind thus regenerated.

• Merciful Love ◊ On the feast of the Most Blessed Trinity, June 9, 1895, Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus, spiritually in full blossom, received a grace inspiring her to offer herself to Merciful Love as a victim of holocaust. This oblation of oneself to God’s Merciful Love as a victim of holocaust resolved Sister Thérèse’s inner crisis. From the time she entered Carmel, she had never ceased to feel at odds with the doctrine that Cardinal Bérulle had imposed on the French Carmel, whereby God’s justice could only be appeased through expiatory suffering by an Oblation of oneself to His atoning Justice. Such a spirituality did not correspond to the “Little Way of Spiritual Childhood” that Saint Thérèse had been inspired to live and teach to all little souls. After obtaining Mother Agnes’ permission Saint Thérèse composed her Act of Oblation to Merciful Love. A few days after pronouncing this Act, she received a great mystical grace known as a wound of love. She considered it the sign that God had accepted her oblation as a victim of holocaust.

• Modernism ◊ 1. Its definition: Modernism is a disease of the mind that developed over a long period of time during the 19^th century, mainly under the influence of Immanuel Kant. It is an attempt to bring the Church into line with modernity and then to update the whole of Christian doctrine. Although Modernism has all the appearances of the Faith, by which it escapes criticism, it is, in reality, pure apostasy in disguise. 2. Its theological explanation: Modernism is a denial of God and His Christ in Their living reality. They are replaced by replicas that can be adored without needing to leave the self or submit to any other person. The sophism consists in and is inspired by Kant’s dualist philosophy: what reason proves to be false in its own domain of the real scientific external world, can nevertheless be true for the heart, the conscience and the sentiment, in the domain of intimate spiritual experience. 3. Its consequences: In the logic of Modernism, it is not the Gospel that created the Church, as Christians of former times believed; it is the Church in her collective consciousness and her experience of the divine, who has created the Gospel out of a few uninteresting, residual and inaccessible human events of the life of Jesus. Consequently, religion ceases to lay claim to objectivity and defies all dogmatic codification, the tutelage of ecclesiastical Authority and the verification of science. 4.  Its condemnation: Saint Pius X’s condemnation of the 65 Modernist propositions in 1907 was followed in 1910 by the Encyclical Pascendi and the Anti-Modernist Oath. He put the works of Modernist authors on the Index of Banned Books. At the same time, having no fear of scientific studies, since true science can only confirm the truth of the Faith, Pius X encouraged them. Barred for fifty years, Modernism reappeared at the Second Vatican Council with devastating effects.

• Movement for the Spiritual Animation of Universal Democracy – see MASDU

• O

• Orthodromy ◊ This is originally a navigation term. It is the act or art of great-circle sailing. A ship’s trajectory plotted on a flat map as a straight line looks like the most direct and the shortest route to the destination. However, since the earth is a globe, the shortest trajectory will have the form of an arc on a flat map, although this arc appears deceptively longer.
  Father de Nantes applies the nautical term to God being constantly present and acting in the history of the world to guide its course. This is the divine orthodromy. Although history is fraught with conflicting events, meandering social and political currents, and setbacks, through it all, God is governing the world and leading the holy navigation of the Church, of the world, and especially of France through the millennia, by the shortest trajectory towards the desired Heaven of the Eternal Kingdom and the great judgement to the glory of Christ and the condemnation of Satan.
  Father de Nantes proposes to whoever has the soul of a “disciple” and who places himself under his guidance to model his personal trajectory on this trajectory of the universe, and to take his place in this movement of divine orthodromy. In so doing, the disciple will be a living element in it, in order to belong to this Kingdom of God, to participate actively by joining this grand mystical body that is the Church, in order to struggle there with his brethren against the opposing forces coming from Hell, for the honour of God, “served first,” for the salvation of all men.

• Our Father ◊ In the writings of religious communities, intended for their own members, the authors use the expression “our Father” to refer to the founder of their Community, feeling no need to specify further. For example, when a Benedictine writes “our Father,” he means Saint Benedict; when a Carthusian monk writes “our Father,” he is referring to Saint Bruno. Therefore, when you see the expression “our Father” in the writings on this site, you will know automatically that the author is referring to Father Georges de Nantes, the founder of the Little Brothers and Little Sisters of the Sacred Heart, of their Third Order, the Phalange of the Immaculate and of the Catholic Counter-Reformation Movement. If you are a first time reader and unfamiliar with Father de Nantes’ life and the role he played in the Church in the second half of the 20^th century, you can get a rapid overview by consulting the Chronology of a life and a work. For a more in-depth knowledge, you can read his biography: Georges de Nantes – The Mystical Doctor of the Catholic Faith.

• P

• Phalangist ◊ A member of the Phalange of the Immaculate, which is the Third Order of the Little Brothers and Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

• Phalangist Summer Camp ◊ Our Catholic Counter-Reformation itinerant cycling camps are not only an enjoyable way for parents to provide their children with wholesome activities in a Catholic environment during the summer vacation, they also reinforce the religious education that they are endeavouring to give their children. A young person’s spiritual development, however, is not complete in adolescence. In early adulthood, when serious decisions are taken concerning the service of the Church and Country: religious life or marriage, career choices, etc., it is important for young adults to continue their religious instruction. This is why Father de Nantes established the summer Camp of the Phalange for young Catholics between the ages of 16 and 26 to prepare them to assume the role that God has prepared for them in His divine orthodromy. The camp is, above all, a ten-day retreat of pray and devotions (in particular, a solemn procession to honour the Immaculate Heart of Mary on August 22, Her feast day). Each camp deals with a topic of general culture. From year to year therefore, the daily lectures vary greatly: theology, history of the Church, history of France, literature, missiology, Catholic Counter-Reformation doctrine, the study of the life of our founder, Father de Nantes, etc. Some years there have been special outings or pilgrimages. Other years, plays that are related to the theme of the camp were staged by the participants. Since 1994, the Phalangist Camp has included a musical oratorio composed by Brother Henry de la Croix and performed by our young people. Throughout the year, the lectures given at the August camp are made available, one lecture per month, on video, and they are now published on our Catholic Counter-Reformation VOD (video on demand) site. Unfortunately, all the video lectures on this VOD site are available in French only. However, if you have a basic knowledge of French, you will find abundant lectures to help you improve your understanding of spoken French.

• Progressivism ◊ 1. Its definition: Progressivism is a new heresy more serious than the worst of the past, because it is not the declared negation of any single dogma, but a “transposition,” a “counterfeiting,” a total, devious perversion of the Catholic Faith. It can be defined as collaboration with the enemy of the Church, in the name of charity! It is, first of all, a political collaboration following the sense of history. This leads to the abandonment of all the institutions of the Church, replaced by those of the State. Finally, a false mysticism inflates this utopia. 2. Its theological explanation: This heresy preserves the mystery of salvation in its admirable movement of fall and redemption, but it empties it of its eminently supernatural content and transposes it onto a human and earthly plane. Its essential pastoral concern is to incarnate the Church, which means aligning her with the world and making her espouse the world’s mode of thought, hopes and desires. 3. Its consequences: This transformation of ways of thinking and acting is accompanied by a further transformation, namely, that of the heart’s inclinations: it advocates the admiration of the opponents of the Church, while exuding contempt and hatred of the Catholic faithful. In all areas, Progressivism contradicts the opinion and practice of the Church of all times: the campaign against Catholic Schools, for liturgical changes; suppression of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, the campaign in praise of Protestantism and of Islam. 4. Pending its condemnation: Progressivism is ever attracting souls simply for want of being clearly defined and condemned outright. In 1959, after the death of Pope Pius XII and the accession of John XXIII, Father de Nantes undertook the systematic study of Progressivism to provide the lacking definition. He published this implacable critique of the heresy of Progressivism, set out in a series of thirty-two of his Letters to My Friends, entitled The Mystery of the Church and Antichrist.

• Y

• Youth Work Camps ◊ “It is towards the future that we must now turn our efforts. A new order is beginning [...]. I am inviting you first to an intellectual and moral recovery.” So spoke Marshal Pétain on June 25, 1940 when, after an unprecedented military rout, he announced to the French nation the armistice, the end of hostilities. The Marshal wasted no time. On July 4, 1940, he ordered General de La Porte du Theil, who was not a man to conceal his Catholic faith, to establish a compulsory civilian service (Chantiers de jeunesse – Youth Work Camps), which would compensate for the armistice’s ban on military service. The General regrouped the soldiers of the class of 1940 (those who had been mobilised in May 1940 and who had known nothing but the Army in defeat).
  In a few days, General de La Porte du Theil set up a remarkably effective organisation to achieve the objective of the intellectual and moral recovery envisaged by the Marshal, the first step in secretly preparing these adrift soldiers for resuming combat. Eighty thousand young soldiers were thus grouped into units of two thousand men, the equivalent of a regiment, and sent to camps in remote mountainous regions, far from the cities, assigned to public utility work: lumbering, road construction, draining swamps, etc.
  As Father Redt, the sympathetic chaplain of Group XI in the Vercors (a region of the Alps), said: “Those who were ‘kids, real kids,’ when they arrived, after eight months of this regime, had become men with the maturity required for starting a family.” Before entering the seminary, Father de Nantes himself volunteered to serve in one of these Youth Work Camps in the Vercors mountains.