“Strike at the Head!”

(excerpts from the editorial)

ON July 1, 1968, Father de Nantes was summoned by the Holy Office, undoubtedly at Paul VI’s personal request, for the purpose of retracting his criticisms against the Pope, the Second Vatican Council and the French bishops, and of swearing complete, unconditional and unlimited obedience to all of them. It would mean submission to everyone and to whatever! Father de Nantes had four days to ponder and to make his decision. Until the last moment, he experienced during these four days, “the most dramatic alternative before God, my Master and my Judge.” On July 4, he was finally determined “to submit blindly, entirely and definitively.”

That day, however, in Rome, our Father met Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, then Superior General of the Fathers of the Holy Spirit. Without the slightest hesitation, the latter dissuaded him from such a retraction: “You cannot do this. You do not have the right to do so. We ourselves wrote to the Sovereign Pontiff in due course that the cause of all of the evil is in the Acts of the Council. Be firm in the truth.” Our Father shouldered again this cross which, for a moment, he had thought that he had been ‘relieved.’ The next day, he categorically refused to sign the act of retraction despite the silent threat of an excommunication, which, in the end, was never fulminated.

We begin this editorial in this way, for it so happens that Archbishop Vigano has just paid a vibrant homage to Archbishop Lefebvre, whom he considers “a confessor of the Faith,” judging that “his denunciation of the Council and the Modernist apostasy is more relevant than ever.” Archbishop Lefebvre: a confessor of faith in the Church, certainly not! Since Archbishop Vigano is offering some hope of a salutary reaction on the part of a bishop against the Acts of the Second Vatican Council, it is, in fact, topical to recall that the example of Archbishop Lefebvre, the founder of Ecône, is to be proscribed. This is all the more necessary since we want to stay on the “high ground” as defined by our Father, Georges de Nantes.

This meeting in Rome on July 4, 1968, providential for Father de Nantes, was even more so for Archbishop Lefebvre who was thus being pressed to comply with the order that he had just given to Father de Nantes, that is to say: to denounce the signature that he, as one of the Fathers of the Council, had personally put to all the Acts of the Second Vatican Council, including the declaration on religious freedom, which he knew to be heretical because he had valiantly fought it during the preparation and voting of the text; to publicly oppose this conciliar reform and to directly, openly and officially call into question the personal responsibility of the Supreme Pontiff, following the example of Father de Nantes. We, however, are obliged to say that Archbishop Lefebvre did none of these things and preferred to maintain the equivocal silence in which he had taken refuge since the close of the Second Vatican Council, in order to arrogate to himself the canonical right to found ad experimentum the Sacerdotal Fraternity of Saint Pius X and a seminary, at Ecône, in order “to experience Tradition.”

As early as January 6, 1967, in his Letter to My Friends no. 240, Father de Nantes was in a position to give a catastrophic assessment of the conciliar reformation. In it, he denounced the fundamental collusion between the Pope in person and the subordinate executors of this reformation, he took the decision to engage in a Counter-Reformation struggle and even to announce his intention to address the Sovereign Pontiff directly. Archbishop Lefebvre, on the other hand, waited until 1974 before manifesting his opposition publicly without, however, clearly challenging the Acts and discourses of Pope Paul VI. He preferred once again to hedge, to profess mulishly an apparent attachment to the Sovereign Pontiff, always with the aim of saving his Fraternity of Saint Pius X from a programmed eradication, which took place on May 6, 1975 by decision of the Bishop of Fribourg acting on Paul VI’s orders.

Archbishop Lefebvre then committed two major errors that we must remember today, because we find them in the writings of Archbishop Vigano.

Archbishop Lefebvre’s first error was to claim that, since the Second Vatican Council, two parallel Churches were coexisting: “the reformed, liberal Church” and “the Church of all times,” which he thought he could and wanted to save by establishing an “unofficial, discreet, humble, silent and faithful Church that would maintain ‘the’ Tradition in ‘the’ traditions that are its normal vehicle.” Father de Nantes, however, pointed out that “in order to stress the utility and more especially the vital necessity of this parallel Church, the distrust felt by the faithful towards the New Mass was played up to the point of declaring it dubious, insulting to God, and sacrilegious. No occasion was lost to declare it necessarily invalid and therefore idolatrous.”

ArchbishopVigano makes his own this theory of the two Churches: “Since the Second Vatican Council, there has been the co-presence of two entities in Rome: the Church of Christ has been occupied and eclipsed by the Modernist conciliar structure, which has established itself in the same hierarchy and uses the authority of its ministers to prevail over the Spouse of Christ and our Mother.” He recommends to priests to celebrate “only the Tridentine Mass,” and to preach “only sound doctrine without ever mentioning the Council.” As for the laity, he exhorts them “to go to a church where the priest celebrates the Holy Sacrifice worthily, in the rite given to us by Tradition, with preaching in conformity with sound doctrine. When parish priests and bishops realise that the Christian people demand the Bread of Faith, and not the stones and scorpions of the neo-church, they will lay aside their fears and comply with the legitimate requests of the faithful. The others, true mercenaries, will show themselves for what they are and will be able to gather around them only those who share their errors and perversions. They will be extinguished by themselves.”

Here is what Father de Nantes had to say about this theory that pits one Church against the other: “It is contrary to the Catholic Faith and insulting to the Word of God. To declare: ‘there are two Churches,’ is to believe that His promises are vain. Where do you see two Churches? There is the Church of Rome, the historical, hierarchical, visible Church spread throughout the earth and…? and what? and who? For the ‘Donatists’ of today, the malice of saying that there are two Churches is only a specious, transitory way of assuring the passage from the old universal Church, to the new, private one, which, we are told, is also the true and faithful Church, whilst awaiting to proclaim definitively that it alone remains the only faithful and holy Church, the Church of Rome no longer being in existence. What a fine work of schism!” (CCR no 76, July 1976)

No! What must be understood, and what our Father warned his readers about, even before the Second Vatican Council, in his study dedicated to the Mystery of the Church and Antichrist is that: “Two religions are fighting within the one Church. They are contesting the minds and the hearts of clerics with the aim of climbing the hierarchical ladder to reach the Supreme Power of the Council, the Conclave and finally the Papacy, and so spread unimpeded throughout the entirety of the faithful. On the one side there is the religion of the Antichrist with its cult of Man, and on the other side, our Christian religion with its cult of God Alone. The ancient, perfect, revealed religion is at grips with a new religion invented by men, which bears a blasphemous resemblance to it.” (CCR no 76, July 1976)

When, after the closing of the Council, it became clear that the Church was caught in a general movement for ongoing reformation, Father de Nantes began to engage in a Counter-Reformation. To direct this combat, he established two rules; the first, for him and for those of his friends who were willing to follow him: never to declare that they alone constitute the Church, thus “repudiating this post-conciliar Reformed Church as schismatic and heretical,” the second: to combat “within the Body of the Church, i.e., the visible society in which fallible men conserve the power they have to err or to do wrong, to bring about this latent schism, this parasitical heresy, this inadmissible novelty that defiles her divine purity and conceals her true life.” (Letter To My Friends no. 240, January 6, 1967.)

Archbishop Lefebvre’s second error, which, moreover, is the logical consequence of the first one, was to have refrained from having any recourse to the Pope.

It is indeed extremely imperative for anyone who refuses the chaos and the corruption of liturgy and faith to combat this Reformation ordered or authorised by a hierarchy that is apparently unanimous with its head, the Pope in person. This must be done without forsaking this Church that is provoking him to revolt and that openly desires his departure. The Reformation must be rejected while remaining in the Church. Yet, how is it possible to dissociate the present Reformation from the Church that is imposing it? “This can only be done by “attacking the very Person of the Pope, since he, and he alone, stands at the crossroads of these two worlds, those of order and disorder, of Tradition and subversion, of the Work of Christ and the machinations of Belial.” (CRC n° 38, November 1970)

For outside the exercise of his extraordinary or Solemn Magisterium, a Pope can fail in his duty even to the point of becoming heretical, schismatic, and scandalous. Yet, even though he is heretical, schismatic and scandalous, the Pope, sovereign judge of all the faithful, remains the only judge in his own case, in his infallible doctrinal Magisterium. The infallible Pope judges without appeal the fallible Pope. This is the solution of “the appeal from the Pope to the Pope” that Father de Nantes deduced from the dogmatic definition of the First Vatican Council. Bear in mind, however, that the corollary of this solution is that the person who criticises the Pope for being a heretic or a schismatic “must not leave it at that, but must do everything in his power to engage legal proceedings for his deposition, since he cannot make a universally and immediately executory decision of his personal judgement.” (CRC no. 69, June 1973)

This is precisely what Father de Nantes did, first of all in his masterful letter to Paul VI on October 11, 1967, in which he clearly denounced before the very person who was its instigator, the plan for a certain unprecedented and insane reformation of the Church – the main idea of both the Second Vatican Council and of his pontificate. Then, from 1973 on, seeing that no voice had risen in the Church to oppose this reformation, Father de Nantes brought three Books of Accusation for heresy, schism and scandal against both Popes Paul VI and John Paul II. These were not only public and loyal acts, but also acts of submission to the infallible judgement that was being demanded from the sovereign Judge to whom the case had been canonically referred. Neither of these two Popes deigned to render a solemn and final judgement in the exercise of their infallible Magisterium on the accusations brought against them during their lifetime. On the part of the Supreme Judge, this was a “most flagrant crime of dereliction of duty.”

Yet, there still remained one last heroic remedy: “A bishop, who is also a successor of the Apostles, a member of the teaching Church, a confrere of the Bishop of Rome and, like him, ordained for the common good of the Church, could break his communion with him as long as he has not proved himself faithful to the responsibilities of his supreme pontificate.” (CRC no. 89, February 1975, untranslated) Archbishop Lefebvre obstinately refused to break his communion with the Pope, to publicly accuse him of heresy, schism and scandal. While going to great lengths to express to Paul VI his unreserved attachment to the Holy See and to the Vicar of Christ, while discussing the validity of the new liturgical rites and thus diverting entire masses of the faithful from the fight of counter-reformation, he set himself up as the “sole sovereign judge of Rome, both past and present.” While refraining from revealing the doctrinal reasons for his refusal of the reformation, Archbishop Lefebvre nevertheless continued, after May 6, 1975, the foundations of his work and on June 29, 1976 he ordained fifteen priests, despite Rome’s prohibition. Twelve years later, he consummated his schism by consecrating four bishops without a pontifical mandate.

Is Archbishop Vigano taking the same path as Archbishop Lefebvre, whom he admires so much?

He seems to be making a lucid analysis of Vatican II. He has just written, in a public letter dated September 21: “The central vice therefore lies in having fraudulently led the Council Fathers to approve ambiguous texts – which they considered Catholic enough to deserve the placet – and then using that same ambiguity to get them to say exactly what the Innovators wanted. Those texts cannot today be changed in their substance to make them orthodox or clearer: they must simply be rejected according to the forms that the supreme Authority of the Church shall judge appropriate in due course.”

Yet who is the supreme authority in the Church? It is, of course, the Pope about whom Archbishop Vigano adds: “It should be noted that this mechanism, inaugurated by Vatican II, has seen a recrudescence, an acceleration, indeed an unprecedented upsurge with ‘Bergoglio,’ who deliberately resorts to imprecise expressions, cunningly formulated without precise theological language, with the same intention of dismantling, piece by piece, what remains of doctrine, in the name of applying the Council. It is true that, in ‘Bergoglio,’ heresy and heterogeneity with respect to the Magisterium are blatant and almost shameless; but it is equally true that the Abu Dhabi Declaration would not have been conceivable without the premise of Lumen gentium.”

We can therefore conclude that Archbishop Vigano is today at a crossroads.

He will either follow the example of Archbishop Lefebvre and what he says, writes and publishes on blogs and other internet sites will have no other consequence than to set himself up as the legitimate Pope’s judge and to create a party against him and thus indurate the schism initiated by the founder of the Society of Saint Pius X.

Or else he will place himself at the service of the common good of the Church and thus he must reveal to the Holy Father, and not only to his readers, his suspicions of heresy, and the reasons for his opposition to the Acts of the Council. As a successor of the Apostles, he must break his communion with the Bishop of Rome, then officially, solemnly, and publicly present an act of accusation for heresy, schism and scandal in such a way that no one, the entire clergy of Rome to begin with, will be unaware of it. In doing so, he will compel the fallible Pope to exercise his infallible Magisterium in his own case and to adjudicate in a definitive manner between the true religion of the cult of God and His Divine Mother and the religion of the cult of man… and of Mother Earth.

As for us, since we endorse Father de Nantes’ Books of Accusations, we remain in withdrawal of obedience. This state enables us to differentiate as best we can, according to the infallible criterion of Tradition, that which proceeds from the reigning Supreme Pontiff’s customary and Catholic Magisterium in order for us to submit to it, from that which comes from this usurped authority that serves for the Reformation of the Church, which we consider null and void. Even a ‘warning’ from this so-called ‘French Conference of Bishops,’ which has no canonical authority to pronounce doctrinal judgements in the name of the Church, will not, as we recently wrote to Bishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, divert us from this common service of the Church.

With Our Lady of Fatima we cannot lose faith in the Church and in her restoration. This will come about at the initiative of her Supreme Magisterium, through the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This consecration will come very late, but we know that the Holy Father will pronounce it, no doubt when he is forced to do so by events, as the ultimate and only means of obtaining mercy to spare the world the just punishments towards which it is heading. The current health crisis is a very serious ‘warning’ of this.

COVID 19

There are several things that can be said about the health crisis we have just gone through. It brings to light several cruel realities.

1° We should not forget that this virus comes to us from communist China! Is it of animal origin or did it accidently escape from a laboratory? We do not know, and that is not what is important. Let us assume that the Chinese are not guilty of this or, at worst, that they made a laboratory error. Granted! What they are gravely guilty of, however, is that from the very beginning they blatantly lied about the figures, about how many people had been sick, how many had died, they lied about the date of the outbreak of the virus. At present, they are only admitting to 4,632 deaths. This is hard to believe! This lie about the figures had the consequence of inciting doctors and western governments to underestimate the danger of this virus.

On the other hand, Doctor Alexandra Henrion-Caude recalled that the so-called Chinese experts also made us lose precious time in the fight against the virus: one to two months. When the virus arrived in Europe, the Chinese offered their help to Italy, saying they knew how to deal with the disease. The first thing they advised was, above all, to avoid autopsies. This was odd because the first thing to do when it is observed that an unknown virus is causing deaths is to set up a protocol for a full autopsy of the deceased patients. We, however, preferred to trust the Chinese.

If autopsies had been carried out from the beginning, instead of in March, the number of deaths would have been considerably reduced, because it would have been understood why the patients were suffocating. It would have been ascertained that the virus does not directly attack the pulmonary system, but the cardiovascular system. This would have led to considering an anticoagulant treatment and effective medical care would have been carried out earlier.

2° Let us consider more specifically France, which is one of the ten countries most affected by the pandemic. Why us?

“Is there a mistake that they did not make?” This is the title of Professor Christian Perronne’s essay that was published in spring on the Covid crisis. Dr. Christian Perronne is head of the infectious diseases department at the Raymond-Poincaré Hospital in Garches. He is a university professor who for fifteen years chaired the transmissible diseases commission of the current High Council on Public Health. His function led him to advise many governments and ministers in major health crises such as the H1 N1 pandemic of 2009, SARS, etc. Being a member of the profession, he knows what he is talking about.

In his book, Doctor Perronne notes no less than eleven scandals in this crisis: shortage of masks, absence of tests, wait-and-see attitude of the Scientific Council that is supposed to assist the government, conflicts of interest among the doctors who are members of this Scientific Council, refusal to use chloroquine, prohibition for general practitioners to prescribe it (this is the first time in France that doctors have been deprived of the right to prescribe what they believe they should give to their patients), etc.

Our aim here is not to take sides for or against the supporters of chloroquine. The task of analysing the facts and drawing conclusions falls to the doctors. Our aim is to remind us that the root cause of all these scandals is democracy. The Republic is a headless woman!● In crises as in wars, no one is responsible; in the Republic no one takes decisions, and everyone buries his head in the sand. We saw this during the First World War, during the Second World War, and in all the great scandals of the Republic. This does not surprise us.

Doctor Perronne writes: “Is there a pilot in the France plane? Yes, we had an experienced and even visionary pilot, Agnès Buzyn●, since she understood before everyone else, as early as December 2019, that we were heading for disaster. She had seen the tsunami wave from afar. So the minister procrastinated. Her last measure, a magnificent act of heroism, was to activate her ejection seat before the crash.” sic!

So that is what happened, that is how it always goes in a democracy: there are never any culprits, there are never people who are responsible. At present, more than six hundred doctors have taken legal action against State lies. We can bet that none of these proceedings will end in a condemnation. Neither Macron, nor Véran, nor the doctors of the Scientific Council, nor the pharmaceutical industry bosses, nor anyone else will pay for, will be held accountable for the thousands of deaths that could have been avoided if we had had a competent leader and a minimum of concern for the common good of our country.

3° Much more serious than this, the progressivist Church, the Church of Pope Francis, supposedly close to every man and to all mankind, was “unavailable” during this crisis: orders to close churches, to cancel Masses, to suppress the Holy Week liturgy, to forbid priests to visit families, to assist the dying, to bury the dead in churches, etc. As a result, and it was Msgr. Chauvet, rector of the cathedral of Paris, who said it during an interview on France info on August 14: in France, “there are about 30 % of practicing Catholics who have not returned to church,” either because they now prefer to continue to attend Mass on television, or because they were extremely disappointed by our pastors and have lost all confidence in them. The truth is that in the present health crisis, the Church is failing in her mission to save souls by caring for bodies.

Brother Bruno of Jesus-Mary