The Year of Grace 1960,
Year 1 of the Expansion of World Communism

January 1960.

“Jealousy and discord have destroyed large cities and wiped out powerful nations.” Saint Clement, Letter to the Corinthians (96 a.d.).

I wanted to send you my good wishes for the year of grace 1960, year 1 of the expansion of world Communism according to statements made by its leader, the year also of the revelation of the last secret of Fatima. I delayed writing this letter, so heavy was it with my fears and yet at the same time charged with a great hope. In announcing that blood would flow, the blood of soldiers, the blood of martyrs, I felt that these sad forecasts would not take long to be tragically confirmed. Where would this blood flow, in which circumstances and why? It was these questions that I wished to answer in order to fortify your souls and to enlighten them in Truth.

If we rise above the strange passions in which our newspapers and party activists seek to involve us, and provided that we do not escape into a false “mysticism” where the search for God and Charity would result in a cowardly renunciation of our Church and our fatherland, the coming year can easily be foreseen. The great movements of thought and power will continue their accelerated expansion, which is literally terrifying, unless, prepared in the secrecy of the Church of God which prays without cease and immolates herself, some supernatural event should come to reduce to nothing the vain thoughts of the wicked. Pessimism, optimism, no! It is Christian wisdom which dares to measure with exactitude the forces of Satan and has the faith to oppose them with the power of the Invisible Spirit which animates our Holy Mother the Church.

What is the first thing to terrify us? It is obviously persecuting Communism whose red stain is growing on the map of the world and which, fortified by its successes, is casting its tentacles over a new continent which the West seems to be abandoning to it, Africa... whence it will pounce on Europe and drive towards Mexico where it will already find its emissaries come from the other side of the world. It has been said before and oft repeated, its military force alone cannot explain such an expansion; it is its power of seduction, truly diabolical, which enables it to seize without any opposition immense regions of the earth. On one hand the “under-developed” peoples let themselves be inebriated by this subversive dialectic which the West itself invented, and on the other hand even here Progressivism and its multiple ideological strands regard Communism not as an enemy of our civilisation and religion, but as a sister movement. I will explain all this at length this winter. A recent event characterises this complicity: the visit of Khrushchev to France. This reception, which was both foolish and odious, left the clergy and the elites of the country almost totally indifferent. Therefore, unless America makes some extraordinary mistakes, there will be no all-out war this year, but we will see Communist political and military imperialism feverishly exploiting its ideological conquests: Africa will be devoured. This may happen without any bloodshed or fighting, like a harvest of ripe fruit.

It is before the arrival of Communism that blood will flow, and this will take place within the very heart of a besieged Christendom, in the outbursts of hatred arising from its divisions. Let me explain myself. Communist imperialism, by continuing and extending the doctrines of 1789, utilises a highly seductive notion to involve peaceful peoples in its war, the notion of Independence. Herein it flatters the people in their supreme vice, pride. It provides them with their chance to pronounce that diabolic phrase: “I will not serve!” From one region of the earth to the next, this watchword does the rounds, arousing hatred and awakening the most savage instincts; everyone demands Freedom and the right to enjoy every earthly good; they wish to win this at one blow and whatever the cost. The old political order is condemned, appetites are unchained, and murder is simply viewed as a clever way of making the movement of the revolution irreversible. The rivers of blood flowing from these “wars of national liberation” are transformed into raging torrents and there is no wise authority left to stop them!

If all Christians, all civilised person, viewed this evil in the same way and with the same genuine resolution, there is no doubt that this decomposition of the world and the great Christian empires would be rapidly arrested without great cost. The tragedy, however, is that these events are interpreted in different ways, even within the Church, and that an influential body believes that such an evolution is just and providential. If blood flows in 1960, it will certainly be between Christians, between Frenchmen; even the knife of the Moslem or Communist assassin will be directed by the hands and brains of our race and religion. Indeed, it is a thesis received by all and regurgitated by our “good press” that this abandonment of colonial empires is but a normal way of returning to a more humane and just order. It is supposed to be a purely political change arising from the universal class struggle, which only the “nationalism” and “colonialism” of “extremists” – i.e. the selfish interests and proud passion of Frenchmen and other colonisers – is preventing from being carried out peacefully and generously. M. de Gaulle, following Messrs Faure, Mollet and Mendès, is attempting to effect this political abandonment by anaesthetising and paralysing French nationalism; in this he is followed by the blind masses and spurred on by all the cliques of the revolutionary left.

Missionaries, taking their cue from a vast section – alas! – of the Catholic clergy, would appear from their all too clearly stated attitude and thousand declarations simply to seek to opt out of the game, if one may call it such. They would like to shut their eyes to the situation, for it is not such an easy task in Kairouan and Douala as it is in Paris to be unaware that this immense revolution and frenzy involves a change of a political nature the terrorism and xenophobic fanaticism of which are far from being merely insignificant accidents. In this general orientation of the Catholic elite we observe that perversion of the Progressivist mind which leads him to see in these insurrections, where Christians, Moslems, pagans and Communist are all mixed together, a kind of new biblical and evangelical march by Humanity towards the Promised Land and the City of God. We also note a certain naivety, bordering on the most craven blindness, whereby one imagines oneself to be meriting for the Church the privilege of her full liberty in these new worlds!

That is why, while French Christians are having their throats cut, their brothers (at least the vocal and active “elites”), far from helping them, are either supporting the assassins or washing their hands and swearing that the Church has no part in these temporal conflicts. Therefore, should God not see fit to reverse this Wind blowing against us, the civil war ignited by this Myth of Liberation will throw the Christian world into total ruin. It was the missionaries who encouraged Cameroonian independence; now they are attacked and killed because pride which leads the dance cannot attack the terrestrial order without hating the supernatural causes of that order. The departure of colonists and soldiers heralds the unavoidable martyrdom of missionaries, unless they in their turn, having come to a just appreciation of things, take up firearms against their adversaries, the Moslem and Communist Bamilekes, in order to save their small flock. However, they are likely to be swept away along with those magnificent regions of Christendom which they founded. Sow the powerful wind of pride and the storm of hatred is sure to follow!

There is in this spirit of giddiness, so seductive for the Catholic masses and the elite despite the veiled warnings of the Sovereign Pontiff, such a power of deception that now I can only expect the saving miracle to come from the Church herself, awakening her children. Will it come from the Third Secret of Fatima to be revealed next May 13? Will it come from the Council, apparitions or some other extraordinary event? All this is possible and Heaven is close enough to the earth to reveal the necessary assistance to our dazed eyes. As events unfold, however, might not the miracle be that Catholics, first in their tens and then in their thousands, starting with the clearest-sighted and moving on to the entire people, having purified themselves through prayer and the study of every ferment of heresy, discord or cowardice, should run to the defence of the City of God assailed on all sides.

Georges de NANTES
To My Friends No. 63, January 1960