SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL
DIGNITATIS HUMANÆ
VII. Christian Freedom
AN IMPIOUS AND SUICIDAL ACT
THE declaration “ Dignitatis Humanæ Personæ” is the main grounds for Fr. de Nantes’ opposition to the disastrous Second Vatican Council. His opposition was loyal and unreserved from the beginning. On October 1, 1964, when a bitter discussion concerning this text was getting underway, he wrote:
« This dramatic debate can only lead to catastrophes. It was necessary to avoid recalling truths too austere if the men of the Church were too feeble to shoulder the burden, or to proclaim them proudly and paternally in the face of the modern World, which does not accept them and dies for want of them. But discuss them, never! The Church cannot stray from them without disavowal and apostasy. » (Letter to my Friends no 185)
The Declaration Dignitatis Humanæ was, nevertheless promulgated on December 7, 1965, on the eve of the closing of the Council, but without having any character of infallibility, and this vote was accompanied by such a robbery that it is legitimate to challenge, even today, such a Conciliar Act.
« In the debates from September 15 to 21, 1965, there were from 225 to 250 opponents, an unusual number in this flock of dumbfounded bishops, against the same number of passionate partisans of the novelty. To win over, at all costs, the minority, vehement protestations of Catholic orthodoxy were inserted into this heretical text. (no 1). There were still 249 opponents on November 19 and 70 on December 7, during a public session, in the presence of the Pope who, nevertheless, proclaimed this impious Act.
A STRANGE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
WHOSE FOUNDATION CANNOT BE FOUND
The numbers 1 to 4 of the conciliar Declaration affirms the internal and external right, of individuals and of society to full religious freedom, without coercion of any sort that prevents or restricts its exercise, that restrains or solicits it in any manner.
« Injury therefore is done to the human person and to the very order established by God for human life, if the free exercise of religion is denied in society. » (no 3) And: « Provided the just demands of public order are observed, religious communities rightfully claim freedom in order that they may govern themselves according to their own norms, honour the Supreme Being in public worship [sic!], assist their members in the practice of the religious life, strengthen them by instruction, and promote institutions in which they may join together for the purpose of ordering their own lives in accordance with their religious principles. » (no 4)
The foundation of such a right lies « in the very dignity of the human person as this dignity is known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself » (no 2). This is at least what the conciliar text claims. But Father Congar himself admitted: « The precise point of religious freedom such as our Declaration uses it is not found as such in Sacred Scripture. » (Unam sanctam no 60, p. 13) We needed to know!
As for the argument of human reason, the author of the text, Msgr. Pavan, had to branch off into the natural right and moral duty of all men « to seek truth » in order to justify absolute liberty of thought and action in matters religious. How could such a sophism have been accepted by the Council?
The consequences of this theory are incalculable: « This Council dismissed God from its sessions to listen to man, to idolise him and to define its new religion, its pastoral approach, on the basis of the cult of man in lieu of the cult of God. » This is the main accusation made forty years ago by the theologian of the Catholic Counter-Reformation in the twentieth century.
We have been unable to find a better comparison of these two religions that fight one another within the unique and holy Church other than this commentary made by our Father, in January 1986, of an article of Msgr. Pavan himself. Father Gitton, at the time when he was chaplain of Montmartre, said about these two pages: « They are irrefutable. » Here is the summary, in the form of a dialogue, a “dialogue” that never took place!
GOD AND JESUS CHRIST DISMISSED
Msgr. Pavan : Rights like duties adhere in concrete persons and not in values. Truth, justice, beauty are values not persons. Consequently, truth has no “right” to freedom, but only the individual who, even in error, does not lose his rights.
Fr. de Nantes: – The supreme Truth is Christ; he is our Justice, our good and our supreme Beauty. Now, Jesus Christ is a Person, divine Person incarnate, and therefore the incomparable “subject” of the most extensive social “rights”. The Council only recognises “persons”, that is to say: men who recognise within themselves certain highly subjective “values”, and who will not only admit purely empirical social relationships between themselves, relationships for the good life in common as “bons vivants” each keeping his own ideas, his own morality, his own metaphysics, his own “values” for himself, without bothering the others. Thus God is dismissed from among men.
Msgr. Pavan: – The conciliar text expresses two distinct affirmations: no one can be constrained to accept a faith, nor can anyone be prevented from giving expression to his own faith, unless it injures other people...
Fr. de Nantes: – And if that “other person” was our gentle Saviour Jesus Christ, or the Person of His Father, our Father in Heaven, or the divine Person of their Holy Spirit, greatly “injured” by men’s idolatries and irreligion. Msgr. Pavan does not think of this? For him, and for the Council, society is a collection of human persons in an association of perfect freedom, equality and fraternity.
Msgr. Pavan: – Yes, each person is responsible for his relationship with God, and must always be able to remain himself.
Fr. de Nantes: – That is a total inversion of the natural and divine order. It is no longer God who is “in charge”, that is to say the sovereign legislator, of his relationship with man and, therefore, of the being, and of the rights and duties of each person. It is man who is the author and free legislator of his relationship with God in an absolute autonomy. Man who declares himself God has banished God from his world, has banished his Creator and the Son of God made man, become his Lord and Master, his Saviour and king.
Msgr. Pavan: – For the Church the person must be at the centre of everything.
Fr. de Nantes: – What person?
Msgr. Pavan: – Well! The person of every man, of course, whoever he may be! The person of the poor, the outcast, the oppressed…
Fr. de Nantes: – And the person of Jesus Christ, our king and Sovereign Legislator?
Msgr. Pavan: – Ah no, that is excluded. With Him at the centre, all the others will be his subjects. With him at the head all the others will be his members... »
The conclusion of our Father: « Man at the centre can only mean one thing: Neither God nor Jesus Christ, nor the Church at the centre, but Man. Rebellious man, and at his centre, the conqueror Satan… And this is where we see the fundamental, absolute, irreparable contradiction between the Catholic religion and the new religion of Man imposed at the Second Vatican Council. » (cf. CCR no 186, pp. 3-4)
THE CONSEQUENCES OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
In number 5 of Dignitatis Humanæ, liberty is recognised to families « to freely live their own domestic religious life under the guidance of parents » The Council did not dare to go against the natural right of parents to give to their children the education and religious training of their choice. But Msgr. Pavan admitted: «There is no doubt that the proclamation of freedom in matters religious, a fundamental human right, postulates that within the family as well, parents cannot impose religious faith on their children. » (Unam sanctam, p. 158)
Go on! May 68 will pass that way and will break down all the barriers.
As for Schools, the Council, in an attached Declaration on “Christian Education”, quite liberal in conception, took another step towards apostasy. « In the past, everything came from God, resumes our Father, through the natural and supernatural institutions that participated in his authority and in his rights. This Council of apostates inverts this divine order so as to make everyone kneel, on all fours, at the feet of the child-king, the child-god, the modern idol... All must work together towards his service in view of the development of his personality. »
Lastly, the State, whose profile is drawn by Vatican II, democratic and neutral, indifferent to God and servant of individual freedom: it is no longer a question of recognising in it a divine legitimacy, and even less a religious mission, as given to the King of France consecrated at Reims. « However, the Council gives to the State with one hand what it takes away with the other: it makes it the repressor of religious anarchy! It takes religion away from the State from the point of view of the truth, but it gives it back to him from the point of view of public order! And no one seems to realise that this subjugates religion to the State!... After all is said and done, it succeeded in freeing individual and social man from the sovereignty of Jesus Christ, in order to cruelly abandon him to the tyranny of police States. It is a disgrace and an apostasy. » (CCR no 28)
LIES ABOUT REVELATION AND TRADITION
After having proclaimed the new dogmas of Religious Freedom, in answer to the requirements of the Modern World, the text of the Council attempts to justify it by Scripture and Tradition. « A wasted effort, explained Fr. de Nantes: this theory is unknown to Scripture which is its divine contradiction and its eternal condemnation. »
The only verse quoted in support of this new thesis, not by the conciliar text, but by its commentators, is that of Sirach, according to which « God left man in the hand of his counsel » (Si 15.14). It is on this sole verse that reposes the weight of the temple of the freedom of man! Now, Brother Bruno has done a scholarly exegetical commentary on this verse (cf. CCR no 264, pp. 9-11). Replaced into its context, it signifies that after his fall, in chastisement of his rebellion, God abandoned man (Adam) to the malice of his counsel and to his perverse designs. All of his descendants inherited this ill-will, unless he is freed by the grace of He who said:
« If you abide in My Word, you will indeed be my disciples. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. » (Jn 8.31-32)
The Council therefore blinds itself when it states:
« In faithfulness therefore to the truth of the Gospel, the Church is following the way of Christ and the apostles when she recognises and gives support to the principle of religious freedom as befitting the dignity of man and as being in accord with divine revelation. Throughout the ages the Church has kept safe and handed on the doctrine received from the Master and from the apostles. » (no 12) It is to use cunning with the Gospels and the apostolic Epistles, mixing the interior and intimate liberty of consciences, which no one has the power to compel, and social liberty, which is folly.
The text goes a step further, at no 12 once again: « Thus the leaven of the Gospel has long been about its quiet work in the minds of men, and to it is due in great measure the fact that in the course of time men have come more widely to recognise their dignity as persons, and the conviction has grown stronger that the person in society is to be kept free from all manner of coercion in matters religious. »
Thus, thanks to the Council, the Church is supposed to have discovered among the free masons and the atheists, as a Gospel leaven, the doctrine that nineteen centuries of Catholic tradition had prevented her from bringing to fruition. That is a bit much! And here is the blackmail:
« It is plain that men of the present day want to be able to profess their religion freely in private and in public. Indeed, religious freedom has already been declared to be a civil right in most constitutions, and it is solemnly recognised in international documents. » (no 15)
Therefore, if modern man and contemporary States recognise it, the Church can only concede defeat, renounce her truth, her law, so as to satisfy the demands of the World, hoping to contribute in this way to the concord and peace of the entire human family, founded not on the worship of Jesus and Mary, but on the assistance of all human religions and ideologies, fraternally associated in a Movement for the Spiritual Animation of World Democracy, Masdu! From this fatal moment on, Satan reigns in the Church.
THE FREEDOM OF CHRISTIANS AND OF THE CHURCH
When Vatican III wishes to come back to the true conception of the freedom of Christians and the Church, divine in its source and its measure, it will only have to take up what our Father wrote in October 1964, before the end of the third session of the Council in the heat of the controversy that still held error in check, for the imperishable reasons outlined here:
« Freedom comes from God alone. Perfect human freedom belongs to Jesus Christ alone and, in the divine gift that He made of it, to the Catholic Church. She alone is the true religion and the perfect society whose rights dominate all powers and all created individuals. It is by virtue of their membership in this divine and true Church that all Catholics have the full freedom of worship and apostolate in all nations and in all states. It is the foundation of a family, social, political international law, absolute and sacred. The other religions, being deprived of all historical proofs and of all supernatural marks of truth, have no specific authority and those who practice them, even sincere persons, have no special right other than that of natural morality. Neither the Church nor States should recognise such religions, nor grant them the slightest social right, for error founds no real right. Only the requirements for common good and peace can bring about a certain tolerance, which, however broad it may be, will be no more than a lesser evil, always dangerous for the true faith, for the supernatural good of societies and for the salvation of souls.
« One must not speak, therefore, of freedom except concerning private consciences, which cannot be forced: no one can be compelled to practice a religion that his conscience rejects as being irrefutably bad; but it does not follow that this religion may act exteriorly according to its error. Furthermore, society must expend all its efforts to bring it to the truth and redress it according to the good to which God calls it.
« To say that it is violent for the Church to demand for herself what she refuses to others is to lead minds astray, it is to renounce the true God, the true faith, the unique Church of Jesus Christ so as to no longer judge things except from the point of view of Man, autonomous and absolute, who has taken God’s place, free to believe and to act without restriction! The conscience and its rights are exalted, but let us be careful not to unleash, under this mask, the human beast! Who would not be able to use his conscience as an excuse for shaking off all constraint and all law? Undoubtedly the conciliar project was reviewed and partially amended, but world opinion heard the Church renounce her intransigence and exalt liberty as a fundamental human right. It will be difficult to come back to wisdom. » (Letter n° 185)
As for us, let us remain prudent, protected from the ruses of the Devil, by the grace of the Immaculate who crushes his head and triumphs over all heresies: « You divert our gaze from the seductions of the Serpent. Your secret, finally revealed, is that of a creature forgetful of Herself and preserved for God alone, a creature whom God has magnificently exalted. Your lesson saves us from the mirages of Antichrist, who is the opposite of You in every way. » (Georges de Nantes, Letter no 179)
Taken from He is Risen! n° 10, June 2003, p. 13-16