Foreword

THE Little Brothers and Little Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (and Mary) have fallen, undoubtedly due to my fault, to the lowest degree of abjection, to the degree from which no one can recover unless he is a saint. In the case of a saint, it is obvious that just previous to death, such an ordeal must be a martyrdom, a seal of the inflamed Love of this soul, for Jesus and for Mary, which is but one. It is golden ticket to Heaven. On the contrary, for those who are only poor sinners, the mere rumour of sex scandals is enough to make those who are defamed – whether rightly so, wrongly so, or even to some extent – odious to everyone.

Such insinuations or even denunciations, accusations, condemnations, going around for twelve or fourteen years were more than corroborated on July 27, 1996 by the bishop of Troyes. His word immediately accepted as authoritative before the media tribunal. Public and ecclesiastical opinion accepted everything as being well-known, highly scandalous, and a disgrace not only for us and our friends, but also the Catholic right-wing and the Church herself!

Thus, I had nothing to do other than to obey the injunction of my bishop and judge: to disappear like the ‘Man in the Iron Mask’, cut off from the world of the living in a monastery, for ever. Our brothers and sisters were to be dispersed. Although they had committed no evil and enjoyed complete presumption of innocence, Vigi-sectes disregarded these facts and incriminated them anyway. They had nothing more to do other than to keep their heads down and assert their rights.

The misfortune is that this ‘trial by media’, opportunely got underway at the same time as a worldwide media hype was making public opinion aware of the ‘dangerousness of sects’. Thus both political and ecclesiastical public opinion were already prejudiced against us. I am a “suspended” priest. Although a ‘suspens a divinis’ is a disciplinary measure that is lenient, always temporary, limited to one’s diocese, in the eyes of public opinion it is defaming: to question the reputation of a priest in France is morally and socially tantamount to assassinating him, to ruining him.

That was in 1966, and it was the work of a charming bishop, Bishop Le Couëdic, who promised to recommend me very warmly to the bishop of the diocese to which I would flee. For in that period of the end of the Algerian war, he was a Gaullist, and I was not, which earned me demonstrations of hysterical hatred on the part of the Communists of Troyes. Bishop Le Couëdic saw in this a case of ‘odium plebis’ that merited a dismissal!

The Council was taking place simultaneously with this political unrest. The same bishop found the same priest and his religious community, once again on the opposite side of the one he was taking at that time! He was on the side of the mighty, of those in power, of the press and public opinion. The talk going around about the ‘OAS priest’ sufficed to stir up hatred. To add that this Community was ‘opposed to the Council’ sufficed to isolate Father de Nantes from good Catholic people dooming him already to an imminent excommunication.

Seeking only to be straightforward, I had asked to be judged in Rome, with a view to obtaining a doctrinal judgement which, given the centrality of the subject to Catholic dogmatics, should bear all the hallmarks of infallibility. Not seeing anything forthcoming, I decided to write to Cardinal Ottaviani who was still ‘Pro-Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office’ [Letter to My Friends n^o 231, of July 16, 1966], in order to delimit and specify the object of such a trial. In the letter, I explained that the Council had undertaken a cunning destruction, as promising for the satisfaction of the world as it was radical for the Catholic religion, of which there would soon remain nothing, neither personnel, nor institutions, nor the faithful. Bishop Le Couëdic, who according to canonical regulations ought to have transmitted it to its addressee, refused to do so. Then he forbade me to publish my own letter in our own periodical. For having carried on regardless, I was declared ‘suspended’ on August 25, 1966, thirty years ago.

He had already published a ‘warning’ against us in the press in 1965. It is still the one that Bishop Daucourt brandishes today to accuse me of persistent disobedience, while we thought rather that we benefitted from the endless patience, the somnolence, or the wisdom shown by Bishop Le Couëdic’s successor and Bishop Daucourt’s predecessor. He used the argument of Rome’s silence to leave us all in peace, us, himself, and the good faithful.

Nevertheless, these are not situations that are very clear for practicing laymen and even less so for anticlerical laymen. A well-chosen circumstance would suffice to transform our ‘interim period’ into an inconceivable, constant, and open rebellion against the Church in general. Bishop Daucourt found this rare circumstance that he needed to appeal to the people in order to annihilate us: the campaign launched against us by anti-sect vigilante groups after they had succeeded in having us put on a list of ‘dangerous’ and ‘pseudo-Catholic sects’. With the help of these same vigilante groups, the bishop added a new offence of ‘atomic’ importance, a nuclear bomb! We were, to be more precise, I was, denounced as a ‘heretic’. The terrible word was pronounced. I was heretical on the great dogmas of the Eucharist, the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Holy Trinity.

These accusations would not have disturbed the general public any more than the sanctions of 1966, had there not been the lure of scandal – concerning a priest! – and what more, of an opponent of the Reform, of Democracy, of Liberty, of change!

Obviously, if the Pope had been able to clear himself of my accusations, then I would have inevitably disappeared of my own doing from the forefront of the world stage. If I had done like everyone else and had rallied to the Council with my Communities, my faithful, and the majority of traditionalist opinion that suffers and remains silent, then, as if by enchantment, the personal initiatives that I took with the ministry would be excused, my theology would be praised to the skies and considered of highly topical interest for its anti-Freudism, and there would never have been a scandal.

Could we not, however, take the initiative now to pacifically, fraternally clear the air in order to regain our honour, our work that is functioning magnificently, our scientific studies that are known and appreciated by everyone, and our summer camps for children that have never given rise to the slightest rumour, to the slightest scandal. No! Why? Because, for the Bishop of Troyes, the scandalous morality of this Community, its indisputable heresies, although unknown to the public, its pastoral activity that extends well beyond the limits that Bishop Le Couëdic established in 1965-1966, all these blameworthy affairs, must silence the priest and his disciples: Let him be muzzled, let him be thrown into an inaccessible dungeon, in order to rid the reigning Pope of the accusation of heresy, thus of schism and scandal that he is levelling against the Council, thus against the Popes of the Council and against the New Catechism based on the Council.

There was nothing for me to do but to disappear!

In my absolute solitude, I sought insight on what I must do. I had the time, the serenity, and the atmosphere of peace, everything needed to examine the heart of the matter. On the eve of my departure, a hurriedly made photocopy of a page, of a sentence! – of the eminent successor of Cardinal Ottaviani, Cardinal Ratzinger, casted a violent light on the matter. Now, what a prodigious coincidence! What perfect agreement! The Prefect of the Sacrosanct Congregation for (the defence and the illustration of) the Doctrine of the Faith explicitly endorsed the central theme of my Letter of 1966 to his august predecessor. He says, without taking the tone of a joke, yet immediately afterwards – as he always does! – he ensures that he has a strategic retreat, not of flight, but of expectation. Here it is:

“Today we are clearly witnessing a profound paradigm shift (to use this voguish expression). An abyss is splitting the Church’s history into two irreconcilable worlds: the preconciliar world and the post-conciliar world. »

What follows does not detract from the gravity of this enormous word of incompatibility! Thus, he continues, « for many, there could be no harsher a verdict than to consider themselves justified in describing a decision of the Church, a liturgical order, or a person as pre-conciliar. Did Catholic Christianity thus find itself in a truly frightening state before 1965? » Yet already, he himself has already withdrawn from the game.

For instance, further down, on the same page, he evokes « Pius X’s specific liturgical knowledge and experience », but in order to take the liberty of writing without too great a risk: « Today, in Germany, Pius X is scarcely considered more than an antimodernist pope », and already in Rome, at the Holy Office, “Pius X” has lost his halo and his title of saint! This is found in the book “A New Song for the Lord”, with the subtitle: “Faith in Christ and the Liturgy today” (Desclée - Mame, 1996 pp. 173-174).

My status as an outcast allows me to think, speak, and write in my seemingly perpetual seclusion, all that I want without prevaricating. Well, the Cardinal thinks exactly what he says, but in a dialectic that the reader cannot imagine. Here is my hermeneutic of his precious words: there is incompatibility between the Christian thought of the years 1900-1914, in particular the thought of Pius X, and the current thinking of the Cardinal and his friends who claim to be Modernists, and in fact truly are. This incompatibility, however, is interesting, suggestive, edifying, if we show the continuity of the living tradition in which the profound identity of “life” appears: Pius X’s thought responded to the aspirations and the demands of the beginning of the century as Cardinal Ratzinger’s thinking responds to those at our end of the century on the way to a renaissance for the century to come. So, are we satisfied? He is only completely satisfied if we draw the inferences that are hidden in the premises: Saint Pius X’s antimodernist Catholicism is rigorously impossible to tolerate today. Since it is incompatible with the modern spirit, it must be destroyed and its proponents reduced to impotence.

As for us, we were initially pleased to be in agreement with the Cardinal; he at last is coming round to our analysis: between his faith and ours, which was that of the whole Church before the crisis of 1962-1965, there is “incompatibility”. Now, in the absolute of the Tradition that does not evolve but remains in the unchanging truth of the deposit of the apostolic Revelation, it is Pius X’s anteconciliar faith that is divine, and its incompatible caricature can only be carnal, worldly, and therefore Satanic. This is what must be rejected in order to bring the Roman Church back to the religion of Saint Pius X, Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, and our venerated Father Charles de Foucauld.

I tremble to think about all of this, which can be easily written; I tremble to judge men, their convictions, their actions in these matters. Is it possible that the Council introduced heresy, schism and apostasy, that the Apostate himself sat as though God on the throne of Jesus Christ?

Well! Modestly, we are going to read the text of the Discourses and Acts of the Council with a critical mind.

Warning.

These texts, which were written in reclusion, are only projects for critical studies on the Discourses and Acts of the Second Vatican Council based on their texts alone (ed. Centurion, French-Latin) I do not refer to any other text – they are inaccessible to me – except Sacred Scripture. I have no access to my own writings!

I begin with John XXIII’s Opening Address. For, already it commands the whole of the Council, announces and provokes it! Then comes the Liturgy followed by the Media of Social Communication. Why those ones? The second one because it interested no one and was the first to be finished; the first one because a party of extremist periti had prepared a surprise assault in order to overthrow everything. The text is their work. Their passions and their intentions show through shamelessly, and what a debacle that caused! It became the model for those that would follow.

I will merely write down the common-sense thoughts that my reading inspires in me. I will refuse to engage in affected admiration, hoping that my reader will follow me in this non-conformism. Then, I will look for the fierce biases, the hammered-out, outrageous nonsense, the linchpins of the demonstration that is imposed on us. My reader will agree with me or not; one would have to be either a sort of Communist or Christian Democrat parliamentarian to utter or to swallow such monstrous errors. It is outrageous; it is grotesque.

The grandiloquence of the reformers of the years 1962-1965 is like those trains of the Wild West that I saw in cowboy films in my youth: the wagons would fall one after the other from a bridge into the river. What a fall, Your Eminences! Yet alas! If you are no longer amongst us to see it, the rest of us are picking ourselves up from this entanglement of bloody scrap, badly shaken for life, in a Church from which everyone, or almost everyone has fled. This is where we are, remembering other times, other doctrines, and other splendid, sacred liturgies.

After twenty-five years of doing other works, when I re-read these first acts of the Council, I am stupefied, scandalised, shaken.

a) Stupefaction!

Msgr. Charles, the chaplain of Montmartre, related at that very time [1962-1965] what happened in the Council: he compared it to the system of the boiler! Yet nowadays who knows what a boiler is? He summarised it all with a demonstrative wave of his hand: all that had been bubbling on the flames [of the “Liberation”: 1944-1964] for twenty years, in all our Modernist-Progressivist clubs, rose through the chimney, the central conduit of the boiler, from where it was sprinkled through its spray head over the mass of lukewarm, grimy laundry, sorry! I mean, over the mass of Bishops, which it thoroughly impregnated with its soap (what strange soap!).

Now, when I re-read with a well-informed mind “John XXIII’s Opening Address” and his “Message to the world”, and then Sacrosanctum Concilium and Dignitatis humanæ to get to the heart of the matter, I already find in them all the poisons of the closing (1965) and of the post-Council years until the present day (1996). The boiler invented nothing: all had been previously prepared in the clubs. The fact remains, however, that in the desiderata that the vast majority of the Fathers expressed prior to the Council, they were expecting to see all these poisons scorned, dismissed or condemned. Nevertheless, this majority applauded, from the very first day on and then to the last day, to the last denial of December 7-8, (1965), and to the last opponent, Archbishop Lefebvre. It is astounding!

b) Scandal:

Here is our nightmare: no one, apart from a few, very few sedevacantists, and the Lefebvrists – but this was an induced effect of their disobedience and schism –, no one other than us, and in any case no one more openly, continually and skilfully, therefore implacably than us, has stood up canonically against this monstrous heap of the worst heresies of our times. The Holy Church no longer shows anything but the leprosy in her upper limbs and in her visible periphery, the skin and the extremities. Where are the holiness of the Church and her indefectible profession of the true Catholic Faith? It is scandalous!

I am all the more scandalised because there is no longer any way out! I have been protesting strongly, first alone, then with a few priests (five or six) and a few hundred families of my friends, from the beginning of the Council, and ever more strongly. The authorities pretended to ignore me, they feigned to judge me, they imposed an absurd suspension on me, they “disqualified” me, they committed a criminal abuse of authority by excluding my Profession of Catholic Faith from the official archives. This Profession was my reply to Cardinal Seper’s unspeakable ultimatum, which he made on Paul VI’s order. It was followed by this ridiculous “disqualification”; that was in July-August 1969. Then they added one dereliction of duty after another by refusing my “Books of Accusation” in 1973, 1983, and 1993, despite promises, or despite the law. Now, they are looking for accusations of bad morals, which is the ultimate means (unless it is a Masonic suicide) of silencing me and dispersing our group.

All that is left for us to do is to remain faithful and, for me, contrite for having laid myself open to accusations of misconduct and heresy unrelated to the conciliar debates, to bear everything without letting ourselves be impressed or demoralised, without becoming “turncoats” or “going over to the enemy”, or abdicating. “To set our face like flint under the blows” (Is 50, 7), “despised and rejected by men” (ibid., 53, 3), and use this time to sanctify ourselves and to perfect our demonstrations of the Church’s apostasy and “diabolical disorientation” in its general nature. Yet it is vertiginous. Is it a vertigo of pride or of humility?

c) Trembling:

It is rationally impossible since our demonstration remains unanswered, and prudentially impossible since the dereliction of duty is permanent and universal, that error lie with us and that truth lie with the head and the members. Has God foreordained the great trial of the last times, and therefore is He abandoning His last faithful in virtue of His “will of Good Pleasure”, which is inaccessible and incomprehensible to everyone! This has occurred in many circumstances, for instance, Josiah’s death at Megiddo (in 609 B.C.) and the even more miserable death of Gedaliah who, for invaded and deported Jerusalem, was the Marshal Pétain of that time, in 587 (Jr 40), not to mention other catastrophes in the New Testament, in accordance with the divine orthodromy. Perhaps we will all have to be crushed.

But never will we be renegades!

This does not prevent anguish. Not anguish for our own life, for our eternal salvation, nor for those of a billion lost Catholics, but “for the Church” who must remain indefectible and repose on the Pope and the faithful episcopate, at all times and until the end. Now, apostasy and dereliction of duty have endured for thirty-three years (written in 1996), and their fruits are manifest. There is, however, no longer anyone who dares to claim that these “outnumber what the quantity of the flowers would lead us to expect”!

We will never claim to be useful to God! However, we must affirm, not only by our existence and our unchanged Catholic Counter-Reformation faith, but also through our prophetical certainty that divine Truth, divine grace, the virtues of divine holiness still exist and will exist until the end. By our prayers and our merits, we will obtain the assistance, both apocalyptic (i.e. “unveiled” by apparitions) and eschatological (i.e. of the last times) of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Jesus, Who will grant the « apostles of the last times », for whom St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort hoped and prayed, to become Holy Church saving herself.