22. The humiliation of God
and the patience of saints 
(1983-1988)

FATHER de Nantes’s concern was to preserve souls from the conciliar heresy, the integrist schism and the false mysticism of the Charismatic renewal advocated by Cardinal Ratzinger and implemented by John Paul II in the World Youth Days. He therefore founded in 1984 the Catholic, royal and communitarian Phalange, the spearhead of the Catholic Renaissance.

Father de Nantes’ cry and anguish contrasted violently with the unwholesome illusionism that had spread through the whole Church during John Paul II’s pontificate. In January 1982, our Father had painted an uncompromising picture of it: “For three years, we have lived from one festivity to the next, amid voyages, triumphs and universal acclaim. Nothing has been decided, and nothing has been done. No error has been condemned, no disorder sanctioned, no indiscipline nor any sacrilege! It is the sabbatical year, asked for by Hans Küng, with no end in sight [...]. And so for a thousand days the Church has grown accustomed to a quiet life, anxious about nothing, in a gentle daze because He is there! Even piety is on the increase wherever it in no way disturbs the sweetness of evil. Disturbing things are no longer referred to [...]”●

CARDINAL RATZINGER SOUNDS THE ALARM.

In August 1984, Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, seemed in turn to sound the alarm in an interview with the journalist Vittorio Messori. A “malaise of the Faith,” he affirmed, is spreading in four out of five continents. It challenges the fundamental truths of the dogma: “Negation of God, Father and Son, and revolt against the almighty Creator. Negation of the mystery of the Church and revolt against her divine authority. Negation and rejection of the Church’s dogmatic and moral Magisterium. Negation of the connection between Church and Bible and refusal to receive the Bible from the Church. Negation of the Church’s frontiers and rehabilitation of all religions.”●

This impressive assessment of a series of outright heresies was the sign of an undisguised apostasy that was devastating the life of the Church and leading to the loss of souls; thus Father de Nantes had been absolutely right in exclaiming ‘The House of God is on fire!’ in order to rouse the sleeping pastors of the Church. “ Our confidence,” our Father wrote in an ‘Open Letter’ to Cardinal Ratzinger, “reached its highest when we read your very concise confidence concerning the Third Secret of Fatima: ‘Si, l’ho letto, yes, I have read it!’ We forgot who you were, where you came from and on whom you depended whilst we listened to and saw none other than the Prefect of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office reading the Mother of God’s Message to our 20^th century, pondering on it and keeping it in his heart.”●

Father de Nantes, however, put his finger on the source of the trouble when he asked the Cardinal: “In a nutshell: the hidden agenda of the active minority of this Council, which was admittedly held in the Catholic faith, was to introduce into the age-old doctrine the principles of modern liberalism, going against the Magisterium of the last two centuries. It is under the cover of this papal and conciliar liberalism that the Beast of the Apocalypse invaded Rome where it camped with its armies. The question now is: what is your role at the Holy Office? Are you the obliging door keeper who holds the door open for the invaders whilst keeping it closed to us? Or are you yourself a high ranking officer of the invading army?”●

The answer is self-evident. Cardinal Ratzinger already gave us “the distressing impression of someone who – whether acting under orders, according to some pact or following his intimate feelings – is unwilling to commit himself and who will neither come to the aid of burn victims, nor fight the fire, nor even pursue the arsonists.”● Nevertheless, our Father concluded with these poignant lines, that the future would either confirm or deny:

“ If there is someone who can and ought to, it is you, Your Eminence, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Holy Office [...]. I greet in you the one who only yesterday was speaking the language of the world and on whom Christ has laid His heavy Cross, which He bids you carry with Him for the ‘Redemption-liberation’ of His Church. You will be either the apostle who is faithful to His Master all the way to Calvary or else the renegade and traitor.”●

THE FOUNDATION OF THE PHALANGE.

Cardinal Ratzinger placed his hope in the Charismatic Renewal, as if this movement, born of Protestantism, contained within itself the salutary and providential remedy to post-conciliar decadence. “That is your ‘recipe,’ ” our Father wrote to him, “whence you draw your extraordinary serenity, your confidence in the future, your certitude of a ‘salvation’ wrought by the Lord Jesus Christ alone, aided by his ‘unprofitable servants.’ This ‘restoration’ which, turning its back on a past forever gone ‘looks forward towards the Lord, towards the fulfilment of the Church’s history,’ is Pentecostalism.”

This hope could not be more illusory, because this quietism coupled with illuminism is “the other, complicit, face of devastating Modernism. With this latest madness, the great ship of the Church, slowly foundering, suddenly pulls up and points its prow heavenwards; for a moment it seems to be ascending towards it! That, however, happens to every sinking ship before it promptly disappears beneath the waves.”●

So, to save our friends from this temptation, and to launch the ark of salvation that he had been thinking about for years, on November 1, 1984, during the All Saints’ Day session (an annual three-day doctrinal instruction session at the Maison Saint-Joseph for young adults), our Father founded the Catholic, Royal, Communitarian Phalange, under the patronage and in the spirit of our venerable Father, Charles de Foucauld. On Saturday, November 3, 131 friends came forward to pronounce on the holy Gospels their act of allegiance, of adherence of mind and heart, and of fidelity to this “community of love of God and of the Virgin Mary, of love and service of the Homeland, and first of all of true, effective charity among ourselves, which is the basis of all action.”●

On the following November 21, feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin, we, in turn, brothers and sisters, following our Father, swore our “Ego promitto fidelitatem.”

“When I created the League in 1970,” our Father confided, “I did it to dissuade you from losing your Christian freedom, in either the conciliar heresy on the left, or in the integrist schism on the right, the danger of which many, at the time, did not understand. Yet we were only doing our duty, and all of you along with us, with no thought other than of remaining faithful to Christ and in the discipline of His one Church. This has kept us for fifteen years in our freedom as children of God, only in the Lord’s holy bondage. Now, let us advance even further.

“See what is happening: while the left and the right become exhausted and fall back into a weary routine, the former into progressivism and the latter into conservatism, a strong current is flowing through the Church, dragging throngs in its wake, the “Charismatic Renewal.” It appeals both the right and the left. It invites all people disgusted with their vain struggles, jaded by the great reformation programs or rearguard battles, to one simple newness of life: to fill themselves with the Spirit of Christ, with pure love, unconditional and universal love. Add to this appealing proposal, (false) apparitions,● (false) miracles, (false) illuminations, and everyone blindly follows the herd, throwing themselves into this wonderful experience and this (false) mysticism.

“It is the diabolical replica of what we are inspired to do: to live focused on Jesus Christ alone, to really occupy all our thoughts and affections with Him, to regulate our whole life on Him. Such is the Phalange. We have no new apparitions to put forward; Fatima for our century is enough for us. No miracles, no illuminations nor speaking in tongues; the holiness of the Church and her perpetual miracle are better for us. What we have to show, on the other hand, what is our sign, a good Gospel sign (!) and our merit, is persecution. The ‘Charismatic Renewal’ receives as much universal praise and high approvals as our Phalangist Communion suffers contempt, sarcasm and silence, a conspiracy of silence, so that this Phalange is nothing! Oh no, it is nothing but a seed of rebirth, of ‘Catholic renewal.’ ”●

It was at this time that Pope John Paul II launched his famous wyd, summoning young people to Rome for Palm Sunday 1984, ‘Year of the Redemption.’ He renewed the experience the next year, tagging along behind the UN that had declared 1985 ‘International Year of Youth.’ “The smoke of Satan will only disappear in the mystical invasion – hey, that is the true Catholic miracle – of the ‘True Friends of the Cross,’ the ‘Apostles of the Last Times,’ ” our Father wrote. “The Phalange is perfect joy, it is the opposite of 1789 (the French Revolution): it is in the hearts, and will one day be in the institutions, the enthronement of our King, our Queen, Jesus and Mary, for the liberating reign and the universal triumph of Their most unique and sacred Heart!”●

In July 1984, four sisters from our Maison Sainte-Marie flew off to Canada. Our Father thus completed the foundation of the community in New France, since he wanted the Communities of sisters in our Order to live in complementarity with those of the brothers, in imitation of the motherhouses. Thus, the sisters generously provide the brothers with all the necessary help, just as the holy women of the Gospel assisted Our Lord and His Apostles with their goods and their devotion.

On July 13, Brother Pierre installed our sisters in Saint-Georges de Champlain, a village not far from Maison Sainte-Thérèse. Maison Saint-Georges was close to the parish church. The parish priest and the population welcomed them. Our Father wanted them to do “exactly what we are doing here, for a people very close to ours, to help families similar to yours, facing the same difficulties and dangers,” as he stated in the Letter to our Friends, no. 51, of June 1984.

He added: “I had intimately promised to God, or more precisely He seemed to be the one Who was demanding these two things, the sending of our sisters to Canada, and the creation of the Phalange in 1983, if the announced Deadline left us the time and freedom to do so. So it has to be done.”

Promises are made to be kept. Since Heaven had heard the prayers of our children, our Father answered the divine reprieve with these foundations of a mission in Canada, and of the Phalange, the spearhead of the Counter-Reformation.

PETITION FOR THE PEACE OF THE CHURCH.

On January 25, 1985, John Paul II announced that an extraordinary synod was to be convened for the solemn celebration of the 20^th Anniversary of the close of the Second Vatican Council. It would “once again plunge the Church back into the euphoria of the Council sessions during which the Fathers could no longer distinguish their right from their left. Fundamentally, does not he himself seek to reanimate this charismatic gift, to prolong the intense pleasure, which is the basis of his pontifical optimism, so as to blind himself still a little longer until the day of his glorious exit from the world stage, stepping over the immense ruins of the conciliar event to which he owes his entire career?”●

In order to show the fallacy of this ‘revival’ Father de Nantes had the idea of approaching the Synod Fathers with a new ‘Petition for the Peace of the Church,’ asking that the minority voice of the opponents to the Council, crushed but still in existence, should finally be heard: “Your synodal assembly would certainly render a great service to the Church and to souls, to the cause of God, by proceeding first of all to an examination of this primordial division touching the Faith and of this intolerable discord, both of which date from the Council that this Synod is due to revive and, as it were, to reiterate. May it neither celebrate nor renew its discord and its division! Let the party of the Counter Reformation, therefore, be heard as much as the parties of the conciliar Reformation and of the permanent Reformation! And having been thus listened to, may all be brought back to the unity of Truth and reconciled in the charity of Christ!”●

This new approach inspired by faith in the Church remained vain, for when the final report of the Synod was published, it could be summarised as: “The Council is a Hobson’s choice.” On the strength of which, Cardinal Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris, did not hesitate, upon his return to Paris, to declare Father de Nantes and his disciples excommunicated. The young members of the Phalange courageously counter-attacked, both in Paris and in provincial France, by expressing dissent during the meetings organised to celebrate ‘the experience’ of the Council.

During heated public debates, both Father Laurentin and Father Martelet recognised that the innovations of the Second Vatican Council were not covered by any infallibility. They are therefore fallible, and their authors have failed. Our Father has proved it.

The detailed accounts of these meetings, published each month in the ‘Letter of the Phalangist Communion,’ inserted in the Catholic Counter-Reformation, gave these controversies a certain impact that contributed to defeating the charismatic revival of the conciliar reformation within the Church of France.

THAT WAS GOING TOO FAR!

The Pope nevertheless pursued his grand plan: on January 25, 1986, in closing the Week for Christian Unity, he announced that he had invited all the leaders of the world’s religions to gather in Assisi for a “special gathering of prayer and peace.” On April 13 he went to the synagogue in Rome, something that was without precedent in the history of the Papacy! On May 18 he published his encyclical "Dominum et vivificantem", a kind of charismatic oracle announcing the coming of a new era for the year 2000.

Our Father endeavoured to make a precise analysis of encyclicals, with the special gift he had for penetrating the deepest thoughts of the adversaries. Occasionally, some of them admitted that he had a better understanding than they themselves of their own theses. Then he would discern, in a perfectly objective manner, with supporting quotations, the part of truth embedded in their error.

This is what he did for this encyclical. Our Father was one of the rare theologians, if not the only one, to see right through the underlying theories:

“Throughout the sixty-seven chapters of this interminable and difficult encyclical, an idea progresses, becomes clearer and is gradually unveiled: In the year 2000 a new human race will be born, animated by a universal Spirit, in which all the religions of the past will be reconciled and fused; then will begin the third millennium, which will be that of liberty, equality and fraternity, of the ‘civilisation of love’ and of ‘universal peace,’ of course!”●

In order to silence the one true opponent of this antichrist agenda, the CCR was exposed to public condemnation as a ‘sect.’ That was going too far! Father de Nantes titled the CCR of June 1986: ‘The great modernist sect is plotting our ruin? It will lose!’ He recalled:

“There is only one sect in the Church. It began from nothing a century ago and now it rules everywhere. Saint Pius X had unmasked and execrated it, after having revealed the extent of its treachery in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis of September 8, 1907. To counter it, he had erected the formidable barrier of the Anti-Modernist Oath to be imposed on everyone assuming any position of responsibility in the Church. Forever marked with infamy, the Sect could only subsist by settling for secrecy and perjury [...].

“In 1960, the Modernist spirit chased out the Holy Spirit. The Sect methodically pursued its course of occupying all the Church’s leading functions with perfect cynicism. The fact is that its adversaries were denied the right to speak and no longer had the right to truth, justice or anything else. From 1962 to 1965 the Council provided it with a platform whence it imposed its New Christianity on the Church and on the world. Thereafter, in the ‘Spirit of the Council’ and to bring about its announced Reformation, the Modernists co-opted and pushed one another into the first places, protected from above by the Popes, with the sole exception of the thirty-three day reign of Pope John Paul I. And everywhere they all spread under the odiously ambiguous letter of the Acts of the Council and papal encyclicals, homilies and discourses, the universal treachery of a New Christianity, simply a new edition of changeless Modernism ‘the sewer where every heresy collects’ as Saint Pius X called it [...]. I am against the Sect. That alone deserves condemnation.”

After recalling his twenty year struggle against this Modernist sect in power, our Father concluded: “So they have won? They plotted our ruin, and have succeeded in it? Let the mob hear them, let it bay for the blood of our miniscule ‘sect,’ let the civil powers use the full force of the law to impede us, and the Sect will have won; it will then have the entire dominion over the Church that it sought from its father, the Prince of this world.

“Well no, that will not be. I have three round pebbles for my sling. If the first two miss our Goliath, the third will be fatal!”●

DAVID AGAINST GOLIATH

In September 1986, the Pope came on ‘pilgrimage’ to Ars, Annecy, Paray-le-Monial and… Taizé! “What an astounding place to stop, how abominable to God, to Christ and to His Holy Church! For no Catholic, even the Pope, is allowed to come to a place of schism, heresy and persistence in confusion of tongues.” Our Father seized the opportunity to write to Cardinal Decourtray, Archbishop of Lyon, Primate of the Gauls, on August 25, 1986, on the twentieth anniversary of his suspension:

“Am I wrong? Are we wrong, all those of us who remain the witnesses of yesterday and of the day before yesterday, against the Church of the Council and of the post Council? Concerning this grave, capital and – in the spiritual sense of the word – mortal error, if your Eminence, your brother bishops, the Sovereign Pontiff himself, are infallibly sure and certain, as we are given to believe, why do you not say so with the full force of the divine authority conferred on you by your high office, in order to end this division and bring us back into the unity of the Roman, Apostolic and Catholic faith? [...].

“Consequently, Eminence, I ask you, and not confidentially, but crying from the roof tops, if I may say so, as the situation demands of your Office and of your solicitude, to persuade Our Holy Father the Pope to intervene in a decisive manner by which I mean an act of his solemn and extraordinary Magisterium [...]. I have done my duty as a member of the faithful and as a simple priest by requesting through your charitable mediation that the holy Catholic hierarchy in the person of its Head give us the truth of the Catholic Faith. I do not have to tell you your duty; you know it well enough! Today is the time for the Truth to be declared and lived before the time comes when Justice is heard and suffered.”●

Touched by “the consideration you express for my person and for my title,” the Cardinal replied:

“You hope that the Sovereign Pontiff and the bishops will say ‘with the full force of the divine authority’ whether you are wrong in opposing ‘the Church of the Council and of the post-Council.’ You think that only an ‘infallibly sure and certain’ act could ‘end this division’ and bring you ‘back into the unity of the Roman, apostolic and Catholic Faith’. I find it hard to believe that such an act would have the expected effect. I shall, however, transmit your letter to the Holy See.”

Did he do so? No one knows. There was total silence from the Vatican.

Then like David, our Father took a second ‘stone’ from his game bag and slung it at Bishop Vilnet, the President of the Conference of French Bishops, on October 11, 1986, the anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council:

“If it is You – and it is You – who is in heresy and schism, and for this reason you refuse the infallible sentence that you must pass in this war of religion, we must go further. In the first place, we must appeal to the people of God against its lying pastors.

“Your Excellency, I therefore invite all of you and challenge you to clear yourselves of our accusations, and if you are able, to confound your accusers, publicly, in a debate with no consideration shown to anyone, having no other intention than the manifestation of the truth. You say that it is in your possession? Show that this is so, prove it! [...].

“On Saturday, November 15, in the main hall of the Mutualité in Paris, we shall hold the annual meeting of La Contre-Réforme Catholique at 9 pm. There are 2000 seats, and I invite you. Or rather I leave it to your disposal in order to hold this debate with me, which will mark a date in the history of our Church of France, as well as that of the world crisis of post-conciliar Catholicism. For the first time since Vatican II, the French episcopate will have agreed to a public meeting with the traditionalist Catholics, their constant adversaries.”●

Bishop Vilnet did not reply, but the Bishops of France, on the sly, asked a Jesuit, Father Sesboüé, to present them a study on religious freedom. On learning of this, our Father wrote: “One needs to be born a Jesuit or become one to execute such a command – to draw up a solid dossier for them to study during their assembly at Lourdes, not to answer me, of course, or make any effort to convince me, but no doubt to quiet their own consciences on this theme: ‘Is the doctrine of religious freedom contrary to Christian revelation and to the Church’s tradition?’ ”●

After the appeal to the legitimate authorities, and then to the sensus fidei of the People of God, there remained the third stone to sling by writing to Cardinal Lustiger, paragon of the new conciliar religion, in the form of a final appeal to the Tribunal of God. This undertaking was unprecedented in the history of the Church. Father de Nantes, however, had already envisaged it, three years earlier, if Rome refused to receive the second Liber: “So, there remains for us the great, the ultimate means, which is to appeal to the Omnipotence of the veritable and eternal Head and Pontiff of the Holy Church, and to invoke against a prevaricating Pope the Name of Jesus Christ, the just Judge of the living and the dead.”●

THE APPEAL TO THE JUDGEMENT OF GOD.

Thus, on November 11, 1986, our Father wrote to Cardinal Lustiger, his former seminary confrere: “I see that nothing remains to us other than the direct and immediate appeal to God’s judgement with you. Yes, your Eminence! With you…” Then he proposed that in the year that run from December 8, 1986 to December 8, 1987, “he who errs be struck by God with death, and that the other be spared.”●

With, as champions for the ordeal:

“As upholder of the unchanging Roman Catholic Faith who rejects its recent Conciliar and pontifical contradiction, I, Georges de Nantes, priest of the holy Church.

“As guarantor of the new doctrine of religious freedom considered as a natural right of man in society, and consequently of all the other innovations of the decrees and declarations of the Council relative to ecumenism, non-Christian religions, openness to the world, Your Eminence, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger [...].

“I do not imagine anyone in your entourage, nor you yourself, would dare pray for three hundred and sixty-five days that Heaven take my life away so that the edifice from which my entire belief takes its inspiration be torn down. To give it its most exact name, this edifice is the Faith of Pius X. Are you going to ask in your pious prayers: ‘O Christ, O Lord and King of my heart as You are of the Church of Heaven and earth, destroy Saint Pius X?’

“No, of course not! So, I formulate the wish that, pressured by this threat of God’s Judgement, you will enter into yourself, Eminence, that you will abjure your errors and your hatred before the hour of just Truth and true Justice has come for you this year. The consequences of such an abjuration would be considerable and you would then be, much better than I have been able to be, during these twenty years of trouble and diabolical disorientation, the best defender of the Catholic Faith.

“Your Eminence, I kiss your pastoral ring, with the most profound and firm hope that you will wish to enter voluntarily into this Judgement of God, which is our last recourse, our sacred recourse, the one that cannot be rejected. It will be heard.

“Your devoted colleague of old and your most humble servant,

“Georges de Nantes.”●

This ‘Year of the Faith’ was spent in insistent supplication and filial abandonment to the good pleasure of our heavenly Father, drawn from the Immaculate Heart of Mary, our Mother and Mediatrix of all graces, ‘powerful against every heresy like an army in battle array.’ “It is a vast, deep, long-lasting impetus,” our Father noted with satisfaction, “from our Communities and from your circles, from your families, a vigorous impetus, a joyful impetus, which makes difficult things easy, and renders definitive the decisions that have remained fragile until now and that have too often been abandoned. Pray, have children pray! Sing the Magnificat every day! Say the Rosary, many Rosaries from now to December 8, 1987! Also, reform ourselves, really change, in order to live out this whole year as though above ourselves in the virtues that are most difficult for us, because of what we are asking God for!●

The wait during the last days was trying, as our Father noted in his Phalangist notebook:

“December 3. A deadly wait. Unable to write anything, since the beginning of this novena, the last entreaty of this final recourse. Futility of words and speeches, of demonstrations repeated for twenty years in the ears and before the eyes of men, now that I am addressing You, Lord, just Judge of the living and the dead, Who knows all, Who can do all, to Whom it is good to address only prayers, to Your royal Sacred Heart, through the intercession of the Victorious and Immaculate Heart of Your and our Mother, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary. When I have no words on my lips other than those of Jeremiah: ‘Bonum est præstolari cum silentio salutare Dei... It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of Yahweh.’ (Lm 3:26,) for Saint John of the Cross informs us: ‘In silence and hope shall be your strength’ Now, with five days to go before the end of the term, You order me, Lord, to make a deal, You suspend all Your graces, You paralyse all my powers and lead my eyes and my heart to Your Will. A unilateral covenant, a blind deal, but who would want to resist You? Here it is:”

Our Father then recalled the discovery he had made of the supernatural life and mission of Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart, born Maria Droste zu Vischering. Our Lord had made her His confidant and messenger at the very end of the 19^th century in order to obtain from Pope Leo XIII the consecration of the world to the Sacred Heart, heralding His triumph and reign throughout the world. “He had indeed spoken about this triumph and salvation to Mother Chappuis●: ‘I shall do it, and no one will be able to say: It is I who did it,’ inspiring courage and confidence in her with the memory of these gentle words addressed to Saint Margaret Mary: ‘Leave everything to My good pleasure and let Me fulfil My designs without your having any part in it, for I shall take care of everything,’... nevertheless, there was a contract: to obtain from Him, and from Him alone, that He take care of everything, according to His own good pleasure. As for me, I had to pronounce the Act of Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus of the Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart: ‘My most lovable Jesus…’ without any proxy or mental restriction.

“Yet what connection is there, Lord, between this pious prayer and the great events we are awaiting?

‘None. Do whatever He tells you,’ we are gently ordered by our Mother of the Immaculate and Victorious Heart, ‘consecrate yourselves to the Sacred Heart of My Son and He Himself will provide for everything, without delay.’ ”●

Cardinal Lustiger, meanwhile, had completely different thoughts. Far from appealing to God, He hastened to publish his book entitled ‘God’s Choice’ before the expiration deadline of December 8, 1987!

LUSTIGER PROCLAIMS HIMSELF “GOD’S CHOICE.”

“I would never have supposed what I have just learned from a good source,” our Father wrote a few days later, “that Cardinal Lustiger was very concerned about my ordeal and took the initiative so as to have the upper hand. He worked hard all year to have ready for publication, substituting himself for the Judge, the Lord’s Answer – yes, yes! – “God’s Choice” just in time for it to burst into the press and on television for December 8! I am the one whom God has chosen, he says, and de Nantes is excluded.

“God’s Judgement, coming from the all-powerful Archbishop of Paris, is claimed to be infallible. And the Pope, who received the first copy, has ratified this Choice of God, giving it his full and total approval [...]. How could Lustiger have been so imprudent as to mock, not us – what merit in that?–but Christ, the Son of God Himself, insolently taking His place. I am amazed. He places his assurance in his Israel, the chosen people, in his circumcised flesh? We place ours in the spiritual Israel of our pure and holy baptism, in Jesus Christ only Saviour, and in His unique Spouse, the Roman Catholic Church, outside which there is no hope or grace for anyone, for neither Jew nor pagan.”●

For good measure, at the Wednesday Audience on December 9, Pope John Paul II, in turn, condemned Father de Nantes in veiled terms, saying: “Jesus never works a miracle to punish anyone, even someone who is guilty; He also refuses to do so for His glory or in self-defence.”● Certainly Pope John Paul II was “guilty,” since the day before, December 8, he had asserted “the inalienable, inviolable right of every man to social liberty in matters of religion,” which was the very error that was the object of our Father’s appeal to God’s Judgement!

THE PATIENCE OF SAINTS.

“So, nothing is finished,” Father de Nantes noted, “God Himself sends us back to our fight. Once again He has allowed our adversaries to speak, act and triumph. May it become apparent to all, however, by such excesses contemplated to destroy us, how much they are in rebellion against Him.”●

“And since then, it is naked faith. I mean: it is the simple intellectual act whereby each person sees the opposition between the Creed and the new religion that the authorities of the Church substitute for it, which makes us cling to the Catholic Counter-Reformation. It is therefore absolutely clear to me that God Almighty did not want to respond to my, to our Appeal, because He is already too obviously insulted, blasphemed, and His Holy Mother as well, to feel inclined to give supererogatory signs to this ‘evil and adulterous generation.’

“The effect of this clear light is to legitimate and legalise in my own eyes and in the eyes of those who have the same certainty, my work in its two constant, major and absolutely principal efforts: the dogmatic and canonical fight against the conciliar and pontifical Reformation that I have led publicly and mightily for twenty-five years; and the fight against all the other schismatic traditionalist movements, or of those who have rallied, namely, movements of liberals, moderates, and charismatics, all of whom avoid this defence of the Faith that remains utterly essential, in a class by itself, absolutely Catholic, and outside of which there is no salvation, except for people without intelligence.”●

Thus our Father applied himself to commenting on the encyclical Sollicitudo rei socialis that John Paul II published to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio. While claiming to reaffirm this new social doctrine of the Church, as taught in Gaudium et Spes, John Paul II intended to call men and women to a mass mobilisation in favour of justice and peace, and for liberation from all constraints. Our Father denounced this great dream of earthly happiness.●

At the end of that same year 1988, our Father also analysed the encyclical Mulieris Dignitatem, which the Holy Father had published on August 15! This text, exalting and adulating the person of every man and woman, is the complete destruction of the edifice built through the centuries on the foundation of the Apostles and martyrs in honour of and for the worship of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, and of the Blessed and Immaculate Mary, ever Virgin, Mother of God, blessed among all women. Thus, the perfections of Jesus and Mary are transferred by the Pope to every man and every woman. Our Father was the only one who denounced this monstrous inversion!●

Our Father continued this fight on all fronts, increasingly isolated when, subsequent to Archbishop Lefebvre’s consummation of schism, part of the traditionalists rallied to the conciliar reformation. The patience of saints, which he had been preaching since 1970 and practising for an even much longer time, as “the only path that Hope keeps open for us,” allowed him to maintain himself on a road between the peril of infidelity and that of insubordination.

“If we despaired of the Church with the sense that we no longer belong to her – we the last of the Righteous among all the others who are guilty –, it is then that we would be participating in the universal error. Once we resolve to sanctify ourselves, we find ourselves in the barque, fraternally rowing with all the others, perhaps more than the others, but for our common salvation. Did not Our Lord say to us: ‘In patience you shall win your souls’?”●

When Bishop Lefebvre gave episcopal consecration to four priests of his Sacerdotal Fraternity on June 30, 1988, without pontifical mandate and against the will of the Sovereign Pontiff, he forsook this ‘patience of saints’ and consummated his break with the Church. Likewise, Jean-Marie Le Pen led the French Catholic Right into an impasse during the elections of April 24 and May 8 of that same year, by playing into the hands of François Mitterrand. This was the second great misfortune, which incited several people to abandon the Phalange.

Our Father wrote: “It might happen that we ourselves, in these dogmatic, ecclesiastical and political storms, each of which throws new clusters of men into the sea, might end up like an abandoned wreck, ready to sink, with its last sailors too few in number to manoeuvre and save the ship [...]. The time has come, on a deserted ocean, to count the survivors, strengthen the hull and straighten the mast. Then we will resume our orthodromic course – it is all in God’s hands! – to safely reach port. "Fluctuat, nec mergitur", the CCR, although tossed by the waves, will not sink [...].

“The Phalangist Communion is dissolved. A New Phalange rises from its ashes.”●

Shortly afterwards our Father wrote to his new Phalangists: “What is important, we understand this better now and we will remember it, is the truth of doctrine, fidelity to its requirements in filial submission to those who keep it, and fraternal charity, the enemy of dissent, rebellion, ambition, and other betrayals.”●

Since misfortunes never come singly, on October 13 of that mad year 1988, the anniversary of the ‘fall of the sun’ in Fatima, Cardinal Ballestrero, Archbishop of Turin and custodian of the Holy Shroud, announced the so-called ‘verdict of science’: this radiocarbon-dated relic was henceforth to be considered a forgery, the Man of the Shroud is not the Lord!

Yes, He is! The Holy Shroud is authentic! Yes, it is the Lord! After a brilliant scientific rehabilitation of the signal relic, before 2500 faithful gathered in the great hall of the Mutualité in Paris, on November 27, 1988, our Father wanted to take once again his troops in hand and, in order to deliver us forever from the disease that has plagued the French right and Catholic traditionalism for several decades, decided to ‘Sanctify 1989 through the grace of the Holy Face of Jesus Christ.’●

“Today, December 8,” he wrote in a Letter to the Phalange, “what I must preach to the Community shortly, and to you here in this letter, so that your promised fidelity may be applied to it, appears to me in a beautiful light as though it were shining from the glory of the Immaculate and from Her ‘gentle face marked with grace and tenderness’: It will be during this year of seclusion spent in devotion that our hearts will free themselves of this illness● that prevents the grace of salvation prepared in the Heart of God, from unfolding in the world [...]. We want to live the events that come, together, pure of these seeds of discord and pride.”●

This was neither flight from combat, nor desertion, but once again a very strong presence for the reconquest of Christianity, the consolation and glorification of the Name of our most beloved Heavenly Father too greatly offended. Like an oath of fidelity sworn before the Holy Face during our major meeting held in Paris at the Mutualité conference hall. “The words were addressed as though from mouth to mouth, from the Church Bride of Christ, gathered here, to Christ the Bridegroom and King of His people, Who appeared here in majesty on this cloth as He willed to be projected onto His glorious Shroud in the instant of His blessed Resurrection.”●

If our Father asked his Phalangist disciples and friends to take this oath of fidelity, it was because he himself was drawn to it by his beloved Lord, as he had movingly confessed on the fortieth anniversary of his priestly ordination:

“Behold, the voice of the Beloved insistently speaks these last words to me:

“At last,” the voice said to me on a hundred occasions, “love Me only. It is time that you give Me what I am asking for, as I am entitled to it! with such impatient patience. But enough is enough: I want your heart to master all its movements, and if you still resist, it will cost you dearly; for I want you to love Me, Me alone, your Spouse and your magnificent King, in such a warm-hearted way that you love through Me, like Me, in Me and for Me all those whom I please to give you, and never again anything or anyone outside Me and in spite of Me!”

“This voice is soft, its offers are charming, while I hear as in the distance, a rumble of thunder, the roar of the mighty oceans, which make me shudder.

“ ‘O God of Wrath, O jealous God! How will I be able to resist Your entreaties indefinitely? I will have to resign myself to doing my duty and my good. Is this not the last favourable time when the day and the hour of my forty years of priesthood is come? Forty years! Is that not the limit of Your weakness in the psalm? It has to be done, let us resist no longer! Let us at last take the decision to surrender our hearts to You... I would have too much sorrow and fear to incur, after this date, Your divine Wrath, O the most magnanimous of Princes and the most loving of Hearts!’●”

MAMINE.

This resolution was soon put to the test by the death of his mother, his support, his guiding light, on October 10, 1988. She passed away “peacefully, like a devotional candle that finishes by burning out, her earthly purgatory completed and, I hope, the hour of her flight to God having arrived.”● Like Don Bosco’s ‘mamma Margaret.’

Marguerite de Nantes, who “had always wanted to go straight to Heaven,” left us this touching spiritual request in her will: “Pray for me, and pray to me so that I may help you with all my motherly affection.”

Throughout his life, our Father benefited from this maternal help. In 1989, he experienced it again when he went to pray at his mother’s grave in Chônas to ask for a grace that he would obtain without delay.

The “Memories and Anecdotes” that our Father would then devote to his mother, ‘Mamine,’ now form “a monument of filial piety, capable of giving back to our generation, through the talent of incomparable eloquence, what it lacks the most: love.”●

“In the extreme silence of death where I see you, in this communion of souls where it seems that I am able to get in touch with you, you can hear me, without needing to read me, since I am so bold as to speak to you, to tell you everything. It was thus necessary for you to die, for me to dare to write: Mum, I love you! I love you tenderly!”●