23. The children ask for bread 
(1989-1993)

OUR Father wanted to redress the ‘baneful year 1988,’ that had been dishonoured by the betrayals of Le Pen in May, and of Lefebvre in June, and by the denial of the Holy Shroud in October, with a ‘Holy Year 89,’ for the bicentenary of a revolution that was ‘satanic’ in its essence. Well! Satan did not stand by and let it happen!

A PHALANGE UNDER HEAVEN’S COMMAND.

On June 17, 1989, we were in Reims, for the tercentenary of the offers that the Sacred Heart made to King Louis XIV, transmitted by Saint Margaret Mary. We also commemorated and atoned for his sad refusal, sanctioned on June 17, 1789, when Freemasonry, disguised as the Third State, declared itself a sovereign people, uncrowning Christ, King of France, once very Christian.

On the feast of the Sacred Heart, Father de Nantes preached the mystical reason for His demands: “As Our Lord reveals His Heart, we see that He and the Blessed Virgin want more and more sincerity of a heart which, attaching itself to Him totally, permeates its whole life with the wills of His divine Heart and the Heart of His Mother.

“Saint Joan of Arc came to show that one is not God’s without at the same time being loyal to his king, not rebellious, not a traitor to his country, not unfaithful to the Pope. We put everything under the governance of Christ. We must have a mysticism, that is to say, a supernatural wisdom, which makes us enter into these views not through constraint, but out of love.

“With Louis XIV, this Louis Dieudonné whom God loved and prepared for a great mission, there is one expression that draws our attention, namely that Jesus wants his whole heart. Jesus wants the whole heart of the king, and then He will take care of his affairs, including his victory over enemy powers that are also His own, including the king’s reconciliation with the Pope who is His Vicar on earth.

“For our century, the Virgin Mary is sent and put forward by order of Jesus, presenting Her Immaculate Heart. What is characteristic of Fatima, what bothers the enemies of God and Christ the most, is that the Virgin Mary speaks of Russia. So there is also an involvement in politics here. It is not meant to exasperate people, but to show them that Heaven cannot want to make a distinction between individual and family life, on the one hand, and on the other, the secularity of the State, foreign alliances, etc. All this must remain within the movement not of the law of God, but of the Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary.”●

At Reims, our Father explained with such clarity the true reasons for the delay of the promised salvation, that we were all seized by it:

“It cannot be Heaven’s fault, can it? It is therefore the fault of men [...]. Heaven is constantly held back from fulfilling its will of salvation by the bad faith, not of the enemies of the Church, but of some of her children who want to ‘bring God round to their will,’ as Saint Ignatius says, rather than submitting their passions, their thoughts, their plans to the sovereign and most loving Will of our Heavenly Father.”●

“MAN IS UNGOVERNABLE.”

Our Father then discovered a “powerful, superb, and fascinating Russian” book: The White Admiral,● which illustrates this truth. It made the tragic destiny of Admiral Kolchak known to him. Faced with the rising red tide of Bolshevism, the Admiral did not succeed in gathering all his compatriots who remained faithful to the tradition of Greater Russia, its religion, its secular order, to the point of being abandoned by his own people.

Our Father applied the lesson of this tragedy to the topicality of our struggle in the Church as well as in the homeland:

“Will the counter-revolution always be defeated everywhere? Does it have an intrinsic structural cause of defeat? Does it carry on its brow the curse of the Lord?

“It is a dreadful, a nagging question.”

“Deeply moved,” our Father understood, in the light of this attempt at recovery in Siberia in 1917-1920, the cause of the failures of our traditionalist right: “man is ungovernable.”

He explained it in Sherbrooke, Canada, in August 1989 and then, on his return to France, he came back several times to the subject:

“Evil always comes from some man who stands against lawful order […]. The ungovernable man is me, it is you, it is all of us.

“I would like to show to what extent this faculty of dissent, of rebellion, has produced movements fatal to this divine orthodromy by which God leads the Church, the world, and especially France, to the greatness that He wants us to reach, before ending the history of the world with a great judgement to the glory of Christ and the condemnation of Satan.●

Now, after the dissensions of 1988, Father de Nantes saw that we were “still suffering from it in the Catholic Counter-Reformation, as we have seen this cankerworm at work around the Action française and Maurras.”●

HOW A REVOLT CAN BE QUELLED… IN 1989!

This reflection prepared our Father to face the serious events that troubled our community in September. What happened then illustrates our doctrine of Catholic Counter-Reformation and Counter-Revolution in the 20^th century: how, in our century, a determined man, invested with God’s authority, can quell a revolt. “Rebellious to rebellion from whichever side it comes,” according to the well-tried Catholic Counter-Reformation motto.

On September 18, our Father wrote to our friends:

“We are facing a situation that is unprecedented for us. One of our brothers, well known to all, and ten of our sisters, including their prioress, decided to separate from us, or more precisely from me. While our brother intends to continue his monastic life in conditions more in keeping with his personal desires, our sisters plan to found another community with the same name, the same rule, the same habit. They found it impossible to trust me for the spiritual direction of their souls, and to endure on my part the exercise of an authority which was an obstacle to that of their Mother Superior. The separation took place yesterday, Sunday, September 17, [1989] after ten days of attempts at conciliation.”●

During these tragic days, our Father acted as a true Father-Abbot, “Master and Judge in God’s Name” in his monastery, according to the premonitory picture he had just painted in a retreat preached in Canada:

“The Father Abbot must protect the monastery against the invasion of the world; he must not hesitate to expel, excommunicate false brethren, so that the monastery may keep its tranquillity, in peace. Pax! May peace be given to us, so that we can work out our salvation! It is absolutely normal, evangelical. It is already biblical, Mosaic. Our Lord has subscribed to this power of command of the pastors, who were the ‘judges’ of the Old Testament, and who will become the ‘Princes’ of the Church. It is a law of the ‘City of God.’ It is the order of every Catholic city, it is the real-life ideal of Christianity.”●

After these events, our Father asked us to speak no more of this tragedy, nor of the sisters and brother who had left us. We scrupulously observed this wise directive that led us, rather than to dwell on the past, to resume our religious life with all the more fervour and regularity since we were delivered from those who had been hindering this. From then on, the community of our sisters grew rapidly. Moreover, our Father was free at last to teach us his spiritual and mystical doctrine, the heart of his heart, our treasure, until the day when the whole Church will be nourished on it, when the Pope has ‘returned’ to confirm his brothers and to heal the Church of the horrible scandals that have disfigured her since the Second Vatican Council.

The years 1990-1996 will be very fruitful for our Father. He will reach the fullness of his teaching: ‘total’ doctrine, both from the spiritual and political points of view.

THE LOW ROAD TO PERFECTION.

Our Father saw in all these trials an invitation to “enter into a fidelity to God, our Father full of mercy and tenderness, and to His Christ, our Spouse, our King, a fidelity rendered more demanding but more inflamed with divine Love, more enthusiastic with the very flame of the Holy Spirit, our Exhorter.”●

Since this Love has humility as its foundation, our Father then took as his programme for the renewal of our monasteries, of our Phalange, of our League, the words of Our Lord that serve as a principle and foundation for chapter 7 of the Rule of Saint Benedict, ‘Humility’: “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” (Mt 23:12)

For his part, meditating on these tragic events, our Father liked to compare himself to David fleeing from his son Absalom who was rebelling against him. He confided: “Rather than glorious humility, I love humiliation without profit. I would rather die alone, forsaken, than lie about myself.”●

Death to self, to every personal interest as well as to every ambition, is the condition and the source of true fruitfulness, our Father tirelessly taught us. This is how one becomes a docile, malleable instrument in the hands of Christ, filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit for the salvation of the Church and of souls.

He himself offered us the living illustration of this truth. He was in such a state of ‘death to self,’ abandoned in the hands of the Good God, and sacrificed, consumed by the necessities of the Church’s service, that he communicated to us the fullness of his mystical life, with an intimate, overflowing joy, as if in a hurry to give the best of himself.

Since he had been accused of preaching a ‘false mysticism,’ our Father endeavoured to answer this accusation in 1990-1991 in conferences entitled True and False Mysticism.● He contrasted Saint John of the Cross and Saint Francis de Sales with Molinos, the Quietist. Then, following in the footsteps of Father de Foucauld, he proposed ‘a low road to perfection,’ accessible to all those who want to advance towards holiness.

After months of procrastination, at the beginning of January 1991, when war was about to break out in Kuwait,● our Father decided that we and our friends would practice the devotion of the first Five Saturdays of the month, “since this is what Our Lady wants. She wants things that the Pope and the bishops have not given Her during the forty, the fifty years since She asked for them, and they are well aware of this! Punishment is coming upon the world because no one is fulfilling this devotion that Our Lady is asking for.”●

Since that day, we solemnise the First Saturdays of the month and our friends come in ever greater numbers, as a family, to practice this “little devotion” in order to console the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Penetrating ever more deeply the message of Fatima and meditating at the same time on the biblical texts that the Church applies to the Blessed Virgin, our Father received, on December 8, 1991, “abundant graces of knowledge and devotion”● concerning the Immaculate Conception and Her mysterious pre-existence in the bosom of the Father.

“The meditation of these splendours seemed to us to establish” this certainty “that salvation would come to us from Jesus, the divine Word, through Mary, Queen of the World, throne of Wisdom, holy Dove of creative Love, governess with God of the Church in all her works, and finally “as terrible as an army in battle array against every heresy, schism and apostasy.”●.

At the same time, the necessities of charity brought us back to our main battles: the Holy Shroud and Fatima. It was urgent to mobilise our ‘crisis centres’ as the diabolical assaults were so overwhelming, requiring learned and powerful counter-attacks. A real detective novel led us to discover a ‘false shroud,’ a clandestine sample substituted for the real Shroud of Our Lord. ‘Truth is a laser that pierces all illusion and all lies’● was the title of the League in the December 1989 issue. While we thwarted the propaganda campaign aimed at falsifying the testimony of Sister Lucy concerning the consecration of Russia.●

Thus, we remained in close ranks, united as a Phalanx should be, we continued to march ahead into the Apocalyptic battles that were proposed to us. And the orthodromy of those nineties was again flying like a golden arrow to its target: “Against the Reformation, that of Luther, that of Lamennais, that of Paul VI and John Paul II, the same idolatry of Man... and for the Catholic Renaissance by fidelity to the messages of Reims, Paray-le-Monial and especially Fatima, the greatest, in advance assured of triumphing over all opposing forces!”●

The mortal danger threatening the Church at the end of the century was the Gnosis to which she was pressed to adhere by clever tricks of Pope John Paul II.

JOHN PAUL II’S GNOSTIC UNANIMISM.

André Frossard related that Pope John Paul II confided something to him: “There is something that makes him sad. He told it to me. It is to see that his encyclical letters are so poorly distributed and that so few people read them, even though he has put so much effort into them.”

Well, at least one theologian, Father de Nantes, has carefully listened to, read and studied him, before explaining him to his readers. He made it his duty to do so:

“From the beginning of John Paul II’s pontificate, I have applied myself to commenting on his major acts, and if I have been absorbed with some other event and have failed to do so, I have always regretted it because the subject matter of these acts was of such importance. A much stronger philosopher and theologian than his predecessor John Baptist Montini, Karol Wojtyla goes from one encyclical to the next, and again in this recent Apostolic Letter Mulieris dignitatem, building a system without parallel in the Church’s past, especially on the part of a Roman pontiff! This system is the complete dogma, article by article, of a new cult of man, still seemingly Christian…”●

It was a cult of man, of woman and of their freedom! John Paul II made it the theme of his three successive Messages for World Peace Day in 1989, 1990 et 1991: ‘Freedom of conscience for peace in the world.’ He deliberately made himself the minstrel, the doctrinarian of the masdu, which he based on a Hegelian type metaphysics. In the foreword to his commentary on the encyclical Redemptoris missio, published on December 7, 1990, Father de Nantes wrote:

“There is in the Pope’s teaching a progression in boldness and in fusing contradictories in a Gnostic proposition of the mystery of man and of God who are but one. This teaching is authentic, if you like, but certainly not ‘ordinary’ [that is to say, the Pope is unable to invoke his predecessors] or ‘extraordinary’ [that is to say, he is unable to invoke his personal infallibility because, if he were to do so, he would condemn himself!], for it is innovating and deviating beyond what is tolerable!”●

How can that be? Oh! It is quite simple:

“It is a transposition, or dreamlike sublimation, of Catholic theology into the ancient gnosis of the great initiates, for whom the divine mysteries are freed of their Christian and Catholic moulds to be revealed as universal. What is said about the Church is secretly granted to the whole of humanity. What is attributed to Christians by virtue of their faith and baptism is as though already possessed, incognito, in the state of ‘seeds of the Word’ by every religious man or as ‘evangelical seeds,’ in every soul of good will who is preoccupied with the good of his neighbours and the progress of humanity.”●

This is what our Father called Pope John Paul II’s ‘unanimist gnosis,’ whereby apostasy dons sumptuous Christian, Catholic chasubles, and whereby the Church takes off her divine and chaste adornments to become a courtesan.”●

When rereading this text from June 1991, we cannot help but think of the gaudy cope that Pope John Paul II wore for the inauguration of the third millennium on December 24, 1999, at Saint Peter’s, during the ceremony of the opening of the Holy Door. The Sovereign Pontiff celebrated a strange, esoteric and syncretistic ritual. This was the outcome of the Second Vatican Council, such as it had been foreseen by our Father: “The great solemn river of the Roman Church flows, through the ever enlarging delta of the Conciliar reform, into the ocean of the universal religiosity wherein it longs to vanish. Instead of going back to its source to purify and vivify itself, after the fashion of previous reforms, it follows the rapid descent toward the cesspool of the pagan world and the murky waters of apostasy.”●

Father de Nantes implacably demonstrated this once again when he analysed the speech that John Paul II addressed on March 16, 1991 to the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. “I imagine,” he wrote, “that Saint Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, martyr and Doctor of the Church, experienced this indignation of mine when he read the Gnostics of his time, in the second century, and this same difficulty of distinguishing the true from the false, and the divine from the satanic in the fascinating hymns and equivocal ravings of these great heretics who extoled the ‘mysteries’ concealed from the common of the faithful and reserved for the initiated.”

In this speech dealing with “man’s aspiration to happiness, as a foundation stone for faith,” our holy religion based on the new and eternal covenant in the Blood of Christ, which is historic, real, unique, holy, apostolic and Catholic, was totally absent:

Admittedly, the most beautiful, the richest, the most delightful Christian words are in this speech! Nevertheless, there is no longer a “divine and conditional Covenant, no revealed Law, no adoration, no worship of God. One finds no conversion, no faith, no baptism. There is no cross, no sacrifice, no justification, no concession of grace. One sees mention of no Church, no sacraments; no confession, no Communion. There is no Heaven, no Hell, even less any mention of Purgatory. One reads of no particular or general judgment, no good or bad angels, no saints of Paradise, no devotions to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. The poor Virgin Mary is forgotten. Worse yet, She is excluded...

“Thus, John Paul II makes himself, unobtrusively and without the consent of the Church, without so much as a countersignature from Cardinal Ratzinger● or anyone else, the Magus who reveals a ‘conception of life and happiness’ that any man, from whatever religion or irreligion he may be, can adopt without changing in the slightest any of his ideas, practices of worship and morals and submitting to the dogmas, sacraments and commandments of the Roman Catholic Church.”●

We understand why God sent us His Holy Mother to Fatima to teach us the catechism that the Pope and the hierarchy no longer teaches, but that Sister Lucy evoked in her book on the Calls from the Message of Fatima.

We had to bow to the evidence: “The Pope ‘does not know God’ in the Johannine sense of such an expression: he does not love Him, he flees from His light, he distorts and amputates His revelation in order to please the impious men of our time.”●

THE STALE BREAD OF “CULTURE.”

Religion having vanished, there remained its modern substitute: culture. After an interval of three days, the Pope delivered another speech at Camerino to an audience composed of academics, on the theme: ‘To create a new man.’ After the collapse of so many ideologies, he explained that the conciliar Church accepted the challenge. She espoused the world, and from their union a new man was to be born. She claimed to affirm his primacy: “Individual man, as a person, is the supreme reality of the universe.” Suddenly, blasphemy rang out: “A permanent feature of the social doctrine of the Church is that man must nourish himself not only from the bread earned through the work of his hands… but also through the ‘bread of science and progress, of civilisation and culture.’”

The Pope was quoting himself, since this sentence was taken from his encyclical Laborem Exercens, published in 1981. Our Father was beside himself with indignation: “Here, without warning, the Masonic ‘Cacangelium’ is substituted for the Gospel in order to get his Satanic message across under the guise of divine teaching! For Jesus Christ, Whose Vicar is the Pope who therefore ought to be His spokesman, retorted to the first temptation of the Devil: ‘Man does not live by bread alone, but also by all the words that proceed from the mouth of God,’ from His own divine mouth! John Paul II replaces the good of the divine Word, become flesh, become Eucharistic bread, with the adulterated, mortal foods ‘of science and progress, of civilisation and culture,’ the stale bread of the Freemasons and its rat poison. He substitutes all of that which, in our sad times, is but wind, vice, corruption and death for divine predestination and the gift of grace, and for Christian sacraments and worship. These are the first heavenly joys, a foretaste of eternal happiness.”●

CELESTIAL BREAD, THE SOURCE OF DAILY VIRTUES.

The 1992 Pentecost session of the Phalangist Communion was entitled: ‘A new look at life,’ a look that authorises and nourishes our relational metaphysics and its mystical and moral extension intended to purge the Christian existence of our children of the vulgar, corrupt and atheistic environment of this ‘sad time’ and of the so-called ‘modern culture.’

“What I would like to hand down,” our Father announced, “to spread in profusion, successfully, as the Franciscan tertiary that I have been for fifty years, in the line of the aesthetics of Saint Bonaventura, is the taste for nature and life purified from their original defilement by Baptism, resplendent with the beauty of Christ the recreator, where the sanctified man and woman, like a new Adam, a new Eve, reach the deep secret of the universal nature and of their own heart, which is nothing other than modesty, pity, Gospel piety, in all relationships with God and with close relations, rich in virtues, value and divine peace, absolutely satisfying.”●

They were three days of feast and intellectual stimulating lectures, in which our Father had no difficulty in contrasting our Catholic, royalist, communitarian lights with the prevailing atheistic, capitalist, socialist and democratic dark ages. Three months later, for our autumn retreat, he proposed a “New Saint Thérèse” to us as a model. Yes, new as well, because for the first time our Father understood that Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus was not only the “miniature of the Immaculate,” but also the prefiguration of the Church beset by the “diabolical disorientation” foretold for the last times. He also explained to us what this ‘little way of spiritual childhood’ of ‘the greatest saint of modern times’ (Saint Pius X) involves. A special grace: during our community pilgrimage, our Father had the good fortune to celebrate Holy Mass in the Carmelite Chapel of Lisieux, with the kind permission of Father Zambelli, then rector of the chaplains.

Following the example of the Martin family (the family of Saint Thérèse), our Father sacrificed his life for the service of the Church and for the service of France, the ‘Eldest Daughter of the Church.’ That is why, in 1992, he campaigned against the disastrous Maastricht Treaty, which jeopardised the future of our homeland by a criminal transfer of sovereignty to foreign, in this case European, and predominantly German, institutions. The very existence of our country, the future of our children, the bread of our families, were at stake.

“Once again, ‘Let your no be no!’ as it must have, or should have been, on June 18, 1940, in reply to the sinister appeal of the Rebel, of the felon, Charles de Gaulle, restorer of the Republic against France, and since then to all the betrayals, repressions, subversions, civil wars, decolonisations, dechristianisations of Catholic France, put up for auction. ‘Let your no be no!’ as also it must have or should have been to the call of the Popes and the Council for the Reformation of the Church, for her republicanisation, her secularisation and the cascade of heresies, schisms and scandals that followed. To revolution, any revolution, only this resolute no is perfectly honest and holy, as is only the yes to Christ, true Lord and Saviour of the Church, Who is also true King of France and of all our beloved homelands and brotherhoods.”●

The disastrous treaty was unfortunately adopted, but by such a small majority, and with such a high rate of abstention that, the day after the meeting that our Father held in Paris in the Mutualité’s largest conference hall on the theme ‘For France to be viable once again’, he wrote: “We are happy to walk with our French and Catholic people, awakened from their torpor, worried about their future. We are working for them, not for us. Our solutions and our wishes, our prayers too, are for their salvation, their economic and monetary recovery yes, of course! and more generously for their physical and moral recovery, for their spiritual rebirth, their ardent return to Christ Who is the true King of France, to the Virgin Mary, their Good Mother and Queen.”●

However, the struggle for the Faith resumed with the publication on October 11, 1992, for the 30^th anniversary of the Council, of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (C. C. C.), the antithesis, if ever there was one, of the Catholic Counter-Reformation (C. C. R.)!

IMPOSSIBLE TO RALLY.

Just as he had done twenty years earlier with the Dutch Catechism, Father de Nantes began by admiring this new Catechism:

“Even though I soon regretted allowing myself to be caught, I admit that I was charmed and won over by the religious ardour, the spiritual joy and the contagious magnanimity of this Catechism.

“Furthermore, its perfect mastery of dogmatic questions, its admirable knowledge of Holy Scripture, its excellent choice of quotations from the Fathers of the Church, and better still, if possible! its opening to the best of modern science and theology, always with great moderation, with a Roman sobriety that does not exclude warmth and due enthusiasm, make this Catechism a great book, worthy of the Holy Catholic Church, a ‘Roman work.’

“From beginning to end, I found myself being powerfully and gently enticed to adhere to it, ‘charismatically’ conditioned to yield to its Weltanschauung, to its global model of envisaging the Christian religion, so new and apparently so liberating. Yet liberating from what? From all constraint?”

Yes! That is where the shoe pinches. Because there is “venom in this honey,” as in every encyclical of John Paul II:

“There are chapters, easily recognisable, composed of extensive quotations from the Acts of Vatican II, which our Catholic Faith has increasingly rejected for a quarter of a century on account of their obvious incompatibility with and contradiction of simple philosophical or scientific truth easily accessible to natural reason, or points of ecclesiastical doctrine that cannot be challenged or doubted, now that they have been defined.”

Thus, to be submitted to the Roman Magisterium in order to know which of us has lost the Faith: “Either I must be excommunicated and my preconciliar Profession of Faith anathematised, or the Magisterium must resign itself to anathematising the decrees of Vatican II that we call into question, and to excommunicating those who would refuse to reject them with the full force of the infallible Magisterium, which is Roman and Catholic. ‘Let your Yes mean Yes, and your No mean No!’” It would be the ultimate and decisive provocation.

There is something more serious: our Father felt as though “a malaise [...], an intuitive horror in the presence of this evil and fearful gnosis. Combining the true and the false, the good and the bad, orthodoxy and heresy, this Catechism is like an hallucinogenic drug, a soft drug, the euphoric effect of which is to mix the cult of Man with the cult of God, as though they were equal and in osmosis, marrying their two infinities, their two beatitudes, their two liberties, as though mutually acceptable in a definitive Alliance with no obligation or sanction and already replete with earthly happiness, giving a foretaste of that happy nirvana where all men and women go from generation to generation, outside time and space, plunged in God, in Love.”●

VENOM IN THE NECTAR

Commenting on the first of the 2865 sections contained in this Catechism, our Father wrote: “From the very first words, it seems to me that some lethal poison has been mixed with the exquisite Catholic nectar, some heretical gnosis, as old as the world.”●

It is very interesting to follow, step-by-step, the analysis of the twelve heresies detected by Father de Nantes in the CCC:

“The abusive extension of the Church’s infallibility – Error concerning the predestination – the Incarnation – the Redemption – the remote hereafter outside space and time – The Holy Spirit, the animator of the world – The people of God, convened and led by the Spirit – the common priesthood of the faithful – An antichristic cult of man – The so-called Christian democracy – State secularism – Your gnosis, Most Holy Father…”

Our Father almost finished the draft when he was struck with vertigo. It was a Sunday evening, after the ceremony for the perpetual vows of Brother Vincent de Paul and Brother Louis-Joseph. After vespers, he implored prayers, his voice choking from the anguish of not being able to see his work through to the end. This anguish became a true agony ten days before the date set for the trip to Rome.● Here is this moving dilemma:

“If this Catechism is Catholic it is criminal to attack it, to turn our back obstinately on the truth, simply because we have criticised this Reformation of the Church for thirty years now.”

The light, however, dawned again at the thought of leaving it to the Church to decide, the Catholic attitude par excellence: “It is up to the Church to judge, as I ask her to, in an infallible way.” Once more, the Church, in the person of the Pope and his ministers, refused to judge.

WE, INNONCENT SUPPLIANTS, WENT TO THE HOUSE OF GOD.

In the morning of May 13, 1993, we arrived at Rome, by air – a special airplane – or by the night train – the Palatino.

“Here and there, in the air and on the rails, everyone was reading the Book that had come off the press the evening before; once again we formed one heart, one soul. In 1968, I was alone. In 1973, we were sixty; In 1983, two hundred; and today two hundred sixty-seven, a small praying, conscious, very motivated community. It was the event of our life.

“Upon our arrival at Saint Peter’s Square, we were questioned by plain-clothes policemen and Italian carabinieri: we were told to get back into our coaches and leave! Like the other times, the same business. I refused and asked questions. The orders, they admitted despite instructions, came from the Vatican. And they did not understand anything: does one drive back such peaceful pilgrims?

“There was much discussion, and time passed. On this May 13, Saint Peter’s Square was abnormally empty. There were no coaches, no groups, only Italian police, barriers piled up and chained, military vehicles and ambulances. There were carabinieri in uniform and plain clothes police. All were there to bar our access to the Holy Office. More discussion; it was absurd, and the time passed. Finally, whilst our friends were held in a far corner of the Square, I was authorised, conducted like a criminal, to gain access to the Holy Office where Cardinal Ratzinger reigns. Accompanying me were two of our brothers and two of our friends, one Belgian and the other French. By good fortune, the younger friend had an excellent camera which now allows us to have proofs of this event, which, though ridiculous in the eyes of men, is grandiose, sacred even to the Heart of Christ.

“The important part consisted in a few words. We were received by a Monsignore of radiant youth and naivety, but like beggars, in a corridor of the porter’s lodge. I asked to be taken to a decent reception room; telephone call, wait, permission granted. Up there, I asked for chairs; no one was on that floor, unless they were all hiding behind doors! to bring these chairs. Our plenipotentiary had to go and fetch them himself. We sat down.

“It was quickly done. Two books were handed over with explanations as to their addressees. One for the Holy Father, the other for the Cardinal. All right, very good. The comedy lasted two minutes, and our young angel was already holding out his hand. ‘No, not yet, Monsignore, I demand a receipt.’ Search for an unfindable piece of paper. I dictated the text that the other, pretending not to know our language, wrote down as though he were an illiterate. To cut the story short, here is the essential:

“I asked him to declare that these books were placed on the desk of the Holy Office with a view to the canonical opening of a Trial. He said that he had never seen anything like that; he could not write it! Very slightly voices began to rise. I dictated the acknowledgement of the two books, then the canonical significance of our action, which he still protested he was unable to sign. Yet, it is for this declaration that we had come; it was to receive and transmit it to his masters that they had delegated him to deal with us. He must either fulfil his task or take us to one of his superiors.”

Finally Msgr Caotorta signed this receipt:

“Rome, May 13, 1993.

“I, the undersigned [sic], Msgr. Damiano Marzotto Caotorta, Official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, have received from Father de Nantes two copies of the ‘Book of Accusation for Heresy,’ one for the Holy Father, and one for Cardinal Ratzinger.”

“I asked Msgr. Caotorta,” Father de Nantes also related, “to specify that these items were being deposited with a view to the opening of a trial for which this Book was the Act of accusation. He protested that this was not possible. So, I dictate this demand on another piece of paper to be presented to the Cardinal:

“‘According to Canon Law, this Book of Accusation entails the opening of a heresy trial, as soon as possible, under pain of dereliction of duty.’

“He complied, always indifferent to whatever was asked of him. Then, closing the meeting, he accompanied us to the street, where he left us, undoubtedly happy that he had not committed a single blunder and had not said something foolish as his predecessor had done in 1983!”●

It is incredible! “We, who are nothing, [...] have done what someone necessarily had to dare to do. The hierarchy of Holy Church must therefore judge these dogmatic and moral questions sovereignly and infallibly.”●

Cardinal Ratzinger had been forewarned: “With our two hundred and fifty friends, we do not come to debate with you, to express our frame of mind, to insult anyone, to seek honourable conditions for giving our support, nor to plead our case, but only to introduce it. It is clear and simple. One minute will suffice. And Your Eminence knows that because of his high position, it is His duty to receive this Book of Accusation and in this way have the dossier prepared for our trial and seen through to its juridical conclusion under pain of dereliction of duty.”●

A MAGISTERIUM DEFEATED BY DERELICTION OF DUTY

Once that task had been carried out by main force, since our Father had received no reply to his requests for an audience either from the Holy Father or from Cardinal Ratzinger, the Roman dicastery continued to lie low. True, Msgr. Caotorta had accepted the book, but only to shelve it so that no one would talk about it any more! So, our Father sent me to Rome to enter into discussions with the Secretariat of State, a place where I had privileged access, so to speak! since Bishop Re, substitute, had seen me there in December 1981. Bishop Re asked one of his subordinates, Msgr. Leonardo Sandri, an assessor, to receive me on May 21, 1993. That was less than ten days after our Father’s approach of May 13.●

To begin with, I asked Msgr. Sandri whether the trial that Father de Nantes had requested would be opened.

“I suppose that an examination will be made,” he answered. “I do not know whether there will be a trial. I think that from a subjective point of view you will have no need to worry: you have done what your conscience commanded.”

As I reminded him that this was Father de Nantes’ fourth attempt and that he never received any reply:

“In a non-reply, there is an implicit reply,” he said in a most casual way. “Especially four times. You should understand the meaning of this form of reply. The Lord left His Spirit to the Church. It is impossible to think that He has abandoned His Church. In the Pope and the bishops, we have Jesus Christ’s successors on earth for our guides. Of course there are deviations. But the Holy Father has always pointed them out.

– Excuse me, Monsignor, but the deviations, which are countless, are in this Catechism. Father de Nantes has set them out in twelve chapters.

– You think that the Pope can give his children heresies in place of the bread of life? That is not so!”

And yet… that is so! One only has to read.

It so happens that the first chapter of the accusation elaborated by our Father consists in denouncing the abusive extension of this infallibility and indefectibility. According to the Catholic Truth, “no man, nor assembly – be they Pope, Council, college of bishops or priests, group of theologians or body of lay people, nor even an allegedly universal Church – may impose their doctrinal or moral opinions as though invested with some sort of infallibility, outside of the perfectly defined boundaries of the solemn or ordinary Magisterium.”

Consequently, “if anyone says that the Pope, the Council or the Christian people cannot be deceived or cannot deceive, but that they profess the divine truth and discharge the role of the teaching Magisterium or their prophetic charisms in a way that is indefectible, such that they can never be subject to any canonical complaint or accusation in the Church, let him be anathema.”●

Msgr. Sandry was liable under the anathema condemns! However, since our conversation had begun in a perfectly polite tone, he was going to try to convince me of the opposite:

“A friend of mine used to receive your bulletin when he was at the seminary here in Rome. So I used to read it too. It was frighteningly logical, implacable! Very strong. But you should study your method. It seems as though you constitute another power centre, which condemns the Church with anathemas. It is not like an obedient priest humbly presenting his objections. One must always have the humility to submit first.”

The prelate stopped for a moment; then continued with great affability and even a tone of candid friendship:

“You know, everyone wants you to be in the Catholic Church.”

“But Monsignor, we are in it! In the last place maybe, but inside, and not outside like Archbishop Lefebvre.”

“But your way of proceeding is too brutal. You condemn!”

“No we don’t. We accuse. It’s not the same thing.”

“Yes you do! You condemn. Look: anathema, anathema…”

“That is to prepare the work of the Holy Office, Monsignor. It’s a question of presentation. Each ‘anathema’ sums up in a proposition the object of a thesis under dispute. It is now a question of judging its content: true or false?”

“It is the form you use that is too brutal. You should have begun by presenting your objections to your bishops. What do your bishops say?”

“Our former bishop of Troyes, Bishop Fauchet, remained silent, saying that our affair was the concern of superior authority in Rome. The new bishop, Bishop Daucourt, does not hesitate to say that we are outside the Church. Other bishops say the same. But if you ask them why, they won’t answer [...].”

“Father de Nantes should see everything in the perspective of a faithful son of the Church.”

“That is precisely what he does! Otherwise, he would have left a long while ago. But he perseveres and persists in asking for justice. And that is the object of my visit to you.”

There was a silence, then this incredible admission:

“If we did what you asked, it would mean that it all has a fundus veritatis, a basis of truth. If we began to examine, it would already mean that you are right. We cannot do that. The whole post conciliar Magisterium has explained Vatican II. Father de Nantes must open his mind to all the novelties. He must be his own Holy Office. Even if you are not formally declared heretics, you have to try to understand why you never receive an answer; you have to see in the Church’s globality the answer to your contestation. Instead of remaining stuck in your positions like mammoths!

– You are not serious, Monsignor. You are failing to answer my question: can we hope for an end to the abuse of authority practised by the Church’s pastors?

– First of all, show yourselves to be obedient sons, and then we shall see.”

Precisely! I seized the opportunity, and I came back to the specific purpose of my visit:

“The situation is grave, Monsignor. Father de Nantes is acting less out of concern for himself, for us, than for the Church, for the Holy Father. This catechism is a scandal affecting the whole Church; the Church which gives a favourable welcome to a heretical catechism! Father de Nantes is perfectly aware that there is no way out of this situation because, from a dogmatic, theological point of view, he is right. But he also sees that the Holy Office cannot prove him right against the Pope. That’s impossible. So he has asked me to transmit a sort of proposition to the Holy See.”

At these words, Msgr. Sandri changed expression. He became grave, took a sheet of paper and made a note.

“1. The Holy See could open the trial introduced by Father de Nantes’ accusation by a public, official decree announcing that the catechism is to be examined by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“2. Whilst awaiting the conclusion of this examination, the “suspension” unjustly weighing on Father de Nantes for twenty-seven years could be suspended, for it is a suspension that allows Father Laurentin to say that we are excommunicated and our new Bishop of Troyes, Gérard Daucourt, to say that we are outside the Church.”

“How many of you are there?

– Twenty-seven male religious divided between France and Canada, and as many nuns.● And a third order, to which my companion here belongs.

“Pusillus grex!”

That was said with a smile marked with kindness. It is a quotation of the Gospel: “Fear not, little flock, for it has pleased your Heavenly Father to give you the Kingdom.” This is the word of the Lord!

At that point, Msgr. Sandri asked where Father de Nantes had celebrated Mass in Rome on May 13:

“Nowhere, since Higher Authority had not given authorisation! He attended the midday Mass with us and received Communion like a simple member of the faithful. That is the obedience of Father de Nantes, Monsignor. And above all it is his concern for the Church. He is not concerned about being unjustly punished but about seeing a heretical catechism imposed on the whole Church. This dispute will have to be closely examined. What he proposes is that you declare this examination to be opened. He will then consider himself discharged of all that and his status in the Church will thereby return to normal. And similarly his defence of the Catholic Faith in the best service of souls. If the Holy Office examines this affair, he will occupy himself with his affairs, with us his Communities restored to their missionary vocation through the lifting of the suspension which unjustly weighs on our Founder and Superior. His thinking is that things could thus proceed in all freedom of spirit, solely in the service of divine Truth, without the Holy See needing to take account of the parties engaged in this controversy.

“Our Father, Georges de Nantes, is not asking for any special consideration, reward or congratulations for having done what is merely his duty as an ‘unprofitable servant’… Servi inutiles sumus, Monsignor! This delay would allow a new edition of the catechism to be prepared, revised and corrected of all its errors, without loss of face, without even having to say publicly that Father de Nantes is right. This is what he himself proposes to you.

– I shall pass it on. Only what you request is official. The rest is personal conversation.”

The conversation was finished. It had lasted an hour and a half. As he showed us to the elevator, Msgr. Sandri told us once again: “I would rather be wrong with the Pope than right against him.”

This is the major argument that the conformists, the good traditionalists use against us. They fail to see how offensive this rule of conduct is… for the Pope! “for how can you say you are ‘with the Pope’ while thinking you are wrong on the very same matters about which he says he is right?!” asked Father de Nantes.

“Let us be serious-minded about this. Being with the Pope is not what matters most, for being with the Pope is justified only inasmuch as it allows one to be with Jesus Christ through him. Being against the Pope could never have any other conceivable justification other than to remain with Jesus Christ, should the Pope ever part with Him, which God forbid! and then to live only in anguish over such a state of affairs, in the throes of such a contradiction.

“What alone matters supremely to mystical souls is to be with Jesus Christ. For the glory of the Father, for the love of this Bridegroom and King full of majesty, for the intimate exultation of the Holy Spirit within us, the earnest and promise of Life everlasting [...]. A mystical life that is so supernal, so disembodied that nothing can upset it, that nothing can affect and hurt it, and that nothing could prompt it to revolt, that it ceases to be true [...]. For it stands to reason that there can be no true spiritual union with the thrice-Holy God in the fervent, exclusive, nuptial zeal for the unique and pure Catholic truth! without feeling horror towards all heresy as well as all schism. I feel pity for these mystical dovecotes that, under the duress of obedience to all the conciliar Church’s new fashions, have become whitewashed tombs.”●

May God keep us! As He has always kept our Father, whose polemics had no other support than the ardour of his mystical life and of which it was the fruit!

THE SWORD OF THE TRUTH AND THE SHIELD OF THE LAW.

For the fourth time, as in 1968, in 1973, in 1983, and again in 1993, the authorities had shirked their duty, contravening the provisions of Canon Law, according to which: “By virtue of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, every member of the faithful may freely defer to the judgement of the Holy See, or bring before it any contentious or penal case at no matter what degree of jurisdiction or moment of the trial.” (Canon 1417 § 1)

The three Books of Accusation complies quite precisely with Canon 1502: “Whoever wishes to serve a writ on someone must present the competent judge with a libellum expounding the object of the litigation and requesting the judge’s intervention.”

Then, how is it that we have received no response? I am going to tell you why; it is quite simple: “If within the month following the presentation of the libellum, the judge has not sent out a decree of acceptance or rejection in accordance with canon 1505, the interested party can request that he acquit himself of his duty; if, despite this, the judge fails to pronounce within ten days after the request, the libellum will be considered as accepted.” (Canon 1506)

In other words: ‘Silence gives consent’… The silence of Rome is extremely eloquent. It proves that the Catholic Faith has not yet been modified, altered or corrupted in the virginal soul of the Church: “This is vouched for by this Book of Accusation that remains in the archives of the Palace of the Holy Office, as well as in the tormented hearts of those who had hoped to change the Catholic Faith by turning the centuries-old catechism into a new Catechism of the Catholic Church.”

By way of conclusion, our Father was, however, very keen on showing solidarity with the authors of this supposed catechism, in order to indicate clearly his horror of schism, which is equalled only by the vehemence with which he reproves heresy:

“We have been led astray by our mirages, Most Holy Father; we have lost our way because of our gnosis and we are filled with pride for having dreamed of a plan of grace more wonderful than that of God even! We have thrust the human race back under the yoke of the Liar, the Satan of the original times. Today, he believes he can triumph through our false Gospel. Ah, let us repent, let us preach the true paths of salvation! It will never be too late to make amends for our errors and our extravagant behaviour.

“Through the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Sacred Heart will allow Himself to be touched, and our world, humbly athirst for Life, Truth and Love, will find or rediscover the way of the Church, the way of Rome, which is that of the Kingdom of Heaven in this world and in the next.

“I am Your Holiness’ humble servant.”

Our dearest Heavenly Father took His servant, who was thus offering himself as an expiatory victim, at his word.