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“Instaurare omnia in Christo”

A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition

A pre-history
of the society

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“Instaurare omnia in Christo—To restore all things in Christ.”
Motto of Pope St. Pius X

The

ngelus
A Journal of Roman Catholic Tradition

2915 Forest Avenue

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sources of evil literature.”
—Pope St. Pius X

September 2008
Volume XXXI, Number 9

• Kansas City, Missouri 64109

English-language Editor and Publisher
for the International Society of Saint Pius X
PublisheR

Fr. Arnaud Rostand
Editor

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A fertile soil: tradition in France
Prior to the SSPX (1958-76) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
Cor Unum

Handmaids of jesus eternal high priest
and of the heart of mary  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Madrid, Spain

heraldry: part 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  26
Dwyer Quentin Wedvick

Teenagers? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  30
Fr. Paul Robinson, SSPX

the responsible leader. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  34
Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P.

catechism of the crisis
Part 16
in the church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
37
Fr. Matthias Gaudron

a romantic excursion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  39
Bishop Richard Williamson

Questions and answers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  41
Fr. Peter Scott

july 2008 writing contest winning entry  . . . . . . . . 43
The Angelus Monthly photo writing contest  .  .  .  . 44

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ON OUR COVER: Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget celebrates Mass at Saint Nicolas du
Chardonnet, Paris.

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2

A FERTILE SO

Catholic Tradit
Prior to the SSPX

Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget celebrates Mass at Saint Nicolas du Chardonnet, Paris.

SOIL:

3

dition in France
X (1958-76)
The success of the Archbishop’s stand in France
and the whole world resulted from a long history in
which faithful French Catholics were providentially
prepared. Learn the history of the Catholic counterrevolution from its rise during the French Revolution.
The Society’s chronicler captures the high drama
and sets before our eyes the heroes and heroines of
Tradition who have gone before us of whose labors
we enjoy the fruits, and whose combat we carry on.

© DICI

The Society of Saint Plus X’s District of France was founded on August 15, 1976, and entrusted
to Fr. Paul Aulagnier (born in 1943), who had been ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop
Lefebvre in 1971. In 1974, Archbishop Lefebvre had already purchased a house on the rue des
Carrières, in Suresnes (near Paris) to serve as an outpost for his activities in France. That same
August 15, he blessed the Priory of St. Anne in Lanvallay (Brittany), a quite recent acquisition. The
next day, August 16, the deed was signed for the purchase of the Priory of Notre Dame du Pointet
(Auvergne) which would serve for the next two years as the residence for the District Superior
before becoming a house for spiritual exercises. Lastly, at the same time, the priory of St. Michel
in St.-Michel-en-Brenne (Central France) was founded. The following year it was to become the
Mother House of the Sisters of the Society of Saint Pius X. At the end of this first year, 1976, the
district of France numbered at most four houses, of which only one was fitted out with the bare
essentials.
Now, a little more than thirty years later, the District of France numbers 39 houses with
resident priests (not including various chaplain’s houses), and 130 active priests. (The second
largest district is that of the United States, with 16 houses and 55 priests.) To reach the same
number of houses and priests as the District of France, one would have to combine the US District
with the third largest district, Germany (14 houses and 41 priests), as well as the fourth largest
district, that of South America (11 houses and 34 priests).
These astonishing figures are not the only ones worthy of consideration. In the Society of Saint
Pius X, priests of French nationality alone make up a third of the priest members. Besides, it must
be noted that in Tradition at large, almost all of the male congregations and a great part of the
female congregations are of French origin: the Benedictine monasteries of Santa Cruz, Our Lady
www.angeluspress.org

The ANgeluS • September 2008

4
of Guadalupe, and Notre Dame
de Bellaigue (stemmed from the
Monastery of Sainte Madeleine of
Barroux, founded by Dom Gérard
Calvet, 1927-2008)1; the Society
of the Transfiguration of Mérigny2
(founded by Fr. Bernard Lecareux,
born in 1933); the Capuchins of
Morgon3 (founded by Fr. Eugène
de Villeurbanne, 1904-90); the
Dominicans of Avrillé4; the Sisters
of the Society of Saint Plus X,5
founded by Mother Marie-Gabriel
Lefebvre (1907-87); the Carmels
of Tradition,6 founded by Mother
Marie-Christiane Lefebvre (190896); the teaching Dominican
Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus7
(Brignoles and Fanjeaux); the Little
Sisters of St. Francis of Le Trévoux;
the Benedictine Nuns of Lamairé8;
the Little Handmaids of St. John the Baptist in Le
Rafflay9; the Poor Clares in Morgon; the contemplative
Dominican Sisters in Avrillé,10 etc.
On a different plane, we would also note that the
other congregations attached to the Traditional Mass
(associated with the Ecclesia Dei Commission) are also
mostly of French origin, or connected with France. For
instance, you have the monastery of Fontgombault and
its foundations (Randol, etc.); the Little Brothers of the
Sacred Heart of the Abbé de Nantes, the Monastery
of St. Madeleine of Barroux and its foundation (St.
Marie de la Garde); the Abbey Notre Dame de
l’Annonciation; the teaching Dominican Sisters of the
Holy Ghost (founded by Fr. Victor-Alain Berto, 190068); the Abbey Saint Joseph of Clairval (founded by
Dom Augustin-Marie Joly, 1917-2006); the Institute of
the Holy Cross in Riaumont (founded by Fr. Albert
Revet, 1917-86); the Society of Saint Vincent Ferrer
in Chéméré; the Institute of Christ the King the
Sovereign Priest; the Fraternity of Saint Peter (seven of
the twelve founding priests were French); the Canons
of the Mother of God in Lagrasse and the Canonesses;
the Society of the Missionaries of Divine Mercy in
Toulon, the Benedictine Nuns of Jouques; the Victim
Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Marseilles; the Institute
of the Good Shepherd in Bordeaux, etc.
How can this rapid growth of the Society of Saint
Pius X and more generally of Catholic Tradition and
the Traditional Mass in France be explained? “It
is in our dear homeland, France, that resistance is
most strongly opposed to subversion in the Church,”
observed Archbishop Lefebvre in a sermon given at
Saint Michel School in Niherne on October 2, 1983.
One of the historical causes can certainly be found
in the “fertile soil” which existed in France long before
the arrival of the first priests ordained by Archbishop
Lefebvre in Ecône. The following lines will be devoted
to telling and describing (although briefly so) the

period which preceded the arrival
of the Society of Saint Pius X.
Persons and institutions are
mentioned and described at the
time when they intervened in the
combat for Catholic Tradition.
Their later evolutions have been
very diverse, but we will not deal
with them here. If many have
remained faithful up to the end,
some may have given up the
fight, or come to terms with the
Council, or sunk into aggressive
sedevacantism. That they may
have later strayed from their
course (and the first signs of their
misguided ways may have begun to
be manifest already in the period
we are going to deal with) does not
belong to the history recounted
in this text. We will mention here
exclusively interventions in favor of Catholic Tradition
as they occurred in France between 1958 and 1976,
regardless of later developments.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712-78)

THE ANGELUS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

France, Land of
Revolution and Resistance
To understand the emergence of the Catholic
resistance in France from of the death of Pope
Pius XII, we must first take a leap back into the
past. Indeed, for more than two centuries, French
Catholics had been confronted with so violent and
so numerous attacks that they had developed quite
a peculiar capacity for resistance. If the French were
the spearhead in the resistance to religious and
political revolution, the reason is that, sadly enough,
France had served too often as the laboratory for this
revolution. As Fr. Franz Schmidberger observed in
Fideliter of January, 1984:
The fact that Archbishop Lefebvre is French caused
great resonance in his own country. And besides, since the
separation of Church and State, it has become a constant
necessity for the French to fight, to see to the defense of their
own affairs. For several generations, they have had to take
upon themselves the upkeep of their priests, their churches
and chapels, their schools. Consequently, the crisis from
which the Church is presently suffering did not catch them
completely unawares. The French are used to fighting to
defend their faith.

The Revolution of the
Enlightenment and
Counter-Revolution
In the intellectual and political field France came
across revolution very early, and consequently has

5
been able to develop a rich counter-revolutionary
doctrine in parallel.
The first offensive occurred in the 18th century,
the century of the “Enlightenment” with the so-called
“Philosophers.” Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot,
Montesquieu, D’Alembert, Holbach, Helvetius,
Condorcet, Condillac, and so on, launched a
systematic and concerted assault against the natural
and supernatural order, against Christ and His Church.
To confront this flood there arose apologists of the
Faith, of the Church, of society, and of common
sense: Barruel, Freron, Nonotte, Patouillet, Palissot,
and so forth. Even though they were derided by the
“Philosophers” and their henchmen, they nevertheless
established the groundwork of a salutary reaction.
The end of that century saw Revolution break
loose in France. Essentially anti-clerical, anti-Catholic,
and anti-religious (according to its various phases), it
destroyed the monarchy because this latter was linked
to the Church, and devastated the French people
because it did not want to fit into the mold of “the
new man.” A military and political reaction (Vendée,
the Chouans) rose against this cataclysm. But there
was also an intellectual reaction (Burke, Clorivière,
Bonald, Maistre, Rivarol, and so on) which was to set
up the blueprint of “counter-revolutionary” thought.
Two sentences from Joseph de Maistre can give us
the general tone: “There is in the French Revolution
a satanic character which distinguishes it from all that
has been seen up to now and maybe from all that will
ever be seen;” “Counter-Revolution is not an opposite
revolution, but the very reverse of revolution.”

Catholic Liberalism
and Anti-Liberalism
After the Revolution (and its continuation, the
Napoleonic Empire), the Restoration tried to tie some
political and religious threads to the Old Regime, but
the machine was broken, the spirit lost. However,
this period witnessed a Catholic renaissance in
France, especially under the literary influence of
Chateaubriand, who inaugurated a renewed form of
apologetics (The Genius of Christianity, The Martyrs).
At the same time, a priest, Lamennais, proposed
a more conquering and audacious attitude to confront
modernity, which was supported by a novel doctrine
of “common sense” (Essay on Indifference in Matters of
Religion). However, Lamennais, especially together
with his friends Montalembert and Lacordaire went
from a strongly anti-revolutionary mind set to an
attempt to unify the Church and the Revolution.
Centered around the newspaper L’Avenir (The Future),
he created “liberal Catholicism,” whose offspring
were numerous. Lamennais evidently met with
contradictions, opposition, and criticism, including
from people within his own school (Dom Guéranger).
From 1850 up to the war of 1914, French Catholicism
was divided into two camps, which were in constant

opposition: the liberals and the anti-liberals, and these
latter developed into a doctrinal and polemical corpus
which is unmatched.

From the “Ralliement”
to Modernism
During the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII, this
quarrel was rekindled as a consequence of the
politics of “Ralliement” (“cooperation with”) to the
(anticlerical) Republic launched by the Sovereign
Pontiff in 1892. A new generation of anti-Liberals
worked out a doctrine which recalled in particular
that among the acts of the pope some deal more with
politics than with religion, and hence do not have a
right to the same immediate obedience. This nuance
added to an often massive “ultramontanism” would
take on more significance during some of the next
episodes.
Under St. Pius X, a new battle emerged around
the modernist issue. France was at the front of the
battle lines: Loisy, Hébert, Blondel, Le Roy, Houtin,
Laberthonnière, Turmel, and many of the leading
modernists and modernizing men were French. This
offensive caused a third generation of anti-liberals to
enter the ranks.
These latter fought on two fronts: the ecclesiastical
front, against the modernists and semi-modernists;
and the political front, against the destruction of what
remained of Christian France. Indeed, since 1879,
all the powers had been in the hands of anticlerical
Republicans who applied systematically the politics
of de-Christianization, which first brought about the
exile of tens of thousands of religious and forced
the religious who remained in France to don secular
clothes. (For instance, the teaching Dominican Sisters
of the Holy Name of Jesus did not wear their religious
habit during the first 40 years of the 20th century.)
Lastly, in 1905, Church and State were radically and
brutally separated by a former seminarian who had
become a Freemason, Emile Combes. All the churches,
parsonages, bishops’ residences, seminaries were
confiscated, and the State suppressed any financial
support to the Church. Thanks to the vigilance and the
energy of St. Pius X, the reaction of French Catholics
was unanimous, and they mobilized to defend their
Church, thus learning how to live on their own
resources and support their priests and churches out
of their own pockets. Such an experience would prove
invaluable later on.

The Drama of the
Condemnation
of Action Française
In 1926, a new drama occurred in the Church in
France: brutally and inconsiderately, Pope Pius XI
condemned Action Française, a counter-revolutionary
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THE ANGELUS • September 2008

6
movement which was secular in itself, but in which
there were many of the most anti-liberal Catholic
militants. Judging the condemnation to be unjust (and
this with some grounded arguments), the majority
of the leaders and members refused it: they were
excommunicated (they disputed the validity and
existence of the excommunication), and the censure
was lifted only in 1939, by Pius XII, at the beginning
of the Second World War. After this condemnation,
French bishops and other Church authorities (the
press, Catholic Action, etc.) were methodically purged
in favor of Catholics who were more liberal and
leaning more to the Left.

The Birth of Progressivism
after the Second World War
In 1940, the French Army was crushed in a few
weeks by the German forces. A hero of the First World
War with immense prestige, Marshall Pétain, was
appointed by the Chamber of Deputies (for the most
part composed of leftists) to conclude an armistice
with Germany. French bishops massively and publicly
sided with the government of Marshall Pétain, and
incited the Catholics to support his action. But in
1944 and 1945, the government of Pétain found itself
in the “camp of the defeated”, and those who had
supported it fell victims to a bloody “purge.” In the
meantime, the bishops had cleverly changed sides, and
the Catholics who had obeyed them four years earlier
found themselves alone to assume the consequences
of their acts. A lasting mistrust towards the hierarchy,
at least in the field of politics, struck its roots in some
French Catholics. On the other hand, the direction of
the Church in France underwent a new purging to the
benefit of a Catholicism leaning more towards the Left.
The aftermath of these events was tragic after the
Second World War. In the theological field, France
was at the heart of the “New Theology” with Fathers
Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, MarieDominique Chenu, Henri Bouillard, Gaston Fessard,
Yves de Montcheuil, without forgetting the fact
that the works of Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
were clandestinely flooding France, especially the
seminaries. On the political and social level, France
experienced a strong deviation of Catholic institutions
towards the Left. In many cases, it resulted in the
elimination of all association with Catholicism (for
instance, Christian trade unions became simply
“democratic” trade unions). In the religious realm,
the Church in France made a choice in favor of
“the missionary option,” which essentially consisted
in neglecting practising Catholics (considered as
“obstacles to the mission” with their “bourgeois and
routine habits”) in order to go to the non-practising,
the non-believers, and the non-religious. Evidently,
this implied reducing the Christian message to its
humanitarian dimension. Lastly, in the liturgical
domain, France was at the forefront of the “liturgical
THE ANGELUS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

experiments” and trivialized the concept of “liturgical
pastoral care” (which would prove devastating)
through the National Center of Liturgical Pastoral Care
(Centre National de Pastorale Liturgique or CNPL).

The Trauma of the Algerian War
In 1954, a new drama began in France which
would have significant repercussions on its religious
evolution: the Algerian War. Algeria had been a
French territory for over 120 years, where “Pieds
noirs” (people born in Algeria of various European
origins, especially French, Italians and Spaniards),
Jews, and natives were living together. The war
was waged by “Algerian nationalists” of the Front
de Liberation Nationale (FLN) according to terrorist
methods (bombs in public places, murder of hostages,
mass killing of civilians), whereas the Algerian
population, democratically consulted, was clearly
in favor of a pacific political development in union
with France. Hence, the war against the FLN looked
perfectly legitimate. But it was conducted by a French
government which at the time was socialist, and young
Frenchmen were on the ground. The Catholic press,
together with Catholic Action for the most part, sided
with the FLN against the French Army. Even worse,
a number of progressivist Catholics went so far as to
actively support terrorism. They became “porteurs
de valises” (suitcases carriers) for the FLN, (i.e. they
were involved in its logistics). Such an attitude of
“betrayal” scandalized numbers of more traditionally
minded Catholics. But with the evolution of mindsets
in France, and finally the independence of Algeria in
1962, (ratified in France by a referendum massively in
its favor), these traditional Catholics who once again
had trusted their government (General de Gaulle, head
of the government, had declared in 1959: “As long as I
live, the flag of the FLN will not unfurl over Algeria”)
were wronged politically speaking and felt betrayed by
churchmen.

The Conciliar Revolution
in France and May 1968
In such conditions, the period of time which
started in France with the death of Pius XII, and
especially after the opening of the Council, was a
disaster. A veritable tidal wave, something like a wind
of folly swept away all that was still traditional in the
Church in France. The cassock disappeared in a few
months to be replaced by lay clothes. Confessionals,
stations of the cross, statues, reliquaries, communion
rails, liturgical vestments, kneelers, etc., were all taken
out of the churches and trashed or, in the best of
cases, sold to antique shops. The craziest liturgical
experiments became a daily occurrence. The teaching
of the catechism was laid waste, with traditional
catechisms banished to the advantage of the “fonds
obligatoire” (compulsory collection of texts) which no

7
longer taught what is necessary
for salvation. The clergy
supported the most rash political
opinions (and those leaning
most towards the Left). By the
thousands, priests abandoned the
priesthood and got married.
The climax was reached
during the revolutionary events
of May 1968, during which
Cardinal François Marty,
Archbishop of Paris and
President of the French Bishops’
Conference, declared: “God
is not conservative.” The next
decade, until the death of Pope
Paul VI, was calamitous for the Church in France,
which was emptied of its substance (drop in Church
practice, massive diminution of the clergy and of
vocations, collapse of the religious life, beginning of
the financial problems which would only get worse).
The wildest experiments were carried out, the most
heterodox and absurd statements were defended and
broadcasted everywhere.

Two Key
Institutions
after the
Second World War

Jean Ousset (1914-94)

A Clergy and Laity
Rich in Experience
to Confront the Crisis
When confronted with this crisis that placed
every Catholic in the “tragic necessity of making a
choice,” French Catholics attached to Tradition (priests
as well as laymen) were less unprepared than many
others. They had the advantage of having a counterrevolutionary and anti-liberal literature of quality,
which was both abundant and easy to obtain. Given
the “Ralliement” they knew that Rome could err in
certain matters. Since the condemnation of Action
Française they had realized that ecclesiastical sanctions
could be both without basis and unjust. During the
Second World War they experienced the cowardly
backing down of their bishops, which was for them
a forewarning. The recent trauma of Algeria opened
their eyes to the subversion rampant in the so-called
Catholic press, in Catholic Action, and in a good part
of the clergy. Massive “secularization” had alerted
them of the near danger of seeing the disappearance
of Christendom in its most concrete and immediate
aspects. The storm which was unleashed over the
Church of France from 1962, and which touched them
in their immediate and personal religious lives (liturgy,
catechism, clerical garb, lives of the priests, preaching,
Catholic schools, and so on) showed that they could
not escape crucial choices. Lastly, for 60 years,
French Catholics had been getting used to supporting
with their money (“denier du culte”) their priests and
churches. They had acquired a wealth of experience to
confront the crisis which was beginning to break out.

These general historical
conditions do not suffice to
account for such a massive
Catholic Resistance in France.
More immediate dispositions
contributed to prepare it after
World War II, especially through
two symbolic works: the “Cité
Catholique” and Chabeuil.

Jean Ousset and the Cité Catholique
It is impossible to understand the vitality of
Catholic Resistance in France if we do not study first
the Cité Catholique. Most of those who reacted at the
end of the 1960’s in France had been formed within
this organization during the two preceding decades.
In 1946, in the Sacred Heart Basilica of
Montmartre, three men founded the future Cité
Catholique, under the temporary name of Centre
d’Études Critiques et de Synthèse (Center of Critical
Studies and Synthesis). Their objective was to create
an organization of lay people who, in their civic
capacity, would work toward the advent of a Christian
social order. This lay organization sought to profess
and make known the social doctrine of the Catholic
Church rather than any personal doctrine. Since the
Church allows any Catholic the right to make his own
political preferences, the Cité Catholique made use
of this liberty to diffuse its method and action. The
principal leader and organizer of the Cité Catholique
was Jean Ousset (1914-94).
The method of the Cité Catholique is founded
on the “cell,” a small group of militants who meet
regularly and methodically study doctrine, especially
that of the papal encyclicals, either directly or through
the books published by Jean Ousset, of which the
principal and most known is entitled Pour qu’Il Règne
(That He Might Reign). It is a methodical synthesis of the
“Catholic counter-revolution” and its characteristic is
its great wealth of diverse quotations.
In 1963, as the Cité Catholique was (already)
under virulent attack from the progressivists, its
leaders decided to change its name. They chose the
title “International Office of Works of Civic Training
and Doctrinal Action in Accordance with Christian
Natural Law,” a name purposely impossible to use
(it was usually shortened into “The Office”). They
also modified its structure and created a multitude
of affiliated associations gravitating around a unique
center so as to adapt their strategy to the evolutions of
the combat.
At the time, the Office had a great influence in
France as well as internationally. Its first Congress
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THE ANGELUS • September 2008

8
took place in Sion, in Swiss Wallis
in 1964, and from 1965 to 1977
in Lausanne. Between 2,500 and
4,000 people from all nationalities
would meet for three days. This
gave the organizers of very diverse
movements an opportunity to
harmonize and organize their actions
(movements, associations, Catholic
groups and newspapers of traditional
orientation all had their booths). At
this yearly international meeting
you could listen to a Catholic
intellectual elite: Marcel De Corte,
Jean Madiran, Marcel Clement,
Louis Salleron, Gustave Thibon, etc.
In 1977, the journalist of the daily Le
Monde still observed: “During three
days the Palais Beaulieu in Lausanne
probably contained the most
important counter-revolutionary
documentation in all of Europe.”
The Cité Catholique (or Office) had its own
publication: first Verbe, mostly concerned with
pure doctrine (most of the main books of the Cité
Catholique were first published there in installments);
and later Permanences, which gave more space to a
critical analysis of current events.
The Cité Catholique enabled thousands of
French Catholics to acquire a thorough knowledge
of the social doctrine of the Church (together with all
its presuppositions and all its consequences), to be
brought into contact with the counter-revolutionary
doctrinal corpus, and to be made sensitive to the ever
increasing progressivist subversion.

matter of fact, he desired to extend
the reign of Christ by evangelizing
adult men so that these would
later become a ferment in their
parish communities. Consequently,
he founded the Organization of
Parish Exercises (Oeuvre des Exercices
Paroissiaux–OEP) to stimulate the
perseverance and apostolic spirit
of the retreatants engaged in their
respective parishes.
In 1927, Fr. Vallet, devoured by
his evangelizing zeal, saw his health
give way. His superiors imposed
upon him a long rest during
which he was inspired to found
the Congregation of the Parish
Cooperators of Christ the King
(CPCR).
On May 3, 1928, Fr. Vallet left
the Society of Jesus to undertake his
new foundation. He began in Uruguay but soon went
to France where he opened the “Nazareth House”
in Chabeuil (diocese of Valence). From then on, the
five-day retreats according to the Exercises of St.
Ignatius were preached without interruption, especially
by Fr. Ludovic-Marie Barielle (1897-1983), a former
parish priest from Marseilles (who would end his life
in Ecône). The movement of the Anciens Retraitants
Paroissiaux (ARP–Former Parish Retreatants) was
founded to carry on the work of the Exercises in the
parishes.
Jean Ousset and his friends discovered the work of
Fr. Vallet and became attached to it. The CPCR were
teaching a strongly Catholic and anti-revolutionary
doctrine and spirituality. So, quite naturally, they
encouraged their retreatants to adhere to the Cité
Catholique, the only clearly counter-revolutionary
Catholic lay organization in France. The leaders of
the Cité Catholique became accustomed to follow the
retreats in Chabeuil and incited their militants to do
likewise.
Thus thousands of French Catholics would
henceforth come regularly to profit from the strong
spiritual truths of the Exercises and thanks to
these were protected from the deadly confusion of
progressivism.

Fr. François de Paule
Vallet (1883-1947)

Fr. Vallet (CPCR) and the Spiritual
Exercises of St. Ignatius in Chabeuil
But behind the doctrinal, militant, and lay
organization of the Cité Catholique (or the Office)
there was a spiritual reality which is absolutely
essential to understand the fertile soil in which
Catholic Resistance in France was born and
developed: the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius
condensed into five days by Fr. Vallet and preached by
the CPCR (Parish Cooperators of Christ the King) in
Chabeuil.
François de Paule Vallet (1883-1947), a Spaniard,
joined the Jesuits in 1907 after a retreat according
to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, which had
deeply moved him. As of 1923, he adapted these
Exercises to the circumstances of modern life,
condensing them into five days. Upon this basis, he
launched an apostolic campaign of great scope in all of
Catalonia. In five years, over 12,500 men experienced
these Ignatian retreats.
Fr. Vallet’s objective, however, was not exclusively
“spiritual” in a narrow and restricted sense. As a
THE ANGELUS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

A Wealth of Reviews
Already Before the Council
Yet all the Catholics with traditional leanings were
not necessarily members of the Cité Catholique or
people following the Exercises in Chabeuil. And even
those who were, needed nourishment and intellectual
protection between their retreats or their cell meetings.
Hence the importance of a truly Catholic and counterrevolutionary press. Now, France’s characteristic at the
beginning of the 1960’s is that Catholic mainstream

9
press was essentially represented by
two groups (Bayard Press and the
group La Vie Catholique) which
had both fallen into the hands of
progressivists. “Conservative,”
“traditional,” “fundamentalist”
Catholic reviews were already
opposed to the predominant
thought–they were fighting, they
were dissident. Consequently they
imbued their readers with a spirit
of critique, of reaction, of attention
to the subversive movements in
the very bosom of the Church.
This prepared minds to react when
confronted with the ecclesiastical
revolution that was to break out
soon. We give here below the main
reviews read by traditional Catholics
even before the beginning of the
Second Vatican Council.

enlighten its readers. For instance,
we can find, buried in dusty issues
of the review, texts which are still
remarkable today on the question
of religious liberty or the liturgical
revolution.

Jean Madiran and Itinéraires
In March 1956, Jean Madiran,
a philosopher and journalist, born
in 1920, founded the monthly
Itinéraires (Routes). At the beginning,
it was, to be sure, a Catholic and
traditional review, but especially
concerned with cultural topics and
analyses. As time went on, Madiran
made of it the meeting place of
French Catholic thought, thanks
to the collaboration of (among
others) Fr. Berto, the Charlier Brothers, Fr. de Chivré,
Gustave Corçao, Marcel De Corte, Fr. Dulac, Fr.
Guérard des Lauriers, Dom Guillou, Louis Jugnet,
Charles De Koninck, Archbishop Lefebvre, Henri
Massis, Gustave Thibon, etc. During the Council,
the review strove to enlighten Catholics and help
them to “remain sane,” but it remained relatively
aloof. On the other hand, from September 1967
onwards (with the reprint of the Catechism of St. Pius
X), Itinéraires successively became engaged in the
battle for the catechism in opposition to the “Fonds
obligatoire” of the French bishops, and in the battle
for the traditional Mass ( January 1970) and finally it
ardently supported Archbishop Lefebvre and Ecône
(The Wild Condemnation of Archbishop Lefebvre, 1975).
During all those years, the review was a guiding
light for traditionalists. Thus, on December 1, 1985,
Archbishop Lefebvre wrote to Jean Madiran to thank
him for “the review Itinéraires which you founded and
which has become symbolic of fidelity to the Catholic
Faith.” And on August 19, 1988, in the last letter he
addressed to him, he said again: “Your opinion and
your judgment during these twenty years of combat
were of the utmost importance to support and direct
those who were fighting.”
Among the collaborators of Itinéraires, it is fitting
to mention two men in particular with respect to
the reaction against the new Mass. First of all, Fr.
Roger-Thomas Calmel (1914-75), a Dominican, the
author of the vibrant “Declaration” of fidelity to the
traditional Mass by which the review made manifest its
commitment in the battle in January 1970. In articles,
magnificent for their doctrine, clarity, and literary
quality, Fr. Calmel developed his “apology for the
Roman Canon” and his strong denunciation of the
“liturgical revolution.” This true Dominican remains
one of the greatest characters of Catholic Resistance
and his writings are still astonishingly up-to-date.

Jean Madiran
(1920- )

La Pensée Catholique
La Pensée Catholique (Catholic Thought) was founded
in the fall of 1946 by four priests: Frs. Lucien (Luc)
Lefèvre (1895-1987), Henri Lusseau (1896-1973), Victor
Berto (1900-68), and Alphonse Roul (1901-69). It was
a bimonthly theological review and represented the
tradition of the French Seminary of Rome (of which
the four founders were alumni) and of Fr. Henri Le
Floch (1862-1950). Its principles can be summed up in
three words: Romanitas, Thomism, and anti-liberalism.
This review was fighting the good doctrinal fight, but
being essentially theological, it was especially read by
priests.

Dom Edouard Guillou
and Nouvelles de Chrétienté
In 1954, two laymen keenly interested in sound
doctrine, Charles-Pierre Doazan and Lucien Garrido,
founded a bulletin which was first duplicated and later
printed: Nouvelles de Chrétienté (News of Christendom).
At first, it was devoted to religious topics of general
interest: pontifical documents, various news updates,
commentaries, religious history, and so on. But a man
whose name never appeared (for easily understandable
reasons of discretion) gave life to this publication
with his spirit and his pen from the beginning of the
Council: Dom Edouard Guillou (1911-91), a monk
of the Benedictine Abbey of La Source (founded by
Solesmes) in Paris. From the very beginning of Vatican
II, Dom Guillou understood the revolution which was
underway. Day after day, in Nouvelles de Chrétienté, he
analyzed the progress of the Council. The fact that
the review was published every week was precious to
react quickly and not leave minds unarmed. The pen
of Dom Guillou was erudite and well argued, sharp
and lucid, ironic and polemic, and worked wonders to

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10
Next, we must mention the
name of Louis Salleron (1905-92), a
jurist, economist, and a writer. As of
September 24, 1969, in the weekly
journal of general interest Carrefour
(Crossroads), he took a clear stand
against the Novus Ordo Missae. In this
review and in Itinéraires, he developed
high-quality canonical and dialectical
argumentation, which in December
1970 was gathered in a book which
left its impression on minds and
launched an expression, La nouvelle
messe (The New Mass). This book was
re-printed and enlarged several times.

Fr. Georges de Nantes and
La Contre-Réforme
Catholique
French reaction to the crisis in
the Church could not be explained
without the many-faceted action of a
priest born in 1924, Fr. Georges de Nantes. In October
1956, he began the monthly publication of his Lettre à
mes amis (Letter to My Friends), in which he denounced
progressivism and gave an emergency critical analysis
of the Second Vatican Council and its texts. In
October, the review was replaced by La Contre-Réforme
catholique au XXe siècle (The Catholic Counter-Reformation
in the 20th Century). This latter had up to 30,000
subscribers–a considerable number. Fr. de Nantes
completed his action as a journalist and writers with
conferences and public meetings which drew a large
audience. Even if his interventions were often marred
by excesses inherent in his personality, even if his
practical position concerning the new Mass eventually
remained ambiguous (since he advised his followers
to attend Mass in their parishes on a regular basis),
we must acknowledge that, at the time, Fr. de Nantes
had dazzling intuitions concerning the revolutionary
process which was then being set up. He spoke
loudly–very loudly–and clearly to warn Catholics and
enlighten them as to their duty.

Fr. Georges de
Nantes (1924- )

“Conservative” Reviews
In the period preceding the conciliar liturgical
reform properly so-called, we must not forget the
influence of Catholic reviews which Anglo-Saxons call
“conservative.” By principle, they were determined
to submit to the hierarchy. Nevertheless they have
their place in the atmosphere of reaction against the
errors and impostures which were beginning to be
massively diffused in French Catholicism. Among
these, we can name the review Défense du Foyer
(Defense of the Home) run by Pierre Lemaire, who led
a virulent campaign against the errors of the new
catechism, on the one hand, and on the other hand,
THE ANGELUS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

against the moral deviations of the
progressivist press. Mention must also
be made of France Catholique-Ecclesia.
Created in 1924, it was the former
review of the Fédération Nationale
Catholique founded by General de
Castelnau. Also worthy of being
noted is L’Homme Nouveau (The New
Man), created in 1946 by Fr. Fillere
and Fr. Richard with a clearly anticommunist orientation, and which at
the time was run by Marcel Clement
(1921-2005), a former redactor of
Itinéraires. It is fitting to recall the
action of Jean Daujat (1906-98), a
collaborator to France Catholique and
L’Homme Nouveau, who in Paris, in
1925, founded the Centre d’Études
Religieuses (Center of Religious
Studies) where thousands of Catholics
received a good formation in sound
Thomistic doctrine.

Catholic Resistance
after the Council
At last, the time had come for a massive crisis in
the Church of France. Certainly, the soil had been
prepared, but was it going to be able to produce the
expected fruits? Other countries at that time (we may
simply think here of Italy) apparently possessed a
fertile soil, which nevertheless did not produce the
fruits which could have been expected. Now, French
soil would, in fact, be fertile during this whole period
of time.
Whilst the institutions and reviews already in
existence before the Council continued their action
(under diverse forms), new personalities came
forward, specifically in reaction to the crisis which
was beginning to be unleashed. We give here the most
prominent men, without however keeping strictly
the chronological or honorific order, because their
interventions overlapped often with one another.

Michel de Saint-Pierre and
Les nouveaux prêtres (The New Priests)
In this panorama of the great resistance fighters,
it is fitting to name someone whom we would
not necessarily expect here and who yet played a
major part: a writer and a novelist, Michel de SaintPierre (1916-87). A cousin of the writer Henry de
Montherlant, a Resistance fighter (he received the
Légion d’Honneur, the Military Medal, the Rosette
de la Résistance Française, the Croix de Guerre avec
étoile de vermeil 1939-45 and the Croix du Combattant
Volontaire), Michel de Saint-Pierre wrote abundantly
and successfully (in 1954, 25,000 copies of his novel
Les aristocrates were sold; in 1955, he was awarded

11
the Grand Prix du Roman de l’Académie Française).
In 1964, he published a novel entitled Les nouveaux
prêtres (The New Priests) which “portrayed” the crisis
in the Church. This book was as public as a wellknown scandal because it pointed out the very bases
of the crisis which was just beginning to break out.
The progressivists were furious that they had been
uncovered; bewildered Catholics found themselves
enlightened and encouraged to resist; and the general
public was informed about the true situation of the
Church. The author complemented this novel with
other books on the crisis of the Church, such as Sainte
colère (Holy Wrath), in 1965; Ces prêtres qui souffrent
(These Priests Who Suffer), in 1966; Eglise en ruine, Eglise
en péril (Church in Ruin, Church in Peril), in 1971; Les
fumées de Satan (The Smoke of Satan), in 1976 (co-written
with André Mignot); Le ver est dans le fruit (The Worm
Is in the Fruit), in 1978; etc. Michel de Saint-Pierre
brought his unfailing support to Archbishop Lefebvre
and Ecône. Among other things, he founded the
Association Credo, in 1975, to organize the SSPX
pilgrimage to Rome on the occasion of the Jubilee
Year.

Fr. Louis Coache and the Vade Mecum
It is almost impossible to understand the vitality
of traditionalism in France if we do not mention the
figure of Fr. Louis Coache (1920-94), who was at the
heart of the main initiatives of resistance to the tidal
wave of the conciliar revolution. Ordained in 1943
for the diocese of Beauvais, Fr. Coache, a doctor in
Canon Law, was appointed, in 1958, as parish priest
of Montjavoult (near Gisors, at the south-west end of
the department of Oise). Since 1955, confronted with
the increasing ravages caused by progressivism, he had
been making notes in view of writing a book on the
subject. But the advent of the “spirit of the Council”
made the book a much greater priority so that, on
Christmas 1964, Fr. Coache sent to his confreres of the
diocese of Beauvais a Lettre d’un curé de campagne à ses
confrères (Letter of a Country Parish Priest to His Confreres).
On September 8, 1965, a Nouvelle lettre d’un curé de
campagne (New Letter of a Country Parish Priest) was
released and even more widely distributed. That same
year, under the pseudonym of Jean-Marie Reusson, he
published at Table Ronde Editions a book entitled La
foi au goût du jour (The Faith according to the Taste of the
Day).
In June 1966, in the monthly Le Monde et la Vie (a
large-size illustrated magazine competing with Paris
Match) an article was published by Fr. Coache entitled
“The New Religion.” This article of four large pages
was used for the cover page of the issue (with a striking
photo of Pope Paul VI), and André Giovanni, the
editor, introduced it in his editorial. The article had
such a considerable impact that it earned its author
scorn from his bishop, and the review a condemnation
from the Permanent Council of the French Bishops’
Conference (together with Défense du Foyer, Lumière,

and Itinéraires). In June 1967, a Dernière lettre d’un curé
de campagne (Last Letter from a Country Parish Priest)
was released, with the printing of 150,000 copies, thus
proving the fame the author had obtained in a few
years.
At that time, Fr. Coache was fighting with his pen
to oppose the landslide of modernism. As the parish
priest of Montjavoult had no intention of becoming a
writer, his pamphlets should have had only a limited
echo. But in the complete rout of the Faith, faithful
Catholics gave widespread acknowledgment to those
modest writings. Encouraged by this daring voice,
some priests took heart and contacted one another;
lay people gathered together–in short, a traditional
resistance began to be organized.
At the time, although Fr. Coache was already
poorly thought of by his bishop, his canonical situation
was perfectly regular, and, apart from his writings,
he had not yet undertaken anything which could
jeopardize it. Things changed radically on February
28, 1968. On that day, Fr. Coache, who had planned
a solemn procession of the Blessed Sacrament in his
parish on the occasion of Corpus Christi to close the
Year of Faith, sent Bishop Desmazières an invitation to
come and preside over the ceremony. The bishop of
Beauvais, who was already looking for an opportunity
to oppose Fr. Coache, immediately opened fire. Two
days later, he told him that he was asking for an
explicit act of submission. Not being satisfied with
Fr. Coache’s response, on March 19, he gave him the
order to discontinue all his publications and to cancel
the procession of the Blessed Sacrament.
Faced with such an attitude, Fr. Coache decided to
have recourse to the Roman tribunals to obtain justice.
Thus began a long and tortuous procedure: no less
than 80 letters were exchanged between Fr. Coache,
Bishop Desmazières, and the Roman authorities
(Cardinal Wright, Bishop Palazzini, Cardinal Seper,
Cardinal Villot, etc.) At long last, on June 10, 1975,
a commission of cardinals officially approved the
destitution of Fr. Coache by the bishop of Beauvais.
The priest accepted to submit to the Roman decision,
as he had said he would, and he left the presbytery
of Montjavoult, where he was residing, to retire
to Lacordaire House in Flavigny, which he had
purchased in the meantime. But during all those years,
the Corpus Christi processions in Montjavoult were
one of the main annual rendezvous of traditionalism.
In February 1968, Fr. Coache founded the Combat
de la Foi (Combat for the Faith), a monthly bulletin
destined to relay his action. But more importantly,
he wrote, with the help of Fr. Noël Barbara, the text
which was going to have the most significant influence
in the constitution of traditionalism: the very famous
Vade mecum du catholique fidèle (Companion of the Faithful
Catholic). This short pamphlet, which recalls the
essentials about prayer, confession, communion, the
Mass, readings, catechism, the Catholic press, and
morals, proved to be a veritable tidal wave. Published
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THE ANGELUS • September 2008

12
at the end of 1968 by Ferrey Printing Company, it
had already sold 150,000 copies by the end of January
1969. In 1975, its fourth reprint (still available from the
Editions de Chiré) brought the total number of copies
printed to 360,000, a considerable number.
Besides the precious advice it contains, what gave
its worth to the Vade mecum were the names of 400
priests who signed the first edition (others would join
later on), thus sketching the map of France’s Catholic
fidelity. It obtained its full effect especially in 1969,
with the introduction of the “New Mass,” which Fr.
Coache rejected publicly without delay. Catholics
confused by the liturgical rout had only to consult the
Vade mecum to find the priest who was still saying the
true Mass close to their homes. Moreover, Fr. Coache
did not spare himself to support the Vade mecum with
public meetings in the Mutualité and the Wagram Hall
(one of them gave birth to the pamphlet Evêques, restez
catholiques [Bishops, Remain Catholic!] of which 120,000
copies were printed), and with pilgrimages. The most
important of these latter were obviously the “Marches
to Rome” of 1970, 1971, and 1973. These international
pilgrimages to the heart of Catholicism were meant
to bring about the restoration of the Faith and liturgy
of the Church, and they gave evidence of the vitality
of Tradition. They were brought to their conclusion,
in 1975, by a great pilgrimage presided over by
Archbishop Lefebvre on the occasion of the Jubilee
Year. Soon after, Fr. Coache created the pilgrimages to
Lourdes in an atmosphere of spiritual combat.
All these initiatives were of primary importance in
encouraging faithful Catholics, supporting them, and
enkindling their zeal. Fr. Coache was at the very heart
of the heroic combat of the first hours.
Many other of Fr. Coache’s activities must also be
mentioned. There was the campaign of destruction
of bad newspapers in churches, which resulted in
several lawsuits. There were some “commando-type”
actions, especially against sacrilegious emblems. There
were various fights against modernists, either on the
occasion of scandalous ceremonies, or with meetings
of protesting priests. There were his interventions in
the media, for instance the Radioscopie (a famous radio
program) with Jacque Chancel on May 5, 1975. And
last but not least, Fr. Coache was a decisive factor
(under the leadership of Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget) in the
take-over of Saint Nicolas du Chardonnet Church and
in its remaining a bastion of Tradition.
Fr. Coache was one of the front-line soldiers who
sacrificed to hold the front-line while young recruits
were being trained in the rear. How could we not
ascribe the magnificent religious efflorescence we can
see today in Tradition to the difficult fight led by Fr.
Coache during the “terrible years.”

THE ANGELUS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

Fr. Raymond Dulac
and the Courrier de Rome
In 1967, while the liturgy was decaying,
especially in France, a bimonthly bulletin printed on
a duplicating machine, and entitled Courrier de Rome
(Mail from Rome), was created. Its main organizer
was Fr. Raymond Dulac (1903-87), an alumnus of the
French Seminary in Rome, and a doctor in theology
and canon law. The Courrier de Rome, in the clear and
cutting style of Fr. Dulac, specialized in analyzing
the juridical and canonical aspects of the new liturgy,
proving, on the one hand, that the Traditional Mass
had never been forbidden, nor could it be (Fr. Dulac
introduced the public to the Bull Quo Primum, which
he had translated from Latin); and, on the other hand,
that the New Mass was not compulsory, since the texts
put forth to the contrary were either non-existent, or
falsified, or without coercive power. To these canonical
considerations, Fr. Dulac added pertinent theological
as well as historical and liturgical observations. It
was characteristic of the Courrier de Rome to intervene
very early, with unparalleled force and clarity. It
contributed to enlighten, bring together, and galvanize
priests and faithful who wanted to keep Tradition but
who at the time were feeling lost and isolated.
Fr. Noël Barbara and Forts dans la Foi
Fr. Noël Barbara (1910-2002), a priest repatriated
from Algeria, played a definitive role in the Resistance,
mainly with his talents as catechist and author of
books for ordinary people. As he had belonged to
the Parish Cooperators of Christ the King for a time,
(he left before taking his final vows), he had received
the tradition of the Spiritual Exercises according to
the method and spirit of Fr. Vallet, especially from Fr.
André Romagnan. He retained from this a powerful
sense of doctrine, and a clarity of exposition which
characterized his apostolate in the crisis. In 1963,
he made himself known by the publication of a
remarkable Catholic Catechism of Marriage. Later,
faced with the doctrinal and catechetical crisis, he
gave numerous conferences everywhere in France
to enlighten, warn, and encourage people to keep
the Faith. In 1967, in order to extend his action,
he founded Forts dans la Foi (Strong in the Faith), a
bimonthly review of Catholic catechesis, in which his
crystal-clear style and sense of the concrete worked
marvels. In 1968, together with Fr. Coache, he was at
the origin of the monument of French traditionalism:
the Companion of the Faithful Catholic.
Fr. Michel Guérard des Lauriers
and the Ottaviani Intervention
The New Mass was promulgated on April 3,
1969. Cristina Campo (1923-77), a writer and poet
and instigator of Una Voce Roma, together with her
friend Emilia Pediconi, immediately gathered five

13
or six priests to prepare a critical
study to be presented to Pope Paul
VI before November 30, the fateful
date of the implementation of the
new Mass. In April and May, on the
premises of Una Voce, and often during
nocturnal sessions, Msgr. Renato
Pozzi (a member of the Congregation
for Catholic Education and former
peritus at the Council), Msgr. Gerrino
Milani (likewise a member of the
Congregation for Catholic Education),
Msgr. Domenico Celada (a renowned
liturgist), and a few others prepared a
draft. The redaction was entrusted to
Fr. Michel Louis Guérard des Lauriers
(1898-1988), a Dominican and
professor at the Pontifical University of
the Lateran. From his notes in French,
Fr. Guérard dictated a text to Cristina
Campo, who translated it into Italian and minutely
brought it to completion under the title Breve esame
critico del Novus Ordo Missae (A Short Critical Study of the
Novus Ordo Mass), and dated it June 5, 1969, the feast
of Corpus Christi.
Campo and Pediconi having access to influential
ecclesiastical circles, in particular via Cardinal
Ottaviani’s office, it was decided to seek prestigious
“signatures” for the document. But things dragged on
because one after the other, Italian prelates backed
out. Eventually, only Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci
signed the introductory letter of the text. Tired of
waiting, Fr. de Nantes published the letter signed
only by Ottaviani in the Contre-Réforme Catholique on
October 15, 1969. Since all was uncovered, they could
not wait any longer. Consequently, the letter by the
cardinals was dated September 3, the feast of St. Pius
X, and delivered to Paul VI together with the study on
October 21, 1969.
In the meantime, the study had been translated
into French by Fr. Guérard, into German by Elisabeth
Gerstner, into Spanish by Don Luigi Severini, and
into English by Prof. Anderson (under the title The
Ottaviani Intervention). It was very widely distributed,
especially in France, and remains a landmark in
Catholic Resistance. As Cardinal Alfons Maria Stickler
(1910-2007), who always celebrated the traditional
Mass, wrote in a public letter dated November 27,
2004,

Msgr. François DucaudBourget and St. Nicolas
du Chardonnet
Fr. François Ducaud (18971984), a writer and poet who had
taken the pen name of DucaudBourget, had founded the literary
review Matines (Matins) in 1936.
Because of his function as general
chaplain of the Order of Malta, he
was entitled to be called Monsignor
(a title which continued to be given
to him even after he had ceased
that function). A priest of the
diocese of Paris, he was chaplain
at Laennec Hospital when the New
Mass appeared. He continued to
celebrate the traditional Mass in
the chapel of the hospital, and as
weeks went by attendance at his
Mass kept increasing. Expelled from Laennec in 1971
as a result of political pressures from trade-unions,
he went from place to place with the congregation of
faithful that had gathered around him. Among others,
in 1972, he celebrated Mass in a former warehouse
in the district of Les Halles, in rue de la Cossonnerie,
and also in the Social Museum, in rue Las Cases. He
eventually found shelter in Wagram Hall on Sundays,
and in a small room adjoining the said Hall during
the week. This small adjoining room became St.
Germaine’s Chapel. Surrounded by a small group of
priests attached to Tradition, in virtue of circumstances
Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget found himself at the head of
the largest French traditional community, at least in
numbers. Several times, he respectfully asked the
archbishop of Paris, Cardinal François Marty, for a
place of worship for the community, but he met only
with refusals and rebuffs.
In desperation, he decided to take an initiative
which has since been recorded in history: to provide
for Tradition a magnificent church in the very heart of
Paris, St. Nicolas du Chardonnet.
Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget, Fr. Coache, Mrs. Buisson
(a very active member of the community, involved in
all the traditional works and charities in Paris), and
a few friends were accustomed to meet on a regular
basis in Le Tourville restaurant, near the home of
Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget. Already in 1974, Fr. Coache
had mentioned the possibility of taking a church in
Paris. Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget, more temperate than the
hot-headed priest of Montjavoult, always delayed the
execution of such a project. On October 20, 1976, a
meeting organized by Fr. Coache and presided over by
Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget took place in La Mutualité and
was attended by 3,000 persons. With Msgr. DucaudBourget’s permission, Fr. Coache announced that in six
months they would have taken a Parisian church. The
crowd grew enthusiastic about the project.

Fr. Michel Louis
Guérard des Lauriers
(1898-1988)

The results of the [liturgical] reform are judged as
devastating by many today. It was the merit of Cardinals
Ottaviani and Bacci to discover very early that the
modification of the rites resulted in a fundamental change
in doctrine....The analysis of the Novus Ordo by these two
Cardinals has lost nothing of its value, nor, unfortunately,
of its timeliness.

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14
Five people were let into the
secret: Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget, Fr.
Vincent Serralda (1904-98), Fr.
Coache, Mrs. Buisson, and Mr.
Ducaud (Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget’s
nephew). Each of the three priests
brought his specific contribution to
the project: Msgr. Ducaud-Bourget
was the “boss,” the Parisian figurehead
who gave his moral guarantee. Fr.
Serralda designated the church, St.
Nicolas du Chardonnet, where he had
been a curate, and which was located
next to the Hall of La Mutualité. Fr.
Coache contributed his daring, his
sense of organization, his groups of
well-trained men thoroughly drilled
by numerous previous operations. The
rest of the story is well known: it is
abundantly narrated in many books.
The large meeting had been scheduled in the hall of
La Mutualité, but the crowd of faithful was sent to
the nearby church. This peaceful but strong invasion
resulted in the celebration of the traditional Mass,
the first in many years in this edifice. Since then, the
“admirable church of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet” is
“world famous,” to quote Archbishop Lefebvre. Msgr.
Ducaud-Bourget is buried in the ambulatory.

Luce Quenette
and La Péraudière
In 1946, Luce Quenette (190477), for whom “Catholic education
was a passion” (to quote Archbishop
Lefebvre), bought a farm in the
village of Montrottier, in the Lyonese
mountains, in order to found a
boys’ school. She wanted to give
children a taste for Christian and
French civilization through the study
of classical literature in a family
and country environment that was
already in a spirit of reaction against
progressivism. In 1954, she bought
some buildings in a hamlet called
Péraudière. In 1969, she founded a
girls’ school in Malvières, in HauteLoire which was later transferred to
Saint-Franc, in Savoy, in 1994.
Luce Quenette reacted very early to the
subversion, first because of the decay of catechism,
next because of the liturgical cataclysm. “During the
whole year 1969,” Jean Madiran wrote in his funeral
tribute, “with tremendous impatience, Luce Quenette
kept urging us to do everything possible, and even
impossible, to ward off the threat of the new Mass
which had been announced. ‘We’ll see,’ would we tell
her. ‘Just wait....’ ‘I cannot wait,’ she would answer.
‘Children cannot wait: we must tell them now, this
very day, and once and for all where the true Mass
is.’” And Jean Madiran did not hesitate to say during
a conference at Ecône on March 19, 1974: “Without
her, the review Itinéraires, might not have taken such
a strong stand on the Mass so early.” In 1970, Luce
Quenette met Archbishop Lefebvre for the first time in
Fribourg, and the Archbishop came to visit the school
at Péraudière the following year for Corpus Christi.
Luce Quenette first became known in the field of
literature in a little professional review entitled Entre
Paysans (Between Peasants). In 1967, she began her
contribution to Itinéraires. In 1968, she founded the
Letter from La Péraudière, which became one of the first
traditionalist periodicals in France and enlightened
many people concerning the crisis of the Church. In
1974, her texts about education were collected and
harmonized into a book entitled L’éducation de la pureté
(The Education of Purity) by the Dominique Martin
Morin publishing company.
Her testament clearly expressed the fight she had
waged:

Luce Quenette
(1904-77)

Fr. Michel André and
the Noël Pinot’s Association
Fr. Michel André (1915-2000) must be mentioned
in this gallery of the great resistance fighters, even
if his public activities in France belong to a later
period. A Holy Ghost Father, he was a missionary in
Argentina from 1962 to 1971. Faced with the crisis
of the Church, he began by having 10,000 copies of
the Ottaviani Intervention printed in Spanish, and he
traveled all over South America to make it known.
Upon the advice of, among others, Archbishop
Lefebvre, his former Superior General, he left
Argentina in April 1971 and came back to France.
In 1972, he created the Noël Pinot Association (after
the name of a priest guillotined wearing his priestly
vestments during the French Revolution) for the
defense of the traditional Mass and to help priests
faithful to the Mass. This help is also material: every
year, the Noël Pinot Association receives some 15,000
Mass intentions which it re-distributes to priests who
bind themselves to celebrate exclusively according
to the traditional rite. Since its creation, more than
2,000 priests have belonged to the A.N.P. In June
1973, Fr. André founded a quarterly bulletin, Introibo,
which gives doctrine and news updates. It is fairly well
distributed, since up to 6,000 copies are printed.

THE ANGELUS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

Only the Tradition of the Church founded by Our Lord
Jesus Christ two thousand years ago, and handed down to
us, represents the Catholic religion in which we have been
baptized, and in which we can work out our salvation. We do
this with the traditional Latin Mass, the authentic catechism
passed on to children, and Sacred Scripture free of today’s
falsifications.

15
During the years of the conciliar revolution, La
Péraudière School was “the school of Tradition” for
boys in France. It brought forth many vocations, and
was a model and an example for the traditional boys’
schools which began to be founded at the end of the
1970’s. Many of the first priests who worked in those
schools were alumni of La Péraudière.
At the same time, the revival of traditional
education for girls was underway in Toulouse, in the
Congregation of teaching Dominican Sisters of the
Holy Name of Jesus, especially under the influence
of their chaplain, Fr. Calmel. After mature reflection
and painful discussions, a first group of 26 Sisters,
under the guidance of Mother Hélène Jamet, a former
Superior General, settled in Brignoles in July 1974. A
year later, in July 1975, a second group of 21 Sisters,
under the guidance of Mother Anne-Marie Simoulin,
Superior General in charge, left Toulouse for Fanjeaux.

“Conservatives”
Among the people who took action against the
widespread subversion in the Church in those years,
we must also mention those whom we might call
“conservatives,” because they did not completely side
with Tradition.
Foremost among them was the Una Voce Association,
founded in France in 1964, and from which was born
the Una Voce International Federation, in 1966, with its
chapters in numerous countries. The initiative of the
foundation of Una Voce was due to Georges CerbelaudSalagnac (1906-99) and his wife Bernadette Lécureux
(born in 1913, and the author of the book Latin, the
Language of the Church). For 20 years in particular,
it was presided over by Henri Sauguet (1901-89), a
member of the Institute, and a famous musician.
Founded even before the end of the Council, Una
Voce did not have the New Mass in view (this latter was
only promulgated five years later). Its objectives were
clearly defined: the defense and promotion of Latin,
Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony in the Western
Roman Catholic liturgy, as well as sacred arts. But
the arrival of the New Mass forced Una Voce to take
a stand. Whereas most of the national associations
(juridically independent) of the International
Federation clearly chose the traditional liturgy only,
the French association showed more reservations
because its members and its leaders did not agree
on the attitude to be adopted. Though expressing a
definite preference for traditional liturgy, Una Voce
France nevertheless accepted the liturgy of Paul VI,
and tried its utmost to have it celebrated in Latin and
with Gregorian chant. It publishes a bimonthly review
and books, and runs a radio program devoted to
Gregorian chant.
At the height of the combat, most of the defenders
of Tradition in France were members of Una Voce or
read its review because every kind of ammunition
was precious at the time. The Opus Sacerdotale, an

association of priests providing mutual support for
their priestly lives and founded by Canon Etienne
Catta, also in 1964, was working in a spirit similar to
Una Voce’s.
We must also mention the existence of groups,
not at all insignificant, which, while accepting
the Council as well as the liturgical reform, were
nevertheless active to denounce and combat the
increasing doctrinal and liturgical deviations. Among
the most active, the Rassemblement des Silencieux de
l’Église (Association of the Silent Ones of the Church),
founded in 1969 by Pierre Debray (1922-99) worked
within the parishes. Pierre Debray extended this action
with the foundation of theCourrier Hebdomadaire (Weekly
Bulletin), in 1972, and later with a new group called
Chrétiens pour un Monde Nouveau (Christians for a New
World). Along the same lines, the association Fidelité et
Ouverture (Fidelity and Opening), founded in 1971 by
Gerard Soulages (1912-2005), was addressed mostly to
more intellectual circles.

The “Resonance Boxes”
As it was said above, the mainstream press, be it
lay or Catholic, was then in the hands of progressivists
and those who were favorable to progressivism.
Consequently, the initiatives of traditional Catholics
were often silenced. Yet, there were some “resonance
boxes” which made it possible to reach a larger
audience. We give here below a few characteristic
examples.
In the 1960’s, a magazine for the general public
entitled Le Monde et la Vie (World and Life)–founded
at the beginning of the 1950’s–ran the explicit subtitle: “Learn everything from texts and images.” This
magazine, a kind of monthly Paris Match, devoted
several dossiers to religious problems from 1962
onwards, thanks to the impulse given by its editor,
André Giovanni (who, in 1976, founded Santé [Health]
magazine, destined to a fine future). It willingly gave
“traditionalists” the opportunity to express themselves.
For instance, in December 1962: “Where Is the
Church of France Going?” had the following table
of contents: “The Gospel Betrayed,” “The Church in
Danger,” “Teilhard de Chardin, an Accursed Jesuit or
a Future Father of the Church?” “The Battle Between
Fundamentalists and Progressivists,” “Why the Mass
Back to Front?” “A Former Worker-Priest Speaks.”
We can also note at random in old issues: in February
1964, “The Demagogues and Sacred Arts”; in June
1964, “Communist Infiltration Through the Pax
Movement”; in August 1964, “Vernet vs. Teilhard”;
in January 1965, “Dossier on the New Priests”; in
February 1966, “Fr. de Nantes,” and so on. Le Monde
et la Vie disappeared at the end of the 1960’s and was
revived as a bimonthly in 1972, under the title Monde et
Vie, with an openly “traditionalist” orientation.
In the political weekly paper Rivarol, Edith
Delamare (1921-93) kept a widely read religious
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THE ANGELUS • September 2008

16
chronicle, clearly favorable to traditional Resistance.
In 1967, she went to battle with Contre la liturgie d’après
Concile (Against the Post-conciliar Liturgy) and opposed
Fr. Georges Michonneau (1899-1983), one of the
forerunners of the conciliar revolution, who proclaimed
his commitment in Pour la liturgie d’ après Concile (For
the Post-conciliar Liturgy) (Berger-Levrault). Together
with Léon de Poncins, Jacques Bordiot, Gilles de
Couessin, and Georges Virebeau (a.k.a. Henry Coston),
Edith Delamare contributed, in 1969, to the collective
book entitled, without ambiguity, Infiltrations enemies
dans l’Eglise (Enemies Infiltrate the Church) (La Librairie
Française). In that same weekly paper, Rivarol, during
the 1960’s, Msgr. Carbonnel, a French monsignor
residing in Rome, wrote in favor of Tradition under the
transparent pseudonym of “Civis Romanus.”
A few courageous small publishing companies,
going against the stream, tried to support Catholic
resistance, for instance Nouvelles Editions Latines,
Dominique Martin Morin, La Librairie Française,
Editions du Cèdre, etc.
Catholic resistance could hardly rely on
the network of regular bookstores, which were
commercially bound to the leading publishing
companies, which in turn were in full agreement
with progressivist ideas. For this reason, mail-order
bookstores developed in France at that time. Several
companies were founded; among them it is fitting
to make special mention of Diffusion de la Pensée
Française (DPF). Created in 1966 by a student at the
University of Poitiers, Jean Auguy (born in1942), this
mail-order bookstore was soon established in the little
Poitou village of Chiré-en-Montreuil, and before long
it had its own publishing department under the name
of Editions de Chiré. DPF played a major role during
the years of combat, essentially by diffusing many
works about doctrine and liturgy. The orientation of
Jean Auguy’s company can easily be characterized if
we remember three books published by Editions de
Chiré. As early as 1971, Jean Vaquié published there
a remarkable book entitled La révolution liturgique (The
Liturgical Revolution), which analyzed the conciliar
constitution, on the one hand, and the Novus Ordo
Missae, on the other hand. In 1975, Editions de Chiré
printed L’Eglise occupée (The Church under Occupation),
by Jacques Ploncard d’Assac. This book is a historical
analysis of the way the revolution penetrated into the
ecclesiastical world. Lastly, still in 1975, the French
translation (by Cerbelaud-Salagnac, the founder of
Una Voce) of the book of Brazilian Arnaldo Xavier Da
Silveira, La Nouvelle messe de Paul VI, qu’en penser? (What
Are We to Think of Paul VI’s New Mass?) was released.
In the 1970’s, the daily L’Aurore, nowadays no
longer in existence, played a non-negligible role in
waking up French Catholics because of it religious
chronicles written successively by two “high-powered”
Dominicans. Fr. Maurice Lelong (1900-81) was a fairly
well-known preacher (not to be confused with Fr.
Michel Lelong, a White Father born in 1925, and still
THE ANGELUS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

alive); he was notably in charge of the Sunday homily
on the airwaves of the State-run radio France Culture.
In 1971, he published Lexicon de l’Eglise nouvelle (Lexicon
of the New Church), a pastiche of the “new ecclesiastical
language written as a dictionary. The following
year, he did it again with Le livre blanc et noir de la
communion solennelle (The White and Black Book for Solemn
Communion) (Maine, 1972), which was a criticism of
the organized destruction of this religious ceremony of
capital importance in the religious formation of French
Catholic youth. This, together with the sound doctrine
of his sermons on the radio, earned him the disfavor of
his superior and the abrupt termination of his contract
with France Culture. In 1972, he was consequently
received by L’Aurore, for which he wrote the weekly
religious chronicle (collected in Les feux de l’Aurore,
[Robert Morel, 1973]), to which, in 1973, he added
Puisqu’il fait encore jour (Since It Is Still Daylight [Robert
Morel, 1974]), and, in 1974, Les jeudis de l’Aurore (Robert
Morel, 1975). Supporting himself upon a very solid
and traditional theology, Fr. Lelong, in his chronicles,
did not hesitate to take to task the murderers of the
Church, especially religious journalists, priests on the
binge, and irresponsible and cowardly bishops. In 1976,
Fr. Lelong also wrote the preface for Un nouveau piège
de la subversion: L’expression corporelle (A New Trap Set by
Subversion: Corporal Expression) published by Dominique
François with Editions du Cèdre (connected to La
Pensée Catholique).
For the religious chronicle in L’Aurore, Fr. Lelong
had as his successor Fr. Raymond-Leopold Bruckberger
(1907-98), a Dominican absolutely impossible to
classify. A former Resistance fighter, a man of letters,
a film critic, and a friend of many artists, he led an
unconventional life at the very least. Nevertheless,
out of a sincere attachment to good doctrine, he
contributed to the book Dialogue théologique published
in 1947 by Frs. Labourdette and Nicolas, which offered
a thorough criticism of the “New Theology” at its
dawn. In the post-conciliar era, with great liberty of
style and true literary qualities, he began to express
his questions and surprises in front of the disturbing
evolution of the Church (Lettre ouverte à Jésus-Christ
[Open Letter to Jesus Christ], Albin Michel, 1973). The
directors of L’Aurore (as well as those of Journal du
Dimanche) offered him an opinion column. His critical
reflections on the dramatic situation of the Church
had a considerable impact, and were collected in L’âne
et le boeuf (The Ass and the Ox), published by Plon in
1976 with an introduction by Jean Dutour, and more
specially in Toute l’Eglise en clameurs (The Whole Church
Is Clamoring), published by Flammarion in 1977. Fr.
Bruckberger did not hesitate to dedicate this book
to Louis Salleron and Michel de Saint-Pierre. Every
Thursday in those years (which were the years of the
condemnation of Archbishop Lefebvre and of the
taking of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet), worried and
confused Catholics were eagerly looking forward to
reading the chronicle of “Father Bruck.”

17

Priests’ and
Laymen’s Resistance
Thanks to this whole heritage, to the widely
diffused formation, and to the encouragements
bestowed by the “stars” of Resistance, French
Catholics entered resistance in a manner which was
certainly modest in itself, and yet really massive
compared to that of the universal Church.
Almost everywhere some priests kept wearing
their cassock, teaching the old catechism, celebrating
the traditional liturgy, and maintaining the ancient
forms of Catholic piety. There were certainly several
hundreds of them, maybe even more than a thousand.
This means that they represented between 2% and
3% of the French clergy (which at the time numbered
between 35,000 and 40,000 priests): in the state of
cataclysm in which the Church was, such a figure was
far from being insignificant, and must be compared
with that of so many other places where there was no
reaction or hardly any.
In every diocese (France numbers about a hundred
dioceses), priests (and especially country parish priests)
maintained Tradition. In one diocese, there was only
one such priest. In another, there were two or three.
But in some dioceses, there were six, seven, or even
ten or more priests who remained faithful to Tradition.
All in all, they made up a network, which, though
uneven and irregular, was fairly dense. Roughly
speaking, any French Catholic could find a traditional
Mass less than 60 miles from his home.
It is obviously impossible to mention here the
hundreds of names of these resistance priests. On the
one hand, it would be long and tedious. On the other
hand, to offer an exhaustive “register” of the various
local resistance would require a minute and complex
research. Indeed, the situations were very different.
They happened over various periods of time, in places
which at times changed from one week to the next,
priests interchanged or succeeded each other, some
changed their minds and then returned...
However, to express our gratitude and filial piety
to the brave combatants who made it possible for
Tradition to survive in France in spite of the storm,
we give here, almost at random, some names (which
will thus be saved from complete oblivion): Fr.
Avril, Fr. Aymard, Fr. de Bailliencourt, Fr. Baillif, Fr.
Barcelonne, Fr. Bayot, Fr. Bénéfice, Fr. Bertrand, Fr.
Bouteille, Fr. Bovadilla, Fr. Burdin, Fr. de Chivré, Fr.
Choulot, Fr. Claisse, Canon Cousseran, Fr. Crespel,
Fr. Dirat, Fr. Duboscq, Fr. Dupanloup, Fr. Ehanno,
Fr. Emmanuelli, Fr. Etienne de Sainte-Madeleine,
Fr. Fellich, Fr. Gérentet de Saluneaux, Fr. Givry,
Msgr. Gillet, Fr. Goyenetche, Msgr. Grasselly, Fr. des
Graviers, Fr. Grymonpré, Fr. Guerle, Fr. Houghton,
Fr. Jamin, Fr. Juan, Fr. Lagarde, Canon Lavigne, Fr.
Le Boulc’h, Fr. Le Perderel, Fr. Londos, Fr. Lourdelet,
Fr. Magentis, Fr. Mazué, Fr. Montgomery-Wright, Fr.
Morandi, Fr. Mouraux, Canon Poncelet, Canon Porta,
Fr. Pozzéra, Fr. Reynaud, Canon Robin, Fr. Rohmer,

Fr. Rousseau, Canon Roussel, Fr. Sausm, Fr. Simon,
Fr. Son, Fr. Sulmont, Fr. Vermeille, Fr. Vinson, Fr.
Zucchelli, etc.
This enumeration is partial, and even biased
inasmuch as it forgets so many names which would
deserve to be taken out of oblivion. It is given here
only as part of a global homage to all the priests
who have become anonymous and have often fallen
undeservedly into oblivion.
These resistance priests were, for the most part,
persecuted (and often shamefully) by their bishops and
by many of their confreres who had “tacked.” They
were threatened, mocked, publicly attacked, deprived
of financial resources, deposed, sent away, and often
had to face dramatic situations. Many died of grief,
suffering, and misery.
However, some spiritual “shelters” allowed
them to regain strength. For instance, in Bédoin, in
Vaucluse, since August 1970, there had been a fervent
Benedictine community under the guidance of Fr.
Gérard Calvet, a monk from the abbey of Tournay.
In Pontcallec, the teaching Dominicans of the Holy
Ghost, maintained the spirit of their founder, Fr. Berto,
the peritus of Archbishop Lefebvre during the Council.
But, in those days, it was especially the abbey of
Notre-Dame de Fontgombault that was one of the main
centers of resistance in France, under the guidance
of its abbot, Dom Jean Roy (1921-77), who was a
“friend and confidant” of Archbishop Lefebvre. Bishop
Tissier de Mallerais noted this in his biography of the
founder of the Society of Saint Pius X. Thus, in 1973,
Archbishop Lefebvre ordained Fr. Jean-Yves Cottard
(SSPX) to the priesthood in Fontgombault.
Annoyed by this traditional center, Rome
expressly sent the apostolic nuncio to influence Dom
Roy. In January 1973, Archbishop Lefebvre still tried
to raise his spirits: “Let us keep the Mass, our common
objective. We have been increasingly harassed for
a few weeks because of the liturgy; to give up is out
of the question!” Unfortunately, in 1974, Dom Roy
yielded to pressures and the abbey of Fontgombault
gave up the public celebration of the traditional Mass
(whereas the priest serving the parish of Fontgombault
at the time, Fr. Lecareux, remained faithful to it). This
major loss considerably weakened Catholic resistance.
For their part, tens of thousands of lay people
mobilized. Some were driving many miles every
Sunday to attend a Mass celebrated in the traditional
rite (guided to the right places by the famous vade
mecum of Fr. Coache). Others, who lived near a parish
where there was a priest attached to Tradition, would
bring him help, support and protection in the face
of clerical persecutions. Others still, geographically
distant from any traditional priest, gathered together,
organized themselves, created associations (the famous
“Associations St. Pie V,” which sprung up under
various names throughout France), and mobilized in
order to go to find a priest available to say Mass for
them, even if they had to drive hundreds of miles.
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THE ANGELUS • September 2008

18
They would offer him room and board, and
then drive him back in the same incredible
conditions. These groups also often taught
catechism to the children, since France, at
the time, was a desert as far as catechism was
concerned.
Dozens of local bulletins began to appear.
They were written either by priests or by simple
laymen, and were trying, to the best of their
abilities, to defend the Faith, Tradition, and the
liturgy of all time. These writings left no stone
unturned. Anyone could become a self-styled
apologist, liturgist, theologian, or historian:
the holy city was threatened, they had to hold
the fort even if they did not have any specific
training for the job. In those turbulent days,
such bulletins encouraged, enlightened, and
strengthened people of good will.
All these resistance fighters kept in touch by
mail, met privately, and organized meetings. A
layman, Gérard Saclier de la Batie, even tried
to federate the Associations Saint Pie V. The
attempt met only with half success, but it did
help some less organized persons to take the
matter into their hands, and it strengthened the
associations already in existence.
Thus France was crisscrossed by a network
of priests, groups of lay people, reviews,
bulletins, and “Mass centers” which made up
the Catholic Resistance. From 1976 onwards,
the date of the foundation of the District of
France, the priests of the Society of Saint Plus
X went on mission in this fertile soil. And this
fertile soil largely accounts for the astonishing
expansion of the district during the 30 some
years which have elapsed since.
Thanks to these first resistance fighters,
to these heroes, Tradition did not disappear
altogether. Let us think about the priest who
kept his cassock while all his confreres changed
into lay clothes, and who was the butt of the
said-confreres’ jokes because of the “old frock”
he was still wearing! That was enough to make
his reason vacillate, and to wonder whether he
were not a fool to keep a mode of life which all
his friends, his confreres from the seminary, and
his superiors had joyfully given up in the name
of the dawn of a new era.
As for the faithful, they were expelled
without any consideration from Catholic
associations, before being simply thrown out
of their parishes. All this happened to them
because they were guilty of attachment to
the most obvious Catholic tradition, the very
tradition which the priests, who now persecuted
them, had been teaching a few years earlier
under pain of heavenly chastisement.
These men and women saved the essentials
by remaining faithful in the midst of the storm.
THE ANGELUS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

Saint Nicolas du Chardonnet, Paris
They have saved from destruction entire sections of Catholic
traditions which, but for them, would have disappeared
forever.
We must not forget to pay homage to all those priests
and lay persons who, by their faith, courage, enthusiasm, and
great sacrifices, enabled the traditional Mass to live and to
survive, and Catholic doctrine still to be taught and handed
down in the midst of the most formidable storm the Church
had ever experienced.
This article originally appeared in issue No. 89 (February 2008) of Cor Unum, the internal
bulletin of the Society of St. Pius X. Reprinted with permission from Superior General
Bishop Bernard Fellay.
1

Since 2005 The Angelus has been running a series of articles featuring the traditional
religious orders. The article on these Benedictine monasteries appeared in the April
2008 issue.
2
Ibid., Feb. 2007.
3
Ibid., Sept. 2005.
4
Ibid., Feb. 2006.
5
Ibid., Feb. 2008.
6
Ibid., Dec. 2005.
7
Ibid., Dec.2006.
8
Ibid., Oct. 2006.
9
Ibid., June 2007.
10
Ibid., Apr. 2007.

Madrid, Spain

Traditional
Religious
Orders

Handmaids of Jesus
Eternal High Priest
and of the Heart of Mary

19

O

n November 21, 2006, Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Bishop
Alfonso de Galarreta signed the decree of the erection of a new Congregation: The
Handmaids of Jesus, Eternal High Priest and of the Heart of Mary. That same day three
novices pronounced their vows in a moving and solemn ceremony marking the birth of a new
religious family for Holy Mother Church.

Origins
In 1965, the Reverend Pedro Muñoz, a diocesan priest, founded a congregation near
Barcelona called Oasis de Jesús Sacerdote, the purpose of which was the offering of the lives
of its members for the sanctification of priests and consecrated souls, a mission all the more
necessary given the vocations’ crisis that followed the Vatican Council II.
Oasis soon established friendly relations with the Society of Saint Pius X, going so far
as to submit its Constitutions to Archbishop Lefebvre, who responded in February 1987 by

20

according it his moral approbation. The life and
growth of the new contemplative congregation was
made known to a wider public through Father Muñoz’s
book The Simplicity of a Life, the story of a young nun
of Oasis who made the offering of her life to God for
priests, and whose offering was accepted by the Lord.
In 2004, however, Father Muñoz began to part
company from the Society in his handling of issues
stemming from the crisis in the Church. Some Sisters,
alarmed by the new orientation of the convent,
consulted several priests and bishops of the SSPX.
Bishop de Galarreta, taking the situation in hand,
recommended their separation from the Oasis in
September 2005. So it was that on October 3, 2005,
fifteen of the nuns left the convent to continue their
religious life in a new congregation.
The wisdom and timeliness of the decision
were corroborated by subsequent events: in June
2007, Oasis obtained the approbation of the Ecclesia
Dei Commission, after having petitioned Cardinal
Castrillon Hoyos for its juridical normalization.

Transition
The Sisters were afforded temporary refuge at
the Society’s house near Madrid, the Casa San José.
As expected, the house in El Alamo soon became
too small, but after our spending nearly nine months
there, St. Joseph took compassion. The priests, after
THE ANGELUS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

an exhaustive search for a suitable property far
enough away from the hubbub of the city yet close
enough to the Society’s house, found an appropriate,
although provisional, property situated outside
Griñon, just seven miles from Casa San José, where we
could continue our religious life with regularity and
facilitating enormously the task of providing us with
spiritual assistance (daily Mass, etc.).
The Sisters moved in on June 21, 2006, and soon
recommenced their contemplative life. Later that
year, on November 21, Feast of the Presentation of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, Bishop de Galarreta gave official
recognition to the new congregation, which observes
the Constitutions approved by Archbishop Lefebvre.
Henceforth, they would be called the Handmaids of
Jesus Eternal High Priest and the Heart of Mary.
The new convent was still too small, and room
was needed for future growth. In the summer of 2007,
two wooden houses were acquired, one for a chapel
and the other for a parlor. The priests and faithful took
care of preparing the terrain for the buildings, their
transport, and final installation, working under a tight
deadline. But all was in readiness by October 21, 2007,
for the profession of a French novice and the taking of
the habit by two postulants.
At 5 o’clock on November 3, 2007, the first
Saturday of the month, the moving ceremony of the
installation of the cloister took place. At the intonation

21
of psalms, Bishop de Galarreta, followed
by his ministers, the Community and the
faithful, went in solemn procession blessing
the exterior doors and entrances of the
convent, which thereafter were closed. On
arriving at the last door, before which the
Sub Tuum Presidium was intoned, Bishop
de Galarreta blessed the Community
and handed over the keys to the Mother
Superior, thus establishing the cloister.
(To date—August, 2008—the Community
numbers 15 members of whom only
one is a novice. The nationalities of the
Sisters include Spanish, French, Mexican,
Argentinean, Chilean, and English.)

What Do
Cloistered Nuns Do?
Before answering that, we have to recall
a fundamental truth: the end of man. We
have been created “to know, love, and
serve God in this life in order to be happy
forever with Him in the next.” The reigning
materialism, the lack of reflection–as today
everything possible is done to assure we
do not think nor enter for a moment inside
ourselves–uncontrolled sensuality, have
drowned in souls and in consciences this
duty of every Christian. And not only do we
not think about sanctity, but not even that
we have a soul to save! It is a grave mistake
to believe that Christian perfection is the
concern only of priests and religious–it also
applies to all Christians from the mere fact
of being baptized in Christ as He Himself
tells us: “Be perfect as your heavenly
Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). And St.
Pius X wrote: “It has not been conceded
to everyone to embrace the religious life,
which is the patrimony of a small number,

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THE ANGELUS • September 2008

22

but all men ought to strive to reach that perfection to which God
calls them.”1
While all Christians ought to work towards this sacred
summit of holiness, which consists in the perfect love of God and
one’s neighbor, the religious must strive for this by vocation: it
is her professional duty. It is not that she must be already perfect,
but must strive to be so. She consecrates her whole life so that
she may love Him alone with all her heart, and in order to do so,
she freely embraces the evangelical counsels through the vows of
poverty, chastity, and obedience.
To the worship of money, which hardens hearts and incites hatred
and conflicts, the religious opposes, through the vow of poverty, the
example of total detachment and voluntary self-deprivation.
Before the spirit of independence and emancipation–which dreams
of destroying all authority and refuses to recognize any obstacles–the
religious, by the vow of obedience, offers the example of submission,
which, far from degrading her, ennobles her since she obeys God
Himself.

THE ANGELUS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

In this way the religious, with their vows,
overcome materialism, save the world, and
at the same time save souls. They draw men
towards the practice of Christian virtues: they
do more than what is necessary so that others
are encouraged to do the indispensable, and,
moreover, they expiate for the sins of nations.
How mistaken is the world in its judgment when
it believes that in religious houses, particularly
in convents of the contemplative life, so many
lives are buried without utility for the common
good!2

This is the general end of the religious
life, but God has given each Congregation a
specific mission inside the Church.

“Handmaids of Jesus,
Eternal High Priest”
Ours is a cloistered contemplative
Congregation and, as our name indicates,
an eminently priestly one obliging us–in
addition to the three common vows–to a
fourth vow called “vocationist.” By this

23
vow we bind ourselves to offering up
our entire life–total immolation–for the
sanctification of priests and consecrated
souls, and in order that these may
increase.
A few paragraphs extracted from the
writings of the great Spanish saint, Teresa
of Jesus, explain perfectly the object of
our vocation:
There came to my notice the devastation in
France and the ravages that those Lutherans
had done, and how this unfortunate sect was
spreading. [Today we can say the same of the
ravages caused by Modernism, not in one
nation only, but in the whole Church!]
It caused me great sorrow, and, as if I
could do something or was someone, I cried
to the Lord supplicating Him to remedy so
great an evil....And, seeing myself a lowly
woman and unable to do as much as I
would like to in the service of the Lord, all
my anxiety was, and is, that as He has so
many enemies and so few friends, at least
these [she refers particularly to priests] were
good, I thus determined to the little good
that I could, which is to follow the Gospel
counsels with all the perfection I could, and
to procure that these few who are here, do
the same, confident in the great goodness
of God, Who never fails to help those who
for Him, determine to leave everything;
...and that all [of us] occupied in prayer for
those who are defenders of the Church, for
preachers and learned men who defend
Her, we may help this my Lord Who is so
afflicted by those traitors that it seems they
want to crucify Him again.
Oh! my Sisters in Christ, help me to
implore this of the Lord which is the reason
I have gathered you here; this is your
calling: those must be your concerns, these
your desires, here your tears, those your
petitions.
...It may be that you say why do I insist
so much on this [to pray for priests] saying
[how is it] that we have to help those who
are better than ourselves. I will tell you...
it is because it is they who have to assist
weak people and encourage the little ones.
They have to live amongst men and deal
with men....do you think little is required
in order to deal with the world and things
of the world, and to be in their interior
foreigners and enemies of the world, to be
like someone who is in exile and, in the end,
not to be men, but angels3

“To be apostles of the Apostles,” as
St. Theresa of the Child Jesus used to
say, that is our mission!

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THE ANGELUS • September 2008

24

“...And of the
Heart of Mary”
The second part of our
name indicates the means we
must take to accomplish our
mission—the Heart of Mary,
as it reads in the motto of
the Congregation: “Pro eis in
Corde Matris“–For them (i.e. for
priests) in the Heart of Mary.”
St. Ambrose says that “the
most holy Virgin conceived
Jesus in her heart before she
conceived Him in her womb.”
In that Heart of the virgin and
Mother, was anointed by the
Holy Ghost, the first, unique,
and eternal Priest, from
Whom derives the Catholic
priesthood. Everything, then,
comes to us and is given to us
through the Heart of Mary.
God has thus disposed it and
has thus wished to show it,
particularly at Fatima (even
though the devotion to the
Heart of Mary has existed
for centuries), revealing to
us the importance of this
devotion for these last times,
the last means of salvation and
sanctification. “God wishes to
establish in the world devotion
to my Immaculate Heart....
My Heart will be your refuge
and the way to lead you to
God.” And little Jacinta said
to her cousin: “Tell them that
God wishes to grant all graces
through the Immaculate Heart

of Mary, that they ask for them through her.” To ask for the sanctification of
priests is the grace of all graces.
A Handmaid of Jesus, Eternal High Priest, has to be formed and let herself
be formed in the Heart of Mary, Model of all virtues; she has to unite herself
to that Sorrowful Heart which was at the foot of the Cross offering the Divine
Victim, and offering itself with Him to His heavenly Father, thus obtaining
graces for His chosen ones, the Apostles, and through them, for the Church
and for souls. Our vocation is, then, spiritually speaking, a participation of the
priestly Heart of Mary.

And in Practice?
Guided by the spirit of St. Francis de Sales, the life we lead is humble and
simple like that of our Lady at Nazareth. Work in the kitchen, sacristy, garden,
laundry, and so on is interwoven with assistance at Holy Mass, mental prayer
(one hour in the morning and another in the evening), the recitation of the
Divine Office (Prime, Sext, Compline, and sung Vespers on Sundays and feast
days), the rosary, spiritual reading and reading of Holy Scriptures, without

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25

daily Schedule

forgetting chant practice and moments of joyful expansion
during recreation (twice daily).
Emphasis is placed on the practice of interior virtues:
obedience, humility, silence, mortification of one’s own will,
meekness, and charity. Fundamental elements of this spirit of St.
Francis de Sales are peace and joy. “Servite Domino in laetitia,”
says St. Paul, and St. Francis de Sales insists further: “Yes, my
daughter, I tell you in writing and verbally: While you can,
rejoice doing good because good work has a double grace when
it is well done and done with joy....Live in a spirit of holy joy
that, modestly extended over your actions and words, gives
consolation to those who see you so that they may glorify God,
which is our only objective.”4
A Handmaid of Jesus strives in a special way to imitate
the Blessed Virgin Mary—the first Religious of God and the
contemplative par excellence—in order to unite herself to God,
seeking only His greatest glory, and seeing Him and pleasing
Him in all things.

6:10 AM Rise
6:50 AM Prime, Mental prayer
8:15 AM Holy Mass
9:10 AM Breakfast
9:40 AM Work (or classes)
12:45 PM Sext, examen
1:00 PM Lunch
2:00 PM Recreation
2:45 PM Grand silence
3:30 PM Holy Rosary
4:00 PM Spiritual Reading
4:30 PM Work
6:00 PM Mental prayer
7:00 PM Work (or chant class)
7:30 PM Supper
8:20 PM Reading of Holy Scripture
8:45 PM Recreation

Formation
The aspirant has to complete a period of postulancy which
is normally six months. She then receives the holy habit and
begins her novitiate of (normally) two years’ duration. During
these two stages of formation, she attends classes of Catechism
(Christian life, the interior life, the virtues, prayer, etc.), Religious
life (the spirit of the Congregation and the Constitutions),
Liturgy (the Divine Office), Gregorian chant, sewing, and so on.
On completion of her novitiate, the novice makes her temporary
vows (poverty, chastity, obedience, and vocationist) for three
years, after which period she normally makes her perpetual
vows.
Any young lady with normal health can lead this life, which
is simple and balanced. The minimum age of entrance is 18
years and the maximum, 35 years. It is essential to have a docile
and joyful character, with an ardent desire for holiness. Persons
of a melancholic or neurotic character are unsuited to this life.
Also required is completion of basic educational studies.

The Handmaids’ Cooperators
The congregation invites the faithful to unite themselves in
their mission to obtain from God many holy priests and many
holy religious vocations by prayer and sacrifices pro eis. For
those who would like to make this participation official, they
should send a letter requesting admission as a “co-operator
of Jesus Eternal High Priest,” promising (1) to recite a prayer
for the sanctification of priests every Thursday; (2) to offer
one Communion monthly for this purpose, if possible the
first Thursday of the month; (3) to unite oneself spiritually to
the convent (by prayers and sacrifices) and to help with its
maintenance and development; and (4) to make this work
known to family and friends and others likely to share the
congregation’s goal.
This is, in broad outlines, our life. We hope that Our Lord
will raise up many vocations of souls wishing to offer themselves
for this ideal and in this way to contribute to the restoration of
the Church through the Catholic priesthood:

9:15 PM
10:10 PM

(except during Advent and Lent)
Compline
Lights out

towards the Altar of Sacrifice, and for this
reason its principal concern is the holiness of
the priesthood.5

We thank most sincerely all those who
so generously help us both spiritually and
materially. We have no other means to repay
you than with our poor prayers. May God
bless you all!
1

Letter Inter Gravissimas, April 18, 1910, to the Society of
the Daughters of St. Francis de Sales.
2
Fr. Royo Marin, O.P., The Religious Life.
3
St. Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, Chaps. I and III.
4
“Letters to Mme Bourgeois, April 1609; Mme de la Fléchère,
August 1608, quoted from Sources of Joy, Chap.VIII, No.5,
“Be Joyful.”
5
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Letter to the SSPX, June 4,
1981.
For information:
Siervas de Jesús Sacerdote y del Corazón de Maria
Ap. Correos 3
28979–Serranillos del Valle
(Madrid) Spain
If you wish to help these nuns, you may send your donation to:
Maria Mercedes Matia Bahillo
Acct. No. 0030 1401 0000399271.

All the Sacred Scriptures look towards the Cross, to the Redeeming
Victim, radiant in glory. The whole life of the Church is directed
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THE ANGELUS • September 2008

Part 3

26

D w y e r

Q u e n t i n

W e d v i c k

with illustrations especially painted for this article by the late Michael Francis McCarthy

Heraldry
A legacy of St. Pius X, the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX),
its History and Heraldry

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Bishop Bernard
Fellay

Bishop Bernard
Tissier de Mallerais

Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer

Bishop Richard
Williamson

Bishop Alfonso
de Galarreta

27

Archbishop
Lefebvre

Bishop de Castro Bishop Fellay
Mayer

After Vatican II the Catholic Church proceeded to
loose the traditional teachings of the Church in favour
of a modern “renewal” to bring the Church in line with
present day Protestant, Jewish, and secular thinking.
The “renewal” was planned, deliberately and carefully
carried out over 40 years (two generations) from the
top down, through the hierarchy to and through the
priests to the laity; and from the bottom up by putting
the laity on parish councils to oversee that the priests
did what they and the bishops directed. Few Catholics
alive today can or want to remember what the Church
was like before 1962. The change is remarkable in
its similarity to the English Reformation completed
under Queen Elizabeth I. There were few voices in
the wilderness. However these few banded together
and stuck with the teachings of St. Pius X under
the leadership of one Catholic Archbishop, Marcel
Lefebvre. He founded the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX).
This is the story of two bishops and the four bishops
they consecrated.

Archbishop Marcel
Lefebvre (1905-91)
Marcel-François Lefebvre was born on November
29, 1905, in Tourcoing, France, the second son and
third child of René Lefebvre (who died in the Nazi
concentration camp of Sonnenburg in 1944) and
Gabrielle Watine (died 1938). Marcel Lefebvre was
ordained a priest on September 21, 1929, by Bishop
Achille Liénart (soon to be a Cardinal) in Lille, France.
He continued his studies in Rome, earning his doctorate
of theology in July 1930. In 1931 he was released
from his diocese to join the Holy Ghost Fathers and
proceeded to missionary activity in Gabon, Africa, until
1945.
On June 12, 1947, Pope Pius XII appointed him
Apostolic Vicar of Dakar in Senegal and made him
a titular Bishop. He was consecrated a bishop on
September 18, 1947, in his family parish church in
Tourcoing by Cardinal Liénart. In 1948 the Pope
appointed him Apostolic Delegate to French Africa.
His chief duty was to build up the ecclesiastical
infrastructure in French Africa. Pope Pius XII wanted to

Bishop Tissier
de Mallerais

Bishop de
Galarreta

Bishop
Williamson

move quickly towards a proper hierarchy (dioceses with
bishops, instead of vicariates and apostolic prefectures).
He was responsible for selecting these new bishops,
including the first indigenous bishops in French
Africa. On September 14, 1955, Marcel Lefebvre was
promoted to be the first Archbishop of Dakar. In June
1959 he was appointed to the Preparatory Commission
for the Second Vatican Council. In January 1962 he
was transferred to the new diocese of Tulle in France,
retaining his personal title of archbishop. On July 26,
1962, the Chapter General of the Holy Ghost Fathers
elected Archbishop Lefebvre Superior General. He was
widely respected for his experience in the mission field
and his ability to deal with the Roman Curia.
The Archbishop took the lead in opposing the
reforms within the Catholic Church associated with
the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). In particular,
he condemned ecumenism, the principle of religious
liberty, collegiality, and the revision of the traditional
Latin rite of Mass.
In 1970, he founded the Priestly Society of St.
Pius X, an organization which continues in existence
to this day to propagate the historical traditions of
the Catholic Church through the proper formation of
priests and to send them to the ends of the earth to do
their missionary work to teach faith and morals and to
deliver the sacraments to the laity.
To perpetuate the Society’s work, on June 30,
1988, he consecrated four bishops for the SSPX with
Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer of Campos, Brazil,
as co-consecrator. The four new bishops were Bishop
Bernard Fellay, Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta, Bishop
Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, and Bishop Richard
Williamson.
The results are that the SSPX today has, in addition
to the bishops, almost 500 priests, over 100 Brothers
and nuns, six seminaries, and 600 chapels to serve souls
in 55 countries.
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre died on March 25,
1991.
Blason of the arms of Archbishop Lefebvre: Or, a
lion rampant sable, armed and langued Gules impaling Or,
a cross Gules, a five pointed star Argent, between four pierced
fraises Azure.
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THE ANGELUS • September 2008

Bishop Fellay
Bishop Tissier de
Mallerais
Bishop Williamson

Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer (1904-91)
Antonio de Castro Mayer was born in 1904 in Campinas, Brazil. He
was ordained as a priest on October 30, 1927, and appointed Coadjutor
Bishop of Campos, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on March 6, 1948, and succeeded
as bishop of Campos on January 3, 1949. When Bishop de Castro Mayer
became aware of the changes promulgated by Vatican II, he immediately
instituted a program of intense education of his priests and the laity of his
diocese which lasted for 18 years and which even included the building of
privately financed and owned chapels. When he was forced into retirement
in 1981 and replaced by the modernist Bishop Navarro, who closely
followed and instituted the changes put in place after Vatican II, a great part
of the diocese “walked out,” priests and laity alike. Bishop Navarro and the
Vatican were nonplussed. No other diocesan bishop in the world reacted to
Vatican II in this way.
Eventually this “ecclesial strike” resulted in the formation by the
Vatican of an Apostolic Administration to service the traditional members
of the diocese headed by Bishop Rifan. Bishop de Castro Mayer knew
about the SSPX and came to the aid of Archbishop Lefebvre and served
as co-consecrator in the matter of the ordination of the four SSPX bishops.
Bishop de Castro Mayer died on April 26, 1991.
Blason of the arms of Bishop de Castro Mayer: Ermine, a lion rampant or,
armed and langued gules, charged on the shoulder with a Greek cross gules, a double
tressure, gules.

Bishop Bernard Fellay
Bernard Fellay was born in Switzerland in 1958. In 1977 he entered the
seminary at Ecône, Switzerland, and was ordained as a priest by Archbishop
Lefebvre in 1982. He was one of the four priests consecrated as bishops by
Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop de Castro Mayer on June 30, 1988. Bishop
Fellay has served as the Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X since
1994.
Blason of the arms of Bishop Bernard Fellay: Azure, a base vert, a castle
with a single tower to dexter, argent, mortared sable, in sinister chief a five pointed
star or.
I wrote Bishop Fellay regarding the background and meaning of his coat
of arms; His Excellency responded with the following:
The star is Stella Maris or Stella Matutina who watches over the fortress of the
Church which cannot fail.
The tower is the Turris eburnea, the prototype of the Church against which the gates
of hell will never prevail.
This coat of arms is derived from the coat of arms of the Fellay family, and
according to family tradition, it might date back to the Crusades.
The motto: Spes Nostra, our hope: the Blessed Virgin comes to confirm the whole
coat of arms.

Bishop de Galarreta

Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta
Alfonso de Galarreta was born in Spain in 1957. He emigrated to
Argentina and entered the seminary in La Plata there in 1975, transferring to
the seminary in Ecône in 1978. He was ordained a priest in Buenos Aires by
Archbishop Lefebvre in 1980. He was one of the four priests consecrated as
bishops by Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop de Castro Mayer on June 30,
1988.
Blason of the arms of Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta: Quarterly: First and
third, Or a double heart outline intertwined at the top with the bottom of an open
coronet castellated with five battlements with the center one in the form of a Latin
cross, gules. Second and fourth, gules, a three-towered castle or, mortared and
windowed sable.

Heraldic Terms
29

Bishop Bernard
Tissier de Mallerais
Bernard Tissier de Mallerais was born in Sallanche,
France, in 1945 and was ordained a priest at Ecône
in 1975 by Archbishop Lefebvre. He was professor,
vice rector, and rector of the seminary of Ecône,
then appointed Secretary General of the SSPX. He
was one of the four priests consecrated as bishops by
Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop de Castro Mayer on
June 30, 1988. He Authored Marcel Lefebvre, considered
the definitive biography of the Archbishop for which
research started in 1996 with the book being published
in 2003.
Blason of the arms of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais:
Azure, on a saltire between four fleur-de-lis Argent, a heart
with a cross issuant Gules.

ARGENT: silver

Bishop Richard
Williamson

ERMINE: a heraldic “fur” mimicking that of an animal

Richard Williamson was born in London in 1940.
A graduate of Cambridge University, he started
teaching and then converted from Anglicanism to
Catholicism and entered the seminary of Ecône in
1972. He was ordained a priest in 1976, and he then
became professor, vice rector, and rector of the SSPX
seminary in Winona, Minnesota, US. He was one of
the four priests consecrated as bishops by Archbishop
Lefebvre and Bishop de Castro Mayer on June 30,
1988. Currently he is rector of the SSPX seminary in
Argentina.
Blason of the arms of Bishop Williamson: Azure, a
lion guardant or, armed and langued gules, holding in the
dexter paw a sword in fess, point to sinister, argent, above in
base a cross flory Argent, charged with a reversed cinquefoil
or.
Dwyer Quentin Wedvick was born in 1940 and has been a soldier, a sometime
Captain in the US Army, a stockbroker, a yacht restorer, and owner of a contract delivery business. In his semi-retirement he pursues his ambition to be a
student of heraldry. A Catholic and parishioner at Christ the King Church in
Ridgefield, CT, he is a Knight of the Constantinian of St. George (Madrid). The
emblazonments in all three parts of this article are copyright of the estate of the
late Michael Francis McCarthy.

REFERENCES
The Angelus (Angelus Press, Kansas City) for information on the biography
Marcel Lefebvre.
www.sspx.co.uk for background information on the four SSPX bishops, Archbishop Lefebvre, and Bishop de Castro Mayer.
Arms blazon information credit to:
The Angelus (Angelus Press, Kansas City) for color images of the bishops arms
for background information.
The late Michael Francis McCarthy, of Darlinghurst, Australia, well-known Catholic heraldic artist for blazon input and for rendering the arms in color.
Rev. Fr. Gerardo Zendejas, SSPX, Christ the King Church, Ridgefield, CT, for
the courtesy of giving me permission to take digital photos of a wall-hanging
tapestry with five of the bishops’ arms embroidered accurately in color thereon
for background information.

AZURE: bright blue
BASE: the lower part of a shield
BLASON: a formal description which enables a person
to depict a coat of arms with accurate detail.
CHARGE: anything borne on a coat of arms
CINQUEFOIL: abstract form resembling flowers
DEXTER: right-hand side of the shield
FLORY: when the edges are charged with fleur-de-lis
FRAISES: a five-leaved flower
GULES: red
IMPALEMENT: the practice of joining two coats of
arms side-by-side in one shield
ISSUANT: used to describe a charge or bearing, rising
or coming out of another
LANGUED: an animal having its tongue visible
MEMBERED: a bird having legs of a different color
from that of the body
MOUNT VERT: literally a “grassy mound,” a landscape
OR: gold
ORDINARIES: a simple geometrical figure on the
arms, often bounded by straight lines
PASSANT: a beast facing and walking toward the
viewer’s left with one front leg raised
PER FESS: a field parted horizontally
PROPER: when a charge is borne of its natural color it
is said to be proper
RAMPANT: standing on the left hind foot
SABLE: black
SALTIRE: St. Andrew’s Cross
SINISTER: left hand side of shield
TRESSURE: a thin border around a shield
VERT: green

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The ANgeluS • September 2008

The
Wonder
Years?

30

Teenagers?
F r .

p a u l

R o b i n s o n ,

Doubtful. Introverted. Irritable. Moody.
Uncertain. Rebellious. Reclusive. Insecure. When one
utters the word teenager, the mind cannot fail to travel
beyond the bare notion of a chronological period in
one’s life to a stereotyped and psychologically defined
world. And that world is not a pretty one. Getting
children over the hump into full-fledged adult life is
one of the most difficult challenges parents face.
The concept of the teenager with its pejorative
connotation is a gift to us from the modern world. In
the Latin language, for instance, we find words for the
childhood years (puer) or the time of youth in general
(juventus and adulescens), but no homo teenager. Dr.
David Allen White identifies Shakespeare’s Hamlet
as the first teenager as teenager to appear in a literary
work. The play was penned around 1600. So the
question naturally arises: Where did this creature,
this cultural phenomenon, come from? And what
defines him? A precise answering of these questions
will be an effective step in helping parents help their
teenagers “find themselves” and get going in life.

The ANgeluS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

s s p x

Uncertainty:
The Defining Characteristic
Rudolf Allers, a pre-Vatican II Catholic
psychologist and author, delves into the teenage
psyche in his book Forming Character in Adolescents.
He points out that the adolescent is keenly aware
that he is neither child nor adult, but rather a curious
mixture of both. Unlike the child, he is painfully selfconscious, suddenly deeply confronted with his own
individuality and facing the grand questions of life
that such a realization brings. Children are blissfully
dependent and secure in that dependence. They live
outside of themselves, unconcerned with identifying
or individuating themselves. The teenager, on the
other hand, has awakened to the immense spectrum
that life proposes–social, political, eternal–and realizes
that he as an individual human being needs to have
a sure-fire game plan in order to situate and safely
position himself in this world.
On the other hand, the teenager is by no means
an adult. The child does not care about the problem

?

31
of life; the adult has (hopefully) answered it. The
teenager is between the two. And the immensity of
the problem is as terrifying as it is uncertain.
We all know what it is like to face a necessary
task with little or no idea of how we are going to get
the job done. The more all-embracing this goal is, the
more it weighs upon us. If the goal is immense and we
see many obstacles and difficulties in the way, strifes
and struggles, suffering, sacrifice, blood, sweat, and
tears, we easily become paralyzed. Should I advance
with the left or the right foot? But what if this happens
or that happens? There is no way that I am going to
succeed! This is going to hurt! But I have no choice; I
have to find a way!
Having a plan and confidence in the success of
that plan is one half of the road to getting the job
done. Without a plan, we remain frozen. If there is no
map, there is no journey. With a map, even if the road
leads over mountains, chasms, and cliffs, there is no
uncertainty.
Even with a strategy, however, there is one more
ingredient necessary for success, and that is courage.
It is like a man standing on the high dive for the first
time. The goal is clear and the means is well-defined:
JUMP! But how many get to the top, look down,
stand there for five minutes, and then descend. The
goal was difficult and daunting, but the route was
completely laid out. What was lacking? The courage
to take the plunge.
Now the teenager is facing the biggest problem
imaginable: the problem of his existence. It is a new
problem, awakened by his physical maturation, which
is taking place at an alarming rate, and the realization
of this problem is expanding, not contracting. Its
complexity and immensity become more evident as
the days pass.
The Redemptorist Fr. Henry Sattler highlights
the colossal forces churning within the teenager in his
book Parents, Children, and the Facts of Life:
Growing up to be a mature adult is the chief problem of
adolescence, for adolescence is a time of in-between. The
individual feels he is no longer a child, and yet he is not
grown up. He wants to take his place among adults and yet
feels inadequate to the task. He is attempting to push away
all parental props, to take his first steps alone and unaided;
and at the same time he feels the need of his parents more
than ever. He is beginning to look around and see the world
and its problems for the first time. Getting along in a social
world has taken on new importance, and many a youngster
wonders whether he is secure in the esteem of his friends
or even of his parents.…
Adjustment to the fresh, bewildering, turbulent, changing
reality of the world is made even more difficult by the fact
that the adolescent himself is changing rapidly. Not only
does the world about him seem to change every day, but his
point of view is changing as fast. His body alters and grows
rapidly. He hasn’t the muscular coordination he had a short
time before. He is suddenly clumsy. His emotional capacity
is growing along with his ability to grasp and penetrate the
meaning of things. He hardly wakes on two consecutive
days feeling the same individual. Picture someone trying
to keep his balance in a room when the walls and floors are

moving, while his legs have lost their responsiveness to his
brain. This gives a fair image of the plight of the adolescent,
who cannot feel confident of either the world around him
or himself.1

In short, the major problem of adolescence is
its uncertainty: life is huge, I have to live it, but the
number of unanswered or insufficiently answered
questions is legion. Without the guidance to find the
answers, the humility to accept them, and the courage
to implement them, the teenager has recourse to
the inadequate and destructive solutions with which
we are so familiar: running away from the problem
by rebellion, seclusion, self-gratification, and the
like. Instead of getting on his way through selfdevelopment, often the teenager undergoes spiritual
atrophy and, in the worst case scenario, all too
common today, remains a child for the rest of his life.
The recognition of this fundamental teenage
characteristic is a first step toward helping him:
Nobody can ever hope to understand the adolescent
mind, and even less to influence it somewhat, unless he
is fully aware of the fact that uncertainty is the very basic
feature of this age.2

A Gift of the Modern World
But we know obviously that the transformation
from childhood to adulthood, both physical and
spiritual, has existed from the beginning of time. Why
then have not ages past seen fit to isolate the teenage
phenomenon? Why has the Anglo-Saxon mind seen
it necessary to create this word and the connotation
it evokes? Where were our pre-historic teenagers, our
Biblical, Egyptian, Roman, and Greek teenagers, our
Dark Age teenagers, our medieval teenagers?
Well, teenagers are defined by uncertainty.
Certainty comes from conviction, and conviction
comes from God, country, and family, the three
great sources of authority and stability that are meant
to plant a young man in the unshakable ground of
reality and enable him to face it and live it. Most
civilizations of the pre-modern world provided, in
some way, a national religion with a system of beliefs
and a strong national authority, whether embodied in
one man, as an Egyptian pharaoh, or a body of men,
as the Roman Senate. Most of them upheld, again, in
some way, the traditional family structure and familial
authority. The path for the youth of such civilizations
was fairly clear cut, being delimited and directed by
societal norms that were completely unquestioned.
The strength of medieval Christendom in this
respect is striking. It portrayed authority at all levels
as loving and caring by always associating it with
fatherhood and motherhood. God, the Pope, the king,
the parish priest, and the mayor were all set forth as
fathers, while Our Lady, the Church, and the queen
were portrayed as mothers.3 Beyond his immediate
family, a child found security in these extended
familial figures, and their authority and what they
www.angeluspress.org

The ANgeluS • September 2008

32
represented provided a healthy pressure to conform
to a standard of morality and right living. In not
conforming, you did not fit in with the entire societal
structure. This made becoming a troubled, uncertain
teenager an aberrational route to take.
In today’s modern countries, that route is hard
to avoid, for this reason: the proximate and remote
sources of all stability, authority and truth, are denied
our youth. Firstly, authority. The authority of God
has been cast off by separation of Church and State,
the authority and identity of country by pop-culture
and unbridled capitalism, and the authority and
integrity of the family by divorce, abortion, samesex “marriages,” promotion of “free love” and the
like.4 Authority today is not seen as protecting, but is
portrayed as tyrannical, suspicious, to be questioned.
Modern television revels in making fools out of
parents and teachers.5 Homer Simpson, the brainless
parent, and his clever, hip son Bart, make a perfect
example.
Children today are pushed into insecurity by
being pushed into a pseudo-liberty that leaves them
all alone and defenseless, with no answers but the
ones they provide. It is like going out to fight on the
battlefield of life naked and weaponless, untrained,
unfit, and far too young, without any help. Children
need and naturally want the security that comes from
authoritative guidance and direction, but usually
are not provided it either because they have no
stable authority in their life or that authority does
not believe in the exercise of authority. Meanwhile,
society screams that this God-given source of security
is not to be trusted.
The modern world is faring no better in providing
teens certainty through truth. In education, today’s
schools follow the model of Rousseau (1712-88), who
taught that the ideal formation of Emile does not

SUCCESSFUL
FATHERS:

The Subtle but
Powerful Ways
Fathers Mold Their
Children’s Characters
James Stenson

It takes hard work to become
a good father, and one thing
lacking is good guidance on
fatherhood. This booklet gives men much-needed
directions on problems fathers face, and reveals
“twelve commandments of successful fathers.”
Learn how to defuse adolescent boys’ defiance and
how to form positive father-daughter relationships.
He details what fathers must do–and not do–in
order to instill the Faith in their children.

64pp, 4" x 7¼" softcover,
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impose on him any social constructs or objective
truths, but rather guides him to follow his inner self
in all situations. Truth comes from the student and
from nowhere else. Children taught on this model will
not only be spoiled brats, but will also be slamming
continually against the brick wall of objective reality,
which contradicts their subjective “truth.” Such
constant slamming makes for a very troubled life.
More fundamentally, the sane philosophical
principles which give credence to our God-given
mode of truth-knowing have been completely cast
off. Man’s perception of reality itself is not certain. It
all started with Descartes’s (1596-1650) assertion that
we could not trust the data of our senses to know the
reality around us. The objective outside is uncertain,
while the subjective inside is not: “I think; therefore
I am,” not “There is a tree; therefore it is.” Instead of
turning outside of self to submit to God-established
reality, we turn inside to self-established illusions,
waverings, and uncertainties for our entire vision of
the cosmos. Creating a universe of truth within one’s
fallen self is so impossible a task that no man can fully
undertake it without losing his mind.6
Philosophical thought succeeding Descartes went
beyond the claim that reality is uncertain to say that
reality does not exist! There are no such things as
essences, stable natures which separate one class
of corporeal beings from another, that enable man
to know with certainty what is outside of him. It is
interesting that Romano Amerio makes this tenet of
modern philosophical thought the cornerstone of his
analysis of the modern world in Iota Unum:
The crisis of the modern world consists in rejecting
natures or essences, and in believing that man can give
essences to things, as well as giving existence.7

So modern man rejects God’s objective reality
outside of him and embraces a subjective “reality” of

PREPARING FOR
ADOLESCENCE:
A Planning Guide
for Parents
James Stenson

“Why don’t you trust me?”
“Why do you tell me what
I can’t wear?” “Why do
you always correct me?” If
you’re hearing those kinds
of questions from your
children–or if you think you might–you need this
book. Explains how you can keep your children’s
adolescence from being dominated by rebellion
and conflict, and how to give your children clear
moral direction. Includes a Q & A to help you plan
for troubles before they arise.

72pp, 4" x 7¼" softcover,
STK# 8268 $2.99

Dr. James Stenson is a Catholic educational consultant specializing in family life and family-school
relationships.
He has 2008
written
several books for parents and regularly gives conferences throughout the
The ANgeluS
• September
www.angeluspress.org
world. While we believe Mr. Stenson has many good and worthwhile things to say, a word of caution:
He is a supporter of Opus Dei and in this, we must disagree. (Reference our Opus Dei booklet.)

PREPARING
FOR PEER
PRESSURE:
A Guide for
Parents of Young
Children
James Stenson

Want to teach your
little ones to maintain
Catholic values in a
contrary culture as they
grow into adulthood? You have to start early,
and here’s how: this book gives you a framework
for instilling values in your children before they
reach age twelve. He shows you how to avoid
common mistakes, explains how to detect signs
of character weakness in your children, and
helps you form your children’s character while
respecting their legitimate freedom.

64pp, 4" x 7¼" softcover, STK#
8269 $2.99

33
his own making within him. This “reality” is everchanging and has no more certainty than the pride
and blindness the individual man can muster.
The end result for today’s teenager runs
something like this:
Joe Teenager: Life is scary! There are so many
things for me to figure out and resolve!
Parents: Don’t worry, son, we are not going to
interfere with your freedom. Just get in touch with
the way that you feel, your inner self, and use that to
answer all of life’s problems. Meantime, we will keep
feeding you and giving you everything you want.
Society: Don’t trust anybody or anything in
solving your problems, Joe, not even your own eyes!
Any outside help is a restriction that will keep you
from finding the “real you.” Do what thou wilt.

The First Teenager
Perhaps a further illustration from Shakespeare’s
Hamlet will help to make all of this clear.8 Our hero
has been attending the university at Wittenberg,
the town where Luther set into motion a rebellion
against the objective authority of the Church to
replace it with the subjective authority of one’s own
person, notably in the interpretation of the Scriptures.
Evidently, young Hamlet is being fed a healthy dose
of philosophical doubt, as he seems no longer to trust
anything that his senses tell him. The only thing left
that he truly believes in is his love for his beloved
Ophelia. Writing to her from Wittenberg, he says:
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.9
Ophelia, who knows if the stars are shining (objective)
or the sun moving (objective, at least from a perspective)?
Heck, who knows if anything taught or learned is true? The
only thing I am sure of is my (subjective) love of you.

Then, when Hamlet comes home upon his
father’s death/murder, he finds that love itself is not
set in stone either, as his own mother Gertrude has
so quickly forgotten her love of his father, which
Hamlet believed to be as real as his own love for
Ophelia, as to contract an incestuous marriage with
his uncle Claudius in less than a month. So Hamlet
and Ophelia’s mutual love is dubious. Then Hamlet’s
father appears and commissions Hamlet with
avenging his murder at the hands of Claudius. But
Hamlet cannot trust the ghost, so he has to test his
message. Then Hamlet’s best friends Rosencrantz and
Gildenstern betray him, and his uncle Claudius plots
his death.
Bottom line: there is nothing certain in this life,
nothing that can be trusted. Everything is in doubt!
Something is rotten in the state of Hamlet’s mind,
and he spends the rest of the play living the life of a
tortured teen, wavering between action and inaction,
despair and hope, atheism and belief.

=

Teenager
Natural Upheaval
Social Insanity ( Family Help)

+

–

Today’s youth have nothing to anchor them;
they are set out to sea without oars or sails and told
this is wonderful freedom. Without the moorings
provided by a sane society, they swim in a dark sea of
uncertainty with no plank to grab onto. In reaching
adolescence, they undergo rapid physical and
spiritual changes. They become aware of the huge
challenges that life poses on the one hand, and, on the
other, the fact that family and society are not going to
“interfere” with their resolution of those challenges.
It is in combining these natural changes that man has
always undergone with the unreality in thought and
praxis of modern society that we find ourselves in the
presence of our modern stereotype, the teenager.
Fr. Paul Robinson was ordained in 2006 and is stationed at St. Mary’s Academy and College in St. Marys, Kansas. There he is a professor and chaplain
to the St. Joseph Businessmen’s Association among other responsibilities in
the parish.

1

Henry V. Sattler, Parents, Children, and the Facts of Life (New York: Image
Books, 1956), pp.148-49.
2
Rudolf Allers, Forming Character in Adolescents (Fort Collins, CO: Roman
Catholic Books, 1940), p.16.
3
In general, the Church surrounds one with family. If you’re a living member
of the family Church Militant, Church Suffering, Church Triumphant, you’re
in great shape, you’re secure. Pope Pius XI asserts in Quadregesimo Anno
that to accomplish the common good, it is required that “the constituent
parts of society...deeply feel themselves members of one great family and
children of the same heavenly Father.” In general, Protestantism eliminates
groups and reduces everything to the individual: find your own way in life,
your own way to heaven, your own way to truth. Beyond your immediate
family, no one cares about you in a familial way: angels, saints, guardian
angels, poor souls, Church leaders, governors, employers. Today we have
a Protestant world and family suffers terribly from it.
4
To just give one statistic: according to the Wall Street Journal of June 14,
out-of-wedlock births are at 38% for the nation, 28% for whites, 50% for
Hispanics, and 71% for blacks.
5
Nickelodeon just recently went to 24-hour programming for children. The
May 2008 Southwest Airlines magazine contained an article by a father who
tried to watch 24 hours straight to see what they were showing. Analysis:
these shows undermine my authority as a father. Contradictory conclusion:
Only let my children watch 1 hour a day, instead of 4.5 hours like the rest
of America!
6
“Modern man does not recognize that his very subjective existence
depends on objective truth. Adhering to this truth he receives essential
nourishment; not adhering to it, he receives nothing, and dies.” Romano
Amerio, Stat Veritas (Madrid: Editorial Criterio-Libros, 1998), p.82.
“We may also observe that if man were really and seriously to doubt the
veracity of his organs of knowledge he simply could not live. Since every
action or abstention from action is an act of trust in that veracity, action and
inaction would alike become impossible. A man therefore who attempted to
carry out in his life the thought truth is impossible for me would inevitably
lose his reason. Nietzsche, who was a great poet but regarded belief in truth
as the ultimate bondage from which the world should be delivered, made the
experiment to his cost.” Jacques Maritain, An Introduction to Philosophy
(London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1930), p.80.
7
Romano Amerio, Iota Unum (Kansas City: Sarto House, 1996), p.421.
8
The analysis of Hamlet which follows is taken from the ideas of Dr. David
White in a conference given to seminarians on the play in 1999.
9
Act II, Scene 2.

www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • September 2008

34

Twenty Minutes

with Fr. de Chivré:

The

Responsible

Leader

The individual takes part in his own existence
by his life of thought and of conscience. The leader,
because of his authority, enters into the life of thought
and the life of conscience of others. He is present by
his words, his examples, his orders–all things which
qualify or disqualify a leader before God and men.
He is absent by his silence, abstentions, carelessness–
all things which likewise qualify or disqualify him.
This responsibility requires in the leader
a knowledge of consciences, acquired by the
experience of his own conscience educated always
toward the “better.” It also requires a knowledge of
his duties as regards the practical skill, morality, and
the religious life of his subordinates.
That knowledge calls into play the leader’s virtue
of prudence: he observes, listens, compares, studies,
and reflects in view of a practical decision. Similarly,
there is his spirit of renouncement: before belonging
to his own desires, he belongs to his subordinates by
his work of preparation, by his time. The leader takes
his role seriously, knowing that his responsibilities
mean he will have to render an account before God
of what he has done, of what he should have done or
not done.
The leader knows his own weakness and misery
and is wary of himself–not to keep himself from
THE ANGELUS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

acting but in order to act, seconded by God through
prayer and the sacraments. The leader is someone
humble; he is not spectacular but powerful. He is a
being labored by grace, deepened by silence, selfeffacement, secret sacrifice, profound gift of self; a
being open to all possibility of improvement.
A leader is someone strong. Words are not
enough for him: he wants proofs of moral capacity,
for himself, before asking them of others. His
authority comes from the quality of his interior life.
Guaranteed against himself in this way, he can take
charge of the moral and spiritual interests of others
without fear of neglecting them: by superficiality,
born of pride; by nonchalance, born of a taste for
ease; by imprudence, born of a lack of depth.
He is truly responsible: he has espoused the
interests of others by making them his own. For what
is a leader responsible? For the ideal of those under
his authority, for the intelligent and profound manner
of understanding that ideal: teaching. For the practice
of that ideal: the right to advise, to congratulate,
to reprimand. There are different aspects of that
practice: the aspect of the conscience, leading toward
the priest; the moral aspect: encouragement or blame,
and the intellectual aspect: skills to be learned.

35
The gravity of that responsibility bears upon
souls: the young, still undirected, with an ideal that
is waiting for someone to ask great things of them;
upon an elite easily disappointed in its leader if he
does not discern in them the elite of the elite; upon
minds that are expecting a great deal and upon wills
that are fresh and new and therefore longing to
prove themselves.
A leader understands all that, and all that leaves
him unsatisfied with himself, for the gravity and
the beauty of the goal to be attained show him
the gravity and the beauty of his role. The leader
does not think so much of organizing the future as
organizing the present of his conscience and his
heart, upon which depend in part the future of his
subordinates.
Salvation is dependent on the place God wants
you to fill. On the natural level the place is indicated
by your qualities. On the supernatural level the
place is indicated by your graces, just as on the
natural level the place is indicated by awareness of
your qualities.
To evict a man from his place, to leave a man
in his ignorance, not to give a man the means to
occupy his place, is to compromise his value, his
happiness, his eternity, and deprive life in society of
an element, of an example, of peace.
All of these issues come into play in your
function as a leader of guides or scouts: It is not
about a game for the weekend. It is not about
a game of worldliness. It is about the game of
existence, both present and future.
You can see the solemnity of your role,
contributing to the destiny of souls, of consciences,
of minds. It goes beyond the uniform, but
presupposes it. It goes beyond the camp, but
presupposes it. It goes beyond the oath, but
presupposes it.
Your uniform, your camp, your oath, have
the right to expect certain things of your souls,
your consciences, your minds: a rectification of
your character, certain demands on your nature,
supernatural interventions in your soul which put
you in a position to form the existence of others,
because you can form someone only in refusing to
remain deformed yourself.
A dirty mirror does not send back the light. A
broken mirror turns the light away. A mirror without
glass cannot capture the light. Sin is what deforms:
it alters from the absolutely beautiful form of God.
Instinct is what deforms: it warps our spiritual
qualities. Abdication in the face of duty deforms: it
suppresses the affirmation of your value.
If troop leaders are deformed, it means that
the social future of many is compromised. The
desire to form yourself presupposes the courageous
knowledge of yourself and prayer, that pure and
strong element of the thought of God putting

things in their proper light. It further presupposes
the persevering decision concerning yourself;
the intervention of grace: the energies of Christ
presuppose honesty with yourself.
On my honor, have I respected that absolute
examination, an examination all the more necessary
because you have no chaplain and you subtly try
to dodge the light? You have the powers of your
baptism: to direct towards God, to look always
higher, to forbid evil, and to call for effort.
What a responsibility it is to be a cub scout
leader! Let him who has ears to hear...

The Leader and the
Choice of What Is Better
What is better involves neither a uniform
nor wealth. What it deeply presupposes is more
than enthusiasm, more than a sense-attraction. It
presupposes the intellectual taste for the good in a
latent, habitual state, with an interior watchfulness
ready to seize the least occasion. He who is “better”
does not consider himself satisfied with the merely
essential. He wants more, and it is that actualized
tendency toward the “over and above” which
consecrates him among the elite.
How should we understand this “over and
above”? In quality: the same obligations as others
but more deeply lived, with greater faith, with
greater gift of self and a horror for the mediocre
“same as everyone else.” In quantity also: he judges
his activities not by current opinion but in function
of the absolute of God.
Wherever there is everything necessary to satisfy
the habitual, but where there lacks something in
answer to the absolute of God, he adds final touches,
precautions, perseverance, patience, and extra care.
He offers wherever the merely habitual did not ask
for such an apparently superfluous gesture.
The effects of this “over and above” include a
nourishing effect for a soul in full healthy activity,
a mortifying effect for a nature subjected to the
practical demands of the plan of action for that
ideal. The tendency of that nature is to fall back
on the easier “good enough”: exterior bearing,
appearances, etc. There is, further, a supernatural
effect: an appetite for God, an instinctive need to
have recourse to Him.
“Over and above” is the obligatory motto of the
leader, because by his position he is held to enrich
his subordinates with examples, knowledge, and
devotion. You cannot enrich others if you are poor
yourself or on the same level as the others. To enrich
evokes the idea of a surplus. The leader ought to
have a moral surplus to distribute.
The exterior is not enough for him. The chief
is above all a being of thought: he reflects, he
www.angeluspress.org

THE ANGELUS • September 2008

36
meditates in order to measure his responsibility
and then act. He is conscientious, faithful to grace,
allowing no excuse towards evil, and praying to
God.
In this way, he is a being of love: given over
to his ideal, anxious to prove to Him that he has
understood. You become a leader from the moment
you know yourself well enough to want no longer
to accept yourself the way you are. You are a leader
once you let the will for the better act freely in you.

Occupy Your Place by the
Knowledge It Requires
Christ knew His redemptive mission. He knew
without failing, not the excess that would discourage,
not the lack of knowledge that would excuse from
loving His mission the way it should be, but His
teaching, more important than the sacraments: “Go,
teach all nations... baptize them...”
To save, to build the Church, to mold the
martyrs, the virgins, the confessors. He taught first,
and according to His awareness as the Redeemer.
Through the ages, the sanctifying apogee of the
Church has always gone hand in hand with an
integrity of her teaching: The place given to the
knowledge of God, about God, determines the
salvation of souls.
The procedure is the same in every aspect of a
man’s education: putting him in a position to know
the reason behind all of the demands contained in
that given aspect of life. The responsibility of the
troop leader and of the cub scout leaders is as grave
in the context of scouting as that of Christ in the
context of the Redemption.
Christ taught us to love God because He knew
without failing. Christ taught us to understand the
spiritual life because He lived it the way it should
be lived. You will never teach scouting to the cub
scouts or the guides otherwise than by an absolute
possession of the skills of scouting, which then orient
the child beyond those skills.
Authority, esteem, respect, and affection will
only be given to you unconditionally if the cub
scouts feel that you are not a caricature: a civilian
in disguise; only if you know by heart (completely
and with real attachment) the detail of the skills,
for that detail is the only thing by which the spirit
can be transmitted. In the knot of a rope there is a
transmitted preaching of the knowledge, application,
spirit, and intention for which it is tied that way.
Christ was able to teach the apostles by
miraculously fishing a whole net-full for them. The
leader obtains moral authority over his scouts by
proving to them that no one can one-up him in
scouting skill and that he is capable of going through
the whole routine with one hand tied behind his
THE ANGELUS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

back. The true, precise, demanding teaching of the
scout life determines the leader’s authority and the
use he can make of it in the moral formation of his
scouts, without a veneer or a false front.
A cub scout leader who does not know anything
has zero authority. He who botches up what he
does know has barely accepted authority. He who
considers skills as something secondary reveals a
lack of conscience, a professional dishonesty which
authorizes a camp to not obey and to disobey.
The authority to know binds under pain of
sin. The intellectual mortification of learning with
conscience in order to teach with love consecrates
the authority of the cub scout leader. The leaders
who know nothing have no right to ask, and, in his
spiritual life, the leader ought to pray often to the
Holy Ghost, Cause of all knowledge, in order to be
capable of teaching.
You have to take seriously the skills, the badges,
the scout examinations, if you do not want the
camps to turn into a kind of tourism without a
reason for being and without directives, everyone
living as comfortably as if they were at home.
He who has knowledge has a share in the
prestige of exact thinking and speaks with few
words: the authority of precision. There is no
blustering sentimentality: the authority of reserve.
There is no empty preaching: the authority of
prestige.
The knowledge of his function imposes the
leader on the entire camp; it creates an atmosphere
of order, confidence, and collective obedience.
You cannot improvise being a leader; you learn
to become one, hence the obligation on your
conscience to nourish your mind and conversation
in the scouting spirit and to guarantee your authority
by the knowledge of your function.
Know the scout law in order to help others know
it, and know the skills in order to teach from time
to time how to save others. A chief who is sloppy in
his attitude emanates no authority whatsoever. The
more you know, the more the cub scouts and the
guides will have confidence to confide in you for
problems that go beyond those skills. Occupy your
place of skill-teaching that fosters moral and spiritual
teaching. God is confiding children to you as He
confided the world to His Son.
This conference, translated into English for the first time by Miss Ann Marie
Temple for Angelus Press, combines four talks published in Le Scoutisme
(Touraine Micro-Edition, 2007) under the titles “Le chef responsable,” “La
responsabilité de la cheftaine,” “Le chef et le meilleur: L’engagement d’être
meilleur,” and “Occuper sa place par le savoir correspondant.”
Fr. Bernard-Marie de Chivré, O.P., (say: Sheave-ray´) was ordained in 1930.
He was an ardent Thomist, student of Scripture, retreat master, and friend of
Archbishop Lefebvre. He died in 1984.

PART 16

37
F r .

M a t t h i a s

G a u d r o n

Is the Mass essentially a Supper? The import
of this idea, which cropped up in the Common
Declaration of the Lutheran-Catholic Joint
Commision, is examined.

Catechism
Of the Crisis
In the Church

56) Does the Church’s teaching about
the holy sacrifice of the Mass lessen
the importance of the sacrifice of the
Cross?

The sacrifice of the Mass in no way lessens the
importance of the sacrifice of the Cross because it
depends on it totally and draws from it all its efficacy.
Its whole worth consists in making it present through
its commemoration and in applying to men the graces
Christ merited for them on the cross.
l Who has accused the sacrifice of the Mass of lessening
the importance of the sacrifice of the Cross?
The Protestants have accused the sacrifice of the
Mass of being an outrage against the sacrifice of the
Cross. According to them, the Catholics think that the
sacrifice of the Cross did not suffice for the salvation of
mankind and that another perpetual sacrifice is needed.
l How should the Protestants’ accusations be
answered?
The Protestants completely misunderstand the
Church’s teaching. On the cross, Christ merited all
the graces necessary for the salvation of all men of all
time.1 The sacrifice of the Mass is not another sacrifice
than that of the Cross, but the same sacrifice made

present to all Christians. Its purpose is not to gain new
graces, but to apply to men the graces already merited
on the Cross.

l Why is the sacrifice of the Mass needful for applying
to us the graces merited on the Cross?
According to Christ’s will, the fruits of the
redemption are not dispensed automatically, but are
linked to the sacraments: “He that believeth and is
baptized shall be saved” (Mk. 16:16); “Except you eat
the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you
shall not have life in you” ( Jn. 6:54).
l But why is a sacrifice required for dispensing the
fruits of the redemption?
The Christian life is a participation in the life
of Christ. But He became incarnate in order to be
able to offer in His own person, and in our name, a
perfect sacrifice to His Father. The essential act of our
Christian life must be to unite ourselves to Christ’s
sacrifice, according to St. Paul’s word: “[I] fill up those
things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in
my flesh, for his body, which is the church” (Col. 1:24).
In the Mass, the Church, the priest, and the faithful
continually unite their life to Christ’s sacrifice; they
give themselves, and they receive graces for giving
themselves ever more.
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THE ANGELUS • September 2008

38

57) Is the Holy Mass
also a meal or supper?

In its very essence, the Mass is neither a meal nor a
meal including a sacrifice, but simply a sacrifice. Holy
Communion, which strictly speaking could be called a
meal, is a fruit of this sacrifice but does not belong to its
essence.
l What does the Church’s magisterium say about this
subject?
The Council of Trent clearly affirms that the Mass
is a sacrifice. It never says that it is also a meal. The
thesis according to which the Holy Mass, in its essential
nature, would be both a sacrifice and a meal was explicitly
condemned by Pope Pius XII:
They, therefore, err from the path of truth who do not want
to have Masses celebrated unless the faithful communicate;
and those are still more in error who, in holding that it
is altogether necessary for the faithful to receive holy
communion as well as the priest, put forward the captious
argument that here there is question not of a sacrifice merely,
but of a sacrifice and a supper of brotherly union, and consider
the general communion of all present as the culminating point
of the whole celebration.
Now it cannot be over-emphasized that the Eucharistic
sacrifice of its very nature is the unbloody immolation of the
divine Victim, which is made manifest in a mystical manner
by the separation of the sacred species and by their oblation to
the eternal Father. Holy Communion pertains to the integrity
of the Mass and to the partaking of the august sacrament; but
while it is obligatory for the priest who says the Mass, it is only
something earnestly recommended to the faithful.2

58) Who teaches that the Mass
is both a sacrifice and a supper?

Nowadays the theory that the Mass is a supper
during which a sacrifice takes place is widely held by
many “Catholic” theologians. According to them, the
Mass is firstly a meal, but also comprises a sacrifice
because Christ gives Himself to us as food. It is Christ’s
self-donation in the supper that would impart to the
Mass its sacrificial character. But this notion has nothing
to do with Catholic theology, for it completely skews
the reality. Sacrifice consists in an offering made to
God, not to men. On the cross, Christ offered Himself
to His Father and not to us. If this new theory were true,
the sacrifice of the Mass would be offered to us and not
to God.
l Where are these new theories on the nature of the
Mass to be found?
This theory is proffered, for example, in the
Common Declaration of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic
Joint Commission that worked from 1976 to 1982.
l Who were the Catholic participants in the
commission?
Among the Catholic members of this commission
were future Cardinals Karl Lehmann and Walter
Kasper, and Cardinals Hermann Volk and Joseph
Ratzinger.
l What did the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Declaration
say?
The Lutheran-Roman Catholic Declaration states:

l Is there a way to tell on a practical level that the
Mass is not essentially a supper?
The Church has imposed the obligation to attend the
holy sacrifice of the Mass every Sunday, but has never
required the faithful to received Holy Communion weekly.
If the Holy Mass were essentially a supper, the faithful
present would all have to communicate since one who
attends a meal without eating anything has not taken part!
l So it is possible to really participate in the holy
sacrifice of the Mass without receiving Holy
Communion?
Yes, the faithful can really participate in the holy
sacrifice of the Mass without communicating (even
though, obviously, communicating increases one’s
participation). The Council of Trent declared:
If anyone says that Masses in which the priest alone
communicates sacramentally, are illicit and are therefore to
be abrogated: let him be anathema.3

l Are there other proofs that the Mass is not essentially
a supper?
The rite of Mass itself shows that the Mass is not
essentially a meal. How strange a meal it would be
in which after such lengthy rites and ceremonies so
miniscule a morsel were served! If the Mass were a
meal, those who would like to organize the Mass with
the form of a genuine supper would be right.
THE ANGELUS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

The visible sign of Jesus Christ’s offering in the celebration
of the Eucharist and of our incorporation in this sacrifice is...
the Supper. This means that, in the realization of this Supper,
the sacrifice that Jesus Christ makes of Himself is made
present and effected. That is why the traditional distinction,
which only became habitual after the Council of Trent,
according to which in the Eucharist are distinguished the
sacrament and the sacrifice, cannot be retained by theology
because it falsifies the fundamental structure. It is in the fact
of His offering Himself as food that the sacrifice of Jesus finds
its expression in the liturgy.4

l What may be said of this teaching?
This theory really constitutes a new teaching
that implies the rejection of the traditional theology.
Therefore it must be firmly refused.
Translated exclusively for Angelus Press from Katholischer Katechismus
zur kirchlichen Kriese by Fr. Matthias Gaudron, professor at the Herz Jesu
Seminary of the Society of St. Pius X in Zaitzkofen, Germany. The original
was published in 1997 by Rex Regum Press, with a preface by the District
Superior of Germany, Fr. Franz Schmidberger. This translation is based on
the second edition published in 1999 by Rex Regum Verlag, Schloß Jaidhof,
Austria. Subdivisions and slight revisions made by the Dominican Fathers
of Avrillé have been incorporated into the translation.
“But Christ...neither by the blood of goats, or of calves, but by his own
blood, entered once into the holies, having obtained eternal redemption”
(Heb. 9:12).
2
Pius XII, Encyclical Mediator Dei, November 20, 1947, §§114-115.
3
DS 1758 (Dz. 955).
4
Lehmann Schlink, Das Opfer Jesu Christi und seine Gegenwart in der Kirche
(Herder, 1983), p.223.
1

39

Letter from
La Reja

A Romantic Excursion
An American friend with a genuine love of English
poetry asked me if I would be willing to answer
questions he might ask on some well-known English
poems. There are readers of The Angelus who may still
be puzzled that Catholics can interest themselves in
pagan literature, but the principle to be applied is that
of the great Catholic Doctor, St. Augustine, when he
said, “All truth belongs to us Christians.”
Famous poets in any language have become famous
only because they tell truths about man and life, even
about God. And if they make mistakes, nobody better
than Catholics should be able to distinguish truth from
error, so as to profit from the truth and leave to one
side the error. The Lord God seems to bestow on men
talents, like the poetic talent, more widely than he gives
the gift of the Faith. What a loss for Catholics if they
will not profit by the multitude of talents outside the
household of the Faith!
A case in point is the first poet chosen by my friend
for comment–Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). Shelley
is one of England’s five famous Romantic poets, all
living around the turn of the 18th into the 19th century.
The other four are Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and
Byron. All of them are dealing in their poetry with
a new mental world emerging out of the industrial
revolution, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic
Wars. An old order is going, going, gone, and mankind
is off to the races of modern times.
Broadly, the world used to revolve around God.
From now on it will revolve around man. Shelley
himself was an atheist. He died young, racing a
lightweight yacht in stormy weather off the coast of
Italy. It seems unlikely that he saved his soul, but that
did not stop him from writing some of the poems that
appear in every collection of English poetry.
One of these poems is “Ozymandias,” my friend’s
selection for comment. It is short enough to be printed
here. Then a few words by way of analysis, a Catholic

take on Romanticism, and finally my friend’s questions.
Here is “Ozymandias”:—
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The theme of this poem is the passing of human
glory. The once great king, Ozymandias, modelled
on an Egyptian Pharaoh, ruled domineeringly over a
great empire. In his own lifetime he had a huge statue
of himself erected to impress his subjects, who must
have been then numerous in this part of the world,
but it is now desert. The colossal statue has likewise
been wasted by the passing of time, so that of the
once bustling imperial scene nothing now remains but
wreckage and sand–“Sic transit gloria mundi,” said the
Latins–thus passes the glory of the world.
The imagery of the poem lies in the description
of the desert scene. It is a vivid description, with one
dramatic word after another that punches over the
message:— “antique… vast…shattered…frown…sneer…
stamped…despair…colossal…wreck…boundless.”
Such vocabulary builds up a powerful effect, climaxing
in the eleventh line, dying away again in the return of
the last three lines to the desert, where the poem began.
In the beginning there is nature. Then man comes to
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The ANgeluS • September 2008

40
“strut and fret his hour upon the stage,” but finally all
that is left is – nature. Deserted nature at that.
The meter of the poem is that of a classic
14-line sonnet, except that Shelley has interestingly
interlocked the six rhymes, so as to sweep the reader
straight through from beginning to end. Whereas a
Shakespearean sonnet is always divided by the rhymes
into three blocks of four lines with a final rhyming
two lines, and the content often divides between these
blocks, eight lines (sub-divided into four and four)
against six, with the final couplet clinching the whole
sonnet, “Ozymandias” may on examination divide into
eight, three and three lines, but the effect is rather of
a continuous build towards the key word of the whole
poem, “despair”, with a quietening down afterwards.
“Despair!” is indeed the key-word of the poem.
Nothing in the 14 lines gives the hope that human
affairs have any final meaning. The most that can be
said, Shelley seems to tell us, is that human affairs
can be impressive and mighty for as long as they last,
but–as he clearly suggests through the inscription on
the pedestal of the broken statue–they never do last.
And so we arrive at the strength and weakness of
Romanticism.
Coming at the end of the 18th century, and reacting
against its general limiting of human life within the
bounds of human reason–rationalism–the Romantics do
have the advantage of re-opening wide perspectives of
human life and feeling. Ozymandias was indeed once
great. His ambition to command as King of Kings went
well beyond reasonable bounds. Like Solomon in the
Old Testament, he was driven to recognize that “all is
vanity” (Eccles. 1:2), but even if he failed to achieve
anything that lasted, nevertheless he affirmed by the
striving of his “works” that there is more to life than
just living out one’s life-span in material comfort with
social security.
So against the complacent materialism of a modern
world shutting out God and closing down human
beings, the Romantics score heavily. Where they fail
is that their affirmation of the Something More is not
usually hooked to any reality tougher than their own
instincts and feelings that there must be Something
More. But supposing there is not? Feelings alone are
not enough. And that is why Ozymandias finishes
in despair. He sensed that human greatness had a
meaning, and he lived greatly as though it did, but he
never found that meaning. And so for Shelley there
seems to remain nothing but the desert, forerunner of
T. S. Eliot’s famous “Wasteland.”
Therefore the Romantics correctly see that sick
modern man is making life into a poor affair. They
protest, eloquently. They are right to protest. But unless
they diagnose the sickness as being the cutting out
of God, and unless they re-anchor their instincts and
feelings in the greatness of the true God who invites
all men to Heaven, then a few generations later the
Romantics’ beautiful “feelings” and noble “instincts”
and great “longings” will be cast out as so much
kidology. Man lives by Truth. He demands truth to live
THE ANGELUS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

by. And that is why the 20th century, however much
it may have “longed” to be able to continue “feeling
good” about life, saw a strong anti-Romantic reaction.
Listen to the howling disappointment screamed out by
the Rock musicians, grandchildren of the Romantics.
My friend asks if in “Ozymandias” Shelley is railing
against monarchy. Only secondarily, I would say. It is
true that he belonged to the Revolutionary age getting
rid of kings, but primarily he is railing against the
apparent meaninglessness of what seems greatest in
human life.
A second question asks if the “slouching beast”
of W. B. Yeats’ “Second Coming” relates to Shelley’s
Ozymandias. Interesting question. In that also famous
poem, Yeats imagines some Egyptian-style beast
coming out of the “sands of the desert” to solve the
modern world’s grave problems. Yeats might, like
Shelley and T. S. Eliot, be evoking the desert to suggest
what modern man has made of his world.
A third question, given the Egyptian setting of
“Ozymandias,” is what travel meant, then and now.
In Shelley’s day there were not even railways, so the
journey to Egypt will have meant weeks of land and
sea travel, with then only camels to reach the kind of
monument commemorated in “Ozymandias.” So “an
antique land…far away” had a sense for Shelley quite
different from our own time, when the Pyramids are no
further away than one or two aeroplane flights and a
ride in an air-conditioned bus. Modern transportation
may have its advantages, but it has virtually destroyed
distance, and with distance it has destroyed the
evocativeness and romance of “antique lands…far
away.” A follow-up question asked what travel should
mean to us. Modern means of transportation are here
to stay, so the romantic interest of distant lands will
not come back until and if a global upheaval–easy
to imagine–grounds the aeroplanes. Then men may
remember Shelley and say, “Look on these ruined
airports, and despair!”
Until then, travel in a homogenized globe is neither
here nor there. What Catholics do need to grasp is that
with their Faith giving them a real grasp on the true
God, they can live both by the reasonableness of the
18th century and by the wide dimensions of the 19th
century, without having to be fragmented between the
two. The True Church has the real solutions for the
human problems of all ages. All that we need to do is
to live by our Faith. Sacred Heart of Jesus, give us your
grace to live by our Faith!

Bishop Williamson is the Rector of Our Lady Co-Redemptrix Seminary in La
Reja, Argentina.
If you would like to help the seminary in La Reja: To ensure that a check sent
to help the seminary in La Reja will be tax-deductible in the US, make it out
to “Society of St. Pius X,” accompanied by the request that it benefit the South
American seminary and send it to:
US District Headquarters, SSPX,
11485 North Farley Rd.,
Platte City, MO 64079-8201
Attn: Mr. Tim Eaton, Bursar

F R .

Does the Church’s infallibility
extend to disciplinary laws?

p e t e r

This is a question of the greatest importance
for a traditional Catholic in the present crisis in
the Church, for in practice he rejects disciplinary
laws of the post-conciliar Church. How can he do
so if disciplinary laws are infallible? Surely, if they
are infallible, then he is obliged either to admit the
sedevacantist thesis that there is no pope, or simply
submit to them.
However, it is theologically certain that the
Church’s infallibility does indeed extend to
disciplinary laws, based upon the Church’s own
condemnations of the contrary propositions of
Protestants by the Council of Trent, of Jansenists and
the Council of Pistoia by Pope Pius VI, of Liberal
Catholics by Pope Gregory XVI, and of Modernists
by Pope St. Pius X in the decree Lamentabili and the
encyclical Pascendi. Moreover, it can be deduced from
the Vatican I definition of papal infallibility.
Disciplinary laws are, in fact, a part of the
secondary object of the Church’s infallibility. The
primary and direct object consists in all those truths
of Faith and morals that are in themselves revealed
in Scripture and Tradition, and subsequently taught
by the Magisterium. The secondary or indirect object
of the Church’s infallibility consists of those truths
that are necessarily connected with the deposit of
the Faith, in such a way that it cannot be kept in its
entirety without them. It includes some speculative
truths, such as the immortality of the soul; some
practical facts, such as the legitimacy of the Council
of Trent as a true ecumenical council; and some
definitive and final decisions that solemnly use
the fullness of the Church’s authority, such as the
(traditional) canonization of saints and the approval
of religious orders. Disciplinary laws are to be
included in the secondary object of the Church’s
infallibility, but only indirectly and inasmuch as they
are connected with directly revealed truth (doctrine)
by the goal that they attain, the salvation of souls.
Note that this is rather a negative quality of the
pope’s supreme and universal power of government
of the Church, namely that inasmuch as those acts
of government are directed towards the salvation of
souls, they cannot impose any obligation opposed to
divinely revealed Faith and morals.
This infallibility of the Church’s universal
disciplinary laws is in no way a positive infallibility,
as if the Church’s laws could never be wrong or
inappropriate, provided that they are for the whole
Church. Clearly, they are often not adapted to present
needs, and the fact that they continually change
demonstrates this. The most well known case is that
of Communion under both kinds, which originally
existed in the Roman Rite, but was abolished for

R .

s c o t t

41

very good practical reasons, and for the theological
reason that Christ is present whole and entire under
either species. The Council of Constance proclaimed,
against the heresy of John Hus, that the practice of
receiving Holy Communion under one kind
which is observed by the universal Church and approved
by the sacred Council of Constance, must be preserved, so
that it be not allowed to condemn this or to change it at
pleasure without the authority of the Church (Dz. 668).

This is clearly a disciplinary decision, so
connected with the revelation on the Real Presence
necessary for the salvation of souls that it itself
benefits from the Church’s infallibility.
This was restated by the Council of Trent when
it reiterated the Church’s authority to make laws
concerning the administration of the sacraments while
preserving their substance (Dz 931ss.). It did the same
thing with respect to the reservation of the Blessed
Sacrament, and condemned with an anathema
anybody who would affirm
that the received and approved rites of the Catholic
Church…may be disdained or omitted by the minister
without sin and at pleasure, or may be changed… (Dz.
856).

It likewise taught that the Canon of the Mass is
free from all error, and condemned with an anathema
anyone who says that it contains errors or that it
ought to be abrogated (Dz. 953). This is a negative but
infallible guarantee if ever there was one.
Pope Gregory XVI spoke explicitly of this
teaching in an encyclical to the Rhineland bishops in
1833 (Quo Graviora), condemning the indifferentism
of innovators and Liberal Catholics, wanting to bring
about a general reform of all Catholic discipline and
government:
When they pretend that all the forms of the Church
without distinction can be changed, are they not subjecting
to this change those points of discipline which have their
foundation in the divine law itself, which are joined to
doctrines of faith by so close a bond that the rule of
faith determines the rule of action? Are they not trying,
moreover, to make of the Church something human; are
they not openly diminishing her infallible authority and
the divine power which guides her, in holding that her
present discipline is subject to decay, to weakness, and to
other failures of the same nature, and in imagining that
it contains many elements which are not only useless but
even prejudicial to the well-being of the Catholic religion?
(The Church, Papal Teachings [Solesmes], p.130)

The infallibility of the Church’s disciplinary laws
can also be deduced from the condemned proposition
No. 5 contained in the Decree Lamentabili against the
Modernists in 1907:
Since in the deposit of faith only revealed truths are
contained, in no respect does it pertain to the Church
to pass judgment on the assertions of human disciplines.
(Dz. 2005)
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THE ANGELUS • September 2008

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For denying all immutability of truth and religion,
they cry out that the government of the Church must be
reformed in every respect, but especially on the disciplinary
and dogmatic side. Thus, both within and without, it is to
be brought into conformity with the modern conscience,
as they say. (Pascendi, Dz. 2104)

It is precisely because the Church’s discipline, its
ecclesiastical laws, reflect and express its doctrine that
it expresses the Church’s infallibility and need not be
reformed in every aspect.
The article on Ecclesiastical Discipline in the
Catholic Encyclopedia (1909) explains this negative
infallibility in this way:
Inasmuch as in her general discipline, i.e. the common
laws imposed on all the faithful, the Church can prescribe
nothing that would be contrary to the natural or the Divine
law, nor prohibit anything that the natural or Divine law
would exact.…It is quite permissible, however, to inquire
how far this infallibility extends, and to what extent, in her
disciplinary activity, the Church makes use of the privilege
of inerrancy granted her by Jesus Christ when she defines
matters of faith or morals.

It is both interesting and important to note that the
defense of the infallibility of the Church’s disciplinary
laws has always been against heretics, liberals, and
modernists, enemies of Catholic Tradition. Is it
possible that this teaching could be now turned against
traditional Catholics, to force us to accept precisely
this liberalism and heresy against which the Church’s
constant discipline was such an effective bulwark?
If common sense manifestly denies this, there is a
reason, and it is contained in the essentially negative
nature of this infallibility, which in turn derives from
the fact that infallibility is directly a property of the
Church’s teaching function, which is of the order of
truth, and is only indirectly related to the order of
government. It is not a positive characteristic of each
law itself that makes it infallible, and it is not because
the Church makes a law that it becomes by that very
fact infallible, the best possible and unchangeable. This
is the common conception of what “infallible” means,
but it does not at all apply to disciplinary laws. They
are only infallible inasmuch as they do not directly
contradict a question of Faith and morals necessary
for eternal salvation. The Church consequently could
not make a universal law, for example, that denies
the Real Presence, or that denies the possibility of
going to hell. However, it can certainly make bad laws
that do not promote devotion to the Real Presence as
they ought, or that do not inculcate the fear of eternal
damnation as they ought. The Church’s infallibility in
no way protects against such laws.
Allow me to quote again the above-mentioned
article from the Catholic Encyclopedia, that admits that
we can very rightly enquire as to the real extent of this
infallibility.
Doubtless, in last analysis all ecclesiastical laws are based
on certain fundamental truths, but as laws their purpose
THE ANGELUS • September 2008 www.angeluspress.org

is neither to confirm not to condemn these truths. It does
not seem, therefore, that the Church needs any special
privilege of infallibility to prevent her from enacting laws
contradictory to her doctrine. To claim that disciplinary
infallibility consists in regulating, without possibility
of error, the adaptation of a general law to its end, is
equivalent to the assertion of a (quite unnecessary) positive
infallibility, which the incessant abrogation of laws would
belie and which would be to the Church a burden and a
hindrance rather than an advantage, since it would suppose
each law to be the best.

This is a profound observation on the negative
quality of disciplinary infallibility. It cannot be
some positive quality of an ecclesiastical law, as it is
commonly understood to be. It is simply the purely
negative fact that the Church’s disciplinary law does
not contradict divine or natural law. Consequently,
there can be in the Church, and frequently have been,
bad laws, laws that are not adapted to the common
good, laws that contain all kinds of errors of fact and
practice. St. Thomas Aquinas would say that such
laws are not laws at all, since they are no longer an
ordering of reason to the common good (I-II, 96, 4),
and that consequently it makes no sense to speak of
their infallibility. However, we can certainly admit that
inasmuch as such universal “laws” are promulgated by
the highest authority in the Church, that of the pope,
they benefit from this purely negative infallibility of
which we are speaking. God would not allow the pope
to make a universal law, related to the salvation of
souls, that would contain a direct contradiction to a
doctrine of Faith and morals.
Given, then, that there is an infallibility to the
Church’s disciplinary laws, how is this applied to the
post-conciliar Church, and can it oblige us to accept
the disciplinary revolution that issued from Vatican II?
There can be no doubt that there are a whole
range of disciplinary laws introduced in the Church
since Vatican II that are doing great harm to souls, that
undermine the Faith and that are consequently evil.
Obvious examples include the decrees promoting the
New Mass, or permitting Communion in the hand,
or permitting altar girls, or encouraging liberty of
false religions, ecumenism, or Eucharistic hospitality.
The list is endless. The first question to be asked is
whether they are truly universal, that is whether or not
they impose an obligation on the entire Church. As
a general rule, these novel laws do not. Laws that are
limited to the Roman Rite are not properly universal,
and so consequently the application of these principles
concerning the infallibility of disciplinary laws could
well be disputed.
However, allowing that they are to be considered
as universal, given the predominance of the Roman
Rite, the infallibility from which they benefit would
in no way oblige us to accept them as just laws.
This infallibility simply means that they contain no
direct contradiction to Catholic doctrine, on the

43
Real Presence, for example. It does not prevent
them from containing grave ambiguities, such
as concerning the word “Church,” or the word
“Christ’s Presence,” or the word “Eucharist.” It does
not prevent them from containing grave errors, as
for example the laws promoting the freedom of all
religions. It does not prevent them doing great harm
to souls, and it does not prevent them from being
bad laws, and frankly evil, as is the New Mass.
Evil is the absence of the good that is due,
that ought to be present. The “presence” of
evil, therefore, does not mean that there is a
contradiction with a Catholic doctrine. It simply
means that the Catholic doctrine is not adequately
expressed. The New Mass is an evil law that
destroys faith in the propitiatory nature of the
Holy Sacrifice. The Church’s infallibility did not

prevent this legislation from being imposed, nor
did it prevent even a false definition of the Mass
in Article 7. Nor does the Church’s infallibility
prevent one from denying its true promulgation as
Church law, for it manifestly is not in reality a law
of the Church, but a modernist imposition. The
Church’s infallibility simply negatively prevents a
direct contradiction with divinely revealed Catholic
doctrine. The argument, then, of the infallibility of
the Church’s disciplinary laws is a red herring in
the question as to how to react in the present crisis.
It is entirely irrelevant as to how we must resist and
refuse the disciplinary revolution of Vatican II. It
is, to the contrary, the infallibility of the Church’s
disciplinary laws which is precisely the guarantee
and assurance that we cannot be wrong in holding
firm to the ecclesiastical traditions and laws that
maintained the Faith for nearly 2,000 years.
Fr. Peter Scott was ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988. After assignments as seminary professor, US District Superior, and Rector of Holy Cross
Seminary in Goulburn, Australia, he is presently Headmaster of Our Lady of
Mount Carmel Academy in Wilmot, Ontario, Canada. Those wishing answers
may please send their questions to Q &A in care of Angelus Press, 2915 Forest
Ave., Kansas City, MO 64109.

writing
Contest
winner
Callia Watner

JUly 2008

Gramling,
South Carolina

Fragments of a Statue Compared to a Soul
After the wild journeys made in the time
before conversion, it is wondered how a life can
be made whole from the shattered fragments of a
past life. When a statue has undergone the ravages
of vandalism, it is hopeless for the poor artist to
pick up each bit of plaster and to re-form each
limb. He could not re-attach them, even then. It
is only through the expertise of the Great Artist
Himself that anything can be made of a vandalized

life. He will leave the broken chunks behind and
reconstruct a new masterpiece through His lifegiving grace. He will sweep up the dusty bits of
plaster from every corner of the room, and He will
forgive each sin which has buried the soul beneath
so many layers of grime. As the Artist of this newly
formed magnum opus, He will safeguard it anew; if
the soul is willing, www.angeluspress.org
He will lock it THE
away
as a• treasure
ANGELUS
September 2008
in His Heart.

The Angelus

Photo taken by Bro. Marcel

monthly photo writing contest
Any member of a household aged 10-18 whose family address has a current subscription to
The Angelus (either in print or online) is eligible. There may be more than one entry
per address if more than one child is eligible. (Please include your family’s address and
phone number, especially if you are a contestant writing from a boarding school.) Pricing
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The Angelus is offering $150 for a 250-word creative writing composition on the above

picture. (This may include, but is not limited to, any poem, dialogue, short story, song lyrics,
script, explanation, etc.) If none is deserving of the prize, none will be awarded. The winning
essay may be published if there is a winner. An extra $50 is available if one is a member of
the SSPX Eucharistic Crusade (verified by your chaplain with your entry).
Entrants must submit a creative-writing composition in their own words about the featured
monthly picture. Submissions must be handwritten and will be judged on content, legibility,
and creativity. The essays will be judged by parties outside of Angelus Press.

Essays must be postmarked or faxed by october 15 and be addressed to:
Attention: The Angelus Monthly Photo Writing Contest
2915 Forest Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64109
FAX: 816-753-3557 (24-hour dedicated line)

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Sept. 21, 1929

ordained priest

Sept. 1, 1931

enters novitiate of
the Holy Ghost Fathers

Sept. 25, 1935

perpetual vows in religion

Sept. 22, 1948

appointed Apostolic Delegate of
French Black Africa and Madagascar

Sept. 14, 1955

made first Archbishop of Dakar

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