Sunday will be the 30th anniversary of Marthe Robin's death...

After a lifetime of Christian witness at La Plaine; this article is in today's La Croix, by Céline Hoyeau and an English overview of her life and mission is here, at the Foyers of Charity site. Her cause is open and at the Holy See.

Update on Sunday, February 6, 2011 at 12:00 by Marc

One of France's diocesan bishops was at a Foyer de Charité today to celebrate the anniversary of Marthe Robin's death.  One.

Roma locuta, causa finita est...

L'affaire Thiberville is over with; Rorate Caeli noticed Mons Nourrichard's announcement. I posted on the business back in July. In matters like this, it is impossible, as a non-participant, to know where precisely to assign blame or praise: let's hope that Fr Michel will see his way forward with grace and clarity. Oremus pro invicem. 

The French 'March for Life' attracted many thousands...

Of participants (Le Salon Beige has a collection of links to media coverage); 6,500, according to les flics, 40,000 according to the managers. The West Coast version drew some 40,000 people; the event's media coverage site is here.  (A photographic account of the event's 2006 version is here, at Zombietime, where we may hope for photos of this year's, eventually.) Tomorrow in DC....

Am reading Mons Aillet's little book...

The Old Mass and the New, and noticed at Le Salon Beige that the good Bishop of Bayonne has written a most excellent, evangelical book foreward praising an 'authentic missionary spirit' vis-à-vis the Muslims. Perhaps he will go to Paris when Cardinal Vingt-Trois retires in a few years.

St Sylvester Night arrests were up by 25% in France but...

We'll have to wait until later in the month for the annual totals to discover whether there was a similar increase of car burnings because M Brice Hortefeux, the interior minister, doesn't want anyone to try to make a contest out of topping last year's total. But nor does he want it thought that he is "hiding or covering up" any unpleasant realities.... 

Update on Sunday, January 2, 2011 at 10:38 by Marc

There is this report in Le Figaro today; "... it wasn't as peaceful a night as M le Ministre thought...".  The fact is, of course, that I haven't played the sociologist and searched out the crime statistics for e.g. New York, Palermo, London and Los Angeles--so far as I know as a matter of certain fact Paris may be, comparatively speaking, an island paradise. But I doubt it.

This is one of those affairs that is made worse...

By the fact that we don't necessarily know all the facts, that I doubt that all three bishops were involved in the denial of the decedent's will, that perhaps troubles between the diocese and the ICKSP have been ongoing et cetera.  I hope that the lady has already had many prayers offered in suffrage for the repose of her soul.  We already knew that a large number of members of the episcopate in France and elsewhere are derelict in their duty to provide for those faithful who are attached to the usus antiquior; that they are prepared to ignore testamentary dispositions is a further black mark against their names.  One can only hope that the executor had the spine to refuse payment to the cathedral clergy of any stipend that was associated with the Mass request, and turned elsewhere.   

An interview with Bat Ye'or on the publication...

Of her new book L'Europe et le spectre du caliphat was published here on the site of the interviewer, Véronique Chemla; translation of a part of the conversation is here, at GalliaWatch.

There is a new low possible, of course, but...

The current mess in France is pretty abysmal, even for France, as Erik's correspondent at ¡No Pasaran! points out.  "God forbid the French actually have to work until the shockingly ripe old age of 62 to keep the country going."

The French state continues to decay...

As Erik points out at ¡No Pasaran!.  Young rapscallions, learning from their video games, have evidently upped their fire power and the police are being... prudent.

"In this sort of situation where an attempted apprehension risks the unleashing of a volley of gun fire on a major downtown street, it's been decided not to apprehend the robbers immediately", said a police functionary in justification.

The Le Monde article by Richard Schittly, quoted at ¡No Pasaran!, is from the end of last month and hence now behind the paywall.

The Chartres pilgrimage is Pentecost weekend...

11th, 12th, 13th June next year; I'm thinking about the possibilities.  It seems a long time from now but am conscious these days that 'a long time' when one is on the advanced side of fifty doesn't have quite the same duration as it did when thirty was still in the distance.

A new bishop for Orléans...

Who has been, till now, auxiliary of Bordeaux; Mons Jacques Blaquart.  I shall look about for reactions from the French bloggers, and see if Golias has taken notice.  He wears (or, has worn) a beard, tsk.

Update on Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 20:03 by Marc

Mons Soto doesn't look quite as awful. But surely there is conciliar legislation against episcopal use of beards?

L'affaire de Thiberville...

Has seen new movement; the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura has accepted Father Francis Michel's appeal, on its merits, as we Americans would say, Perepiscopus reports.

The short version follows. The bishop of Evreux in Normandy, pleading a lack of priests, a lack of this, the desire for that, et cetera, required Abbé Michel to acquiesce in a plan that would remove him from his pastorate and join a 'team' of clerics who would then be responsible for any number of consolidated parishes and ministries.

Abbé Michel refused, in a more or less politic way, and appealed to Rome, to the Congregation for the Clergy and to the Apostolic Signatura, which appeals were refused because of defects in their form.

This business is complicated by the fact that, according to all accounts, Abbé Michel's churches have become full and prosperous and pious and Catholic, and he paid attention to Summorum Pontificum (meaning that there have been both forms of the Roman Rite in use in them) and the Pope's 'hermeneutic of continuity'. And further complicated by the fact that when Mons Nourrichard went to Abbé Michel's church to personally explain the imposition of the 'innovations', the congregation loudly protested and wouldn't hear him.  Abbé Michel retains possession of his churches but Mons Nourrichard has announced that he will suspend him at the end of the month unless he undertakes to obey his instructions.

Mons Nourrichard was appointed by the Holy Father in 2006. (Rorate Caeli has featured an entire series of posts on this business, which can be found via today's post.) On the one hand, the diocese is decaying and it seems just, well, stupid or vindictive for Mons Nourrichard to muck about with Abbé Michel's apparently exemplary work. On the other hand, the bishop is the bishop.

There is a party which sees disaster coming and retrenches, thinking to save some by finesse and adaptation; there is another party which sees with the eyes of hope, spes contra spem: while I know where I should expect to find the finger of God, it is probably necessary to point out that it ought to be presumed that both Abbé Michel and Mons Nourrichard are acting in what each to perceives to be the cause of Religion and justice. But I haven't followed very closely in the French blogs and newspapers.

"The Little Prince was written by a saint: Exupéry"

Joe at ¡No Pasaran! points out for our amusement and edification some of the more amusing errors that French students have made on their baccalauréat exams (which amount, more or less, to a series of national university entrance tests).  "As the name indicates, the blues were invented by the blacks."  "The earth would be covered in ice were it not for the volcanos heating its interior."  "The chief exponent of Surrealism is Salvador Dalida." One more.  "The three states of matter are the solid state, the liquid state, and le tiers-état." Doubtless it's funnier that it's the poor French whose ignorance reveals itself: but Americans, alas....   

The occasional Roman and episcopal use of the sword is welcome...

To admonish, to threaten, and to excommunicate.  Mons Ventura, the Apostolic Nuncio in France, is creating knights of the Holy Sepuchre, however; but it's a great photograph. Perepiscopus g a. 

Two new princes of France...

Were born Friday; congratulations to their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Anjou on the birth of Prince Louis and Prince Alphonse.  The Duke of Anjou is by right King Louis XX.  Le Salon Beige g a.

Update on Sunday, May 30, 2010 at 23:07 by Marc

The twin Princes were born in New York City.

The article in Le Monde is in itself not much...

To be excited about.  Mons Fellay of the Lefebvrists is to be quoted in Der Spiegel's next issue as saying that homosexuals have to be suppressed from the priesthood; which is mild enough in Lefebvrist rhetoric and can only shock the pious readers of ECNR, the Tablet and les Goliastes: the great part is Le Monde's description of what the Second Vatican Council did.

... The Fraternity of Saint Pius X, the integrist community founded in 1970 by Mons Marcel Lefebvre, refuses to accept the major decisions of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), such as interreligious dialogue, religious liberty, and the abandonment of the dogma of papal infallibility.

Who knew? I'd like to see the section in... which dogmatic constitution was that bit about papal infallibility in? But this is exactly what the partisans of the Third Vatican Council believe and think: a new church is founded, the old dogmas are shredded and so on and so forth. Osservatore Vaticano g a.

This is a photograph of ordinary Catholic piety...

In any age of the West, save for our own half century: his Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris kneeling as the Most Sacred Host is carried to the ad hoc sacristy in preparation for the later rite of Benediction (during the ANDC Chartres Pentecost pilgrimage).  That it is such a noteworthy action is an astounding thing.  Summorum Pontificum observatus g a.

An awful great lot of 'warmth' during Cardinal Vingt-Trois's visit...

To the assembled Pentecost pilgrims, as noted at the Association's site.  It strikes me that this is one measure by which one can distinguish between the faithful who, in spite of episcopal encouragement for the worldly nonsense we see so much of in our churches, and episcopal obduracy that prolongs the plague once begun, remain Catholic, and the faithful who have abandoned certain truths of the Faith believing that they are defending more important ones: I have no doubt that in spite of his Eminence's not entirely impressive accounting of himself before the witness of Tradition he was received with genuine warmth--as he should have been, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church and Archbishop Metropolitan of Paris.  The poor faithful who have separated themselves from their legitimate, if imperfect and sinful, pastors deserve our prayers in these times when Rome, under the influence of his Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, is attempting, more directly than in previous years, to ameliorate the distress caused by misconstruings and misapplications of conciliar teaching.

Perhaps we can go to Paris and Chartres next year...

I see that were at least some 75 Americans who participated in the Pentecost pilgrimage to Chartres.  I don't look at the Remnant because, in the back of my mind, I--perhaps wrongly--associate those people with rejection of the usus recentior on supposed doctrinal grounds et cetera.  I should do some reading, eh.

The annual Pentecost pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres has reached...

The evening camp at Choisel: some 8,000 of the faithful are participating. The site of the sponsoring Association Notre-Dame de Chrétienté is here. I didn't realise until a couple of years ago, ahem, that the SSPX partisans have their own Pentecost pilgrimage, underway now also... but from Chartres to Paris.  Nôtre Dame, Reine de la France, priez pour nous!

Update on Monday, May 24, 2010 at 20:39 by Marc

This post at Le Salon Beige reports the 'official' estimate that some 7,000 pilgrims walked from Chartres to Paris (or, at least, stages of the pilgrimage); 8,000 to Chartres from Paris (with the same qualification).