Mysterious Things

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?

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.

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....   

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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).

Before the end of the year? Who knows how to parse the brief comment of Cardinal Barbarin?

Mons Soto of Sacramento recently accompanied the Knights and Dames of Malta to Lourdes, and has written a lovely meditation about the place and les malades for the Catholic Herald.  Jack Smith at the Catholic Key g a.

Or what is referred to in shorthand as 'Tradition', will greet the faithful at Chartres at the conclusion of the annual pilgrimage organised by Notre-Dame de Chrétienté at Pentecost and will preside at Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament, according to posters at Le Forum Catholique, who saw the information published in Famille Chretienne, somewhere (a quick search doesn't return anything touching this news but of course I'm not a subscriber).  Messainlatino.it g a.

A certain context is that Rumor has it that elements of the French episcopacy have been seeking, at the Holy See, a monitum against the 'political traditionalists' in France, conceived (whether rightly or wrongly) to be still adherents of Charles Maurras and Action française, militant royalists, Luddites, Pétainists, rabid antidreyfusards and 'rejecters' of the Second Vatican Council (and so on and so forth), who constitute a large and significant portion of those who are 'reformers of the reform' in more specifically ecclesiastical terms i.e. of those who are determined to preserve the continuity of the dogmas and practices of the Faith against the partisans of a Third Vatican Council.  In France the political traditionalists (and a Right political extreme) are commingled with the ecclesiastical traditionalists in a way that just isn't replicated outside of la fille aînée de l'Eglise. 

Update on Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 13:40 by Marc

A press release from Notre-Dame de Chrétienté describing Cardinal Vingt-Trois's participation in the annual Pentecost pilgrimage. 

I don't have time to read the article this morning but I expect that there will be issues with this.  As a general rule, the French government can obtain passage of whatever legislation it proposes (unlike the majority party in the Congress in this country, for example); we shall see. Have, days later, corrected my title's spelling of burqa; fat lot of good my semester of Arabic did me, eh; if only it were the 'u' or the 'a' I had gotten wrong, I could have blamed my error on the fact that one has to write vowels with signs and squiggles instead of proper letters.

Subscribed to by a group of French public intellectuals et cetera; can't find anything here, anyway. Which is fine, because Andrew Cusack has done, and he translated the thing, which would've taken me ages. 

At LifeSite News.  Hermeneutic of Continuity g. a.

Huffington Post, mirabile dictu, and the Venerable Pope Pius XII.  M. Lévy has done these things before: it is the specific outlet that is surprising.  G. Curt Jester.

M. Michel Janva at Le Salon Beige wonders if perhaps the folks at La Croix (scarcely a bastion of professed adherents of Tradition, ahem) have read the signs of the times correctly, as evidenced by Mlle Isabelle de Gaulmyn on her blog there; she writes:

... In short, it has become more and more difficult to justly describe those who hear Mass in the chapels of the Fraternity of St Pius X as 'integrists', which term, moreover, implies a sort of militancy which they do not, in fact, share....

Speculators seems to be anticipating an ecclesiasitcal reconciliation (at least in France) between the Hierarchy and the Lefebvrists in the not too distant future.  We shall see.