Keeping Calm Amid The Storm - Fr. Regis de Cacqueray District Superior of France SSPX

Keeping calm amid the storm

Despite the unprecedented storm sweeping the Church today, nevertheless, we must remain calm, hopeful, and do our duty to become saints.

We offer here a timely letter from Fr. Regis de Cacqueray (the French District Superior), which exhorts Catholics everywhere to maintain calm amid the post-conciliar storm that threatens the Barque of Peter, while giving encouragement to remain hopeful and continuing striving in sanctity. SSPX.ORG specially thanks Fr. de Cacqueray for allowing us to make this instructive letter available in English.

Letter to Friends and Benefactors no. 81, December 2013

The Revolution: part 1

On whom or on what do we found our hope? Every time that we learn of the further encroachment of sin, every time it threatens to overwhelm us, we tell ourselves that such decadence cannot go on forever, that the long awaited moment of correction must arrive eventually. We remember that God watches over us and that He will not allow the folly of men to surpass the limits He has established from all eternity. These times of trial may even be shortened by our prayers. And finally, we arm ourselves with patience, for we believe that the progress of moral evil will ultimately cease, and when that happens we will only have to climb back up the slope. And in the meantime we must adopt the good habit of drawing from the very spectacle of this ever-accelerating fall an additional motive to grow in hope: is it not indeed a sign that we will soon touch bottom?

But on whom or on what can we still found our hope? We know that God is all-powerful and in no way indifferent to our misfortunes. We are certain that His grace will never fail us, since He wishes to sanctify and save us. At the same time, we see that the great efforts of so many valiant Catholics before us did not suffice to prevent the degeneracy of our times. And so we live too in the hope that some holy soul will arrive in our midst and save us from the situation. A man of Providence, a divine surprise, a great monarch, a holy pope — sometimes it is to one of these that Catholics pin their hopes.

We would like to examine these two foundations for hope first and then recall a few truths that determine our lives and define our hope. Let us set aside the superficial and deceptive hopes that, perhaps, encumber our spirits. The point is not the natural inclination of individual characters towards optimism or pessimism, but rather to determine good and reliable foundations from which our hearts can draw hope.

Sanctioned insurrection as sole dogma and politico-moral system 

It is indeed the spectacle of decomposition and decay in our societies that brings us to these questions on the depth of evil: “Are we sure that there is a limit to evil, that at some point it will be impossible to sink any lower, that the vertiginous descent we are experiencing will end?” Does not the Psalmist seem to say, on the contrary, that “deep calleth on deep”,[1] meaning that evil brings evil with ever-increasing momentum? Do we not see the indefatigable frenzy of evil at work on earth? The blindness of man has become such that nothing seems able to halt his sinful appetites. So our efforts, our sacrifices, our recoveries and our prayers will never do more than slow down the infernal machine that seems destined to bear man and society inexorably onwards to death and annihilation?

What do both reason and faith tell us? That man and society flourish when they subject themselves to divine law. Such is the infallible means of obtaining the maximum happiness possible on this earth and of hoping for ultimate and full happiness in eternity. Men become corrupt and societies weaken and dissolve when they distance themselves from God and rebel against Him. These propositions formerly appeared to be common ground and obvious to nearly all men, before agnosticism and atheism were violently promoted on earth. That they are no longer self-evident demonstrates the level of blindness and malice to which humanity has sunk.

Our time, foolish enough to believe itself superior to ages past, chose and established as its pedestal the very principle of revolt, conscious revolt against God and against the immutable order of beings and essences. Revolution sweeps the past out of the picture along with its traditions, on the grounds that earlier centuries did not reject the existence of intangible laws. Certainly, there was no lack of crimes and misdeeds even in those times. But those responsible were not proud of them, or if they were, at least they did not expect justice to glorify their faults. Generally men — at least Catholics — understood each other when they spoke of good and evil: disputes on such matters did not exist amongst them. If there were quibblers, they were sternly called to order.

But the accession of the revolution has changed all that. The revolution is in its essence insurrection, sanctioned as the only dogma and the sole politico-moral system valid on this earth. It is the reversal of all principles and the perpetual overthrowing of men and societies. Within the microcosm of the human being as well as within the various societies to which he belongs, the revolution acts as a tornado that overthrows everything with the misfortune of existence. Its nature is to destroy, to demolish until nothing remains. It will not come to rest until everything has been smashed to pieces.

Our minds suffer most, no doubt, from ignorance of this satanic characteristic of revolution. We thought, in accordance with our understanding of modern history, that revolution only overthrew a regime and a set of principles in order to replace them with others. We did not understand that revolution ends in nothingness and that it simply wants to replace whatever existed before with nothingness. We thought it sought something else: a new order, no longer the order imposed by God but a system designed by man. In itself, this would be evil enough for us to oppose it with all our strength.

But in reality, it is of the utmost importance that we raise the mask of revolution and discover its true face. We must understand that no other lasting order can ever take the place of divine order, that the laws of human nature are inviolable and that pretending to change them is a Promethean attempt, doomed to failure. How should man hold power over human nature, which he did not create and whose mysterious essence is beyond him in every sense? Detaching oneself from this order, setting new principles to rule mankind, changing human nature to promote a new humanity — these things are illusions, lies. Those who persist will perhaps succeed in destroying the order that previously existed. But the day that they succeed, life will no longer exist on earth.

All the while the revolution is occupied with overturning thrones and knocking over altars, destroying traditions and laying waste to the Ten Commandments, abolishing small societies within larger ones and unravelling family ties, and reducing man to a state where he is born an orphan, lives single and dies without descendants — the revolution is perfectly aware of where it is going and how far it means to go. It is only for a time that it will manufacture these chimeras, these synthetic families, men and societies, so as not to frighten us too badly. It is careful not to reveal its nihilism and its homicidal purposes openly, but it is still leading us to the slaughterhouse. It will not consider its task complete until humanity has been swept into nothingness.

“Are you not speaking of revolution as if it were a person?” It is true. But my prosopopoeia is justified. Indeed, if a being is only to know itself by its actions, the rage of the revolution forces us all the way back to Lucifer to explain revolution, to the one who shouted before God, before plunging into the abyss forever, “I will not serve!”[2] This is revolution’s battle cry!

We observe our contemporaries and our modern societies race towards death in frenzied droves. The course of events is as so many illustrations. If we examine the natural order, first of all, we see that it is indeed death alone that is promoted everywhere. And, since the family is the natural and indispensable sanctuary of human life, it is also the primary target. It has been violated by the law on divorce and damaged in its most profound aspect. It will only recover from this evil through an abrogation of this law, which has spread disorder, infidelity and sterility everywhere.

The range of laws supporting death that have followed the legalization of divorce should not surprise us. The family, which needs so badly to be strong, is stricken in its basic principles and now is like a cracked hull. It is unfit to welcome children, whose presence require so much selflessness and love from the parents. And so laws promoting infanticide are passed with a hellish cadence: promotion of contraception, abortion, funded abortion… What does it matter that hundreds of thousands of women throughout the world admit that the iron and the death that assaulted the fruit of their wombs now cause them nagging torment, Cain’s curse that haunts the remainder of their faded lives. No, we must leave man in the belief that crime against the unborn child, the aspirator in the womb, means victory over the obscurantism of past centuries. How shameful!

Death progresses and triumphs. Parents get rid of their abnormal children, or of those who could become abnormal according to pusillanimous and fearful doctors. The new crime with which they could be reproached is not having killed these children, but rather having allowed one with Down’s Syndrome to survive…

But we are even more profoundly seized with nausea at the next step, the one French society has just taken. It was not enough… now we must convince an entire people the sodomy, rightly despised throughout the centuries, is a misconstrued practice of love, unjustly scorned and condemned. In our naivety we did not think that the sin of Sodom could one day be upheld and supported in the code of human laws. How is it possible to carry blindness to such extremes? How can they not die of the shame of having dared to vote in, to set such turpitude in stone? If the world continues and if France survives, our generation will be pointed out as the one that ratified this infamy.

It is hardly useful to state the obvious: partnerships of men with men and women with women are doomed to sterility. And yet we have been the witnesses of the tenacity with which their henchmen claim a right to marriage. Thus this parody has been scandalously promoted and declared equal to the only valid marriage, the one made to give life. And now children are entrusted to such couples? Where will the perversity end? For how long will God, men, women and children be mocked? Yet everyone knows very well deep down in their conscience and in their human bones that a child will never flourish other than in the natural setting of the tenderness of a mother and the affection of a father.

Let those who survive abortion and eugenics take care! Where abortion filters the entry into life and allows a few survivors through, euthanasia and assisted suicide take its place and watch over the remainder of the lives of all adults, whether aged or adolescent. “See how far my freedom extends: not only can I rid myself of my children, but I can prove my freedom by killing myself!” Suicide becomes the supreme accomplishment and prerogative of liberty, the nec plus ultra of modernity! All hail to the age of freedom: behold man finally liberated, heading towards a better world and the best of worlds…

Whether we consider revolution in its principle or in its consequences, we say that it leads to death and that it will reach that fatal conclusion if man does not turn back and if God does not intervene to halt its course. No one can return from the end of evil, for the simple reason that evil taken to its logical conclusion only ends when it has destroyed everything capable of being destroyed.

But if the end of evil is death, from which there is no return, cannot we at least hope for a divine intervention to extricate us from this terrible pass? We would be wrong indeed to assume incredulity before such an eventuality. Examples of men raised up by Providence abound in the history of the Chosen People. We cannot list them all. We find in particular admirable heroines, female figures armed with magnanimity and courage for the defense and the preservation of their race. How should we withhold our admiration for examples such as Judith’s or Esther’s? Humble women have sufficed to bring their people through desperate situations. What can God not do if He chooses?

Indeed it is in the very heart of our own national history that we find St. Joan of Arc. She is the embodiment of our hope, more so than any other saint. God loved France enough to desire to intervene at this point in the course of its history, to protect France among nations, even taking it upon Himself to settle our differences with our neighbors. What other earthly fatherland has such a mark of divine favor in its heritage? And, taking a leaf from St. Paul, if we must glorify our country, what other has been blessed with so many apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary?

Certainly, a divine intervention that would reverse the plans of man in the course of history is possible. Not only must we not exclude such a possibility, but we may also beg God, His angels and His saints for an intervention, for He awaits our prayers to send us, perhaps soon, a luminous soul to reverse the situation.

 Footnotes

1 Psalm 41:8.

2 Jeremias 2:20.