from the president of the association Notre-Dame de Chrétienté (Our Lady of Christendom) – the organizers of the Paris/Chartres pilgrimage. This year attendance at the opening and closing masses was drastically limited by the French Coronavirus restrictions. Nor could a unified pilgrimage take place. Nevertheless, more than 11,000 pilgrims joined in smaller events dispersed all over France and beyond (as far away as Egypt and Armenia!). Jean de Tauries takes the opportunity to forthrightly address the issue most on the minds of Traditionalists today.
On the Way Home from Chartres
By Jean de Tauries, President
The 39th pilgrimage has just ended. We hear that the rumors of a new motu proprio, limiting the one signed by Benedict XVI in 2007, have allegedly been turned into a text ready to be signed by Pope Francis.
What a contradiction between these new restrictions and the exceptional number of pilgrims this year (more than 15,000 pilgrims including the “Guardian Angel” pilgrims)! 1) What a paradox, in contrast to the missionary spirit of our chapters in France and in so many countries! What a profound lack of knowledge of our Traditional Catholic world!
Let’s take a step back. Among the innumerable rebukes which we have received ( the “summary note” of the Conference of French Bishops, the Dijon Affair etc.) 2) I read : “The instruction that is given, the liturgy that is celebrated, date from before Vatican II and cannot be representative of the present age.”
I’d like to invite our clerical critics (often in their 70s) to come and talk with our pilgrims in their 20’s. They might be surprised to find an approach that is radically different from the subjects with which they are obsessed. Our pilgrims are not living in 1965 – in the midst of the “springtime of the Church” – but in 2021, the post-Vatican II era. Our clerical critics should clearly understand that they have before them a representative sample of the last practicing Catholics in France.
The first preoccupation of all these families is to give their children a Catholic education in a world that hates Christianity. Our pilgrims are youth engaged in evangelical movements (at times in contact with Islam), professionals inquiring about the application of the social doctrine of the Church, fighters for the defense of life. They may not know, perhaps, the essence of the conciliar documents, but they know very well the Church that has emerged from the Council. They see every day her eradication from society, the persecutions she endures, her suffering, the break in catechetical instruction….
Our pilgrims never say “it was better back then” because they know nothing of that “back then”; moreover, even their parents had not yet been born at the time of the Council! On the contrary, they explain very clearly their well-considered choice for traditional religious practice: the sacramental life, the liturgy, the religious instruction, the pastoral leadership assured by priests who know and love this apostolate. Our pilgrims do not think themselves outside of the Church. On the contrary, above all they want to be capable of remaining faithful to her.
As Bishop Rey 3) told us on the Monday of Pentecost before 700 pilgrims in the cathedral of Chartres (not including those following the Mass on our website):
The world doesn’t need a “soft underbelly,” “Christianity light,” but professing and confessing Christians who take up fully their baptismal identity and undertake to sanctify the world – beginning by sanctifying themselves. These Christians are not isolated and withdrawn into themselves but take up and unfold their heritage in their surroundings by their personal, evangelical influence and by their courageous witness to the truth, which for us has the face of Christ. Christ will demand an accounting from us of our compromises, of our hollow words and of our cowardly silence.
I thank from the bottom of my heart Bishop Rey for having accepted our invitation despite some very complex circumstances. His visit and his remarks were a great encouragement for the “Pilgrims of Christendom,” spread out over all of France. Also, my great thanks to Father Laurent for his invigorating words which we needed so much in the morning of the Saturday of Pentecost at Saint Sulpice.4) I would like to reiterate once again my thanks to all the clerics, the religious, sisters, priests, deacons and seminarians of our allied communities and of the dioceses who accompanied us for three days. I remember all our pilgrim friends of Our Lady of Christendom who’ve demonstrated that they know how to make a pilgrimage under any circumstances. We will be working during the summer vacation on analyzing the feedback from this pilgrimage. In the expectation of meeting you again after the return from the summer holidays, I’d like to remind you of the main dates of the second half of the year 2021: the retreat at Fontgombault on October 2nd-3rd and the day of Christian Friendship on the 20th of November.
Saint Joseph, protect the Church,
Our Lady of Chartres, protect us,
Our Lady of Holy Hope, convert us!
Source: Appel de Chartres #249 (My translation). For a description of the 2021 pilgrimage (in French) see HERE.
- “Guardian Angels” are supporters who do not (physically) take part in the pilgrimage.
- The “summary note” is a document prepared earlier this year by the French episcopate which puportedly summarizes responses to a Vatican questionnaire and is extremely hostile to Traditionalism; the Dijon affair refers to the recent expusion of the FSSP from that diocese.
- Dominique Rey, bishop of Frejus-Toulouse.
- After the fire in the cathedral of Notre Dame, St. Sulpice functions as the main church of Paris; the pilgrimage began here.
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