Presidential Anesthesia Administered to French Bishops Who Didn't Seem to Notice

Source: FSSPX News

On April 9, 2018, the bishops of France welcomed the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris. The theme of the evening was “dialogue.”

“Dialogue” in which the political language that says “po-tay-to” responded to the ecclesiastical language that says “po-tah-to.” On the program: euphemisms, clichés, unvoiced sentiments, and insinuations.

The head of state declared to the prelates: “We know basically—you and I—that the voice of the Church cannot impose.” In other words: it can be heard, but it cannot possibly claim that people must listen to it, much less follow it. Emmanuel Macron preached even to the bishops the virtue of “the humility of questioning”. In concrete terms: Catholics would be well advised to oppose the next draft law on medically assisted procreation with silent protest marches only, and not with another noisy, manifestly deafening Manif pour tous [Demonstration for Everyone, an overwhelming show of French popular support for traditional marriage].

To make himself perfectly clear, the President of the Republic stated:

My role is to make sure that each of our citizens has absolute freedom to believe or not to believe, but I will likewise and always ask him to respect absolutely, and without any compromise, all the laws of the Republic.

Because laïcité [French secularism in the public square] is a “brass yardstick” that imposes “an absolute freedom of conscience”—“absolute” means here “above the natural and divine law”: the ego versus the credo. And the bishops greeted the presidential remarks with fervent applause.

Nevertheless the Catholic daily newspaper La Croix writes, diplomatically, that the speaker “seemed to be preparing Catholics for a disappointment about some of their aspirations”. Indeed, he intended to administer a sedative to his listeners, who are already anesthetized by “religious liberty” and chloroformed by “positive laicity”.

The French bishops, having been asked not to wake up, are currently riding in an ambulance. Now everyone knows that one does not fire shots at an ambulance, especially if it runs the risk of turning into a hearse along the way.

The other evening, in the aseptic setting of the Collège des Bernardins, the mitered audience seemed to be under the influence of hypnosis. It is expected that the patients will be admitted to the intensive care unit.

- Father Alain Lorans, SSPX