A successful anniversary: Courrier de Rome’s fiftieth
Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X, presided over the celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of the review Courrier de Rome in Paris on January 14 and 15.
On Saturday, the 14th, the crypt of Notre Dame de Consolation housed the 13th Theological Congress that paid homage to the Pioneers of Tradition. 150 participants came to hear Fr. Emmanuel du Chalard, the journal’s director, outline a half a century at the service of the Church. Then Jacques-Régis du Cray, a history professor, mentioned some of the priests who were at the start of the fight for Tradition: Fr. Emmanuel des Graviers, Fr. Louis Coache…, and he explained that without them the Society of St. Pius X’s apostolate would not exist today. Fr. Grégoire Celier, chaplain of Notre Dame de Consolation, explained how Fr. Raymond Dulac, a canon lawyer who collaborated with Courrier de Rome, maintained from the very start of the New Mass the imprescriptible rights of the traditional Mass. Professor Roberto de Mattei, a historian and Vatican Council II specialist, showed how much the conservative Council Fathers of the Coetus Internationalis Patrum owed to the Roman School of Theology, where French ecclesiastics like Cardinal Louis Billot, SJ, Fr. Henri Le Floch, CSSP, Fr. Joseph Le Rohellec, CSSP, Fr. Thomas Pègue, OP, and Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, distinguished themselves.
Fr. Emmanuel du Chalard.
Jacques-Régis du Cray.
Fr. Grégoire Celier.
Professor Roberto de Mattei.
In the afternoon, Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize, professor of ecclesiology at the seminary of Econe and frequent collaborator with Courrier de Rome, showed that the theological work against the contemporary errors is along the same doctrinal lines as the Roman School of Theology. Then Fr. Alain Lorans mentioned a few laymen who have collaborated with Courrier de Rome, in particular Marcel de Corte and Louis Salleron, and showed how relevant their analyses published in the 70’s still are today.
Bishop Fellay concluded this day of study by insisting that the doctrinal fight is still the same fifty years later, directed against the anthropocentrism and subjectivism introduced in the last council. But he also pointed out that in reaction to certain excesses, a very indirect criticism has been making itself heard over the last couple of years: the idea of a “para-council” or a “media council” that has gotten in the way of the “true council”; there is also the claim that adherence to conciliar documents on ecumenism or religious freedom are not indispensable conditions for being Catholic… But it is hard to know today just what these criticisms mean, since they are far from being the majority in the Church.
Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize.
Fr. Alain Lorans.
Bishop Bernard Fellay.
The next day, on Sunday, Bishop Fellay celebrated a solemn high Mass at 10:30 am at the church of Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet. In his sermon, he drew a parallel between the gospel of the day – the miracle of Cana – and the doctrinal fight led by Courrier de Rome for the past 50 years in defense of the truth, recalling that it was at a marriage that Jesus Christ accomplished his first miracle, and that the indissolubility of marriage is now being jeopardized by the post-synodal exhortation Amoris Laetitia, to such an extent that cardinals have to publicly oppose the very grave confusion that it creates in souls. But, repeated the Superior General of the Society, everything is in the hands of Divine Providence, even this unprecedented crisis. Our trust in Providence and our fidelity to our duty of state, our prayers and penance, are the way to preserve supernatural light and strength even in today’s confusion.
(Source: DICI no. 348 dated Jan. 20, 2017)
