Jean Madiran [1980]: Interesting Revelation Concerning John XXIII

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Interesting Revelation Concerning John XXIII, Jean Madiran – ITINÉRAIRES November 1980

La Porte Latine [Machine translated from the French - emphasis mine]


Despite a few contrary appearances he had generously cultivated, notably when he was nuncio in Paris, John XXIII was in reality an admirer of Marc Sangnier and a disciple of the Sillon.

A revelation? Yes. As Henri Rambaud used to say, the true "unpublished" is… the printed word — that which went unnoticed at the time of its publication.

The letter from Nuncio Roncalli reproduced below had already been published in 1965 in Ernest Pezet's book: Chrétiens au service de la cité, de Léon XIII au Sillon et au MRP (NEL). It had passed unnoticed, at least by us. It has now been republished in L'âme populaire, the still-living organ of the "Catholic Sillon" founded by Robert Pigelet in 1920, in its 60th year, issue 571, August–September 1980.

This letter was addressed by Nuncio Roncalli to Mme Marc Sangnier on June 6, 1950, on the occasion of Marc Sangnier's death. Its content and significance far exceed a simple message of condolence, as will be seen:

"Paris, June 6, 1950

Madame,

I had heard Marc Sangnier speak for the first time in Rome around 1903 or 1904, at a meeting of Catholic Youth. The powerful fascination of his words, of his soul, had enchanted me, and I keep of his person and his political and social activity the most vivid memory of my entire priestly youth.

His noble and great humility in accepting later, in 1910, the admonition — moreover quite affectionate and benevolent — of the Holy Pope Pius X, gives in my eyes the measure of his true greatness.

Souls capable of remaining as faithful and respectful as his of the Gospel and of the Holy Church are made for the highest ascents that secure earthly glory before contemporaries and posterity, to whom the example of Marc Sangnier will remain as a teaching and an encouragement.

On the occasion of his death, my spirit was greatly comforted to see that the most authoritative voices to speak in the name of official France came together, unanimously, to wrap Marc Sangnier as in a mantle of honor, in the Sermon on the Mount. No more eloquent tribute and praise could be rendered to the memory of this distinguished Frenchman, whose contemporaries knew how to appreciate the clarity of a profoundly Christian soul and the noble sincerity of his heart."

By the magical effect of a kind of implicit "reinterpretation" of texts — which foreshadows the marvels that the conciliar evolution would achieve in this domain — Marc Sangnier and his Sillon thus received from the "holy Pope Pius X" nothing other than a "quite affectionate and benevolent admonition"; no memory remains of any error that had been condemned, of any teaching that had been formulated against the Sillon. The only "teaching" that the future John XXIII recalls in this connection is that of… Marc Sangnier himself!

No doubt Saint Pius X recognized in the leaders of the Sillon "elevated souls, superior to vulgar passions and animated by the noblest enthusiasm for the good"; but he also declared: "We have had the sorrow of seeing our warnings and reproaches glide off their elusive souls." The people of the Sillon are "swept along a path as false as it is dangerous." The Sillon "builds its city on a theory contrary to Catholic truth and distorts the essential and fundamental notions that govern social relations"; it "sows erroneous and pernicious ideas"; it has "a false idea of human dignity"; "its spirit is dangerous and its education harmful"; and henceforth "it forms nothing more than a miserable tributary of the great movement of apostasy organized in all countries."

Who would suspect this, reading Roncalli's soothing reinterpretation? Who could suppose that in reality, in his Letter on the Sillon, Saint Pius X had doctrinally defined and denounced that RELIGIOUS DEMOCRACY which, half a century later, through the so-called CONCILIAR EVOLUTION, would draw ecclesiastical society into IMMANENT APOSTASY?

Moreover, in 1950 Nuncio Roncalli enjoyed recalling that he had been "fascinated" and "enchanted" by Marc Sangnier: a memory that remains "the most vivid of his entire priestly youth."

The same Nuncio Roncalli, with other interlocutors, managed to pass himself off rather as an admirer and disciple of Cardinal Pie — we have precise testimony of this. Unhappy John XXIII, of whom Abbé Berto had said that terrible thing: "He is a skeptic."

A skeptic, yes; but not, for that reason, impartial between doctrines, or indifferent before them. Like all skeptics by temperament, he actively inclined toward the anti-dogmatic; the modernists; the Sillonists. His admiration for Cardinal Pie was a pretense — or let us say: a protocolar respect, which he played skillfully. His heart was with the Sillon.

Most striking is the calm audacity with which Nuncio Roncalli allowed himself to speak of Saint Pius X's letter on the Sillon, "reinterpreting" it in such a way as to strip it of all its moral and doctrinal significance. Let one reread that letter Notre charge apostolique of August 25, 1910, and one will immediately perceive to what extent the manner in which Nuncio Roncalli speaks of it manifests a total effrontery.

In 1950, the substitute Jean-Baptiste Montini treated the encyclical Humani generis of Pius XII in exactly the same way: an account of this is found in one and the other of the two books Jean Guitton devoted to Paul VI. I had analyzed this phenomenon in detail on the occasion of the first volume: in issue 128 of ITINÉRAIRES, December 1968, pages 154 to 159. I did not name Montini; I examined his remarks and characterized them by understatement as "inattention to texts" and "gratuitous reverie," judging that my commentary "would currently change nothing at all and would find its natural place in its own time, with hindsight and in an already historical perspective."

Since Montini's name did not appear, my analysis attracted little attention. One may refer to it today, after Jean Guitton's second work on Paul VI, which has confirmed the authentic tenor and brazen audacity of Montini's remarks from 1950.

That was September 8. Roncalli, June 6 of the same year. The occasion of the one and the other text was different. The substance, the intellectual method, was identical. Such, then, were the hands into which the Church Militant had fallen.