Between the French Revolution and the Second Vatican Council, alongside a magisterium of anathemas against the modern world born of this Revolution and against the concessions made to political modernity by liberal Catholics, culminating in Pius IX's Quanta Cura, another operation unfolded on the part of Rome, describable as "diplomatic" in a broad sense. One thinks in particular of the instructions for rallying to the modern Republic given by Leo XIII to French Catholics in his 1892 encyclical Au milieu des (...) sollicitudes. But there have been other acts before and since that enter into this perspective, by which the Holy See seemed to contradict, for the benefit of established liberal powers, its condemnation in principle of the institutions on which these same powers rested: the coronation of Napoleon, the "second Ralliement" of the 1920s, the abandonment of the Cristeros for "reasons of Church". (shrink)

Grandson of King Charles X, the earl of Chambord, Henry V (1820-1883), incarnated during his life the hopes of monarchical restoration of French legitimists, exercising a true moral royalty. In his speeches and letters, he presented a political program for to counter the ideas of French Revolution. The reflection of the earl of Chambord appears, during the third quarter of the XIXth century, like the most completed expression of counter-revolutionary thinking. To restore social harmony disturbed by the Revolution, the earl (...) of Chambord wanted to embody a Christian monarchy tempered by a new definition of representation rules, the recovery of local freedoms and the concern to restore social justice by improving the workers conditions of life. This political program encountered opposition from circles liberal-conservative who wanted to guard against the restoration of king adhering to the principles formulated by Pius IX in the Syllabus. They put to their support unacceptable conditions for the earl of Chambord, demanding to him to accept “the principles of 89”. The White flag crystallized this frontal opposition, failing the third restoration. (shrink)

The Vendée War (1793-1795) was an essential part of the French Revolution (1789-1799). A region of western France, south of Nantes, the Vendée, refused to continue obeying the new authorities of the Republic (1792), against a backdrop of forced military mobilization and anti-Catholic religious persecution. This peasant insurrection, led by nobles like Charette, suffered terrible repression, beyond military counter-insurgency. The Convention, the assembly governing the Republic, was very frightened in 1793, in a context of difficult foreign war and multiple domestic (...) disputes. It took revenge by organizing a populicide in the Vendée. Carrier's infamous massacres in Nantes, carried out to order, were the norm, not a pathological exception. The infernal columns of the Republican army carried out the Vendée genocide. We propose to rediscover these historical facts, sometimes still hidden. (shrink)

This paper aims to highlight Joseph de Maistre's pioneering work in anthropology, which 150 years before Girard came to the same conclusions as Girard: the importance of sacrifice in human societies, the logic of violence and its resolution, and the particular character of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which comes as a fulfillment and definitive end to the logic of bloody sacrifice. This little-known aspect of the counter-revolutionary thinker gives us a better understanding of the issues of matriarchy, patriarchy and (...) Christian patriarchy, right up to contemporary developments with gender. He also gives us an example of the application of Catholic realism, based on theology and nourished by sound Thomistic metaphysics, and how a return to this Catholic realism in the human sciences is a key to understanding contemporary phenomena. (shrink)

The word "school" has never been so commonly used as it is today. But do we really think about what it means? What reality(s) lie(s) behind this apparently neutral term? Originally encompassing a wide range of different meanings, the noun gradually became confined, in the wake of the Renaissance and the French Revolution, to common or public education, associated with simultaneous teaching. Older, more traditional forms of child-rearing, more domestic in nature, have steadily declined. The consequences of this anything but (...) trivial phenomenon are numerous for individuals, families, societies and even the Church. It's important to be aware of them, to be conscious of them, and to take stock of them, which is what this two-part post hopes to contribute to. (shrink)

The word "school" has never been so commonly used as it is today. But do we really think about what it means? What reality(s) lie(s) behind this apparently neutral term? Originally encompassing a wide range of different meanings, the noun gradually became confined, in the wake of the Renaissance and the French Revolution, to common or public education, associated with simultaneous teaching. Older, more traditional forms of child-rearing, more domestic in nature, have steadily declined. The consequences of this anything but (...) trivial phenomenon are numerous for individuals, families, societies and even the Church. It's important to be aware of them, to be conscious of them, and to take stock of them, which is what this two-part post hopes to contribute to. (shrink)

Abbé Lionel Groulx (1878-1967) is the most influential intellectual in Quebec history. A historian and nationalist activist, he asserted that the French language was the guardian of the Catholic faith in North America. He edited L'Action française de Montréal (1917-1928), a magazine inspired by the traditionalist thinking of Maurice Barrès and Charles Maurras. Groulx advocated Quebec independence as early as 1922. He denounced Anglo-Saxon cultural infiltration of French-Canadian society, through both British imperialism and American capitalism. He harshly criticized the "Quiet (...) Revolution" of the 1960s, which de-Christianized Quebec under the pretext of modernizing it, and in particular the educational reform that distanced French culture in America from the living axis of ancient Greco-Latin civilization. (shrink)

Information has been omnipresent and all-powerful for almost two centuries, and now possesses sophisticated and invasive means of imposing itself and creating opinion. It was crucial in the Enlightenment and in the preparation of the French Revolution by the intellectual and bourgeois elites. Its characteristic is to be the opposite of intangible truths, to be moving, malleable and adaptable. It is the new replacing the old. It is bracketed by history, because it ignores tradition and no longer needs the past. (...) The creation of opinion in the 18th century introduced a concept of freedom that in fact conceals totalitarianism. People are told what to think. Information is a weapon against all forms of personal reflection and inner life. It imposes itself and imposes, making it impossible to distance oneself. It even kills the democracy it boasts about. (shrink)