Still Running Off at the Keyboard

ERRORS OF THE SILLON

Two aspects of Gallicanism are sometimes distinguished: royal Gallicanism, which defended the special rights of the French monarch in the French church; and ecclesiastical Gallicanism, which tried to preserve for the French clergy a certain administrative independence from Rome. Gallicanism in both senses received its theoretical formulation during the crisis of the Great Schism through the conciliar theory, which asserted the supremacy of general councils over the pope.
- The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, "Gallicanism"

A legacy of the Age of Enlightenment, the motto "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternity" first appeared during the French Revolution. Although it was often called into question, it finally established itself under the Third Republic. It was written into the 1958 Constitution and is part nowadays of the French national heritage.
- PRESIDENCE DE LA REPUBLIQUE

From the political point of view Pike with many other Anglo-American Scotch Masons interprets all Masonic symbolism in the sense of a systematic struggle against every kind of political and religious "despotism." Hiram, Christ, Molay are regarded only as representatives of "Humanity" the "Apostles of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"
- The Builder Magazine, August 1919

To sum up, such is the theory, one could say the dream of the Sillon; and that is what its teaching aims at, what it calls the democratic education of the people, that is, raising to its maximum the conscience and civic responsibility of every one, from which will result economic and political Democracy and the reign of JUSTICE, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY.

This brief explanation, Venerable Brethren, will show you clearly how much reason We have to say that the Sillon opposes doctrine to doctrine, that it seeks to build its City on a theory contrary to Catholic truth, and that falsifies the basis and essential notions which regulate social relations in any human society.
Letter of Pope Pius X to the French Archbishops & Bishops (1910)

Marc Sangnier, Founder of the Sillon, was born
in 1873 "into a genuinely devout but liberal Catholic family of the rising "grande bourgeoisie" according to Sillon.net. Founding first the journal "Le Sillon" in cooperation with Paul Renaudin, the movement subsequently took the journal's name for its own in 1899. It's life was short. In 1910 Pope Pius X condemned the movement, issuing the Apostolic Letter "Notre Charge Apostolique" on August 25, as linked above. While it was active the Sillon was a lay led movement of student study circles organized in Paris at the Stanislas College, first consisting of Catholic members, and subsequently developing into an ecumenical movement called the "Greater Sillon" that included members of various religious persuasions.

Some concerns expressed by Pius X in his letter to the French bishops:

- According to them, Man will be a man truly worthy of the name only when he has acquired a strong, enlightened, and independent consciousness, able to do without a master, obeying only himself, and able to assume the most demanding responsibilities without faltering.

- Studies are carried out without a master. ...The study groups are really intellectual pools in which each member is at once both master and stdent.

- ...the social doctrines of the Sillon are erroneous, its spirit is dangerous and its education disastrous. ...What are we to think of a movement so punctilious in its brand of Catholicism that, unless you embrace its cause, you would almost be regarded as an internal enemy of the Church, and you would understand nothing of the Gospel and of Jesus Christ!

- There was a time when the Sillon, as such, was truly Catholic. It recognized but one moral force--Catholicism; and the Sillonists were wont to proclaim that Democracy would have to be Catholic or would not exist at all. A time came when they changed their minds. They left to each one his religion or his philosophy. They ceased to call themselves Catholics and for the formula "Democracy will be Catholic" they substituted "Democracy will not be anti-Catholic," any more than it will be anti-Jewish or anti-Buddhist. This was the time of "the Greater Sillon." For the construction of the Future City they appealed to the workers of all religions and all sects. These were asked but one thing: to share the same social ideal, to respect all creeds, and to bring with them a certain supply of moral force.

Sound familiar? If you have read Masonic philosophy it surely does. If you have read about the Catholic New Ecclesial Communities, it does as well. Study circles were a part of "Renew" in the Roman Catholic Church in the 1980s and 1990s. Those study circles, too, were lay led and teased out their own brand of theology at the circle meetings.

Pius X continues:

Alas! this organization...has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer.

The bolding is mine. Bring to mind our sexual abuse scandal? Add the following to that bolded phrase and think again about the sexual abuse scandal:

The exaltation of their sentiments, the un-discriminating good-will of their hearts, their philosophical mysticism, mixed with a measure of illuminism, have carried them away towards another Gospel which they thought was the true Gospel of Our Savior.

I believe that would be the other gospel I saw in action at Mass yesterday. The Sillon fell into the "horizontal" error:

- ...it is a fashion in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to mention only His unlimited clemency. His compassion for all human miseries, and His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of men.

Pius demanded that "Priests will have to keep entirely out of the dissident groups."

Sangnier, faithful to the faith he professed, disbanded the Sillon after the decree of Pius X. He did not abandon activism, but rather moved on to other pursuits. According to the Sillon website:

After his death on Pentecost Sunday 1950, his wife Rénée received this remarkable testimony from, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, the Nuncio of the Holy See in Paris:

"I first heard Marc Sangnier speak at a meeting of Catholic youth in 1903 or 1904. The wonderful charm of his words and soul exhilarated me. The most vibrant memory of my whole young priesthood is of his personality as well as his political and social action.

His noble and frank humility in accepting late in 1910 the admonishment of saintly Pope Pius X - as affectionate and benevolent as it was - was to my mind the true measure of his greatness.

Souls like his with such a capacity to remain faithful and respectful to both the Gospel and the Holy Church are destined for the highest ascents which ensure glory: the glory of Christ who knows how to exalt the humble, even the glory of the present life before his contemporaries and posterity for whom the example of Marc Sangnier will remain as an example and as an encouragement."

Now that Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII, today Blessed John XXIII, has become a candidate for canonisation, it seems appropriate to recall that he himself considered Marc Sangnier as, in effect, a saint.

Beliefs of the Sillon were the beliefs of the Christian Democrats and of Robert Schuman, a Catholic and one of the founders of the European Union. Schuman was a follower of Marc Sangnier, and the Communists were part of this picture according to the journal "Oikonomia":

Since the beginning of the century, French Catholics had largely taken refuge in opposition to the Republic, despite the attempts of Pope Leo XIII at the end of the 19th century towards a “ralliement”. The social Catholics, the disciples of Marc Sangnier (who was condemned by Pius X in 1910) had worked for their reintegration. The condemnation of Maurras in 1926 confirmed instead the orientation of Leo XIII. But Catholics continued to vote en masse for right-wing parties. The slide towards the left was begun by Christians influenced by Emmanuel Mounier and by the movements of Catholic Action and all those who accepted the dialogue with the Communists, and who, like the worker-priests, practised this dialogue every day. When a significant number of Christians began to vote for the Left, the reversal of the majority brought François Mitterand to power as President of the Republic in 1981. This allowed the decline of the Communist party, a necessary element if the Left was to be able to maintain itself in power.

Want more information on the Sillon? Check out The Le Floch Report.

According to Sillon.net the list of those influenced by Marc Sangnier is long. Unfortunately the linked websites are written in French if they aren't broken links.

Sangnier didn't disappear from the religio-political scene after the condemnation of the Sillon by Pope Pius X. According the Sillon.net Biography, in 1912 he

founded La Jeune Republique a new movement which continued the work of the Sillon in the political domain. Other initiatives followed after the war, most notably the International Democratic Peace Congresses during the 1920s.

The peace movement, in other words, was influenced by the left-leaning founder of the condemned Sillon, Marc Sangnier, a man lauded by Pope John XXIII as a near-saint, and a man with Revolutionary French Masonic ideals. Those ideals, it would seem, had their roots in the Gallican Church that rejected the authority of the papacy, the same Gallican church that today promotes Pentecostalism, and Ecumenism with "a Vatican-sonsored series of conferences led by Vinson Synan, David Duplessis, Earl Paulk, and Killian McDonald", the same church that included Satanist Eugene Vintras.

The Paris Occult Revival has come home to roost in the Roman Catholic Charismatic Renewal of the Church from which the Gnostic heresy developed.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!