The Curé d'Ars: Part II - Chapter 7 - Great Trials of the First Years: Calumnies and Temptations

- No good work ever succeeds unless it be accompanied by suffering. "Without shedding of blood there is no remission." (Heb 9:22). Sacrifice is the groundwork of every achievement of God's saints. The pastor of Ars knew the secret of the saints, hence the cruel scourgings and severe fasts which he
undertook in order to obtain the conversion of his beloved flock. God was now about to permit sufferings that were to cut even deeper into the quick of his soul, wounds that were to be inflicted by the malice, more or less conscious, of men.
- "If a priest is determined not to lose his soul," he exclaimed, "so soon as any disorder arises in the parish he must trample underfoot all human considerations as well as the fear of the contempt and hatred of his people."
- M. Vianney had no wish to be the cause of his own damnation...During several months those of their number who attended church had poured over them from the pulpit an almost uninterrupted stream of reproaches, adjurations and threats.
- "Did M. le Curé preach long sermons?" Mgr. Convert one day asked Père Drémieux. "Yes, long ones, and always on Hell."
- "I want you to understand," he explained, "that there is such a thing as a holy anger that springs from the zeal that we have for the interests of God."
- He was never harsh when a meek and conciliatory spirit was required, and he never hesitated when strong measures were needed.
- His methods, to be sure, were not quite those of his predecessors: murmurs arose in many a household. M. le Curé was too strict...Was not this new parish priest far too hard on those who profaned Sunday, on the patrons of the tavern, on those who haunted the dance hall?
- Catherine Lassagne, who ended by becoming one of his most ardent admirers, experienced towards his person feelings in which fear had as large a share as reverence...M. Vianney wanted her to become perfect; for that reason he would not condone the slightest fault in her conduct.
- "If a villager has a misunderstanding with his pastor because, for the good of his soul, the latter has admonished him, the man at once conceives a hatred for the priest: he speaks ill of him; he loves to hear him criticized; he will distort everything that is said to him."
- They were shameless enough to attribute his pallor and emaciation not to his terrible macerations, but to a life of secret debauchery...anonymous letters, full of the basest insinuations, were sent to him...At times God allows the purest souls to become the victimes of the vilest calumnies.
- [His approach toward those who persecuted him was that] he forgave the guilty ones; nay, he went so far as to bestow on them marks of friendship. Had he been in a position to shower benefits upon them he would have done so..."We must pray for them," he kept repeating. "Do as I did; I let them say all they wished, and in this way the ended by holding their tongues." A holy soul "turns all bitterness into sweetness," says St. Thérèse of Lisieux...
- [On one level] he would have wished that the Bishop, believing him guilty, would remove him from his parish, so that he might have time to weep over his "poor life" in quiet retirement. [And yet] the Curé d'Ars had reached the highest degree of heroic humility. He was not merely detached from worldly honors, he despised honor and reputation.
- Assuredly, M. Vianney might have defended himself, and that publicly, since he was publicly attacked. More than one he was advised to do so - he preferred to weep in silence under the eye of God. (Mt. 5:9 - Turn the other cheek)
-  However great may have been his trust in God, the sight of what he called his profound wretchedness and the duties of his ministry, filled him with an exceeding fear of the judgments of God. He experienced something that was closely akin to despair. "My God," he groaned, "make me suffer whatsoever you wish to inflict on me, but grant that I may not fall into Hell."
- He had to go through those awful crises, when the soul receives no comfort from the world to which it no longer belongs, nor from Heaven from which it is as yet banished...It was at times such as these that he longed to hide himself in some lonely corner there to weep over his "poor life." Truly the cross that weighed on him was proportioned to his destiny. But when once he began to love it, how much lighter it felt! "To suffer lovingly," he exclaimed, "is to suffer no longer. To flee from the cross is to be crushed beneath its weight. We should pray for a love of the cross - then it will become sweet. I started praying for a love of crosses and I felt happy. I said to myself: 'verily, there is no happiness but in the cross.'" Thus though the tempest raged round his soul, it did not disturb that highest point where hope and peace reside.
- Expecting neither recognition nor reward from men, he went on working solely for the glory of God. "Far more is done for God," he said, "when we do things without pleasure or relish."
- The good doctor's prescription [in response to his extreme fasts] was that he should take meat or milk, soups, chicken, veal, beer, raw or stewed fruit, together with fresh bread, toast with fresh butter and honey, tea with milk and sugar, and plenty of very ripe grapes." But the only thing he consented was to accept a packet of tea. M. Vianney had only reached his fortieth year, yet he felt utterly exhausted. The fever never left him.
- [During his ministry he was offered the choice to leave to go to a much larger parish which had been overrun by Jansenists. He later commented on his fear of that parish], "Pagans are more quickly converted than Jansenists."

The Curé d'Ars: Part II - Chapter 5 - The Campaign Against Dancing

- Like heathens who are unable to realize their wretched condition, the patrons of the dance were loud in asserting the innocence, and consequently the lawfulness, of this form of recreation. M. Vianney felt it incumbent on him to enlighten their consciences.
   A girl who loves dancing until it becomes a passion is unable to relish pure and simple pleasures; she
has no true Christian spirit. If her parents approve of her conduct, their household cannot be one in which the practice of a devout life are held in honor. Before they can become truly religious, such persons must begin by renouncing their worldly ideas and habits of life. They who wish to avoid sin must flee from the occasion of sin.
- He fought against the passions which dance fosters. Hence also his anathemas against the veilles (nighttime gatherings) as they were practiced at the time, and the rejoicings in which the young people indulged on the occasions of betrothals (Wedding Receptions)
- There, "under the eyes of parents who were either dumb or accomplices,  things were done reminiscent of pagan times."
- As regards dances, resistance was obstinate, and victory was slow in coming. Again and again, during ten long years, M. Vianney had to return to the charge. "There is not a commandment of God," he explained, "which dancing does not cause men to break...Mothers may indeed say: 'Oh, I keep an eye on my daughters.' You keep an eye on their dress; you cannot keep guard over their heart. Go, you wicked parents, go down into Hell where the wrath of God awaits you, because of your conduct when you gave free scope to your children; go! It will not be long before they join you, seeing that you have shown them the way so well....Then you will see whether your pastor was right in forbidding those hellish amusements."
- Above all, the life of the parish priests was the most persuasive of all sermons; in it men could see the Gospel in action...."Whatever our parish priest recommends, he first does himself. He practices what he teaches. We have never seen him take part in any amusement; his only pleasure is, apparently, to pray to the good God."
- M. Vianney adopted a line of conduct of exceeding severity. Starting from the principle that those who deliberately live in the occasion of sin may not be absolved unless they first give up that which is to them a cause of spiritual ruin.
- [One woman admitted she used to visit an annual vogue where] "I danced for a while. But this little escapade, which occurred just once in the course of the whole year, was the cause of my being refused absolution."
"Did you go to confession all the same?"
"Yes, before all the great feasts, but M. le Curé only gave me his blessing."
"And what did he tell you?"
"'If you do not amend and stay away from the dance, you will be DAMNED!' He did not mince words."
- Mlle. Claudine Trève also related how she onced danced on the occasion of a wedding which took place in about the month of February. M. Vianney put off giving her absolution until the Feast of the Ascension...He would not allow anyone to take part in society dances, even in the role of a spectator.
- [To parents he further said], "You must answer for their souls as you will answer for your own. I wonder whether you are doing all that lies in your power...but what I do know is that if your children lose their souls whilst they are as yet under your care, it is to be feared that your lack of watchfulness may be the cause of your own damnation."
- Scandalous dress goes with corrupting pleasures...at the time of M. Vianney's arrival at Ars, there were women who outraged the most elementary rules of modesty. Their conduct roused him to indignation. His anger included parents who idolized their children and fostered  their vanity. Let us listen to him castigating "that mother who can think of nothing but her daughter. She is far more concerned whether her bonnet is put on properly than whether the child has given her heart to God...Soon the girl's aim will be to attract. Her extravagant and indecent dress proclaims her to be a tool by means of which Hell seeks the ruin of souls. Low necks and bare arms, to be sure, would have never been tolerated in his church.

The Cur'e D'Ars: St. Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney (Abbé François Trochu, 1927)

I am not yet finished with this book, but I highly recommend it.
https://tanbooks.benedictpress.com/index.php/Cure-DArs-Trochu

The first half follows his life leading up to his priestly ministry, and the second half is all about his life in the small village of Ars.

I will highlight some key texts in coming posts.

Pax Christi, St. John Vianney, pray for us.

Is Tradition Excommunicated? (Angelus Press 1993)

This book comes with two different covers depending upon when it was printed.
I am borrowing this book from a friend/parishioner.

The opening pages have been highly revealing yet also succinct, so I thought I would type them out in hopes that some may read this and really begin to ask themselves what has been going on in the Church for the last fifty years. God Bless.

NEITHER SCHISMATIC NOR EXCOMMUNICATED

Catholics on the Rack

     It seems that since Vatican II, a Catholic is constantly compelled, by necessity, to have to choose

between Truth and "obedience," or in other words, between being a heretic or a schismatic.

     Thus, to take a few examples, he has to choose between St. Pius X's encyclical Pascendi which condemns modernism as a "collection of all heresies" and the present openly modernist ecclesiastical orientation which, through the voice of the Holy See, never ceases to laud modernism and modernists and to disparage St. Pius X. His encyclical was even described, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of his death, as "a disclosure...without respect for historical points of view."

     He has to choose between the monitum from the Holy Office in 1962, condemning the works of Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin in that they are "alive with ambiguities, and even errors, so serious that they offend Catholic doctrine," and the present ecclesiastical trend. Ecclesiastics do not hesitate to quote these works, even in papal speeches. On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the "apostate" Jesuit, a letter from Cardinal Casaroli, Secretary of State of His Holiness, praised the "wealth of his thought" and the "unequaled religious fervor," thus giving rise to the reaction of a group of Cardinals.

     He has to choose between the already defined invalidity of Anglican ordinations and the present-day ecclesiastical orientation in pursuance of which, in 1982, a Roman Pontiff, for the first time, took part in an Anglican rite in the Canterbury Cathedral and jointly blessed the crowd with the lay primate of this heretical and schismatic sect, a primate who in his welcoming speech, arrogated to himself, and without being contradicted, the title of Successor of St. Augustine, the Catholic evangelist of Catholic England.

     He has to choose between the ex cathedra condemnation of Martin Luther and the present ecclesiastical trend which, "celebrating" the fifth centenary of the birth of the German heretic, declared in a letter signed by His Holiness, John Paul II, that today, thanks to the "common researches made by Catholic and Protestant scholars...has appeared the deep religiosity of Luther." (sic!)

     He has to choose between the historical truth of the Gospels, which "Holy Mother Church has affirmed and affirms in a definite and absolutely constant manner...and certifies without hesitation " and the present ecclesiastical orientations which denies loudly these historical truths in the document published on June 24, 1985 by the Pontifical Commission on Religions Relations with Judaism.

     He has to choose between the Holy Scripture which declares Jews unbelievers "by hatred of God," according to the Gospel, and the present ecclesiastical orientation which, in the speech of the first pope to visit the synagogue in Rome, discovers in the Jews, still unbelievers, "the older brothers" of ignorant Catholics.

Buddha Statue on top of the Tabernacle in Assisi

     He has to choose between the First Commandment "Thou shalt not have strange gods before Me," which Buddhists adoring their living idol, who sat with his back to the tabernacle where the flickering light attested to the Real Presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

corresponds to the duty which, since the Redemption, obliges all men to render to God the worship we owe Him "in spirit and in truth," and the present-day ecclesiastical orientation according to which, at the invitation of a Roman Pontiff, were practices in the Catholic churches of Assisi all the forms, even the worst, of superstition  the false worship of the Jews, which in this era of grace pretend to worship God while denying His Christ; the idolatry of the

     He has to choose between the Catholic dogma "outside the Church there is no salvation" and the present ecclesiastical orientation which sees in non-Christian religions "channels to God" and declares even polytheist religions "are also venerable!" (sic)

     He has to choose between immemorial teachings of the Church according to which heretics and/or schismatics are "outside the Catholic Church" and the present ecclesiastical orientation whereby between the "various Christian denominations" exists only a difference "in depth" and "in fullness of communion" and for which consequently the different heretical and/or schismatic sects must be "respected as churches and ecclesiastical communities."

     Let us stop there as it would be materially impossible to enumerate all the choices that have been imposed and are being imposed all the time on Catholics. Our newsletter (Sì Sì No No) has pointed them out for the last 14 years and Romano Amerio has made an incomplete list in the 636 pages of his book Iota Unum: A study of the Changes in the Catholic Church in the 20th Century.