Abbé de Nantes' Introductory Letter To The Phalange On The Secret Of La Salette

Maximin and Mélanie
from a daguerreotype taken in 1846,
the same year as the Apparition.

THE SECRET OF LA SALETTE AT FATIMA
FROM 19 SEPTEMBER 1846 TO 13 OCTOBER 1996
In all truth

LETTER TO THE PHALANGE No 58
13 May 1996


Our very dear friends,

Whence this impulse to make a detour via La Salette in Dauphiné, as we make our way to Fatima? From whom does it come and for what reason? Initially, I remained vexed on the subject. Because from 1946, the centenary year of the apparition to Mélanie and Maximin on 19 September 1846 – following a thinly disguised admission of doubt as to its reality expressed by our Superior of the seminary of Issy-les-Moulineaux, who was nevertheless a great devotee of the "divine Mary", whom he loved – I remained perplexed, and for very solid reasons: the mediocre behaviour of the two children, Mélanie’s inconceivable fabrications, Maximin’s odd behaviour and even his confession of having lied to the Curé d’Ars who ceased to believe in La Salette… before returning to it for good! That’s enough, I have sufficient to believe in, to admire and learn from ten other encounters between Heaven and earth, all beautiful, pure and free from doubt… whereas here, as much as the Apparition is certain and the message signed, so the all too famous "Secret" is inadmissible, odious and unworthy of Our Lady! La Salette is not worthy of a detour…

"Yes it is! (Tais-toi!) Be quiet, you are speaking blasphemy. Have you made a scientific study of the whole thing? the facts! the message! the Church’s acceptance? the miracles, the conversions, the immense stream of poor, humble, penitents beating their way to the foot of the Mountain, imploring, contrite and repentant as they make the tough climb to the top, where they are washed clean, pardoned and reconciled?

"What is this small set of bad priests compared with their bishop, stirred up moreover by the despicable Ernest Renan who lied about La Salette as he did about Lourdes, pretending to have read all the books and documents when he had got no further than their titles!

"And you, priest of the diocese of Grenoble [the Abbé de Nantes is of course referring to himself – ed.], you, the timid pilgrim of La Salette on three occasions, are you planning to present yourself before this same "beautiful Lady", whom you spurn over there, by bothering Her with your presence at Fatima, Her other and exactly similar shrine?"

I never address myself using the familiar "tu". So whence this voice? From Mamine, perhaps! Re-reading my previous Letter, on the secret of Lourdes, and the similarity of these "lost mountains", half way on our flight to Fatima, as a step towards conversion before our arrival, I understood in fact that Lourdes alone spoke of La Salette, and that its message of prayer and penance found a parallel echo in every line I wrote! On Mount Gargas too, there was all the space needed to accommodate the crowds who would come in procession, and at Grenoble there were successive bishops, holy priests, including the Curé d’Ars and Saint Julien Eymard, ardent promoter of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady of La Salette, who established perpetual adoration in a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of La Salette, you know it! formerly the chapel of the White Penitents in the rue Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, now renamed the rue Voltaire through the malice of the masonic Municipality, yes, the "rue Voltaire chapel" where you were ordained priest on 27 March 1948, ungrateful and indifferent to the lesson, the spirit and the grace of this blessed place!

"All because you were told lies, which you believed. That there were no miracles at La Salette? But Mgr Giray published two volumes of La Salette’s miracles in 1921! And absurd stories like those told by the late Jesuit Dhanis about Fatima! such as the ridiculous supposed adventure of a pious old lady of Grenoble accused of having set up the whole scenario in the mountains, for what shameful reason? an invention of unfrocked priests, of comfortable Gallicans, Voltarians and Liberals confronted by the supernatural incarnate in this "beautiful Lady" weeping heavy tears and speaking in patois to two uneducated children on this mountain of the Matheysine, and eager to ridicule these good country priests and peasants who were forthwith converted and who stopped blaspheming and working on Sunday, as though by chance, led by an ultramontane, legitimist bishop who had escaped from the prisons of the Terror!"

Whilst hearing this severe voice, another, gentler and more merciful voice – but I am imagining this! – predicted that during this study which I was required to undertake without delay, I would receive through pure chance the very book I needed, and another book that would reveal the falsehood… There is nothing unusual in this, but, furthermore, I thought I would discover in the false secret the echo of the true one and would thus be providentially led back from my Grenoble diversion to the direct and rapid route to Fatima. The two apparitions enlighten and support each other, as will be seen in the ultimate conversion of the Pope when, in the end, he reveals their two veritable secrets.

Finally – and this too I may be imagining – this gentle voice compelled me, as a penance for my straying so long, and to mark my gratitude for the graces of this pilgrimage, to ask Our Holy Father the Pope, through all our happy pilgrims and through all the Catholic faithful, to insert in its rightful place in the Creed, this dogma which would thereby be enhanced, guaranteeing its victory over hell at the end of this century:

"I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen!"

The books arrived, both the good and the bad… During our Chartres pilgrimage, I read to our friends, all keen to penetrate this mystery, the account of the Apparition as found reproduced in these pages, in all its charming originality and simplicity, and I began to demonstrate its capital importance. It remained for us to study La Salette, once and for all, in order to discover its entire truth… It fell just right: we had just enough time to learn of this mystery in order to prepare for a worthy celebration of the feast of Our Lady of La Salette, the Reconciler of sinners, in this her 150th anniversary, on 19 September 1996, before packing our bags to be in Fatima on the 13th October.

Let us begin by looking into the Apparition and the Message. Then we shall unravel the true Secret from the false. Then throughout this long study, as with the previous stages, contacts and similarities, we will show that in very different places and under quite similar forms, "multifariam multisque modis", in the words of Saint Paul (Heb 1.1), it is the same and ever maternal Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Conception, who was thus preparing, "on numerous occasions and in many ways", her ultimate appeal and her promise of salvation for the world.

13 July 1996

Two months have passed, doubtless taken up with many other things, but in the persistent thought of the enigma of La Salette. It is now time to expound certitudes, which have long been disputed but today are recognised. And, as always and as usual, once the summit has been conquered, an immense scene appears before our eyes, linking the mountains together and guaranteeing their coherence, beauty and wisdom, which we call the overall orthodromy. It is breath taking. This is the explanation of our title, which announces the continuity of events, the connection between the messages, the future verification of the secrets, the one by the other. In these pages I hope to show "The whole truth of the apparitions", of their messages and their secrets, "from La Salette to Fatima".

It is understood that I am not claiming to impose any of this research and its different results on the minds of our friends and readers. Everything, as always, is subject to the judgement of the sovereign Magisterium of Holy Church, our Mother, which is Roman.


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Bibliographical note.

To keep everything simple, I would recommend both adults and children, for whom it was conceived, to read the strip cartoon published by Fleurs, no 76, Les Bergers de La Salette. It is historical and makes no concession to either legend or modernism. It is accessible for children and sufficient for busy adults.

Providence first guided me towards a book by Louis Bassette, Le Fait de La Salette (1846-1854) published by Cerf (Paris 1955). The book is clear, supremely honest, written in good quality French and Catholic. Its demonstration is scholarly and classical; it is unbeatable.

The eighth and last chapter, Depuis un siècle: La fin de l’opposition. Importantes décisions et grandes heures, judiciously and discreetly opens onto our hopes. This book rescued me from all incertitude and saved me from fatal error.

Then, I discovered in our library, Les Secrets de La Salette by Max Le Hidec, published in 1969 by N.E.L which, in the wake of the Council, is not afraid of violating the prohibition of the Holy Office and reveals heaps of secrets accumulated over a century concerning the ins and outs of shady ecclesiastical business. It is a book to be handled with caution and no doubt to be followed almost to the end of its conclusions.

Whereupon, we received from Téqui an enormous 626 page pocket book given as the definitive work by Hyacinthe Guilhot, La vraie Mélanie de La Salette (Nov 1995). This work by fanatical "Mélanistes" will poison the public with its staggering falsehood. Under the appearances of exhaustive science, it is an apology for the seer Mélanie, presented as the greatest saint and the one most favoured with mystical graces of all time. This wonderful life as revealed by Mélanie, and based on her words, writings, visions and confidences alone, is an abuse of confidence on the part of the authors and publishers. It is not dear, it is true, but at 88 Francs, it is still robbery.

The naive (?) Father Triclot, doctor in theology et cetera, stands surety for this enormous pseudo-mystical bric-à-brac, stopping all opposition with this argument, which he says is unanswerable:

"I immediately add that Mélanie never knew these texts [of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, on "the true apostles of the last times", which she is accused of having appropriated!] for the Saint’s manuscript was still unknown at that time; it was still mouldering away in a chest, half eaten at the edges by mice. Its publication is quite recent. Mélanie, therefore, could not have been influenced by it." (preface, p. 14)

"Quite recent", really? The encyclopaedia Catholicisme, (Paris, 1975), specifically states that the Treatise on the True Devotion "discovered by chance in 1842, was published the following year; today, it has gone into over three hundred editions and into more than twenty languages." (art. Louis-Marie, col. 1130) Mélanie, therefore, could not but have known it, she who devoured this kind of literature, when she began to speak of these things in 1853, ten years later.

It made me ill to see the revival of what Le Hidec calls the "Mélaniste" clan, when "Les Enfants de Notre-Dame de La Salette et de Saint Grignion de Montfort" Association sent me a book by Mgr Antonio Galli, honoured with a letter of approval by Mgr Hnilica, dated 13 May 1996, which, coming from Rome in the name of John Paul II’s personal friend, brings encouragement to the devotees of La Salette and at the same time to those "of the statue of Our Lady of Medjugorje which wept tears of blood at Civita Vecchia". As though that were not enough, the cover shows an autograph of the prestigious theologian that was Garrigou-Lagrange, photocopied and stuck there, to impose his opinion on us, accompanied by his signature: "I am inclined to think that Mélanie kept up her mission until her death. f. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, OP" Its title? La Bergere de Notre-Dame de La Salette. Its content? Ah! What a surprise! The Association’s charismatics are so convinced of the suffocating holiness of their Mélanie that they publish everything, absolutely everything, which the more cautious of this poor visionary’s followers, even Téqui’s, had hitherto hidden or wreathed in mists of glory.

It was this little book that sealed my conviction and brought me back to the surest and purest ecclesiastical tradition, that of the Missionaries of La Salette and of their review MARIE, which was so precious in its day, that of our bishops of Grenoble, down to the one who ordained me priest of the diocese of La Salette on 27 March 1948. And it this that I am going to apply myself to now.