Vive le Roi!

Ruins of the Jumiège Abbey

I love watching the Tour de France in the month of July in large part because of the virtual tourism throughout the beautiful country of France. This year, I am struck by the crumbling remains of ancient French fortresses and the aged Cathedrals, monasteries, and churches that serve as physical reminders of the destruction of the Catholic Church and the genocide of Catholics which began during the French Revolution. So many of the abandoned buildings throughout the French countryside were left to ruins in the aftermath of the French Revolution: when all of the monks, nuns, priests, and Catholic laity were slaughtered at the hands of the republicans, who was left to care for the beautiful church building in the center of a quaint French village, the Catholic cemetery, the abbey and the chapel? Who was left to pass the Catholic faith on to a subsequent generation? When I traveled and studied in France, I falsely presumed that the absence of religious faith in the majority of the French people was owing to the appeal of modernism and secular impiety: Where is your faith? But this judgement failed to account for the lethal penalties of religious belief in France's recent history since the fall of King Louis XVI.

So often, the French Revolution is glorified for its defense of democracy and republicanism, but the murderous intentions of the sans-culottes against those with superstitious belief (i.e., those pesky Catholics) is a fact buried in many history books. Most historians instead commend the republicans of the French Revolution for casting aside the religious virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love for the Enlightenment principles of Reason and Progress (akin to contemporary calls for "Science!" over and above "Dieu, Le Roi!").

"God, the King!", Sacred Heart patch

Michael Davies' For Altar and Throne: The Rising in the Vendee offers a Catholic perspective of the French Revolution. Louis XVI was a conciliatory kind of king; instead of asserting his divine kingship, he mistakenly offered a series of concessions that eventually led to his annihilation and to the destruction of the ancien régime. One of the central aims of the Revolution-cum--Reign of Terror was the dechristianization of France. A new anti-Christian calendar was instituted which began not with the birth of Christ but with the beginning of the Republic on September 22, 1792. To avoid any reference to the seventh day of rest in delight of God's creation, the republicans proposed a ten-day week instead of seven: Sunday was now a day of work and not a day of rest. The phial that held the sacred oil of Clovis, the first French Christian king, was smashed to bits by the raging republicans. Churches were vandalized, destroyed, or claimed as Temples of Reason. Altarpieces were destroyed; stained-glass windows broken; liturgical books were burned; sacred vestments were used in theatrical mockeries of religious rites; the word "saint" was removed from towns, street names, and the French vocabulary; stone statues commemorating Christian figures were beheaded; anyone continuing to wear clerical garb or the religious habit would be sentenced to death; priests were arrested or forced to renounce their faith and vocation; nuns were beheaded; priests were beheaded; Catholic families were murdered; Catholic babies were beaten until their skulls caved in; Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris became a spot for drunken orgies and anti-Catholic celebrations (see: Davies pp. 60-63).

With the Declaration of the Rights of Man, man declared himself king and thereby dethroned not only King Louis but also cast aside Christ the King. The Progress of Enlightenment was on its way, rolling over the decapitated heads of King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette; Enlightenment's Reason rushed over the drowned bodies of Catholic families that were thrown into the Loire River today commemorated as Les Noyades de Nantes. The republicans enjoyed the mass killing of Catholic women, children, and men so much that they joked that the Loire was in fact the "baignoire nationale" (trans: the national bathtub). They mocked the Catholic reverence for Our Holy Mother and instead laughed at their new "sacram sanctum guillotinam" (trans: "our holy mother guillotine"). Historians estimate between 250,000 and 300,000 Catholic Vendeans died at the hands of French Revolutionaries.

This gruesome genocide is absent from today's history books in large part because secular, modern culture tacitly sides with the republicans. Death to the Catholics! Vive la France! Liberté, égalité, fraternité! Did you know that this exclamation of "Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!" was first exclaimed by the father of the Reign of Terror Robespierre himself? And when the Church properties were stolen by the murdering republicans, they placed the above placard on the religious edifices to show their new secular proprietorship...Republicanism or Death! Whenever I hear this phrase uttered, even in defense of high-minded idealism, I shudder at its death wish for people like me, for faithful Catholics who pray to God and order their lives around Christ the King by honoring and loving their faith and their families. Vive la France! indeed, but also Vive le roi!