Our Lady At La Salette
And The Heresy of Melanianism
©Lucio Mascarenhas. April 18th., 2004; Revised, March 2008.
LIE: "Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist...." — Words alleged spoken by Our Lady of La Salette to Melanie Calvat in 1846 A.D., and falsely sold by Pseudo-Catholic heretics as being fully approved by the Church's magisterium! As a matter of fact, this message, put out after the Vatican Council, 1869-1870, has been repeatedly and consistently condemned and proscribed by every Pope from Pius IX to Pius XII, and no Catholic may lawfully approve or teach it!
This article includes text from the Abbe de Nantes' pages on the same subject. See also: Romanism & Roman
I had studied the book,
The Church Teaches — Documents of the Catholic Church in English Translation by the Jesuit Fathers of St. Mary's College, St. Marys, Kansas, 1955, reprinted by TAN Books, 1973. It was while I was reading the Council of the Vatican's Dogmatic Constitution,
Pastor AEternus that I became convinced of the Catholic Doctrine of Roman Indefectibility — and of the implications for Catholic Traditionalism.
In my long battle to uphold this Doctrine, I was certain of other, older texts upon which
Pastor AEternus was based, and which provided backing-up for the Doctrine, but unfortunately, because of my laziness, I did not take the trouble to seek them out again, transcribe them and use them as reinforcement for the Doctrine.
However, recently, while writing out a minor tract, sort of, against the heresy of Ecumenism, I rediscovered these texts.
It is with great pleasure that I made the acquaintance, once again, of these texts. One text, however, stands out, for a particular reason.
Frequently, in official texts, the name Roman Church is used ambiguously, both for the Church of Rome, as a particular community of believers, and for the Universal Church, of which, the name "Roman" is one of its attributes, being governed by the Bishop of Rome as the Supreme Pastor on Earth, in succession to the Supreme position conferred on St. Peter by our Lord.
However, in this one particular text, this ambiguity is necessarily absent, as it juxtaposes these two distinct realities and sets out the relationship between them.
Therefore, without any further ado, I present to the reader the II
nd. Holy & Ecumenical Council of Lyons, under the Pope Gregory the X
th., in 1274:
The same holy Roman Church also has supreme and full primacy and jurisdiction over the whole Catholic Church. This it truly and humbly recognizes as received from the Lord himself in the person of St. Peter, the Prince or head of the Apostles, whose successor in the fullness of power is the Roman Pontiff. And just as the holy Roman Church is bound more than all the others to defend the truth of faith, so, if there arise any questions concerning the faith, they must be decided by its judgment.
Anyone who is aggrieved may appeal to it in matters pertaining to the ecclesiastical court; and in all cases that require ecclesiastical investigation, one may have recourse to its judgment.
Also, all churches are subject to it, and their prelates render it obedience and reverence.
There is such a fullness of power vested in this Church that it admits other churches to a share in its responsibility; amd many of these, especially the patriarchal churches, the same Roman Church has honoured with various privileges. Yet always its special position has remained intact, both in general councils and in some others.
Amen.
What is obvious is that the
sensus of the above text entirely and absolutely excludes any possibility that the Church of Rome could ever fall away from the True Faith, as had, for example, the Church of Constantinople at least five times: Under the Patriarchs Nestorius, Acacius, Sergius the Monothelite, Photius and Michael Caerularius...
What would one be obliged, then, to make, if someone sidled up and claimed to have received revelations that the Church of Rome would fall?
Dismiss this nonsense with the contempt due, of course! Any doubts?
Melanie Calvet was one of the two shepherds to whom our Lady appeared at La Salette, France, in 1846. After investigating the claim of the vision and the message, the Bishop of Grenoble certified the vision as genuine.
Melanie Calvet, however, had a troubled career and kept on wandering from place to place, and institution to institution, unable to cope or settle in. Later, she came into contact with a rather eclectic class of people who dabbled in mysticism, under whose influence she began to claim that our Lady had given her certain messages, including that "Rome will lose the Faith and become the seat of the Antichrist."
The Bishop of Grenoble, Msgr. Ginoulhiac, was forced to act against Melanie and her claims of additional visions and of new messages. These were found to be contrary to the faith, and the Bishop was forced to formally announce that the Apparitions of La Salette had come to an end.
In 1854, the Bishop wrote of the additional "messages" that Melanie put out after the approval of the Apparition, that "the predictions attributed to Melanie... have no basis in fact: they have no importance with regard to La Salette... they have come after La Salette and have nothing to do with it".
The bishop added: "The children were given the broadest freedom to amend or deny any statement they may have made, but they have never altered anything on the veracity of the event of La Salette".
With this in mind, Bishop Ginoulhiac, on September 19, 1855, proclaimed the following from the Holy Mountain of La Salette, where our Lady had appeared to the two visionaries: "The mission of the shepherds is herewith ended, that of the Church begins."
In 1854, a English priest brought Melanie to England. She entered the Carmelite convent of Darlington the following year: she took temporary vows there in 1856, but left the convent in 1860.
She tried religious life again with the Sisters of Compassion of Marseille. After a stay in their convent of Cephalonia (Greece), and a short sojourn at the Carmelite convent of Marseille, she returned to the Compassion for a brief time.
Following a short stay at Corps and La Salette, she went to live at Castellamare di Stabia, near Naples in Italy. She resided there seventeen years, writing her "secrets" as well as a rule for a future foundation. The Vatican urged the local bishop to forbid her this type of publication, but she persisted in her search for approbation and an imprimatur, even extracting a hearing from a papal official, Bishop Lepidi. This, however, never constituted even a veiled approval. The authority invoked by Melanie is incompetent in the matter.
After a stay at Cannes in the south of France, Melanie travelled to Chalon-sur-Sa�ne, seeking to found a community with the sponsorship of the Canon de Brandt of Amiens. Eventually she entered into litigation with Bishop Perraud, the ordinary of Autum.
The Holy See, brought into the matter, decided in favor of the bishop.
In 1892, Melanie returned to a place near Lecce, Italy, then journeyed to Messina in Sicily on the invitation of Canon Annibale di Francia.
Following a few months in the Piedmont region, she was invited by the abb� Combe, pastor of Diou, a priest much taken up with politico-religious prophecies, to settle in the Allier region. She finished a contrived autobiography, wherein she created an extraordinary childhood enriched with pseudo-mystical wanderings, her own imaginings and the chimera provided by her correspondents.
Melanie died on December 14, 1904, at Altamura, near Bari, Italy.
She is buried beneath a marble column with a bas-relief depiction of Our Lady welcoming her into heaven.
In spite of her unapproved writings, Melanie was always faithful to her original account of the apparition and message of La Salette. She demonstrated this at the Shrine of La Salette during her last visit there September 8-19,1902.
The Church avoided cracking down on her, and made several attempts to rehabilitate her, all in vain. Finally, after her death, privately published books containing her errors were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books, in 1915 and 1923.
In making her famous claim, Melanie, apparently unknowingly borrowed it from the greatest, most vicious, degenerate and satanic enemy of Christ and of Christianity in the history of the Church — Martin Luther.
This claim has been pounced upon and triumphantly flaunted by various enemies of the Church ever since, not the least by Michel Colin, a confidence-artist who opportunistically latched on to the anti-Catholic legacy of Melanie Calvet in order to found his own schismatic sect, presently broken into two factions, one of which is led by the heresiarch Gaston Tremblay in Quebec.
Melanie Calvet's 1879 "Revelations" are pure heresy, which flagrantly contradict the Holy Council of the Vatican held in 1870, which declares quite plainly that it is the eternal Church tradition that Rome cannot fail and lose the faith. [See my articles:
Romanism;
Roman]
These purported messages put forth by Melanie Calvet were certainly not part of the original message revealed at La Salette, but the result of her subsequently falling in with unscrupulous people. Again, much of these ideas were picked up from Protestant Millenarianism.
No one can be Catholic and admit the Melanianist heresy. It is therefore well and proper that Holy Mother Church had put these Pseudo-LaSalettan heresies, the Melanianist heresies, on the Index...
There are many who persist in crediting the heresies of Melanism, despite being made aware of the prior, and contrary, teachings of the Holy Council of the Vatican, 1869-70, and of other Ecumenical and General Councils before that, upon whose teachings, the Council of the Vatican, 1869-70, bases its own teachings, on this point, upon.
It remains a fact, that if Melanie's forged latter messages are true, then the Church fell away, not under Roncalli, but, at least, under Pius IX and with the Council of the Vatican, 1869-70,
if not earlier...
There is, in fact, a small group of people, mainly associated with the Dollingerites or "Old Catholics" who indeed put forth these ideas.
For us, however, who are unashamedly Catholic, such a claim is impious and unconscionable...
Given these incontestable facts, one is forced to the conclusion that those who persist in pretending to be traditionalist Catholics, and yet credit Melanianism are either gullible idiots or malicious saboteurs and infiltrators... Whichever it is, it does not do them credit, that they credit that which blasphemes Holy Mother Church...
I can only say that I have nothing but the utterest contempt for anyone who is either so puerile or so vile as to credit these monstrous blasphemies put forth by Melanie Calvet in her "latter" messages, in opposition to the Holy Council of the Vatican, 1869-1870, and in further opposition of the actions of Holy Mother Church in putting these vile blasphemies on the index in the early years of the last century.
It is extremely regretable to see that despite all the evidence available in the documents of the Church, many souls still persist in crediting the nonsense put forth by Melanie Calvet.
It is now high time to slay off this beast once and for all.
As a test, let us grant that this "prophecy" is right. Therefore, we are forced to conclude that the Seat of the Pope, the Successor of Peter, cannot be permanently fixed in Rome, since, at one time in history, Rome will lose the faith, etc.
Now this basic deduction runs into a huge obstacle in Catholic doctrine. We have authoritative texts of the Church dating even from the first age of the Church, wherein it is clearly and imperatively specified that the Bishop of Rome is always and eternally the Pope!
Take for example, the classic directive of Pope Boniface VIII in his Bulla
Unam Sanctam, which he issued in 1302:
"We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff."
There are very many more texts, both before and after this, by Popes, Councils, etc., but I will use
Unam Sanctam as a test case.
If it is true that God revealed that "Rome will lose the Faith and become the seat of the Antichrist", then He would not have permitted Boniface to decree as he did. For then, Boniface would have been guided to decree in this manner:
"We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Pope, who will be, for a long time, the Roman Pontiff, but not always!"
The difficulty of the case becomes apparent, does it not?
There are far too many statements binding the faithful where the Church has unambiguously specified the central role of the Roman Pontiff in the Economy of Salvation. However, if it is true that "Rome will lose the Faith and become the seat of the Antichrist" then all these statements are either wrong or defective in that they did not specify as unambiguously as necessary.
This is an important point to understand. The Church is infallibly guided by the Holy Ghost, who is God, who can neither deceive, nor be deceived. Therefore, if this message (of Melanie) is correct, then the Church should have, at least several times, if not at every single mention of the Roman Pontiff, added this necessary caveat, such as I have, for demonstration, added to the directive of Boniface VIII...
Some may argue that perhaps the Church already has done this, in some obscure text. I say that this argument does not hold water. As one pope has mentioned: The faith is not meant to be known only to those who have spent their entire lives searching the books, and to have found the final and comprehensive truth only in their last days. Rather the faith is for all men, of whatever age and condition. Therefore, we are forced to either conclude that the Holy Ghost has failed us, which is impossible, or that the claim of Melanie is wrong and false, contrary to the Holy Catholic Faith.
Church vs. Revelation?
Given the perversity that obtains, I fully apprehend that some people may allege that the Revelations made to Melanie are superior to the Doctrine of the Church, and supercedes the teachings of the Church.
The teaching authority of the Church has been established by Christ Himself, in Divine Revelation, and He guarantees it for all time. But, again, there is a sharp distinction between Public and Private Revelation.
Public Revelation is always and everywhere superior to any Private Revelation.
Public Revelation is that Revelation that is made unto all men and which all men are required to accept and follow in order to ensure their eternal salvation.
Private Revelation, on the other hand, needs to be investigated and certified as true by the authorities established in Public Revelation — the Teaching Authority of the Church — and if it contradicts or alters Public Revelation in any point or question, it gives way to Public Revelation.
Magisterial Texts Upto Pope Pius IX
- Pope St. Julius — Letter to the Oriental Churches, 341: Why was nothing written to us about the Church of Alexandria? Did you not know that the custom was this: to write to us first, and thus from here justice would be determined? Therefore, if any such suspicion fell upon the bishop of Alexandria, the thing to do was to write to this Church (of Rome).
- Pope St. Innocent I — Letter to the Bishops of Africa, 417: Following the examples of ancient tradition... in your pursuit of the things of God,... you have made manifest your proper course of action the vitality of your religion... when you agreed to refer to our judgment. For you knew what was due to the Apostolic See, since all of us who are here desire to follow the apostle from whom have come this episcopate and all the authority belong to this name. By foloowing him we know how to condemn what is wrong and to approve of what is praiseworthy. Moreover, in safeguarding the ordinances of the Fathers with your priestly zeal, you certainly believe they must not be trodden under foot. They decreed, not with human, but with divine judgment that no decision (even though it concerned the most remote provinces) was to be considered final unless this See were to hear of it, so that all the authority of this See might back up whatever just decision was reached.
- Pope St. Boniface I, Letter to Rufus, Bishop of Thessalonica, 422: ... We have sent a letter... to the Synod (at Corinth) and from this letter all the brethren realize... that Our judgment is not to be reviewed. For it has never been permitted to go over anything once it has been decided by the Apostolic See.
- Pope St. Hormisdas, Formula for the Acacians, 517. It was ordered by the Emperor Justinian, the first Catholic Emperor of the East in a long time, that the Oriental bishops sign the Formula drawn up by Pope St. Hormisdas at his behest to end the Schism of Acacius, one-time Patriarch of Constantinople. According to the Formula, these bishops re-recognised the supremacy and authority of the Apostolic See, i.e., of the Church of Rome and of its Bishop, the Pope.
- Pope St. Leo IX, Letter to Michael Caerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, 1053: ...The holy Church has been built upon a rock, that is, upon Christ, and upon Peter or Cephas, the son of John, who was first called Simon. It was so built because it never was to be conquered by the gates of hell, that is, by heretical opinions which lead the unwary to destruction. This is the promise of Truth itself who is the cause of all that is true: "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18). The same Son of God bears witness that by his prayers he obtained the fulfillment of this promise from the Father, for he said to Peter, "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has desired to have you... but I have prayed for thee , that thy faith may not fail" (Luke 22:31f). Will there by anyone, then, so foolish as to dare think that the prayer of the person whose will is power to do, can be devoid of effect? Is it not by the See of the Prince of the Apostles, namely, but this Roman Church, both by this same Peter and by his successors, that all the inventions of heretics stand condemned, exposed, and overcome? Are not the hearts of the brethren strengthened in the faith of Peter which has not failed thus far and will not fail till the end of time?
- Pope Gregory X, The Second Council of Lyons, 1274: The same holy Roman Church also has supreme and full primacy and jurisdiction over the whole Catholic Church. This it truly and humbly recognizes as received from the Lord himself in the person of St. Peter, the Prince or head of the Apostles, whose successor in the fullness of power is the Roman Pontiff. And just as the holy Roman Church is bound more than all the others to defend the truth of faith, so, if there arise any questions concerning the faith, they must be decided by its judgment. Anyone who is aggrieved may appeal to it in matters pertaining to the ecclesiastical court; and in all cases that require ecclesiastical investigation, one may have recourse to its judgment. Also, all churches are subject to it, and their prelates render it obedience and reverence. There is such a fullness of power vested in this Church that it admits other churches to a share in its responsibility; amd many of these, especially the patriarchal churches, the same Roman Church has honoured with various privileges. Yet always its special position has remained intact, both in general councils and in some others.
- Pope Boniface VIII - Bulla Unam Sanctam (1302): We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.
- Pope Leo X - Exsurge Domine Condemnation of the Errors of Luther (1520):
- Condemned Proposition # 25: The Roman Pontiff, the successor of Peter, was not, in the person of St. Peter, appointed by Christ as his vicar over all the churches of the entire world.
Operation Of Roman Indefectibility
Some will say, "Whatever the Church taught, Rome has in fact fallen!"
Rome has not.
The Doctrine of Roman Indefectibility does not mean that Romans will not fall. It merely means that not
all Romans will fall. That is, there will always remain a remnant Church in and of Rome that will not fall.
It may be that most if not nearly all Romans fall away. However, the Citadel of the Faith will not fall; it will not be destroyed or ruined or occupied by the enemy. It will stand.
Today, we see, with our eyes, that "Rome has fallen." But we are obliged to believe, upon the Word of God, that Rome has not; that merely a great number have, but that Rome withstands, not of itself, but by the Power and Guarantee of God. This is our Faith. To confess this is to be Catholic.
Like Abraham, we cannot see the physical evidence of God's faithfulness. But we believe in God, who can neither deceive, nor be deceived. And so we believe: The Church of Rome is indestructible!
Caveat: The Non-Case
It is necessary to state the Caveat that, even though I believe entirely and absolutely in the Doctrine of Roman Indefectibility, I do not agree with Mr. J. Lawrence Case's claim that it means that only the Romans can act to supply the Church the pope.
Such a claim is not evident from a plain consideration of the Doctrine in itself.
Previously, as I invariably cite, the Councils of Pisa and of Constance were the results of International efforts to solve a similar crisis in the Church — the "Great Western Schism" — without insisting first on the right of the Romans to solve the difficulty and to provide the Universal Church with its indisputable Supreme Leader...
It may be also be worthwhile to point out that neither Pisa nor Constance were Councils in the regular sense, in that a Council is invariably a gathering of the Bishops as a College, in succession of the College of the Apostles.
On the contrary, Pisa and Constance were actually Great Congresses of Catholics and even of Conciliarists, who were not yet defined formally as heretics; gargantuam Congresses of laymen, academics, lower clerics and from all walks of life in the Catholic world of that day!
Lúcio Mascarenhas, Bombay, India
Secretary for Correspondence to His Holiness Michael I, by the Grace of God, Pope.