Any day now, lightning will strike Mgr Dominique Rey, whom the Pope will probably deprive of his episcopal faculties by flanking him with a coadjutor endowed with "special powers". He is guilty, gravely guilty, of having turned his diocese into a crossroads of traditional and charismatic currents, a haven for young non-conformist priests, with a flourishing seminary, a young clergy of 250 active priests, with parish priests and vicars for every steeple. It's unbearable! At the end of a merciless chase led by Rome, the nuncio, the confraternal bishops and the horns are ready to sound the kill. Perhaps a little too quickly. The Bishop of Fréjus-Toulon is not yet dead.
A priest of the John Paul II generation
Dominique Rey was born in 1952 in Saint-Étienne, into a Catholic family of seven children (one of his sisters held a senior position with the Sisters of Saint Joseph de Cluny). With a master's degree in political economy and a doctorate in tax economics, he spent 1975 and 1976 working for the Chadian Ministry of Finance. There, he discovered the fiery Pentecostalism of Pastor Jacques Giraud (bishop, he became interested in the "megachurch" of Californian Baptist Rick Warren). In Paris, as a tax inspector in the Ministry of Finance, he discovered the Emmanuel community founded in 1972, of which he became a first-generation member.
He decided to become a seminarian for the Paris diocese -- but not in the then very progressive seminary of NNSS Marty and Gilson, but rather in a community hosted by the Dominicans on rue du Faubourg-St-Honoré. He was ordained in 1984, as a member of Emmanuel, for the diocese of Paris, which had become Lustigerian. Appointed to the Lycée Stanislas, whose chaplaincy at the time was entrusted to Emmanuel, he then became superior of the chaplains at Paray-le-Monial, the hub of the Community's overflowing activities, and a priest accompanying its seminarians. In 1995, he returned to Paris and was appointed parish priest of the large Trinité parish in Paris, entrusted to Emmanuel, whose large congregation is comparable in age and family size to that of traditionalist churches. He energizes the liturgical assemblies - in a rather classical sense - and the numerous activities, notably the famous "Christian café" in the heart of Pigalle.
In 2000, the nuncio Baldelli, anxious to protect the Castille seminary, which had been taken over in 1983 by Mgr Joseph Madec, appointed Dominique Rey, 48, bishop of Fréjus-Toulon, with the task of making the major seminary flourish.
A bishop who understands the power of tradismatics
"Mgr Rey, the 'start-upper' of evangelization", headlined Timothée de Rauglaudre in Les Jours on June 13, explaining: "The charismatic bishop has turned his diocese of Fréjus-Toulon into an American-style rechristianization lab against a backdrop of conservative ideas."
In short, he would be the best user of these famous 'tradismatics,' whose posture is thus analyzed by Gaël Brustier in an article for the Fondation Jean-jaurès: "Tradismatics have inherited from the 'tradis' a keen interest in politics and from the 'chachas' a self-assurance that enables them to reach out to others quite easily. In 2013, tradismatics will appear as the little brothers of the 'John Paul II generation', gathered at the 1997 WYD, and as the Benedict XVI generation gathered in Madrid for the 2011 WYD."
Mgr Rey understands them perfectly: "Mgr Dominique Rey is in no way a traditionalist. Let's emphasize that. A true charismatic, a bishop of Catholic shock, an outstanding political entrepreneur, he is the spearhead of a French Catholicism that has decided to compromise on nothing. An intellectual, missionary and organizer, as well as a fine politician, he sensed and felt, probably better than anyone else in the French episcopate, the strength and power of a widespread and diffuse spirit: the tradismatic spirit...".
A bishop of "Catholic reconquest", said Le Point on November 3, 2017, who wants to implant the Church by evangelizing in discotheques and on sports fields, while presiding over traditionalist processions in the Muslim neighborhoods of Toulon. He comes out through the eyes of Golias magazine, which awards him two dunce caps in its "Trombinoscope," and chokes at the fact that its Socio-political Observatory, directed by Abbé Louis-Marie Guitton, invited Marion Maréchal to the 2015 edition of the Universités d'été de la Sainte-Baume. And Golias doesn't know that Mgr Rey married the heir to the Orléans family and that he is the chaplain of Catholic families in Gotha who also willingly support tradismatics.
Le Point quoted one of his collaborators - Abbé de Boisgelin, whose ancestors fought in the Crusades - who praised him, albeit with nuances, as an ecclesiastic: "When you work with him, you have to accept the poverty of spirit that consists in changing your ideas when he changes them. [...] In our diocese, we welcome all ways of living one's faith, no one is left on the sidelines. It's rich, even if it sometimes upsets."
The bishop took risks, including financial ones, opening doors wide, welcoming some twenty new communities, from Brazilian charismatics to traditionalists such as the Missionaries of Divine Mercy, whose Saint-François de Paule church became the seat of a traditional personal parish in the center of old Toulon, i.e. the Muslim city, a community dedicated to the evangelization of Muslims.
The bishop unashamedly "shops" in Latin American communities, but also in traditional ones, so that the number of his seminarians in the Castille seminary, a wine-growing estate near Toulon, where jeans and cassocks rub shoulders, but also placed in communities outside the seminary, has exceeded 90 in some years.
Summorum Pontificum, in 2007, was very well received in Fréjus-Toulon. It is even the only diocese in France where the motu proprio was truly applied, i.e. where parish priests had complete freedom to say the traditional Mass, at the request of "stable groups", without referring to the bishop, and of course to Rome. That was before synodality...
Benedict XVI could have transferred Bishop Rey to a larger diocese to extend his experience, or even appointed him a cardinal. In 2008, however, he was content to appoint Marc Aillet, Vicar General of Fréjus-Toulon and member of the Communauté Saint-Martin, at the urging of Mgr Rey, Bishop of Bayonne.
Putting Bergoglionism to the test
The climate in the Church changed from 2013 onwards. It was a sort of climatic chill for prosperous dioceses, communities and seminaries, now labelled "clerical", dangerous places to be suppressed. In Albenga, Italy, the bishop was forced to resign by the appointment of a coadjutor with full powers to govern the diocese. To the very classic bishop of San Luis, Argentina ("Did you say Amoris laetitia? I haven't heard of it, nothing's changed with me!"), the Pope asked for his resignation. The bishop of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, was dismissed, and his flourishing St. Joseph's Seminary was brought back into line. In San Rafael, Argentina, another seminary was closed for being too "rigid".
As a result, the most critical of Bishop Rey's French confreres began to feel their wings grow. The "questions" sent to the bishop by the Roman congregations multiplied, because with such a large number of young communities, there is bound to be room for crisis and dysfunction. On January 11, 2020, for the first time since the John Paul II era, a determined progressive was appointed nuncio to France, Archbishop Celestino Migliore. On May 3, 2020, the bishop was stabbed by e-mail, in the form of a public letter from Abbé Arnaud Adrien, former rector of the Séminaire de la Castille - the very opposite of a leftist, but one to whom traditionalism gives hives, addressed to the deans, members of the presbyteral council, canons, Mgr Aveline, metropolitan, Mgr Beau, in charge of seminaries at the Conférence des Évêques, in other words, a letter destined to be circulated throughout the bishoprics of France and the dicasteries of the Roman Curia. The letter makes a single accusation: Mgr Rey is guilty of giving his seminary "an increasingly traditionalist line", without any consultation, particularly with the vicars general. The proof: the dismissal of Abbé Mallard, a very "open" professor of fundamental theology, by Abbé Dubrulle, of the Missionaries of Mercy, appointed prefect of studies at La Castille.
From then on, events were to unfold rapidly, particularly in the context of the Comité de Salut Public (Public Safety Committee), which was preparing and then publishing Traditionis custodes, a document designed to destroy supporters of the traditional liturgy. Mgr Rey had to explain himself before a kind of tribunal presided over by Cardinal Stella, then all-powerful Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, and before the principal members of his Congregation, notably Mgr Mercier, Secretary of the Congregation, and the very formidable Louis Menvielle, member of the Notre Dame de Vie Institute. This was followed, still in 2020, by a "friendly visit" from the future Cardinal Aveline, Archbishop of Marseille, Metropolitan of Fréjus-Toulon, prompted by the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Ouellet, Jean-Marc Aveline, an old friend of Mgr Rey's, tried to mediate, inspiring a "charter" that would enable better discernment of vocations as they arose.
But Rome, which had decided on death, was astonished by the bishop's resistance: he didn't resign like his peers in Albenga and San Luis, spoke of "dialogue" with the CEF and Rome, and dropped a few sandbags to raise his airship.
Then came the astonishing news that Cardinal Ouellet had forbidden the ordinations to be carried out by Bishop Rey in June 2022. As with the Traditionis custodes offensive, the conservative Catholic world was stirred: "Rome's unprecedented decision to 'suspend' the priestly ordinations that were to have been celebrated by Mgr Rey on June 26, is causing turmoil in the Catholic Church", wrote Jean-Marie Guénois in Le Figaro on June 3, 2022. "In the memory of theologians and bishops, the Catholic Church has never seen such a sanction." The suspension - ordered by Rome - of priestly ordinations scheduled for June 26 in the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon must be called a sanction. In other words, a brutal means of imposing a Roman message on the local bishop, Mgr Dominique Rey, 69, who has been in charge of the diocese for 22 years. Compliant newspapers like La Vie, obviously tipped off by Ouellet's offices, meanwhile listed "dysfunctions". The main one being "the restructuring of the seminary and the diocesan welcome policy". Too much room for tradis.
And on February 13, 2023, a canonical visit began, a real one this time, made to kill, under the guidance of the Congregation for Bishops, with two visitors, the most hostile ever to the local bishop, Mgr Antoine Hérouard, former secretary general of the CEF, former rector of the French seminary in Rome, former apostolic delegate for the sanctuary of Lourdes (from whom the "clerical" Mgr Brouwet had to be removed), recently appointed archbishop of Dijon, and Mgr Joël Mercier, former Secretary of the Dicastery for the Clergy, who knew the Rey dossier admirably well. No one doubted that the concluding report would, at the very least, make Bishop Rey a powerless puppet bishop. Since he decidedly didn't want to resign.
An "ecclesiastical scandal"
"The word 'ecclesiastical scandal' is strong," thundered Jean-Marie Guénois in the aforementioned article, "but it is justified. How can the Vatican and those who endorsed this decision, which a priori targets the ecclesial options of the bishop of Fréjus-Toulon, take hostage ten young seminarians [4 future priests, 6 future deacons] who are not responsible for the problem? There are undoubtedly too many priestly ordinations in France..." And he continued in a crescendo: "If there are contentious cases among the ten ordained, the Church has every means of withdrawing approval from the ordinands in question. If there's a problem with the bishop's management, it can be identified and dealt with as such. But this kind of authoritarian collective punishment does not sit well with the French Catholic community. Even on the left, which does not hold Mgr Rey dear and is surprised by the 'violence' of the procedure. We mustn't let the authoritarianism deplored by many in the Vatican at the end of Francis' pontificate create a kind of clerical terror in the Catholic Church, at a time when all we can talk about is synodality!"
It has to be said that "left-wing" Catholic thinking has become completely out of step with the expectations of what remains of the Christian people in France. A questionnaire entitled "Synode sur la synodalité" revealed that 92.9% of those questioned expect a priest to dispense the sacraments as a matter of priority, 87.6% are in favor of priestly celibacy, 70% criticize the Church for "not assuming its opinions and keeping the Truth to itself for fear of shocking people", 74% expect it to promote "a bioethical model ensuring full respect for the human person, from conception to natural death", 70% expect it to "defend the family in its traditional form".
In short, practicing Catholics believe that mainstream ecclesiastical thinking has got it all wrong. Dominique Rey understood this. In Les espaces du catholicisme français contemporain (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2021), Vincent Herbinet devotes an entire chapter to analyzing the Fréjus-Toulon case and its different bishop. He spoke of a "fourth way", neither progressive, nor fundamentalist, nor even a "third way" of the kind Cardinal Lustiger advocated in the 80s and 90s. V. Herbinet, who "hypothesized that a more visible Catholic militancy would henceforth take shape with family, ethical and doctrinal issues", rightly attached decisive importance to the articulation between classicists and traditionalists, and made it the central point of the Rey attempt.
This was the most subversive point of the established ecclesiastical order, and thus the main charge against the Bishop of Fréjus-Toulon: in tune with the current reality of what remains of French Catholicism, Dominique Rey was helping to blur the boundaries between conservative and traditional Catholics. For Vincent Herbinet and Jean-Marie Guénois alike, the Rey experience in Fréjus-Toulon, despite its weaknesses, was a laboratory for the future.
A bishop betting on the future of the Church? The men of the past, in Rome and in the French episcopate, wanted to make him pay for it.
So, one last remark: who could be the impeccable hero to succeed Dominique Rey? The faithful who have seen what episcopal appointments have been like for several decades are wondering... and worrying!
