Bishop Dominique Rey, of Fréjus-Toulon, France, one of the best and most solid bishops in the world, and a beacon of liberty for the Traditional Mass, resigned his office today. He is 72.
Francis had first suspended the ordinations in his diocese. Then, he named a coadjutor for him, but encouraged him to stay until his regular retirement, at 75. In his letter of resignation today, Rey says,
“During a private audience on December 23, 2023, the Pope had encouraged me to receive this collaboration [the coadjutor bishop] in a fraternal spirit, and not to resign. At the end of a first year in which the suspension of ordinations was lifted for almost all the candidates, the nuncio informed me that the Holy Father was asking me to leave my position as diocesan bishop of Fréjus-Toulon, without my knowledge of any new elements than those that had motivated the designation of the coadjutor bishop.”
Shameless and disloyal? Yes, but par for the course for Francis.
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Guillaume de Thieulloy had a great rundown of the whole disgusting story for our friends at French blog Le Salon Beige:
Bp. Rey has just resigned - at the express request of the Apostolic Nuncio. Officially, for two reasons. The first concerns the economic management of the diocese. This was already one of the main reasons put forward for the canonical visitation that led to his being sidelined. However, I would be curious to know how many French dioceses would be spared if Rome took an interest in their economic management. Before Covid, it was said that half of them were bankrupt. Since then, the abuse crisis and the collapse of revenues have taken their toll, and, at the very least, three quarters of France's bishops could suffer the same fate as their confrere from Toulon for reasons of economic management.
The second reason had been in the air for a long time: it had been suspected when certain seminarians were deprived of ordination; it has now been made evident. With this new sanction, Bp. Rey is paying for his excessive closeness to the “Trad world”. No, he wasn't a “Trad,” but he did welcome “Trads” into his diocese. Note the exactitude of the accusation! Anyone can be close to a “Trad” or to someone who is close to a “Trad,” and so on. Like the plague, this disease is likely to be contagious, and anyone who isn't rolling on the floor and foaming at the mouth at the sight of traditional liturgy is likely to find themselves accused.
There is a lot to be said for this impiety that makes us loathe so much what our forefathers did. But, for today, I do not have the heart to go into the substance of the debate. I would just like to draw attention of the legitimate authorities to the fact that the sanction taken against Bp. Rey may well appear to be an act of authority, but in reality it is devastating for authority - firstly of the Pope, and secondly that of all the bishops.
Of the Pope because, as far as I know, on this “charge” (which should be a title of honor, for I don't believe that a bishop's mission is to stir up liturgical warfare in his diocese!), Bp. Rey merely followed the request of John Paul II, then of Benedict XVI, for a generous welcome of the faithful attached to the traditional liturgy. If a bishop can be sanctioned by the Roman Pontiff for having obeyed a previous Roman Pontiff, we can bet that his fellow bishops will consider now a prudent wait-and-see attitude. I doubt that this will be very “productive” for the good of souls, but I'm sure that it destroys the confidence we should all have - and bishops first of all - in the one who, until recently, was called the “Common Father” and who, in place of paternal authority, is here proposing the tyranny worthy of Bolshevik political commissars.
Unfortunately, I'm not using the word indiscriminately. These methods of “government” were indeed exemplified by the various totalitarian regimes and, with unequalled “refinement,” by the Bolsheviks. Under the Red Terror, people could be executed on the basis of mere suspicion and moderation, with objective facts and proven crimes no longer having a monopoly on punishment. That's what's happening here (mutatis mutandis because, thank God, Vatican bureaucrats will always be choirboys, if I may say so, compared to Chekists!): on the one hand, Bp. Rey isn't being punished for a precise, condemnable, fact and, on the other, his condemnation can extend to anyone.
That's the problem with the left, that's the problem with progressivism: you can never be progressive enough. You're always “reactionary” relatively to someone else. The Left, which has been deciding who is right-wing since 1789, demands that the moderate Right hand over the head of the “extreme” Right on a platter. And if you want to survive in a world governed by rules as inept as they are monstrous, there's only one solution: denounce, denounce again, and denounce again - and, if possible, those closest to you. Until it's the chief denouncer's turn (the Revolution always devours its children)!
I don't know just the extent in which the Pope was involved in the decision to “resign” Bp. Rey, but until there is proof to the contrary, it was at least taken in his name. So it is indeed pontifical authority that Vatican apparatchiks are dissolving by turning it into a pure power struggle. Ironically, it was under a Jesuit pope that Hobbes finally triumphed over the great Jesuit theologian Saint Robert Bellarmine, suggesting that law has nothing to do with truth and everything to do with force - but perhaps no one in Rome knows anything about the heroic resistance of the Catholic Counter-Reformation to absolutism (especially English absolutism).However, it is above all Bp. Rey's fellow bishops who have something to worry about. The episcopal authority which - until recently (and I wasn't informed of the change!) - was established by divine right in the Church is now subject to that of the smallest minutante of the Curia. What was the point of convening Vatican II to talk to us about the episcopate and the laity? The bishops are asked to obey blindly and the laity are asked to keep quiet. In France, since the Concordat, bishops have been considered “purple province prefects.” Clearly, Rome has decided that prefects are easier to deal with than successors of the Apostles, and now dismisses them at the drop of a hat: Bp. Rey is not the first to pay the price, and there's no reason why he should be the last.I don't know what will become of Bishop Rey and his diocese. I gladly pray for both of them. But what I am sure of is that the Church cannot safely ape the worst failings of the State. It's not healthy in the State for legitimate authorities to say everything and its opposite (isn't that Jupiter?). It's even more dangerous to do so in the Church, where authority rests on the very word of Christ, the eternal Truth. It's not healthy for legitimate authorities in the State to trample on natural communities. It's even more dangerous in the Church, where a diocese is not the cell of a giant termite mound that would be the universal Church, but a truly local Church. It is unhealthy in the State for legitimate authorities to punish someone for a ghostly or imaginary crime. It is even more dangerous for the Church to consider faithfulness to Tradition - without which there would simply be no Church - as a crime.The terrible crisis of the Church we are going through is first and foremost a crisis of authority - that no longer dares to believe that it is divinely established to lead us to Heaven, and which, no longer sure of itself, oscillates between laxity and authoritarianism. The only way out is a return to authority, and first and foremost to Christ, the source of all authority in the Church. To our usual prayer: O God, give us holy priests, I suggest we add: O God, give us holy bishops!
