Traditionalism in France

[joe17]

 New York Catholic,

    Whatever your color(brown, black, poka-dot) you are welcome at where I go to Mass.  I do understand, sadly, that there can be a sense of "this is OUR Church/Chapel" and you are a guest in some places.  Something that we probably be with us, to some extent, until the end of time.
   I know a seminarian from France.  He says to wear the cassock out there is to bring ridicule from many he encounters.  Being on pilgrimage there nearly a decade ago, the sense of propriety is largely out the window, not that the US can really brag. 
  I do pray that one day the monarchy is brought back to France. 

  Joe
   

[maso]

Henri d'Orléans, the Orléanist (and Unionist) pretender.

Descended from Freemasons, revolutionaries, a regicide and an usurper!

Vive le Très haut, très puissant et très excellent Prince, Louis XX, Par la grâce de Dieu, Roi de France et de Navarre, Roi Très-chrétien!

You are perfectly right, the Orleans family is full of degenerates, insanes, and fremasons. When Louis XVI was executed on the guillotine, his cousin d'Orleans, "Philippe Egalité" (who voted in favour of the king's murder, the one vote that made the ballot to swing) wrote: "The fat pig was bled dry this evening".
In addition I must say that the two empires of Napoleon and Napoleon III in no way were anticatholic. The last one's wife was a pious and holy woman. The 5 Republics France underwent were all freemasonic by essence, thus anticatholic. The 5th, founded by De Gaulle (probably a crypto mason) doesn't make exception.

[maso]

How do you envision this emerging political power to be sustained given that the vast majority of Frenchmen are secular? Even if Traditionalism is flourishing in France they still only make up something like 2% of the population.

Yes but a religious revival is likely to ensue in the West, especially as materialism and liberalism start (slowly) dying out. We expect a great majority of mainstream Catholics to wake up in the next few decades and broaden the scope, since the Church herself will be in better shape. We can envision some likely scenarios.

1. After the political and economical collapse of the current states, the social revolutions will be bloody and dreadful with lots of personal vendettas, killings, rioting, pillaging and lawlessness;
2. Disorder and crime wears all people down and a great deal of Frenchmen, even the moderates and the undecided, will naturally flock to a strong authoritative response that restores order and who is rooted in the country's glorious past, invested with a moral authority that no republic or parliament can ever claim;
3. The moral bankrputcy of the democratic regimes that caused the collapse and chaos will make the remaining secularist voices irrelevant and discredited.
4. Finally, keep in mind that it's the politically engaged minorities that change the course of nations and history. The majority just follows along like sheep.

Vetus Ordo, you are right, at least for point 1/.
Things in France are evolving by periodic bursts since the Revolution: For instance, the riots of 1830, 1848, 1871, then the WWI calmed down a possible unrest by this time, then 1936 Front Populaire, the 1944/45 Liberation (by chance the presence of the US armies prevented a communist coup, but there were at least 100000 victims of communist summary executions), then the 1968 riots, and 3 years ago we got many troubles in Paris suburbs for 2 weeks.
Therefore you may understand that France is nearly to undergo a lot of civil troubles because the economic and social situation are bad. Things may be worsened by the muslim fundamentalists in some out of law zones.
Pray for France.
Anyways I think that only a new bloody civil war will help France to recover and to come back to her catholic roots.

[Adelbrecht]

Is there a viable candidate for king of France?  I know that there are those who can make a claim, whether Bourbon or Bonaparte, but is there a solid one to be made?

Louis Alphonse is the legitimist pretender, and there's Henri d'Orléans, the Orléanist (and Unionist) pretender.

Louis has the strongest claim.

Sans aucun doute.

[Warrenton]

How do you envision this emerging political power to be sustained given that the vast majority of Frenchmen are secular? Even if Traditionalism is flourishing in France they still only make up something like 2% of the population.

Aragon, this is all wrong.  Let's ask ourselves: what percentage of the population writes the songs that people sing?  What percentage of the population writes the films and television shows that people imitate?  That percentage design the clothes that people buy and consider fashionable?  What percentage of Europe write the laws that say how Danish and Scottish fishermen can smoke kippers, or how Italian and German butchers can make sausage?  In each case, less than 2% of 2%.  We're talking a few thousands of people out of half a billion people in Western Europe, the US and Canada. 

The vast majority follow the leaders.  When the leader was Caesar, they cheered the gladiators in the arena.  When the leaders were war mongering positivists, they fought two fratricidal world wars.  When the leaders were socialist utopians, they accepted the dole and acquiesced to nuclear deterrence.  When the leaders preached free love, the people divorced their husbands and wives and consented to the debauchery of their children.

Yet these are relatives, progenitors and descendants, of the same people who, when their leaders were Catholic, raised Cathedrals and fought crusades.   

If we wait for the majority to return to traditional Catholicism without leading them to it, we are apt to have a very, very long wait.  The good shepherd went and found the lost sheep.  To stretch the metaphor, we traditionalists are like the sheepdogs - helping herd the sheep, by barking, biting their hocks, showing them the way, and defending them from wolves when we must.  If we prove we can lead, the majority will follow. 

[jovan66102]

Henri d'Orléans, the Orléanist (and Unionist) pretender.

Descended from Freemasons, revolutionaries, a regicide and an usurper!

Vive le Très haut, très puissant et très excellent Prince, Louis XX, Par la grâce de Dieu, Roi de France et de Navarre, Roi Très-chrétien!

You are perfectly right, the Orleans family is full of degenerates, insanes, and fremasons. When Louis XVI was executed on the guillotine, his cousin d'Orleans, "Philippe Egalité" (who voted in favour of the king's murder, the one vote that made the ballot to swing) wrote: "The fat pig was bled dry this evening".
In addition I must say that the two empires of Napoleon and Napoleon III in no way were anticatholic. The last one's wife was a pious and holy woman. The 5 Republics France underwent were all freemasonic by essence, thus anticatholic. The 5th, founded by De Gaulle (probably a crypto mason) doesn't make exception.

A blog post that might be of interest that I wrote a number of years ago:

http://jovan66102.blogspot.com/2005/11/more-on-de-gaulle.html

It deals with de Gaulle flirting with the idea of putting the Orleans on the throne and gives some details on the House of Orleans.

[newyorkcatholic]

Thanks Aragon and joe17.  Although I phrased it personally, part of my point was also that wanting to preserve a Christian culture and return to monarchy in France is great but is very different from skin-color-racism, which I see as fundamentally incompatible with Catholicism.

[Warrenton]

It deals with de Gaulle flirting with the idea of putting the Orleans on the throne and gives some details on the House of Orleans.

Gore Vidal, modern day Oscar Wilde that he was, wrote a comic novella in the early 60s or late 50s called something like "The Short Reign of Pepin the 4th," in which a descendent of the Capets is installed as king of France when the 5th Republic falls.  So, other minds than ours have at least considered the possibility! 

[mikemac]

Some believe the Dauphin survived the Temple prison, that he has progeny down to today and that he is kept in hiding until the right time cause there has already been attempts on his life.

[The_Harlequin_King]

Some believe the Dauphin survived the Temple prison, that he has progeny down to today and that he is kept in hiding until the right time cause there has already been attempts on his life.

Isn't that basically the plot of The Scarlet Pimpernel?