'Resister Au Mensonge!' Live Not By Lies!

The French government tries to crush a Christian movement

‘Live Not By Lies’ say the leaders of Academia Christian (watch in French here)

An extraordinary and shameful move by the French government. It has shuttered Academia Christiana, a kind of school and movement run by traditionalist Catholics and the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. My European Conservative colleague Helene de Lauzun reports:

The news came as a shock to the French Right. Victor Aubert, the president and founder of the Catholic youth movement Academia Christiana, which was set up in 2013, announced that proceedings are underway to dissolve his association, on the initiative of Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin. For all those who know this remarkable organisation from near or far, incredulousness reigns supreme, as does the powerful feeling that we have definitely tipped over into a totalitarian era.

Victor Aubert learned the news at the beginning of December, on Monday, December 5th. The police raided his home and, in front of his traumatised children, handed him a letter from the Ministry of the Interior, informing him that the association of which he is president would be dissolved by the Council of Ministers in the coming weeks. 

As Victor Aubert points out in an interview with Valeurs actuelles, “our activities include universities, training sessions, conferences, traditional festivals and folk dances.” This is the object of the government’s vindictiveness—at which it points a finger—on vague grounds: “incitement to hatred and discrimination,” incitement to violence. 

Aubert is alarmed: in a video, he calls for an “army of builders” to rise up. A metaphorical and spiritual army, which is transformed by the political police into a belligerent threat. One of the authorities’ fantasies also sees fascism in the sports played by the association’s members at its summer universities—in an atmosphere that has more in common with a traditional village festival than with paramilitary training. 

She says that this is

… the banning of a movement of Catholics attached to the Tridentine liturgy, which aims to educate young people through its conferences and to awaken them to the beauty and traditional cultures of France. The idea that they pose any danger to French society is preposterous. How many deaths has traditional Catholicism been responsible for in France to date? On the other hand, the violence of which Antifa movements can be capable is palpable in the news of the last few days, yet they are not bothered by the authorities.

This is a very serious matter. It would seem that today, it is no longer possible to shape people’s consciences towards an alternative to the model of society proposed by a corrupt and over-powerful state. Its main concern has become to destroy what has made France what it is for centuries, and to prevent young French people from taking hold of this legacy in order to cherish it, bring it back to life, and pass it on.

Here’s a link to the Academia Christiana website. They’re about educating French Catholics about Catholic culture, theology, and philosophy, as well as reviving and passing on traditional French culture — all in the service of the common good. Here’s a link to the video response (in French, no subtitles) by the Academia leadership.

I checked with sources plugged in to French public life about this. One said:

This is a crazy decision, legal-wise. Our centrists are so authoritarian in their “above the fray” mentality. Every time they dissolve (on solid legal grounds) a far left or Islamist group, they feel the need to do the same to the “other side”, whatever the legal grounds they can invent. This is a terrible dynamic which could go far.

Another said:

[Interior Minister] Darmanin and company are aware just how quickly they would lose control in the event of any serious native reaction to the civilizational catastrophe they’ve been nursing along. The regime will prevent the French from protecting themselves until its dying gasp (which might be coming sooner rather than later).

This is a Live Not By Lies moment in France if ever there was one. Christians and civil libertarians everywhere need to be watching this closely. The Academia is going to fight this in the courts, but if they lose, then they are going to have to go underground. Imagine that: because the French state cannot bring itself to recognize that not all religions are the same, and not all religions pose a threat to the common good, as radical Islam does, they are trying to crush means of Christian resistance to the dissolution of Catholicism and French culture.