The Confraternity of the Knights of Our Lady of the Assumption

In its July-August 2012 issue no. 208, Fideliter published an eleven-page article on the Order of the Knights of Our Lady, Observance of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. 

In its n° 249 of July-August 2019, the same magazine proposes an article of six pages on dissidence formed by Father Briols, followed by two former members of the Order, Christian de La Tour and Reynald Berthod.

This dissent would have adapted the Statutes, which had served for the canonical erection of the Order of the Knights of Our Lady of Chartres in 1964, "with the modifications dictated by experience and the particular circuмstances due to the crisis of the Church". "They were revised and amended by Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais and approved on June 21, 2018 by Bishop Bernard Fellay, then Superior General, who erected "canonically as a Marian Brotherhood to the Order of the Knights of Our Lady of the Assumption" on June 29. "Shortly afterwards, in the Notre-Dame-des-Champs chapel of the Ecône seminary, a small ceremony gathered some priests and faithful around Bishop Tissier de Mallerais for the blessing of the insignia (the Confalon) and the sword for the use of the Order.

It is this "little ceremony" that Fideliter relates a year later to give publicity to the new Confraternity, apparently still made up of the two knights mentioned above, accompanied by a chaplain (Father Briols), an ecclesiastical superior (the superior of the District of France, whoever he may be) and a Protector Bishop (Mons. de Galarreta).

This method of splitting, aroused and sustained, makes us curiously think of the ephemeral community formed by some fugitives from Avrillé, who, over the years and for various reasons, left the convent, being grouped in Belgium by Bishop de Galarreta and Bishop Fellay, in spite of the latter's commitment to the Dominicans.

In the case of the two deserters of our Order, it was Father Briols, firmly supported by Bishop de Galarreta, who in 2012 called them to rebellion, just as Bishop Fellay incited one or the other of these Dominicans to distrust their superiors. Despite the assurances given by Fr. Schmidberger two months after the death of Msgr. Lefebvre, in a circular of May 27, 1991, according to which the Fraternity did not have "the slightest intention of reaching out to the other communities in any way," does not support the communities that it considers insufficiently submissive, much less in recent years, those that did not adhere to the new policy of abandoning the state of necessity and supplied jurisdiction, as if there was no longer any crisis in the Church: so it continues to create copies of these communities for its service.

Fideliter's article confirms it: "According to the statutes, it is the superior of the district of France, currently Father Benoît de Jorna, who is the ecclesiastical superior of the Confraternity. - Is there a superior of the Order? - No, the present members of the staff do not require the election of a Superior or a Master. It will be provided later when the need arises. Finally, the contact address is that of Father Briols. This shows that this "cavalry" does not at present have any lay superior to lead the struggle in temporary order, as the doctrine of the Two Swords wishes, but is in fact led by a cleric, Father Briols, and de jure by another cleric, the superior of the district of the Fraternity of France. There is no escape! Statutory submission to another institute, something that our Order has never known in its three quarters of a century of existence. When the spirit is gone, coercion replaces it.

It is also a good confirmation of the change of direction of the Fraternity. Thus, while in order to remain faithful to Faith and Tradition, our Observance of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary was constituted on the margin of the ancient Order that became conciliar, dragged in reverse by the liberal current; the FSSPX raises a "cavalry" that walks with it towards modernist Rome.