Restoring Le Royaume de France Catholique
La réduction française philosophique de Ste. Jehanne d'Arc
La réduction française philosophique de Ste. Jehanne d'Arc
La réduction française philosophique de Ste. Jehanne d'Arc is a transcendent, systematic model of the French royal hearts of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux developed through the influence of the life of St. Joan of Arc, Thérèsian Carmelite spirituality, and the philosophical lens of Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross). Its aim is Faith, Hope, and Love "on earth as it is in Heaven" through the majesty of French Catholic spirituality and True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Its means is personalized, phenomenological devotion to the combined hearts and spirituality of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
The Story
What is Royaume France?
Royaume France's purpose is to inspire others to make a dogmatic confession of Catholic faith in the spirit of True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary as prescribed by St. Louis de Montfort. Our means of inspiring that confession of faith under the mantle of the Blessed Virgin is devotion to the eternal form of Our Lady's Catholic and Royal France under the patronage of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the two co-secondary patronesses of France.
The Royaume France model, built through the phenomenological reduction of the combined hearts of St. Joan and St. Thérèse, is a transcendent form of traditional French Catholic spirituality designed to keep us on what I call "the Trail of the Dogmatic Creed with St. Joan and St. Thérèse" to the Kingdom of God. Without such a model, we likely will be swept away by the prevailing hurricane force winds of modern culture, philosophies, and disoriented spiritualities. Our goal is Heaven; our understanding of the only means to attain it is the Holy Catholic Church; our fundamental spirituality is devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary; and the manifestation of all this is what we call the "Royal Heart." The Royal Heart is foremost a spiritual orientation resulting from Royaume France which naturally leads to a Catholic worldview in cultural and political affairs.
Foundational to meriting the Royal Heart of St. Joan and St. Thérèse in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is the rejection of the grave errors of modernity - it's ideologies, philosophical manifestations, cultural premises, and socio-political structures.
Royal Hearts are inherently, substantively opposed to modernity in its current state for the simple reason that we are for the Kingdom of God. In the temporal cultural world, we are different from "reactionaries" who simply "conserve" the present (thus, fancying themselves as "conservatives"). Royal Hearts have a positive understanding of the Kingdom of God as our model "on earth as it is in Heaven," however imperfectly we instantiate that Kingdom on this earth. Therefore, we oppose modernity with its progressive liberalism not because we are "reactionaries" who are "afraid of change," but because we are Catholic and Royal Hearts who are pointing to a superior model in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary where Jesus Christ reigns in all His glory. We are "for" the better manifestation. We "oppose" what draws us further from it.
Thus, we often share immediate goals with reactionaries. It is not unusual that we oppose the same liberal evil. However, we are not reactionaries attempting to conserve the existing ways; we always are seeking movement toward the superior model, a very different and life-giving motive. The interests of reactionaries and royalists coincide but are grounded in different paradigms.
My goal as a Royal Heart, and as reflected in Royaume France, is the rejection of modernity for the glory of Mary and to help usher in the reign of her Immaculate Heart. This model is one that provides lasting spiritual support in that effort. Only those who "endure to the end" will be saved. To reject modernity for the sake of the Blessed Virgin Mary is to take a step away from the gates of Hades and toward the Kingdom of God.
This is Royaume France, the "form" of True Devotion to Mary instantiated in us that we call the "Royal Heart" of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
The Jehannian Spirituality of Royaume France
Jehannian Monarchism
I still have the image in my mind of the high plains outside of my childhood home of Guymon. I'm talking about Guymon of long ago, the one that has almost faded into the mist of my aging memory. The land and the sky both were as big and wide as the whole earth, at least it seemed. Occasionally, big dark clouds would form way out in the distance, and you could see the shadow beneath them made up of the rain falling over some distance acreage. The occasional flash of lightning would result in a low rumble maybe five seconds later. The clouds were ominous but not threatening, as they were miles away.
In my life story, the land and these experiences infused into me the spiritual model I would come to actualize over the course of my life. The land's "giveness" as Edith Stein would call it, was a sense of divine order. My response was a Steinian form of "empathy" with that land. I received it as it was "in itself," all the while remaining "myself" (an important Steinian distinction).
Later this empathy was catalyzed through St. Thérèse of Lisieux' descriptive metaphor of spirituality as a panoramic landscape. Through her I was introduced to Joan of Arc who, I discovered, had the exact "giveness and empathy" relationship with her land that I did with mine, only hers was at a much more profound level. This led to an immediate sense of kinship and to what I call, again under the mentorship of Edith Stein, an "empathic devotion" to Joan of Arc, whom I trusted could develop and fully actualize this panorama in my soul. I could trust no other at her level in the created order (another important distinction). Only she could lead me, and this by command of the Divine Will.
This empathic devotion with Joan led to an understanding through her eyes of the Monarchy as a representation and incarnation of this divine order. Just as Stein's philosophy was for me at the event horizon between natural and supernatural knowledge, Royalty, through Joan, became for me the event horizon between Heaven and earth in this divine order.
And that is how I became a Jehannian Monarchist, a term I use to describe my particular form of devotion to the royal blood. The objective nature of this devotion came about through "intersubjective" (a principle of Phenomenology) sharing with the French heroine. God writes straight using crooked lines as the saying goes, or, more accurately, using intersubjectivity between empathic minds.
I write this because my model expands when I do, and expand it must. Without manifestation through further intersubjectivity in shared words, it gets lost like an echo over one of those meadows, remembered but never again heard.
Edith Stein - our Philosophy mentor
Edith Stein is our mentor for the philosophical foundations of Royaume France
The development of Royaume France was in accord with the following:
"For Thomas, the first axiom of philosophy—if we wish to use the word—is that God himself is the first Truth, the principle and criterion of all truth. From God proceeds any truth we can get hold of. The task of first philosophy follows from this fact: it must take God as its object. It must set forth the idea of God and the mode of his being and knowing.
Then it must establish the relationship to God of whatever else that exists, in its essence and existence, and the relationship to the divine knowledge of the knowledge of other knowing beings. We must bring to bear on these questions everything we can know about them, taking what we should not only from natural knowledge but also from revelation."
~ Edith Stein, Knowledge and Faith (The Collected Works of Edith Stein, vol. 8, Kindle locations 818 and 821)
Reductive versus Emergent Approach
The Royaume France approach is uniquely reductive
I have written extensively on the subject of empathic devotion to St. Joan of Arc. Our Lord and Our Lady have transformed my life through this uniquely powerful relationship. The Holy Spirit has willed to provide the sanctifying grace I need in hierarchical fashion, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary and then through St. Joan. I have been fascinated for over a decade as to the process and mode of this grace. It feels as though I am called to think it through for whatever mysterious purpose that thinking out, that modeling of the grace, serves the Kingdom of God.
The key aid has been Edith Stein, known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Here is why. The point of great importance in the model for which I seek is the interface between our natural philosophy and God’s supernatural grace. This seems to be my primordial point of focused interest. I contemplate the zero-point, the event horizon, between philosophy and grace. Where does our natural philosophical orientation meet grace, thus subsuming the former into the latter for our transformation into a member of the Kingdom? How are our minds transformed in congruous participation with the heart? As a philosopher saint, Edith Stein has proven invaluable in this endeavor.
Stein was a pre-conversion phenomenologist who, post-conversion, reconciled phenomenology with the scholasticism of the Church. The result has been a treasury of knowledge for my cause. Edith Stein integrated modern philosophical thought with the ancient tradition of the Church. She is modern without being a modernist, a spiritual talent sorely needed in contemporary society.
Her description of the philosopher’s need to engage a mentor, even across time and space, by studying their thinking from “grounds to conclusions” overwhelmed me as being most appropriate for understanding my own devotion to Joan, my mentor, and an introduction to Edith’s philosophy on empathy. It was my first reflection on empathy from Edith Stein’s perspective and the beginning of my articulation of “empathic devotion.” I began to realize that it was empathy, in the Steinian sense, that I felt with Joan of Arc, the very empathy Edith wrote upon extensively and described above.
The integration of Edith’s own model of empathy to ours, from the Holy Spirit’s voluntary Divine Glance of Grace, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and to our empathic devotion to Joan, led me to the following proposition on the issue of the zero-point between our natural philosophy and supernatural grace, that is, about the point where they meet. Repentance, with the goodwill assumed by it, is that zero-point. Repentance makes us willing to listen, to follow another from “grounds to conclusions.” Without repentance Joan inspires us naturally in our own lives as we seek our own way (emergent qualities), but we are not transformed supernaturally in sanctifying grace to see as Joan sees (reductive qualities). By repentance we enter Joan’s life empathically in grace, allowing her to teach and guide us with the aid of the Holy Spirit and through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
For those who would ask how to prepare oneself to be transformed through devotion to St. Joan, I would say true repentance, an empathic willingness (goodwill) to see the world as Joan sees it, and the reductive act of surrendering all to Divine Providence through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
This is the substance of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness that is our aim in inspiring others to seek a repentant, dogmatic confession of Catholic faith.
