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Confidential MemorandumMonograph 48
Narcisse Roussel, SM, 67 pp., $5.00
No charge to members of the SM or FMI
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(Description Continued)In 1844, Roussel wrote the Memorandum to three archbishops to prove Chaminade was “not fit to govern a religious society.” Father Jean Chevaux, SM, the man who would become the third Superior General, called it a diatribe, full of false assertions and insinuations. When Chaminade tried to get a copy to build his defense, one of the recipients of the letter, the archbishop of Albi, told Chaminade the Memorandum was an “enchantment.” To read this text is to gain entrance into the mind of Roussel, a troubled and calculating man who unfortunately convinced the ecclesial powers of the time to declare the position of Superior General vacant which ended Father Chaminade’s leadership within the Society. It is not an easy text to read as it rambles and is repetitious, but it is a necessary text to understand the scheme that led to such a sad last chapter in Chaminade’s life.
The full story involves complicated legal matters over contracts and the rights of a founder; the episode is well documented in Vincent Vasey’s Last Years of Father Chaminade and Chaminade, Another Portrait. The fiasco did, indeed, delay the progress of Father Chaminade toward canonization. The truth of these events was brought to light through Father Vasey’s work in the late 1960s, and Father Chaminade was beatified in 2000.
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