NAME: The American Vendée Institute (AVI)
SLOGAN: Dieu Le Roi (God is the King)
WHAT IS IT? The AVI is an educational and action-based think tank established to promote and defend the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ.
MISSION: The American Vendée Institute’s mission is to restore a Christian social, political and legal order on the North American continent through education and public activities grounded in the principles of traditional Catholic social teaching and Western Christendom.
WHAT IS THE AMERICAN VENDEE INSTITUTE?
The American Vendée Institute (AVI) is an educational and action-oriented think tank established to restore a Christian social, political and legal order on the North American continent.
The AVI focuses primarily on political, legal, and social issues from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective in effort to open the minds and hearts of all Americans to the suppressed history of our own past, the reality of the present world, and to prepare Americans for the future to come.
The AVI’s goal, then, is to educate Catholics and non-Catholics alike about America’s political, legal, and social history from an anti-revolutionary, Christ-centered worldview in effort to lay the groundwork for faithful Christians to convert the North American continent and thrive in a new Christian world order subservient to Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
The means, or how this is accomplished, must begin with defending the Christian social order—that is one based on the principle of subsidiarity—a hierarchy of natural social institutions that work together for the common good of society. What this will look like concretely is what the AVI will attempt to show.
WHAT IS THE VENDEE?
The name refers to the uprising that occurred in the Vendée region of France during the French Revolution between 1793 and 1796. The uprising is often characterized as a “counter-revolutionary” movement because the goal of the rebellion was to restore not just the Bourbon monarchy, but the Catholic faith in France.
The humble peasants, artisans, farmers and religious of this rural region of France did not ask for revolution—yet rebellion against the forces of revolution was forced upon them. They simply wanted to be left alone to live the lives that their ancestors dating back to time immemorial enjoyed. They lived a life of peace, tradition, and love of God, while they were forced to confront the evil goddess of secular humanism desperate to overturn a millennium of law, faith and social order.
Sadly, with this overwhelming revolutionary assault on tradition came death, destruction, and genocide. Untrained and poor peasant men of the region bravely led the charge to defend their families and heritage against this effort at systematic destruction at the hands of professional armies. Farms were burned, women were raped, churches destroyed, and priests were executed. More than 6,000 people regardless of their military status – men, women and even 400 children – were murdered through forced drownings, firing squads and guillotines.
While the United States has so far managed to avoid the social upheaval that a revolutionary mindset inevitably causes (the Civil War was one major exception), those days appear to be numbered as we witness a breakdown of the rule of law, morality and social order every day.
THE GENERAL PHILOSOPHY
In many ways, American society has rejected God’s divine and natural laws and attempted to substitute them with man-centered, secular principles openly hostile to traditional Christian principles. The AVI rejects these types of novelties contrary to the Truth, including all forms of liberalism, modernism and secular humanism.
Contrary to this post-Enlightenment, revolutionist worldview is one based on a just society, structured to benefit the common good and the salvation of eternal souls. In hindsight, it was also in France where the pinnacle of this Christian worldview achieved its apex. Under King St. Louis IX in the thirteenth century, a truly just social order was established wherein the Church and King worked in harmony, within their own rightful spheres of authority, to create a culture and legal order upon which Christendom flourished.
While no specific form of civil government is necessarily required, ultimately this integration of Church and State is most perfectly reflected in a Christian monarchy like the ones over which King Louis and other European monarchs reigned. Reality and common-sense dictate, however, that in order to institute a functioning Christian monarchy, our American society must first become truly a Christian one—as it was meant to be.
The AVI believes that while time travel to the world of the Middle Ages is not possible, the ideas that contributed to the greatness of these times must become known and applied to the extent reasonably prudent in modern society. The AVI seeks to uncover these hidden gems of law, faith, morality, and political organization to prepare modern Americans for the future in this world—and the next.