After the suppression of their status as a public association, the purposes for which this private association (de facto) and stand alone non-profit civil corporation, the Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist (MSJB), exists:
(1) to strive, as indicated by the teaching of Perfectae Caritatis Vatican II (cf. no. 2), to imitate His Majesty, Jesus Christ, and their holy founder Fr. Jean Baptiste Rauzan (d. 1847). They will do as they did, and as their own bishop has recently instructed them: patiently to “pursue the life of contemplation and penance,” and “[t]here is nothing to prevent you as individuals from living and praying in common and continuing to seek Christian perfection together.” In a word, they strive to follow as closely as possible the spirit, writings, and written rule of Fr. Jean Baptiste Rauzan in order to remain faithful sons of the Holy Roman Catholic Church;
(2) to live in community in view of (1) in which common religious life is lived in a disciplined, traditional manner, including the celebration of the liturgy according to the usus antiquor of the Roman Rite, with the liturgical books of 1962 being normative;
(3) to maintain the patrimony and contracts of the MSJB now a private association (de facto; cf. cc. 215, 310) and stand alone non-profit civil incorporation;
(4) to build up the Body of Christ in the ways open to them (cf. Eph 4:12, 16 and Romans 14:19), such as maintaining a pious presence in the Church, maintaining their websites (e.g., cf. www.ourladyoflourdes.info), and seeking further education of its members;
(5) to do all things necessary and proper to carry out the intent and purpose of the MSJB as may be lawfully done under the law of the Catholic Church, the Statutes of the MSJB and civil law, including the disposition of property by lease, sale, exchange, transfer or otherwise.
The shield is for battle in the Lord’s army and is blue for Our Lady of Victories.
The Sacred and Immaculate Hearts at the center show how the whole world needs to have them for its focus. All the arrows of the cross point inward to them! Without them man is lost! Thus, as they have asked of us, we must give them everything in a total consecration and spend our lives in dedication to them... as the very center of counter-revolution!
This private association of the faithful (de facto), officially recognized as the Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist (MSJB), stems from the spiritual legacy of the Congregation of the Priests of Mercy, which was originally founded at Lyon, France, in 1808, by the Very Reverend, Jean Baptiste Rauzan, a zealous priest of Bordeaux. Fr. Rauzan noted that after the great upheaval which the Church suffered in France during the Revolution, the clergy and people sought from heaven extraordinary ways to foster the salvation of souls. Many ways were employed to revitalize the faith. A congregation of missionaries was desired which would be at the call of their excellencies, the bishops. Consequently, Archbishop Joseph Cardianal Fesch, requested that Fr. Rauzan found such a missionary society first at Lyons under the Empire in 1808, and organized at Paris during the first days of the Restoration in 1814. These first Missionaries of France received, without difficulty, the privileges of a legally constituted society. Of note for the MSJB as spiritual sons of Fr. Rauzan is how their holy and dedicated founder was exiled or sidelined, if you will, no less that four times, on each occasion in good standing. During these times, he kept up his good spirits, ever trusting in Divine Providence.
On February 18, 1834, Pope Gregory XVI, of holy memory, established and erected this little band of missionaries as a pontifical society under the title of the Priests of Mercy of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. By 1961, the Holy See fulfilled the long held desire of Fr. Rauzan by further elevating the institute to a full religious congregation with the members adding the public vow of poverty to that of chastity and obedience.
In the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, mitigations in religious discipline and liturgical revisions were observed in many institutes that caused some religious to seek restoration. Two members of the Congregation of the Priests of Mercy, inspired by various papal documents and exhortations calling for reform, sought permission to establish a new institute that would not only embrace a more rigorous consecrated life, but would also employ all the Sacraments according to their usus antiquior. The superior and the council of the congregation, as well as the Bishop of Covington, Kentucky, Roger J. Foys, agreed to this new foundation.
The Missionaries of Saint John the Baptist seek to maintain the spiritual and liturgical patrimony left to them by Fr. Jean Baptiste Rauzan, including making use of much of his original rule. The same revolutionary errors he confronted and corrected are now fully entrenched in the modern world. Like the great Precursor of our Lord, therefore, we, too, are a voice crying in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord and making straight His paths (Isaias 40:30), so that all things may be restored in Christ the King. Such counter-revolutionary work within ourselves, within our community, within the membership of Holy Church, and within society in general, however, is tempered by modern man's need for the Mercy of God. Since our dearest Lord came not to condemn the world but to save the world (John 12:47), we look to imitate the methods of the greatest of Prophets and Fr. Rauzan who were sent to turn the heart of the fathers to their children and the heart of the children to their fathers: lest (God) come and strike the earth with anathema (Malachias 4:6).