The Church, the Charity of Christ

ON February 2 last, the Feast of the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem, the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X announced its intention to proceed with further episcopal consecrations on July 1, the Feast of the Precious Blood, without a pontifical mandate and against the expressly stated will of the Sovereign Pontiff. In the wake of this announcement, the Superior General of the Society, Father Davide Pagliarani, published on February 5 a lengthy and carefully prepared interview, in which he set forth the circumstances and the reasons underlying such a decision, which immediately sent shock waves even as far as Rome itself. “ Last summer, I wrote to the Holy Father to ask him for an audience. Having received no reply, I wrote to him again, a few months later, in a simple and filial manner, concealing nothing from him of our needs. I mentioned our doctrinal differences, but also our sincere desire to serve the Catholic Church without respite ; for we are servants of the Church, notwithstanding our unrecognised canonical status. ”

In fact, the service of the Church does not, in itself, depend upon a ‘canonical status’. We are quite willing to grant this. But what, precisely, does such service entail ?

What is the service of the Church ? The question is fundamental.

Having observed that “ in an ordinary parish, the faithful no longer find the means necessary to ensure their eternal salvation ” – this applying “ in particular, both the integral preaching of Catholic truth and morality, and the worthy administration of the Sacraments as the Church has always practised it ” – Father Pagliarani answers the question of service of the Church as follows : “ We serve the Church first and foremost by serving souls. This is an objective fact, independent of any other consideration. Fundamentally, the Church exists for souls ; her purpose is their sanctification and their salvation. All fine speeches, the various debates, the major themes upon which one discusses or might discuss, have no meaning if they do not have as their finality the salvation of souls. It is essential to recall this because the Church is in danger of busying herself with both everything and nothing. Ecological concerns, for example, or the preoccupation with the rights of minorities, of women, or of migrants, risk causing the essential mission of the Church to be lost from view. If the Society of Saint Pius X strives to preserve Tradition, with all that this entails, it is solely because these treasures are vital for the salvation of souls, and because it aims at nothing else but the good of souls, and that of the priesthood – ordered to their sanctification. ”

This purely intellectual reasoning, notoriously insufficient, indeed even democratic in its conception of this “ service of souls ”, gives rise to the notion that the mere use of the Church’s traditional spiritual goods, including the sacraments, in order to provide souls with a spiritual service “ of a parochial kind ”, and thereby to retain them, would suffice to establish this alleged service of the Church which the Superior of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X so presumptuously claims for himself, and, consequently, this membership in the Church, outside which that same Superior nevertheless knows that there can be no salvation of souls.

The priests of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, whatever their personal merits and virtues may be, deceive their ‘faithful’, who have asked nothing of them and towards whom they have received no mission whatsoever from the Church. They draw them ‘into their nets’ by means of the Church’s wondrous and incontestable treasures, which they forcibly appropriate to themselves, which they steal by illicitly receiving, each one of them, the sacrament of Holy Orders. They deceive the Pope by claiming to submit to his authority while at the same time creating a clerical body, and even an episcopal one, and by distributing the sacraments throughout the world against his will, thereby denying by that very fact his authority and his primacy. They hold in contempt the authority and the rights of the bishops in whose dioceses they establish priories, setting themselves in direct competition with the legitimate parish priests and the regular parishes, and against which they insinuate into the consciences of their ‘faithful’ that their souls could not find there the means of attaining salvation. Such, then, are the conditions of a purported ‘state of necessity’, first created out of whole cloth by their own deception, and of which they subsequently boast in order to arrogate to themselves every right to remedy it, in defiance of all the laws of the Church.

Without the Church, outside the Church and therefore against the Church, the priests and bishops of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X are no longer children of the Church ; they are no longer disciples of Jesus Christ. They invoke His name, certainly, but they refuse to submit to His first commandment, namely, to belong to His one and legitimate flock. They serve a religion which is, admittedly, very well organised and highly structured, but which is integrist, narrow, individualistic, anarchic, schismatic, and which cannot be described as Catholic.

It is the religion of a flourishing priestly institution which has not belonged to the Church since 1976, namely, the one founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. With obstinacy and full awareness he refused to take part in the salutary work of the Counter-Reformation for the good of the Church and of Christendom, although the Holy Spirit was calling him to this through Father de Nantes’ example and preaching. Rather than defending the Church, he preferred developing his own work, until he had drawn it irrevocably into schism.

THE DEFENCE OF THE CHURCH AND OF CHRISTENDOM

From 1958 onwards, at the time when he was received into the Diocese of Troyes by Bishop Julien Le Couëdic, in order to found there a community of missionary monks in the spirit of Saint Charles de Foucauld, Father Georges de Nantes was to take up the defence of the Church against a section of the French clergy which was slipping dangerously towards the Progressivist heresy.

This opposition of our Father to this party within the Church was to become more pronounced on October 13, 1961, when the Cardinals and Archbishops of France made a declaration, in the name of a falsified Catholic morality. They became active accomplices in the treachery of General de Gaulle who was handing over the defenceless Christian land of French Algeria to the knives of the Muslim and Socialist fellaghas. Our Father was then the only priest in the Church of France to come publicly to the defence of our brethren in Algeria, of that historic community which formed an integral part of France.

And better still, when his faithful parishioners of Villemaur came to attend Mass on July 1, 1962, the Feast of the Precious Blood, and the first bloody day of the land of Algeria’s purported independence, in order to receive the Body of Jesus for the good and spiritual salvation of their souls – how legitimate and necessary ! – our Father distributed it to them in a liturgy that was simple, magnificent and perfect. But to those same parishioners, who had come to mourn their sins and to obtain from the Church the aid of grace through her spiritual benefits, our Father also preached a spirit of Crusade, in order to enlist them all in a true and fruitful service of both the Church and Christendom, the one being inseparable from the other. And how ?

First, by rendering worship to the Blood shed by Our Lord for the remission of our sins, “ to the point of refusing, at any price, to be the direct, brutal and odious cause of so many wounds, of so many injuries inflicted upon that divine Body of Jesus Christ ”. Then, by rendering worship to the blood of “ the martyrs and soldiers of our cause ”, and by experiencing an intense emotion “ at the great spectacle of so many innocent dead among our fellow citizens and our brethren in the Faith ”. And finally, and above all, by reminding them that “ the Church has lived on, that France herself has passed through the centuries and carried the Gospel, together with civilisation, to the uttermost ends of the earth, because there has always been found within her that brilliant cohort of heroes and saints. The best among them have heeded the word of Jesus, King of martyrs and confessors : ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for those whom he loves.’ Let us know this, and, cultivating this ideal of generosity in our families and in our parishes, let us not stifle such vocations when they arise in the generous hearts of some of our children. They are the ones who will be the guarantors of our peace tomorrow. ”

In short, as our Father was to write on July 16, 1966, in his petition addressed to Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, Pro-Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith :

“ I could not remain indifferent to the tears and blood of my brethren and my fellow citizens. But, above all, I could not silently accept seeing Christian morality corrupted through the falsehood of fear and servility. The texts of my Letters to My Friends of that time remain, bearing witness to the permanence of a human and Christian morality in the face of political and ecclesiastical powers having passed into the service of the world Revolution. From this complicity there arose a new, ‘evangelical’ morality, which is the permanent negation of every political order and of all human justice (...). Meanwhile, Christ is in agony in the millions of innocent victims of the Revolution, and still more in His Gospel and in His moral teaching, shamefully corrupted within His very Church. ”

And this opposition to the Progressivist party, in scandalous collusion with the party of the world Revolution, was to lead our Father from this true service of the Church in France to that of the universal Church. How did this come about ?

He rose up against an entire Council, namely the Second Vatican Council, which was adopting new laws for a necessary and permanent reform of a Church. These laws marked a break with Tradition and were clearly heretical. The Church, becoming more democratic, less self-centred was thus required to place herself at the service of a broader, more generous and, in the end, loftier purpose than the mere salvation of souls to lead them to Heaven. Forced to merge into a vaster whole, that of a ‘Movement for the Spiritual Animation of Universal Democracy’, the Church thereby aligned herself with the ‘legitimate’ aspirations of a world which is, nevertheless, under Satan’s dominion. These aspirations, which are based on liberty, equality and fraternity, would open the way to a new world, a better world : a world of justice and peace. Thus, without the Church, and therefore without Jesus ! But then, in whose name, and for what purpose ? In the name of a new spirit, inspiring the Fathers of the Council with a cult of man in his dignity and freedom, the Council resolutely placed the Church on the side of the Revolution, setting up man as a god and a king.

This is what our Father never ceased to explain and demonstrate with force and clarity throughout the sessions, in order to stigmatise the actions of the Progressivist wing that occupied the key positions of the Council. At the same time he supported, with complete disinterestedness, the traditionalist Fathers, among whom was Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Superior General of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit Fathers, former Apostolic Delegate for French-speaking Africa, former Archbishop of Dakar, and former Archbishop of Tulle. Thus our Father attempted to stem the revolutionary onslaught which threatened the Church “ in her dogmas and her structures ”. But these traditionalist Fathers, while approving our Father’s analyses, which they read in the Letters to My Friends, were convinced that the Council was the work of God, that good would necessarily prevail, and therefore that it would have a good outcome. They thus consented to discuss the texts with the false brethren who, with complete impunity, upheld theses that were clearly heretical and sought to arrogate to themselves an authority emancipated from the control of the Faith, refusing “ to provide the proofs of their orthodoxy in order to impose themselves ”.

And in between stood a mass of bishops who, instead of labouring and performing a work of truth, simply deferred to the wishes of Pope Paul VI who, since the publication of his encyclical Ecclesiam Suam on August 6, 1964, had shown himself won over to the reformist outlook of Father Congar. He was at the helm, directing the Church’s October Revolution to its successful conclusion, which was to end, as our Father feared, in the complete crushing of the traditionalist minority.

The assembly adopted all the texts by overwhelming majorities, including Dignitatis Humanæ, the much-contested declaration recognising social freedom of religion for everyone – a practical act of apostasy, an affront to God and harmful to all societies. With rare exceptions, all the Fathers of the Council – among whom Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre must be counted, despite his mendacious denials – agreed to sign all the texts in order to comply with Paul VI’s wishes.

After the Council had come to an end, all the traditionalist voices fell silent, like that of the great Cardinal Ottaviani. They remained in a servile silence, a silence of acquiescence to the reform of the Church, with the sole exception of our Father’s voice : “ In human battles, it is the violent who prevail. There is no divine battle save in the name of the Faith in all its purity, which is then stronger than anything else. But the Faith must find witnesses, ‘witnesses who suffer themselves to be slain’. At the Council we heard, on the one hand, insolence and blackmail ; on the other, fear and servility. The contest was not an equal one, but the Faith does not change for all that. The great Ottaviani is dead. The battle continues. ”●

Since the Council, by the decision of Pope John XXIII taken on October 11, 1962 and subsequently confirmed by Paul VI, had renounced the exercise of its supreme and infallible authority in matters of dogma and morals, its Acts, insofar as they contained doctrinal novelties, remained fallible and subject to reform. Remarkably ambiguous as to their authority, they left open a narrow and difficult path, yet no less a necessary one for the service of the Church : a dogmatic demonstration of what they had failed to achieve, and a counter-reformation that our Father undertook in perfect continuity with the critical chronicle that he had been writing in his Letters to My Friends, whilst the texts were under discussion and being drafted. The aim was to resolve the ambiguity arising from a so-called magisterium – which was assuredly fallible – by means of the infallible Magisterium, which alone engages the divine authority of the Church !

SERVING THE COMMON GOOD OF THE CHURCH

This Counter-Reformation fight would be led by our Father in accordance with four principles, four core tenets that set out the benchmarks and limits of a useful service of the common good of the Church.

First principle, our Father would do everything “ openly. ” This fight, essentially doctrinal in nature, was published in full in the Letters to My Friends and subsequently in the Catholic Counter-Reformation bulletin. There was never the slightest hint of insinuation, pretence, deception, concealment, duplicity or inconsistency in anything our Father thought, said, wrote or did. Everything was public and known to all, in exactly the same terms, both to our Father’s readers and friends and to the superior authorities of the Church.

Better still, our Father repeatedly submitted his writings, criticisms and accusations concerning the reform of the Church to the scrutiny of those same higher authorities so that they might approve or condemn them in accordance with the rules of law and in the light of the truths of the Faith that come from God and not from men.

As early as 1966, he was able to literally “ wrest ” permission from his Ordinary, Bishop Julien Le Couëdic, to forward the entire series of his first two hundred and ten Letters to My Friends to the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, containing in particular the complete critical chronicle of the four sessions of the Second Vatican Council.

As early as 1967, our Father wrote Pope Paul VI directly and personally to denounce the reform of the Church decreed at the Second Vatican Council, as well as the arrogance of its authors.

He even went to Rome in 1973, 1983 and 1993, each time to attempt to submit a Book of Accusation for heresy, schism and scandal against Popes Paul VI and John Paul II. Since the penalty imposed on him by Bishop Gérard Daucourt in 1997 provided him with the canonical opportunity to do so, he hastened to officially submit these three Books of Accusations to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Second principle. The reform undertaken at the Second Vatican Council, and the comprehensive character of the movement which immediately swept through the whole Church, compelled our Father to reach the following conclusion : “ There exists an agreement, a fundamental collusion, between the supreme responsible Authority and the subordinate executors of the reform, for ‘the creation of a new Church at the service of a new world.’ ”●

And the supreme Authority in the Church is none other than the Pope who, by that very fact, finds himself “ at the juncture of two worlds : that of order and that of disorder, of Tradition and of subversion, of the work of Christ and the machinations of Belial ”.●

Thus, our Father, in his Counter-Reformation fight, rather than attacking the consequences of that reform and the subordinate authorities in a cowardly, hypocritical and inadequate manner, turned his attacks on the very Acts of the Second Vatican Council and on the subsequent Acts of Popes Paul VI and John Paul II. Nor did he fear to level accusations of heresy, schism and scandal against them, all of which were systematically underpinned by very compelling arguments, extensive quotations from the texts in question, and interpretations that were extraordinarily and scrupulously faithful to the authors’ thinking, differing from them only in the conclusions that our Father was able to draw from them.

All this was considered in the light of the Catholic Faith, which does not change, not even by a majority vote of the bishops at the Pope’s behest, for he is not a god and, like all the baptised, is bound to obedience to the faith.

“ We were led to this course of action less by any deliberate choice on our part than by the logic of our zeal for the real and essential good of the Church and of souls. It was necessary to struggle against decadence by denouncing the reform of the Church ; yet one could not denounce that reform without naming those responsible for it, whatever the cost. In short, if we wished to remedy the effects, we had to trace them back to their causes, and to the highest and most general of those causes : the Council and the reigning Pope. ”●

Our Father never wavered from this position, even when, in 1969, the liturgical crisis erupted following Paul VI’s promulgation of a new ordo missæ, which was perceived as a genuine provocation by traditionalist circles, particularly in France ; these groups, having been attacked ‘on their own turf’, in their ‘sphere of competence’ and – dare we say it – in their ministerial interests, raised their heads to set out on a crusade to defend, in their own words, ‘the Mass of all time’.

The issue was, of course, of paramount importance, of unprecedented gravity. It was one of the charges levelled by our Father in the Liber which he attempted to present to Paul VI on April 10, 1973 :

“ Your reform attacked the Propitiatory Sacrifice itself. Therein lies the fundamental schism of your New Ordo, exemplified in its Article 7, which you neither regretted, nor rescinded : “ The Lord’s Supper or Mass is the sacred assembly (sacra synaxis) or congregation of the people of God coming together, with the priest presiding, in order to celebrate the memorial of the Lord. Therefore, the promise of Christ applies pre-eminently to the local assembly of the holy Church : ‘Where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them’ (Mt 18 :20).’ This is your Ordo Missae. You did not write the definition yourself : you are not a heretic to that degree. But you accepted it and when you were obliged to rectify it, you did so without denouncing the error on which this entire artificial liturgy is based.

“ Countless articles and books have been written about the consequences of this : the schismatic novelty of this liturgy has led priests to lose their Catholic belief in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. My own enquiries show that a great many priests now ascribe no other meaning to the ‘Eucharistic celebration’ than that of a memorial of the Last Supper, that is to say, a remembrance of the fraternal repast that Jesus shared with His Apostles on the evening of Maundy Thursday. ”

Consequently, the crucial question arose as to the validity of the new sacramental rites adopted following this liturgical reform, in particular the Mass celebrated according to this new Ordo Missæ. After a thorough investigation carried out in various Churches (Rome, Madrid, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal and Australia), our Father could but conclude that the new rite imposed at the Pope’s behest was accepted by all.

Therefore, it was impossible to assert that this Mass was invalid, since the entire Catholic Church throughout the world accepted its daily celebration. On that basis, since Christ is with absolute certainty present in His Body, His Blood, His Soul and His Divinity, it was possible to attend this Mass ; one simply had to know how to attend this Mass celebrated according to the new Ordo, and even to suffer whilst attending it !

Having established this, the liturgical reform – which is highly open to criticism in the principles that inspired it and particularly disastrous, even scandalous, in its consequences – could not, and should not, on its own, be the sole focus of the entire counter-reformation fight.

The Acts of the Council and the Acts of Paul VI and John Paul II represented the profound, general, comprehensive and even total reform required to draw the whole Church into this general movement of spiritual animation of universal democracy – with all the religious and political consequences, both for the salvation of souls and for the salvation of nations, that such a movement entailed. Therefore, in order to serve the common good of the Church, the Counter-Reformation had to neutralise this reform in its entirety by denouncing all the major principles that inspired it. It could not concern itself solely with the consequences chosen by each individual according to his particular and immediate interests. These concerns, including such things as one’s family, parish, community, Fraternity, liturgy, Mass, school, Latin and Gregorian chant, catechism and so on, are, moreover, perfectly legitimate.

However, it is true that such a struggle, carried to the summit of the Church, to its very head, and waged against the teachings of the Sovereign Pontiff, in defence alike of the common good of both the Church and Christendom which extends from it, required complete detachment from every private interest that might be at stake, and an entire absence of calculation.

Our Father wrote to his friends :

“ I wish to say to you expressly what you already understand for yourselves : we have sacrificed all, neglected all, as we know full well, and we suffer for it, for the sole purpose of serving the present common good of the Church. This is our present vocation, our mystical immolation. Share with us in this consecration, I make bold to exhort you thereto, by yourselves likewise sacrificing all else, so as to concentrate all your energies upon what is presently essential. Present this oblation to God through the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and pray that this total gift, accepted by the Father in Heaven, may, through the victory of the Counter-Reformation, brought about by a holy Pope and a glorious Council, lead to the restoration of the Roman Catholic Church. Then, when our joy has been restored, we shall once again be able to turn our thoughts to our Order and to your dearly beloved persons, in order to serve all your spiritual and temporal interests. ”●

When our Father met Archbishop Paul Philippe, Secretary of the Congregation for Religious, in Rome in June 1963, he received much earnest encouragement regarding the provisional Rule of the Little Brothers of the Sacred Heart, which might well be granted definitive recognition, but on condition that its author renounce his political commitment and his defence of French Algeria. Our Father immediately retorted to the Dominican : “ Your Excellency, the defence of my slain brethren is a duty which Christian morality imposes upon me, whatever the circumstances ; the recognition of the Order that I have come to seek from you, depends solely on God’s good pleasure. If this design is in accordance with His Will, He will bring it to pass in due time. I, however, cannot accept this official recognition at the price of committing an undeniable immoral act, which for me, would be grievously culpable. ”● The Rule of the Little Brothers of the Sacred Heart has remained in a provisional state to this day, pending definitive recognition, if this plan for foundation pleases the Good God, but never at the cost of betrayal.

Third principle. One cannot wage such a combat against the Acts of a Council and those of Sovereign Pontiffs without observing two imperative rules, without which an excessive struggle against heresy would ultimately lead one to commit that other offence against charity, and against the Church, namely, the offence of schism. What are these two rules ?

First, that of never declaring that he, our Father, and those friends who were willing to follow him, constituted the Church by themselves, “ rejecting this post-conciliar reformed Church as schismatic and heretical. ”

And then, as a corollary, the second rule : to remain “ within the Body of the Church, that visible society wherein fallible men retain their power to err and to do wrong, to combat this latent schism, this parasitic heresy, this inadmissible novelty which mars her divine purity and conceals her true life. ”●

It shall be the appeal from the Pope, possibly heretical, schismatic, and scandalous in the exercise of his teaching authority, to that same Pope in the exercise of his extraordinary and solemn Magisterium, so that unity and peace may be restored by the Sovereign Pontiff himself – that is to say, by the Church – in the name of the Truth of the Faith, concerning these matters which are both disputable and disputed.

An order, a request, a desire expressed by the Holy Father admit not the slightest shadow of dissent, dispute, disagreement, disobedience, or opposition whatsoever – save in matters pertaining to faith and morals. In matters of faith and of the moral law, the Holy Father possesses neither power, nor authority, nor right to teach from the See of Peter a heretical doctrine contrary to the dogma of the Faith ; for, at the same time, any member of the faithful, any priest, is bound scrupulously to preserve the Faith which the Church has taught him, and without which it is impossible to be pleasing to the Good God.

But opposition to an allegedly heretical teaching of the Pope – this position of withholding obedience on account of a legitimate suspicion, pending the judgement of the solemn and infallible Magisterium of the Sovereign Pontiff – must not lead to a principled refusal to submit to his authority, to his power, which remains legitimate. “ Were we to behold worse still – and what we already behold is scarcely bearable – we ought to remain submissive to the Pastors of the Church, whilst rebelling against their rebellion, standing opposed to their schisms and their heresies. Let us remember that Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, is the sovereign Lord and Master of His Church, and that He Himself knows what He must do in such a case, without our presuming so much as to dare to set ourselves in the place of His justice and His judgment. ”●

Apart from the question of dogma, and pending his solemn and infallible judgement, the Pope remains the Pope, and he must continue to be obeyed in the exercise of his powers of governance and sanctification.

And it was precisely in order to manifest this submission to the authority of the Pope, and first and foremost to that of the bishop of the diocese in which he was then residing, that our Father resolved not to appeal against the suspense a divinis imposed upon him by Bishop Julien Le Couëdic on August 25, 1966, for having made public his petition, dated July 16, which he had addressed to Cardinal Ottaviani. At the very time when he was publicly calling into question the orthodoxy of the reform of the Church, it seemed right to him to bear witness to an exact submission to the disciplinary decisions of the hierarchy, even when arbitrary, provided that they concerned his person alone. Moreover, in the eyes of our Father, it was important not to turn aside from the essential and sacred undertaking which he had embarked upon for the triumph of the holy Faith, merely for the sake of defending his personal honour and rights.

And our Father conformed himself throughout his life to this censure, from which he was never released. He abstained from celebrating the Sacraments and from preaching in the churches of the Diocese of Troyes. For the rest, he asked nothing for his Community ; he refused to countenance any indirect means whereby his brothers might receive priestly ordination ; and he humbly accepted, within the Church, the place assigned to him by his bishop and by the Holy Father – namely, the lowest place of all : that of a priest deprived of every ecclesiastical office, and held out to the public as though he had been excommunicated.

Recognising that schism had entered the Church through the agency of “ Paul VI the Reformer, ” and drawing the implications of his trial, which had taken place at his own request before the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1968, our Father publicly made the following resolve :

“ To discord, to partiality, to hatred, whereby barriers and strongholds are erected, love alone must be opposed : that love which has its foundation in the unbreakable communion of sacramental life. The Church is the charity of Christ poured forth and communicated to all the brethren. So long as they retain even the outward appearance of ecclesial belonging, we are bound to hold them and retain them within Catholic charity, neither consenting to their ostracism and scission, nor adding our own to them. If we withdraw from the communion, if we emancipate ourselves from hierarchical Authority and repudiate its jurisdiction, we thereby strengthen the schism ; we confer upon it the homogeneous character of a sect ; we surrender to it the whole ecclesial domain. We have to stay in the Church and consent to being struck, to suffer and to obey in all that is not forbidden and which remain bearable, as martyrs for Catholic Unity and Charity. We must refuse whatever is enjoined for subversive ends and not allow ourselves to be struck without making due protest. But never, under any circumstances, shall we contest the one inviolable jurisdictional power of the Pope and Bishops united with him. Even when they act unjustly, they, and not we are the Catholic hierarchy. ”●

However, in the Notification published on August 9, 1969, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was unable to identify the slightest error in our Father’s critical analyses of the Acts of the Second Vatican Council and of Pope Paul VI ; nor was it able to impose the slightest canonical sanction in respect of the accusations of heresy, schism, and scandal which he had publicly upheld, even in Rome itself. Consequently, by refraining from any such condemnation or canonical sanction, it implicitly acknowledged his freedom to pursue this work of counter-reformation, which constitutes both a doctrine and an action proper to the Church.

Fourth Principle. A thorough critique of this total reform of the Church, undertaken on the occasion of the Second Vatican Council, can constitute a counter-reformation ordered to the useful service of the common good of the Church only insofar as it is accompanied by a comprehensive and positive work of renewal within that same Church. Any criticism must be accompanied by a solution whereby the difficulty arising from an error is duly remedied. Such a solution completes the demonstration of the soundness of the criticism directed against the error, and thereby makes possible a true progress in continuity with Tradition.

On May 13, 1971, our Father declared : “ Instead of lamenting and preaching pointlessly a return to the past or a ‘measured reform’ of Vatican II, let us prepare for the future ! The questions under discussion are new, at least in part, as our Father acknowledged, and they compel us to resolve difficulties unknown to those who went before us. Our Catholicism will thus have theological and institutional progress to make [...]. We do not wish to ‘return’ to Vatican I, nor to the Council of Trent, nor to that of Nicaea ! We want Vatican III to sift Vatican II, isolate its poison, and eliminate it. ”

It is in this perspective that our Father opened the way to a “ reform of the reform ”, at once wise and prodigious, erudite and enthusiastic, and this in every discipline pertaining to our holy, unique, and true religion, whether theological, exegetical, mystical, metaphysical, philosophical, moral, or even political and historical.

Yet, in parallel, in 1975, our Father made the following observation :

“ If a bishop, if a national episcopate, had risen up against Paul VI and his chimeras, with no other immediate motive than the honour of God and love for the Church whom this Pope delivers over to her enemies, and pity for the peoples whom his diplomacy casts into martyrdom ; if some portion of the Church, through the voice of her episcopate, had refused communion with the provider of the world-wide Communist revolution, Pope Paul VI – yesterday in Portugal, today in Vietnam, and tomorrow in Spain or Ireland – the bishops would have dismissed Casaroli, Poggi, Hussler and the other agents of the Soviets ; the bishops of those threatened countries would have been, not dumb dogs, but righteous defenders of their people ; heads of State might have counted upon Catholics, instead of regarding them as the most dangerous of traitors ; every nation would have defended, arms in hand, its independence and its legitimate order, without being condemned by the conscience of the world ; and Christendom, at last, would have saved herself in her strongest parts and spread peace (...).

“ And I am not speaking here of the whole immense betrayal, by Pope Paul VI, of the duties of his office as defender of the Faith and of morals, as supreme guardian of the Sacraments and of the prayer of the Church. Everything is bound together, in betrayal as in steadfastness.

“ Either the Church shall end by excommunicating the Pope, or the Pope shall end by leading the world to perdition. It is in no wise, as is plain, a matter of breaking with Rome and founding another Church. But where a torrent of blood divides, it is a supreme duty to remain outside the communion of the Judases who betray their brethren together with their Master, in order to abide in the communion of the martyrs.

“ It is the greatest shame ever to have befallen the Church that, for ten years now, no bishop has dared to perform this saving act. ”●

The bishop who could and ought to have performed this saving act – breaking communion with Paul VI in order to remain in the communion of the martyrs – was, beyond all doubt, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. But he did not want to do so.

CHRONICLE OF A SCHISM FORETOLD

When the great controversy broke out concerning the new Ordo Missæ promulgated by Paul VI on April 6, 1969, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, at that juncture, remained markedly reserved. In particular, he refrained from publicly associating himself with the petition dated September 3, submitted by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, who sought to obtain from Paul VI the abrogation of the said new Ordo. The prelate had a project in mind : to establish a seminary and even a priestly fraternity. And its success, in his view, required him to proceed “ gently ”, without allowing anything to arouse the slightest suspicion of opposition to the Reform of the Church, or to Paul VI.

Unable to assert his authority so as to counter the aggiornamento movement within the Congregation of the Holy Spirit Fathers, of which he was Superior General, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre seized the opportunity to resign from that office on September 28, 1968 and, in the autumn of 1970, to settle in Switzerland : in the Diocese of Fribourg, as regards the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, and in the Diocese of Sion, at Ecône, as regards the seminary, with the provisional, ad experimentum, authorisations of the ordinaries concerned.●

His purpose ? His work ? To found a priestly fraternity bringing together priests who had received a solid formation in a seminary, that they might instruct the faithful in the traditional religion, with a sound and exact doctrine purged of every novelty, and with the sacraments celebrated according to the rites commonly described as “ of all time ”.

Archbishop Lefebvre, a former missionary, was persuaded that, by acting in this manner, he would form priests conformed to the Heart of Jesus, and would preserve from every corruption a priesthood which would have no difficulty in labouring efficaciously for the salvation of souls. In short, Archbishop Lefebvre perceived the decadence of the Church, which he believed himself able to remedy by setting forth directly upon the conquest of souls, offering them a traditional ministry – personal and family-centred – so as to meet those spiritual needs which were necessary to their salvation.

In August 1972, he declared during a public conference : “ The seminaries are non-existent, because the definition of the priest and the true notion of the priesthood have been abandoned. I confess to you that I find myself unable – truly unable – to found a seminary with the new Mass. The present problem of the Mass is an exceedingly grave problem for Holy Church. All the efforts that are being made to recover what is being lost, to reorganise, to reconstruct, to rebuild, all this is stricken with sterility, because we no longer possess the true source of sanctity, which is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Profaned as it is, it no longer bestows grace ; it no longer conveys grace. ”●

In so doing, however, Archbishop Lefebvre was committing two grave errors, which were moreover closely connected.

First, he concealed from the eyes of the world, and above all from those of the Church, the profound reason for the foundation of such a priestly institution, which was intended to remain humble and discreet : namely, the hostility of its founder towards the reform of the Church, and his determination to withdraw himself from it by feigning an outward and public submission to the one who had initiated it, Pope Paul VI, so as to elude the prohibitions and impediments which might proceed from him, and, on the contrary, to obtain all the canonical permissions necessary for such an undertaking. By concealing such intentions, Archbishop Lefebvre was already entering, secretly – in his heart, and by a submission which was merely apparent and external – upon the path of a concealed yet very real insubmission to the authority of the Pope.

Secondly, Archbishop Lefebvre passed over in silence the fundamental causes of the decadence of the Church which, nevertheless, he claimed to remedy by the foundation of such a priestly institution. He put traditional remedies into practice, but refrained from addressing the doctrinal causes of the evil, which are to be found in the Acts of the Second Vatican Council and in the subsequent Acts of Paul VI. He was acquainted with the major doctrinal errors contained in those Acts. Refusing to denounce them publicly, both the Acts themselves and their authors, Archbishop Lefebvre, by his silence, made himself their passive accomplice.

Worse still, he was labouring to establish, within the very bosom of the Church, a coexistence between two cults, two religions, two parties, in the name of a purported right to experience Tradition – a coexistence which, in his view, could be brought about in an atmosphere of peace, provided that each party respected the other and concerned itself no further with it. What an aberrant thought, and one even injurious to Our Lord Jesus Christ, that there should be, within His Church, a coexistence of two religions. This safeguarding of the traditional priesthood for the salvation of souls, which Archbishop Lefebvre proposed to accomplish through his seminary and his Society, was manifestly insufficient to thwart Paul VI in his grand chimera of drawing the whole Church into, integrating it with, and even, if possible, dissolving it within that wider movement of the spiritual animation of universal democracy – a project which had already led, and was to continue to lead, nations into the gravest temporal and spiritual calamities. And Archbishop Lefebvre was, in fact, to prove himself wholly indifferent towards these calamities, so long as he himself, and his party – the party of Tradition, which was flourishing among so many of the faithful and which, without doubt, would ultimately prevail democratically – were granted the freedom to exist... if only they were allowed the time and the means necessary to demonstrate the fruits of their “ experience of Tradition ”, to fill with the faithful those churches and chapels which people would be willing to entrust to their priests, while the Progressivist party in command of the Conciliar Church... emptied them.

Yet – and providentially – this was without reckoning with the sectarian and Progressivist spirit of the bishops of France and of Paul VI, who perfectly understood the underlying opposition which this seminary and this priestly fraternity represented to their project of reforming the Church, a project which was the object of all their zeal. They were firmly resolved to use and abuse the terrible spiritual and canonical powers with which they knew themselves to be invested, in order to curb and destroy the nascent work of the former leader of the traditionalist minority at the Second Vatican Council. Providentially... for their common determination ruthlessly to behead this nascent work before it could come to fruition might have led, and indeed ought to have led, Archbishop Lefebvre, as a bishop and, in that capacity, a member of the teaching Church, to take a public and active part in the Catholic Counter-Reformation, the one true and useful service which he could render to the Church. Archbishop Lefebvre was to evade this duty, and thereby inexorably to consummate the offence of schism, despite the adjurations of our Father, who was nevertheless to grant him all the necessary lights.

Following a canonical visitation conducted in the autumn of 1974 by Bishop Albert Descamps, Secretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and Bishop Guillaume Onclin, Deputy Secretary for the revision of Canon Law, Archbishop Lefebvre emerged from his equivocation and, on November 21, 1974, drew up a profession of faith, which he was to make public in January 1975 in the journal Itinéraires : “ We adhere with all our heart and with all our soul to Catholic Rome, guardian of the Catholic Faith and of those traditions necessary for the preservation of that Faith ; to eternal Rome, mistress of wisdom and truth. On the other hand, we refuse, and have always refused, to follow the Rome of neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies, which manifested themselves clearly in the Second Vatican Council and, after the Second Vatican Council, in all the reforms which proceeded from it. All these reforms, indeed, have contributed, and continue to contribute, to the demolition of the Church, to the ruin of the priesthood, to the annihilation of the Sacrifice and of the sacraments, to the disappearance of religious life, and to a naturalistic and Teilhardian teaching in universities, seminaries and catechesis – a teaching deriving from Liberalism and Protestantism, repeatedly condemned by the solemn Magisterium of the Church. No authority, not even the highest in the hierarchy, can compel us to abandon or diminish our Catholic Faith, as it has been clearly expressed and professed by the Magisterium of the Church for nineteen centuries (...). ”●

Our Father commended this declaration, although he deemed it inadequate both in substance and in form. “ Archbishop Lefebvre declares, as a bishop fully conscious of the gravity of his words, that it is impossible for any Catholic to accept this Reform, in any one of its parts, without thereby falling into heresy. ”●

Yet was the founder of Écône in a position to develop a theological demonstration by which to substantiate his rejection of this Reform ?

Nothing could be less certain, when one considers that “ Bishop Lefebvre does not expressly identify – and I believe that to do so would even go beyond his own thought – the Reform then in progress, heretical and truly diabolical, with the Acts of Vatican II, which he does not explicitly reject as we do, nor with the Discourses and Acts of Paul VI, or at least with his deepest thoughts and convictions. He deliberately leaves a margin of imprecision and uncertainty between that which he anathematises and the persons themselves, namely, the moral person of the Ecumenical Council and the person of the reigning Pope. ”●

Our Father therefore foresaw the tragedy that was unfolding with a prevaricating Paul VI at the head of the Church by the permission of Jesus Christ, imposing upon her scandalous acts, yet tolerating not the slightest opposition to his projects of reform, even from a mere seminary which sought, quietly and without disturbance, to make trial of Tradition. It was obvious : he was going to have it closed.

Our Father indicated to Archbishop Lefebvre the weapon which he had both the right and the duty to take up :

“ To strike at the Head of him who possesses the Powers of the Lamb, yet speaks with the tongue of the Dragon (Ap 13 :11). Regicide, which is the remedy for the tyrannical anarchy of power within the State, is forbidden to the faithful of the Church, however bad, however wicked the Pope may be. The public arraignment of the Head of the Church on charges of heresy, schism, and scandal falls within the competence of the priest and of the theologian, who are capable of establishing the reality of such offences with certainty and of drawing up the canonical instrument thereof, the Libellus accusationis. This is what we have done. But if it is not even received, by reason of the Supreme Judge’s most flagrant dereliction of his office, the proceedings are stayed before they have even been opened. ”

“ Then there remains the ultimate remedy, the heroic remedy, the sole remedy feared by Him who has knowingly and obstinately perverted the very meaning of his divine and apostolic mission. It is necessary that a bishop, himself likewise a successor of the Apostles, a member of the teaching Church, a brother-bishop of the Bishop of Rome and, like him, ordained to the common good of the Church, break communion with him until such time as he shall have given proof of his fidelity to the duties of his supreme pontificate. ”●

This public and solemn rupture of communion was to be grounded upon a formal complaint against Pope Paul VI on the grounds of heresy, schism, and scandal, thereby placing him under legitimate suspicion.

“ For it is indeed true that, although the Church is constituted as a human society, she is the Holy Mystical Body of Christ. Governed visibly by canonical rules, she is governed invisibly by the one precept of charity. As for the canonical status of the Pope and of the bishops, I am not their judge. Legally – according to a ‘legalism’ which they affect to deride, yet from which they benefit and which they abuse, but which we, for our part, respect –, they are our Princes, our Doctors, and our Pastors. Such they shall remain so long as no canonical action, establishing their heresy, schism, and scandal, has degraded and deposed them, or corrected and replaced them.

“ But spiritually, according to the order of Charity, according to the ‘pastoral concern’ of which they make so great a point, and according to filial and fraternal communion, we are no longer theirs, nor are we with them, because they are no longer of Christ and are against Him. We remain in perpetual rebellion against their heretical thoughts, their schismatic wills, their criminal decisions. We have warned them, privately and publicly ; we have sought justice, we have knocked at their door, and at their hearts. They have always, without exception, rejected us. In accordance with the very teaching of the Lord, and in order to remain faithful to His Law, we must henceforth regard them as hardened public sinners. And ‘let them be to you as the heathen and the publican’ – that is to say, as ‘excommunicated persons’, as the Jerusalem Bible notes.

“ Such ruptures of communion are to be found, in varying degrees of severity, in times of crisis within the Church ; and, although the advantage has ordinarily lain with Rome, it has happened on several occasions that those who refused submission were in the right against an Authority that was uncertain or unfaithful. For example, Saint Augustine and the two hundred and twenty-four African bishops of the Council of Carthage, in 418, against Pope Zosimus, who was more deceived than deceiving. Yet these divisions in charity have invariably been brought to an end by a judicial decision pronounced by the authority of the Pope or of the Council. Never by hatred or contempt ! ”●

Archbishop Lefebvre was going to take precisely the opposite position to that of our Father, whose own position is perfectly balanced between the juridical order and the spiritual order, thereby enabling one to advance within the Church along this ridgeline, whilst avoiding at one and the same time the two offences against the unity of the Faith and the unity of the Church, namely heresy and schism, the dividing line between which is none other than the person of the Pope himself. It is the Pope, therefore, who must be confronted – not in order to deny his authority, nor to defy it, but in order to bring to an end the discussion concerning the deleterious doctrine which he imposes upon all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ, so that he may pronounce upon his own case, by means of a judgement proceeding from himself, solemn and infallible.

In short, Archbishop Lefebvre declined to engage upon the dogmatic question, where he would have stood upon strong ground, and instead became entangled in the disciplinary question, where his position was weak and where, by placing himself upon that ground, he put himself entirely in the wrong.

In February 1975, during an initial meeting in Rome, Cardinals Garrone, Tabera and Wright had brought the editorial “ Strike at the Head ! ”’ to Archbishop Lefebvre’s attention. On March 3, these same cardinals questioned him about his profession of faith addressed to his seminarians – and not to the Holy Father, which would have been more loyal – and his intentions regarding his seminary : Archbishop Lefebvre disavowed our Father and insisted he wanted nothing to do with “ that strange man […]. I do not want anything irreverent to be said about the Holy Father in my seminary. ”● And from that point onwards, Archbishop Lefebvre would never retract this repudiation, nor would he ever openly, directly and publicly accuse Paul VI – and subsequently John Paul II – of heresy and schism. He would criticise certain Acts of the Council – on ecumenism, religious freedom, and collegiality – setting himself up as their judge, yet never troubling himself to submit his judgements to that of the Supreme Judge of the Faith ; he would criticise the new rites of the Mass and of the other sacraments, going so far as to call their validity into question. He would reproach Paul VI and thereafter John Paul II with fostering heresy and schism ; he would brand them liberal popes, that is to say, men torn between the desire to remain, in the depths of their being, Catholics, and the desire to please the world and to do everything possible to meet it halfway, only, in the final analysis, to excuse the Pope and accuse those who accuse him – in other words, our Father. Lefebvre wrote in 1985 in his Open Letter to Perplexed Catholics : “ I am not one of those who insinuate or assert that Paul VI was a heretic and that, by that very fact of his heresy, he was no longer Pope, ” after having recalled : “ I have never ceased repeating it : if anyone separates himself from the Pope, it will not be I. ”

This refusal to associate the teachings of Paul VI and John Paul II with the delicts of heresy and schism was one of Archbishop Lefebvre’s gravest errors. It remains difficult to account for.

There is, of course, the education he received at the French Seminary in Rome, where the Pope was venerated to excess. For a bishop of that generation, trained in Rome, criticising or attacking the Pope’s teaching was certainly a kind of sacrilege, an undermining of the very foundation of his fidelity to the Church.

There was also, undoubtedly, on the part of the founder of Écône, a calculating mindset, one aimed at sparing the Pope’s feelings, from whom he expected, first and foremost, not unity and peace for the Church in the truth of the Catholic Faith, but the right to found, organise and maintain a work – his own work.

Finally, there is another reason, which our Father explained clearly in 1987 whilst commenting on Archbishop Lefebvre’s book Ils l’ont découronné (They Have Uncrowned Him). Up to page 222, his position coincides entirely with that of our Father ; but on the following page, when it comes to drawing his final conclusion, he backs down. “ He holds the Pope excused and says that he is always orthodox in the intimacy of his heart, even though he is guilty of sometimes favouring heresy to a certain extent. Why this withdrawal ? Out of cowardice ? Certainly not ! Because this affirmed certitude of John Paul II’s radical orthodoxy, as well as that of his predecessor and father, Paul VI, will authorise Archbishop Lefebvre in conscience to tell himself that he is invested with an ‘exceptional jurisdiction’, and will enable him to continue his work of saving the Church without any further concern for Rome’s official interdicts and sanctions. It will be like many members of the ‘Resistance’ who, in the years 1940-44, thought the fighting for Free France was authorised at heart by an old Marshal [Pétain] prevented by the Occupier from self-expression and action. ”●

Hence this ‘intellectual diplopia’ in Archbishop Lefebvre, consisting in his seeing in his mind two Churches : the Church of the Ages, and the Conciliar Church, into which he would indiscriminately, or thereabouts, place all the bishops won over to Modernism and Progressivism, yet governed by one and the same Pope, divided between heresy and the Catholic Faith. Thus, in words, he could claim to remain subject to the authority of the Pope of the Church of the Ages, whose faith, tradition, perennial Magisterium, priesthood and sacraments his Society would undertake to safeguard, in order thereby to justify, in deeds, his disobedience to the Pope of Rome, of the Conciliar Church fallen into heresy and schism.

“ It is contrary to the Catholic Faith, insulting to the Word of God and treating His Promises as vain, to declare : ‘There are two Churches.’ Where do you see two Churches ? ” our Father asked in his editorial, “ Voilà bien le gâchis ! ” [“ What a Mess ! ”]. ”●

“ The Church of Rome, the historic, hierarchical, visible Church, spread throughout the whole earth – and ? And what ? And who ? Whatever might claim to be, or be presented as, the Other Church would be a new, particular Church, and therefore a false Church, just as Saint Augustine had already demonstrated against the Donatists. ”

And our Father went on : “ What I have repeated tirelessly for twenty years, with a certain spirit of foresight, of which the texts, continually reissued, dated and unaltered, most assuredly bear witness, is that for nearly a century there has been a great apocalyptic struggle : two religions are contending within the one Church, vying for the understanding and the heart of the clergy, in order to ascend the hierarchy and attain supreme power – conciliar, conclavist, and, finally, pontifical – and thus to spread themselves without hindrance throughout the whole body of the faithful. On the one side, the religion of the Antichrist and its cult of Man ; on the other, our Christian religion and its cult of God alone. The ancient and perfect religion revealed by God is locked in combat with the new religion invented by men, which is its blasphemous likeness. ”

“ But – and this is the fundamental doctrine of our League of the Catholic Counter-Reformation – we know that this cancer, gnawing at the cells and now assailing the vital organs of the great Catholic Body, shall not prevail. We know that the organism will struggle, and that its uncreated Soul, the Holy Spirit, and its created soul, the divine hierarchy, will breathe into it such energy and vitality that, however grave the peril may be for individuals – alas ! – however appalling the great Apostasy of the Princes and Priests of the Church, the Modernist-Progressivist cancer shall at length be reduced, vanquished and excised ; and the Church shall once more live resplendent in purity, sanctified in her Head and strengthened in her members, on that longed-for day of the Church’s Peace. ”

“ Hence our twenty years of battle (...). Had all of them then joined us in our complaint to the Pope concerning our brother in the Faith, Paul VI, we should have prevailed over the heresy, the schism and the scandal thus denounced. But we were left alone. Our opposition continues, an all too meagre, all too feeble participation in the struggle of Religion against Heresy within one and the same Church, whose head is Paul VI, homo duplex. ”

“ We are struck down, disqualified, defamed, yet still within the Church. And members of the Church with all our faith, our will, our religion, in the communion of charity with those pastors and faithful who are willing to receive us as brethren. For our part, we exclude no one, not even the Man of Iniquity. Should the Adversary, having become master of the one and only Church, succeed in excommunicating us – which he never shall – we should persist in our resolve never to belong to any other, but to her alone, and should remain beneath the porch, upon the threshold, awaiting the Clavigère Sacré, the Sacred Key-Bearer, to open her gates to us once more. But without going elsewhere to build church against Church, altar against Altar. ”●

THE PRIESTLY ORDINATIONS OF JUNE 30, 1976

By then, convinced that Archbishop Lefebvre would not break communion with him in order to accuse him of heresy, schism and scandal, Paul VI proceeded to take every measure to eradicate his work by canonical means, and to obtain from him a total, unconditional and unlimited submission to his authority, to all his Acts, and to all the Acts of the Council, without the least discussion, the least explanation, the least justification, or the slightest exception being admitted.

On May 6, 1975, the Ordinary of Fribourg, Bishop Mamie, notified Archbishop Lefebvre that he was withdrawing the decree of erection of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X.

On that same day, the three members of the Commission of Cardinals confirmed that “ once the Fraternity had been suppressed, having thereby lost its juridical foundation, its establishments, notably the seminary at Écône, would at the same time lose their right to exist. ”

The decision was justified by the fact that the bishop was urging his seminarians to subject the directives coming from the Pope to their own judgement, so as either to submit to them or to evade them.

Archbishop Lefebvre took no account of any of this and continued all his activities.

Seeing this, on June 29, Paul VI addressed a personal letter to him in order to obtain from him a public act of submission. Archbishop Lefebvre outrageously maintained his silence when our Father, for his part, courageously and publicly denounced the falsehood contained in that letter, namely its placing the Councils of Nicaea and Vatican II on an equal footing as regards their authority.

“ If it were established and certain that the Acts of Vatican II possessed the same absolute, incontestable and infallible authority as the dogma of the consubstantiality of the Divine Persons, essential to the Creed of Nicaea, for which Athanasius fought alone against all (...), then the matter would be settled : whoever opposes the faith of Nicaea thereby rejects the Christian Faith itself and stands excommunicated ; and likewise, we who, ever since their promulgation, have refused the Acts of Vatican II as tainted with heresy, ambiguous and pernicious, would thereby find ourselves cut off from the Church. And one would simply wonder that the Pope had waited ten years to make this known to us, and then only in passing, in the form of an exclamation, in a private letter devoid of doctrinal authority, when from the very first day we have said and published the contrary, and had again affirmed it without contradiction before the tribunal of the Holy Office in May 1968 : no, this Council has nothing infallible about it ; its Acts possess no dogmatic authority, and their novelty has no right to impose itself upon the consciences of the faithful contrary to the Tradition of the Church ! ”

“ It would be beneficial for the whole Church if, departing from his deferential submission, Archbishop Lefebvre were to utter the same refusal and denounce the Pope’s falsehood, the falsehood of which the Church is dying. ”●

The founder of Écône did nothing of the sort.

The Pope renewed his demand for submission in September 1975. In “ response ”, Archbishop Lefebvre reopened the doors of his seminary for a new academic year and contented himself, on September 24, with writing a few lines to Paul VI in which he assured him of his “ unreserved attachment to the Holy See and to the Vicar of Christ ”.

At the same time, Archbishop Lefebvre was travelling throughout France and throughout the world to make his work known and to offer his ministerial services, in violation of the requirements of canon law, without anyone’s permission, in contempt of the rights of the bishops and of their priests, everywhere casting doubt upon the validity of the sacraments of the new Ordo.

Despite the prohibition personally imposed upon him by Paul VI, and reiterated in Paul VI’s name by Archbishop Benelli, Substitute at the Secretariat of State, on June 25, Archbishop Lefebvre conferred priestly ordination upon fifteen candidates for the priesthood on June 29, 1976, thereby clearly, publicly and gravely committing an act of insubordination towards the Holy Father and, by that very fact, a schismatic act. Thus, on that day, Archbishop Lefebvre passed from an apparent, unconditional and therefore culpable submission to the Pope and to his reform of the Church – which he knew to be heretical and schismatic – to an insubordination still more culpable, by beginning to create a clergy in defiance of prohibitions and sanctions and contrary to the general prescriptions of canon law, thereby establishing it in schism, or at the very least setting it upon the path to schism.

“ Archbishop Lefebvre declares that, through him and his young seminarians, it is the priesthood of all time, it is the Mass of all time, that are being mortally assailed (...) ”, wrote our Father in his August 1976 editorial, “ The Bad Break ”●. “ By justifying his rebellion with arguments such as these, Archbishop Lefebvre is making bad propaganda for his cause and, alas, alas ! he is inflicting irreparable harm upon the rites and traditions he sought to save. For he presents it as certain, as self-evident, that there is no true Mass except our ancient Mass, that there is no longer any true priesthood or true seminary outside Écône and the priests formed in that tradition which he claims to possess. When this liturgical argument has been fully deployed, the whole Church will understand that such a conception of ecclesiastical institutions is false, is heretical. It will be conceded that there were defects, excesses and disorders in the reform of the rites. But all will agree that the Church, the priesthood and the Mass are not lost, and that they continue to exist far from those proud men who deem themselves their sole custodians, the last of the faithful, the only ones capable of saving them.

“ What absurdity, what a mess, what a tragedy ! Nothing worse could have been done : having been right on what was essential, and possessing serious advantages on what was secondary, to put oneself in the wrong, to cast oneself into heresy, to separate oneself from the One Church of Jesus Christ. ” Heresy, by reason of that inexcusable, criminal doubt which the founder cast, irrevocably, upon the validity of the sacraments celebrated by the Church according to the new ritual forms. The mad, excessive accusation of heresy and schism “ levelled against the Church, the present-day Church of Rome, universal, as a constituted Body ”, in place of the only accusation that could possibly be made, the legitimate and unanswerable accusation “ of heresy against ecclesiastical men, be they theologians, bishops or Pope ” ; and, finally and above all, the creation of a clergy no longer possessing any canonical bond with the hierarchy – that is to say, with the bishops and the Pope.

“ Bishop Lefebvre may yet come to repentance, and so may each one of his priests and disciples individually. But his work is compromised for ever ; it has no future save outside the Church and against the Church. It is henceforth not merely useless, but culpable, to associate oneself with it, ” wrote our Father in his editorial of August 1976, “ The Bad Break ”.●

Such was the judgement pronounced by our Father in July 1976, and nothing that followed would ever gainsay it.

Archbishop Lefebvre and his successors have continued their work in schism with an inexorable logic born of an obstinacy of rare magnitude, thereby irrevocably abandoning the struggle of the Counter-Reformation, the true and fruitful service of the Church.

The priests ordained on June 29, 1976 were, ipso facto, suspended from the exercise of the Holy Orders they had received. Archbishop Lefebvre, for his part, was suspended from the conferral of Holy Orders. However his formal insubordination to the prohibition he had received from the Holy Father further earned him, from the latter, a suspension a divinis, on July 22, 1976. Thus the Priestly Fraternity was reduced to canonical non-existence, all its members struck by the penalty of suspension, which principally forbade them from celebrating and administering the sacraments. Their leader, their founder took no account of this and pursued all his apostolic activities to confer, by his own authority – though canonically reduced to nought –, upon each of his priests – who were nonetheless bereft of canonical attachment and incardinated nowhere – the powers of order and jurisdiction, to send them throughout the whole world to celebrate and administer all the sacraments to all the faithful whom they might encounter on the paths of the Church, thereby detaching them from their legitimate pastors.

Such were the initial developments of a formal schism, manifested by the determination of the Society of Saint Pius X to sever itself from the sacramental life of the Church, no longer wanting to regard as brethren all those who participated in it. Their intention was to attain independence in the life of grace, gained at the cost of serious offences against the law of the Church, thereby undermining her unity and the charity of Christ.

(To be continued)

Brother Pierre-Julien of Divine Mary.