Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre - Volume II

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Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre
by Michael Davies
Volume I
Taken from the SSPX Asia website

Author’s Introduction

The first volume of the Apologia took the story of Archbishop Lefebvre up to the end of 1976. I had hoped to continue the account in this volume, but the amount of material I felt it necessary to include was such that it could cover only three more years, taking the story to the end of 1979. The last major incident in this book is the Archbishop's sacerdotal Golden Jubilee. I had also hoped, as I remarked in the Introdtiction to Volume I, to be able to give details of an agreement between the Pope and the Archbishop in this volume. Alas, no final agreement has yet been reached, but negotiations are still continuing. Let us pray that Volume III will contain details of this greatly desired reconciliation.

The major part of this book is taken up with the negotiations between the Archbishop and the Holy See, principally with the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Archbishop Lefebvre had long demanded that his case should he brought before this Congregation; his request was granted, and the resultant discussions are absorbing and of considerable historic interest. Unlike the treatment he received from the Vatican which was described in Volume I, I consider his treatment at the hands of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to have been scrupulously fair. The story is told here principally through the original documents which are presented without comment. The discussions were by no means one-sided. The questions put to the Archbishop were very perceptive and clearly gave him cause to think deeply about the basis for his attitudes and actions. In some cases he has clearly vindicated his position, but in others his answers were not quite as convincing. These negotiations are, of course, continuing. Further documentation will be provided in Volume III.

I have followed a strict chronological sequence, and have interspersed documentation on the negotiations with some of the Archbishop's sermons and accounts of his activities. The schedule he undertakes is quite staggering for a man in his seventies. His travels take him all over the world, to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, the United States of America, South America, and many European countries. Wherever he goes, the faithful have high expectations of him, and despite his personal fatigue and the weighty problems with which he has to deal he rarely disappoints them. He is always ready with a friendly smile, a kindly word, and inspirational sermon. The progress made by the Society at this time would have been almost miraculous even had it enjoyed the full support of the Vatican. The number of ordinations increased steadily, new seminaries were opened; there are now three in addition to Ecône-in Germany, the U.S.A., and Argentina. Schools were founded, church buildings purchased, and new Mass centers opened at an astonishing rate.

But at the same time evidence of problems within the Society began to emerge. The Archbishop was attracting considerable criticism from the fringe of the traditionalist movement for his alleged moderation and willingness to "compromise." A good number of priests outside the Society claimed that the New Mass was intrinsically invalid, and that there had been no true pope since Pope Pius XII. Some priests in the Society became infected by these theories, particularly in France and the U.S.A. And, almost inevitably, some young Society priests began to show alarming signs of arrogance. The Archbishop had taken a calculated risk in sending young men out to do pastoral work without the benefit of guidance and supervision from mature priests. Some proved worthy of the trust he had placed in them, others did not. Needless to say, reports of these tendencies reached the Vatican and added to the Archbishop's problems in working for a reconciliation. This was why he found it necessary to clarify his position on the New Mass and the Pope on a number of occasions, as this book will show. These internal problems became more serious after 1979, and will be dealt with in Volume III. The Archbishop felt obliged to expel a number of priests in subsequent years, including nine in the United States in 1983. Others left of their own accord. Sadly, some of these priests have had no scruples about making vindictive attacks upon t lie bishop who had given them their priesthood.

In June 1983, Archbishop Lefebvre resigned as Superior of the Society, to be succeeded by Father Franz Schmidberger who had been Superior of the German District. The Archbishop will continue to carry out the ordinations and confirmations, but will at least be relieved of the administrative burdens.

This book, as was its predecessor, is not directed primarily to Catholics who support the stand Archbishop Lefebvre has taken. Its aim is to provide factual material for those interested in discovering the truth about a man and a movement of great significance in the history of the Church during the post-conciliar epoch. No individual has been as consistently mispresented in the official Catholic press as the Archbishop. When the three volumes of the Apologia are available it will at least be possible for fair-minded Catholics to judge him by what he has said and done, rather than what he is alleged to have said and done.

I do not expect every reader to agree with all the Archbishop's opinions, actions, and judgments. I do not necessarily do so myself. He has admitted that he sometimes speaks with excessive indignation (see p. 112), and that his addresses have included "exaggerated expressions" (p. 290). But, as I have endeavored to point out several times in the present volume, it is necessary to set the case of the Archbishop within the overall context of the Conciliar Church, a context of accelerating self-destruction, of doctrinal, moral, and liturgical degeneration, widespread anarchy, and apparent impotence on the part of the Holy See to take any effective measures to restore order. In the U.S.A., for example, respected Catholics unconnected with the traditionalist movement are speaking of a de facto schism. In an editorial in the January 1983 issue of The Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Father Kenneth Baker, S. J., noted that in the United States: "We are witnessing the rejection of the hierarchical Church founded by Jesus Christ to be replaced by a Protestant American Church separate from Rome." This is a fact which must be kept in mind continually when passing judgment upon Archbishop Lefebvre. I would ask those readers who do not know him and are not familiar with his work to read his sermons carefully. How many bishops preach like this today? They disclose a man who has the Faith, loves the Faith, and lives the Faith.

I said earlier that the account of the negotiations with the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is absorbing. There will be one exception for some readers. This is Chapter XV, a long chapter which contains the Archbishop's defense of his position concerning religious liberty. Those who are not familiar with the background to this controversy may well find Chapter XV complex and difficult to follow. I suggest that they omit it, at least on a first reading. Most readers will find it less difficult if they first study Appendix IV to Volume I of the Apologia, This provides a fairly brief and simple introduction to this question, which is probably the greatest obstacle impeding a reconciliation between the Archbishop and the Vatican. The Archbishop's insistence upon the Society being allowed to use the Tridentine Mass and pre-conciliar sacramental rites is a disciplinary matter, and could be conceded by the Pope without great difficulty; but the question of religious liberty involves a serious disagreement on a matter of doctrine.

I would like to draw the reader's attention to the list of abbreviations contained on page xvii. All the abbreviations used in the book are, I hope, included here.

I am grateful to a number of people who have given me considerable help with this volume. I must mention first Miss Norah Haines who provided the typescript, checked the proofs with meticulous care, and compiled the index. Without her help it would never have been completed. I am equally grateful to Mrs. Carlita Brown who set the type and submitted to numerous last minute amendments without complaining. I must also pay tribute to Father Carl Pulvermacher for printing and collating the book single-handed. This has been a real community effort in what I believe is supposed to be the "spirit of Vatican II." Archbishop Lefebvre was kind enough to read through the proofs and make a number of corrections. There are several others whose help I would like to acknowledge publicly, but who have asked me not to do so.

I would like to stress the fact that although both volumes of' the Apologia have been published by the English-language publishers to the Society of St. Pius X, The Angelus Press, I have written them with complete independence. No attempt has ever been made to influence what I wished to say.

Finally, I would like to answer a question concerning which I receive a considerable amount of correspondence. Has Archbishop Lefebvre been excommunicated? No, he certainly has not. Statements claiming the opposite have been made in several countries. In order to settle the matter once and for all I wrote to the Vatican in April 1983, and received a letter signed by Cardinal Oddi, dated 7 May 1983, stating that Archbishop Lefebvre has not been excommunicated. However, those who would like him to be excommunicated will no doubt continue to insist that he has been, no matter what evidence to the contrary can be brought forward, which is just one one indication of why I consider it to have been so necessary to write Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre.

Michael Davies,
7 August 1983,
St. Cajetan, Confessor.

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Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre
Volume II

List of books cited

AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH


M. Davies        *Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre, Vol. I (Dickinson, 1979).

G. Kelly          The Battle for the American Church (New York, 1979).

J. Twyman      *The Betrayal of the Citadel (Oregon, 1978).

M. Lefebvre    *A Bishop Speaks (Edinburgh, 1976).

Y. Congar        Challenge to the Church (London, 1977).

G. Kelly          The Crisis of Authority-John Paul II and the American Bishops (Chicago, 1982).

M. Lefebvre    *I Accuse the Council (Dickinson, 1982).

M. Davies (Ed.)*Newman Against the Liberals-Twenty-five Sermons of Cardinal Newman (Devon, 1978).

M. Davies        *Partisans of Error-St. Pius X Against the Modernists (Minnesota, 1983).

M. Davies        *Pope John’s Council (Dickinson, 1980).

M. Davies        *Pope Paul’s New Mass (Dickinson, 1980).

R. Wiltgen      *The Rhine Flows into the Tiber (Devon, 1978).

A. Flannery      Vatican II – the Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents (New York, 1975).

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Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre
Volume II, Chapter I

Lefebvre: Rebel or Restorer of the Roman Church?

January 1977

The Dispute between Pope and Archbishop in Ecumenical Perspective
by Mgr. Klaus Gamber, in Katholilcher Digest

MUCH IS BEING WRITTEN about the Lefebvre case, but little by theologians-and then only from the "Roman" side. He is regarded as the rebel against Vatican II and against Paul VI. The Lefebvre case is certainly not-as it might appear-a personal quarrel of a headstrong, spiritually inflexible old man against a Head of the Roman Catholic Church who is open-minded to modern times. Neither may the case be reduced to a mere dispute about liturgical rites. The positions held by the Church leaders and by Mgr. Lefebvre seem to be unbridgeable. They concern matters that constitute the inmost being of the Church: in the last analysis, what is at stake is the Faith that has been transmitted to the Church.

The gist of the conflict is the spirit of Liberalism which is spreading more and more in Catholic Church since the Council. It is a pluralism which tolerates all opinions and endeavours which are not directly contrary to the Christian Weltanschauung (the Christian outlook and attitude to life)-except those that aim at the restoration of the Church to its former state.

The same Church authorities that persistently show leniency towards heretics, even those who deny fundamental dogmas such as the Divinity or Resurrection of Christ and the existence of the devil-show a severity, which hardly differs from that meted out to dissidents in past ages of intolerance, towards the orthodox (unbeirrbaren-unable to be led into error) defenders of the Council of Trent, and the liturgical books promulgated in obedience to it.

It must be clear to everyone who knows the mutual connection between Faith in God and Worship of God as expressed in the axiom lex orandi, lex credendi, that the Liturgical Reform which doubtlessly contains some positive elements, must play an important role in that struggle. The official Church is silent about almost all, even the most daring experiments in the liturgical field, but forbids-and this with great severity-the Rite that has been celebrated in the Western Church for 1,500 years until recently, and had been codified by the order of the Council of Trent. The Catholic people do not understand this schizophrenic attitude of the ecclesiastical authorities.

The Reformers appeal to the right of the Pope to revise the totality of the (liturgical) rites-a right that, in my opinion, has by no means been proved, and which, moreover, no single pope has ever claimed for himself nor exercised in a complete reform of the Liturgy. Until Pope Paul, the popes have made only minor adaptations of the traditional rites to the needs of the times. Even the Tridentine Missal of Pope Pius V does not constitute an innovation. It was merely an improved edition of the Missal then in use in Italy and in Rome. According to the will of Pius V it was in no way to replace the various local Missals provided they had been in use for at least 200 years.

However, as I said before, it is not primarily the Liturgy that is at stake today, but the traditional Faith of the Church.

Had you asked a Catholic ten years ago what he regarded as the essential points of his Faith, he might probably have mentioned the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity or belief in eternal life. Are these articles of the Faith and other dogmas defended with the same emphasis as before? Certainly not! There has, however, been no lack of protestations of obedience to Paul VI when he meted out high ecclesiastical censured to his disobedient son Lefebvre. No word of understanding for the real issues that most deeply move that man! Without intending it, the Archbishop has now become the opponent of the Pope.

The number of his supporters, especially the secret ones, increases from day to day.

Lefebvre is not a rebel. In his sermon at the Ordination of priests, 29 June 1976, at Ecône, he said:

We regret infinitely, it is an immense, immense pain for us, to think that we are in difficulty with Rome because of our faith! How is this possible? It is something that exceeds the imagination, that we should never have been able to imagine, that we should never have been able to believe, especially in our childhood-then when all was uniform, when the whole Church believed in Her general unity, and held the same Faith, the same Sacraments, the same Sacrifice of the Mass, the same Catechism. And behold, suddenly, all is in division, in chaos.

An individual believer does not have the right to judge the Pope, who is certainly motivated by the best intentions to solve the problems of the Church today. But a glance back into history clearly shows that not all popes have always acted prudently in all decisions. Even saintly popes have made serious errors of judgment, e.g., St. Pius V when, in 1570, he excommunicated Elizabeth I and released her subjects from their oath of allegiance to her, which caused a most bloody persecution of Catholics in England. That was a clear misuse of papal power-to the detriment of the Church.1

That and the case of Lefebvre, opens up the question, whether the fulness of power, which the popes have had since the Middle Ages, and which is in no way founded on Holy Scripture nor on the early Tradition of the Church, does not constitute a danger for the Church? History teaches us, as we all know, that not only pious and wise popes have ascended the Chair of Peter; she knows of many false decisions made by supreme shepherds of the Church.

Not everybody is competent to judge the Pope: but there must be bishops who have the courage to climb the barricades in case of need as St. Paul did in a decisive case at Antioch when he “withstood Peter to the face” (Gal. 2: 11). Archbishop Lefebvre is of the opinion that decisions of the Pope concerning vital problems of the Church do not bind in conscience if they are contrary to the centuries-old Tradition of the Church, when, for instance, the Pope forbids something which had until then been the universal and unopposed usage of the Church; or when he orders something that constitutes a radical change of direction in the attitude of the Church and a clear turning away from Tradition. It is precisely this that Paul VI is reproached for doing-notwithstanding his repeated professions of the traditional Catholic Faith.

Far more important than the Pope's profession of faith, however, is what is actually done in the Church without the intervention of the Magisterium: heretical teaching on the part of several heretical professors going on unchecked; the doubt wherewith the faithful are being poisoned from numerous pulpits; the disastrous new books of religion which carry the spirit of religious indifference among the young generation now growing up. Church authorities do nothing or next to stem this creeping decomposition of the very substance of the Faith.

Such a situation necessarily calls for a courageous man such as Lefebvre, for a defender of the traditional Faith of our fathers and the long-established forms of worship. Perhaps, at times, he and his community of Ecône overstate the emphasis on ancient forms of piety in their fight against the changes in the Church: but any damage done thereby is certainly not as great as that caused by the continual experimentation which the faithful have to endure today.

It is also true that the salvation of the Church does not lie in rigid adherence to partially outdated forms, but in faithfulness to Tradition as such. This faithfulness does not exclude an organic development such as has taken place in the Church in the past. In this, a constant, meditative glance back to the origins is important. What we are experiencing today, however, is not organic development, but a landslide.

The real problem seems to lie deeper. It has its cause in the unhappy Schism between East and West, in the breaking away of the great patriarchates from Rome: the Patriarchates of Byzantium, Antioch, and Alexandria. That division of Ancient Christendom into two halves was formally completed by 1054 when legates of Pope Leo IX placed the Bull of Excommunication on the High Altar of Santa Sophia Basilica in Constantinople. The actual estrangement had already begun centuries before.

Contact with Orthodoxy was also lacking in the years that followed. Both the Eastern and Western Churches have suffered from this in their later development. A rigidity of forms soon developed in the East; a further division occurred in the West through the Reformers, a division that was much deeper that the break with the East. Later came the time of the Enlightenment in the West with all its revolutionary ideas.

These could indeed be pushed into the background during the Restoration, but they continued to thrive underground and came to the surface again after the Council (Vatican II). In addition to that, we have today a one-sided ecumenism which primarily consists in adapting the Catholic Church to the concepts of the Protestant world while the latter has not made one single essential step nearer Catholicism.

A simple Restoration, as in the 19th century, and as Lefebvre seems to want, is not enough. This might be his tragedy. He may perhaps eventually fail on account of his immobility. On the other side is the exterior submissiveness of the bishops towards the Pope while in practice they still do as they please. This we can see today again and again.

The Roman Catholic Church will overcome modern errors and gain new vitality only when she succeeds in being united again- to the supporting powers of the Eastern Church, to its mystical theology based upon the Great Fathers of the Church and to the piety pervading its culture (Kulturfrom-migkeit). This cannot be achieved simply by an embrace of the Greek Patriarch by the Pope.

One thing seems certain: the church's future does not lie in a rapprochement with Protestantism, but in a rapprochement with the Eastern Church-the bearer of the unabridged Christian Tradition. In a Church-thus re-united-the Protestant Christians will-as we hope-one day also find their home, bringing with them all the positive values they undoubtedly possess.

Can Lefebvre renew the Catholic Church? He can be the impetus for a renewal. Or will there be a new schism? Nobody knows. A schism would certainly be a disaster. The Church of Christ needs unity, the all-embracing unity in Faith and in Charity.



Two Weights and Two Measures

In the article which has just been cited, Mgr. Gamber contrasted the leniency shown by Church authorities towards heretics with their severity where traditional Catholics are concerned. When considering the treatment accorded to Archbishop Lefebvre during the pontificate of Pope Paul VI it is important never to lose sight of the historical context. This context, it must be stated with sadness, was of a Church a state of de facto anarchy. There were rare instances of sanctions being applied to a particularly outrageous Liberal, e. g., the Marxist Abbot Franzoni, but, in general, anyone was free to undermine the Church in any way he pleased without fear of sanctions, providing he was not a traditionalist. The most scandalous and evident example was the retention in positions as official teachers of the Church of priests who had publicly rejected the Encyclical Humanae Vitae, among the most notorious of these is the Professor of Moral Theology at the Catholic University of American, Father Charles Curran. He still retained this post in August 1983.

The following report from the 17 December 1976 issue of Universe is particularly valuable in setting the case of the Archbishop in its proper perspective. What was his crime? He believed and taught all that was believed and taught by the Church prior to Vatican II. Could this be a cause of scandal? He offered Mass and administered the sacraments in the liturgical forms utilized before Vatican II, in most cases forms based firmly upon traditions dating back a thousand years or more. Could this be a cause of scandal? Meanwhile, in Holland, priests by the hundred were violating their solemn vow of celibacy. Was this a cause of scandal? One would hope so. These included professors in Catholic colleges of theology. Incredible as it may seem, many of these continued to occupy their posts after their marriages, and, what is more, were teaching not Catholicism but theological Modernism. The Vatican acted. How could it not do so? It commanded that these married priests be dismissed, otherwise, the institutions which employed them would no longer receive Vatican recognition for the degrees they conferred. To cut a long story short, these institutes in Holland replied: “To hell with Pope.” Now, please bear in mind the inflexible and censorious attitude adopted by Pope Paul VI to Archbishop Lefebvre before reading the relevant report which follows, a report of abject capitulation on the part of the Vatican which constitutes a “scandal" in the fullest theological sense of the word. Because the institutions would not dismiss the married priests the Vatican agreed that they could remain, "so as not to disrupt syllabuses," but requested that no more such priests should be employed. Here is the text of the Universe report:

EX-PRIESTS STILL TEACH THEOLOGY AT COLLEGES...

Thirty priests who have been laicised and have since married are still teaching at five of the Church’s colleges of theology- four in Holland and one in Canada.

They have been allowed to continue so as not to disrupt syllabuses. But the Vatican is said to insist that no more such priests be employed.

The facts were disclosed during the second International Congress of Catholic Universities and Faculties of Ecclesiastical Studies in Rome.

1.FOOTNOTE BY MICHAEL DAVIES. Some readers who not familiar with the background to the Bull Regnans in exelsis may be rather surprised at the severity with which Mgr. Gamber criticizes St. Pius V. It is certainly true that the vast majority of historians regarded the Pope's action as ill-judged. A standard history of the Popes, published in England, comments: "The Pope, ill advised on the situation of the English Catholics, encouraged Philip II of Spain to invade England and depose Elizabeth. He issued a famous Bull, Regnans in excelsis, 1570, intended to help the Catholic claimant, Mary Queen of Scot, then an English prisoner, which deposed Elizabeth and released her English subjects from their allegiance to her. The English saw in this an attempt to promote Spanish political advantage. Had Mary become queen, her rule would have been supervised by Spain at least. In the event all the Bull did was to secure the execution of Mary and provide the English government with an excuse for increasing the severity of its persecution of Catholics, on political as well as religious grounds" (E. John, The Popes, London, 1964, pp. 349-350). The case of St. Pius V and the Bull, Regnans in excelsis, is certainly pertinent to the case of Pope Paul VI, the reform of the Missal, and Archbishop Lefebvre. In both cases the popes did not exceed their legal authority, but in both cases it is legitimate to ask whether they acted prudently and in the best interests of the Church. In the case of St. Pius V, I am inclined to believe that a better case can be made out for Regnans in excelsis than is generally done.

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Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre
Volume 2, Chapter II

Lefebvre: Rebel or Restorer of the Roman Church?

27 February 1977

ON SUNDAY, 27 February 1977, the Church of Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet in Paris was "occupied" by Catholic traditionalists, or "liberated" as they prefer to express it. The church was still firmly under their control in 1983, and is certainly the most popular and thriving parish in Paris. Melodramatic stories of the event have been circulated by progressives; there have even been accounts giving the impression that it fell to a squad of fascist militia using rosaries as knuckledusters! When the Pope visited France in 1981 an appeal was made to him to celebrate Mass with ousted parishioners in the schoolroom which they have to use since they have no church. The Pope declined the invitation. As the article which follows makes clear, Saint Nicholas was operating as joint-parish with the parish of Saint Sévrin, literally a stone’s throw away. There is ample room in this huge church for a hundred times the number of the parishioners of Saint Nicholas, or alleged parishioners of Saint Nicholas, who do not wish to worship there now that the Tridentine Mass is offered once more. Although, strictly speaking, the occupation of Saint Nicholas does not form part of the story of the breach between Archbishop Lefebvre and the Vatican, which is the subject of this book, it must be set within the historical context of this breach-particularly where the French situation is concerned. It was certainly the most dramatic event in the centuries-old conflict between Tradition and Liberalism to have occurred in France since the triumphant Mass at Lille just over six months before (see Vol. I, pp. 253-271).

I had the good fortune to visit Saint Nicholas on 12 April 1977. The account which follows is one which I wrote for The Remnant of 30 April 1977.

The date: Tuesday, 12th of April, 1977. The place: Paris-more precisely, the métro station Maubert-Mutualité. The time: about 6.15 in the evening. I emerge from the métro station, and the first thing I note is the sound of the church bell sounding triumphantly, imperiously over the noise of the rush hour traffic and the homeward hurrying crowds. Within moments I see the church from which the bell is sounding-it is the Church of St. Nicholas du Chardonnet, the church where a miracle has taken place. A miracle? Il ne faut pas exagérer say the French. "One must not exaggerate." But this is no exaggeration. Up till the first Sunday of Lent it had been typical of most parish churches in Paris. Less than 100 of the faithful attended all the Masses celebrated on Sunday. The once beautiful church had a grubby, dilapidated look. The Sunday assemblies, as the Mass is now termed in France, were celebrated on a table placed upon a podium covered in extremely tatty purple material. The altar had been abandoned-apparently forever.

During the final Mass of the morning on the First Sunday of Lent the miracle began. The handful of worshippers started to grow. Slowly but surely the church began to fill. Before long it was full. The faithful were standing in the aisles. One of the parish clergy could not restrain his astonishment.

"Who are you? Why are you here? We're overcome with delight."

"Let's hope you're still delighted in a few minutes' time," answered a layman.

“Why, what do you mean?" asked the cleric.

He soon found out.

Through the main door of the church a triumphal procession entered. Preceded by a cross came a long line of the faithful headed by a good number of priests, three of whom were vested ready for Mass-let their names be known and venerated. M. l'Abbé Juan, sub-deacon; M. l'Abbé de Fommevault, deacon; Monsignor Ducaud-Bourget, celebrant-a priest of more than eighty years of age, a patriarchal figure with long white hair , a priest who appeared to be a reincarnation of the Curé d'Ars. Among the other priests was M. l'Abbé Coache, hounded from his parish for the crime of organizing a procession in honor of the Blessed Sacrament.1

For years now these holy priests had been celebrating a series of Masses each Sunday in the Salle Wagram, a rather dilapidated hall near the Arc de Triomphe. They had begged and pleaded, used every possible approach to the civil and ecclesiastical authorities to be allowed the use of a church to celebrate their Mass-but to no avail. The Mass which they wished to celebrate was the Mass codified by Pope St. Pius V –and the celebration of this form of Mass is the one and only form of activity which is totally and absolutely verboten in the French Church. The present situation was perfectly expressed by Fr. Henri Bruckberger, Chaplain-General to the French Resistance. “Today a priest is permitted to lend his church for use by Moslems or Buddhists, Tibetans or Patagonians, hippies, Papuans, non-Papuans, boys, girls, by the ambiguous, the ambivalent, the ambidexterous, amphibians or nomads-but if a poor priest wishes to celebrate the Mass for which the very Church was built (and not by the hierarchy but by the people themselves), and if the French people wish to go there to assist at the same Mass that has been said in the place for centuries, then the full fury of the French episcopate falls upon them.”

But by the First Sunday of Lent 1977 the faithful had had enough-more than enough. Attendance at the Salle Wagram -8,000 each Sunday-more than surpassed any other place of worship in Paris, not excepting the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Why, they asked themselves, priests and people alike, why should they have to worship in a public hall for the sole crime of remaining true to the faith of their fathers?

"By what right do you come here?" asked one of the parish clergy.

"We come ," replied Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget (and is it unreasonable to claim that he was inspired?) "in Nomine Domini."

The apostles of progress are temporarily nonplussed; before they realize what is happening their podium and table have been relegated to a transept, and a Solemn High Mass is being celebrated on the altar. But the apostles of progress do not remain nonplussed for long. Militant campaigners against oppressive social structures, advocates of lay participation- what can they do? The answer is simple. Call the police. They do so without hesitation. The police arrive. "Expel those people from the church."

"But they're saying Mass and praying. That's what a church is for! " Exit the police. The apostles of progress are nonplussed once more.

And that was that.

The traditionalists came; they prayed; they stayed. And they are there still.

The progressives clung on to the sacristy for some days, and on one occasion made a determined counter-attack which was unsuccessful. The resulting violence did, for a time, cast a shadow over what had been a very joyful event. But now they have given over the church entirely to the traditionalists. The faithful have a church in which they can assist at the Mass which was celebrated in all the churches of Paris before the "liturgical renewal" which has been followed, on the admission of Cardinal Marty, Archbishop of Paris in 1977, by a 54% decline in Mass attendance by Parisians. But no one is as determined as a stubborn Liberal, and the Cardinal would quite clearly prefer not to have a single Catholic assisting at Mass on Sundays rather than allow a single celebration of the traditional Mass.

Since the occupation, the Liberal establishment, led by Cardinal Marty himself,has engaged in a series of grotesque posturings for the benefit of the media-posturings which could only evoke amusement but for the distaste aroused by their cynical hypocrisy. Messages of sympathy have gone out to the poor pastor of Saint Nicholas and his distressed congregation (all sixty or seventy of them) who now have nowhere to worship, nowhere to hold meetings, religious instruction, or for their scout troop to meet. The Cardinal is united with them in their hour of sorrow and persecution, etc., etc., as are innumerable Liberal stalwarts who have expressed their solidarity effusively and very publicly. Yet only a stone’s throw from Saint Nicholas is the huge church of St. Sévrin-in fact, the two were already some sort of joint parish before the occupation. Once again, as a result of the decline in Mass attendance, there has been no difficulty in squeezing the handful of parishioners from Saint Nicholas, who have opted for the new Mass, into the ample space available for the new Masses celebrated in this church. But, and this is very important, now more than two hundred parishioners of Saint Nicholas are attending Mass in their parish church each Sunday-and the traditionalists can prove this. Cardinal Marty claims to have the signature of 2,000 outraged inhabitants of the parish who are consumed with impatience for the return of their church! When I mentioned this figure to those organizing the occupation it evoked extreme hilarity. To put it mildly (which they did not), they suggested that the Cardinal’s figures might be somewhat (and more that somewhat) exaggerated. In their own case, they are keeping a list of parishioners who have expressly signed a petition asking that the church be left in traditionalist hands, and in each case a photocopy of the signatory’s identity card has been obtained to prove that the person concerned is a genuine parishioner. The petition has now been signed by more than 50,000 symathizers-not just from Paris but from all over the world. I was most honored to add my own on April 12th.

Now surprisingly, Cardinal Marty is not content to leave the situation as it is. A court order has been obtained stating that the traditionalists can be expelled by a bailiff, by the police, and by the military if necessary .A date was given, but was followed by a stay of execution until after Easter, so that all the Holy Week services could be held (perhaps the judge wished to attend himself). This stay of execution expired on Monday 11 April, and it had been with some trepidation that I made my first visit to the church at about 8:15 a.m. on the morning of 12 April after an all-night journey from Switzerland. Upon entering the church I thought that the worst had happened as I heard a priest speaking in French-but all was well, he was simply reading the Gospel. It was a great joy to assist at Mass in a beautiful old church exactly as it had been celebrated before the Council.

After the Mass I had a talk with the celebrant and some of the young men who are guarding the church. They then invited me to share their very simple breakfast of bread and butter dipped in coffee. It would be hard to imagine more pleasant and courteous young men; to discover such fervor and dedication for the traditional faith among young people brought up in the "Conciliar Church" is certainly a sign of great hope. All the doors of the church but one have been locked, and at least two or three young men always remain on duty here. They work in shifts-some remaining on duty all night while the others sleep in a makeshift dormitory. It is a monstrous calumny to suggest, as some Liberal papers (Catholic and secular) have done, that these are young men with a predilection for violence. If an attempt is made to expel them from the church by force they will resist-but if they are not attacked there will be no violence. Those I spoke to also assured me that they would not resist the police-only a physical attack by progressive laymen.

But the police and the courts have made it quite clear that they are most reluctant to take any direct action. Monsieur Jean Guitton, a prominent Catholic writer, member of the French Academy, and a close friend of Pope Paul VI, has been appointed as mediator. But the traditionalists will not leave unless they are offered a church of their own. After eight years of exile they are determined that they will worship in Churches from now on. If they are expelled they will simply occupy another church, and the legal process will have to begin again-the Cathedral of Notre Dame has been mentioned.

I was assured that if I wished to experience the true atmosphere of the traditionalist parish I should return in the evening-which explains why, at 6.15p.m., I emerged from the métro station Maubert-Mutualité to hear the bell of Saint Nicholas summoning the faithful to worship. Even on weekdays there is Mass at 0800, 1200, 1700 (followed by Vespers Benediction) and at 1830. I entered the church during Benediction just in time to hear Pope Paul being prayed for by name. This had also been done during the Good Friday services at Ecône where I had been four days before. A truly superb choir was singing-I discovered later it had come together spontaneously; it sings at Vespers, Benediction, and Mass each day and on Sundays at several Masses. Each evening its members remain behind to practice and expand their already impressive repertoire-the most remarkable aspect of the choir (apart from its talent) is its youth.

The grubby and dilapidated church which has existed before the occupation has been transformed-lovingly and thoroughly. The church has been washed and scrubbed-marble statues that seemed almost black with grime are now positively gleaming with whiteness. There are flowers in every side chapel, candles burning before the statues, the high altar in particular is ablaze with candles and almost smothered with flowers. The high altar in every church is the symbol of Christ, and in this Easter Week it is the most dramatic possible symbol of the resurrection of the faith of Christ’s Church in Saint Nicholas. The altar had indeed seemed to be dead, abandoned forever, never to be used again, and here it was, triumphantly resurrected, radiant with light and Easter joy-with the Cranmerian table and its tatty podium, cast inside, aptly symbolizing a defeat for the Conciliar Church.

The Mass began. It was celebrated by Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget himself. It was sung, and sung beautifully. At the Sanctus in particular the timeless chant filled and echoed through the arches of this ancient church as it had done for centuries. The Council might never have taken place.

A lady moved from chapel to chapel watering the potted flowers with loving care. Every few seconds an individual or a' group of people came into the church. Some stayed for the Mass, others just prayed for a few moments before leaving. Many were young, but some were old-and how happy these old people were. Here was the faith they had been brought up to know and love; here were their traditional devotions quite unchanged. Inside the Church of Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet it is as if time had stood still in 1962. A group of seminarians from Écône came in for a few minutes. They had left the seminary for their Easter break. They were a heartening reminder that the traditionalist resurgence in France is not a temporary phenomenon dependent on a few elderly priests. For every older priest who has remained faithful to the Mass of his ordination there is a young priest or a seminarian ready to join him, and eventually replace him. And for every old person who clearly regards Saint Nicholas as heaven on earth there is a teenager who has discovered what the Catholic faith once was, and is determined to accept it in no other form.

And the miracle of Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet - will it "continue? "You must pray for us. You must pray for us that it will continue," said one lady, gripping my arm in her fervor. "Tell everyone to pray for us."

As an ironic footnote to this report, and a significant sign of the times we live in, I discovered upon reading the 9 April issue of The Tablet, after my return to London, that Cardinal Mart)' has invited any Anglicans visiting France to receive Holy Communion in Catholic churches if they cannot get to an Anglican one. It would seem that the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris needs our prayers far more than the traditionalist members of his flock.


A Report in The Times

By an interesting coincidence a reporter from The Times visited Saint Nicholas on the same day. I was shown a copy of his report some days after mine had been dispatched to The Remnant. This report refers to the attempt at mediation by Monsieur Jean Guitton of the French Academy. It appeared in the 13 April 1977 issue

Church Occupiers Ignore Order

From Charles Hargrove
Paris, April 12.

The Roman Catholic traditionalists occupying the church of St. Nicholas du Chardonnet, in the Latin quarter, since February 27, expected to fight eviction today. But no police turned up to enforce the decision of the Paris court of April 1, which gave them 10 days to leave voluntarily or be expelled by force if necessary.

The main doors were shut against any surprise attack. A few determined looking young men, wearing a Sacred Heart badge, controlled admittance through a side door.

Inside the dimly lit church there was no sign of tension. A couple of dozens faithful, old, and a few seminarians from Ecône, seminary of Mgr. Lefebvre, the former Archbishop of Dakar, knelt in prayer before the high altar, reinstated in its pre-conciliar role. The host was exposed on it in a monstrance amid a profusion of flowers and tapers.

The “Kitchen table" in the transept, which had displaced the high altar in the new liturgy, had been removed.

A steady stream of people came in, asking for information about services, and putting their names down on the rolls of watchers or donors of offerings in support of the traditionalist cause.

Chairs were being arranged in rows in one of the side chapels for a lecture in theology to denounce the ways of the modern church, which was to follow the evening Mass, at which Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget, the instigator and organizer of the occupation of St. Nicholas, preaches.

There has never been any real likelihood of force being used to put an end to the occupation of the church. The Paris court which ruled it illegal and authorized the parish priest, Father Bellego, to call on the police to enforce the judgment, also indicated its distaste for such a solution.

This, the court's president said, "would create an unpleasant situation for all concerned." He appointed mediator, M. Jean Guitton, of the French Academy, the Catholic philosopher, who was given three months to produce a report.

After meeting Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget, Father Bellego, and the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Marty, M. Guitton was in Rome last week to obtain the approval of the Vatican for a compromise solution, which Cardinal Marty refuses to contemplate.

The Cardinal has said recently that to allow the traditionalists to have a church of their own where they could worship as they pleased would amount to giving official approval to a schism.

A lover of tradition, M. Guitton is also a close friend of the Pope, who publicly wished him prompt success in his efforts on Easter Monday.

Father Serralda, one of the four or five traditionalist priests who minister to the needs of the new congregation, told me: "Many Catholics today are in deep distress. They do not understand what is happening in their Church. The conciliar texts are like the decisions of Pope Paul VI-they are ambiguous. All we ask is that all the rites and teaching of the Church should respect Catholic doctrine.

"We are not a party in the Church. We are battling for the Church, not for ourselves. The obligation to say the New Mass is based on an abusive interpretation. It attributes to papal decrees the same authority as to Church laws, like the Bull of 1570 of Pius V laying down irrevocably for all time the liturgy of the Mass."

Facts and the Truth

The reporting of events at St. Nicholas which appeared in The Times was generally fair and factual, it was evident that its reporter, Charles Hargrove, was making every effort to be objective. But the report which follows indicates the extent to which a factual report does not necessarily convey the truth of a situation. Why this is so will be explained after reproducing the report which appeared in the 23 April 1977 issue.

Offer to Occupiers of Church is Rejected

From Charles Hargrove
Paris, April 22.

Cardinal Marty, the Archbishop of Paris, has made a gesture of conciliation to the traditionalists who have occupied the church of St. Nicholas du Chardonnet since the end of March.

He has offered them another place of worship until July 4, when M. Jean Guitton, the Roman Catholic philosopher appointed as mediator by a Paris court on April 1, will submit his report. He added that this offer in no way implied a recognition of their claims.

The church, appropriately St. Marie-Médiatrice, is on the outer boulevards, near the Porte des Lilas, north of Paris. It has been out for use for more than five years, since the construction of the Paris ring motorway. It was built by Cardinal Suhard, the archbishop at the time of the German occupation, as a result of a vow to erect a place to worship if Paris were spared destruction.

Cardinal Marty announced the granting of this church to the traditionalists after reaching an agreement with M. Guitton, who recalled in a statement last night that the dead-line set for the evacuation of St. Nicholas by the court had been prolonged by a week until yesterday, at his request.

But the offer was rejected last night by Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget, one of the leaders of the traditionalists, who said he would sue the cardinal before the ecclesiastical authorities.

"For 10 years we have been treated with contempt," he said. “The faithful from at least five parishes come to our services. There is no question of our transferring to one of the outlying churches of Paris. Let the forces of law and order come and throw us out."

At a press conference this morning at the offices of the archbishop, Mgr. Georges Gilson, an auxiliary bishop, expressed regret that this "generous offer" had been rejected. The cardinal had made it in a "spirit of peace."

Over and above the juridical problem raised by the occupation of St. Nicholas, the cardinal was much more concerned with the religious conflict in which the traditionalists' leaders were opposed to the Catholic hierarchy, the Pope and the Council.

If Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget persisted in his refusal to leave the church, justice would take its course. A bailiff would come to record the fact and the secular arm would then act as it thought fit. But it seems hardly likely that force will be used to expel the traditionalists.

Mgr. Gilson said the leaders of the traditionalists would have to face up to their responsibilities.

The Truth behind the Facts

The reason that the traditionalists declined the "generous offer" of Cardinal Marty was that it was not a generous offer at all, and he must have realized that they would find it totally unacceptable before making it. The church, as the report notes, had been out of use for five years since the construction of the Paris ring motorway. It could only be reached by crossing a very busy motorway (freeway) on foot. The area around the church also happens to be one of the least salubrious in Paris, one where mugging is prevalent. It was also in a most inconvenient location, right on the north side of Paris rather than being central as St. Nicholas is. A good number of elderly Catholics now worship at St. Nicholas, and to have asked them to switch to St. Marie-Médiatrice was a totally impractical proposition, so unrealistic that it could not possibly have been made with any expectation that it would be accepted. This is the truth that the facts quoted in the report did not reveal.


Restored Tradition and the New Mass
By Louis Salleron2

The French newspaper Le Monde of 22 April 1977 published this among other letters which it said it had received concerning the “occupation” of St. Nicholas du Chardonnet Church in Paris. Le Monde said that these letters "are particularly revelatory of the viewpoint of certain Catholics who have so far had little opportunity to express themselves in public.” Professor Salleron’s letter follow:

The arguments brought forward by opponents of the Mass of St. Pius V can be reduced in the last analysis to a single point: St. Pius V, they say, established a rite by his Bull Quo Primum of 1570. What one Pope has done another Pope can undo; consequently, the new rite approved by Paul VI in his Constitution Missale Romanum of 1969 has abrogated the earlier rite.

To present the question thus is to be wrong all along the line. To start with, there is an essential difference between St. Pius V's Bull and Paul VI’s Constitution. Pius V did not set up a new rite. What he did was to authorize a text based on the researches of scholars over many years, and which thus seemed to him to carry the best guarantee of authenticity. It was the traditional rite in all its purity that he restored, after centuries during which faulty versions had become current in a number of dioceses. So great was his respect for tradition, that, although in his Bull he formally prohibited the use of the faulty rites, he expressly recognized and permitted the use of any rite which could prove a certain tradition of at least 200 years. In a word, his intention and his achievement was the restoration of the traditional Mass rites and, in particular, of the first among them, the Roman rite. By contrast, what Paul VI has done is to give his approval to a new rite-Novus Ordo Missae-which is a totally different thing.

Paul VI, it is said, had the right to do this. Of course he did. And therefore (the argument continues) the old rite has been abolished. This is not so. For in his Constitution the Pope does not abrogate the tradition rite; he does not forbid its use any more than he makes the new rite mandatory.

Is it the Pope's will that the new rite should replace the old one and that the latter should disappear? There is no doubt that this is his own wish, but it is not (in the legal sense) his WILL as Pope, which he could only express in and through a solemn Constitution, such as Missale Romanum. Moreover, even in the most urgent of his addresses (Allocutions), he has never invoked his authority as supreme legislator, nor applied this to give effect to his will in respect to the Mass; such an exercise would in any case require a different form than that of an Address. The most "imperious" of his texts on the subject is his Consistorial Address of 24 May 1976, and this merely refers one to the Instruction (or rather, Notification) of 14 June 1971. Now, in this context, an Instruction has no more weight than a Notification or an ordinance; none of them have the authority of an "Apostolic Constitution" or have the power to modify it. (To do so would be rather as though, in French political terms, an executive decree or even a Bill passed by Parliament were to modify the Constitution of the Republic.)

One may add that in the Bull Quo Primum St. Pius V granted an individual indult to all priests, permitting them to celebrate the rite that he had just authorized, despite any ruling to the contrary, even by competent juridical authorities. This perpetual indult can only itself be abrogated by a new and equally authoritative ruling specifically directed to that end.

Cardinal Ottaviani was thus fully justified when he said to me personally at Whitsun 1971-many months after the promulgation of the new rite: "The traditional rite of Mass, according to the Ordo of St. Pius V, has not to my knowledge been abolished. Consequently, local ordinaries (i.e., bishops) especially if they are concerned to protect the rite and its purity , and even to make sure that it continues to be understood by the body of those attending Mass, would do well, in my humble opinion, to encourage the permanent retention of the rite of St. Pius V. .." Note that he does not say "would do well ...to authorize the rite," but "encourage the. ..retention of the rite;" the rite, having been neither abolished nor forbidden, has no need of authorization.

In actual practice, the bishops do forbid the use of the rite of St. Pius V. But their prohibition is itself illegal, and this illegality would be proclaimed as such openly if it were not that the Roman legal structures are in full decomposition.

Rank-and-file priests and layfolk do not look so far. What they can see is that anything, absolutely anything, is permitted in the way of "celebrations"-anything, that is, except the Mass of St. Pius V. As they know, too, or as their instinct tells them, that the new Mass was constructed in an ecumenical intention: that is to say that in it the notion of Eucharistic Sacrifice is played down as far as possible, so as to make it acceptable to Protestants, they are in revolt.

Behind the affair of St. Nicholas du Chardonnet (in Paris) looms the whole problem of the Catholic Mass. This problem is still to be resolved.

St. Nicholas du Chardonnet - Two Months Later

Despite the fact that Monsignor Ducaud-Bourget was sagacious enough to evade the trap set for him by Cardinal Marty’s “generous offer," he soon found that remaining at St. Nicholas brought its problems, namely that despite the fact that is a very large, it was soon unable to accommodate the thousands who wished to worship there each Sunday. The result was that Mass had to be celebrated once more in the Salle Wagram. This is referred to in an extract from an article by Professor Thomas Molnar which follows. Professor Molnar also mentions the sympathy shown by the police for the traditionalist clergy and parishioners of St. Nicholas. It appears that on one occasion a delegation of progressive clerics (in civil costume, naturally) went to the principal police station of the area to demand that the officer in charge should explain why no action had been taken to evict the traditionalists from the church. They were informed by the sergeant on duty: "You can't see him now, he's assisting at Mass at St. Nicholas."

Professor Molnar's account of his visit to St. Nicholas appeared originally in the New Oxford Review and was reprinted in The Remnant of 17 January 1978.

An Interview with Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget

Last April Ecône received some important allies, one in the person of Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget the priest-poet, and the thousands of people who helped him take over the Church of St. Nicholas du Chardonnet in one of the Paris’s oldest quarters. The reader may now speak of “violence.” But this is France. St. Bernard was violent, so was Joan of Arc and Bossuet and Bernanos. So was Jesus Christ in chasing the money changers from the temple. For years, the "traditionalists" have begged Cardinal Marty for a church where the Mass of Pius V (Tridentine Mass) could be celebrated; the Cardinal, closing his eyes to the desecration of Rheims Cathedral by copulating hippies and to the Buddhist celebration in the Cathedral of Rennes, left the petitioners without an answer. Last Easter they moved into St. Nicholas, made it clear that only the old Latin Mass would be celebrated, and that they would not leave before a church is officially offered them as a permanent abode. For more emphasis, they set up a permanent guard of several dozen young men to keep out troublemakers. These young people, all of them making financial sacrifices by leaving their jobs or studies for the duration of the "siege," canalize the worshippers, keep a watch on the street, and provide protection to the half dozen priests celebrating Mass.

I visited St. Nicholas on Sunday, 12 June of this year. It was 11 o'clock, people were coming out en masse, their way practically blocked by a similar mass of people waiting to enter for the next celebration. The crowd in the square in front of the church was enormous, waiting for the 12 o'clock Mass. Before entering, I talked to several policemen in the vicinity. Without exception they sympathized with the "occupants," partly on the old religious grounds, partly on political grounds. "It is doubtful," a young police officer told me, "that if ordered to evacuate the church, my men would obey. But at any rate, what politician would dare give such an order, and certainly not Chirac, the new mayor? Besides, if Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget personally stands in our way, we would not touch him or whatever or whomever he protects."

After Mass, I was received by the Monsignor in a room of the sacristy .We are in France! He is 84, as alive as an eel, white hair to his shoulders, long nails like a mandarin, and a pipe between his lips. His manners and speech could be placed somewhere between the eras of Louis XIV or Louis XV. First we spoke of doctrine and philosophy, which was made easier by the fact that we had read some of each other's writings, I his poetry-poetry which had just been given an enthusiastic review in the Osservatore Romano where the editors had not realized that the poet Ducaud-Bourget and Mgr. D-B are the same person! Huge embarrassment a few days later and repulsive back-tracking. So much for pettiness...

The Monsignor had just arrived from the Salle Wagram where he said Mass before the 800 people who could not get into St. Nicholas that morning. In other areas of France churches are similarly occupied by those whom the new inquisitors contemptuously describe as a few old people and some reactionaries. I had carefully scrutinized the crowd in and outside the church: all age groups were represented; of course, whether they were reactionaries, I had no way of discerning.

The Monsignor told me of the endless lies, unkept promises, threats, and vexations on the parts of Cardinal Marty, his bureaucrats, and the Vatican. Thank God for the brutal anti-church laws of 1905: all ecclesiastic property was then confiscated by the State, so that the Cardinal is today unable to send his shock troops to reoccupy St. Nicholas; and as we saw, the Government and the Municipality prefer not to touch this hot potato, for fear of dividing their electorate. Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget is consequently confident that nothing will happen. We then spoke of the recent court decision (lawsuit by the regular curé of the church) to ask the Roman Catholic philosopher, Jean Guitton, supposedly impartial, to mediate between the Archdiocese and the occupants. Guitton is a soft man and an opportunist, Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget told me; he does not wish to jeopardize his status as a biographer of Paul VI. With all that-I was shown letters-Guitton expressed his “déférence sympathique” to Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget, and called his own role as a mediator a wonderful opportunity to meet him. Therefore I was surprised to read in the Express interview with Guitton (late July) his disparaging comments on Lefebvre’s position vis-à-vis the Pope to that of an Algerian O.A.S. General vis-à-vis De Gaulle. A ludicrous and not even flattering comparison-after which one may speak disparagingly of Guitton’s intelligence too.

Anyway, the “mediation” is off, but meanwhile the “Case” is expanding and more “allies” are joining Lefebvre. In early June the Princess Pallavicini opened her palazzo in Rome for 1,500 guests to hear the Archbishop re-explain very simply that he would not renounce the faith of 2,000 years. “I do not want to die a Protestant,” he said. There was an indescribably fervent ovation, not only by the guests in the salons, but also by people sitting on the stairs and the multitude outside who listened through loudspeakers to Lefebvre's words.

The Vatican took this as a further provocation - to carry the "opposition to the Pope" to within the latter's earshot. The Pope's vicar (as Bishop of Rome), Cardinal Ugo Poletti, attacked the Princess in a press statement-to which he received a responding statement amounting to "mind your own business, I receive in my home whom I wish." The "mind your own business" is quite an appropriate warning, since Rome now has a fellow-travelling mayor elected on the Communist list.

Saint Nicholas Today

Readers who wish to participate in the "miracle of Saint Nicholas" during a visit to Paris should take the metro to the station Maubert-Mutualité, which is adjacent to the church. All the old churches and cathedrals in France belong to the State, which is responsible for the upkeep of their exteriors. It is very significant that since the liberation of St. Nicholas a great deal of work has been done to the outside of the building, by the civil authorities, to complement the internal renovation carried out by the parishioners. Although the diocesan authorities will not accept the legality of the present situation, or that it has any permanent basis, it is clear that the civil authorities have no intention whatsoever of evicting the traditionalists. St. Nicholas now stands as an island of Catholic tradition, and, indeed, of sanity, in a sea of Modernism and liturgical banality.


1. See Vol.I,pp.108-109

2. Well-known writer and journalist

[Stone]

Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre
Volume II - Chapter III

Letter to Friends and Benefactors No. 12
19 March 1977

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

We are going on with our work and with God's blessing we will continue to go on, for Tradition cannot cease to transmit Revelation until the end of time. God has revealed Himself to us in Our Lord Jesus Christ. This Revelation is today what it was in the past and what it will always be. We must receive it such as it has been given to us.

The Revelation was brought to an end with the last of the Apostles in order that we might fix our gaze on Jesus Who is “the author and finisher of faith" (Heb. 12: 2).

Saint Paul summarizes this Revelation which he himself also received in these words: "I judged not myself to know anything among you but Jesus Christ and Him crucified" (I Cor. 2:2).

The Cross of Jesus summarizes the whole of our faith and therefore the whole of our conduct, all of our attitudes, our interior and exterior life. It not only teaches us the truths necessary for our salvation, but also the way to salvation and the combat, which must be waged to achieve it. It shows the way to wage this combat against all that is opposed to our salvation, whether it be within or around us. The Cross is therefore the leaven and the law of Christian civilization which is that of the salvation of souls by Jesus crucified.

To attempt to diminish in one way or another the teachings revealed by the Cross under the pretext of the historical development of society, of historical conscience, evolution, etc. is to close the way of salvation and deliver men up to other men, with no divine hope, light or life. It is to make this world the antechamber of hell.

This is what is being prepared for us by the elimination of any idea of combat against error due to religious liberty, or against atheism, laicism, and communism. Likewise by an ecumenism which delivers the Church into the hands of her enemies, and lack of opposition to sin by wiping out law in favor of conscience.

This new attitude of the Church authorities is a negation of the Cross of Our Lord. To ask us to follow this attitude, which lay under the surface during the Council, and which is clearly expressed in the reforms and practice of the Conciliar Church, is as much as to ask us to deny Christ crucified. We cannot do so .

By the grace of God our seminarians and young priests understand these things well and do not wish to abandon the crucified Jesus either. They demonstrate this by their dress, their daily lives and their preaching: but essentially and above all by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Once again this year we have numerous candidates for the seminary and our novitiates to the Brotherhood and Sisterhood. The number of our houses continues to multiply as we now have one in the province of Quebec in Canada and another in Geneva. To satisfy all the requests for priests which we receive it would be necessary to ordain a hundred a year! This year, God willing, fourteen priests and twenty subdeacons will be ordained. Five brothers as well as five nuns will receive the habit. Three of the sisters will make their profession.

We hope that we will soon be able to announce that the foundations of the seminary chapel at Ecône have been laid! This will be a very important enterprise. We know that we can count on you to help the seminary with a chapel worthy of the honor and adoration that we must give to Our Lord.

Above all we must pray and do penance to ask Our Lord, by the intercession of the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph, to deliver Holy Church from those who wish at all costs to ruin her and arrive at the great apostasy.

In gratitude for all that you are doing in favor or our work for a true renovation of the Church, may God bless you!

+Marcel Lefebvre
Feast of St. Joseph, 1977.

[Stone]

Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre
Volume II, Chapter IV

A Sermon Delivered by Archbishop Lefebvre
17 April 1977
On the Occasion of the Profession of Three Sisters of The Society of Saint Pius X


In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

My dear Sisters and my dear brethren:

In a few moments, in accordance with the custom of the Church and in accordance with Tradition, we are going to bless these religious habits, those crosses, these medals, these rings, these veils and these crucifixes.

And why all of this? Why these blessings? Why these religious habits? Would it not be preferable to abandon these customs which seem no longer to have any significance in our day? We, therefore, ask the Church in her Tradition: “Why these blessing? Why these religious habits? Why these religious objects?” The Church tells us that it is because these persons who are going to be clothed wish to become religious.

We again ask the Church: "What is a person who becomes a religious?" For the answer we open the law of the Church which is called Canon Law. We find in Canon Law that a religious is a person who pronounces the three vows of religion: the vows of obedience, of chastity, and of poverty. All of this seems so formal, so strict. What then is a person who pronounces these three vows, and what do these three vows signify?

These three vows signify that the person who consecrates herself as a religious abandons henceforth the pleasures of the flesh, abandons all that money is able to procure for us here on earth, and abandons as well her own will. Obedience is the vow by which the religious abandons her will into the hands of her superior. The vow of chastity is that by which the religious sacrifices the joys of maternity, and the vow of poverty signifies that the religious despises henceforth the things, the goods of this world. She does not wish to profit from all that money legitimately or, alas!, illegitimately can procure for us here on earth.

All of this seems to have a rather negative aspect, a penitential aspect, an aspect of austerity, of renouncement, abnegation. Is it this alone that truly makes the religious? Is there nothing else, no other more elevated motive other than the simple desire to do penance and to appear in the eyes of the world as a person who despises the world? Is there not a more profound motive to pronounce these vows? Yes, indeed! There is a more profound motive. All the rest would mean nothing, absolutely nothing, if there were not.

It is He, He Who draws the religious to Himself. You know, there is only one name in heaven and on earth which is able to attract souls to the point that they consecrate themselves to Him. It is Our Lord Jesus Christ! There is the key to the mystery. It is He Who has touched the heart of the religious, of priests, all Christians. There is only one name here below which has been given in order to save us, in order to have eternal life; one Person alone Who has shed His blood in order to save us from our sins: Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Who, then, is this Person Who has the privilege of this power to draw souls, to attract hearts in such a manner that those who wish to become religious abandon all that gives joy-apparent joy-on earth? Who is, therefore, Our Lord Jesus Christ? What has He done for us?

If one glances at history since Our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven, one sees the number of martyrs of all ages, of all conditions, who have given their blood in order to follow Our Lord Jesus Christ, because they adored Him, because they loved Him, because they obeyed Him. For His name alone they were ready to shed their blood. So many martyrs! So many nations who, because of their faith, have been massacred: because they believed in Our Lord Jesus Christ! So many vocations! So many monasteries! So many convents  which were erected to enclose those who wished to pass  their whole life praying, adoring, and serving Our Lord Christ! What great generosity! What great charity this name alone has raised in the entire world.

In Christian homes the venerated name of Jesus gives the virtues necessary for the family, makes a more Christian home - a home where one respects and honors the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. So many souls have dedicated their entire life to serving the sick-to serving the Mystical Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ - to serving the suffering in hospitals, in infirmaries, in leper colonies - wherever there are suffering members of the Mystical Body of Our Lord there have been generous souls to minister to these sufferings. Why? Uniquely for those who are suffering? No! In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ!

So many souls have devoted their lives to teaching the Faith, the catechism, to the religious education of children, of families. These souls have spent their lives for Catholic education - for Christian education. Why? In order to make Our Lord Jesus Christ known. And today, do not the Epistle and Gospel say the same thing - that is our faith: we believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. We believe, therefore, that He is God Himself. Per quem omnia facta sunt  -by Whom all things were made - we have been made by Our Lord Jesus Christ. We are creatures of Our Lord Jesus Christ and He shed His blood for us. He came upon earth to sacrifice Himself for us: we then also wish to sacrifice ourselves for Him. Thus, this is religion; this is why one becomes a religious.

My dear Sisters, if you are not attached to Our Lord Jesus Christ during your entire life, you have no reason to become religious - none! This is why you are going to receive your habit, in order to manifest Our Lord Jesus Christ by your religious habit. This is why you are going to receive your veil, your medal and your crucifix. This is why you are going to be blessed in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

The fathers and mothers of families might say, "It certainly is pleasant to be a religious. Without a doubt, one separates oneself from a great number of joys, but also from a great number of difficulties. Certainly convents and monasteries must be paradise on earth since it is the Church itself which says, "Ubi Jesus, ibi paradisum-there where one finds Jesus, one finds paradise." Thus, if Jesus is in religious communities, paradise is there as well.

Without a doubt, this perhaps should be the case. But the good Lord does not permit paradise to exist upon earth. On the contrary .He has promised us the cross! He has promised us sacrifices in religious communities-even monasteries. It would be a serious mistake to believe that we could find on earth a place where we could be as in paradise. Paradise is reserved until after our death.

During the course of our life we must carry our cross. Whatever one may be: Christian spouses, religious, priests- we all must carry our cross. We cannot find Our Lord Jesus Christ here on earth unless we find Him with His cross. If we find Him, He will impose His cross upon us -"Carry thy cross and follow Me." This is what He tells us: "If thou wish to gain eternal life, carry thy cross and follow Me." He did not say, "I will give thee happiness upon earth," but rather He told us, "Thou shalt have eternal life in heaven but first carry thy cross."

This is why, my dear Sisters, do not deceive yourselves, you are beginning the way of the cross, but a way of the cross, as Our Lord said, "My yoke is sweet and my burden light." Borne with Our Lord Jesus Christ in following Him, the cross becomes light. Remember that this cross assimilates us to Our Lord Jesus Christ; it makes us resemble Our Lord Jesus Christ. Remember that by His cross we participate in the redemption of the world. When our blood must flow in carrying this cross, our blood will be mixed with that of Our Lord Jesus Christ and souls will be saved.

All sufferings, the least of the smallest sufferings, are occasions to mix our blood with that of Our Lord for the redemption of the world, for the redemption of our souls. Thus, how good it is to be with Our Lord! This is why the saints and martyrs wished to suffer; they desired the cross.

Remember the words of St. Andrew when seeing the cross to which he was going to be attached-O bona crux! -O good cross! St. Andrew knew that attached to his cross he would resemble even more Our Lord Jesus Christ and that he would ascend to heaven. He knew also that partaking in the sufferings of Our Lord, he would save souls. Thus, perceiving it from afar, he cried, "O bona crux!" May you also be able to say every day of your life, when your crosses weigh heavily upon your shoulders, "O bona crux!" They will further unite you to Our Lord Jesus Christ because they will make you understand all of His sufferings.

Moreover, you have as a particular patron, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Compassion, Our Lady of Seven Sorrows, who had not a single sin, who was immaculate from her conception, who did not commit any sins here on earth. If she merited to suffer with her divine Son in such a way that her heart was pierced with a sword, she who did not deserve these sufferings-shall we, who deserve to suffer because of our sins, dare not to imitate and resemble the Blessed Virgin Mary?

Ask your holy patron, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of compassion, Our Lady of Seven Sorrows, to teach you to suffer with Our Lord Jesus Christ in order that you also will one day share in His glory.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Ghost. Amen.

[Stone]

Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre
Volume 2, Chapter V

Archbishop Lefebvre in Rome
6 June 1977

ON 6 JUNE 1977 Archbishop Lefebvre delivered an address in Rome Pallavicini Palace. Princess Elvina Pallavicini had “sent out 400 invitations to this gathering. Her stately home, decorated  with works by Botticelli, Rubens and Van Dyck is near the Vatican" (The Boston Globe, 1 June 1977). The 5 June 1977 issue of The Courier-Journal and Times (U.S.A.), quoted Cardinal Poletti, the Vicar-General of Rome, as stating in L 'Osservatore Romano that the lecture would be “a presumptuous act showing a total lack of good taste and education" The London Universe carried a special report in its 3 June issue by Ronald Singleton, who has a pathological dislike for the Archbishop or anyone who upholds Catholic Tradition, a fact easily proved by reading his reports. “What he is about is  still unclear," Singleton revealed. “Will his theme, 'The Church after Vatican Council II' be open to questions and answers? Will he attack the Holy Father with louder defiance?”

As Archbishop Lefebvre has never attacked any Pope, but has always referred to Pope Paul VI and his successors in terms of the utmost respect, it would have been interesting if Singleton of The Universe could have explained how he could do so "with louder defiance." But, alas, neither Singleton nor The Universe are open to questions and answers.

Singleton also felt competent to provide Universe readers with a psychological profile of the Princess: "The hostess at this gathering is the aged, bitter, lonely widow Elvina Pallavicini, who married a member of the De Bernis family, a gold-medal French war hero, a woman consumed by nostalgia, who views the Vatican of Paul VI with horror and resentment." This is not, perhaps, the most gallant way to speak of a lady, but I presume that those who consider ladies should be treated with courtesy, unless they manifestly deserve not to be, are "consumed by nostalgia." If Singleton was open to questions and answers we might have learned how he managed to gain such a penetrating insight into the mind of the Princess. I wonder, too, if he would have abused the Princess in this way had she invited Hans Kung or Charles Curran to address a gathering in her palace? Somehow I think it unlikely.

The Catholic Herald, also published in London, is a drearily predictable mouthpiece for the Conciliar Church, but even this squalid weekly managed to sink to a particularly low level in reporting on the Archbishop's lecture in Rome. Here is the complete report from its 10 June 1977 edition:

Incursion into Heart of Rome by Lefebvre

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre carried his lone struggle to preserve an immobile seventeenth century Catholic church into the Holy See's own city of Rome this week and failed signally to make any impression.

The French prelate's rhetoric in his denunciation of Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI, the majority of French and Italian bishops and the entire results of Vatican II evoked even laughter from a cynical audience, made up mainly of journalists.

More than 1,000 had been invited to listen to the Archbishop's two-hour talk in the Pallaircini-Rospligliosi Palace opposite the Quirnale, home of the Italian republic and one time papal summer palace.

About 700, at least 500 of whom were journalists or merely curious, jammed the small 'conference room and the steps leading up from the courtyard-on "which loudspeakers had been placed.

The so-called "black nobility," the mainstay of Italy's princely families, were noticeable by their absence. There were a handful of lesser nobility who were antagonistic to Pope Paul because he had disbanded the Holy See's noble guards.

Much more significantly, the less than 200, who applauded Lefebvre were the youthful thugs of the fascist-right MSI party and elderly supporters of the Sapincere and Action Française of the 1920s-movement banned by the Vatican in 1921 and 1926.

Officially, the Vatican took no note of Lefebvre's incursion into Church territory and his oratory against the Pope and the post-conciliar Church.

Unofficially, one prelate said, "This is a singularly unpopular movement which has been built up because of its spectacular nature into a schism.

“One bishop, some 5,000 supporters in France and a few thousand others throughout the whole world can scarcely be considered a schism. The Church has survived much more serious moves, which threatened and in cases were schism."

An Alternative View

As an experiment, with a totally predictable result, I sent a copy of this report to the Rome correspondent of the National Review (New York), and asked her to write to the Editor of the Catholic Herald making some comments as an eyewitness. The experiment was to see if the Herald would be willing to print a letter exposing its falsehoods - needless to say, it didn’t. Here is the unpublished letter of Mrs. Martinez, dated 21 June 1977.

Sir,

As a journalist present at the Pallavicini Palace in Rome on June 6, I can take issue with virtually every line of the report published in the Herald on June 10. However I will limit myself to the following excerpts.

1) "Archbishop Lefebvre ...failed signally to make any impression."

Already in late May the lecture was making news in all Italian media. There was front-page coverage for edicts forbidding Knights of Malta and the Holy Sepulchre to attend, followed by counter declarations by Knights resenting interference on the part of the Grand Masters. The rush to persuade Princess Pallavicini to cancel the affair was played up with stories about the Cardinal close to the Pope (Pignedoli, it was said) who pleaded with her and about emissaries from exiled King Umberto in Portugal. Then came the Princess's well publicized press communiqué saying it was "incomprehensible that the private expression of theses which every bishop in the world held until a few years ago should so greatly disturb the security of (ecclesial) authority:”

2) "The Vatican took no official note."

On June 5 L 'Osservatore Romano carried a scathing denunciation, repeated in all the media, calling the lecture (to be given in a private house to invited guests) "offensive to the Faith, to the Catholic Church and to the Divine Head, Jesus." The guests were called "aberrant nostalgics, prisoners of repetitive traditions which have nothing to do with their vaunted fidelity to its Church." The declaration was signed by Cardinal Poletti, Pope Paul's Vicar for Rome.

3) "About 700, of whom 500 were journalists or merely curious, were jam packed into the small conference room..."

Make it over 2,000, the crowd that sat and stood in the great "throne room" of the family's Pope, Clement IX-  and who filled two large adjacent halls, sat on the grand staircase going down two stories to the courtyard filled with people who listened over loud speakers.

4) "The French prelate's rhetoric...evoked laughter from a cynical crowd."

There was just one laugh when Mgr. Lefebvre described the new trial marriage "sacrament" invented by the President of the French Episcopal Conference. No cynics, the audience reverently stood with bowed heads to recite the Ave Maria at the opening and the Salve Regina at the close of the lecture.

5) “The Less than 200 who applauded (out of 700 present)”

The top Roman daily, left-leaning Il Messaggero, described “unremitting, thunderous applause” and “criticism of the Vatican’s Ostpolitik brought clamorous applause” and finally, “at the conclusion the ovation was deafening.” This paper, as did all other Italian dailies, gave big front-page coverage with photos on June 7, Il Messaggero devoting in addition its entire third page to the same subject.

6) The “less than 200” were “fascist thugs” or “elderly followers” of movement banned by the Vatican in 1921 and 1926.

Constantino Canstantini, leading feature writer for Il Messaggero, found “lots of familiar faces, the crowd one sees at the Chess club and the Tennis Circle; there were film personalities, lots of dark glasses and new hair-dos” while down in the courtyard, arms linked to hold back a crowd there was “a galaxy of youth, slim but well-nourished, nearly all in impeccable navy blue, sons of patrician families or members of such ‘in’ groups as Cristianita or Excalibur.”

And - the hostess’ name is not “Pallaircini,”  the palace opposite here is not the “Quirnale.”

Yours truly,

Mary Martinez,
Rome Correspondent for National Review, New York.

 

A Secular Daily Comments

The Daily Telegraph is probably the most respected and objective daily paper in Britain, replacing The Times in this respect. Its “Way of the World” column for 17 June 1977 suggested that the Catholic Herald could receive an award “for the Most Promising Left-wing Journal of the Year.” It continued:

On such questions as ecumenism, the role of the World Council of Churches, East-West “detente” and so on its Leftist record is impeccable. As for its treatment of Archbishop Lefebvre and his campaign against Modernism in the Catholic Church, to call it tendentious would be charitable.

The current issue contains a superb example of a certain kind of reporting. It deals with an address the Archbishop recently delivered in Rome itself. "The French prelate's rhetoric..." says the unnamed reporter, "evoked even laughter from a 'cynical audience, made up mainly of journalists. More than 1,000 had been invited to listen to the Archbishop's two hour talk...”

"About 700, at least 500 of whom were journalists or merely curious"- watch these figures -'jammed the small conference room ...The so-called 'black nobility " the mainstay of Italy's princely families, were noticeable by their absence; There were a handful of lesser nobility"- were some of them journalists? -"who were antagonistic to Pope Paul because he had disbanded the Holy See's noble guards.

"Much more significantly, the less than 200 who applauded Lefebvre were the youthful thugs of the fascist right MSI party and elderly supporters of the Sapincere and Action Française of the 1920s -movements banned by the Vatican in 1921 and 1926."

In all this, you will notice, there is not a single indication that what is being reported is not so much fact as a slyly-contrived mixture made up of about ten per cent fact and ninety per cent slanted opinion, with a heavy component of "smear by association," a favorite journalistic device.

The "report" concludes with another classic journalistic device: anonymous belittlement. "'Unofficially" one prelate said, 'this is a singularly unpopular movement which has been built up because of its spectacular nature into a schism.'"

Singularly unpopular? We shall see. One of the most noticeable signs of our times is the continual and systematic turning of truth on its head.

The Ottaviani Invitation

The 17 June 1977 issue of the Italian journal Vita included a most interesting revelation in its religion column. The column for this issue was entitled "La telefonata misteriosa"- "The Mysterious Telephone Call." The column began:

If it is true - as reported by a certain daily and by a weekly - that among the phone calls to the Princess Pallavicini to dissuade her from receiving at her home Mgr. M. Lefebvre, one was made by Cardinal Ottaviani, it seems that someone was pleased to use his name improperly.

The basis for this claim was information given to the journal by two ladies who had managed to visit the Cardinal on Saturday 4 June, two days before the lecture. I happen to know one of them personally. They found the Cardinal “guarded " by a young and rather aggressive Monsignor, who was called to the telephone during their visit. One of them asked if the Cardinal had accepted his invitation to the conference to be given by Archbishop Lefebvre the following Monday at the Casa Pallavicini.

"What conference?"

"But come now, does not Your Eminence know that Mgr. Lefebvre will hold a conference?"

"No, I know nothing," replied the Cardinal.

"But did you not receive the invitation?"

"No, no invitation."

The phone call ended, the secretary returned to the sitting room, and the Cardinal asked him if by chance there had been an invitation for him from the Princess Pallavicini. The secretary replied that, yes, an invitation had been received, but that he had not spoken about it: "It will be among the papers.”

He then became angry and informed the ladies that had he known they would mention the Archbishop's conference he would not have let them enter, as the Cardinal could not possibly offend the Pope by going there. The Cardinal then insisted upon knowing about the invitation, and before the ladies left he said: "You will see, you will see, all will be adjusted for poor Mgr. Lefebvre!" (Vedrà, vedrà, tutto si aggiusterà Monsignor Lefebvre!)

The problem posed by this incident is that the Cardinal could hardly have tried to persuade the Princess to deny her home to the Archbishop when he was unaware of the proposed conference.1


An Ironic Diversion

This examination of the manner in which the Archbishop's visit to Rome was reported, and it is typical of all the reporting on him to appear in the "official" Catholic press, makes it easy to understand why Catholics who rely on the "official" press for their information tend to have such an unfavorable view of Mgr. Lefebvre. But the hostility aroused by the fact that the Archbishop had dared to make his views public has an ironic aspect. Perhaps the most radical disagreement between Archbishop Lefebvre and the Conciliar Church concerns his objection to a passage in the Vatican II Declaration on Religious Freedom. The Declaration claims that all men have a right founded in the very dignity of the human person not to be prevented from acting in accordance with their beliefs in public, providing that a breach of public order does not ensue.2 Yet when the Archbishop exercises this “right" he is reviled for doing so. It is evident that many of those who quote the documents of Vatican II as if they are divinely revealed truths do so in a somewhat selective manner. I doubt whether they would be too pleased at being informed that in attacking the Archbishop for giving this and other conferences they are acting contrary to the letter and spirit of Vatican II.


ADDENDUM

A few days after the Archbishop's lecture, which provoked such indignation in Vatican circles, another visitor came to Rome-Janos Kadar, who might appropriately be termed the 'Butcher of Hungary' for his role in the savage suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. As Minister of the Interior, he had been responsible for the farcical trial, the torture, and the imprisonment of Cardinal Mindszenty. He shared with Rakosi responsibility for the campaign of persecution against Hungarian Catholics. He was responsible for the presence of Soviet tanks in the streets of Budapest in 1956, and initiated a campaign of ruthless persecution after the Soviet victory, which involved the imprisonment of scores of teen-aged boys until the age when they could be hanged legally, executing them upon their birthdays. One might have imagined that such a man would have been even less welcome in Rome than Archbishop Lefebvre, but, on 9 June 1977, the Feast of Corpus Christi, he was received together with his entourage in audience by Pope Paul VI, who, according to a report published in the 23 June 1977 English edition of L 'Osservatore Romano, expressed the hope that Kadar's visit would promote: "mutual understanding and positive cooperation in the service of noble causes of interest not only to the Hungarian people but also to other peoples and all mankind, particularly in defense of peace and in promoting the social, economic, cultural moral progress of the nations." (My emphasis.)

Kadar’s reception by Pope Paul VI marked the culmination of a process which, according to Cardinal Mindszenty, had been initiated in 1958. Writing in his memoirs he remarked:

Meanwhile [i.e., 1958] "coexistence" and "détente...had become magic words in international politics. Even the blatantly communist dictatorships wanted to appear in a good light, chiefly so that public opinion in the West would not oppose the forthcoming disarmament, economic, and trade conferences with the Soviet bloc. The prestige of the Kadar regime had reached a particular low. Around this time it had been repeatedly condemned by the United Nations (twenty times altogether).

But who could better assist a communist, anti-religious dictatorship to win international recognition than the Vatican itself? If you want visible triumphs, seek to associate yourself with the Roman Church which is still regarded as the foremost moral authority in the world. Such was the advice that world communism’s brains trust apparently offered the Kadar government. And so Janos Kadar appeared wearing a mask of peace, and took the first steps towards Rome.3

The final step was, as we have seen, taken literally and metaphorically on the Feast of Corpus Christi, 1977, when Pope Paul VI, head of the “foremost moral authority in the world,” asked Janos Kadar, head of “a communist, anti-religious dictatorship,” to cooperate with him for the “moral progress of the nations.”


Footnotes

1. This incident parallels very closely the background to the false claim that Cardinal Ottaviani had repudiated his criticisms of the New Mass-see Pope Paul's New Mass. Chapter XXII1.

2. There is a long tradition of papal teaching that in a mainly Catholic country, the government would have the right to prevent attacks upon the Catholic Faith in the interests of the common good. Archbishop Lefebvre claims that the teaching of the Vatican II Declaration on Religious Liberty cannot be reconciled with this tradition (see Apologia, Vol. I, Appendix IV).

3.Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty, Memoirs (Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, 1974), page 225.

[Stone]

Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre
Volume 2, Chapter VI

The Mediation of Mgr. Stimpfle
15 June 1977

On 15 June 1977, Mgr. Stimpfle, Bishop of Augsburg, sent his secretary, Father Döllinger, to Ecône, to deliver a letter to Archbishop Lefebvre. In this letter Mgr. Stimpfle urged the Archbishop to postpone the ordinations arranged for 29 June as a sign of respect for the Holy Father. Father Döllinger was accompanied by Dr. Eric de Saventhem, President of the International Federation Una Voce and by Madame Elizabeth de Saventhem. Father Döllinger returned to Germany the same day, and that evening an aide Mémoire of his two hour discussion with the Archbishop was compiled by Dr. de Saventhem and transmitted to him in Munich by telex the next morning. It read as follows.

16 June 1977
Telex number 618/77

In the ardent desire to be in full accord with and in complete submission to the Vicar of Christ and the Successor of St. Peter, and despite the blow of the recent discussions in Rome, Mgr. Lefebvre is still prepared to adjourn the date of the ordinations set for 29 June next in the hope that at the end of this period of delay it will be possible to conduct these ordinations in a climate of serenity and in a fully licit fashion under Canon Law. So as to justify such a hope, Mgr. Lefebvre would need to receive certain assurances before 22 June. These assurances would need to deal with the following three points:

1) Acceptance of the conciliar texts sensu obvio

In certain conciliar texts there exist passages of which the apparent meaning appears to contradict previous teaching of the Church. It is because of this that Mgr. Lefebvre has restricted himself to stating his letter of 3 December 1976, that he accepted "everything that in the Council and in the reforms, is in full conformity with Tradition." It was due to this reservation that the recent conversation between Mgr. Lefebvre and two Roman theologians failed.

In order to find a way out of this impasse, Rome would need to agree that the controversial passages should be submitted to the Pontifical Commission for the Interpretation of the Decrees of the Second Vatican Council, and that the above mentioned Commission should be ordered to invite the defenders and critics of these excerpts to submit their views to it in writing, according to methods of procedure to be agreed. After making a study of these submissions, the Commission, in an "official interpretation" will show or confirm the full accordance between the controversial texts and the constant teaching of the Church. Once approved by the Sovereign Pontiff this "interpretation" will become binding for one and all.1 If this procedure was to be set in motion Mgr. Lefebvre would be able to accept all the conciliar texts, be it in their apparent sense, or according to an official interpretation that assures their full concordance with the authentic Tradition of the Church.


2) A liturgical modus vivendi for so called traditional priests and lay people.

For the present it will be sufficient for Rome to cancel as soon as possible the third paragraph of section two of the Notificatio of 14 June 1971.2 With regard to this a letter should be sent to the Episcopal Conferences informing them that henceforth for all Masses celebrated in Latin the priest may use the old Missal on an equal basis with the new, and requesting them to put churches at the disposal of those (priests and layman) who wish to do this.

As for the other sacramental rites, Rome ought to accept in principle the demand for a moratorium on the application of its recent legislation which makes the exclusive use of the new rites mandatory.


3) The canonical status of the Society of St. Pius X

Mgr. Lefebvre must be assured that the “truce” will be used by Rome to restore to the Fraternity its legal right to exist. The precise methods (of bringing this about) will remain to be fixed, and should result from direct negotiations between the competent (Vatican) Congregations and officials of the Fraternity.

If such assurances reach Mgr. Lefebvre before 22 June he will cancel the ordinations set for 29 June, postponing them to a latter date (probably the Saturday after the Ember Days of September).

A “truce” of almost three months should be sufficient to deal with all the canonical problems.

Copies of letters addressed by Mgr. Stimpfle to Archbishop Lefebvre on 14 and 17 June, together with this aide mémoire, were dispatched to Cardinals Benelli, Ratzinger, and Villot. The correspondence was delivered to Cardinal Benelli by courier at 4:00 p.m. on June 18 June.


1. FOOTNOTE BY MICHAEL DAVIES. Note well that the Archbishop has such confidence in the validity of his criticisms of the texts in question that he is willing to bind himself in advance to accepting the decision of the Pontifical Commission, which, he is confident, is bound to uphold Tradition.

2. "From the day on which the definitive translations must be adopted in the celebrations in the vernacular languages, those who continue to use the Latin language must uniformly make use of the renewed texts, whether for the Mass or for the Liturgy of the Hours.” The text of the 14 June 1971 Notificatio, and a commentary on its legal status, is available in Pope Paul’s New Mass, pp. 560-563.

[Stone]

Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre
Volume 2, Chapter VII

Pope Paul's Response
20 June 1977

Sixth Letter of Pope Paul VI to Archbishop Lefebvre

To Our Brother in the
Episcopate, Marcel Lefebvre,
Former Archbishop-Bishop of Tulle.

A few days from the feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, when you have announced publicly your intention of carrying out, on this occasion, a new and very serious act of disobedience to ecclesiastical authority, Our thoughts do not cease to turn towards you, and the young people whom you are leading along the path you have taken.

We admonish you with all Our strength; do not worsen the bad example given by our attitude, do not make your break from the unity and charity of the Catholic communion irreparable. Even were it to grieve you to do so, abstain from conferring holy orders by using a power which has been granted you, not for personal use, but for the service of the Church alone.

Indeed, it has come to Our knowledge that you could under certain circumstances postpone the carrying out of such a design for a few months, but only with conditions which, in their content, seem truly unacceptable to Us. Is it also necessary to tell you of Our pain at seeing you impose conditions upon the Pope? Have We not already assured you that We shall try as best We can to find a solution to all the questions which concern you?

We continue, Brother, to hope that you will be reconciled with Us. We wish to believe that there is yet time. May the Holy Ghost illumine you, and may He help you to make the only decision worthy of a bishop.

Paulus PP VI
The Vatican, 20 June 1977

26 June 1977
Telegram from Archbishop Lefebvre to Cardinal Ratzinger

His Eminence Cardinal Ratzinger
Collegio dell'anima
Via della Pace 20
00186 ROMA

Deeply grateful for your fraternal assistance stop I confirm am in complete agreement with text of aide mémoire drafted for attention of Mgr. Stimpfle transmitted 16 June by telex number 618/77 and delivered to Cardinal Benelli 18 June at Rome stop profoundly saddened to learn of the rejection of the three proposals stop hope profoundly for better appreciation of the true significance of these proposals which for my part still remain valid.

+Marcel Lefebvre

27 Jun 1977
The Allocution of Pope Paul VI to the Consistory of Cardinals

This allocution was delivered two days before the 29 June ordinations, and was similar in content to that of 1976 (Vol. I, pp. 173-191).

The Pope praised the liturgical reform, claiming that it had “borne blessed fruits.” These "blessed fruits" included: "a greater participation in the liturgical action, a more lively awareness of the sacred action, a greater and wider knowledge of the inexhaustible treasures of Sacred Scripture, and an increase of a sense of community in the Church." Had these benefits indeed resulted from the liturgical reform it would certainly have been followed by an increase in Mass attendance and piety among the faithful. In no case can any such increase in Mass attendance be shown to have followed the liturgical reform, indeed, in the countries from which the Society of St. Pius X draws its principal support there have been declines ranging from the serious to the catastrophic, e. g., more than 60% in France and Holland, 50% in Italy, 30% in the United States of America, and 20% in England.

What these figures mean is that tens of millions of Catholics who were assisting at Mass before the "blessed fruits" of the liturgical reform no longer do so. As on previous occasions, the Pope attributed any ill effects of the reform solely to unofficial initiatives. He expressed his confidence that "the bishops are unceasingly vigilant upon this point." As my book Pope Paul’s New Mass makes clear, not only were most bishops far from vigilant, but some encouraged and endorsed abuses e. g., the scandalous abuse of invalid Masses in the United States, caused by the use of cake instead of Eucharistic matter (see Appendix VI).

In fact, the lack of episcopal vigilance was so manifest that Pope John Paul II felt obliged to issue a public apology to the faithful for the scandal they have received from liturgical abuses, an apology which he made in his own name and in that of the "unceasingly vigilant episcopate" (Letter, Dominicae Cenae, 24 February 1980), and on 3 April 1980 he approved the Instruction Inaestimabile Donum. demanding the cessation of twenty-six grave liturgical abuses which it listed, an Instruction which has been virtually ignored in the countries where these abuses were occurring. In some American dioceses, for example, the bishops are not simply lacking in vigilance but are active leaders in public defiance of the Holy See on such matters as the distribution of Communion under both kinds, admitting Protestants to Holy Communion, or allowing girls to serve Mass.

The extent to which the American Bishops are among the leaders in the movement to destroy Catholicism in the USA was made clear in 1982 in a book entitled The Crisis of Authority1 The author is Mgr. George Kelly, author of twenty-seven books, Professor in Contemporary Catholic Problems and Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies at St. John's University. Mgr. Kelly is not a traditionalist, indeed he is extremely hostile to Archbishop Lefebvre. But commenting upon the book in the Homiletic and Pastoral Review, the leading journal for priests in the English-speaking world, the Editor, Father Kenneth Baker, S.J., noted the extent to which Mgr. Kelly's thinking had developed since an earlier book, The Battle for the American Church ( 1979). Father Baker remarked:

In his Battle for the American Church Kelly had argued that the main problem of the Church in the U.S.A. was located in the dissident theologians, priests and religious. In Crisis he moves a step further and argues that the main problem now is the refusal of most bishops to be bishops, i.e., to guard the faith, rebuke those in error, to teach with the authority of Christ and, if necessary, to cut off heretics and schismatics from the body of the Church.

It scarcely needs saying that this criticism of the American bishops is equally applicable to the hierarchies of France, Holland, Canada, Belgium, and England and Wales, and, no doubt, to those in many other countries. Mgr. Kelly's books provide the best documented and most scathing indictment of the Conciliar Church yet to appear in the English language. It will be interesting to see whether he will move yet one step further, the final step, and admit that the main problem faced by the Church since Vatican II is the refusal of the Pope to be Pope, and, except in rare instances, "to guard the faith, rebuke those in error, to teach with the authority of Christ and, if necessary, to cut off heretics and schismatics from the body of the Church." Sadly, few conservative priests like Mgr. Kelly can overcome the psychological barrier which prevent them from taking this step, or face up to the consequences for themselves which such a decision would involve.

Where Pope Paul VI was concerned, it is my opinion that his refusal to face the fact that his liturgical reform had been a fiasco was also primarily psychological. In no way do I wish to suggest that he was motivated by malice or a desire to harm the Church. His attitude is common among men in executive positions in business, politics, education, the armed forces, or the Church-men who have initiated or approved policies which have failed to achieve the success predicted, but who cannot bring themselves to admit that the policies or their judgment was at fault. They either claim that the policies have produced the fruits predicted, or locate the reason for failure in some factor external to the policies themselves. There is nothing sinister or even unusual about such an attitude, other popes have harmed the Church by adhering to manifestly unsuccessful policies.

This attitude of Pope Paul VI makes it clear why there was no possibility of his reaching an agreement with Archbishop Lefebvre, because to do so would have been tantamount to admitting that he had endorsed policies which had been a disaster to the Church indeed, that his pontificate had been among the most disastrous in the history of the Church. It is difficult, almost impossible, to imagine any public figure making such an admission even to himself. Archbishop Lefebvre was in the position of the boy who told the Emperor that he had no clothes, and, sadly, in this case "the Emperor" could not bring himself to admit that "the boy" was telling the truth.

At a consistory a Pope makes two speeches, one all open address and one to a secret consistory of the Cardinals from which all but the Pope and Cardinals are excluded. Among the new Cardinals at this consistory were Cardinals Benelli, Ratzinger, and Ciappi. In his speech to the open consistory, Pope Paul praised Cardinal Benelli for his work as Substitute (Deputy) of the Secretary of State in which "you have worked to execute Our Will, without sparing time or energy." Cardinal Benelli died in 1982, may he rest in peace. He was not sympathetic to Archbishop Lefebvre or the traditionalist movement, and was responsible for coining the term "Conciliar Church" (see Vol. I., p. 199), but he was certainly anti-communist and generally disliked by the Liberals. Cardinal Ratzinger succeeded Cardinal Seper as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and hence as the chief Vatican negotiator with the Archbishop. There is no doubt that in his younger days he was suspected of theological Liberalism, but is now regarded as very conservative. Cardinal Ciappi is one of the finest theologians in the Church, having been theologian to Pope Pius XII, Pope John XXIII, and to Pope Paul VI. He is almost certainly the author of such documents as Pope Paul's Encyclical Mysterium Fidei and his Credo of the People of God.

The quotation which follows is taken from Pope Paul's speech to the Secret Consistory, which was published in L 'Osservatore Romano (English edition) of 7 July 1977. It was, of course, reported in the press on 28 June, at the moment most likely to put heavy psychological pressure on Archbishop Lefebvre to abandon the ordinations planned for 29 June. The impassioned opening to his ordination sermon (see page 62) can almost be seen as an answer to the Pope's address to the Secret Consistory.

Pope Paul Speaks to His Cardinals

The pope’s attention is drawn today once more to a particular point of the Church’s life: the indisputably beneficial fruits of the liturgical reform. Since the promulgation of the conciliar Constitution Sacrosanctum Concillium great progress has taken place, progress that responds to the premises laid down by the liturgical movement of the last part of the nineteenth century. It has fulfilled that movement’s deep aspirations for which so many churchmen and scholars have worked and prayed. The new Rite of the Mass, promulgated by Us after long and painstaking preparation by the competent bodies, and into which there have been introduced-side by side with the Roman Canon, which remains substantially unchanged, other Eucharistic Prayers, has borne blessed fruits. These include a greater participation in the liturgical action, a more lively awareness of the sacred action, a greater and wider knowledge of the inexhaustible treasures of Sacred Scripture and an increase of a sense of community in the Church.

The course of these recent years shows that we are on the right path. But unfortunately, in spite of vast preponderance of the healthy and good forces of the clergy and the faithful, abuses have been committed and liberties have been taken in applying the liturgical reform. The time has now come definitely to leave aside divisive ferments, which are equally pernicious on both sides, and to apply fully, in accordance with the correct criteria that inspired it, the reform approved by Us in application of the wishes of the Council.

As for those who, in the name of a misunderstood creative freedom, have caused so much damage to the Church with their improvisations, banalites and frivolities, and even certain deplorable profanations, We strongly call upon them to keep to the established norm. If this norm is not respected, grave damage could be done to the essence of dogma, not to speak of ecclesiastical discipline, according to the golden rule lex orandi, lex credendi. We call for absolute fidelity in order to safeguard the regula fidei. We are certain that, in this work, We are supported by the untiring, circumspect and paternal action of the Bishops, who are responsible for Catholic faith and prayer in the individual dioceses.

But with equal right We address Ourself to those who take up an unbending attitude of non-acceptance in the name of a tradition that proves to be more a banner for contumacious insubordination than a sign of authentic fidelity .We call upon them to accept, as is their strict duty, the voice of the Pope and of the Bishops, to understand the beneficial meaning of the modifications made to the sacred rites in incidental matters (modifications which represent a true continuity, and indeed often recall the old in adapting to the new), and not

to remain obstinately closed in their incomprehensible preconceptions. In the name of God We exhort them: "We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God" (II Cor. 5:20).

These recommendations, which spring from Our heart, are intended to emphasize the deeply-felt need for that unity of the Church of which We have spoken at the beginning of this Address.

We mean above all unity in charity. On the eve of the Holy Year We launched a pressing appeal for reconciliation within the Church (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Paterna cum Benevolentia, 8 December 1974: AAS 67, 1975, pp. 5-23). We think it necessary to insist anew on this appeal, since, it seems to Us, the flock tends at times to be divided, and the Church's members undergo the worldly temptation to oppose one another. Now it is in the ardor with which they seek unity that the true disciples of Christ are recognized; it is in the harmony of fraternal sentiments, inspired by humility, mutual respect, benevolence and understanding, that the Christian communities reflect the true face of the Church; on the other hand the spectacle of divisions damages the credibility of the Christian message.

We therefore address Ourself to all Our sons and daughters, that there may be banished from within the ecclesial community those sources of corrosive criticism, division of minds, insubordination to authority, and mutual suspicion that have occasionally succeeded in paralyzing abundant spiritual energies and in holding up the Church's conquering advance on behalf of the Kingdom of God. We desire that everyone should feel at ease in the ecclesial family, without exercising exclusion or isolation harmful to unity in charity; and We desire that there should not be sought the dominance of some to the detriment of others. "United, heart and soul" (Acts 4:32), like the Christians of the first mother community in Jerusalem, under the aegis of Peter, we must work, pray, suffer and strive in order to bear witness to the Risen Christ, “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

But Christ has wished that this unity in charity should never be separated from unity in truth, without which the former could become linked to an indefensible pluralism or a fatal indifferentism. The regula fidei to which We have already referred demands this perfect consistency in fidelity to the word of God, without any obscuring of the clear source of truth, which flows from the Most Blessed Trinity, and is communicated to humanity by Christ, the Son of God and Son of man, the cornerstone on which the Church is founded. Nor must there be any interruption of the continuity that had passed down that Revelation through the centuries with unaltered fidelity and has drawn forth the treasures hidden within it, in continuos deepening, but eodem sensu eademque sententia (St. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium, 23).

But the question arises. According to the very teaching of Christ and the unchangeable constitution of the Church, who is responsible for judging fidelity to the deposit of faith, the conformity of a doctrine or rule of conduct to the living Tradition of the Church? It is the authentic Magisterium, which comes from the Apostolic See and the body of bishops in communion with that See. Ever since the beginning, this has always been the touchstone of truth, be it a matter of faith or morals, sacramental discipline, or the more important orientations of pastoral action for the proclamation of the Gospel in the world.

Today it is very necessary to remember this, since certain interpretations of doctrine imperil the faith of believers who are not sufficiently mature or instructed. As We have already said, when We dealt with abuses in the liturgy, We are certain that the Bishops are unceasingly vigilant on this point. And We warmly urge everyone - Bishops, priests, religious and laity - to work with one mind for unity in truth.

And  with a full heart of sadness We express again the suffering which the unlawful ordinations cause Us -ordinations which Our Brother in the Episcopate is preparing to confer wrongfully, as he has done in the past. We firmly deplore these ordinations. In this way he is emphasizing his personal opposition to the Church and his activity of division and rebellion in matters of extreme gravity, notwithstanding Our own patient exhortations and the suspension he incurred formally forbidding him to persist in his designs contrary to the canonical norm. Young people are thus being placed outside of the Church's authentic ministry, which, by the sacred law of the Church, they will be forbidden to exercise. The faithful who will follow them are led astray in a posture of confusion if not in downright t rebellion greatly harmful to themselves and to ecclesial communion. Whatever may be the pretexts, this constitutes a wound to the Church, one of those which Saint Paul condemned so severely. We ask this Brother of Ours to be mindful of the breach he is producing, the disorientation which he is causing, the division which he is introducing with the gravest responsibility. Our Predecessors, to whose discipline he presumes to appeal, would not have tolerated a disobedience as obstinate as it is pernicious for so long a period as We have so patiently done. We ask you to pray with Us to the Holy Spirit that He may enlighten consciences.

Christ wanted His Church to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic. But if unity is broken by one side or another, a shadow is thrown over the entire ecclesial reality in its constituent marks. For unity Christ prayed    (cf. Jn. 17:20-26); for unity He gave His life: "Jesus was to die...to gather together in unity the scattered children of God"(Jn. 11:51f). Unity was His gift to the Church at the beginning of her life, so that before the world and for the world she might be a united witness to the Word of God and to His salvation.

This unity which the Catholic Church guards intact is what We earnestly commend to all our Brothers and sons and daughters. As We approach the Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, columns of the Church for which they gave their lives, We entrust to them the protection of this unity; for this We call upon the intercession of Mary, Mother of the Church. And, in asking the generous, conscious and active cooperation of all Our Brothers and sons and daughters, We impart in support of firm and worthy intentions Our special Apostolic Blessing.

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