Archbishop Lefebvre: 'I Accuse the Council!' [online]

[Stone]

I Accuse the Council!
by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Preface to the  English Edition

The reader will no doubt find this a difficult book to read. But he will not fail to recognize that the struggle at Vatican II of a small number of conciliar Fathers became, in the long run, the same struggle carried on by the small number of those who resist the world-wide subversion of Socialism and Communism.

The triumph of ecumenical liberalism at the Council was the greatest victory for Communism. Christian civilization forthwith lost its self-confidence and thought it could adopt the principles of its enemies, viz. the rights of man, human dignity, and religious liberty. This adoption opened a one-sided dialogue and raised the banner of détente and of pacifism. Consequently, Communism has spread over the world without hindrance.

Vatican II, which should have been the anti-Communist Council as the Council of Trent was anti-Protestant, was taken over by the Liberals and became the instrument for the destruction of all the moral and spiritual barriers against Communism. When soldiers have lost the ideal for which they fight their weapons fall from their hands. Since there is no longer a Christian civilization to defend, the field is left open to the Satanic revolution.

In the discussions which appear in these pages, nothing less than the Catholic Faith and the future of so-called Christian nations is at stake. Those who worked to disarm the truth and surrendered it to error bear a heavy responsibility.

May these pages kindle the courage to revive the Catholic Faith for which so many martyrs shed their blood.

May those who contributed so much to this edition be abundantly rewarded. May God recompense them by a wide distribution of this book.

Marcel Lefebvre
Rickenbach, Switzerland
March, 1982

* * *

A Note on the Title

Why is this book called I Accuse the Council ? We have chosen this title because we are justified in asserting—a judgment based on both internal and external criticism—that the spirit which dominated the Council and which inspired so many of its ambiguous, equivocal and even clearly erroneous texts, was not that of the Holy Ghost, but the spirit of the modern world, the spirit of Liberalism, of Teilhard de Chardin, of Modernism, in opposition to the kingdom of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Submission to the official reforms and orientations coming from Rome is demanded and imposed in the name of that Council. The tendency of all of these, it will be noted, is openly Protestant and Liberal.

It is only since the Council that the Church, or at least churchmen in possession of key posts, has taken a direction definitely opposed to tradition and to the official Magisterium of the Church.

Such men have imagined themselves to be the living Church, and mistress of the truth, with freedom to impose new dogmas advocating progress, evolution, change, and a blind, unconditional obedience on clergy and laity alike. They have turned their backs on the true Church; they have given her new institutions, a new priesthood, a new form of worship, new teachings ever in search of something fresh, and always in the name of the Council.

It is easy to think that whoever opposes the Council and its new Gospel would be considered as excommunicated, as outside communion with the Church. But one may well ask them, communion with what Church? They would answer, no doubt, with the Conciliar Church.

It is imperative, therefore, to shatter the myths which have been built up around Vatican II. This Council had wished to be a pastoral Council because of its instinctive horror for dogma, and to facilitate the official introduction of Liberal ideas into Church texts. By the time it was over, however, they had dogmatized the Council, comparing it with that of Nicaea, and claiming that it was equal, if not superior, to the Councils that had gone before it!

Fortunately, this operation of exploding the erroneous ideas of the Council has already begun, and begun satisfactorily with the work of Professor Salet in the Courrier de Rome[2] on the Declaration on Religious Liberty. His conclusion is that this declaration is heretical.

There are a number of points about the Council which should be studied thoroughly and analyzed, for example:

-the questions of the relationship of the bishops and the Pope in the constitutions on the Church, on the Bishops, and on the Missions;

-the priesthood of clergy and laity in the introduction to Lumen Gentium;

-the purpose of marriage in Gaudium et Spes;

-liberty of worship and conscience and the concept of liberty in Gaudium et Spes;

-ecumenism and relations with non-Christian religions and with atheists, etc.


A non-Catholic spirit can quickly be discerned in all this. An examination of these points leads us inevitably to look at the reforms which came from Vatican II and suddenly we see the Council in a new and strange light. Then the questions follow: Had those who brought off this astonishing maneuver thought it out in depth before the Council opened? Who are they? Did they get together before the Council?

Gradually one’s eyes are opened to behold an astounding conspiracy prepared long beforehand. Such a discovery makes one wonder what part the Pope played in all this work and how responsible he was for what happened. In spite of the desire to find him innocent of this appalling betrayal of the Church, it would seem that his involvement was overwhelming.

Even, however, if we leave it to God and to Peter’s true successors to sit in judgment of these things, it is nonetheless certain that the Council was deflected from its purposes by a group of conspirators and that it is impossible for us to take any part in this conspiracy despite the fact that there may be many satisfactory declarations in Vatican II. The good texts have served as cover to get those texts which are snares, equivocal and denuded of meaning, accepted and passed.

We are left with only one solution: to abandon these dangerous examples and cling firmly to tradition, i.e., to the official Magisterium of the Church throughout two thousand years.

We hope that the pages which follow will throw the light of truth on the consciously or unconsciously subversive enterprises of the enemies of the Church.

Let us add that the reactions of Liberal clergy and laity, of Protestants, and of Freemasons to the Council only make our apprehensions stronger. Would not Cardinal Suenens be right in declaring that this Council has been the French Revolution of the Church![3]

Thus our duty is clear: to preach the kingdom of Our Lord Jesus Christ against that of the goddess Reason.

Marcel Lefebvre
Paris, France
August 27, 1976