| Editor : Abbé Georges de Nantes | N° 79 – April 2009 |
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REPENTANCES
In a letter of 29 January addressed to Benedict XVI to thank him for having lifted their excommunication, the four bishops of the Fraternity St. Pius X are careful not to attack the Council openly:
« We wish to begin exchanges as soon as possible with representatives of Your Holiness concerning doctrines in opposition to the Magisterium of all time », they write in their letter that has just been published in Fideliter, the organ of the fsspx. « Through this still necessary way (…), we hope to assist the Holy See in finding the appropriate remedy for the loss of faith within the Church », they specify.
… As for us, we would like to assist « the four bishops » in spelling it out. There is no question of « exchanges » when the matter involves « doctrines in opposition with the Magisterium of all time ». Rather it is a question of absolutely refusing the error that the Second Vatican Council taught, in order to keep the Faith without which there is no salvation.
Forty-five years after the Council, Mgr Fellay, successor of Mgr Lefebvre, is still proposing « exchanges » to Pope Benedict XVI. Mgr Lefebvre “dialogued” with Cardinal Ratzinger in exactly the same way in 1987 instead of powerfully, refuting and absolutely refusing the heresy of the Council without fearing the repercussions. It would have been easy: he only had to copy the Abbé de Nantes!
Why did he not do so?
« Because Mgr Lefebvre only saw one thing, our Father explained in 1987 : I have a work, and I created this work under-the-counter, underground, in resistance, without appearing to do so, without protesting against anything, laying blame on the Abbé de Nantes, who openly opposed the heresies, scandals, and schisms of the Council and the Pope. Thus, with the apparent blessing of Pope Paul VI, my work will increase in size and, at a certain moment, it will be too powerful for Rome to forbid it. »
This is still Mgr Fellay’s miscalculation, for there is, as Mgr Stenger, Bishop of Troyes, rightly says, the « inescapable » Council. If the Council is good, we have to obey! If it is bad, we have to say in what. But we cannot “escape” it and act as though it does not exist.
At Econe, they never spoke about it in order to show the Pope that he was respected, venerated, unlike the Abbé de Nantes who criticised him.
On the other hand, when the question of the new Mass was raised, Mgr Lefebvre made it his main concern. He apparently followed the line of the Council because it had decreed that all rites would be respected (Sacrosanctum Concilium n° 4).
Paul VI did not let himself be taken in. In 1975, he decided to close Econe, where a traditional Church was rising up opposite the Roman Church, outside of Roman discipline, as though the Council had not existed.
This is when our Father entitled an editorial: “Strike at the Head!” (CRC n° 89, February 1975).
It was an invitation to Mgr Lefebvre to « strike at the Head of him who has the Powers of the Lamb, but who speaks in the language of the Dragon » (Ap 13.11) What does this mean?
« The indictment of the Head of the Church for heresy, schism, and scandal is within the competence of the priest, the theologian, who is capable of knowing its reality with certainty and of drawing up its canonical Act, the Book of Accusation. This is what we have done. But if it has not even been received in virtue of the supreme Judge’s completely flagrant crime of dereliction of duty, the Trial has suspended before being opened.
« There remains, then, the last heroic remedy, the only one that the One who has knowingly and stubbornly inverted the meaning of his divine and apostolic mission, fears. A bishop, who is also a successor of the Apostles, a member of the teaching Church, a confrere of the Bishop of Rome and, like him, ordained for the common good of the Church, must break his communion with him as long as he has not proved himself faithful to the responsibilities of his supreme pontificate. »
« The Pope who receives Jews by denying Christ in order to speak to them about reconciliation is heretical.
« The Pope who abrogates in practice and forbids the Mass of the Roman Church that St. Pius V promulgated and granted to the Universal Church for all time is schismatic.
« The Pope who praises Buddhism and associates with Tibetan lamas is scandalous.
« As long as you spare the Head, you will not master the members; as long as you obey the Head, you will be crushed by the claws and the teeth of this Masdu. The hydra of the Antichrist must be struck at the Head in order to free the Church of Jesus Christ. »
Mgr Lefebvre, who was absorbed by his unrealistic idea of not displeasing the Pope, replied in an open letter: « I will have you know, Monsieur l’Abbé, that if a bishop breaks with Rome, it will not be me! » Nevertheless, he continued to exercise his ministry while actually in rupture with Rome:
« Since there is a Modernist Church, he used to say, we have to save the Catholic Church and continue our works in spite of the Pope’s interdict. »
When he was summoned to Rome in 1977, he was confronted by Cardinal Šeper, head of the Holy Office at that time. The meeting took place in two phases. Mgr Lefebvre attacked on religious freedom, ecumenism, interfaith. Cardinal Šeper had nothing to reply, but he counter-attacked on Mgr Lefebvre’s anarchic practice of administering the Sacrament of Confirmation in all the regions of the world, ordaining priests without the Pope’s consent, and sending them throughout the whole world to administer the Sacraments without jurisdiction, issuing sham absolutions, celebrating invalid marriages, as though the discipline of the Church did not exist, in rebellion against the Pope and the bishops of the world.
Mgr Lefebvre was left speechless. Feeling faint, he asked that the meeting be adjourned: « I am tired! » But he changed nothing in his schismatic conduct on the grounds of a jurisdiction that he received directly from Christ without the mediation of His Vicar, according to a theory against which he had fought during the Council, and which he was then adopting for the sake of his cause!
Ten years later, the Abbé de Nantes explained in a conference at Maison Saint-Joseph during the annual Congress of the CRC: « Mgr Lefebvre is so much in the wrong that he cannot put back the clock. The men whom he ordained priests without asking anyone anything, against the Pope’s will, now only ask one thing: that Mgr Lefebvre consecrate bishops from among them in order to be able to continue after his death. » This is what happened the following year: on 30 June 1988 Mgr Lefebvre ordained four bishops at Econe and incurred ipso facto a “latæ sententiæ” excommunication, which was made public on 1 July of the same year.
Since then the schism has crystallised: the Fraternity of St. Pius X acts outside of ecclesiastical structures and the Church’s canon law, administering the Sacraments in a fully schismatic way.
By lifting the excommunication, Pope Benedict XVI has not clarified the canonical situation of anarchy in which the Fraternity finds itself. The priests ordained by the four bishops remain suspens, the absolutions that they distribute are invalid, the marriages that they bless likewise.
What has to be done? What the Abbé de Nantes asked Mgr Lefebvre to do in 1987: « He should kneel down, beg forgiveness, and say: “For fifteen years [1972-1987], I have been completely mistaken. I am truly schismatic, but it must be admitted that I am so because you tried my patience to the breaking-point with your heresies.” »
It would have been necessary – but it is never too late to do good – for Mgr Fellay and his three confreres to throw themselves at the feet of the Holy Father and to beg forgiveness for having criminally despised his sovereign authority by multiplying acts of schism for twenty years. Then they should beseech him to remedy the situation by infallibly judging the grave accusations brought against him and his predecessors who intoxicated the world with their heresies, which are appalling to God!
The Abbé de Nantes went to Rome three times, but he came up against a closed door. They will be received! They will be able to say to the Pope quite frankly:
« Most Holy Father, we were wrong, gravely wrong to have disobeyed you, and to attribute to ourselves a jurisdiction that we do not have from you, the Vicar of Jesus Christ.
« Because you have mercifully lifted the excommunication that penalised our disobedience, we take the liberty to tell you, as full-fledged sons of the Church, that the Second Vatican Council and the teaching of your predecessors John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II are grievously erroneous.
« They are marred by idolatry of man and the world, by illuminism and Modernism. The religious freedom that was proclaimed in the declaration Dignitatis humanæ is unanimously condemned by the ordinary, infallible Magisterium of the Church; it leads to Luther’s rehabilitation, which Your Holiness explicitly formulated in a recent Wednesday catechism, but which was already implicit in the decree Unitatis redintegratio (21 November 1964), on ecumenism. It also leads to the promotion of false religions (Nostra ætate, 28 October 1965).
« The rupture with tradition is obvious here and, to be frank with you, Most Holy Father; we can hardly believe that you are sincere when you deny it. Otherwise, you will have to retract the affirmation according to which Gaudium et Spes is « the anti-Syllabus », as you yourself wrote: “The text acts as a counter-Syllabus inasmuch as it represents an attempt at an official reconciliation of the Church with the world as it has become since 1789.” (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, The Principles of Catholic Theology, Téqui 1982, p. 427). Thus, Cardinal Ratzinger identified Gaudium et Spes with the last (condemned) proposition of the Syllabus!
« Most Holy Father, it is Benedict XVI, legitimate successor of St. Peter, who must infallibly judge between Pius IX and Cardinal Ratzinger. Without this act of your sovereign Magisterium, our duty is to break our communion with You on the sole grounds that the law of the Church considers legitimate and that God blesses: the defence of the deposit of the Faith. »