BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DIFFICULTIES AND PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

     The drama we are living through began with Vatican II, when the doctrine of the Catholic Church was abandoned – on several points – in favour of new doctrine. Disciplinary reforms followed, implementing the principles of Vatican II: we recall in particular the liturgical reform along with its high point, the promulgation of a new Missal in 1969, and the canonical reform, realised in the New Code of 1983.

     Let us observe that the reform of Canon Law, although less spectacular than that of the Mass, was nevertheless presented as having an irreversible character.

THE QUESTION OF AUTHORITY

     Very soon, the opponents of Vatican II found themselves confronting important theoretical and practical problems. On one hand, the rejection of a Council and its reforms raises the problem of the legitimacy of the Authority which willed this Council and its reforms. This is the problem of Authority or – as some describe it – of the Pope. As a corollary to this, there is the more practical problem of the obedience that every Catholic owes to the hierarchy and particularly to the Pope.

     To the best of my knowledge, the Abbé de Nantes was the first to raise this question, back in 1967. He did this for a very simple reason: at that time he was the only declared opponent of the Council and its reforms. That is why he raised the question «OF THE POPE» in the CRC n^o 3 (French edition), December 1967, pages 7 and 8. Quoting Cardinal Journet, he put three questions which he answered in accordance with the unanimous and constant Tradition of the Church:

1. Do the faithful have the right to contest the validity of a papal election?

     No, because «when the universal Church peacefully accepts a newly appointed Pope and effectively unites herself to him as to a Head who should be obeyed, this is an act in which the Church engages her destiny. It is therefore an act which is of itself infallible, and it is immediately recognisable as such… The acceptance of the Church may either operate negatively, when the election is not immediately contested…», which was the case with the election of Paul VI: no one contested his election at the time. «Consequently, no one today has the right to contest or to call into doubt the certain validity of the election of H.H. Paul VI, even if it may appear to be most unfortunate or tainted by intrigue and regrettable preoccupations.»

2. Do the faithful have the right to accuse a Pope of heresy and schism?

     Yes, assuredly, since «it would appear to be possible for a Pope to fall into heresy or schism, for the most terrible misfortune of the Church.»

3. May the faithful then consider the Pope fallen from office or demand his deposition?

     This is the most difficult question, the most hotly debated. «According to the most reliable opinion, a heretical or schismatic Pope, or one who is the prisoner of an occult power, does not for all that forfeit his Supreme Power except in the wake of a declarative action by the Church concluding in his manifest incapacity or rather his spiritual death. Such an action, should it prove just and necessary, would prevail over every other consideration and constitute the highest form of charity, for the Fish – ICTUS – would rot from the Head downwards if the Supreme Office were not removed from a man already dead.»

     It is remarkable to see a reference from the pen of the Abbé de Nantes to one of the corpses shown to Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta in the Third Secret of Fatima on 13 July 1917…

     The conclusion drawn by our Father from his preliminary study was as follows: «No one today, therefore, has the right to contest the supreme authority of H.H. Pope Paul VI», and this suffices to expose the following aberration of Father Ricossa:

     Our position is as follows: Paul VI and John Paul II do not enjoy divinely assisted Papal Authority (they are not formally popes). And as regards the matter of obedience, the problem does not arise because one is only obliged to obey legitimate authority.

     Straightaway, we are a thousand light years away from our Catholic Counter-Reformation.

     In his Letter to my friends n^o 212 of 15 September 1965, the Abbé de Nantes dealt in advance with the question OF THE AUTHORITY OF THE COUNCIL: «In order that I may practise a proper degree of filial submission, neither more nor less, I therefore inquire into the exact nature of the divine authority of the twenty-first Ecumenical Council. I began this attentive study on the evening of 11 October 1962, when it was announced that this Council was to be different from the twenty preceding it and of such an astonishing novelty that it would be like a new Pentecost for the world and the beginning of a new Reign. With the utmost faith and reverence I lay these conclusions before the divine authority of the Apostolic See, to which I have sworn my obedience once and for all. May it be pleased to give its sovereign judgement on this matter.»

     We will return to this magisterial study. But for now let us simply bear in mind that his «conclusions» still today await a reply from Apostolic Authority. Whereas Father Ricossa, for his part, has already pronounced his verdict, motu proprio, thereby elevating himself to the level of the Supreme Tribunal! Just listen to him:

     On the other hand, Mgr Lefebvre and his Society recognise the legitimacy of those who promulgated the Council and its subsequent reforms (“bad Pope, but Pope”), and that is why they were quickly forced to rationalise their habitual disobedience to the Pope regarding both the acceptance of his teaching and questions of a disciplinary nature. The practical rule adopted was therefore: “We accept those novelties that have an inherent correspondence with Tradition and the Faith. But we do not feel bound to obey novelties that go against Tradition and menace our Faith.” I recall this principle because it will be applied in the present case by Mgr Lefebvre’s successors, particularly in the question of how the New Code of Canon Law is to be received.

     For Father Ricossa, nothing existed before the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, which apparently pre-existed from the very beginning in the person of Mgr Lefebvre. Such a view is explained by the fact that he himself was born of this Society, having been ordained in 1982… by Mgr Lefebvre!

     But it is essential to go back further, otherwise we will understand nothing of the genesis of the “schism” of both one group and the other.

     Mgr Lefebvre had been Archbishop of Dakar and the Apostolic Delegate for the whole of French-speaking Africa. We have already been able to measure the importance of this fact in the genesis of the 1980 “Ordinances” (Resurrection n^o 2, p. 20-21). Elected Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers in July 1962, he took his place alongside the defenders of Catholic faith and law at the Council, even to appearing the ringleader of the traditionalist minority. He fought every inch of the way but, in the end, he caved in and signed the Declaration Dignitatis humanae, on Religious Liberty, and the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, on the Church in the Modern World.

     So, right from the start, not only did Mgr Lefebvre «recognise the legitimacy of those who promulgated the Council», but he was also one of those who actually promulgated it! He did not even figure among the thirty who said no right to the bitter end by refusing to sign. Nevertheless, he supported the Abbé de Nantes’ opposition, at least in his private correspondence: «The evil lies above all in Rome, he wrote to him, and with the Pope.» (25 September 1967)

     He even informed our Father where his duty lay when he was summoned to appear before the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in July 1968, advising him to refuse to retract his dogmatic, moral and pastoral criticisms of the “cult of man”, ecumenical “dialogue” and the “reform of the Church”, all advocated by Paul VI: «You cannot. You do not have the right… We ourselves wrote to the Holy Father in his time: the cause of all the ill lies in the Acts of the Council. Be firm in the truth.» (French CRC n^o 24, p. 6)

     On 28 September 1968, Mgr Lefebvre resigned his position as Superior General of the Order of the Holy Ghost Fathers. Thereupon began a new phase: the traditionalist bishop entered into rebellion against the new Ordo Missae promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 6 April 1969, all the while declaring his submission to the same Pope Paul VI. In October he received ten seminarians at Fribourg. On 1 November 1970, he founded the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, established as a society of diocesan right for a period of six years, ad experimentum, and opened a seminary at Econe in the neighbouring diocese of Sion.

     To make this foundation known, Mgr Lefebvre then began to multiply conferences throughout France, publicly disowning the Abbé de Nantes who was at that time compiling his Book of Accusation against Paul VI and preparing to take it to the Holy See: «A son does not criticise his Father», he said.

THE QUESTION OF JURISDICTION

     The other problem – which is of direct interest to us – is that of the jurisdiction necessary to exercise the priestly ministry. By law and divine institution there exist in the Church two powers, that of order and that of jurisdiction. “Ecclesiastical power is divided into the power of order and the power of jurisdiction. The power of order is immediately ordered to the sanctification of souls through the offering of the Sacrifice of the Mass and the administration of the sacraments. The power of jurisdiction is itself immediately ordered to the government of the faithful in view of eternal life. It is exercised either through the authorised teaching of revealed truths (sacred magisterium), or through the promulgation of laws (legislative power), through authentic judgments in cases arising between subjects (judicial power), or through the application of penal sanctions against those who transgress the laws (coercitive power).”

     These two powers (and their relative hierarchies) “are truly distinct” but “closely associated by a mutual relationship”. “They differ in their origins, for order is conferred with the appropriate sacrament, whereas jurisdiction is given by canonical mission. They also differ in their tenure, for the valid exercise of order, in the majority of cases, cannot be rescinded, whereas jurisdiction can be revoked. However, they stand in mutual relation to one another, for jurisdiction presupposes order and, vice versa, the exercise of order is regulated by jurisdiction.”

     These definitions usefully recalled here by Father Ricossa are taken from a dogmatic dictionary of theology published at Rome in 1943. No difficulty here.

     The publication of the New Missal (1969) presented the opponents of Vatican II with their first practical difficulty: should one continue and everywhere organise – using the “old” liturgical books – the exercise of the power of order (Mass, sacraments…) even though not enjoying the power of jurisdiction; or should one abstain from acts of the ministry if deprived of the canonical mission that comes from the “hierarchy”. In practice (and not without frequently bending the rules) the Abbé de Nantes was alone in opting for the second approach; everyone else took the first.

     I recalled earlier on the circumstances in which the Abbé de Nantes separated from «all the others». Father Ricossa’s parenthesis is murderous. We must therefore take a journey back in time to understand how the Abbé de Nantes effectively found himself «alone» in choosing the way of the Counter-Reform but Catholic, the Catholic way but of the Counter-Reform, the «via media» between two abysses, steering well clear of any kind of «bending of the rules» that could make him fall, him and all those who followed him, into either heresy or schism.

     For the Abbé de Nantes, «the question of jurisdiction» was far more important than that of the publication of the New Missal (1969): when the Council closed on 8 December 1965, he pronounced a firm and decisive «Non possumus» against the conciliar novelties which are wholly irreconcilable with the Catholic faith.

     Threatened with interdict by Mgr Le Couëdic, Bishop of Troyes, he appealed to Rome to obtain a doctrinal judgement from the Sovereign Pontiff. To this end he addressed to Cardinal Ottaviani, the Pro-Prefect of the Holy Office, the letter that was to open the process of the examination of his works. Mgr Le Couëdic regarded this letter as insulting and refused to transfer the dossier to Rome. The Abbé de Nantes therefore decided to send it himself to its august addressee and to publish the LETTER TO CARDINAL OTTAVIANI in his Letters to my friends. This act of disobedience earned him the punishment of being suspended a divinis in the diocese of Troyes on 25 August 1966. Despite such an evident act of injustice, he submitted to this sanction to avoid giving the least appearance of dissidence, an atrocious crime which has always filled him with horror.

     Eventually, his process commenced in the court of Rome. The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith summoned the Abbé de Nantes on two occasions, in April and July 1968. The only objections it retained against him were those of «irreverence» and «disobedience», and, for this reason, he was asked to sign a general retractation of his criticisms of Pope Paul VI and Vatican II, and to subscribe to an unlimited submission to his bishop and the French episcopate!

     He refused to sign this exorbitant text on 6 July 1968 and again on 23 May 1969. Finally, in response to an ultimatum from Cardinal Seper, he replied with a “PROFESSION OF CATHOLIC FAITH” in which he affirmed his readiness to obey the Vicar of Christ and the bishops, the successors of the Apostles, according to the just limits fixed by Law. But Rome took no account of this…

     Next August 25, the Abbé de Nantes will have persevered in his act of obedience for thirty-five years, scrupulously submitting himself to the unjust suspension which has deprived him of the plenitude of his priestly powers within the diocese of Troyes. What kind of “rule bending” did Father Ricossa have in mind in his homicidal allusion? Was it the celebration of the Mass at Maison Saint-Joseph?

     For more than two years the Abbé de Nantes ceased to celebrate Mass in the diocese of Troyes. Every day, we would go as a community to Mass in the parish church. Not without some astonishment at being forced to do so:

     «Upheld without limits», remarked our Father in a Letter to friends and benefactors in October 1968, «this sanction constitutes a kind of blackmail to crush our souls and to defame us before the faithful. How is it to be explained that we can be given Holy Communion every morning at the village Mass and yet that I am barred from saying Mass? Are we worthy or unworthy? There is no need to attempt an explanation. The situation is one of pure violence, reflecting solely on the College who prolong it interminably for want of courage and honesty.»

     Protracted in an irregular manner, this suspension was transmuted into a vindictive penalty for perpetuity, without any reason to justify it. Therefore, in the autumn of 68, acting on the advice of Fathers Raymond Dulac and Victor Berto, as well as Canon de Rodat, a canon lawyer in the Archdiocese of Paris, the Abbé de Nantes took the decision to celebrate Mass at Maison Saint-Joseph for the good of the community. «The Abbé de Nantes should treat as invalid the arbitrary act which seeks to forbid him to celebrate Mass, said the Abbé Berto. He should disregard it without giving rise to public scandal, discreetly.»

     Which is what he did: on 8 December 1968, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, he started to celebrate Mass at Maison Saint-Joseph. But as regards the other sacraments, he continued, and still continues today, to submit to a sanction imposed by virtue of a regulation which in 1983 disappeared from the New Code of Canon Law! That is his logic: the logic of obedience, antithetical to any kind of dissidence. We are going to see that this was not the logic of Mgr Lefebvre or of Father Ricossa… or of Rome herself!

 
THE POSITION OF THE FRATERNITY FROM 1975-1976 TO 1980.
CRITIQUE OF THIS POSITION.

     Econe may not have had a problem between 1970 and 1974, the period in which the Fraternity of Saint Pius X was canonically approved, but with the suppression of the Fraternity on 6 May 1975, the refusal to grant the dimissorial letters required to ordain seminarians (27 October 1975), and the suspension of Mgr Lefebvre’s authorisation to confer Holy Orders (12 June 1976), the problem appeared in the most dramatic fashion: from 1976, priests ordained in the Fraternity would automatically be suspended a divinis (forbidden to celebrate Mass and to administer the sacraments), exactly as their founder had been (22 July 1976).

     Before he started to say Mass again at Maison Saint-Joseph, the Abbé de Nantes had consulted Mgr Lefebvre. The latter had advised him to think nothing of it because, as he said, the Pope was very sick: he would soon die. This thought never left Mgr Lefebvre. To a large extent it explains his behaviour. Already on 27 June 1965, at Paray-le-Monial, during the ceremonies for the bicentenary of the establishment of the Feast of the Sacred Heart, we had been told by Mgr Lefebvre: «Your Father is wrong to criticise Paul VI. The Pope may die at any moment. It is nothing for God to make a man die.»

     Ten years later, not only was Pope Paul VI still alive, but he had decided to close down the seminary at Econe.

     Once the decision had been taken to administer the sacraments without the requisite jurisdiction – and this included the ordinations of 29 June 1976 – a new difficulty had to be faced: in this situation, although certain sacraments can always be validly administered by virtue of the power of Order which cannot be lost, other sacraments (Penance and Marriage) strictly required, on pain of being administered invalidly, the jurisdiction that was lacking. If for the sacrament of marriage the solution is relatively easy (canon 1098 provides, in certain cases, for the canonical form to be dispensed with), the sacrament of penance presented and presents far greater difficulties: the need for the confessor to have jurisdiction over the penitent is in fact required by the very nature of the sacrament as instituted by Christ and therefore does not come solely under ecclesiastical law (Council of Florence, DS 1323; Council of Trent, DS 1686; Pius VI, Auctorem fidei, DS 2637; Saint Thomas, Suppl. q. 8, a. 4.).

     Admittedly the law provides for cases in which the Church supplies the missing jurisdiction of the priest (“Ecclesia supplet”): in cases of danger of death for example, any priest may validly grant absolution (can. 882), just as he may do, according to the prescription of canon 209, in cases of positive and probable doubt (about his possessing or not possessing jurisdiction) or indeed of common error (the penitents erroneously believe that the priest has jurisdiction). However, it was obvious that the canons invoked were insufficient to justify the practice of habitually and constantly hearing confessions without jurisdiction, which is why Mgr Lefebvre extended the case of the danger of the penitent’s physical death – provided for by the Code – to that of the danger of spiritual death, a case which applies to all Catholics given the Church’s current situation.

     Was not this to reason “as if” one no longer recognised the legitimacy of the hierarchy and the validity of the new sacraments? And indeed Mgr Lefebvre did hesitate – during the summer of 76 – over the legitimacy of Paul VI; but having been received in an audience (11 September), he opted for his legitimacy, a decision which became official with the famous declaration of 8 November 1979 entitled “Mgr Lefebvre’s position on the New Mass and the Pope” (Cor unum, n. 4, p. 1-9), a declaration which itself took shape in the climate following the audience granted by John Paul II to Mgr Lefebvre on 18 November 1978. This position (a theoretical recognition of the legitimacy of Paul VI and John Paul II, but a practice which suggested this recognition did not exist) became one of the weak points of his movement. Let us see how Cardinal Seper, delegated by Paul VI and John Paul II at that time to investigate the traditionalist cause, set out the problem:

     “And your ‘praxis’, objected Cardinal Seper to Mgr Lefebvre in his letter of 28 January 1978, does not correct things. Indeed, you ordain priests against the formal will of the Pope and without the ‘litteræ dimissoriæ’ required by Canon Law; you send priests ordained by you to your priories where they exercise their ministry without the authorisation of the local Ordinary; you make speeches calculated to spread your ideas in dioceses whose bishops withhold their consent; with the priests you have ordained and who in fact answer only to you, you have started to form, whether you intend it or not, a group that is on the way to becoming a dissident ecclesial community. In this regard one must point to the astonishing statement you made (press conference of 15 September 1976, published in Itinéraires, December 1976, p. 126-127) concerning the administration of the sacrament of penance by priests whom you have unlawfully ordained and who are not provided with the faculty of hearing confessions. You considered that these priests had a jurisdiction provided by canon law for cases of necessity: ‘I think, you said, that the situation we find ourselves in is not one of physical circumstances but one of extraordinary morals.’ Was not this to reason as if the legitimate hierarchy had ceased to exist in those regions where these priests worked?”

     The Abbé de Nantes had pre-empted Cardinal Seper by one whole year in giving such a warning to his audience at the Mutualité in January 1977, and in explaining to the readers of the CRC, the following month, where the “praxis” of Mgr Lefebvre was heading. Having quoted the relevant page in Itinéraires, our Father commented:

     «Either there still exists on earth a visible, hierarchical, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church, whose divine order is established and maintained in accordance with the rules of the Canon Law in force, in which case Mgr Lefebvre’s attempted justification is baseless: confessions and marriages without the ordinary powers of jurisdiction and, in the case of marriages without the parish priest’s personal delegation, are indisputably null and void in law.

     «Or else there is no longer a Pope in Rome, and no longer any bishops in our dioceses or anywhere else, other than Mgr Lefebvre alone. But in that case, why invoke Canon Law at all in such a shaky argument? If he is the sole successor of the Apostles today, then his authority alone must stand in the eyes of both men and God as the fount of law. Let him concede Powers to whom he will, wherever he wishes, as he sees fit throughout the whole world! But that is not his real thinking, as can be seen in the timid and hesitant justification we have just read, although it must be the thinking of a number of priests and faithful who follow him and who egg him on.

     «It is all extremely grave: for souls who receive absolutions that are invalid and who become acclimatised to this protestant subjectivism; for families that accept marriages which no ecclesiastical court would hesitate to declare null and void; for the undivided subsistence of Holy Church broken by this form of reasoning and behaviour which can only be called schismatic because that is exactly what it is and, sad to say, even more formally so than the latent schism of those who camp within the Church, taking advantage of the inertia and complicity of those in authority the better to destroy her.» (English CRC n^o 83, February 1977, p. 15-16).

     Mgr Lefebvre’s response, whilst wholly pertinent on doctrinal questions, was far from being so on questions that would logically have led him to denying the legitimacy of the “Pope” and the “bishops” de iure (and not simply de facto). Mgr Lefebvre had remained vague in his reply of 26 February 1978, so Cardinal Seper put the same question to him, in almost identical terms, on 16 March and then again – in a more verbose manner – in the interrogation of 11-12 January 1979.

     At the end of the interrogation, Seper came back to the following question: “Can a bishop, which is how he referred to Mgr Lefebvre’s position, judging in conscience that the Pope and the Episcopate no longer in the main exercise their authority, and seeking to ensure the faithful and exact transmission and maintenance of the Catholic faith, legitimately ordain priests without being a diocesan bishop, without having received dimissorial letters and against the formal and express prohibition of the Pope, and assign to these priests responsibility for the ecclesiastical ministry in their various dioceses (…). Does this thesis conform to the traditional doctrine of the Church by which you intend to abide?”

     The reply was obviously no. Particularly as Mgr Lefebvre himself, in a protest addressed to the Sovereign Pontiff on 18 October 1964, the eve of the third session of the Council, had refuted the theory of a power of universal jurisdiction deriving immediately from Christ, independently of the Roman Pontiff, by virtue of the sacrament of the episcopate (cf. English CRC n^o 202, August 1987, p. 28).

     Mgr Lefebvre’s reaction was immediate: “You are trying to trap me!” His more considered response was no better. At first it was pragmatism: “No. I have not acted on the basis of a principle like that. It was the facts, the circumstances I found myself in, that forced me to adopt certain positions.” Then it was an argument that condemned itself: “I think that history can provide examples of similar acts carried out, in certain circumstances, not ‘contra’ but ‘præter voluntatem Papæ’” (but Mgr Lefebvre was in fact acting ‘against’ and not ‘beyond’ the will of the ‘Pope’).

     Finally came the definitive and logical surrender: “However, this question is too serious and too important for me to answer immediately. I therefore prefer to suspend my response.” The discussions at the “Holy Office” would remain at that point, and there was to be no further response...

     Father Ricossa explains this silence by the self-contradiction in which Mgr Lefebvre was locked, recognising the authority of the Pope without taking any account of it in practice. Undoubtedly this is the reason why, after having been ordained by Mgr Lefebvre in 1982, Father Ricossa left with three colleagues to found the Mater Boni Consilii Institute in 1985.

     Up until that moment the position of the Society of Saint Pius X had been contradictory – due to the position taken over the authority of the Pope – but had been limited to postulating a “supply” by the Church for the exclusive administration of the sacraments. In fact we ourselves for this same reason invoke a supply (not so much by the Church as by Christ, as we will see hereafter) for the licit and valid exercise of the power of order (and exclusively of the power of order). The correct position on the problem and the criticism to be applied to this first deviation of the Society is perfectly expressed by Father Belmont in the following passage published in the Cahiers de Cassiciacum:

     «We freely admit that in the situation of anarchy, in the proper sense of that term [here a note states: «i.e. when there is no longer a Head of the Church.»], in which we find ourselves, there is a divine supply on behalf of the faithful in matters that involve the Church’s power of sanctification. [New note to explain: «And therefore in that which involves the power of Order, and not of Jurisdiction in the external forum, for legislative and judicial powers.»]

     «But it would seem that three factors are necessary for the existence of such a supply (beyond those expressly provided for by the Law):

     « – a general need and not a particular case;

     « – the impossibility of having recourse to Authority. It is Authority that decides on the sacramental acts that we must accomplish; an accidental failure of Authority cannot give rise to a supply. If the failure is substantial and habitual, it is the very existence of Authority that is in question;

     « – a real foundation in him who must act by virtue of a supply. Such a foundation can only be the Character imprinted through the Sacrament of Order.

     «This is because the Catholic priest possesses that sacerdotal Character which Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Church supply for the functioning of that Character whose normal exercise has been prevented to the very great detriment of souls.

     «Excluded, therefore, are acts of pure jurisdiction (dispensations for marriage impediments, granting of indulgences) which are not a function of the sacramental Character, and any acts of which the priest is only the extraordinary minister (confirmation, giving minor orders).

     «In the case of the Sacrament of Penance, the supply does not provide jurisdiction, but Christ and the Church supply for the lack of jurisdiction in each individual act of absolution, because the priest, by virtue of his sacerdotal Character, is metaphysically ordered to grant such absolution. The jurisdiction normally needed does not give the priest the power to hear confessions, it simply gives him a subject on whom he may exercise his power».

     This position defended by Father Belmont in the last edition of Cahiers de Cassiciacum (1981) is also ours. It is quite distinct from that which absolutely denies the liceity of a private ministry of jurisdiction (Abbé de Nantes, certain sedevacantists...) as well as from that which regards as licit such a ministry “against” the very will of the “Pope”, the position in practice of the Society of Saint Pius X from 1976 to 1980.

     This second mention of the Abbé de Nantes is even, if possible, more perfidious than the first, associating him with «sedevacantists», i.e. with people who profess that the Holy See is vacant, people like Father Ricossa who put the Pope between quotation marks! And this at a time when amongst all these so-called “traditionalists” the Abbé de Nantes is the only one who persists in appealing to Pope John Paul II!

     But let us leave this, and continue our reading. Father Ricossa writes about his former patron with an unerring lucidity:

THE «ORDINANCES» OF 1980: FIRST USURPATION OF THE POWERS OF JURISDICTION RESERVED TO THE POPE.

     It is not by chance that I write: until 1980. For at this date occurred an event that considerably worsened the position of the Society of Saint Pius X, the event which elicited the article by Father Belmont quoted above. «In an act dated 1 May 1980, Mgr Lefebvre granted his priests a number of powers and facilities both canonical and liturgical. This is how he justified this delegation:

     «By virtue of the faculties granted to Ordinaries in the Apostolic Letter Pastorale Munus of 30 November 1963, faculties granted to all Bishops of the Missions and henceforth extended to the whole Church, we delegate the following powers...”

     The reference is to the first edition of the “Ordinances concerning the powers and faculties of the members of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X”.

     [Here, Father Ricossa acknowledges in a footnote: «In 1980, we still belonged to the Society and we accepted, like everyone else in this Society, the small volume of the “Ordinances”...»]

     Leaving aside any consideration of the questions of the legitimacy of Paul VI (who promulgated the Apostolic Letter Pastorale Munus) and of the canonical existence of the Society of Saint Pius X, Father Belmont immediately noted two things:

     1^o In 1980, Mgr Lefebvre was not an Ordinary, and even less a local Ordinary: the “faculties” eventually conceded by Paul VI to local Ordinaries were therefore not intended for him. The thing was obvious, and now – in the new 1997 edition of the “Ordinances” which we have published in part – Mgr Fellay himself candidly admits:

     «Mgr Lefebvre, as bishop and Superior General of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, although no longer a local Ordinary as he was in Dakar, considered [sic] that he enjoyed a supply which allowed him to grant his priests similar faculties on behalf of the faithful. He promulgated these in his Ordinances for the use of the Fraternity on 1 May 1980, following the formula facultatem decennalium of 1960.»

     The Fraternity has therefore changed its arguments: in 1980 Mgr Lefebvre, basing himself on an act of Paul VI, thought he was able to “delegate” faculties that belonged to him as an Ordinary. In 1997 Mgr Fellay states that these powers did not belong to Mgr Lefebvre as he was no longer an Ordinary, but that he had received them by “supply”.

     2^o Of the fifty-one powers «delegated» by Mgr Lefebvre, thirty-six are not found in Pastorale Munus, four have been extended beyond what was conceded by Paul VI, and three were not capable of being delegated.

     Father Belmont concluded from this that «whatever view one takes of Paul VI’s authority, this delegation of powers to the priests of the Society of Saint Pius X is invalid and wholly without value. There can be no possible doubt about this. One cannot plead the fact that Mgr Lefebvre used the extensive powers he enjoyed as a missionary Bishop, for Mgr Lefebvre is no longer a Local Ordinary of the Missions, and even if he were, he would only be able to delegate within the geographical limits of his jurisdiction.»

     A priest of the Fraternity who had read Father Belmont’s observations before they were published, accepted that Mgr Lefebvre could not have delegated these powers qua Ordinary («that would be pushing it a little», he wrote), but by virtue of the “supply” of the Church.

     Father Belmont responded with the text that we have just quoted, stating that a supply by the «Church» (or in this case by Christ) outside of the cases provided for by the Law, is only conceivable for the power of Sanctification, and not for exercising the power of governing souls.

     On the basis of this principle, Father Belmont denounced in particular two faculties invalidly granted by Mgr Lefebvre to the Fraternity and his priests: the faculty to confirm and the faculty to dispense from marriage impediments. These faculties were upheld in the 1997 Ordinances and, in the matter of matrimonial dispensations, became the “basis” of a further development of the «powers» of the Fraternity: the power of canonical Tribunals to grant marriage annulments (cf. the document of Mgr Tissier which we published in this edition, taken from Cor unum, n. 61, III, 3, p. 42). We will come back to this “faculty”. Let us note however that already in 1980, the Society of Saint Pius X had assumed powers which are strictly jurisdictional, powers which are the privilege of the Pope and his delegates...

     This was the situation of the Fraternity – insofar as it concerns our study – from 1980 to 1988, the date on which Mgr Lefebvre – after the failure of his negotiations with the Vatican – consecrated four «auxiliary» bishops in company with Mgr de Castro Mayer.

THE CONSECRATIONS OF 1988. BISHOPS WITHOUT JURISDICTION?

     Planned from at least 1983 and announced in 1987, the episcopal consecrations, initially fixed in agreement with Ratzinger, finally took place in 1988 without Roman mandate. (During the ceremony, however, a grotesque “apostolic mandate” was read out, written not by the Pope, but by the Fraternity, in which it was alleged that a mandate of “the Roman Church” – in contrast to “the authorities of the Roman Church” – had been received for the consecrations).

     In a footnote, Father Ricossa recalls that «canon 953 (1013 of the New Code) prohibits episcopal consecrations without “papal” or “apostolic mandate”, i.e. without the authorisation of the Pope. The fact that the “apostolic mandate”, i.e. of the Pope, was written by Mgr Lefebvre says much about the practical identification made by the Fraternity between Mgr Lefebvre and the Pope... What a strange idea then the Fraternity must have of “the Roman Church” (which supposedly authorised these consecrations), a “Roman Church” that is apparently opposed to the “authorities of the Roman Church” (who forbade these same consecrations under pain of excommunication)!»

     By the Motu proprio ECCLESIA DEI ADFLICTA, John Paul II declared Mgr Lefebvre excommunicated and his movement schismatic. Mgr Lefebvre, on the other hand, continued to recognise the authority of John Paul II, which – in our opinion – makes the episcopal consecrations of 1988 illegitimate, since in that case they were accomplished not “præter” but “contra” the will of the “Pope” (not beyond, but against the will of the “Pope”), to repeat the previously quoted expression of Mgr Lefebvre.

     But to pursue the theme of our study, we must examine whether the consecrations of 1988 were carried out in accordance with the logic – albeit erroneous concerning the authority of John Paul II – of the first period of the Fraternity (1975-1980) or of the second (from 1980). In this way we will see whether Mgr Lefebvre assigned his “bishops” a supplied authority exclusively for the purpose of exercising the power of order for the sanctification of souls, or else whether he also assigned them an actual jurisdiction – albeit supplied – for the government of souls.

     For we must distinguish within the episcopate the power of order (which gives the bishop the power, for example, to ordain priests and to confirm) and the power of jurisdiction: the first derives from the rite of episcopal consecration, the second on the other hand comes from the Pope (normally through a papal mandate). Bishops consecrated without papal approval therefore possess the power of order but not that of jurisdiction. To consecrate bishops – in the present situation – is licit [sic! Father Ricossa should have written: is valid. Short of taking upon himself the role of legislator, he obviously cannot declare that episcopal consecrations censured by the Pope are licit!], provided that these bishops are not accredited with a power of jurisdiction which they can only receive from the Pope, but with a power of order only. This, briefly, is the line followed by Mgr M.-L. Guérard des Lauriers and by ourselves [sic] in his footsteps.

     And they believe themselves to be acting correctly! To denounce the actions of others in these circumstances, is this not the parable of the mote and the beam? But let us continue with our reading always so... instructive!

     Mgr Lefebvre himself seemed also to have adopted this position – at least initially: not only did he present the object of episcopal consecration as the power of order («The principal aim of this transmission is to impart the grace of sacerdotal order for the continuation of the true Sacrifice of the Holy Mass, and to impart the grace of the sacrament of Confirmation to children and to the faithful who ask you for it», he wrote in his LETTER «TO THE FUTURE BISHOPS» of 29 August 1987), but he explicitly ruled out for his bishops the power of jurisdiction: «If it were one day to prove necessary to consecrate bishops, he wrote on 27 April 1987, the only episcopal office they would have would be to exercise their power of order and they would not possess the power of jurisdiction, not having a canonical mission.»

     However, even before the episcopal consecrations took place, the theory of “supplied jurisdiction” had already started to be applied to this case as well, something that had previously been invoked solely for the administration of the sacraments. The bishops eventually consecrated by Mgr Lefebvre were supposed to enjoy a true jurisdiction, received not from the Pope but from the Church, which could act without (and even against) the Pope who is her visible head.

     In a very judicious note, Father Ricossa quotes the Abbé Pivert who writes, «The Church is not the Pope, and vice versa», and then he comments: «Of course, the Church is not the Pope, but the Pope is the visible Head of the Church! In particular, the Abbé Pivert, one of the members of the Canonical Commissions of the Fraternity, in his application of the canonical principle “Ecclesia supplet”, forgets that by “Ecclesia” is intended the Supreme Ecclesiastical Legislator, that is to say the Pope, who can grant jurisdiction “a jure”, i.e. by a decision inscribed in the law which he has promulgated. Consequently, the principle “Ecclesia supplet” cannot be invoked if there is no Pope or if the Pope explicitly refuses this supply. We will speak further about this.» End of note, resumption of the text:

     In a short study devoted to the future consecrations, a study approved by Mgr Lefebvre, the Abbé Pivert, one of the current members of the Canonical Commission, was already, without any basis, invoking canon 20 to justify the episcopal consecrations and the exercise by these bishops of a genuine jurisdiction (by supply).

     In this text by the Abbé Pivert (who is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the “theologians” who inspired the Canonical Commissions) it is not clear whether the “Jurisdiction” claimed for the Lefebvrist bishops exists solely for the licit administration of the sacraments of Order and Confirmation, or whether on the other hand he was already theorising, in January 1988, that these bishops might have authority over the faithful. It is this second hypothesis that gradually became the position of the Fraternity and of Mgr Lefebvre himself, something we have already denounced in at least three articles in Sodalitium.

     Two letters from Mgr Lefebvre (4 December 1990 and 20 February 1991) regarding the episcopal consecration of Mgr Rangel made out that the future bishop would be Mgr de Castro Mayer’s effective successor as Bishop of Campos, inasmuch as he had been designated by faithful priests and by the people, over whom he had supposedly received a true jurisdiction. For his part, the Abbé Laguérie had no hesitation in regarding himself as parish priest of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet...

     It was in the speech on SUPPLIED JURISDICTION AND HIERARCHICAL MEANING which he gave to the Circles of Catholic Tradition in Paris on 10 March 1991 (when Mgr Lefebvre was still alive) that Mgr Tissier de Mallerais publicly expressed – for the first time I believe – the opinion of the Society of Saint Pius X on the question. This is how the lefebvrist bishop summarises the thesis he defends: “Your priests – for they are your priests – your bishops, your parishes of tradition, do not possess an ordinary authority, but an extraordinary authority, a supplied authority” which constitutes a hierarchy, itself also supplied, which he defines as “a hierarchy of Tradition”.

     The supplied jurisdiction that Mgr Tissier attributes to the hierarchy of the Fraternity – the hierarchy of Tradition – is not limited to making sacramental acts licit and valid: it extends to the power of providing authoritative teaching to the faithful who request their services. From there to creating actual Tribunals “of Tradition” is but a short step, and such a step had already been crossed, although no one seemed to realise it at the time, and by Mgr Lefebvre in person... The authentic documents of the Fraternity which we have published and which form the object of this commentary provide indisputable proof of what we have just written.

     What followed is an implacable reality, and it was motivated by a spirit far removed from that of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. We will see how the solemn warnings formulated by the Abbé de Nantes in 1970 were verified and justified in a most striking manner! I emphasise this incredible fact: the Abbé de Nantes, this written-off priest, this suspended priest, has for thirty years held his friends back from the slippery slope on which today those who refused to listen to him can clearly be seen to be sliding.

     Before reproducing the text of Father Ricossa without further interruptions, we should reread one of these warnings, a text now more than thirty years old, THIRTY YEARS! (inset below)
 

 
THE CANONICAL TRIBUNALS OF THE FRATERNITY CLAIM A TRUE POWER OF JURISDICTION OVER THE FAITHFUL.

     It is certainly not difficult to demonstrate this assertion, for the fact was freely admitted by Mgr Tissier de Mallerais himself: “It is a true jurisdiction and not an exemption from the law and from the obligation imposed on the faithful to obtain a verdict. Therefore, we have the power and the duty of handing down true verdicts which have potestatem ligandi vet solvendi (the power of binding and loosing). Our verdicts therefore have an obligatory character. Our verdicts are not mere private opinions, for there is a need for authority in the external forum.” (Cor unum, n. 61, IV, 4, p. 43; Resurrection no 2, p. 24).

     The Fraternity therefore attributes to itself the power of jurisdiction (even if it is only by supply), and more precisely the power of jurisdiction in the external forum, a power which has “public legal effects”. We recall that this jurisdiction “is immediately ordered to the governing of the faithful for the purpose of obtaining eternal life” and is not intended “to sanctify souls through the offering of the sacrifice of the Mass and the administration of the sacraments”, which is specific to the power of order. Jurisdiction thus defined “is exercised by the authorised teaching of revealed truths (sacred magisterium), by the promulgation of laws (legislative power), by authentic decisions in cases arising between subjects (judicial power), and by the application of penal sanctions against those who transgress the law (coercitive power). It is these three last functions which make the Church a perfect society (like the State).”

     By attributing to itself this power of jurisdiction, the Fraternity effectively arrogates to itself the power to govern the faithful (potestas regiminis), a power which is proper to the Church. It has made no bones about attributing to itself the various powers exercised by the aforesaid jurisdiction.