Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Archbishop Commented – II

Archbishop Commented – II on January 10, 2015

Before leaving Archbishop Lefebvre’s realistic remarks of 1991 (cf. the last two EC’s), let us comment further, in the hope of helping Catholics to keep their balance between scorning authority in the name of truth and belittling truth for the sake of authority. For ever since the churchmen of Vatican II (1962–1965) put their full authority behind the Church Revolution (religious liberty, collegial equality and ecumenical fraternity), Catholics have been thrown off balance: when Authority tramples upon Truth, how indeed is one to maintain one’s respect for both?

Now in the tormented aftermath of Vatican II, who can be said to have borne fruits comparable to that preservation of Catholic doctrine, Mass and sacraments for which the Archbishop was mainly (albeit not solely) responsible? In which case, the balance that he himself struck between Truth and Authority must be especially deserving of consideration.

Firstly, let us consider a simple observation of the Archbishop on authority: “Now we have the tyranny of authority because there are no more rules from the past.” Amongst human beings all with original sin, truth needs authority to back it, because it is a Jeffersonian illusion that truth thrown into the market-place will prevail all on its own without a disaster being necessary to teach reality. Authority is to truth as means to end, not end to means. It is Catholic faith which saves, and that Faith lies in a series of truths, not in authority. Those truths are so much the substance and purpose of Catholic Authority that when it is cut loose from them, as by Vatican II, then it is cut adrift until the first tyrant to lay hands on it bends it to his will. The tyranny of Paul VI followed naturally on the Council, just as by pursuing approval from the champions of the same Council, the leadership of the Society of St Pius X has likewise behaved itself tyranically in recent years. Contrast how the Archbishop built up his authority over Tradition by serving the truth.

A second remark of his from 1991 deserving of further comment is where he said that when in 1988 he tried to reach an agreement with Rome by means of his Protocol of May 5, “I think I can say that I went even further than I should have.” Indeed that Protocol lays itself open to criticism on important points, so here is the Archbishop himself admitting that he momentarily lost his balance, tilting briefly in favour of Rome’s authority and against Tradition’s truth. But he tilted only briefly, because as is well-known, on the very next morning he repudiated the Protocol, and he never again wavered until his death, so that from then on nobody could say either that he had not done all he could to reach agreement with Authority, or that it is an easy thing to get the balance always right between Truth and Authority.

A third remark throws light on his motivation in seeking from 1975 to 1988 some agreement with Roman Authority. Judging his motives by their own, his successors at the head of the SSPX talk as though he was always seeking its canonical regularisation. But he explained the Protocol as follows: “I hoped until the last minute that in Rome we would witness a little bit of loyalty.” In other words he was always pursuing the good of the Faith, and he never honoured Authority for anything other than for the sake of the Truth. Can as much be said for his successors?

Kyrie eleison.

Archbishop Commented – I

Archbishop Commented – I on January 3, 2015

For today’s Church authorities “there is no fixed truth, there is no dogma. Everything is evolving.” So said Archbishop Lefebvre (1905–1991) in 1991 (see last week’s “Eleison Comments”). For at the end of his life the Archbishop saw more clearly than ever what he had been up against in his heroic defence of the Faith. Since then the liberals (unknown to themselves as such?) who took over his Society of St Pius X as soon as he was gone, have still not understood the gravity of the problem as identified by the Archbishop. Therefore let these “Comments” open the New Year by attempting once more to lay open the mortal wound of today’s Church and world.

When Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) erected man’s refusal of God’s reality into a philosophical system, based on his utterly false proclamation that the human mind cannot know the object as it is in itself, then the philosophy department of universities all over the world began to spill craziness into the streets, because people wanted to make freedom their god and Kant offered them the supreme liberation, that of the mind from its object.

Now Catholics not yet contaminated by the Kantian fantasy know that God and his Heaven exist quite outside of, and independently of, their little minds, and so if they want to be happy for eternity their minds had better deal in objective reality and not in subjective fantasy. Therefore for a century and a half a God-given series of anti-liberal Popes stood up to the liberal world going constantly more crazy all around, and these protected the Church from the prestigious and popular subjectivism. But by the 1950’s the Church’s cardinals and bishops were not praying enough to maintain this protection of their minds and hearts from the madness, known within the Church as “modernism,” and so in the conclave of 1958 they elected one of their own, the supposedly “good” John XXIII, a liberal (unknown to himself as such? God knows), who duly launched in 1962 the disastrous Second Vatican Council.

Why disastrous? Because the madness of subjectivism (the refusal of objective reality), instead of being still utterly condemned by the Church’s highest authorities, was now adopted by them and made (consciously or unconsciously? – God knows) into the official basis of Church doctrine and action. The problem could not be graver. The officials of God’s true Church, appointed to proclaim and defend God’s objective truths of salvation, were henceforth filtering these through their subjectivist minds. Imagine having nothing other than filthy bottles in which to store the best of wine. It can only be ruined. Today’s Conciliar Church officials can only ruin God’s truth.

Here is why the Archbishop said in 1991, “We are dealing with people (at the top of the Church) who have a different philosophy from ours, a different way of seeing, who are influenced by all modern subjectivist philosophers. For them, there is no fixed truth, no fixed dogma. Everything is evolving. This is really the Masonic destruction of the Faith. Fortunately we (Traditionalists) have Tradition to lean on.”

But what has happened to Tradition without the Archbishop to guide it? Alas, the authorities at the top of his Society of St Pius X, which for some 40 years spearheaded the defence of the objective Faith, cannot have been praying seriously enough to protect their minds and hearts from being in turn infected by subjectivism. They too have lost the primacy of objective truth, and so they are being played by the Romans like a fish is played by a fisherman. Archbishop Lefebvre, pray for us!

Kyrie eleison.

Archbishop’s Sense – II

Archbishop’s Sense – II on December 27, 2014

Twelve weeks ago (Oct. 5) “Eleison Comments” presented a first series of extracts from the last public interview of Archbishop Lefebvre, given to Fideliter magazine in early 1991. Here follows a second and last series of extracts, slightly edited but only for the sake of brevity and clarity:—

Q: What conclusions can we draw from the Society of St Pius X after 20 years of its existence?

A: The Good Lord wanted Catholic Tradition. I am deeply convinced that the Society is the means that God wanted to keep and maintain the Faith, the truth of the Church. We must continue faithfully to keep the treasures of the Church, hoping that one day they may resume the place which they should never have lost in Rome.

Q: You often say that, more than the liturgy, it is now the Faith which opposes us to modern Rome.

A: Certainly the question of the liturgy and the sacraments is very important, but the most important is the question of the Faith. This is not a question for us. We have the Faith of all time, of the Council of Trent, of the Catechism of St. Pius X, of all the Councils and all the Popes before Vatican II. For years they have tried in Rome to show that everything in the Council was fully consistent with this Tradition. Now they are showing their true colours by saying there is no longer any Tradition or Deposit to be transmitted. Tradition in the Church is whatever the Pope is saying today. You must submit to what the Pope and the bishops say today. Here is their famous ‘Living Tradition,’ which was the only basis for our condemnation in 1988.

Now they have given up trying to prove that what they say is consistent with what Pius IX wrote or with what the Council of Trent promulgated. No, all of that is over; it’s outdated, as Cardinal Ratzinger said. It is clear, and they might have said so earlier. There was no point in our talking, in our discussing with them. Now we suffer from the tyranny of authority, because there are no longer any rules from the past.

They are showing more and more that we are right. We are dealing with people who have a different philosophy from ours, a different way of seeing, who are influenced by all modern subjectivist philosophers. For them there is no fixed truth, there is no dogma. Everything is evolving. This is really the Masonic destruction of the Faith. Fortunately, we have Tradition to lean on!

Q: You have emphasized that you are sure that the Society is blessed by God, because at several points it could have disappeared.

A: Indeed. It has kept coming under very difficult attacks. That is very painful, but we must nonetheless believe that the line of Faith and Tradition that we are following, is imperishable, because God cannot allow his Church to perish.

Q; What can you say to those of the faithful who still hope in the possibility of an agreement with Rome?

A: Our true faithful, those who have understood the problem and who have precisely helped us to continue along the straight and firm path of Tradition and the Faith, told me that the approaches I was making towards Rome were dangerous and that I was wasting my time. Yet I hoped until the last minute that in Rome we would witness a little bit of loyalty, so I cannot be blamed for not having done the maximum. So now too, to those who say to me, “You’ve got to reach an agreement with Rome,” I think I can say that I then went even further than I should have.

Kyrie eleison.

Fortieth Anniversary

Fortieth Anniversary on November 22, 2014

Yesterday was the 40 th anniversary of Archbishop Lefebvre’s historic Declaration on November 21, 1974, of the reasons for which he and the priests and laity following him were taking their stand against the total change of the Catholic Church and religion being wrought in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. The Declaration is a fresh today as it was on the day when it was written, because the true Catholic religion of God is unchangingly true, while the Conciliar religion of man is resolutely false and it is occupying Rome more than ever.

The Declaration consists of ten brief paragraphs, little more than 50 lines in all: 1/ We cleave to Catholic Rome, eternal Rome. 2/ We refuse Conciliar Rome, neo-Protestant and neo-modernist. 3/ The Conciliar reform is destroying the Catholic Church and diminishing our Catholic Faith, 4/ as not even an angel from Heaven has the right to do (Galatians I, 8). 5/ We choose Tradition, we refuse innovations. 6/ Everything in the Church is being renewed in a way opposite to age-old Catholic doctrine. 7/ The Conciliar reform, coming from heresy and resulting in heresy, is unacceptable to Catholics, so 8/ we shall continue to form Traditional priests. 9/ And we shall cleave to the Catholic teaching and practice of all time, 10/ being convinced that by so doing we will remain truly faithful Catholics.

Notice firstly the clear and sharp distinction (1 and 2) between Catholic Rome and Conciliar Rome. Now it is true to say that Conciliar Rome is occupying the structures of Catholic Rome, but to say that the Conciliar Church is therefore none other than the Catholic Church is as foolish as to say that a cuckoo is a nightingale because it occupies a nightingale’s nest. (And to say that the Archbishop wrote of Conciliar and Catholic “Rome” and not of the Conciliar and Catholic “Church” is to quibble with words.)

But how does the Archbishop distinguish between Conciliar cuckoo and Catholic nightingale? By doctrine! Conciliarism is neo- Protestant and neo- modernist (2). Our faith is being diminished (3), in opposition to Catholic doctrine (6). Conciliarism is heresy (7). We cleave to Catholic teaching (9). And the brief summary above does not give all of the Archbishop’s references to doctrine. Catholic doctrine was the Northern star of his mind and action. It is because modern man wants freedom for his mind and action that he in effect wants his mind to be reduced to mush, whereupon doctrine has no more than a merely decorous function. It has no more bite upon man’s action, except the one disastrous doctrine that doctrine is unimportant. And that disastrous doctrine has a total bite. Here is why the Archbishop is being reduced within the Society of St Pius X, which he founded, to little more than a decorous mascot.

One is impelled to ask, what is it going to take to restore the bite of doctrine, the sense of reality and the love of truth in Society, Church and world? Surely suffering, no less. Solzhenitsyn made a remark to the effect that it will take the crowbar of events to smash open the concrete casing which modern man has built around his sinful way of life. Truly, Lord have mercy.

Kyrie eleison.

Archbishop’s Sense – I

Archbishop’s Sense – I on October 4, 2014

In last month’s issue of The Recusant (www.The Recusant.com) is a translation into English of Archbishop Lefebvre’s last interview, published in French ( Fideliter #79) shortly before his death in March of 1991. He is always refreshing to read. He is clear, because he thinks from basic Catholic principles. He is transparent, because he has nothing to hide. He is unambiguous, because he is not trying to compromise Our Lord’s Church with Satan’s Vatican II. But notice how the interviewer’s questions indicate that the readership of Fideliter was naturally inclining to take the direction which the Society of St Pius X would begin to take a few years after the Archbishop’s death. Here is a selection of the questions and answers, somewhat abbreviated:—

Q: Why can you not make one last approach to Rome? We hear the Pope is “ready to receive you.” A: That is absolutely impossible, because the principles which now guide the Conciliar church are more and more openly contrary to Catholic doctrine. For instance Cardinal Ratzinger recently said that the Popes’ great anti-modernist documents of the 19 th and 20 th centuries rendered a great service in their day, but are now outdated. And John-Paul II is more ecumenical than ever (1990). “It is absolutely inconceivable that we can agree to work with such a hierarchy.”

Q; Has the situation in Rome deteriorated even since the negotiations of 1988?

A: Oh yes! “We will have to wait some time before considering the prospect of making an agreement. For my part I believe that God alone can save the situation, as humanly we see no possibility of Rome straightening things out.”

Q: But there are Traditionalists who have made an agreement with Rome while conceding nothing. A: That is false. They have given up their ability to oppose Rome. They must remain silent, given the favours they have been granted. Then they begin to slide ever so slowly, until they end up admitting the errors of Vatican II. “It’s a very dangerous situation.” Such concessions by Rome are meant only to get Traditionalists to break with the SSPX and submit to Rome.

Q: You say that such Traditionalists have “betrayed.” Isn’t that a bit harsh?

A: Not at all! For instance Dom Gérard made use of me, of the SSPX and its chapels and benefactors, and now they suddenly abandon us and join with the destroyers of the Faith. They have abandoned the fight for the Faith. They can no longer attack Rome. They have understood nothing of the doctrinal question. It is awful to think of the youngsters who joined them for the sake of Tradition and are now following them to Conciliar Rome.

Q: Is there a danger in remaining friends with Traditionalists who have gone over to Rome, and in attending their Masses?

A: Yes, because at Mass there is not only the Mass but there is also the sermon, the atmosphere, the surroundings, the conversations before and after Mass, and so on. All of these things make you little by little change your ideas. There is a climate of ambiguity. One is in an atmosphere submissive to the Vatican, subject ultimately to the Council, so one ends up by becoming ecumenical.

Q; John-Paul II is very popular. He wants to unite all Christians.

A: But in what unity? No longer in the Faith which a soul must accept, and which calls for conversion. The Church has been distorted, from being a hierarchical society into being a “communion.” Communion in what? Not in the Faith. No wonder one hears that Catholics are leaving the Faith in droves. (to be continued)

Kyrie eleison.

“Resistance” Failing?

“Resistance” Failing? on August 23, 2014

Some readers of these Comments no doubt objected to the reference made last week (EC 370) to the “Resistance” presently making “little apparent headway.” They might have preferred a valiant call to arms. But we must stay real. For instance, when the Traditional diocese of Campos in Brazil fell back into the arms of Newrome back in 2001, did not several of us say that out of some 25 priests formed in Bishop de Castro Mayer’s school, at least a few would break ranks? Yet not one of them has gone independent since then to continue defending Tradition as Campos had always defended it, and so all of them are more or less on the neo-modernist slide. However, if we do stay real, there is not nothing to be said.

First of all, God is God, and he is conducting this crisis his way and not ours. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, your ways are not my ways, says the Lord” (Is. LV, 8). We dream of the clear-sighted priests and laity banding together to stand up to his enemies, but God does not need anybody’s “Resistance” to look after his sheep or save his Church. Forty years ago when Archbishop Lefebvre hoped for and looked for a handful of fellow-bishops to stand beside him in public and throw up a real road-block in the way of the Conciliar steam-roller, surely he might have found them, but he never did. In fact when God intervenes to save the situation, as he certainly will, it will be obvious that the rescue was his doing, through his Mother.

Secondly, more than five centuries of rampant humanism have made man so ignorant of God, the Lord God of Hosts, that mankind has to be taught a lesson which it will not learn except the hard way. The ninth of St Ignatius’ 14 Rules for the Discernment of Spirits (first week) gives three main reasons for a soul’s spiritual desolation, which can be applied to the Church’s present desolation:‍—

1. God punishes us for our spiritual lukewarmness and negligence. God alone knows today just what a worldwide chastisement is deserved by our worldwide apostasy and plunge into materialism and hedonism.

2. God puts us to the trial to show us what is really inside us, and how we depend on him. Does not modern man seriously think that he can do a better job of running the universe than Almighty God? And might it be that the truth will not sink in until all of his own little efforts have failed?

3. God humbles us with desolation to cut short our pride and vainglory. Coming from the chief ministers of the one true religion of the one true God, was not Vatican II an unprecedented outburst of human vainglory, preferring man’s modern world to God’s unchanging Church? And the little Society of St Pius X thought that it could save the Church? Unless the “Resistance” remains duly modest in its claims and ambitions, it is doomed in advance.

Then what should those ambitions be? First and foremost, to keep the Faith, without which it is impossible to please God (Heb. XI, 6), and which is expressed in doctrine, in the Catholic Creed. Secondly, to give witness to that Faith, especially by example, if necessary unto martyrdom (“martyr” is the Greek word for “witness”). So howsoever the “Resistance” is or is not organized, it must devote its resources, however meagre, to whatever will help souls to keep the Faith. Then, since its stand for the Truth is bound to be recognizable as such, merely by existing it will not be failing, because it will be giving witness.

Kyrie eleison.