Lefebvrians say they will never accept Vatican Council
Before a key meeting in Rome, the leader of the traditionalists stressed that he was not prepared to make any compromises and also revealed some interesting behind the scenes happenings…
by Alessandro Speciale, Vatican City
“If their aim is still to force us to accept the second Vatican Council, the discussions have been clear enough in showing that we have no intention of doing any such thing.â€
These were the decisive but prudent words of Bernard Fellay, who was adamant he would not agree to any compromise with the Vatican. On the 15 August, Fellay spoke openly about the talks between the Lefebvrians and the Holy See during the “summer University†of the Society of St. Pius X, fonde by Monsignor Lefebvre.
The transcription of the public interview with the Lefebvrian superior, held by the Society’s press agent, the abbot Alain Lorans, was published a few days ago, on the eve of the meeting in Rome between Fellay and Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which should encapsulate two years of “doctrinal talks†between Rome and the traditionalists.
The Lefebvrian superior’s judgement on the discussions was anything but friendly: “They are not beneficial right now because there is a clash of mentalities… In any case, we are certainly not in agreement. If there is one thing we agree on, that is that we do not agree on anything.â€
Monsignor Fellay, one of the Society’s four bishops, ordained against Rome’s will by Monsignor Lefebvre and whose excommunication was removed by Benedict XVI in 2009, called for “extreme prudence†in terms of their relationship with the Vatican, especially in view of next week’s meeting, of which he said he did not know what to expert.
The removal of Fellay’s excommunication, which also meant Monsignor Richard Williamson, an English bishop undergoing trial in Germany for denying the existence of gas chambre and the dimensions of the Holocaust, did not improve the Brotherhood’s position. The Society is not recognised by Rome and its ordinations, which have carried on over the years despite the ban imposed by bishops and the Vatican, are considered “illegal†by the Church.
“If the Society of St. Pius X is to be recognised, the Vatican Secretary of State said in December 2009, they absolutely must recognise the Council and the teachings of John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI himself.â€
“People must not believe everything they hear,†the traditionalist superior told his followers. For example the rumours going round about Cardinal Levada making a “pro position†to the Brotherhood to allow it to entre into communion with the Holy See once again: “On what conditions?†Fellay asked himself, “the way I see it, there must be certain conditions.â€
He went on to say that “there are those who say that up until now, they (the Vatican, editor’s note) have always tried to shove the Council down our throats. I don’t know. All I am saying is: We are moving on. We have our principles, above all faith… Without faith God can never like you, so our decisioni s made. Faith comes first, no matter what, it even comes before recognition by the Church. We need to be strong.â€
During the long interview, “Fellay also revealed nemerous behind the scenes facts relating to the difficult but ongoing relations between the Vatican and the Brotherhood in recent years. A figure which stood out was Colombian cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, formerly president of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, in charge of improving relations with the traditionalists. Even after his retirement, when the former Holy Office took the Commission under its wing as was requested by Benedict XVI, the cardinal seems to have stayed in close contact with Fellay, keeping him up to date with what was going on in the Vatican.
Fellay also explained how the arrival of Pope Ratzinger on the papal throne “set something off†in the Vatican, changing the winds in favour of the traditionalists and opening the way for their potential reintegration: “However, thinking about it and as far asthe person himself is concerned, the mood has certainly changed. Even in the Vatican, his arrival gave courage to those who, calling themselves conservatives, were forced to hide.â€
Still, with the revocation of excommunications and the Williamson case in 2009, relations “became more tenseâ€: in June that year, Fellay claims he tried desperately to meet with the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, but in vain. The traditionalist superior was “diverted†to the Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine for the Faith, cardinal Levada.
Lefebvre’s successor, underlined more than once the divisions that esiste inside the Vatican Curia and warned that any news arriving from Rome should be taken with a pinch of salt. Fellay used the example of an Augustinian monk who was excommunicated and espelle from Rome having “converted†to “Monsignor Lefebvre’s society.â€
The traditionalist superior claimed he went to Rome with the monk’s excommunication letter, signed by the Vatican Congregation for the clergy and that he showed it to Monsignor Guido Pozzo, current Secretary of Ecclesia Dei and head of the Vatican “negotiating†team engaged in talks with the [Fraternity].
“This is how the letter should be treated,†Pozzo allegedly said to Fellay before tearing it to pieces before him. The secretary of Ecclesia Dei is supposed to have added: “You should tell your priests and your flock, that not everything that comes from Rome comes directly from the Pope.â€
Referring to another example, fellay spoke of a case of “ecumenical informing,†in which he was the central figure: after some Lefebvrian bishops, who were still excommunicated, were forbidden to celebrate the eucharist in the Lourdes sanctuary, the traditionalist superior contacted cardinal Castrillon, still president of Ecclesia Dei, to “condemn†the fact that some Anglican bishops had been allowed to celebrate mass.
“I am not calling them bishops because they are all laymen, they are not real priests, let alone bishops,†Fellay added with disdain.
5 comments
It is understandable why the SSPX has severe reservations about accepting Vatican II given the mayhem and destruction in the Church since the close of the Council. Why would SSPX rush to embrace the very Council that caused them to organize and ‘define’ themselves?
The following is my Letter to the Editor in the current issue of The New Oxford Review:
Why They Remain
Anne Barbeau Gardiner’s review of Mary Henold’s Catholic and Feminist (June) brings into focus a growing problem in the Church. One has only to view the many YouTube videos produced by the Womenpriests movement to see how these feminists, while pretending to say Mass, often orchestrate “on the spot†liturgical innovations. In these videos one can usually find a rather sheepish looking male co-conspirator (a male priest or deacon) standing off to the side, while the happy-clappy congregation erupts in Las Vegas-style applause.
Gardiner asks, “So why did Catholic feminists remain inside the Catholic Church?†That question calls to mind Malachi Martin’s comments about a conversation he had with Augustin Cardinal Bea during Vatican II. In an interview with Bernard Janzen, Fr. Martin claims that an emotionally upset Cardinal Bea came to him and said that he had just overheard theologians Hans Küng and Edward Schillebeeckx agree that they would not leave the Church like the Protestants did during the Reformation but that they would stay and work to change it from within.
The feminists, unfortunately, aren’t going anywhere either. They are hoping for an eventual groundÂswell of support from Catholic laity, perhaps buoyed by disgust over the clergy sex-abuse crises.
As a working Philadelphia journalist, one of my many assignments over the years was to profile the staff of a local Catholic Worker House. Impressed by the friendliness of the staff and by their genuine concern for the neighborhood poor, I eventually became a “friend†of the house, often visiting for Wednesday night potluck supper. Prior to dinner, there was a table liturgy. In some cases, a real Catholic priest would preside at these Masses, but very often there would be a woman celebrant. Not all of the women who celebrated had been “ordained,†but many in fact were “sympathizers†or “friends†of the WomenÂpriests movement.
While I had respect for the priest who would place a standing crucifix and candlesticks on the table, the women who celebrated did no such thing. They were more concerned with ensuring that “relevant†tracks for the liturgy were programmed on the CD player. They often used glassware rather than a chalice, and pita bread rather than a Host. (Anyone, legitimately ordained or not, with a remnant of respect for tradition, can take the time to buy a bag of unconsecrated hosts at a Catholic gift shop, but these women were apparently not interested.) They often employed Matthew Fox-inspired language: “She/He†or “Mother God†for God, and politically inspired prayers.
While I had genuine affection for the Worker staff, I had to bite my tongue when they defended the right of women to be ordained, or the right of anyone who felt called to celebrate the liturgy each Wednesday. Sometimes I wondered how this “priesthood of the people†concept, with its vague Marxist roots, would have struck Dorothy Day were she to suddenly re-emerge. Day, while she was alive, had a particular love for the liturgy, especially as celebrated by the Eastern rites, so it is highly unlikely that she would have gone along with the idea that anyone can celebrate Mass in whatever novelty appealed to them just because they were “led by the Spirit.â€
Do I think that Catholic Worker houses, at least in Philadelphia, have moved far beyond the vision Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin planned for them? I do.
Nowhere was this more evident than at the Catholic memorial service for the head of the Philadelphia Catholic Worker house where I was often a visitor. Conducted in the chapel of one of the Catholic colleges on PhiladelÂphia’s Main Line, the Vesper service was cleverly annotated with guitar songs and ad-hoc pleas from feminists for “justice in the Church.†Intimidated by the heavy political bent, I refrained from going up and having my say, which, oddly enough, would have been something that the deceased woman whose life we were celebrating would have wanted me to do. I regretted my silence even more at the reception afterwards, when I sat beside a smartly manicured, well-dressed woman with amazing hair who announced that she was a Sister of Saint Joseph. While we never specifically mentioned the issue of women’s ordination, when I spotted the microscopic gold cross pin on her lapel, I got an eerie, intuitive sense of her views on the subject.
Thom Nickels
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
I think this article is unfortunate. I am skeptical of the facts as presented in the article, but even if I were not, I still think that the timing of it is not good. But it’s obvious that there is something wrong here. I don’t know who translated the article but it is a shoddy piece of work. For one, we do not say that SSPX ordinations are “illegal”; we would say “illicit.” For another, can you really imagine these words coming out of Bp. Fellay’s mouth? “Without faith God can never like you.” Bp. Fellay has his flaws, as all of us poor sinners do, but mouthing mindless platitudes isn’t one of them. And the term “Lefebvrians” is needlessly insulting — hardly impartial.
An acquaintance of mine did some checking and found what I believe to be the actual quote from Bp. Fellay:
“The first is that of the council. For the SSPX to be able to claim canonical recognition, she must recognize the council and accept all the reforms, as well as the teaching of all the popes after the council. This is very hard, as they know perfectly that we never can walk along that way. It is this that makes impossible that canonical recognition. It is easy, then, to condemn us as against the council, to prove that we are schismatics, etc.”
[Original French: “La première est celle du concile. Pour que la Fraternité Saint-Pie X puisse prétendre à une reconnaissance canonique, elle doit reconnaître le concile et en accepter toutes les réformes, ainsi que le magistère de tous les papes depuis le concile. C’est très fort, car ils savent parfaitement que nous n’accepterons jamais de marcher dans une telle voie. C’est de fait rendre impossible cette reconnaissance canonique. Il est facile ensuite de nous condamner d’être contre le concile, preuve que nous sommes schismatiques, etc.” Source: http://www.laportelatine.org/archives/entret/2011/fellay_UDT110814/Fellay110815_udt.php%5D
So instead of saying that the SSPX would never accept the Council, what Bp. Fellay is actually saying is that the SSPX would never accept all the reforms of the Council, as well as those of the Popes following the Council. But frankly, this is true of all traditionalists, more or less. I don’t accept all the Conciliar and post-Conciliar reforms (heck, I don’t even really accept the Breviary reforms of St. Pius X!), at least, not in the sense that I approve of each and every one. For example, I agree with Martin Mosebach that the imposition of the Novus Ordo on the whole Church was tyrannical.
Dear Thom,
Thank you so much for posting your article along with you comments. The article is extremely well done and convincing that if there is room in the Church for such as these, we hope there would be room for the SSPX.
True traditional Catholics (esp. those of us who remember the horror days of the 1970s when we were verbally abused, ostracized and told we were schismatics by those in the conciliar church) will never trust modern Rome. The only real reason why modern Rome is allowing the TLM in some/many areas now is to steal sheep from the independent traditional groups that have always existed to provide the true Mass and true sacraments to the faithful, often at great personal sacrifice and expense on the part of both priests and laypeople. Chaput even said as much in a recent article: he boasted that permitting the FSSP into his former SD diocese caused the local SSPX groups to dissolve. THAT is their true goal, once they cause the true traditional groups to go away, they will whip the TLM right out from under you. Do not be deceived, remember, this is the church of the modernists.
Anna,
What you say may have been the case at some point in the past, but with the TLM now spreading more and more throughout the whole church, it would be realistically impossible to take it away once again. This is what the modernists know and fear.
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