Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre - Volume Three

"Rastafarianism A Valid Religious Experience"
The Daily Telegraph 19 January 1982

The Daily Telegraph of 19 January 1982 carried a report on a document published by the Catholic Commission for Racial justice.

The President of the Commission is Bishop Leo McCartie of Birmingham. This Commission has recommended that Catholics should allow their premises to be used by Rastafarians, who smoke cannabis as part of their religious ritual. This bizarre sect is spurned by the overwhelming majority of West Indians. Its members wear their hair in "dreadlocks" (it cannot be washed or cut). They wear woolly hats. They worship the late Emperor of Ethiopia. They believe that Jesus was black and have a great veneration for the late Duke of Gloucester.

At a news conference in London, Bishop McCartie explained that:
Bishop McCartie, in reply to another question, agreed that Rastafarians looked on cannabis smoking in their ritual as an equivalent to the Christian Communion Service.

The question of cannabis posed a dilemma, the Bishop said. The Catholic Church did not condemn the smoking of cannabis as sinful as it did not condemn the use of alcohol or smoking cigarettes.

Note that the Bishop has no objection to Rastafarianism on the grounds that it is a false religion; the only problem is a conflict with the law as it now stands! I wonder whether, if it were pointed out to him that traditional Catholics often lack places to meet, he would consider allowing us to use Catholic premises? Somehow I doubt it. I doubt whether he would extend his tolerance to us, even if we stopped washing our hair and wore woolly hats.

In his last book, the French philosopher Jacques Maritain spoke scathingly of the many Catholics today who "kneel before the world." He was referring to their tendency to ape the attitudes and mouth the platitudes espoused by the contemporary Liberal establishment in the hope of appearing "relevant." The enthusiasm of so many American bishops for unilateral disarmament is a case in point. I am sure that Bishop McCartie imagined that his advocacy of the Rastafarian cause would bring many an approving headline and laudatory editorial in the secular media. I was encouraged to see that what comment there was in the secular media treated his statement in a derisory fashion.

It should also be noted that Catholic West Indians would find the statement of the English Bishops' Commission unspeakably offensive. Where they are concerned, the worst fate that can befall any of their children is to abandon the true Faith to join the Rastafarian cult.

Dear Friends and Benefactors:

During the audience I was given by Pope John Paul II in November 1978, after a prolonged conversation at the end of which the Pope seemed willing enough to make the Liturgy a matter of option, Cardinal Seper, having been summoned by the Pope, realized that he was willing to take this step and immediately exclaimed: "But, Holy Father, they are making the Old Mass into a banner!" a remark which seemed to make a considerable impression on the Pope.

Leaving to one side the disparaging tone of Cardinal Seper's remark, we are, however, bound to agree that the Mass is indeed the banner of the Catholic Faith, because it makes open profession of all the fundamental dogmas of our Faith combined. In it are to be found all the treatises of Catholic theology.

And by this very fact, this "Mystery of our Faith" overwhelms all the errors of Protestantism, Islam, Judaism, Modernism, and materialistic, socialist and communist secularism. No error can withstand our holy Catholic Mass. The Mass is anti ecumenical, in the sense of ecumenism practiced since the Council: namely, the union of all religions in an amalgam of prayer without dogma, without morality, without specific laws, and agreement based on a few ambiguous slogans like "the rights of man," "the dignity of man," "religious liberty."

On the contrary, the Novus Ordo is precisely the banner of this false ecumenism, representing the annihilation of the Catholic religion and the Catholic priesthood.

For the honor of Jesus Christ and for the honor of the Church, let us be faithful to the Catholic Mass, symbol of our Faith, banner of our holy religion.

To continue this Catholic Mass we need priests, and so we need Catholic, and not Modernist seminaries, where, as always in the Church, young clerics can direct their formation and apostolate entirely towards the altar of divine Sacrifice.

In order to have young men suitably prepared to enter our seminaries, we need Catholic schools where young people will learn to love the Liturgy, Latin and plainchants and where they will be formed in a manly and Christian fashion by sacrificing themselves for the love of Jesus Christ under the care and guidance of their heavenly Mother.

The organizing of schools is therefore indispensable, not only for vocations to the priesthood, but for all vocations, including Catholic marriage with all that it represents in the way of ideal and sacrifice in our corrupt society.

Some schools have already been established in France and in America. Nuns showed us the way and now we are trying to follow in their steps with Catholic education for boys. Thus work has already begun on a school at Fanjeaux in the village of Montreal. To bring this undertaking to fruition we are counting on the ever generous aid of our friends and benefactors in France.

The seminary at Buenos Aires should finish construction of its first wing by March, but there are four more to build...!

We do not know how to thank you, dear friends and benefactors. Your great reward is for you to be present at the ordinations. Come, then, on June 27 to the seminary of Zaitzkofen in Germany, and on June 29 to Ec6ne, as usual. There you will reap the reward of your prayers and generosity.

May Jesus, Mary and Joseph bless you and keep you in the Catholic Faith.

+ Marcel Lefebvre
18 February 1982
Rickenbach

The alleged disobedience of Mgr. Lefebvre, which derives solely from his concern to uphold orthodoxy, must always be set within the context of the Conciliar Church, in which not only the actions of diocesan bishops undermine orthodoxy, but, alas, on occasions that of the Sovereign Pontiff himself. The Pope's frequent interventions on behalf of orthodoxy have been cited in this book. They indicate that he clearly wishes to uphold the Faith, even though these interventions have usually proved ineffective at diocesan or parish levels. Charity demands that we presume that such acts as his visit to Canterbury, or his later visits to a Lutheran church and a synagogue, were motivated by a sincere desire to present the Church as sympathetically as possible to those outside her unity, and to hasten the day when they will enter into her visible unity. But, however sincere his motivation, this does not alter the fact that such actions by the Pope are objectively scandalous and impede rather than hasten the cause of visible unity. They give those outside the Church the impression that the Holy See considers false religions to be as acceptable as the one, true Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is made clear in the following article which I wrote for the September 1982 issue of Approaches, No. 78.



It is not part of the Catholic Faith that the Pope is inerrant or impeccable. He can be cowardly, compromising, imprudent, and sinful- in other words, a cause of scandal to the faithful. When Dante put several popes in hell, no one was scandalized by this in his day. Some conservative Catholics today consider that the least criticism of a reigning pontiff is a cause of scandal in itself, and this is not surprising as for well over a hundred years we had a series of popes whose lives and teachings were a source of inspiration to the Church. Then came Pope John XXIII, a good, well-meaning man in many ways, and extremely conservative in outlook on some matters, but a little too anxious to win popular acclaim, a little too inclined to make statements on some subjects that accorded with prevailing popular opinion rather than the perennial teaching of the Church, particularly where social teaching was concerned. He made some Catholics uneasy. They did not criticize him of course -good Catholics do not criticize the Pope. But long before the death of his successor, Pope Paul VI, many good Catholics were criticizing a reigning pontiff very vigorously -and criticizing him because they were good Catholics. Not all this criticism was well founded, but much of it was, and where this was the case those who made it were doing no more than their duty.

St. Paul's rebuke to St. Peter at Antioch (Gal. 2) provides a classic example of an occasion when the Pope himself needed to be corrected. Peter's behavior in refusing to eat with the Gentile converts was not in conformity with his own convictions or the truth of the Gospel. He was submitting to pressure from the Judaizers and compromising the integrity of the Faith, and, as St. Thomas Aquinas explained, was rightly rebuked: "St. Peter himself set an example for those who rule, to the effect that if they ever stray from the straight path they are not to feel that anyone is unworthy of correcting them, even if such a person be one of their subjects."¹



1. The Church in England went into schism under Henry VIII and became the Church of England, but apart from its repudiation of the Pope it remained largely Catholic in belief and practice. All seven sacraments were still indubitably valid.

2. Under his son, the Boy-King Edward VI, the Church of England was transformed into an heretical Protestant sect with some of its sacramental rites of doubtful validity or certain invalidity.

3. Under Queen Mary Tudor the Church of England became the Church in England once again, totally Catholic in every way.



As I am dealing with a matter of such historic consequence I had also better recall a few facts concerning the Catholic Church. Our Lord Jesus Christ perpetuated His presence on earth by means of His Mystical Body, a visible, hierarchically governed society of believers of which He is the Head, the Holy Ghost the Soul, and we the members. The Mystical Body of Christ has the same mission as that entrusted to Christ by His Father, to preach the Gospel and baptize those who accepted it, then to sanctify those members through the sacraments and unite them in offering solemn worship to the Holy Trinity. It is the will of Our Lord Jesus Christ that this visible hierarchically governed Church should be the ordinary means of salvation; that is, it is His will that we should be saved by incorporation into His Mystical Body. To God, all things are possible, and He offers extraordinary means of salvation to those outside the Mystical Body. As I have just explained, the Catholic Church is Christ, perpetuating the Incarnation throughout the nations and the centuries. There is thus no salvation outside the Church because there is no salvation outside Christ, and the Church is Christ. Even those who are saved in an extraordinary manner are saved through Christ, and thus in some way through His Church. Therefore an Anglican who is saved is saved in the Church of England but not through the Church of England: if he is saved, his salvation must come through the Catholic Church.



There have even been popes who have been deceived by the appearances of Catholicity within the Church of England. Pope Leo XIII would probably have accorded at least conditional recognition to Anglican Orders had not Cardinal Vaughan had the courage and integrity to confront him and insist that this should not be done without a thorough examination - the result of which was the final condemnation of Anglican Orders in the encyclical Apostolicae Curae. Pope Paul VI flirted with Anglicanism on several occasions. As Archbishop of Milan he had clandestine meetings with Anglican clerics without the knowledge of Pius XII, and as Pope he made the theologically indefensible statement that the Church of England is a "Sister Church" of the Catholic Church, when, in fact, it is not a church at all, but what the Second Vatican Council referred to as an "ecclesial communion" - a euphemism for sect.

I have the good fortune to possess an original letter written by Cardinal Manning which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been published. In this letter (dated 20 August 1868, twenty-eight years before Apostolicae Curae) he stated:
Manning, like Newman, had been one of the outstanding intellects within the Church of England before his conversion. In his book The Workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church of England, Cardinal Manning explains that grace is given in it, but not through it, or by it. The distinction is of great importance. Grace is offered in an extraordinary manner even to those who are not Christians, but Anglicans have the incomparably greater privilege of having been admitted to a state of supernatural grace through the Sacrament of Baptism. It is worth repeating that every valid sacrament is a Catholic sacrament-there is no such thing as a Protestant sacrament of baptism or matrimony.

"Every infant, and also every adult baptized, having the necessary dispositions, is thereby placed in a state of justification; and, if they die without committing any mortal sin, would certainly be saved," wrote Cardinal Manning. "They are also, in the sight of the Church, Catholics." Everyone who is baptized is baptized into the Catholic Church, even those baptized in a Protestant sect. They cease to be Catholic when, having reached the age of reason, they adhere voluntarily to the tenets of an heretical sect. But as almost all baptized Protestants do this in good faith they are what is known as material heretics. They do not incur the guilt of formal heresy. To quote Cardinal Manning once more:



It is thus correct to speak of Anglicans and other Protestants as our separated brethren, and, as such, we should have a great love for them and do all in our power to lead them into the visible unity of the Church. Although it is true that they have been given the grace of baptism, and can also receive the grace conferred by the Sacrament of Matrimony, they are deprived of the grace of the other five sacraments. This is something which should cause us deep concern, and impel us to do all in our power to reconcile them to the true Church in which all the sacraments instituted by Our Lord are available as aids to their salvation. There is thus no greater disservice we can do to our separated brethren than to confirm them in their false belief that they already belong to the Church, and that their salvation is assured within the sect to which they belong. Pope John Paul II stated that he was coming to Britain to confirm Catholics in their faith. The result of his visit has been to scandalize faithful Catholics and confirm Anglicans in the belief that their sect is a branch of the one, true Church. Most readers will be aware of the fact that Anglo-Catholics subscribe to what is known as the "branch theory,"i.e., that there is one Catholic Church with three branches-Anglican, Orthodox and Catholic.



But what a contrast once a cleric becomes ecumenical. He is divorced as effectively from the real world as is a drug addict living in a narcotic haze. He can banish from his mind the fact that the pews of his church become emptier each Sunday. He can fix his face into a permanent ecumenical smile and go from ecumenical meeting to ecumenical meeting, take part in ecumenical discussion after ecumenical discussion, and read ecumenical paper after ecumenical paper. He will become more and more friendly with the clergy of other denominations, all of whom share his own problems of ineffectiveness where preaching to the world and his own congregation is concerned. He will have no difficulty in justifying his failure to obey Our Lord's command to preach the Gospel to the world by making the facile excuse that while Christians are divided the world will not wish to listen. It is necessary first to achieve Christian unity, once that has been done the work of evangelization will begin. I am not saying that there is conscientious dishonesty among ecumenical clerics-they are probably deceiving themselves more than they deceive the members of their flocks. It is our prayers that they need more than anything else.

As I have mentioned, Cardinal Hume and most British bishops are ecumaniacs. No ecumenical gathering in England would be complete without an appearance by Cardinal Hume. There is no doubt at all that what mattered most to him where the Pope's visit was concerned was to win the acclaim of his Anglican friends by handing them the Vicar of Christ upon an ecumenical platter. It would be impossible to exaggerate the importance which the Anglican clergy attached to inducing the Pope to appear in Canterbury Cathedral. It was to be a Canossa³ in reverse. A penitent Bishop of Rome would appear before Dr. Runcie and beg forgiveness of the sin of schism. If the Pope could be induced to come to Canterbury this could only be interpreted as de facto recognition of the Church of England. This coup was achieved by Cardinal Hume. The euphoria of the ecumenical establishment was indescribable. Dr. Runcie, the married layman who describes himself as "Archbishop of Canterbury," was triumphantly jubilant. He invited the Anglican "primates" from all over the world to come to England to witness the papal humiliation. Moreover, he devised an order of service which would be a glorification of the Church of England, and even more a glorification of Dr. Runcie.

Then disaster struck. War broke out in the Falklands. How could the Pope come to Britain when she was at war with one of the most Catholic nations in the world? But how could he not come? Cardinal Hume had promised to deliver him on a platter and deliver him he must. If the visit was cancelled the ecumenical set-back would have been incalculable. Anglican bishops from all over the world would have travelled to England to accept the submission of a Pope who did not appear. The credibility of Cardinal Hume and Dr. Runcie was at stake. Such a debacle must be prevented at all costs. Cardinal Hume and a high-powered delegation of ecumenical prelates travelled to Rome to persuade the Pope that, cost what it may, he must come to Britain. The Falklands crisis was a heaven-sent opportunity given to Pope John Paul II to withdraw gracefully from a situation in which the integrity of the Catholic Faith would be compromised. He did not accept it.

Julius Caesar made the briefest report submitted by any general in human history: "Veni, vidi, vici." ("I came, I saw, I conquered.") Pope John Paul II could have written an equally brief report: "Veni, vidi, victus sum." ("I came, I saw, I was conquered.") His visit to Canterbury Cathedral was not simply a personal humiliation for him, it was a humiliation for the Catholic Church, the Immaculate Bride of Christ, and, the most bitter blow of all for British Catholics, a public repudiation, a cruel repudiation, of the martyrs of England and Wales who preferred to undergo unspeakable torture and death rather than do what he did. I am not arguing that he did this consciously, he is probably even more ignorant of the history of the Church in Britain than was Pope Leo XIII. Why should a Polish prelate know anything about the history of Britain? But Pope Leo XIII was corrected by a profoundly Catholic Cardinal. Pope John Paul II is relying on the advice of an ecumaniacal cardinal whose knowledge of theology is terrifyingly abysmal (I can testify to this from correspondence I have had with him).

Before commenting in any detail on the Pope's visit to Canterbury, I had better make it clear what I am not alleging. Firstly, he did not take part in a service of a false religion. What he took part in was a specially devised ecumenical service, and not part of the Anglican liturgy. Secondly, in his address he did not say anything heretical. Everything he said could be interpreted in a Catholic sense. But, and this is what matters, where Anglicans are concerned he took part in a service with them, on their own terms, and in what they regard as their own cathedral, a cathedral wrested by physical force from the jurisdiction of the Pope. Furthermore, although he did not say anything heretical in his address, he did not say anything incompatible with the heretical belief that the Catholic Church and the Church of England are "Sister Churches."⁴ It would be ludicrous to suggest that this was an accident or a coincidence. The Pope's address was a masterpiece of ecumenical ambiguity. According to the media, in no previous visit had the Pope submitted his addresses to the advice of the national hierarchies to the extent that he did in Britain. But even if his address at Canterbury was written for him, the Pope cannot be absolved from all culpability. I have said that a Polish prelate could not be expected to be familiar with British history, but every Catholic prelate should know enough theology and have sufficient integrity to avoid giving the impression that the Mystical Body of Christ and a Protestant sect are bodies of equal status.

I fear that by now some readers will consider me guilty of gross disrespect towards the Vicar of Christ. They will consider me to be the victim of an anti-ecumenical idle fixe. If only this were the case, but it is not. I will not quote from the British media on the subject of the Canterbury visit. Its assessment is identical to mine.

There is no doubt that throughout the world The Times is regarded as the most authoritative voice of the media in Britain. On Monday, 31 May 1982, its Religious Affairs correspondent, Clifford Longley, summed up the visit to Canterbury as follows:
Precisely the same assessment was made by Gerald Priestland, the Religious Affairs correspondent of the BBC. He also laid great stress upon the fact that the Pope had gone to unprecedented lengths in allowing the British bishops to dictate what he would say or, more importantly, would not say.

After The Times, the Telegraph is certainly the most respected paper in Britain. One of its leading writers, T.E. Utley, assessed the Pope's visit in The Sunday Telegraph of 6 June 1982, in the following terms:



One of the greatest scandals of the post-conciliar Church has been the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC). This commission has produced a series of Agreements on the Eucharist, Priesthood, and Authority, in which the Catholic delegates have been guilty of a cynical betrayal of the teaching of the Church on all three issues. In not one instance is Catholic teaching affirmed where it conflicts with that of the Church of England. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has published a report in which the ambiguity of these Agreements is exposed forcefully and clearly. But incredibly, after the publication of the critique of the Congregation, which the Pope himself had authorized, he joined Dr. Runcie at Canterbury in signing a document praising the members of ARCIC for their integrity. The following is the comment of Clifford Longley, Religious Affairs correspondent of The Times:
What The Times correspondent and others have consistently overlooked during the current wave of ecumenical euphoria is that Catholicism and Anglicanism are incompatible for reasons which were not even mentioned during the visit.

The Anglican Communion now accepts priestesses in many of its branches; the Catholic Church can never do so.

To the best of my knowledge, there is not a single bishop in the Church of England who is opposed to abortion on principle, some are opposed to abortion on demand.

The Church of England does not simply permit but endorses contraception, and has recently issue a report which, at the very least, accepts the hypothesis that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle for Christians.

It is also a fact, though the Pope is unlikely to realize this, that the impressive spectacle he witnessed in Canterbury Cathedral is simply a facade covering up the fact that the Church of England has little if any influence upon the life of the country. There are far more Catholics than Anglicans in church on Sundays.



Many commentators were waiting for the sermon on marriage at York with particular interest. Prominent Liberals had made it clear that under no circumstances should the Pope condemn contraception. The notorious National Pastoral Congress held in Liverpool in 1980 had made it clear that contraception is considered acceptable by the prevailing consensus within the Catholic Church in England. Cardinal Hume asked for a revision of the Church's teaching on contraception during the 1981 Synod of Bishops in Rome. In his sermon at York the Pope referred to his recent Apostolic Exhortation on marriage, Familinris Consortio. Now this is a really excellent document. Every basic Catholic teaching on marriage is re-stated with firmness and clarity. Unfortunately, it is far too long, as are so many papal documents and discourses. There is no possibility whatsoever of the average Catholic wading through it. The Pope mentioned in this exhortation certain negative phenomena undermining marriage today. He listed some of them in his sermon:

Once again the Liberals were jubilant.

Here is what Clifford Longley wrote about it in The Times of 1 June 1982. It needs to be stressed for the benefit of readers who are not British that Clifford Longley is looked upon as the mouthpiece of the Liberal Catholic establishment in Britain.

Now read the gleeful assessment of Longley in The Times of 3 June. The same sentiments were expressed by other Liberal commentators in all the media:
Those who watched the television presentation of the papal visit will have received the impression that it was triumphant success as a pastoral event, but this was not the ease. The crowds who turned out were far smaller than expected, sometimes well under a fifth of the anticipated number. Financially the visit has been a disaster for the hierarchy, but, no doubt, the bishops will eventually extract the full cost from the laity. Whatever the cost to them, the boost it will have given to their waning prestige will have made it worthwhile. It was also clear that much of the applause and acclaim which the Pope received was prompted by mass hysteria; it was precisely the same form of acclaim offered to a pop star or a sports team. This was particularly evident at Murrayfield in Scotland where, according to The Tablet, "44,000 young people gave him an exuberantly enthusiastic welcome. " The fact is that a mob of hysterical teenagers got totally out of control and displayed deplorable manners and behavior. They cheered every word of the Pope's wildly, and it was clear that they were not listening to his words or even remotely interested in what he was saying. They screamed and chanted wildly after every sentence just as they would have done at a match in which Scotland was playing football.

To mention some positive points, the Pope totally refused to give Communion in the hand throughout his visit, and his warm personality certainly made an impact and helped the many positive things he had to say to be well received by his listeners. But if his visits to other countries are anything to go by, it is doubtful if they will have any lasting impact. Some of those who watched him said that he clearly enjoys the applause and acclaim he receives; it would be strange if he did not. Every pope is a human being, and most human beings like to be liked. It is thus probable that he feels that his visit has indeed been a success.

For me, the first visit of a reigning Pontiff to my country has been a cause of profound sadness. The most abiding memory, one which I cannot get out of my mind, much as I would like to, is of the Vicar of Christ standing side by side with a heretical married layman, Dr. Runcie, in Canterbury Cathedral, and giving a joint blessing to the congregation as if both were Catholic bishops-and this after Dr. Runcie told the Pope that he, as the successor of St. Augustine (the first Archbishop of Canterbury) was happy to welcome the successor of St. Gregory the Great who had sent St. Augustine to convert the Saxons.

I could not help contrasting the Pope's behavior with that of Thomas Colton, a teen-age boy who suffered terribly for his Catholic faith during the Elizabethan persecution. He was brought before the Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury and asked to give his reasons for refusing so much as to enter a Protestant church. He answered as follows:


If I had the opportunity of speaking to the Holy Father I would ask him whether the principle expounded by Pope Clement VIII, which was incorporated into Canon Law, is valid or not. If the Pope agreed that it was valid I would then ask him how he could reconcile it with his visit to Canterbury Cathedral.

St. Peter succumbed to the pressure of the Judaizers, but overcame their influence after St. Paul rebuked him at Antioch. We must pray that Pope John Paul II will overcome the influence of the ecumaniacs. Until he does, his word and example will cause scandal rather than confirm the faith of his flock. Let us pray for him daily, using a collect from the Roman Missal asking God that the word and example of the Pope will be of benefit to the Church:

"Oh God, the Shepherd and Ruler of all the faithful, look down favorably upon Thy servant Pope John Paul II, whom Thou hast been pleased to appoint pastor over Thy Church; grant, we beseech Thee, that he may benefit both by word and example those over whom he is set, and thus attain unto life eternal, together with the flock committed to his care."


1. Ample documentation illustrating this point can be found in Appendix II to Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre, Vol, I

2. Letter to Mr. Nevers.

3. Canossa, near Reggio in northern Italy, the scene of the public humiliation and submission of the Emperor Henry IV to Pope Gregory VII in 1077.

4. In fact, he said: "On this first visit of a Pope to Canterbury, I come to you in love, the love of Peter to whom the Lord said, I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren (Luke 22:32). I come to you also in the love of Gregory, who sent St. Augustine to this place to give the Lord's flock a shepherd's care."

5. Mementos of the English Martyrs and Confessors, Burns do Oates, 1910.

My dear friends,

Once again we are gathered here at Ec6ne for the very moving ceremony of the ordination of Priests. If there is one ceremony which lets us live the most sublime moments of the Church, it is the ceremony of priestly ordination. It brings to mind especially the Last Supper, when Our Lord Jesus Christ ordained His Apostles. It recalls also the out pouring of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles at Pentecost. So the Church continues, the Holy Ghost continues to extend Himself through the hands of the successors of the Apostles. We are happy to be able today to confer ordination on thirteen new priests.

There was not supposed to be an ordination of priests this year, because the course of studies has been changed from five to six years, and the results of the change were to come into effect in 1982. But special circumstances dictate that we ordain today (besides the new priests) seven deacons for the Society and six others from various groups allied to us, fighting the same fight, with the same convictions and the same love of the Church. The day before yesterday I conferred priestly ordination on two members of the Society for the District of Germany, making a total of fifteen for this year.

We hope, with the grace of God, as the years go by and the numbers increase, that our seminaries, especially in Germany and the United States, will yield the fruits of the seeds planted in preceding years. The first ordinations at Ridgefield, U.S.A., will take place next year with three new priests. They have already taken place at Zaitzkofen, Germany. Let us pray that God will bless these seminaries and give those who are studying for the priesthood the many graces they need.

My dear friends, in a few minutes you will be ordained priests. You know, I am sure, today more than ever, that ordination will put you into the very heart of the work of redemption of Our Lord Jesus Christ. By His Sacrifice on the Cross, Our Lord set Himself to create priests, to create a share in His eternal Priesthood for those He chose to prolong His Sacrifice, the source of the graces of the Redemption, because it is the great work of God. God created everything to be redeemed. This is His great work of love.

For this He created everything the world which we see around us. He did it by the Cross. He did it for the redemption of souls. He did it by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. He did it for priests. He did it so that souls could be united to Him, especially as Victim in the Holy Eucharist. He gives Himself to us as Victim, so that we may offer our own lives with His, and thus share not only in our own redemption, but also in that of others.

This plan of God, this thought of God which brought the world into being, is a most extraordinary thing. We are astonished at this great mystery which Almighty God has brought into being here below. And precisely because the sacrifice of Our Lord is at the heart of the Church, at the heart of our salvation, at the heart of our souls, everything touching on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass touches us profoundly, touches each one of us, personally, because we must participate in the Holy Sacrifice for the salvation of our souls, because we must receive the Blood of Jesus by baptism and the other sacraments, especially the Sacrament of the Altar, in order to save our souls.

This is why we are so attached to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass -the more so as they want to change it and make it (so they say) more acceptable to those who are not of our faith, who do not have the Catholic Faith. All these changes in the last few years in the most precious thing in the Church, the Liturgy, have been made to bring us closer to our separated brethren, that is to say, to those who are not of our Faith.

So our hearts are troubled, our minds and our faith are aroused. We ask ourselves: "How can they water down this truth, the greatest, most mysterious, most beautiful, most divine thing in our Church, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, to bring it down to the level of heretics?" We don't understand; and in this spirit, we ask ourselves how clerics were brought into the Church with ideas that are not those of the Church, not truly fortified by the Holy Ghost, not filled with the spirit of truth, but with the spirit of error and could get to the highest levels in the Church and put through these reforms which are destroying the Church. What a mystery!

How can it be? How could Almighty God allow it? How could Our Lord make these promises to Peter and his successors, to the church and to all the successors of the Apostles, and then allow this state of affairs we see before us today? Blessed those faithful who came before us and did not have such problems to face and resolve!

Briefly, I would like to try to explain what it seems to me our course of action should be in the face of these sad developments taking place in the Church. It seems to me that we can compare this agony the Church is suffering today to the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. You see how astonished the Apostles themselves were when Our Lord was taken and bound after the kiss of Judas. He is taken away. He is clothed in a scarlet robe, mocked, beaten, weighed down with the Cross. And the Apostles run away; they are scandalized. It is not possible that He Whom Peter proclaimed: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of God"- can be reduced to this plight, this humiliation, this destruction. It cannot be. They run away.

Only the Virgin Mary, with St. John and some women remain with Our Lord and keep the faith. They will not abandon Him. They know that Our Lord is truly God, but they also know that He is man. It is precisely this union of the divinity with the humanity of Our Lord that poses extraordinary difficulties. Our Lord in fact did not want to be merely man; He wanted to be a man like us, with all the results of sin yet without sin, apart from sin; but He wanted to accept all the consequences: sadness, fatigue, suffering, thirst, hunger, death. Yes, right up to His death, Our Lord embodied this extraordinary thing that so scandalized the Apostles, as it indeed scandalized many others who turned their backs on Our Lord and did not believe in the divinity of Our Lord.

Throughout the history of the Church, one comes across these people who are so surprised at the weakness of Our Lord that they cannot believe He is God. This was the case with Arius. Arius said no, it won't do, that man cannot be God, because He said He was less than His Father, that His Father was greater than He. He is therefore less than His Father. He is therefore not God. And then Our Lord said that astonishing thing, "My soul is sorrowful, even unto death." How could He, with the Beatific Vision, seeing God in His human soul, and thus far more glorious than weak, far more eternal than temporal His soul already in eternity and blessed yet here He is, saying, "My soul is sorrowful, even unto death," and goes on to utter those astonishing words we could never imagine on the lips of Our Lord, "My God, my God, why hast Thou abandoned Me?" Hence the scandal, alas, which spreads among weak souls. Arius takes practically the entire Church with him in saying this Man is not God.

Others, on the other hand, go the other way and say that perhaps everything Our Lord endured, spilling blood, the wounds, the Cross, all that was imaginary. They were external phenomena but not real. Rather like the archangel Raphael, when he went with Tobias and later revealed to him, "'You thought I was eating when I had dinner with you, but I am nourished with a spiritual nourishment." The archangel Raphael did not have a body like that of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He was not born of an earthly mother, as our Lord was born of the Virgin Mary. Was Our Lord an illusion like that and only appeared to eat, but did not really eat, or appear to suffer but did not really suffer? There were those who denied the human nature of Our Lord Jesus Christ: the Monophysites, the Monothelites, who denied the human nature and the human will of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Everything about Him was God (they claimed), and everything that seemed to happen was only an illusion.

So you see what happens to those who are scandalized by reality and truth. Let me make a comparison with the Church of today. We thought the Church was truly divine, that she could never deceive herself or deceive us.

Well, it is true, the Church is divine; she cannot lose the truth. The Church will always be the guardian of truth. But she is also human. The Church is human and indeed more human than Our Lord Jesus Christ was. Our Lord could not sin. He is the Holy One, the Just One par excellence.

The Church, if she is divine and truly divine, transmits to us all the things of God especially the Holy Eucharist - eternal things which can never change and which will be the glory of our souls in heaven. Yes, the church is divine, but she is human too. She is made up of men who may be sinners, indeed, who are sinners, and yet who share somehow in the divinity of the Church, to a certain extent like the Pope, for example, by his infallibility; by the charism of infallibility he shares in the divinity of the Church and yet remains human. They all remain sinners. Except in those instances where the Pope makes use of his charism of infallibility, he can err, he can sin.

Why be scandalized and say, like some people following the example of Arius, that he is not pope? He is not Pope, as Arius said Christ was not God, it cannot be, Our Lord cannot be God. We ourselves may be tempted to say that it cannot be, he cannot be Pope and do what he is doing.

On the other hand, others would divinize the Church to the point that everything in it becomes perfect. So everything in the Church being perfect, we could say there is no question of our doing anything whatever to oppose anything coming out of Rome; we must accept everything coming out of Rome. Those who talk this way are like those who say that Our Lord was God to such an extent that He could not suffer, that He gave only the illusion of suffering, but in reality did not suffer; in reality it was not His blood that flowed. Those around Him had only illusions in their eyes not reality. There are some of these today who go on saying there can be nothing human, nothing imperfect in the Church. They too are mistaken. They do not see the reality of things. How far can imperfection in the Church go, how high can sin go, if I may say it, in the Church, sin in the intellect, sin in the soul, sin in the heart and in the will? The facts tell us.

As I said a moment ago, we would never have dared to put on the lips of Our Lord the words, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" So too, we would never have thought that evil and error could penetrate so deeply into the Church. But we are living in this age; we cannot shut our eyes. The facts are there; it is not merely a subjective impression. We are witnesses of what is happening in the Church, of the terrible things that have happened since the Council, the ruins piling up day after day, year after year, in Holy Church. The more we go on, the more the errors spread and the more the faithful lose the Catholic Faith. A recent study in France shows that hardly more than two million French Catholics are still really Catholic.

We are nearing the end. Everyone will fall into heresy. Everyone will fall into error because wicked clergy, as St. Pius X predicted, have found their way into the Church and occupied it. They have spread errors from the positions of authority they occupy in the Church.

Are we then required to follow error because it comes from someone in authority? No more than we should obey parents who are unworthy and ask us to do unworthy things, no more should we obey those who ask us to abandon our Faith and to abandon all Tradition. This is out of the question. Oh, of course, all this is a mystery, a great mystery, this union of the divine with the human.

The Church is divine, and the Church is human. How far can human weakness how shall I say overshadow the divinity of the church? Only God knows. It is a great mystery. We see the facts; we must put ourselves in full view of the facts and never abandon the Church, the Roman Catholic Church, never abandon her, never abandon the successor of Peter, because through him we are united to Our Lord Jesus Christ, through the Bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter. But if, by some misfortune, under the influence of some spirit or other, or some weakness or pressure, or through neglect, he abandons his duty and leads us along roads which make us lose our faith, well, we must not follow, although at the same time we recognize that he is Peter and if he speaks with the charism of infallibility, we must accept his teaching, but when he does not speak with the charism of infallibility, he may very well be mistaken alas! It is not the first time that something like this has happened in history.

We are deeply troubled, deeply anguished, we who love the Church so much and venerate her and have always venerated her. This is why this seminary exists, for love of the Church Catholic and Roman. This is why all seminaries exist. Our love of the Church has been badly bruised to think that her servants, alas, are not her servants any longer and render her no service at all. We must pray, we must sacrifice and, we must, like Mary, stay at the foot of the Cross and not abandon Our Lord Jesus Christ, even if He seems, as the Scriptures, say, "as it were accursed" on the Cross. Well, the Virgin Mary had the faith and she saw beyond the wounds, beyond the pierced Heart. She saw God in her Son, her Divine Son.

We too, in spite of the wounds in the Church, in spite of the difficulties, the persecution which we are enduring, even from those in authority in the Church, let us not abandon the Church, let us love the Holy Church our mother, let us serve her always in spite of the authorities, if necessary. In spite of these authorities who wrongly persecute us, let us stay on the same road, let us keep to the same path: we want to support the Holy Roman Catholic Church, we want to keep it going and we will keep it going by means of the priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by the true sacraments of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by the true catechism.

Why, my dear friends?

You see, I was ordained in the traditional, immemorial Mass myself and all my colleagues, up to a certain age - they received the power to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in this immemorial Roman Rite. Remember that: I was ordained in this rite and I do not want to leave it, I do not wish to abandon it. It is the Mass for which I was ordained and for which I wish to continue living. It is truly the Mass of the Roman Catholic Church.

Be faithful, faithful to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It will give you so many consolations, so many joys, so much support in your troubles, in your trials, in the persecutions you may well undergo. You will find the strength with Our Lord Jesus Christ to endure all these insults; you will find this strength in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In truly giving Our Lord Jesus Christ His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity to the faithful, you will give them also the courage to stay with the Church in her tradition and to model themselves on all the saints who have gone before, all who have been canonized, beatified, held up as examples of holiness in Holy Church. They will continue to be our models.


In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Your Eminence,

You were able in the conversation which you accorded me yesterday to note my deep disappointment on receiving your second letter dated 23 June last.

Indeed, it is clearly apparent from it that the Cardinals who you consulted wished to harshen your first answer in a spirit of defense of the Second Vatican Council and the liturgical reforms which have followed it.

As I had the occasion to say to you yesterday, we are in an impasse from which we must find some way out.

The first is this:

Is the Church in a normal situation today? Is there nothing to note with concern in matters of Faith and morals in the Church's institutions, in seminaries, in religious orders, the Liturgy, ecumenism, etc.?

The second is this:

Have the Second Vatican Council and the post conciliar reform given none but good fruits? Could these be described?

The answers to these two questions will show whether we are right or wrong.

You yourself have recognized the seriousness of the situation in which the Church finds itself today, replying to the first question in the way in which all those who have retained their common sense and a sense of what constitutes the Catholic Faith would reply.

As to the second question, Our Lord gave the answer in the Gospel: "A good tree does not give bad fruit, and a bad tree does not give good fruit. A tree is known by its fruit."

There was no need to be a prophet to realize this from the Council onwards, and this is why I published, even during the Council, in 1964, an article entitled "To Remain a Catholic, Must One Become a Protestant?"¹

Our attitude must be judged in the light of these sad findings, which are accelerating the self destruction of the Church, denounced by Pope Paul VI. This easily explains:

1. The necessity of judging the Second Vatican Council in the light of Tradition and the unchanging Magisterium of the Church, so as to correct the texts that are either incompatible with Tradition or equivocal.

No polemics are involved, rather defense of the Truth and of the Catholic Faith clearly expressed in pontifical documents.

2. The liturgical reforms having been conceived to an ecumenical end (see L'Osservatore Romano of 19 March 1965, an article by Bugnini) they are dangerous for the faith of Catholics, who are becoming unable, little by little, to draw a distinction between Catholics and heretics, and the Catholic faithful in public to the moral law, and the public sinner.

If this Reform is scandalous for the Catholic Faith, what must be the attitude of every good Catholic towards this Reform? Moral theology and Canon Law answer this question in the way in which I have answered it in Le coup de Maitre de Satan, p. 44.

We do not doubt that many priests say the Novus Ordo Missae in a devout fashion. This does not, however, compensate for the grave structural defects of the Novus Ordo Missae, pointed out in particular by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci in the Breve esame critieo.

3. As to the contravention of Canon Law mentioned in your letter: given the desperate position of many souls, every pastor is bound to go to their aid, according to the fundamental principles of Canon Law itself.

As to the canonical penalties, they were imposed illegally and without trial, and by men who wished to condemn all those opposed to the self destruction of the Church, by those who wished to turn the Council away from its true goal and who gave a disastrous ecumenical direction to the reforms.

Now everything would be simple if we thought only of the Kingdom of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the salvation of souls. However, everything has been perverted by false ecumenism, which has become the rule of churchmen's conduct. So Tradition is presented as an obstacle which must be swept away. The history of the Church begins with Vatican II.

For so long as this spirit continues to reign in the Curia over the majority of Cardinals, it is unlikely that a solution can be found. Will it be necessary to wait for the complete ruin of the Catholic Church in most so called Catholic countries for the voice of Wisdom to be heard in a return to healthy Tradition?

You have given me some hope by announcing a projected document concerning the free use of the old rite of the Mass. The conditions to which you have alluded, however, make me fear that the result of this decree may be disappointing and only increase confusion.

I dearly wish that this decree should be a way to a solution for the Society and its supporters. The contrary would be very sad.

It is now almost four years since I met the Holy Father. Would not a further meeting be profitable in arriving at a happy solution?

I remain at your disposition and am grateful to you for your brotherly welcome. Please accept, Your Eminence, my sentiments of respect and devotion in Christo et Maria.

+Marcel Lefebvre



1. See A Bishop Speaks, (English edition), pp. T3 84.
2. This Profession of Faith is included as Appendix II.

The first General Chapter1 of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X, which must be held every twelve years, was duly called by His Grace Archbishop Lefebvre and met at St. Pius X International Seminary (Econe), our mother house. It went very smoothly, from Monday, September 13 to Thursday, September 16, 1982, in a spirit of perfect unity of minds and hearts a good augury for the future.

During these four days, chapter delegates brought up a number of topics, all aimed at increasing the sanctity and zeal of members of our religious society. Our one concern was that the Fraternity should be ever more in conformity with the ideal of the Gospel, and that all of us should be courageous in defense of the Faith, of Our Lord, of the Holy Catholic Church, the source of our honor and our glory. The chapter had a second important function. It was our duty to choose a Vicar General for Archbishop Lefebvre.

He will therefore be Vicar General of the Society for twelve years (or more, if God wills). He will succeed Archbishop Lefebvre as need arises.

Immediately after his election, on September 14, 1982, Father Schmidberger stated that it would be his policy to keep the Priestly Society of St. Pius X faithful to the spirit of His Grace, i.e., on three basic points, namely: defense of the integrity of the Faith, safeguarding the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and furthering the social reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Permit me to introduce Father Schmidberger to you. He was born on 19 October 1946, in Goppingen, Upper Swabia (Germany), in the valley of the Danube, in a family of farmers staunchly devoted to Catholic tradition. His secondary education took place in public schools, ending in 1966 with the diploma (equivalent to the French baccalaureate). This was followed by master's degrees in mathematics and philosophy.

Then he entered the seminary at Econe, where he was ordained a priest on 8 December 1975. He taught at the seminary in Weissbad (German Switzerland) and served as its director when it moved to Zaitzkofen (Bavaria, West Germany). In 1979 he became superior of the District of Germany and second assistant to Archbishop Lefebvre, a role which gave him a share in important decisions concerning the Society.

Although a native German, Father Schmidberger speaks fluent French and English. He is friendly and outgoing in manner, and has the gift of using his authority in a way that is both firm and gentle, and in this way he wins the respect of his colleagues.

On behalf of the directors of Fideliter and for myself personally, I am delighted to extend to Father Schmidberger sincerest good wishes for success in his new office, and assure him of our most devoted prayers.

Father Paul Aulagnier

1. Fideliter, No. 29, September/October 1982.