A Book Review: Archbishop Lefebvre and the Vatican

by Dr. Malcolm Brennan

As we scoured the media last years for news of the negotiations between Archbishop Lefebvre and the Vatican, most of us felt stuck somewhere between uninformed, misinformed, and disinformed. Thanks to this collection of documents concerning those events, we are now in a position to find out just what happened and just what the issues were. Here, in their own words, arranged in chronological order, are the statements and positions of the leading actors in the drama—except one.

The documents are not reduced to an easy-to-follow narrative, but the editor's introduction and notes provide helpful guidance.

The sequence of events comes through clearly, constituting an outline of the book: Archbishop Lefebvre's announcements in 1987 that he intended to provide episcopal successors; the Vatican's response by initiating a dialogue with him; the inspection of the Society and associated bodies by the Vatican's Cardinal Gagnon in November and December 1987; a series of formal negotiations and the production of a Protocol in the spring of 1988; Archbishop Lefebvre's repudiation of the Protocol on May 6; the Vatican's additional promises, in vain; the Archbishop's consecrations on June 30; Pope John Paul II's motu proprio of July 2, Ecclesia Dei, and then a flood of commentary on what happened.

The Negotiations

Archbishop Lefebvre's purpose and principls were clear from the beginning. Duty required him, as a successor of the Apostles, to hand down what he had received from them. He negotiated in order to gain official approval to do this. He was authorized to consecrate bishops even without papal approval, he holds, by the law of necessity. This law of the Church authorizes one to break a law of the Church in an emergency,for a grave reason, and for the good of souls.

In contrast to this sound Catholic position, the purpose of the Vatican's several officials was not always clear. At times they wanted the Archbishop to repent, submit, beg forgiveness, and take his punishment; at other times they seemed milder and to want a gentlemanly reconciliation between the Archbishop and the Pope; at yet other times it seemed that the Vatican wanted to give its official blessing to and to be identified with the Archbishop's good works. Another possibility is the calculation that, if the Vatican were to tolerate Lefebvre's traditionalist position, then its tolerance of progressivist heresies would appear less blameworthy.

The Vatican's real position throughout the negotiations is probably revealed in remarks by Cardinal Ratzinger a fortnight after the consecrations, when he explained: "Lefebvre has seen that, in the fundamental part of the agreement, he was being held to accept Vatican II and the affirmations of the post-conciliar Magisterium" (p. 211).

Missing Report

The document which is missing from this collection, referred to above, is the report by Cardinal Gagnon on his Visitation (inspection) of the Society of St. Pius X and affiliated groups. The Vatican for a time put great store by this Visitation. It was an absolute condition before any discussions could proceed. Also, it would provide the material from which a solution to the problem could be fashioned.

Cardinal Gagnon was obviously impressed by what his Visitation revealed, and he remarked informally that the Archbishop's works were the way by which the Church must be restored.

Then nothing. The inspection report was denied to the Archbishop; Cardinal Gagnon, without explanation, was replaced by Cardinal Ratzinger as the Holy See's chief negotiator; and, dealings proceeded as if there had never been a Visitation.

We can guess that Cardinal Gagnon's report is an endorsement of Archbishop Lefebvre's work, perhaps a glowing tribute. What we know is that this irregular procedure and this cavalier treatment of Archbishop Lefebvre had occurred before.

In 1974, under Pope Paul VI, the Vatican had inspected the Society and kept its findings secret. The Archbishop was invited to Rome to discuss the findings with a panel of three cardinals, but the discussions had little to do with the seminary. Afterwards he was told that the discussions were not discussions but a trial, that he had been found guilty, that he was not entitled to know the charges against him, but that his sentence for the unidentified offense was to dismantle his seminary forthwith and desist from ordaining its graduates.

Another feature of the negotiations, says Archbishop Lefebvre, is that the other side never conceded the slightest point except in response to his threat to consecrate without an agreement. Those who think the Archbishop should have been more submissive, trusting, and docile in his dealings with the Holy See this time around should... well, they should think again.

We Won

While it may seem entirely partisan to say so, the truth of these events needs to be stated frankly: We won; they lost. Lefebvre's purpose was to make provision for the preservation of holy Tradition. He did so, though at great personal cost.

The purpose of the Vatican's negotiating team was apparently to require complete submission to the novelties of Vatican Council II. They didn't get it. On the contrary, the Holy See has now accepted as its own the position which it was negotiated into by Archbishop Lefebvre. That is, it has resolved to make the traditional Mass available to the faithful, to train and ordain priests like those of the Society of St. Pius X, and to protect them from wolfish bishops.

One can wonder whether one side or the other might have held its ground at this place instead of that, or conceded this instead of that point. And, of course, all of us wish that the Archbishop and the Holy See had reached a complete accord.

The agreement which was formulated, but not accepted, took from Archbishop Lefebvre and turned over to a new Vatican commission the responsibility for preserving Tradition. (Of course, the Vatican never conceded that Lefebvre had had that responsibility, but its institution of the commission is an admission that the job was being done by no one else.)

The agreement, the Protocol, promised almost everything Lefebvre demanded, and additional promises were made after the Protocol was drawn up, but he judged in the final analysis that the that the commission could not, or would not, keep those promises.

Those who pass judgment on Archbishop Lefebvre's conduct, it seems to me, are finally required to answer two questions: Was he right to doubt the Vatican's will (not just intention) to keep the agreement? Its track record is not good. And, secondly, did an emergency really exist?

Cynics—thinking of fire and flood, earthquake and shipwreck—claim to see no emergency. But this one is more like a famine. The faithful have been fed stones and serpents for twenty years. Old men have been made foolish, young men cowards, women fruitless, and children... the children's' slight frames carry bellies swollen with worldly vanities, and on their dazed and innocent faces breed the flies of Beelzebub.

Excommunications and Schism

A full treatment of these large topics is not possible in a book like this one, but many pages are devoted to various aspects of the subjects. There are the pertinent canons, scholarly interpretations of the canons, an explanation of the rule of emergency, evidence of the fact of emergency in the Church today, reflections on true and false obedience, and the text of Ecclesia Dei, in which the Pope announces Archbishop Lefebvre's excommunications and state of schism.

I say "announces," because the Pope does not "judge," "sentence," "proclaim," or do anything to effect the excommunication. No one has preferred a legal charge against the Archbishop; he has been summoned before no court or tribunal, no evidence has been presented against him, he has not offered a defense or made a plea, no finding has been made, no sentence pronounced—in a word, he has not been tried and found guilty of anything.

Ecclesia Dei simply assumes (rather casually, it seems to me) that the conditions for an automatic excommunication (excommunicatio latae sententiae) have been met—and there is certainly no element of infallibility about this papal opinion on matters of fact. It also accuses Lefebvre of having a false notion of Tradition—but this topic comes out of thin air, for it had no place in the negotiations.

A Curious Irony

If we look beyond the immediate contest which these documents record, some tantalizing perspectives emerge.

The Council of Trent, responding to Protestant attacks, brought clarity to what the Faith says about the Sacraments and the Priesthood. Vatican Council I clarified what the papacy is. Vatican II was to help us understand the episcopacy and the Church, but it got hijacked by Modernists.

Yet wouldn't it be interesting, wouldn't it be a delicious irony, and wouldn't it bear the marks of Divine Providence if Archbishop Lefebvre's episcopal life were a perfect illustration of what the Council meant to say about bishops?

The contrasts between him and bishops formed by the "renewal" reveal episcopal authority at its best and its worst: he is a pastor, they are administrators and activists; he acts personally, they collectively; he ordains priests, they empty seminaries; he maintains Tradition, they fall for one fad after another; he cures souls, they multiply ecclesiastical structures; his pastorate regards the whole Faith and all the faithful, they, by synods and national conferences, try to usurp papal prerogatives; and on, and on, and on.

Archbishop Lefebvre and the Vatican is an extremely important book. Its documents will be studied for centuries. For the present, it is an indispensable reference book for any who would understand the predicament of the Church today.