The Authority of Vatican II Questioned
PART 7
Fr. Gleize is a professor of ecclesiology at the seminary of the SSPX in Ecône and now a member of the commission involved in the doctrinal discussions with the Holy See. In 2006, he compiled and organized Archbishop Lefebvre’s thinking about Vatican II. It was published by the Institute of St. Pius X, the university run by the SSPX in Paris, France.
“I Accuse the Council”
I Accuse the Council : Archbishop Lefebvre talks about the publication of his interventions during the Council. These documents bear witness to the Catholic reaction in face of the enemy’s infiltration into the Church of Vatican II–Conferences of 18 and 27 August, 1976.–Fr. Gleize
These documents will clearly show that the liberal and modernist orientations appeared and had a preponderant influence thanks to a veritable plot by the cardinals from the Rhine region, unfortunately supported by Paul VI. The equivocations and ambiguities of this pastoral council contained the poison that spread throughout the Church by the enactment and application of conciliar reforms. From the Council was born a new reformed Church which His Excellency Bishop Benelli himself calls “the conciliar Church.” To really understand and measure the noxiousness of this Council it is necessary to study it in light of the pontifical documents putting the bishops, clergy, and faithful on their guard against the conspiracy of the Church’s enemies furthered by means of liberalism and modernism going back nearly two centuries. It is also necessary to be conversant with the documents of the Church’s adversaries and especially those of the secret societies preparing this council for more than a century. Lastly, it will be very instructive to follow the reactions of Protestants, Masons, and liberal Catholics during and after the Council. The conclusion we must reach, especially after the immense disaster the Church has undergone since the Council, is that this event, ruinous for the Catholic Church and Christian civilization, was not directed and guided by the Holy Spirit.
Why the title I Accuse the Council? Because we are justified in stating, from arguments based on both internal and external criticism, that the spirit that dominated the Council and inspired so many ambiguous and equivocal and even frankly erroneous documents is not the Holy Spirit, but the spirit of the modern world–a liberal, Teilhardian, modernist spirit opposed to the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ….It is therefore essential to demythologize this Council, which was intended to be pastoral because of their instinctive aversion to dogma and to facilitate the official introduction of liberal ideas into a Church document. But once the operation was over, they dogmatize the Council; they compare it to Nicaea and claim that it is just like the others, if not superior!
Gradually one’s eyes open upon an astounding conspiracy that has been in the works for a long time. This discovery obliges one to wonder what was the role of the pope in all this work, what was his responsibility. In truth, it seems overwhelming, in spite of the desire to exonerate him of this dreadful betrayal of the Church. But if we leave to God and to future true successors of Peter to judge these things, it is only too true that the Council was diverted from its end by a group of conspirators and that it is impossible for us to join this conspiracy even if there were very many satisfactory texts from the Council. For the good texts served to gain acceptance for the equivocal, loaded, booby-trapped ones. We have only one solution left: to abandon these dangerous witnesses and to cleave firmly to Tradition, or to the Church’s official magisterium of twenty centuries.
Results of the “Hot Summer”
Excerpt from a homily given at Ecône on September 19, 1976. After ordinations at Ecône (June 29) and the Mass at Lille (August 29), Archbishop Lefebvre drew the conclusions from this attitude dictated to him by the extraordinary situation created in the Church by the Second Vatican Council. Henceforth, faithful Catholics are obliged to choose between the new theology of the conciliar popes and the teaching of all their predecessors.–Fr. Gleize
The good Lord gave us the pope, He gave us the successor of Peter, and that is what you are studying in your courses, from the Apostles through the Fathers of the Church, through all the acts of the popes, the Sovereign Pontiffs. You are learning the doctrine of the Church, the doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ, the revelation our Lord Jesus Christ made to us. You love to pore over all the texts of the Sovereign Pontiffs and thus you are learning to know the mind of the Holy Spirit through all the texts of the popes and the councils they presided over and ratified.
And, precisely, this is what creates the drama in our day. You pore over these books you have in the library that teach you the doctrine of the Sovereign Pontiffs, which is of a marvelous unity, a perfect continuity, of an immutability, if I may say, in substance and in form, but which develops in some way. For even if the deposit of faith was completed after the last of the Apostles, the popes have the charge to explain this deposit to us, to tell us what this deposit consists of. They have done this in the solemn definitions, in the Credo. And once these solemn definitions have been given, they remain for ever. They become irreformable. And this is precisely what creates the drama in our day. You have knowledge of all the papal doctrine after having studied these books, these magnificent texts of all of the Church’s doctrine, by seeing the popes refer to one another, in some way, in order to attach themselves to Tradition. They are always saying: “As our Predecessors have said; as the Fathers of the Church have said; as the Church has always believed; as the Church has always said in her liturgy; as the Church has always done.” They always refer to Tradition, to what has always been done, in order to confirm and to support what they say.
And now in our time general confusion reigns. It is a great mystery, a mystery of Providence. The good Lord has allowed this incredible trial for the Church. A sort of cloud envelops Rome and the Sovereign Pontiff; doubt enters into souls, into every conscience. Errors of every kind arise everywhere, even coming from the mouths of bishops, the mouths of the Episcopal commissions, coming from the deeds being done everywhere; things that are absolutely contrary, precisely, to everything that you have learned, to all that all the popes have done.…And now it would seem that things that were condemned by the popes become admissible. It is necessary therefore to choose, to choose between what they would teach now in the catechisms and in the current practice of the Church, between that and what the popes have always taught. This is what I said to the Holy Father when I had the opportunity to see him recently. I told him: Most Holy Father, we are torn. We would like to be at your knees and to receive all your words and to be entirely submissive. We have only one desire, and that is to receive your words and to admit them, but unfortunately we are obliged to observe that the orientation taken by the Church currently is in contradiction with what your predecessors said. And so we are obliged to choose. It is a drama for us: to choose between the Church of today, the orientation of the Church today, and what the Church has taught for two thousand years.
What can we do? We can only refer to two thousand years of Tradition. It is not possible to separate ourselves from the Church. That would be to create a schism. Separate ourselves from the Church of two thousand years! There are the schismatics. That is the drama we are living at present. And for us, I will say, even without judging persons, leaving that in the mystery of God, of the Providence of God who will judge all things (later this age will be judged), we see the errors that are taught currently, the practices contrary to the Tradition of the Church of all ages, things that are contrary to our faith. We must say no. We cannot accept what goes against our faith–whoever may teach it to us. Even if it were an angel from heaven, said St. Paul, we cannot abandon our faith. And that is why we hold fast to the Church’s Tradition; because, by remaining faithful to what the Church has always taught for two thousand years, we are sure and certain not to be mistaken. Let us leave to God the judgment of the men and things of our time. The good Lord will judge. He cannot fail to resolve this trial of the Church one day. We must pray. And I think that these days we must pray in a special way.
(To be continued.)
42. The breaking of the Council’s legal framework, continued.
Cardinal Liénart’s action was regarded by the press as a coup by which the Bishop of Lille “deflected the course of the council and made history.” [Figaro, 9 December 1976. The account of events we have given is based on Liénart’s own memoirs, published posthumously in 1976 under the title Vatican II, by the faculty of theology at Lille. It agrees with the account given by Fr. Wiltgen, S.V.D., in The Rhine Flows into the Tiber, Paris 1975 (translation of the American edition of 1966), p.17, which however says nothing about the illegality of the Frenchman’s action.]
All observers recognize his action as a genuinely decisive point in the course of the ecumenical council; one of those points at which history is concentrated for a moment, and whence great consequences flow. Liénart himself interprets the event in his memoirs as a charismatic inspiration, conscious (at least a posteriori) of the effects of his intervention, and keen to exclude the idea that it might have been premeditated or prearranged: Je n’ai parlé que parce que je me suis trouvé contraint de le faire par une force supérieure en laquelle je doit reconnaître celle de l’Esprit Saint. [“I only spoke because I felt constrained to do so by a higher force, in which I feel obliged to recognize that of the Holy Spirit.”] Thus, according to John XXIII, the council was called by command of the Holy Spirit, and the council which John prepared was then promptly turned on its head by the same Holy Spirit, working through a French cardinal. We now have an open confession of this repudiation of the council as originally conceived, from Fr. Chenu, one of the spokesmen of the modernizing school. [I.C.I., No.577, 15 August 1982, p.41.] The eminent Dominican, and his brother in the order Fr. Congar, were upset by their reading of the preparatory commission’s texts, which appeared to them to be abstract, antiquated and foreign to the inspirations of contemporary humanity, and they took action to get the council to go beyond this restricted compass, and to open itself to the world’s requirements, by persuading it to proclaim a new orientation in a message addressed to humanity at large. Fr. Chenu says the message impliquait une critique sévère du contenu et de l’esprit du travail de la Commission officielle préparatoire. [“Implied a severe criticism of the content and the spirit of the work of the official preparatory commission.”]
The text to be put forward in council was approved by John XXIII, and by Cardinals Liénart, Garrone, Frings, Döpfner, Alfrink, Montini and Léger. It emphasized the following points: that the modern world desires the Gospel, that all civilizations contain a hidden urge towards Christ, that the human race constitutes a single fraternal whole beyond the bounds of frontiers, governments and religions, and that the Church struggles for peace, development and human dignity. The text, which was entrusted to Cardinal Liénart, was subsequently altered in some parts, without relieving it of its original anthropocentric and worldly character, but the alterations were not liked by those who had promoted the document in the first place. It was passed by two thousand five hundred Fathers on 20 October. Fr. Chenu’s statement about the effect of the document is significant: Le message saisit efficacement l’opinion publique par son existence même. Les pistes ouvertes furent presque toujours suivies par les délibérations et les orientations du Concile. [“The message managed to seize public attention by its very existence. The paths opened up were almost always followed in the deliberations and orientations of the council.”]–Romano Amerio, Iota Unum, pp.85-86. [Available from Angelus Press. Price: $23.95]
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