The Authority of Vatican II Questioned
PART 6
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.
Vatican II Questioned
Excerpt from the conference given at Ecône on March 25, 1976, during which Msgr. Lefebvre recounted an interview with Msgr. Benelli, substitute for Cardinal Villot, Pope Paul VI’s secretary of state. –Fr. Gleize
The only sentence [Msgr. Benelli] picked out from my talks was in my Declaration of November 21, 1974, which reads: “No authority, not even the highest in the hierarchy [and you can guess what follows], can force us to abandon or diminish our Catholic Faith, clearly laid down and professed by the magisterium of the Church for nineteen hundred years.” I really do not see how one can quibble with a statement like that…
So he began: “‘No authority, not even the highest in the hierarchy’–in other words, the Pope,” he told me.
I replied: “Obviously.”
“But it is not you who make the truth!”
But I do not make truth; I know very well that it is not I who make the truth. But I do think that I am capable of knowing it all the same; I hope I am capable of knowing it.
“But the pope is the judge of what is true; the pope is the criterion of truth; the pope decides what is true.”
I said: “Well, I don’t know about that. I think that the pope is supposed to hand on the truth; he transmits the truth, but it is not he who makes the truth; he is not the truth, he has to transmit it.”
“In any case, it is not you who make the truth.”
I said: “It is not I. A child going to catechism and who knows the catechism knows the truth, and the pope cannot be against the truth that is in the catechism and what the popes taught for twenty centuries.” So I was supposedly against the pope, against the Council, and against everything that had been done after the Council.
The Fight for the Faith
The Society’s attitude is not dictated by a disciplinary question, but by questions of faith. The Society refuses Vatican II because this council effected a rupture in the unity of faith: from a talk given by Archbishop Lefebvre at Ecône, June 22, 1976. –Fr. Gleize
We are the ones, on the contrary, who are for order, the ones who are for the hierarchy, for discipline, and so we are not trying to divide the Church–on the contrary. We think that the principles we profess are the true principles of the Church’s unity. The first unity the Church must seek, and has always sought, and in which it has always existed, is the unity of faith. To the extent that the entire hierarchy of the Church professes the same faith, it is united. It is not we who invent the faith, nor do they; it is not even the pope who invents the faith. The faith existed before him, it existed before us, and it existed before the hierarchy. It is known.
Open your theology books to the sources of revelation; you will find Scripture and Tradition, which are the two sources of revelation. The chapter on Tradition will indicate all the sources which constitute the norma fidei. It is not we who make the norma fidei; it is not we who say what must be believed, but we seek to know what the Church tells us. The theology books will first indicate the professions of faith, the Credos: the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed–the different creeds, then dogmatic theology, and finally everything that has been solemnly and infallibly taught by the magisterium of the Church–it is not complicated.
This is the unity to which we must be joined. And it is precisely to the extent that this unity of faith is shaken that the Church begins to find itself in a terrible situation, a very difficult division, a state of confusion. This is what prompts us to have reservations about Vatican II, its reforms, and everything that has followed. It is not for us simply a matter of discipline, but it is really a question of faith.
When the nuncio of Berne approves and accepts that, in the name of the Council, the social reign of our Lord Jesus Christ is no longer possible, something is wrong. That is not in conformity with the encyclical Quas Primas, an encyclical that is certainly, at least in its fundamental elements, infallible, for the pope bases himself upon Scripture, Tradition, and the teachings of all the popes. It is a very solemn encyclical which, in some way, defines in a public and solemn manner the social reign of our Lord Jesus Christ, clearly based on evident theological truths like the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. So if it is true that in the name of the Council one can affirm that the social reign of our Lord Jesus Christ should no longer be sought, then one is obliged to have some reservations about the Council; it cannot be otherwise. For it is true that in the name of the Council freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, and freedom of worship have been proclaimed–three freedoms which have always been condemned and reproved, at least in the bad sense [of those terms]. There is undoubtedly a certain freedom of thought, there is a certain freedom of conscience, and there is a certain freedom of worship. But when freedom is understood in the sense of license, of total liberty, in the sense that one can think whatever one likes, that everyone may, according to his conscience, have his own way of conceiving things, that cannot be.
Criticism of the Council
Archbishop Lefebvre, in a press conference on August 2, 1976, presenting the first edition of A Bishop Speaks (writings and addresses, 1963–75), recalls that the Catholic Faith is always the criterion by which conciliar liberalism must be judged and condemned (A Bishop Speaks [Angelus Press, 2007], pp. 260, 261).–Fr. Gleize
The adoption of liberal theses by a Council could not have occurred except in a non-infallible pastoral council, and cannot be explained without there having been a secret, detailed preparation which the historians will eventually uncover to the great stupefaction of Catholics who confuse the eternal Roman Catholic Church with the human Rome susceptible to infiltration by enemies robed in purple…
The objection is made that we make ourselves the judge of the Catholic Faith. But is it not the gravest duty of every Catholic to judge the faith which is taught him by that which was taught and believed for twenty centuries and which is inscribed in the official catechisms, like that of Trent, of St. Pius X, and of every pre-Vatican II catechism? How have the true faithful always acted in the face of heresy? They have preferred to shed their blood rather than betray their faith.
No matter how exalted the dignity of the spokesmen of heresy may be, the problem for the salvation of our souls remains the same. And in connection with this, many Catholics are seriously ignorant about the nature and scope of the pope’s infallibility. Very many think that every word that comes from his mouth is infallible.
True and False Obedience: the Faith Does Not Belong to the Pope
During his sermon at Ecône August 22, 1976, Archbishop Lefebvre responded to the charges of disobedience. –Fr. Gleize
“You are disobeying the Pope.” Well, I am disobeying the Pope to the extent that the Pope is identified with the revolution that took place during the Council and after, because this revolution is the Revolution of 1789, and I cannot obey the Revolution of ’89 in the Church. I cannot obey the goddess Reason; I shall not bow before the goddess Reason, and that is what they would have us do. They would suppress this seminary so that all of us would go and adore the goddess Reason, man, the “cult of man”! No, we shall never accept that. We desire to be obedient to God and subject to our Lord Jesus Christ.
We shall be submissive to the extent that those who ought to give us the faith will also be submissive to the faith. They have no right to sell off the faith. The faith does not belong to them. The faith does not belong to the Pope. It belongs to the Church; it belongs to God; it belongs to our Lord Jesus Christ. The Pope and the bishops are there to hand on the faith. To the extent that they transmit it, we kneel, we obey; we are ready to obey at once. To the extent that they destroy our faith, we no longer obey. We cannot allow the destruction of our faith. We have the faith etched in our hearts till death. This is what we must say and profess. Therefore we are not disobedient people; we are people who obey our Lord Jesus Christ. This is what the Church has always demanded of the faithful.
And when they tell us, “You are judging the Pope, you are judging the bishops,” we answer that it is not we who judge the bishops, it is our faith, it is Tradition. It is our penny catechism. A child of five can point out a bishop’s error. Were a bishop to say to a child: “What they have told you about the Blessed Trinity, that there are Three Persons in the Holy Trinity, is not true,” the child could take his catechism and say, “My catechism teaches me that there are three Persons in the Holy Trinity. It’s you who are wrong, and I’m right.” The child would be right. He would be right because he has all of Tradition with him, because he has all of the Faith with him. Well, what we are doing is no different. We are saying: Tradition condemns you. Tradition condemns what you are doing at present. So we are with two thousand years of the Church and not with a dozen years of a new church, a conciliar church, as we were told when Msgr. Benelli asked us to submit to the “conciliar church.” I do not know this conciliar church; I only know the Catholic Church.
(To be continued.)
42. The breaking of the Council’s legal framework, continued.
The predominantly modernizing tendency of the council, which was responsible for the rejection of three years’ preparatory work carried out under Pope John’s aegis, was apparent even in the very first meeting on 13 October. That day, the council was due to elect its members (sixteen out of twenty-four) on the ten commissions which were to examine the draft documents drawn up by the preparatory commission. The council secretariat had distributed copies of the ten requisite forms, each having blank spaces in which to write the names chosen. It had also published the list of the members of the preconciliar commissions from whom the drafts had come. This procedure was obviously designed to favor an organic continuity between the drafting stage and the formulation of the final documents. This is in accordance with traditional practice. It also answers a very urgent need, since nobody can better present a document than those who have studied, refined and finally drafted it. Nor did it prejudice the electors’ freedom, since they remained completely at liberty to set aside the members of the preconciliar commissions when choosing those who were to form the conciliar ones. The only objection which could be made was that since the council had opened only three days earlier, an election might appear to be unduly hasty and insufficiently considered, given that the members of the vast and heterogeneous gathering knew each other so little.
To a good number of Fathers, this procedural step seemed to amount to an attempt to force the issue, and was resented in consequence. Cardinal Achille Liénart, one of the nine presidents of the council, voiced their point of view at the opening of the session. When he had asked the president of the session, Cardinal Tisserant, for permission to speak, and had been refused in accordance with the rules on the grounds that the session had been called in order to proceed to a vote, not in order to debate as to whether a vote should be held, Cardinal Liénart seized the microphone, thus violating due legal process, and read a declaration amidst the applause of many of those present: it was impossible to proceed to a vote without first having information about those to be selected and without there first being consultations among the electors and the national conferences of bishops. The vote did not take place, the session was adjourned, and the commissions subsequently formed contained large numbers of men who had had nothing to do with the preconciliar work.–Romano Amerio, Iota Unum, pp.83-84. [Available from Angelus Press. Price: $23.95]
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