Authority of Vatican II
PART 8
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.
The Magisterium, Faith, and Obedience: Response to Paul VI’s Objections
On September 11, 1976, Archbishop Lefebvre was received in audience by Pope Paul VI at Castelgandolfo. In a long letter dated October 11, Paul VI refused to grant the founder of Ecône’s request that he encourage the experiment of Tradition. The Pope reproached Archbishop Lefebvre with rebellion against the authority of Vatican II and claimed that his ecclesiology was warped in essential points. In a spiritual conference given at Ecône on October 18, 1976, Archbishop Lefebvre responded to these reproaches, showing how the notion of “living Tradition” as understood by Vatican II is irreconcilable with the idea of an authentic magisterium.–Fr. Gleize
After all is said and done, nothing has changed since the recent visitation–not on the part of Rome’s visitors, not on Rome’s, and not on ours. Nothing has changed because, I think, nothing can change so long as the new orientation adopted by the Roman authorities since the Council does not correspond with what the Popes have taught for centuries, but more particularly since the last century and a half–let us say, from the French Revolution till now. The whole problem is there. Either we desire to be faithful to the Tradition defined by the Church’s magisterium–the Church’s perennial magisterium, the solemn, infallible magisterium of the Popes who spoke solemnly, condemning the liberal errors, modernism, and the synthesis of errors professed by very many Catholics, priests, and bishops over the course of a century and a half; or else we give up this magisterium in order to submit to the orientations being given to us today, which lead us towards those very errors and which require us to accept these errors which lead us slowly but surely to Protestantism.
So what is to be done? This is what I said to the Holy Father during the audience: Holy Father, we have only one desire, to follow you, to be able to be absolutely in full agreement with you. But when we are obliged to observe that the orientations taken by the Church at present distance you from your predecessors, we are faced with a dilemma that confronts every Christian, priest, and bishop. What should we do? forsake your predecessors, distance ourselves from the doctrine taught by your predecessors and submit to the new orientations being given in the Church now? What is to be done? Some choose these errors towards which churchmen today are inclining, and others hold fast to Tradition so as not to become Protestants or modernists.
The Pope did not respond to that. I am not going to read you the entire letter,1 which is 18 pages long…that would be impossible. The first part of the letter is to convince me that my behavior is contradictory, as they say:
You want, so you say, to remedy the abuses that disfigure the Church; you regret that authority in the Church is not sufficiently respected; you wish to safeguard authentic faith, esteem for the ministerial priesthood and fervor for the Eucharist in its sacrificial and sacramental fullness. Such zeal would, in itself, merit Our encouragement, since it is a question of exigencies which, together with evangelization and the unity of Christians, remain at the heart of Our preoccupations and of Our mission. But how can you at the same time, in order to fulfil this role claim that you are obliged to act contrary to the recent Council, in opposition to your brethren in the Episcopate, to distrust the Holy See itself–which you call the “Rome of the Neo-Modernist and Neo-Protestant tendency”–and to set yourself up in open disobedience to Us? If you truly want to work “under Our authority,” as you affirm in your last private letter, it is immediately necessary to put an end to these ambiguities and contradictions.2
But what provoked these ambiguities and contradictions? It’s the Council, which is full of ambiguities and contradictions. Moreover, they say the same thing a bit farther on; they themselves enumerate the list of things for which I reproach the Council.
You say moreover that you do not always see how to reconcile certain texts of the Council, or certain dispositions which We have enacted in order to put the Council into practice, with the wholesome Tradition of the Church and in particular with the Council of Trent or the affirmations of our Predecessors.
That is correct.
These are for example: the responsibility of the College of Bishops united with the Sovereign Pontiff—
That is to say, collegiality, this business of collegiality which is nothing neither more nor less than the introduction of democracy into the Church.
…the new Ordo Missae, ecumenism–
Yes, that’s true.
…religious freedom–
Exactly.
…the attitude of dialogue–
Yes, because the attitude of dialogue with error and thus with all the false religions, the attitude of dialogue as it is conceived of by them puts us on the same footing. Dialogue presupposes the equality of the two religions, that there is no difference between error and truth, so that dialogue involves compromise. But that is not the kind of dialogue the Church has undertaken with those who do not believe; they are asked to convert….
Evangelization in the modern world–
Yes, that’s true.
The response is simply “It is not the place, in this letter, to deal with each of these problems.”3
But this is precisely the problem… So you see, “it is not the place, in this letter, to deal with each of these problems, but you are against authority, authority, authority”… They have a notion of the Church which is absolutely hard to believe–let us say, absolutely false.
But behind these questions and other similar ones, which we shall examine later on in detail, it is truly necessary to see the intricacy of the problem: and the problem is theological.4
Precisely, the crux of the matter is theological, absolutely. Then for a page they remind me what the Constitution Pastor Aeternus teaches about papal infallibility, the primacy of Peter, the authority of Peter. But I agree completely. But they forget to include the part of Pastor Aeternus that I put in my Letter to Friends and Benefactors No. 9. Well, I said, it is not hard when you leave out the main point of a text, obviously. It can no longer be understood. The main part is the passage in which it is said that the pope’s authority was not given him to teach new truths, but to hand on faithfully and exactly the deposit of faith. So that is why the authority of the pope has been given. It is in Pastor Aeternus: “…not…that they might disclose new doctrine….”
You say that you are subject to the Church and faithful to Tradition, by the sole fact that you obey certain norms of the past that were decreed by the Predecessor of Him to whom God has today conferred the powers given to Peter. That is to say, on this point also, the concept of ‘Tradition’ that you invoke is distorted.5
“The concept of ‘Tradition’….”: take your theology books–what is Tradition? Tradition is the Church’s infallible and, in a certain way consequently, immutable magisterium. When something has been solemnly defined by the Councils or by the Sovereign Pontiffs, it is immutable; even in its terms it is immutable. It can be explained, but the truth itself is immutable.
Tradition is not a rigid and dead notion, a fact of a certain static sort which at a given moment of history blocks the life of this active organism which is the Church, that is, the Mystical Body of Christ.6
This is hard to believe. Granted, the Church is a living body, a living mystical body to which members are added century after century, generation after generation. But the truth itself, revelation, was concluded with the death of the last Apostle. The revelation our Lord came to bring us was closed after the death of the last of the Apostles; this is what the Church teaches. Afterward, the Church’s mandate is to hand on the deposit of revelation that is found in Scripture and Tradition. Revelation is thus manifested by Tradition and by Sacred Scripture, because Tradition encompasses Sacred Scripture in the sense that Tradition began before Sacred Scripture. The Apostles first spoke before writing, and then they wrote. Subsequently it is up to Tradition, to the magisterium of the Church, consequently, to explain what Scripture means and to give Scripture as the Church conceives it. Hence Tradition in this sense is more important than Scripture. Revelation consists in this, but revelation had been concluded with the death of the last Apostle. Afterward, the Church has only to hand on faithfully and exactly the deposit of revelation, that is to say, the truths that have been revealed.
When a pope defines something after the death of the last Apostle, when they have defined in the councils and in their official acts, they have always said: these truths we are defining originate, are implicitly or explicitly contained in the revealed deposit, therefore they were already contained in revelation, which existed before the death of the last Apostle. This is obvious. So they have always, always, always repeated. So the Church is not dead–that’s obvious: the Church of the past is not dead, it is still living because truth is God; so when a truth is defined, it is as if, I would say, one were defining something in God, therefore something immutable. The Truth, God, is immutable, unchangeable. But because our understanding is weak, limited, restricted, we fail to understand the truth all in one block and in a single apprehension, as we will in the beatific vision. Then we shall see God for all eternity; we shall have the truth before us; then we shall see that it is immutable. But here below, revelation is given to us in a definitive way until the death of the last Apostle, and then the popes have the duty to explain it to us, to specify what this revelation is, but always in reference to what the Apostles taught and what Tradition teaches.
So when we judge correctly, they tell us: “You have no right to appeal to one pope to judge another.” But it is not we who judge, but the deceased pope who judges; it is Tradition that judges; it is the definitive writings that have been given that judge what is being said at present. They say: “Tradition is not a rigid and dead notion, a fact of a certain static sort”–but yes, it is static! The definitions are static, the definitions are definitive; the Credo is something definitive, the Credo cannot be changed.
“It is up to the Pope and the Councils to exercise judgment in order to discern in the traditions of the Church….”7 Here they are changing the subject, you see: the discussion is not about traditions, but Tradition. Tradition is the magisterium of the Church; traditions are something else. They are the customs that have been introduced into the Church, which can eventually be changed–that is certainly possible, but not Tradition.
…They seem to be saying that nobody in the Church can judge what is true or what is not true. But it is up to every Christian, every Catholic, to judge what is true. He is taught the truth, he knows the truth–it is in his catechism. He knows how to read like everyone else; he is quite capable of reading the Acts of the Councils, he is quite capable of understanding and of knowing what the truth is that is taught in the catechism and in his Bible and to realize that what is now being preached by his parish priests, or even by the bishop, is not in conformity with what is said in his old catechism or with what he was taught. It is up to every Catholic to defend his faith when it is attacked. One cannot tell him: “Oh, but he has no say, he has only to obey. Only the pope and the bishops in union with the pope can say what is of faith and what is not of faith.” This is too much, this is not possible. Catholics cannot address the Pope to ask him whether what their pastor is saying is correct; they are quite capable of knowing it themselves.
1 The text of the letter, translated by the Catholic Information Office of England and Wales and published on December 11, 1976, is reproduced with commentary by Michael Davies in his Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre: 1905-1976 (Angelus Press, 1979), pp. 303-343.
2 Ibid., pp. 315-16.
3 Ibid., pp. 324-25.
4 Ibid., p. 316.
5 Ibid., p. 320.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., p. 321.
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