November 1980 Print

A Defense of Mgr. Lefebvre

Michael Davies

There is no doubt that as regards numerical strength the Traditionalist movement is making considerable progress, particularly in France and the U.S.A. This expansion would be far more rapid if traditionalists could overcome their frequent internal dissensions and present their case in a positive rather than a negative manner. By "positive" I mean to stress the things that we uphold and the reasons for which we uphold them. Thus, where the Mass is concerned we can stress the antiquity, dignity, and beauty of the Tridentine Mass and, above all, its doctrinal richness. Its prayers make abundantly clear the doctrine it contains. Similarly, we can stress how appropriate the traditional manner of receiving Holy Communion is when compared to the casual and often irreverent methods used in many churches today.

Unfortunately, a few traditionalists tend to define themselves not by what they are for but by what they are against. They appear far less interested in the Tridentine Mass than the New Mass; it is not exaggerating to claim that some are obsessed with the New Mass and appear to think of nothing else. This is resulting in the appearance of a sectarian mentality in which these people no longer feel united to all those who are working for the preservation and eventual restoration of the Tridentine Mass to the churches of the Roman Rite. For example, some of those who insist that the New Mass is invalid have clearly made this the axiom upon which their faith rests. A fellow Catholic who devotes virtually all his time and energy to working for the restoration of the Tridentine Mass is considered no better than Hans Küng or Charles Curran if he fails to denounce the New Mass as invalid.

It is a sad indication of the extent to which some traditionalists have become possessed by a sectarian and bitter spirit that they are now attacking Msgr. Lefebvre himself. His crime is that he insists upon the validity of the New Mass and the fact that Pope John Paul II is truly pope, and will not allow any priest to remain within the Society who contests either of these positions. The Archbishop, of course, has never questioned the validity of the New Mass (see Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre, p. 348 and A Bishop Speaks, p. 159). Some of those who are attacking him now once supported him; they must have known of his position regarding the New Mass when they gave him their support. Clearly, they have changed their views, not the Archbishop. In this article I wish to provide readers of The Angelus with the facts necessary to prove that the Archbishop's judgment is based on sound theological principles and that the arguments used by his detractors have no basis whatsoever in Catholic theology.

Every reader of The Angelus will know that for a sacrament to be valid an authorized minister with the intention of doing what the Church does must employ the correct matter and form. Readers will also be aware that all seven sacraments were directly instituted by Our Lord. Some may not realize that He instituted them in two ways—in specie and in genere, i.e., specifically and generically. Our Lord Himself specified the essential matter and form in the sacraments instituted in specie; He left it to His Church to decide the matter and form essential for validity in the sacraments instituted in genere. Theologians have differed as to the number of sacraments instituted in specie, but there is absolute unanimity as to the fact that the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist come into this category. In the case of these two specifically instituted sacraments, where a competent minister with the correct intention uses the matter and form specified by Our Lord there is absolute certainty that they will be validly confected. Dr. Francis Clark writes in his classic study. Anglican Orders and Defect of Intention:

The only formulae that infallibly and necessarily contain the essential significance of a sacrament are those which have been canonized by being instituted by Christ and His Church for that purpose. Such words when reproduced exactly, are removed beyond the reach of ambiguity or private distortion. Thus for example the formula for Baptism and the words of consecration in the Eucharist are always and necessarily a sufficient sacramental form, even if included in a rite of obvious heretical import (p. 183).

Some proponents of the invalidity thesis base their case upon what they term a defective "intention of the rite." As evidence for this defective intention they cite the presence of Protestant Observers in the committee (Consilium) which concocted the new rite; the definition of the Mass in terms applicable to a Protestant Communion Service in Article 7 of the first version of the General Instruction (Institutio Generalis) and the removal of so many specifically sacrificial prayers from the Ordinary of the Tridentine Mass. All three points are examined full and very critically in Pope Paul's New Mass. Not one of them has the least relevance to the validity of the New Mass as there is no sound basis in Catholic theology for the concept of an "intention of a rite." The requirements for the valid confection of a sacrament have already been listed: a competent minister using the correct matter and form and intending to do what the Church does. The Church has nowhere stipulated that in addition to these elements there must be an orthodox "intention of the rite." This phrase seems to have first come into use during the controversy following Apostolicac Curae when some opponents and defenders of the Bull mistakenly concluded that the defect of intention referred to in it was that of the rite, whereas it was the ministerial intention of those first using it. Dr. Francis Clark has proved this beyond any possible shadow of doubt in the book already cited.

What of the intentions of those who compose a sacramental rite? In the case of the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist which were instituted specie, the intentions of those who compose a rite are irrelevant to validity. All that matters is whether the matter and form specified by Our Lord are incorporated—obviously defective ministerial intention could render the use of such a rite invalid. I have already quoted Dr. Clark to the effect that the form specified by Our Lord will insure validity in these two sacraments even "in a rite of obvious heretical import." This is not simply a theological opinion but a fact attested to by the Teaching Authority of the Church in actual cases. The Holy See has upheld the validity of baptisms administered by Protestant sects which deny the doctrine of baptismal regeneration and have devised baptismal rites intended to manifest their rejection of this doctrine (see Pope Paul's New Mass, pp. 335-6). Cranmer drew up his 1549 and 1552 Communion Services with the aim of manifesting his rejection of Catholic Eucharistic teaching. Most traditionalists presume as a matter of course that these rites were invalid, but during the course of wide and intensive research on this topic I have not come across one Catholic historian or theologian who questioned the validity of these rites. The only comments 1 have been able to find on this matter confirmed that these rites could be used validly by a validly ordained priest with the correct intention as they both contain the form specified by Our Lord (see Pope Paul's New Mass, p. 337). There can be no doubt that, during the reign of King Edward VI, the majority of the clergy used the new rites with the intention of offering Mass particularly in the case of the 1549 rite. This intention is attested to by the complaints of the Protestant Reformers themselves, who were outraged that the new service was being used in a manner contrary to their intention in composing and imposing it (see Cranmer's Godly Order, pp. 127 and 130). Obviously, when priests who had been ordained with the traditional Missal died out the Anglican Communion Service ceased to be valid.

As the New Mass includes the essential sacramental form specified by Our Lord it would not have been affected from the point of view of validity even had Pope Paul VI intended to promulgate no more than a Protestant Communion Service. As those who have read my books and articles will know, I could hardly be described as an admirer of this unhappy pontiff. But in fairness to him, there is good reason to suppose that he had not read the original General Instruction containing the defective Article 7 before its publication (see Pope Paul's New Mass, p. 506). When the defects of the General Instruction were pointed out to him an attempt was made to rectify them—even if the corrections did not go far enough. Far more important, a Foreword (Proœmium) was added to the revised version when it was published in 1970 stating quite unequivocally that the New Mass was intended to enshrine the teaching of the Council of Trent (see Pope Paul's New Mass, pp. 297-307). This may not have been the intention of some members of the Consilium which devised it, but it was clearly the intention of the Pope who promulgated it. The weakness of the New Mass lies in the fact that its prayers do not express the Eucharistic teaching of the Council of Trent with the force, beauty, and clarity of the Tridentine Mass. As I have said elsewhere, the fact that it was necessary to add this Foreword protesting that the New Mass really is intended to enshrine the teaching of Trent is a far more damning indictment of it than any criticism made by traditionalists. The nature of the Tridentine Mass is made clear by the prayers of the Mass (lex orandi, lex credendi). The nature of the New Mass needs to be clarified by an explanation extrinsic to the rite itself.

While on the subject of sacramental validity, it might be helpful to comment briefly on the five sacraments instituted generically by Our Lord, i.e., sacraments in which He left it to His Church to specify the precise matter and form necessary for validity. Even here there is no question as any "intention of a rite," although the intentions of those who framed a new rite outside the unity of the Church might be taken into consideration as a constituent factor in deciding upon its validity. The Catholic position on this matter has been well summarized by Dr. Francis Clark in Anglican Orders and Defect of Intentkm (p. 10):

The ultimate test of the validity of sacramental rites is not to be found in scholarship and liturgical research alone. When the sufficiency or insufficiency of a rite is in question, the decisive norm is the acceptance or rejection of it by the Catholic Church. So it can be argued that when the head of the Church officially rejects a rite as incapable of mediating sacramental efficacy, as he did in the constitution Apostoticae Curae, he is not only judging authoritatively about a past dogmatic fact, but is also exercising in the present what may be called "practical infallibility." Even by itself, prescinding from anything that had gone before, this solemn act of the Holy See was sufficient to disown the Anglican rite as not a sacramental rite of the Catholic Church. Thus there has been since 1896 an added source of certainty about the invalidity of the Anglican rite—a certainty based on the "practical infallibility" of the Church's determining decrees, which in the sacramental sphere guarantee what they declare.

The "practical infallibility" to which Dr. Clark refers is an aspect of the Church's Teaching Authority of which some Catholics are not aware. The primary object (objectum primarium) of the Teaching Authority is the body of immediately revealed truths and facts, i.e., the Truths of Revelation. The infallible doctrinal power of the Church extends, however, secondarily to all those truths and facts which are a consequence of the teaching of Revelation or a supposition of it (objectum secondarium). The fact that Our Lord instituted the Sacrament of Order is a fact of Revelation. It is taught infallibly within the scope of the primary object of the Teaching Authority. However, as Our Lord instituted the priesthood it is essential for the faithful to know who is and who is not a priest. For example, the oriental rites—Orthodox and Uniate—have completely different ordination rites from the Latin Church but the Magisterium has always accepted their validity. When the Church of England composed a new ordination rite it was pronounced invalid by Pope Paul IV in 1555, and this has been the consistent judgment of the Church since that time. The judgment of Pope Paul IV and its ratification by subsequent pontiffs, such as Pope Leo XIII in Apostolicae Curae, cannot be the object of an infallible ex cathedra pronouncement as Our Lord did not reveal that Anglican Orders are invalid. This judgment comes into the category of what are known as dogmatic facts which come within the secondary object of the Church's infallibility. It would have been meaningless for Our Lord to institute sacraments without enabling the faithful to know with certainty whether they were being administered validly or not. Thus, if the Church states that a particular sacramental rite is valid we can be certain that it is, and if she declares that it is invalid then we know that this is true. The ultimate authority for deciding whether or not rites are valid is, of course, the Pope. Once the Pope has formally promulgated a new sacramental rite it would be the height of presumption to so much as question its validity. Clearly, there is much more to a sacramental rite than the question of validity. The prayers and ceremonies surrounding the essential form could express the nature of the sacrament far less effectively in the new form than the old. In such a case the faithful would have the right and duty to protest and, where they judged the matter sufficiently grave, to insist upon adhering to the older form. This is a very different matter from questioning the validity of a new rite.

I have gone to a great deal of trouble to show in my book The Order of Melchisedech that the new rite of ordination expresses Catholic teaching on the Sacrament of Order far less clearly than the old rite, in fact it hardly expresses it at all. I have undertaken the same task with the New Mass in Pope Paul's New Mass. I can thus hardly be called a defender of the new rites, a charge which will certainly be brought against me by some of those who read this article. As I said earlier, however sincere their intentions, some traditionalists are concerned less with restoring the Tridentine Mass to the altars of the Church than with winning acceptance for their own theological speculations.

A number of people have asked for my opinion of the ICEL translation of the form for the ordination of a priest. As I point out in The Order of Melchisedech, the new rite does contain the essential matter and form specified by Pope Pius XII in his Apostolic Constitution Sacramentum Ordinis in 1947. Dr. Francis Clark noted in the book already mentioned (which was first published in 1956) that: "Since the Constitution Sacramentum Ordinis of Pius XII it would seem that no priestly ordination in which the minister uses exactly the words prescribed in that document, could be impugned on the grounds of defective form, whatever defects there might be in the other elements of the rite" (p. 183). I am far from happy with the way in which the ICEL has translated this form as it seems to have been phrased with ecumenical acceptability in mind. However, I obtained the opinion of one of Europe's outstanding Catholic scholars, a theologian and a linguist, and he assures me that the ICEL version of the form is a linguistically acceptable rendering of the original (see The Order of Melchisedech, pp. 88-9) There is thus no basis for questioning the validity of the new ordination rite, even in its English version. I have no qualms in attending Tridentine Masses celebrated by priests ordained in the new rite, and I know that Archbishop Lefebvre has accepted the services of at least one such priest to work with the Society of Saint Pius X.

A final point on the question of ordination concerns that of intention. What happens if the ordaining bishop has unorthodox views on the nature of the priesthood or has even lost his belief in it? The answer is that: "Every validly consecrated bishop, including heretical, schismatic, simonistic, or excommunicated bishops, can validly dispense the Sacrament of Order provided that he has the requisite intention, and follows the external rite" (see Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, p. 458). Had Cranmer performed his ordinations using the traditional rite, the Church would have accepted them as valid despite his known heretical beliefs. The intention required from the ordaining bishop is the habitual intention of the doing what the Church does, i.e., he must have the intention of conferring what the Church confers in the ceremonies of ordination—he does not need to have the precise intention in mind while saying the form, he might be thinking of his breakfast at the time. He does not even need to believe what the Catholic Church believes about the sacrament in question, he need not even believe that the ceremony he is performing will have any effect at all, but if he follows the external rite seriously without giving any sign that his intention is NOT to ordain, then there is no justification of questioning the validity of the ordination. Similarly, the ordinand needs only the habitual intention of receiving what the Church intends to give in the sacrament. Thus if an ordinand believed that all the rite empowered him to do was to act as president of the assembly because, as a result of defective seminary training, he believed that this was what the Church meant by Orders, he would not need to be reordained if he was later brought to understand the true nature of the Catholic priesthood. I can imagine that these remarks may surprise some readers who have never studied theology, but they are simply basic Catholic teaching. Appendix II of The Order of Melchisedech contains a detailed study of Catholic teaching on ministerial intention based largely on the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas (III, Q. LXIV). In Article 9 he answers the objection that if the minister intends to do what the Church docs he must believe what the Church believes. St. Thomas answers:

Such unbelief does not hinder the intention of conferring the Sacrament. But if his faith be defective in regard to the very Sacrament that he confers, although he believe that no inward effect is caused by the thing done outwardly, yet he does know that the Catholic Church intends to confer a sacrament by that which is outwardly done. Wherefore, his unbelief notwithstanding, he can intend to do what the Church does, albeit he esteem it to be nothing. And such an intention suffices for a Sacrament because as stated above (Art. 8, ad 2) the minister of a Sacrament acts in the person of the Church by whose faith any defect in the minister's faith is made good.

To sum up what has been said in this article, those who are truly concerned with upholding Catholic Tradition will follow the example of Archbishop Lefebvre. They will concern themselves not with theological speculation which few among them (priests included) are competent to undertake, but with defending, or preserving, and handing on intact the Faith which they themselves received. Those who study the work of the Archbishop carefully will see how positive everything he undertakes is. He does not devote himself to attacking the Pope or even the bishops but to founding seminaries where the traditional formation can be given to aspirants to the priesthood, to founding convents where the traditional values of the religious life can be upheld, and above all to preserving the Tridentine Mass as part of the living Catholic tradition throughout the world. He is, of course, also concerned with providing a sound Catholic education for young Catholics; the Society has opened a good number of schools—this year sees the opening of a Catholic university in Paris.

Up to this point the efforts of Pope John Paul II to halt the disintegration of the Latin Church in the West have proved ineffective particularly in the U.S.A., where his instructions are virtually ignored by the bishops. More and more conservative Catholics are coming to realize that it is all but impossible to live a fully Catholic life within the official structures of the "American Church." The positive approach which I have suggested will attract such disillusioned conservatives into the traditionalist movement. But they need to be sure that we are true Catholics in communion with the Pope, concerned solely with upholding Tradition within the Church even if this results in the censure of our bishops and, for a time, the Holy See itself. But such people will be repelled if we appear to be a schismatic group which does not recognize Pope John Paul II as the undoubted Vicar of Christ upon earth and questions the validity of papally promulgated sacramental rites.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The books by Michael Davies referred to in this article can he ordered from the Angelus Press with the exception of The Order of Melchisedech which can be obtained for $7.50 postpaid from The Remnant, 2539 Morrison Avenue, St. Paul, Minn. 55117. Anglican Orders and Defect of Intention is out of print.