July 1978 Print

Courtesy of the New Oxford Review

When, among the reforms of Vatican II, the Curia and its powers were abolished or, to be more precise, subdivided into a number of offices, it was done for the purpose of "democratizing" the procedures, including those of trials, examinations and condemnations. The case of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre shows that the new procedures contain a remarkable degree of secrecy, duplicity, and the worst kind of misuse of ecclesiastic authority.

This is no place to retrace the whole history of the Case. We have only two objectives in mind: bring the reader up to date and rectify the falsehoods disseminated (in this order) by the Vatican, the French espicopate, and the media.

The seminary of Ecône and the few other houses that Mgr. Lefebvre has been establishing in various countries (Italy, U. S. A., Canada, etc.) are neither hotbeds of heresy nor centers of disobedience to the Roman Catholic Church. Attention is called to them only when contrasted to the Church (now in a state of doctrinal and organizational anarchy) which tolerates the most absurd "experiments" and "researches". Ecône, following orthodoxy, seems, in contrast, a way-out, extreme case. And the media possess the stylistic tricks to present it as a strange, dark, conspiratorial, not what "twentieth century man" can accept as a modernized religion. My own visit to Ecône has convinced me that the place is not—would not have been twenty years ago—exceptional in any respect: some 130 seminarians from many countries are trained for the priesthood. Ecône is not a place for illuminati, schismatics, heretics; if any of the young men educated there now will ever be saints, only the future will tell. That they are already slated for martyrdom by the ecclesiastic authorities is evident.

Last year's meeting between the Pope and Mgr. Lefebvre yielded no result. Some argue that the Pope has been systematically misinformed by his advisors and by the French bishops; personally, I do not believe it. The pontifical ideology today dictates the crushing of the Lefebvres, at no matter what sacrifice to the Church and its millions of misled, confused, manipulated faithful. Yes, people say, but Mgr. Lefebvre avoids dialogue with the Vatican, ordains priests, and takes political positions. No, one must answer: he flew at once to Rome when the Pope agreed to talk with him, although he had been rudely handled by the Papal Commission (they called him "stupid") even before then; he ordains his seminarians at the end of their studies as is his function as a bishop in an otherwise devastated Church which no longer attracts vocations; his political utterances, praising the regime in Argentina, for example, are more than mild compared to the pro-Castro or pro-Mao adulatory statements of other bishops or the Communist Party membership of French priests.

For the past two years the question is persistently asked, why is Mgr. Lefebvre not excommunicated? I think the sole reason for Vatican hesitation is political. Behind Lefebvre there is an increasingly large following in every country. Their fervor and sacrificial spirit is unlimited, as I shall illustrate below. Now this in itself would be no obstacle to excommunication; after all, the present Vatican line is favorable to and tolerant of the implantation of a new spirit—call it ecumenical, modernist, protestant, liberal, what you will—and thus to the elimination of the old spirit's representatives, whether priests or laymen. It is more probable that excommunication is held up by the coming legislative elections in France (March 1978) where the outcome may be hanging on a fraction of a percentage of the vote. If the Mgr. is excommunicated before March, the more than divided "rightist" coalition under the Hamlet-like Giscard may very well lose hundreds of thousands of pro-Lefebvre voters who would abstain rather than vote for a government that did not use its great influence with the Vatican. And if the leftist coalition comes to power in France, Italy would surely follow. The dilemma of whether or not to excommunicate Lefebvre will be decided after the French elections—and then quickly! The Archbishop and his followers have only until April 1978—unless, of course, new things happen, like the election of a new Pope.

Anyway, time presses on. Last April Ecône received some important allies, one in the person of Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget, the priest-poet, and the thousands of people who helped him take over the church of St. Nicholas du Chardonnet in one of Paris's oldest quarters. The reader may speak now of "violence." But this is France: St. Bernard was "violent," so was Joan of Arc and Bossuet and Bernanos. So was Jesus Christ in chasing the money changers from the synagogue. For years the "traditionalists" have begged Cardinal Marty for a church where the Mass of Pius V (Tridentine Mass) could be celebrated; the Cardinal, closing his eyes to the desecration of Reims Cathedral by copulating hippies and to the Buddhist celebration in the Cathedral of Rennes, left the petitioners without an answer. Last Easter they moved into St. Nicholas, made it clear that only the old Latin Mass would be celebrated, and that they would not leave before a church is officially offered them as a permanent abode. For more emphasis, they set up a permanent guard of several dozen young men to keep out troublemakers. These young people, all of them making financial sacrifices by leaving their jobs or studies for the duration of the "siege," canalize the worshippers, keep a watch on the street, and provide protection to the half dozen priests celebrating Mass.

I visited St. Nicholas on Sunday, June 12th, of this year. It was 11 o'clock people were coming out en masse, their way practically blocked by a similar mass of people wanting to enter for the next celebration. The crowd in the square in front of the church was enormous, waiting for the 12 o'clock Mass. Before entering, I talked to several policemen in the vicinity. Without exception they sympathized with the "occupants," partly on the old religious grounds, partly on political grounds. "It is doubtful," a young police officer told me, "that if ordered to evacuate the church, my men would obey. But at any rate, what politician would dare give such an order, and certainly not Chirac, the new mayor. Besides if Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget personally stands in our way, we would not touch him or whatever and whomever he protects."

After Mass, I was received by the Mgr. in a room of the sacristy. We are in France! He is 84, as alive as an eel, white hair to his shoulders, long nails like a mandarin, and a pipe between his lips. His manners and speech could be placed somewhere between the eras of Louis XIV or Louis XV. First we spoke of doctrine and philosophy, which was made easier by the fact that we had read some of each other's writings, I his poetry—poetry which had just been given an enthusiastic review in the Osservatore Romano where the editors had not realized that the poet Ducaud-Bourget and Mgr. D-B are the same person! Huge embarrassment a few days later and repulsive back-tracking. So much for pettiness...

The Mgr. had just arrived from the Salle Wagram where he said Mass before the 800 people who could not get into St. Nicholas that morning. In other areas of France churches are similarly occupied by those whom the new inquisitors contemptuously described as a few old people and some reactionaries. I had carefully scrutinized the crowd in and outside the Church: all age groups were represented; of course, whether they were reactionaries, I had no way of discerning.

The Mgr. told me of the endless lies, unkept promises, threats, and vexations on the part of Cardinal Marty, his bureaucrats, and the Vatican. Thank God for the brutal anti-church laws of 1905: all ecclesiastic property was then confiscated by the State, so that the Cardinal is today unable to send his shock troops to re-occupy St. Nicholas; and as we saw, the Government and the Municipality prefer not to touch this hot potato, for fear of dividing their electorate. Mgr. D-B is consequently confident that nothing will happen. We then spoke of the recent court decision (lawsuit by the regular cure of the church) to ask the Roman Catholic philosopher Jean Guitton, supposedly impartial, to mediate between the Archdiocese and the occupants. Guitton is a soft man and an opportunist, Mgr. D-B told me; he does not wish to jeopardize his status as a biographer of Paul VI. With all that—I was shown letters—Guitton expressed his "deference sympathique" to D-B and called his own role as a mediator a wonderful opportunity to meet him. Therefore I was surprised to read in the Express interview with Guitton (late July) his disparaging comments on Lefebvre's and Ducaud-Bourget's intelligence, and likening of Lefebvre's position vis-à-vis the Pope to that of an Algerian OAS General vis-à-vis De Gaulle. A ludicrous and not even flattering comparison—after which one may speak disparagingly of Guitton's intelligence, too.

Anyway, the "mediation" is off, but meanwhile the "Case" is expanding and more "allies" are joining Lefebvre. In early June the princess Pallavicini opened her palazzo in Rome for 1500 guests to hear the Archbishop re-explain very simply that he would not renounce the faith of 2,000 years. "I do not want to die a Protestant," he said. There was an indescribably fervent ovation, not only by the guests in the salons, but also by people sitting on the stairs and the multitude outside who listened through loudspeakers to Lefebvre's words.

The Vatican took this as a further provocation—to carry the "opposition to the Pope" to within the latter's earshot. The Pope's vicar (as Bishop of Rome), Cardinal Ugo Poletti, attacked the Princess in a press statement—to which he received a responding statement amounting to "mind your own business, I receive in my home whom I wish." The "mind your own business" is quite an appropriate warning, since Rome now has a fellow-traveling mayor elected on the Communist list.

So much for the order of events surrounding the Lefebvre Case. Two observations are now in order: One is that Pope and bishops have now definitely placed their bets on far-leftist victories—and that they will add their own contribution to those victories. Not a right-winger, but the left-Catholic J. M. Comenach writes that while under Solzhenitsyn's influence young Marxist professors denounce Marx, Lenin, and the gulag, Catholic priests and bishops are discovering the beauties of materialist-atheist dictatorship. True, the confusion in the Church is such (it is no longer just machiavellism) that on the one hand the Pope speaks optimistically of Euro-Communism while on the other hand Cardinal Konig warns that the East European Communist regimes have not deviated from their policy of destroying the Church. On the one hand the French bishops declare that there is no such thing as "Catholic social doctrine" and praise the "generous intentions" of many Marxists, on the other hand they issue half-hearted documents suggesting—but oh, how indirectly "since they do not want to issue directives to the Catholic voters" [sic]—that it may be incompatible to be a Catholic and a Communist at the same time. Under such conditions, it is clear that a Lefebvre and an Econe are regarded as negligible quantities, in fact opportune pretexts to show future leftist regimes how the Church abhors this "reactionary remnant."

The second observation concerns the root of the issue, independent of political, even mundane preoccupations. May a Catholic, even if bishop, oppose the magisterium? But: is the magisterium now really exercised? Does anybody know what the Pope wants? Is he not contradicting himself? Are all those millions who no longer go to church since exactly Vatican II (and not for other reasons as the progressivist sociologists allege) all in error, are they wrong to rebel against catechisms that teach that Christ was just a wonderful man, that the Mass is a mere "commemorative event," that transubstantiation is a scientific impossibility? The scandal is that Catholics are told that the old authority-bound Church is over, that now they are free to express themselves and to dialogue with their pastors—and at the same time the new bureaucrats (no longer the old Curia) impose on them sets of new dogmas, new rites, and a new authority, colder, more contemptuous, more mendacious than at any time before. Compare only Mgr. Lefebvre's discourses and homilies with Rahner's "existentialist" sermons and Hans Küng's book, On Being a Christian, with its denial of Christ's divinity and praise of the Castro and Allende "experiments"—to know against whom the magisterium ought to raise the threat of excommunication. It is no wonder that Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget demands, in a letter to Cardinal Marty, to be tried by an ecclesiastical court and be condemned if found doctrinally guilty. But the new inquisitors, while as cruel as those who dealt with medieval heretics, are more cowardly—and less knowledgeable of doctrine. They hand those whom they secretly condemned over to the secular power, in other words to the media to be publicly insulted, mocked, pilloried. Dialogue, flattery, and incense are reserved for the Communist regimes, terrorists, and persecutors of Christians. Because he said out loud what millions believe and suffer, Mgr. Lefebvre was turned into a case, a dossier awaiting a sinister signature.