Apologia Pro II

by Lucille Quinlan

Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre, Vol. II,
by Michael Davies,
The Angelus Press,
Box 1387,
Dickinson, Texas 77539.
393 pp., $10.00.

MICHAEL DAVIES' work is solid, objective and completely fair. He does not browbeat his readers; he allows the facts and documents to speak for themselves. As he remarks in the Introduction to the present volume:

Those who have read Volume I will recall how the book came to be written in the first place. We have to thank Monsignor George Leonard, Chief Information Officer of the Catholic Information Office of England and Wales, and nothing less than the Catholic Truth Society for his wretched little pamphlet, "Light on Archbishop Lefebvre." In the last century, a similar piece of misrepresentation by Charles Kingsley resulted in Cardinal Newman's Apologia. Not that the Lefebvre volumes make any literary claims; they have a more important function. They are the stuff of which history is made.

Since the light Mgr. Leonard cast on his subject was dim to the point of darkness, a serious misrepresentation of facts, and since he refused to withdraw his allegations, Michael Davies answered in another pamphlet, "Archbishop Lefebvre—The Truth," which proved so popular that several reprints were called for and the Archbishop gained many new supporters as a result. With all this interest aroused, Davies saw that the only way to put the whole case before the public was to do what the early Christian apologists used to do—write an "apologia."

Without his opposition and obstinacy, Michael Davies would not have begun the monumental task of sorting and assembling and commenting upon all this historic material. We who are living through these momentous times do not see it in the full perspective, even though aware that great things are going on. But we can appreciate the twist of Providence, whereby something wrongly done leads to something done right. We may even refer to Mgr. Leonard's bad little pamphlet as another felix cuIpa—fruitful error!

The book is not intended to be the continuing story of Archbishop Lefebvre personally, nor of the priestly society which he founded, nor of the traditionalist movement of which they are a part. The purpose of this volume is to present the documents relating to the case "Rome v. Lefebvre," during the years 1977-1979, the last two of the reign of Paul VI and the first of John Paul II. Other material is added, certainly not to give light relief, one can be sure, but to illustrate the growing support for the traditional cause and the remarkable development of its seminaries at a time when others were empty.

Thus, early in the book, we have the account of the "miracle" of St. Nicholas du Chardonnet, the takeover (or, what the French traditionalists prefer the "liberation") of a dilapidated and little-used church in Paris dating back to the days before the Revolution. It had no more than a hundred people attending there on a Sunday, and there was another parish church literally a stone's throw away. On the other hand, there were up to 8,000 people every Sunday compelled to hear the Mass of their forefathers in a hall called the Salle Wagram. It was too much for French blood to bear. Negotiation and petition had gotten them nowhere!

The whole operation was carried out with precision, dignity, and a certain French sense of style. One is not surprised to learn that one of the priests concerned was a former Chaplain-General to the French Resistance, Father Henri Bruckberger, and the celebrant of the first "liberated" Mass in the old church was the 84-year-old Mgr. Ducuad-Borget—"alive as an eel, white hair to his shoulders," poet of high repute and the living image of the Curé of Ars. No wonder it is reported that, in spite of a court order to eject the traditionalists, no policeman was willing to lay a finger on such a man. Besides, it happened that the Chief of Police of the district himself attended Mass there!

The situation had really been intolerable, as Father Bruckberger put it:

Today a priest is permitted to lend his church for use by Moslems or Buddhists, Tibetans or Patagonians, hippies . . . by the ambiguous, ambivalent or nomads—but if a poor priest wishes to celebrate the Mass for which the very church was built (and not by the hierarchy but by the people themselves) and if the French people wish to go there to assist at the same Mass that has been said in the place for centuries, then the full fury of the French episcopate falls upon them.

However, in the case of St, Nicholas, the fury fell in vain. Since the First Sunday of Lent, 1977, the old Mass has been celebrated there every day, four times a day, with Vespers and Benediction—and prayers for the Pope. The old church has been cleaned and polished. The white marble of the once grimy statues gleams again, fresh flowers deck the altars. Confessions are heard all day long in various languages, for people come here with joy from all parts of the world to find the Faith of their Fathers living still and wearing the same garb! The "Cranmerian table and its tatty podium" have disappeared. The high altar lives again. The police are certainly needed around St. Nicholas on a Sunday, but only to direct the traffic. The crowds waiting to enter for the next Mass are enormous so that the Salle Wagrum has had to be used again as well. This, at a time when Mass at the regular parish churches is said for smaller and smaller congregations.

Bishop Lefebvre, his cause was considerably strengthened by this French resistance under the leadership of Mgr. Ducaud-Borget in April 1977; and, a few months later he was world news again when the Princess Pallavicini invited 1,500 guests to her palace in Rome to hear the Archbishop put his case. The fervent applause, not only of the guests, but of the crown on the stairs and outside the palace listening to the loudspeakers, could be heard in the papal palace nearby. The surprising thing about this occasion, and that of the "liberation" of St. Nicholas is not their spirited success, but the malice of the reporting in the official Catholic press. References to non-existent "fascist thugs" might have come from Communist journalists. To anyone like myself, old enough to remember, say, the London Universe when Chesterton, Belloc and Father Martindale wrote for it, it seems all but incredible.

Another all but incredible thing was that, a few days after the "affront," as it was termed, of the Archbishop's talk in Rome, so close to the Vatican, the Vatican received the "Butcher of Hungary," Janos Kadar, the man responsible for the mock trial, imprisonment and torture of Cardinal Mindszenty. Pope Paul asked him to co-operate with him "for the moral progress of the nations."

Incidents like these, and others in the book, help to explain the hesitation of the Archbishop in his dealings with those in authority in Rome. Times were not normal. You could not be sure as in the past that such and such a step would have its normal consequence. Whom were you really dealing with? In June 1977 there was an attempt at a truce and the Archbishop was willing to postpone the ordinations, but Rome would give no assurances of a moratorium on the mandatory use of the new rites, nor agree to lift the ban on the Society, uncanonically suppressed in 1975, as he maintained, as he himself had been uncanonically suspended in 1976. Therefore he had no choice but to continue his work. The 1977 ordinations took place in an atmosphere of great emotion before an assembly of between five and seven thousand from all over Europe and beyond. Press, radio and TV reporters were there to spread the news to the world for it was felt, said a Swiss daily, that the Archbishop had "brought about a final break with Rome," and excommunication was probable. Fourteen new priests and twenty-two subdeacons had been added to the "suppressed" fraternity. Ten of the priests and seventeen of the subdeacons were French, a matter of considerable concern to the French Episcopate whose own seminaries were empty or closed. They had taken the progressive side at Vatican II and their opposition to Archbishop Lefebvre dated from that time. It was they who kept up the bitter campaign against him, having the support of their compatriot, Cardinal Villot, Pope Paul VI's Secretary of State. It was Villot who had intervened in 1975 to prevent the Archbishop's case from being heard (as it had every right to be heard in canon law) before the Apostolic Signature. The account of this event is given in Volume I.

But no excommunication took place, though the great newspapers of the world kept predicting it and the new priests from Ecône found anything but a welcome when they returned to their native parishes. As Father Bruekberger put it, "While all sorts of liturgical abuses are tolerated in our churches . . . they are forced to celebrate Mass in secret as during the Reign of Terror. One blushes with shame at the very thought of it."

Meanwhile, the Archbishop had gone on a visit to North and South America, and in Dickinson, Texas, had the joy of re-consecrating the church of Queen of Angels, sold by the local bishop for demolition and, he believed, a parking lot. However, it came into the hands of the traditionalists who had made it into a most beautiful building and center for the flourishing Angelus Press, publishers of the volume under review.

The Archbishop's journey into South America was made difficult but not impossible by the warnings Cardinal Villot had sent to all the papal nuncios that he was not to be received anywhere; but friends all over Latin America contrived to meet him and arrange Masses. At a press conference in Argentina he was asked about his suspension. He replied: "I have no awareness of committing a grave sin in keeping my Catholic Faith." The post-conciliar changes in his view were "leading the faithful, almost unconsciously, to a conversion into Protestantism." He was not seeking "another Church," nor had he any "bellicose intentions." He was just asking the Pope "to be Pope!"

The climate of antagonism in Rome softened a little by January 1978, and the Archbishop's case was re-opened in a letter from Cardinal Seper, head of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It spoke of a "searching examination " and a "real concern for objectivity" in conformity with the ratio agendi of the Congregation, and in the final remarks there was even a reference to the "merits you have accumulated in the course or a long missionary and episcopal career," and the writer seems to regret that "it [the document in question] does no more than allude to various kinds of extenuating circumstances as they affect your present situation." However, "the Congregation which is writing to you knows these things."

After the campaign of calumny and abuse he had endured from his brother bishops in France and Latin America, such language must indeed have offered promise of a fair hearing. Michael Davies, who presents here all the exchanges between the two parties, finds that, unlike his treatment from the Vatican as described in Volume I, that received from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Seper was "scrupulously fair," the questions put being "very perceptive," giving the Archbishop cause to "think deeply about the basis for his attitudes and actions." The reader who is competent to judge such matters will be able to decide how convincing his replies were. This section of the book, and it is the bulk of it, requires careful reading, since it deals with matters lay people have been in the habit of leaving to the clergy. But the Archbishop, in his summing up, has things to say which any suffering lay Catholic can readily assimilate and applaud; for instance, the following:

And the same suffering lay Catholics will readily join in the profession of faith of the Archbishop and his Society:

Anyone who feels the sheer weight of the matters raised in these historic chapters must reflect also on what the discussions meant for the Archbishop, a man in his seventies, approaching the golden jubilee of his priesthood, with commitments all round the world, burdens temporal and spiritual of the deepest consequence. Only once in the long correspondence does it seem he admitted any strain. This was when the negotiations with the Sacred Congregation reached the point of answering in person and he asked if he might bring a companion. This, for no stated reason, was refused, and it seems harsh to the lay readers of this very absorbing account that such a venerable cleric should be kept alone under fire for hours at a time by five interrogators on matters vital to his own future and that of the Church. There were two sessions, January 11 and January 12, 1979, each lasting about three hours. There were certainly written copies made of the questions and answers, and he was able to make adjustments later; but a companion to act as witness and perhaps as aide memoire would have been an act of courtesy, if not of ordinary justice. No wonder he complained to the Holy Father (John Paul II by this time) that the refusal had astonished him. And moreover, he discovered that the dossier obtained from these interviews was to go to certain Cardinals who would then decide his case: and they were the very ones who had previously condemned him, men whose minds were already made up!

It is not possible for a review to cover all these matters. The book is available for all who want to know the truth about this extraordinary man of our time. The sermons he preached at ordinations or at the professions of Sisters of the Society and Letters to Friends and Benefactors, interspersed throughout the volume, reveal the deep faith and rich, simple spirituality of the bishop who has been traduced as a rebel and traitor; while the account of the Jubilee Mass in Paris on September, 1979, attended by between twenty and twenty-five thousand people, reveals the profound admiration and gratitude his courageous defense of the Faith has aroused in the Catholic world.

We cannot be sufficiently grateful to Michael Davies and the Angelus Press for giving us this volume. We can only pray that the third part of the Apologia will find him able to tell the happy ending to the Archbishop's difficulties with Rome.