Archbishop’s
Legacy – I
The Archbishop
died, twenty-five years ago.
Have his
successors followed faithfully? No.
Yesterday, March 25, was the 25th anniversary of the death of a great
man of God, Archbishop Lefebvre, to whom so many Catholics keeping the Faith
today have such a great debt. When in the 1960’s the Revolutionary demons of
the modern world succeeded in bringing under their yoke the mass of Catholic
churchmen either during or after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), it was
the Archbishop who almost single-handed stood by that Catholic Truth which
Catholic Authority, blinded or cowed, was abandoning. For indeed to obey that
Authority given over to the principles of the Revolution, Catholics had to
abandon the Truth of the Church’s unchanging Tradition. Or else, to remain
faithful to that Truth, they had to enter into “disobedience” to the Church
Authorities.
Of course neither the Archbishop nor the Society of St Pius X which he
founded in 1970 were in real disobedience, because Catholic Authority is the
indispensable servant of Catholic Truth: indispensable, because Truth without
Authority is torn to pieces amid the warring opinions of fallible men, but
servant, because Authority is a means and not an end, the means of protecting
and preserving that infallible Truth of Christ which alone can save souls. To
this immutable Church Tradition Archbishop Lefebvre remained faithful to the
end, yet without scorning or defying those Church Authorities which condemned
him to the end. On the contrary he did all he could have done, in fact at a
given moment, on his own admission, even more than he should have done, to help
them to see the Truth and serve it, for the good of the whole Church, but in
vain.
That is when, to ensure the survival of the Truth of salvation, in June
of 1988 he consecrated four bishops without that permission of Church
Authorities which is normally necessary. They must have hoped that his
proceeding without their permission would spell the ruin of his Society, but on
the contrary it flourished, because by now a significant number of souls had
climbed out of their pre-Conciliar “obedience” to understand that Truth has to
come first, and that truthful bishops are essential to the survival of the
Church’s Truth.
But what happened to the Society which he left behind him when he died
two and a half years later? His Catholic wisdom and personal charisma were no
longer there to protect them from the magnetic pull of pre-Conciliar
“obedience,” which took the form of seemingly reasonable propositions of a
diplomatic compromise between Conciliar Authority and Catholic Tradition. False
“obedience,” preferring Authority to Truth, now crept back at the top of the
Society from which the Archbishop had exorcised it, and within a few more years
his Society was hardly recognizable as its misleaders went to Rome, cap in
hand, begging for official recognition from the Church Authorities.
Now Truth has no right to put itself in a position of begging for
anything from a group of liars – “Catholicism is Revolutionary” is a dreadful
lie – but the Society’s misleaders, then and now, justified their humiliating
of Truth by appealing to the Archbishop’s example. For years, they said, he
went down to Rome seeking official approval of the Society, and they were doing
nothing else. But what might have seemed similar was in reality quite
different. While they were going down to Rome in pursuit of some political
agreement, by which, as became clear at the latest in the spring of 2012, they
were ready to compromise doctrine, on the contrary the Archbishop only ever
went down to Rome for the good of the Faith and the Church. For him the official
approval of the Society by Church Authority was only ever a means to help that
Authority back towards Tradition and Truth, and when that Authority in the
spring of 1988 demonstrated once and for all its refusal to look after
Tradition, then the Archbishop broke off all negotiations and diplomatic
contacts, and roundly declared that they would only resume when Rome returned
to doctrinal Truth. In fact the Archbishop’s successors had never understood
him. And today? See next week’s “Comments.”
Kyrie eleison.
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