NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

I missed this one from days ago! Sorry....


Did the Pope heal, or deepen,
the Lefebvrist schism?
by George Weigel
Newsweek Web Exclusive

January 26, 2009


What do the Cardinal Richelieu and King Louis XVI, the Bastille and the Reign of Terror, the Bourbons and Robespierre,
the revolutionary depredations in the Vendée, the Dreyfus Affair, the anti-clericalism of the French Third Republic, and
the World War II Vichy regime have to do with the schismatic movement that the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre led out
of the Roman Catholic Church in 1988 — a movement that Pope Benedict XVI is now trying to move toward reconciliation
by lifting the excommunications of its four illegally ordained bishops on Jan. 21?

In a word: everything.

There are, of course, many different kinds of people in the Lefebvrist movement; the great majority of them are men
and women who find the older forms of Catholic piety — especially the Latin Mass celebrated in the Tridentine form —
more spiritually beneficial than the reformed liturgy that followed the Vatican Council II (1962-1965).

And it is also true that Archbishop Lefebvre, one of the leaders of the anti-reformist faction at Vatican Council II, was
very unhappy with what was done to the Church's liturgy after the council.

But Lefebvre was also a man formed by the bitter hatreds that defined the battle lines in French society and culture from
the French Revolution to the Vichy regime.

Thus his deepest animosities at the council were reserved for another of Vatican Council II's reforms: the council's
declaration that "the human person has a right to religious freedom," which implied that coercive state power ought not
be put behind the truth-claims of the Catholic Church or any other religious body. [Which is, of course, a fallacious
implication. Religious freedom neither denies the claim of each religion to be the 'true' one nor the right of every religion to try to win
others to them (evangelization)! It simply leaves it to the individual to decide what faith he wants to profess.]

This, to Lefebvre, bordered on heresy. For it cast into serious question (indeed, for all practical purposes it rejected)
the altar-and-throne arrangements Lefebvre believed ought to prevail — as they had in France before being overthrown
in 1789, with what Lefebvre regarded as disastrous consequences for both church and society.

Marcel Lefebvre's war, in other words, was not simply, or even primarily, against modern liturgy. It was against
modernity, period. For modernity, in Lefebvre's mind, necessarily involved aggressive secularism, anti-clericalism, and
the persecution of the church by godless men.

That was the modernity he knew, or thought he knew (Lefebvre seems not to have read a fellow Frenchman's reflections on
a very different kind of modernity, Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America"); it was certainly the modernity he loathed.
And to treat with this modernity — by, for example, affirming the right of religious freedom and the institutional separation
of church and state — was to treat with the devil.

The conviction that the Catholic Church had in fact entered into such a devil's bargain by preemptively surrendering to
the modern world at Vatican Council II became the ideological keystone of Lefebvre's movement. [Why then did Lefebvre put
his signature to the Council documents, according to all the reports I have read? I need to check this out!]

And the result was dramatic: Lefebvrists came to understand themselves as the beleaguered repository of authentic
Catholicism — or, as the movement is wont to put it, the Tradition (always with a capital "T").

For 10 years, Pope John Paul II tried to convince the recalcitrant Archbishop Lefebvre otherwise; he got nowhere.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger then tried to mediate. But at the end of the day, Marcel Lefebvre hated modernity more than
he loved Rome.

So in 1988, rejecting the personal pleas of John Paul II and Ratzinger (men who could hardly be accused, reasonably,
of preemptive concessions to modernity), an aging Lefebvre ordained four bishops to carry on his work, without the requisite
authorization from Rome.


[I find it odd that Weigel should omit to mention here - and it is not irrelevant! - that Lefebvre proceeded with the ordinations after he had
signed an agreement with Rome, brokered by Cardinal Ratzinger. Again, I need to read more about why Lefebvre decided to renege
on his signed agreement. I hope I can find a ready English version of that agreement, which is available in Italian.

It bears translation because it would basically foreshadow the arrangements that the Vatican and the present FSSPX leadership
may reach to arrive at full communion. It appears to be similar to the arrangemennt granted by the Vatican to the French-based
Institut du Bon Pasteur, composed of ex-Lefebvrians who came to an agreement with the Vatican in 2006.]

Those four bishops (whose orders, while illegally conferred under Church law, are nonetheless valid sacraments in the Church's
eyes) automatically incurred excommunication by participating in a schismatic act — an act in conscious defiance of Church
authority that cuts one off from the full communion of the Church.

It is those excommunications that have now been lifted by Benedict XVI, in an effort to move the Lefebvrist movement
toward reconciliation with Rome and toward the restoration of full communion.

That one of the Lefebvrist bishops, Richard Williamson, is a Holocaust denier and a promoter of the "Protocols of
the Elders of Zion" has drawn considerable attention and commentary, particularly from Jewish scholars and religious leaders
who have made large investments in Jewish-Catholic dialogue since Vatican Council II.

Their concern is entirely understandable, although it has to be said that the lifting of Williamson's excommunication in no way
constitutes a papal endorsement of Williamson's lunatic view of history, or a retraction of John Paul II's 1998 statement
deploring the Holocaust, or a revocation of Vatican II's teaching
on the sin of anti-Semitism.

At the same time, it ought to be recognized that Williamson's Holocaust denial and his embrace of a crude anti-Semitic
canard like the "Protocols" is not all that surprising, given that Lefebvrist political ideology grew out of the same French
fever swamps that produced the anti-Dreyfusards. (Even as it ought to be recognized that the hypersecularists of
the Third French Republic hated Catholics as much as some anti-Dreyfusards hated Jews.)

Williamson's inanities, while deplorable and disgusting, are something of a sideshow, however. For the highest stakes
in this drama hove into view when Bishop Bernard Fellay, the current head of the Lefebvrist movement, issued a Jan. 24
letter on the lifting of the excommunications to the movement's faithful.

It is an astonishing document, declaring as it does that "Catholic Tradition is no longer excommunicated" and that
the Lefebvrists constitute those "Catholics attached to Tradition throughout the world."

The letter goes on to affirm "all the councils up to the Second Vatican Council about which we express some reservations."
And it implies that the talks that will now commence between the Vatican and the Lefebvrists, now that
the excommunications have been lifted, will focus on those "reservations."

Responsible canon lawyers have raised questions about whether this arrogance on the part of Bishop Fellay does not cast
into question his fulfillment of the canonical requirements for a lawful lifting of his excommunication.

In any event, non-canonists will read his letter as Fellay's unilateral declaration of victory: the Lefebrvists have
been right all along; the Holy See has finally recognized the error of its ways; the only things left to discuss are
the terms of surrender.

[In fact, the Vatican under Benedict XVI has chosen to leave apart discussion of any dispute on Vatican-II - as it did with the IBP - from
the excommunication issue, for the simple reason that dissent with Vatican II (which is part of the Magisterium) is not an excommunicable
offense!

To argue that the Pope should have insisted on threshing this out first with the FSSPX would be to argue that dissent is
excommunicable - and what would that make of the millions of Catholics who dissent on contraception, abortion, assisted
reproduction, women priests, married priests, you name it? Not to mention the theologian priests who even teach against
the divinity of Christ - they are not excommunicated, and unlike the lefebvrians, their ministry is rarely suspended
(not recognized as valid by the Church), because they can go on administering the Sacraments]

Ironically, but hardly coincidentally, the Catholic left (which has been clever enough to avoid formal schism while living in
intellectual and psychological schism since Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical on family planning, Humanae Vitae) has welcomed
Benedict XVI's canonical rescue of the Lefebvrist bishops, with numerous left-leaning Catholic dissidents now saying, in effect,
"Where's my bailout?" [And this is the very consequence of the fallacious reasoning that dissent with the Magisterium is cause for excommunication!

In modern times, the Church has never prohibited personal dissent, even if organized (but not enough so as to break away as the Lefebvrians
did), because that is an individual freedom. She disapproves of it, and it is harmful to the Church because it means secularity has overcome
loyalty to the principles of the faith in the dissenting individuals, but it becomes the individual's personal responsibility for which
he must answer to God if not to the Church.]

Benedict XVI undoubtedly intended this lifting of excommunications as a step toward healing a wound in the church. Bishop Fellay's
letter, in response to the Pope's gesture, suggests that the healing has not taken place.

Moreover, Fellay's letter raises the stakes for everyone, and to the highest level. For what is at issue, now, is the integrity
of the Church's self-understanding, which must include the authenticity of the teaching of Vatican Council II.

Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, the Pope's spokesman, emphasized to reporters on Jan. 24 that the lifting of the excommunications
did not mean that "full communion" had been restored with the Lefebvrists.

The terms of such reconciliation are, presumably, the subject of the "talks" to which Bishop Fellay referred in his letter.
Those talks should be interesting indeed.

For it is not easy to see how the unity of the Catholic Church will be advanced if the Lefebvrist faction does not publicly and
unambiguously affirm Vatican Council II's teaching on the nature of the Church, on religious freedom, and on the sin of
anti-Semitism. [Mons. Fellay has in recent days given very clear and explicit statements of the FSSPX position against anti-Semitism and
its consequences.]

Absent such an affirmation, pick-and-choose cafeteria Catholicism will be reborn on the far fringes of the Catholic right,
just when it was fading into insignificance on the dwindling Catholic left, its longtime home. [Am I reading right here? How can
anyone say that cafeteria Catholicism is 'fading into insignificane'? In the United States alone, all those Catholics who voted for Obama
are mostly cafeteria Catholics - liberals who cannot abide the moral orthodoxy of the Church - and they were certainly not insignificant!
National Catholic Reporter, America, Commonweal and their ilk may well have something tp say about this 0"how dare you say that
our constituencies are 'fading into insignificance'? And what does that make of us, then?". And think of all the tens of millions of
nominal Catholics in Europe.]




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Mr. Weigel gives a very useful background to understand Mons. Lefebvre's anti-modernity which is shared by many French
traditionalist Catholics like him who were shaped by the same history and influences.

But I am disappointed with his treatment of the excommunication issue itself because it tends to reinforce false ideas about
excommunication. Also, he fails to make the connection to the IBP in terms of precedent for 'regularizing' a splinter group, even if the IBP
had no excommunicated bishops.