Marcel Lefebvre

From Conservapedia

Marcel-François Lefebvre (November 29 1905 Tourcoing, France – March 25 1991 Econe, Switzerland), better known as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, was a French Roman Catholic Archbishop. Following a career as an Apostolic Delegate for West Africa and Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, he took the lead in opposing the changes within the Church associated with the Second Vatican Council.

In 1970, Lefebvre founded the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), which is still the world's largest Traditional Catholic priestly society. In 1988, against the orders of Pope John Paul II, the Archbishop consecrated four bishops to continue his work with the SSPX. The Holy See issued a statement that Lefebvre had thereby incurred the automatic excommunication that canon law^[1] applies for such actions. The validity of this remains a subject of acrimonious dispute between many Catholics.

Quotes

• "I well suspected that our refusal to use the New Mass would sooner or later be a stumbling block, but I would have preferred to die rather than confront Rome and the Pope!"^[2]

• "Perhaps one day, in thirty or forty years, a meeting of cardinals gathered together by a future Pope will study and judge the reign of Paul VI; perhaps they will say that there were things that ought to be clearly obvious to people at the time, statements of the Pope that were totally against Tradition. At the moment, I prefer to consider the man on the chair of Peter as the Pope; and if one day we discover for certain that the Pope was not the Pope, at least I will have done my duty. When he is not using his charism of infallibity, the Pope can err. So why should we be scandalized and say, 'So there is no Pope,' like Arius, who was scandalized by Our Lord being humiliated and saying in this Passion, 'My God why have you abandoned me?' Arius reasoned, 'Therefore he is not God!'"^[3]

  --While preaching against the doctrine of Sedevacantism.

• "There are the facts upon which, I think, we can lean. We place ourselves in God's providence. We are convinced that God knows what He is doing. Cardinal Gagnon visited us twelve years after the suspension: after twelve years of being spoken of as outside of the communion of Rome, as rebels and dissenters against the Pope, his visit took place. He himself recognized that what we have been doing is just what is necessary for the reconstruction of the Church. The Cardinal even assisted pontifically at the Mass which I celebrated on December 8, 1987, for the renewal of the promises of our seminarians. I was supposedly suspended and, yet, after twelve years, I was practically given a clean slate. They said we have done well. Thus we did well to resist! I am convinced that we are in the same circumstances today. We are performing an act which apparently... and unfortunately the media will not assist us in the good sense. The headlines will, of course, be "Schism," "Excommunication!" as much as they want to - and, yet, we are convinced that all these accusations of which we are the object, all penalties of which we are the object, are null, absolutely null and void, and of which we will take no account. Just as I took no account of the suspension, and ended up by being congratulated by the Church and by Progressive Churchmen, so likewise in several years - I do not know how many, only the Good Lord knows how many years it will take for Tradition to find - its rights in Rome - we will be embraced by the Roman authorities, who will thank us for having maintained the Faith in our seminaries, in our families, in civil societies, in our countries, and in our monasteries and our religious houses, for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls." ^[4]

  --At the Ecône Consecrations, June 30, 1988.

References

1. ↑ canon 1382 of the Code of Canon Law
2. ↑ Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, "Marcel Lefebvre; The Biography," page 478.
3. ↑ Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, "Marcel Lefebvre; The Biography," page 506.
4. ↑ SSPXAsia.com:On the Occasion of the Episcopal Consecrations