Archbishop Lefebvre Explains His Declaration of November 21, 1974

“We hold fast, with all our heart and with all our soul, to Catholic Rome, Guardian of the Catholic Faith and of the traditions necessary to preserve this faith, to Eternal Rome, Mistress of wisdom and truth.”

The Declaration begins with a loving and ardent profession of faith in the Church, her divine constitution, and her indefectibility. It rests entirely on this foundation, which nothing can shake: “And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mt. 16:18).

Of the Church's three powers (to sanctify, to teach, and to govern), it is the second that is the focus of this profession of faith: Rome, “Mistress of wisdom and truth,” whose mission is to be the “Guardian of the Catholic Faith and of the traditions necessary to preserve this faith.”

This choice is not insignificant, and immediately locates the crisis in the Church. The issue is not primarily liturgical: it is first and foremost a crisis of faith, and it is due to a serious failure in the exercise of the Church's teaching power.

As Archbishop Lefebvre put it in that same year of 1974: “Satan's masterstroke will be to spread the revolutionary principles introduced into the Church by the authority of the Church herself, placing this authority in a situation of permanent incoherence and contradiction. [1]” We will see in a moment where this permanent contradiction lies.

In this profession of faith, Archbishop Lefebvre is not posing as an “office theologian” but as a bishop, a pastor—therefore: his profession of faith is profoundly incarnate; because the Word became incarnate, because the Church is incarnate.

Thus, Catholic Rome is not the guardian of a speculative doctrine with no impact on its concrete life, but the “Guardian of the Catholic Faith and of the traditions necessary to preserve this faith.” In other words, Tradition par excellence (with a capital T)—that of the living faith without which no one can be saved—is embodied in traditions (plural, with a lower-case t).

For example, the rite of the Mass is a centuries-old tradition, rooted in the earliest days of the Church, which embodies the Tradition—that is, our Faith: “We are attached to the Holy Mass because it is the living catechism. It is not just a catechism that is inscribed and printed on pages that can disappear, on pages that do not actually give life. Our Mass is the living catechism, it is our living Credo.

The Credo is nothing other, I would say, than the song, as it were, of the redemption of our souls by Our Lord Jesus Christ...The Holy Mass is still the expression of the Decalogue: what is the Decalogue, if not love of God and love of neighbor? [...]

“Now, in the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Decalogue is realized: the greatest act of love that God can have on the part of a man, and the greatest act of love that we can have on the part of God for us. [...] The Mass is our living catechism. [2]”

The Church, then, is not only the “Guardian of the Catholic Faith,” but just as much “of the traditions necessary to preserve this faith,” which she has no right to turn upside down overnight, even if she can always accidentally improve and purify them. And what is true of the rite of the Mass is also true of the rites of the other sacraments, or even of the laws of the Church, both her canon law and her discipline.

“We refuse, on the other hand, and have always refused to follow the Rome of neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies which were clearly evident in the Second Vatican Council and, after the Council, in all the reforms which derived from it.

“All these reforms, indeed, have contributed and are still contributing to the destruction of the Church, to the ruin of the priesthood, to the abolition of the Sacrifice of the Mass and of the sacraments, to the disappearance of religious life, to a naturalist and Teilhardian teaching in universities, seminaries and catechectics; a teaching derived from Liberalism and Protestantism, many times condemned by the solemn Magisterium of the Church.”

In the light of this profession of faith, we can see the destructive work undertaken by the Second Vatican Council and the reforms inspired by it. Systematically attacking all the Church's traditions, often down to their deepest structures, they can only undermine the Church's faith, and thus contribute to her demolition.

As early as 1966, Archbishop Lefebvre pointed this out to Cardinal Ottaviani: “Unfortunately, we can and must affirm that, more or less generally, when the Council has innovated, it has undermined the certainty of truths taught by the authentic Magisterium of the Church as belonging definitively to the treasure of Tradition.”

For those who love the Church in truth and wish her well, such an observation calls for a practical, prudential stance: “We refuse, on the other hand, and have always refused to follow the Rome of neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies.”

One can oppose the faith either doctrinally, by directly denying a truth of faith; or practically, by acting in a way that destroys the faith. Now, if the teaching on religious freedom is directly erroneous (Archbishop Lefebvre took the matter to Rome when he wrote his dubia [3]), the revolutionary spirit of the Second Vatican Council takes concrete form above all in the promotion of new praxis [4], throwing out all the traditions of the Church, and hence the very faith of the Church.

For example, adopting the Masonic ideal to a greater or lesser extent, the Second Vatican Council claimed to make the Church a factor in the unity of the human race, beyond religious differences. To this end, it introduced a new ecumenism and a new relationship with pagan religions. First and foremost, these are praxis that are not only new but also disciplinarily condemned by the Church, precisely because they contradict the perennial teaching of the faith.

As Archbishop Lefebvre often reminds us: “The Pope wants to create unity outside the faith. It is a communion. A communion with whom? To what end? In what way? It is no longer unity. Unity can only be achieved in the unity of the faith. This is what the Church has always taught. This is why there were missionaries, to convert people to the Catholic faith.

“Now there is no longer a need to convert. The Church is no longer a hierarchical society, it is a communion. Everything is distorted. It is the destruction of the notion of the Church, of Catholicism. It is very serious and it explains why so many Catholics are abandoning the faith. [5]”

Also, without in any way calling into question the teaching authority of the Church (“We hold fast, with all our heart [...] to Eternal Rome, Mistress of wisdom and truth”), Archbishop Lefebvre is opposed to this revolutionary spirit that triumphed at the Second Vatican Council, and to all the reforms that followed. This rejection is essential for anyone wishing to remain faithful to the “solemn Magisterium of the Church,” which has “many times condemned” this same revolutionary spirit.

“No authority, not even the highest in the hierarchy, can force us to abandon or diminish our Catholic Faith, so clearly expressed and professed by the Church’s Magisterium for nineteen centuries.”

For those who would see the Church as a simple human and changing society, refusal of the conciliar reforms would seem a serious act of disobedience. Archbishop Lefebvre reminds us of the teaching Church's authority: it is exclusively at the service of the faith, a faith it has received and which it has a duty to transmit, in order to lead men to “obedience to the faith” (cf. Romans 1:5 and 16:26).

Such is the infallible teaching of the Church: “The Holy Spirit was not promised to the Successors of Peter so that they might make known, under His revelation, a new doctrine, but so that with His assistance they might sanctifiably guard and faithfully expound the Revelation transmitted by the Apostles—that is, the Deposit of Faith” (Vatican I, Pastor Æternus).

On numerous occasions, Archbishop Lefebvre reiterated these elementary points, and their concrete consequences: “The truth of the Deposit of Faith does not belong to the Pope. It is a treasure that is placed in his hands, when he is appointed Supreme Pontiff, Successor of Peter, Bishop of Rome and therefore Successor of Peter, he holds in his hands the treasure of the truth that has been taught for twenty centuries, and he must transmit it faithfully and accurately to all those with whom he is entrusted to speak and communicate the truth of the Gospel. He is not free.

“And so, insofar as it should happen through absolutely mysterious circumstances [...] that a Pope or the one who sits on the seat of Peter should come to obscure in some way the truth he must transmit or to no longer transmit it faithfully, or to let the obscurity of error hide the truth in some way, in that case we must pray to God with all our heart, with all our soul, that light may be shed on the one entrusted with transmitting it.

“But that does not mean that we can change the truth. We cannot fall into error, we cannot follow error, because he who has been entrusted with transmitting the truth to us would be weak and would let error disperse all around him. [6]”

In thus demonstrating the only attitude that can be adopted in the face of the failure of teaching authority, or rather the latter's refusal to exercise its mission to act concretely in the opposite direction, Archbishop Lefebvre still speaks as a pastor of souls, as a Bishop imbued with the spirit of faith: “It is inconceivable that what has been taught for two thousand years and which is a part of eternity should no longer be true today. It is eternity that has been taught to us.

“This is God eternal, this is Jesus Christ, God eternal. Now, whatever is fixed in Jesus Christ is fixed in eternity, and whatever is fixed in God is fixed for eternity. We can never change the fact that there is a Trinity. Never can we change the fact that there is the redemptive work of Our Lord Jesus Christ through the Cross and the Sacrifice of the Mass.

“These are eternal things that belong to eternity, that belong to God. How can anyone on earth change these things? What Pope would feel entitled to change them? It is impossible.

“When we hold on to the past, we hold the present and we hold the future, because it is impossible, I would say metaphysically, divinely impossible, to separate the past from the present and the future. Impossible, or God is no longer God; or God is no longer eternal, or God is no longer immutable. [7]”

“But though WE,” says St. Paul, “or an angel from heaven preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema” (Gal. 1:8).Is it not this that the Holy Father is repeating to us today? And if we can discern a certain contradiction in his words and deeds, as well as in those of the dicasteries, well we choose what was always taught and we turn a deaf ear to the novelties destroying the Church.”

This important passage from the Declaration shows how it is not Archbishop Lefebvre who is in contradiction with Rome, but that it is Rome which is in contradiction with itself, eternal Rome with neo-modernist Rome, and this, alas, in the very person of the Pope.

For the Pope, by his very being, is a reminder of Catholic doctrine; he is Pope only as the successor of all the Popes who preceded him; like them and following in their footsteps, by his very function, he is the bearer of the Deposit of Faith.

All the Popes who preceded him continue to teach through the present Pope, even before the latter utters a single word. As Successor, he is therefore, by his very function, a reminder of the Deposit of Faith handed down from generation to generation, and which unites us for eternity [8].

So it is the Pope himself, however steeped in modernism, who reminds us in a way by his very function that “No authority, not even the highest in the hierarchy, can force us to abandon or diminish our Catholic Faith, so clearly expressed and professed by the Church’s Magisterium for nineteen centuries.”

This is precisely what St. Paul said: “‘But though WE,’ says St. Paul, ‘or an angel from heaven preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema’ (Gal. 1:8).” We note Archbishop Lefebvre's insistence on capitalizing St. Paul's “WE.”

But alas, it is also this same Pope who, “in his words and deeds,” has made himself the destroyer of the faith. Therein lies the contradiction, in the very person of the Pope. The eternal Rome evoked by Archbishop Lefebvre is not the Rome of yesterday as opposed to the Rome of today, but the Rome of yesterday, today, and tomorrow—the eternal Rome—incarnated today in the Pope of today, but contradicted by “his words and deeds.”

In the face of this blatant and painful contradiction, Archbishop Lefebvre would profess his fidelity to eternal Rome and “turn a deaf ear to the novelties destroying the Church.”

“It is impossible to modify profoundly the lex orandi without modifying the lex credendi. Corresponding with a new mass we have a new catechism, a new priesthood, new seminaries, a charismatic Pentecostal Church—all things opposed to orthodoxy and the perennial teaching of the Church.

“This Reformation, stemming from Liberalism and Modernism, is poisoned through and through; it derives from heresy and ends in heresy, even if all its acts are not formally heretical. It is therefore impossible for any conscientious and faithful Catholic to espouse this Reformation or to submit to it in any way whatsoever.

“The only attitude of faithfulness to the Church and Catholic doctrine, in view of our salvation, is a categorical refusal to accept this Reformation.”

The adage pronounced by Celestine I, Pope from 422 to 432, and subsequently taken up by many of his Successors, is famous: “The rule of faith establishes the rule of prayer,” and vice versa. Substantially altering one leads to the substantial alteration of the other.

By quoting this adage, Archbishop Lefebvre shows that the liturgical upheaval, the most visible of all the modifications to the Church's “traditions,” is only the manifestation of a deeper, historically antecedent, substantial change, which affects the very faith of the Church: as St. Pius X already indicated, the Modernism from which this Reformation stems is indeed “the collecting sewer of all heresies.”

This Reformation can only lead to the loss of faith in souls, which is why it must be rejected in its entirety: “The only attitude of faithfulness to the Church and Catholic doctrine, in view of our salvation, is a categorical refusal to accept this Reformation.” In other words—and Archbishop Lefebvre made this explicit as early as 1974—it would be vain and illusory to reduce the crisis in the Church to a liturgical one, or to try to remedy it by “fighting for the Mass” alone.

“That is why, without any spirit of rebellion, bitterness or resentment, we pursue our work of forming priests, with the timeless Magisterium as our guide. We are persuaded that we can render no greater service to the Holy Catholic Church, to the Sovereign Pontiff and to posterity.”

Written in 1974, when Archbishop Lefebvre was about to be asked to close the seminary in Écône, the Declaration states in advance that the former Archbishop of Dakar would not submit to this order: it is unjustified, because, far from being given by eternal Rome, it emanates from neo-Protestant Rome.

Beyond this particular circumstance, these words describe an attitude of soul that we must always keep alive within us: “without any spirit of rebellion, bitterness or resentment.” Because it is first and foremost a profession of love and fidelity to eternal Rome, the Declaration is not a declaration of war against all those who would oppose eternal Rome.

Aware that he does not have to fight against flesh and blood (cf. Eph. 6:12), aware that “love of truth must not make us forget the truth of love” (St. Augustine), Archbishop Lefebvre simply intends to continue to render service “to the Holy Catholic Church, to the Sovereign Pontiff and to posterity.” As he celebrated his thirtieth anniversary as Bishop, he said:

“Without worrying about what is happening around us today, we must close our eyes to the horror of the drama we are living through, close our eyes. Repeat our Creed, repeat our Decalogue, repeat the Sermon on the Mount, which is our law too. Cling to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, cling to the sacraments as we wait for the light to dawn around us once more. That is all.

“That is what we must do, and not enter into rancor, into violence, into a state of mind that would not be faithful to Our Lord, that would not be in charity. Let us remain in charity, let us pray, let us suffer, let us accept all trials, all that can happen to us, all that the good God can send us as trials. [9]”

“That is why we hold fast to all that has been believed and practiced in the faith, morals, liturgy, teaching of the catechism, formation of the priest and institution of the Church, by the Church of all time; to all these things as codified in those books which appeared before the Modernist influence of the Council. This we shall do until such time as the true light of Tradition dispelsthe darkness obscuring the sky of Eternal Rome.”

Always from the pastoral point of view that drives him, Archbishop Lefebvre adds that he will keep to the liturgical, disciplinary, and canonical books published before the Council, until the light is shed on all these more or less obscure areas of shadow.

If a simple glance of faith is enough to see that these reforms are tainted with neo-Modernism and tend to make us Protestant, Archbishop Lefebvre reminds us that it is not up to him to determine doctrinally the degree of obscurity of each of them. This definitive light can only be shed by eternal Rome, once it has been cleansed of the neo-Protestant darkness that continues to obscure it.

In this expectation, therefore, “we hold fast to all that has been believed and practiced in the faith, morals, liturgy, teaching of the catechism, formation of the priest and institution of the Church, by the Church of all time; to all these things as codified in those books which appeared before the Modernist influence of the Council.”

Archbishop Lefebvre's judgment is therefore prudent, practical, in line with the attitude that the Church has always held and which St. Vincent of Lérins summed up so well in his Commonitorium: “What will the Christian do, then, if some new contagion strives to poison not just a small part of the Church, but the whole Church at once?

“Then his great concern will be to cling to antiquity, which obviously can no longer be seduced by any deceptive novelty.” This will be the great means of keeping the faith of the Church, of “holding fast to what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all”.

“By doing this, with the grace of God and the help of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and that of St. Joseph and St. Pius X, we are assured of remaining faithful to the Roman Catholic Church and to all the successors of Peter, and of being the fideles dispensatores mysteriorum Domini Nostri Jesu Christi in Spiritu Sancto. Amen.”

 

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[1] Archbishop Lefebvre, Le coup de maître de Satan, October 13, 1974. It is in this same text that Archbishop Lefebvre makes use for one of the first times, if not the first, of the distinction between eternal Rome and temporal Rome: “Let no one call us rebellious or proud, for it is not we who judge, but Peter himself who judges as the Successor of Peter condemns what he encourages; it is eternal Rome that condemns temporal Rome. We prefer to obey the eternal.”
[2] Archbishop Lefebvre, Poitiers, Homélie of September 2, 1977.
[3] The Dubia (dubium means doubt) is an official procedure whereby doubts are expressed to Rome, asking the Magisterium for a point of clarification. Archbishop Lefebvre presented Rome with his 39 doubts (dubia) about conciliar religious freedom, incompatible with the teaching of the Magisterium of previous Popes. The fifty pages of “non-response” from Rome was one of the elements that determined him to carry out “Operation Survival” for Tradition—namely, the episcopal consecrations of 1988.
[4] Pope Benedict XVI himself recognized this in his address on the hermeneutics of continuity on December 22, 2005: “First of all, the relationship between faith and modern science had to be redefined. [...] Secondly, it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State [...] Thirdly, linked more generally to this was the problem of religious tolerance - a question that required a new definition of the relationship between the Christian faith and the world religions. In particular, [...] it was necessary to evaluate and define in a new way the relationship between the Church and the faith of Israel.” This shows that the Council sought to define a new behavior, a new praxis.
[5] Archbishop Lefebvre, interview in the review Fideliter no. 79, of January-February 1991.
[6] Archbishop Lefebvre, sermon for his 30th anniversary as Bishop, September 18, 1977, Ecône, chaire de vérité, p. 293.
[7] Archbishop Lefebvre, ibid.
[8] This is how Archbishop Lefebvre told his future priests: “We relate to him [the present Pope] and through him to all his predecessors, ontologically, if I may say so. And then, his actions, what he does, what he thinks, and the ideas he spreads, that is something else, of course. It is a great sorrow for the Catholic Church, for us, that we are obliged to observe such a thing” (Archbishop Lefebvre, retraite sacerdotale 1989, 5B).
[9] Archbishop Lefebvre, sermon for his 30th anniversary as Bishop, September 18, 1977, Ecône, chaire de vérité, p. 294.