Origins of Archbishop Lefebvre’s 1974 Declaration (3)

After leaving the Archdiocese of Dakar, Archbishop Lefebvre was appointed to the Diocese of Tulle, at the request of the French bishops who wanted him in a small diocese and did not want to see him in the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops. They were warned against the man who supported Cité Catholique, which the French prelates didn't like.

The former missionary bishop's brief stay in a deprived diocese enabled him to gauge the discouragement that priests were feeling in the face of secularization and the gradual desertification of parishes. He comforted, encouraged, and prepared plans, although he never had the opportunity to implement them, as he was elected Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers in July 1962.

The Second Vatican Council

Before leaving Africa, Archbishop Lefebvre had been appointed a member of the Central Preparatory Commission for the Second Vatican Council in June 1959. He took part in all its meetings until June 1962. In the penultimate session, he witnessed a confrontation between Cardinals Alfredo Ottaviani and Augustin Bea on the theme of religious freedom. Archbishop Lefebvre was deeply concerned.

During the Council, the former student of the French Seminary discovered the extent of the danger. He joined with other bishops to form the Cœtus Internationalis Patrum, with the aim of combating the liberal influences that eventually triumphed in the assembly. Their struggle could not prevent the triumph of a modernist theology that permeated many of the Council's texts.

Errors or erroneous tendencies circulate in these texts, particularly three: episcopal collegiality understood in the sense of dual power with that of the Pope, religious liberty which establishes immunity for religious error, and ecumenism which no longer seeks the conversion of those in error but is content to establish a dialogue with them.

After the Council, Archbishop Lefebvre, who was Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, had to organize a chapter to reform his congregation, for which he had prepared a plan. But the capitulars voted to remove him from the presidency of this extraordinary chapter. So, not wishing to collaborate in the destruction of his institute that was taking shape, he resigned his superiorate.

The Dakar Dream

Archbishop Lefebvre, “late in his long life [...] reveal[ed] to his sons the vision of the future” he had had in Africa, and which was to guide him in adventure he had not chosen: the founding of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X. In his Spiritual Journey, he writes:

“If the Holy Ghost permits me to put in writing the spiritual thoughts which follow [...] I will be allowed to realize the dream of which He gave me a glimpse one day in the Cathedral of Dakar. In the face of the progressive degradation of the priestly ideal, my dream was to transmit the Catholic Priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ in all its doctrinal purity and in all its missionary charity, just as He conferred it on His Apostles, just as the Roman Church always transmitted it until the middle of the twentieth century. How should I carry out what appeared then to me as the sole solution to revive the Church and Christianity?

“It was still a dream, but there appeared to me already the need, not only to confer the authentic priesthood, to teach not only the sana doctrina approved by the Church, but also to transmit the profound and unchanging spirit of the Catholic priesthood and of the Christian spirit, essentially bound to the great prayer of Our Lord which His Sacrifice on the Cross expresses eternally.”

Archbishop Lefebvre thus follows in the footsteps of the holy bishops and founders who sought to preserve the priesthood at various periods in the history of the Church. Providence had long been quietly preparing him for this purpose: through his Roman training, his missionary life, his fight for Catholic truth at the Council, and the new freedom he enjoyed, he would find himself in a position to realize the dream inspired in him by the Charity of the Heart of Christ.

The Founding of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X

On several occasions asked to help seminarians who saw the rapid deterioration in clerical training, Archbishop Lefebvre finally gave in and founded a seminary in Fribourg with the approval of Bishop François Charrière. Courses were taken at the Catholic University of Fribourg. He soon realized the inadequacy of this solution and founded the Écône seminary.

He soon obtained Bishop Charrière's approval for a pia unio, the International Priestly Society of Saint Pius X. The founder himself was astonished by its success: vocations poured in from all over. His love of Romanity led him to found a house near Rome, in Albano, to give his seminarians the same character that had so marked him.

The Mass of All Time

But a serious situation was soon to arise, with far-reaching consequences: liturgical reform. As Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, Archbishop Lefebvre had witnessed the gestation of the new Mass, proposed by Fr. Annibale Bugnini at an assembly of the World Union of Superior Generals, as a “normative Mass,” and had been appalled.

From then on, he fought against this Protestantization of the Mass and became ever more attached to the traditional liturgy, whose marvelous effects on souls he knew. In his sermon on the occasion of his priestly jubilee, he described these effects with detail and emotion: “I saw what the grace of holy Mass could do,” and quoted the names of souls who have been transformed.

The Cabal of French Bishops

As Archbishop Tissier de Mallerais writes in his biography of Archbishop Lefebvre: “The bishops in France could not but be worried by a seminary where ‘the Latin Mass’ was still celebrated, the cassock worn, a strict rule followed, ‘pre-conciliar’ training given, and where French priestly candidates were pouring in,” which was discussed by the French bishops at their meeting in Lourdes in 1972.

They soon took their grievances to Rome, and the Cardinal Secretary of State, Jean Villot—a Frenchman—took up the matter. Archbishop Roger Etchegaray, then Archbishop of Marseilles and President of the Council of Bishops’ Conferences of Europe, promised that “in six months time, Ecône would be finished.” On May 4, 1974, Archbishop Lefebvre was received by Archbishop Augustin Mayer, Secretary of the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes.

The Apostolic Visitors

The latter was intrigued by the founding of the Albano house, asked about the liturgy celebrated at Écône, and expressed surprise and concern that the Tridentine Mass was the only one celebrated at the seminary. The wheels were now in motion, and on November 11, 1974, an Apostolic Visitation was made to the founder to investigate on behalf of three Roman Congregations.

It was conducted by Bishop Albert Descamps, Secretary of the Biblical Commission, and Msgr. Guillaume Onclin, Undersecretary of the Commission for the Revision of the Code of Canon Law. They made “theologically questionable remarks [...] They thought the ordination of married men was normal and inevitable, they did not admit that truth is immutable, and they expressed doubts concerning the physical reality of Christ’s Resurrection,” in front of the seminarians, Archbishop Lefebvre’s biographer notes.

On November 21, Archbishop Lefebvre was in Rome to visit the Congregations concerned. Faced with the reactions he encountered, he understood what was afoot, and back in Albano, “in a moment of indignation,” he drafted in a single sitting the Declaration that is now 50 years old.

If the immediate motive for writing it was the visit made to the seminary at Écône, the deeper motive that animated him was the same love for the Mass, the Catholic priesthood, and eternal Rome that had guided him to found the Society.

His Declaration expresses the whole soul of the Roman priest, the African missionary, the Bishop consumed with zeal for the sanctity of the priesthood, and the unwavering defender of Christ's kingship against the novelties sweeping over the Church as if to engulf it.

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

“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.”