Quote:Most Holy Father,

It is impossible that the audience which you granted me was not the will of God. For myself it was a great comfort to be able to explain quite openly the circumstances and motives surrounding the existence of the Society of St. Pius X, and its seminaries, and the reasons which led me to continue the work in spite of the decisions coming from Fribourg and Rome.

The flood of changes in the Church, accepted and encouraged by the bishops, a flood devastating everything in its path – faith, morals, the institutions of the Church – could tolerate no obstacle, no resistance.

We had, therefore, the choice either to let ourselves be swept away by this stream of havoc, thereby adding to the disaster, or to resist (against wind and tide) to safeguard our Catholic Faith and Catholic priesthood. We were not slow to decide.

Since May 5, 1975, the date of our decision to stand firm whatever the cost, three and a half years have passed and have shown us to be right. The ruins of the Church pile up: atheism, immorality, abandoned churches, the disappearance of religion and priestly vocations are now such that the bishops have begun to be worried and the success of Ecône is constantly brought to mind. Opinion polls show that a large number of the faithful, sometimes even a majority, are in favour of the attitude adopted by Ecône.

It is obvious to any impartial observer that our work is a seed-bed of priests such as the Church has always wished for and the true faithful have always desired. And one is entitled to think that if Rome would admit the fact and give it the legality to which it has a right, vocations would be even more abundant.

Most Holy Father, for the honour of Jesus Christ, for the greater good of the Church and for the salvation of souls, we entreat you to say one word, a single word as the Successor of Peter and as Pastor of the Universal Church, to the bishops of the entire world: “Laissez faire” — “Let them be”; “We authorise the free practice of what many centuries’ Tradition has made use of for the sanctification of souls”.

What difficulty would such an attitude create? None. The bishops would decide the places, the times reserved for this Tradition. Unity would immediately be restored at the level of the local bishop. On the other hand, how advantageous it would be for the Church: the renewal of seminaries, and monasteries; great fervour in the parishes — the bishops would be amazed in a few years to rediscover an outburst of devotion and holiness they thought had disappeared forever.

For Ecône, its seminaries and its priories, the situation would be made normal, as happened with the Congregations of Lazarists and Redemptorists. The priories would serve the diocese by the preaching of parish Missions, Ignatian retreats and by helping in the parishes, in complete submission to the local Ordinary.

The situation of the Church would be greatly improved by this very simple method which is so consistent with the maternal Spirit of the Church, not refusing those who come to the aid of souls, not extinguishing the wick which is still smoking, but rejoicing to see that the vitality of Tradition is full of life and hope!

This is what I believed I had to write to Your Holiness before appearing before His Eminence Cardinal Seper. I fear that long and detailed discussions will not lead to a satisfactory result and will merely prolong a situation which, I am convinced, must seem urgent to you.

A solution cannot, in fact, be found in any compromise which would in practice cause our work to vanish, thereby adding yet another contribution to the destruction.

Remaining at the entire disposition of Your Holiness, I beg you to accept my profound and filial respect in Jesus and Mary.

†Marcel Lefebvre

Quote:“In a hundred years’ time…bishops and priests will think they are marching behind the banner of the keys of Peter when in fact they will be following our flag.” (Masonic Infiltrations in the Church, Barbier.)

Quote:For the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter, that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might individually keep and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith delivered through the Apostles.

Quote:1) Extraordinary Infallible Papal Magisterium (no. 592ff);
2) Ordinary Infallible Papal Magisterium (no. 645ff);
3) Papal Magisterium that is mere authenticum, that is, only "authentic" or "authorized" as regards the person himself, not as regards his infallibility (no.659ff).

While he always has full and supreme doctrinal authority, the pope does not always exercise it at its highest level, that is at the level of infallibility. As the theologians say, he is like a giant who does not always use his full strength. What follows is this:

1) "It would be incorrect to say that the pope is infallible simply by possessing papal authority," as we read in the Acts of Vatican I (Coll.L ac. 399b). This would be equivalent to saying that the pope's authority and his infallibility are the same thing.

2) It is necessary to know "what degree of assent is due to the decrees of the sovereign pontiff when he is teaching at a level which is not that of infallibility, i.e., when he is not exercising the supreme degree of his doctrinal authority" (Salaverri, op.cit., no.659).

Quote:Many persons have retained very naive ideas about what they learned concerning the personal infallibility of the sovereign pontiff in the solemn and abnormal exercise of his power of teaching. For some, every word of the supreme pontiff will in some way partake of the value of an infallible teaching, requiring the absolute assent of theological faith; for others, acts which are not presented with the manifest conditions of a definition ex cathedra will seem to have no greater authority than that of any private teacher (Revue Thomiste LIV, 1954, p.196)!

Quote:By a strange reversal, while the personal infallibility of the pope in a solemn judgment, so long disputed, was definitely placed beyond all controversy, it is the Ordinary Magisterium of the Roman Church which seems to have been lost sight of. It all happened - as is not unheard of elsewhere in the history of doctrine - as if the very brilliance of the Vatican I definition had cast into shadow the truth hitherto universally recognized; we might almost say, as if the definition of the infallibility of the solemn judgments made these henceforth the unique method by which the sovereign pontiff would put forward the rule of faith [Pope or Church? Angelus Press, 1998, p.13].

Quote:No place would be left, intermediate between such private acts and the solemn papal judgments, for a teaching which, while authentic, is not equally guaranteed throughout all its various expressions. If things are looked at from this angle, the very notion of the Ordinary Magisterium becomes, properly speaking, unthinkable [Pope or Church? p.4].

Quote:Since 1870 [the year of Vatican I - Ed.], manuals of theology have taken the formulae in which their statements of doctrine have been framed from the actual wording of the Council text. None of these treated in its own right of the ordinary teaching of the pope, which has accordingly, little by little, slipped out of sight and all pontifical teaching has seemed to be reduced solely to solemn definitions ex cathedra. Once attention was entirely directed to these, it became customary to consider the doctrinal interventions of the Holy See solely from the standpoint of the solemn judgment, that of a judgment which ought in itself to bring to the doctrine all the necessary guarantees of certainty (ibid., p.13).

Quote:By presenting only two possible hypotheses for the case in question [the encyclical Humanae Vitae - Ed.], namely, an ex cathedra definition [which was avoided - Ed.] that is, proceeding from the solemn Magisterium, and that of the Authentic Magisterium [which does not of itself imply infallibility - Ed.], a grave sophism in enumeration has been committed. It is in fact a serious error, because there is another possible hypothesis, i.e., that of the Ordinary Infallible Magisterium. It is very strange how certain people are at pains to avoid speaking about this….It is necessary to realize that there is not only a solemn Magisterium and a simply Authentic Magisterium; between these two there is also the Ordinary Magisterium which is endowed with the charism of infallibility (Renovatio, Oct.-Dec., 1968).

Quote:Catholics have no longer any reason for hesitating about the authority to be recognized in the dogmatic judgments pronounced by the sovereign pontiff: their infallibility has been solemnly defined in the Constitution Pastor Aeternus ....But definitions of this sort are relatively rare. The pontifical documents which come most frequently before the Christian today are encyclicals, allocutions, radio messages which usually derive from the Ordinary Magisterium or ordinary teaching of the Church. Unfortunately, this is where confusions remain still possible and do occur, alas! all too often (op.cit. p.3).

Quote:On this problem we must remember that a truth may be sure and certain, and hence it may be obligatory, even without the sanction of an ex cathedra definition. So it is with the encyclical Humanae Vitae, in which the pope, the supreme pontiff of the Church, utters a truth which has been constantly taught by the Church's Magisterium and which accords with the precepts of Revelation (L'Osservatore Romano, Oct. 19, 1968, p.3).