Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre - Volume II

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Apologia pro Marcel Lefebvre
Volume 2, Chapter XXII

An Invitation and a Warning

Letter of Cardinal Seper to Mgr. Lefebvre

Sacra Congregation 00193 Romae
Pro Doctrina Fidei  Piazza del S. Uffizio, 11
Prot. N. 1144/69


Your Excellency,

I commissioned the Apostolic Nuncio in Switzerland to inform you that your letter of 13 April 1978 had been received and I have no doubt he did that at a convenient time.

I wish today to assure you personally that the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is studying attentively the two answers you were good enough to make to its request and that it is grateful to you for sending them within the prescribed time. I can now inform you that it will very probably ask you to agree to take part in a conference, as provided for in article 13 of its Ratio agendi in doctrinarurn examine of 15 January 1971. At the appropriate time I shall give you a choice of possible dates.

In the meantime, let me insist on a serious point: according to accounts spread by the press (we have not been able to find out on what authority) you intend to proceed to new ordinations at the end of this month. I hope that information is unfounded. I need not remind you in this matter of the prescriptions of Canon Law, of the censures you have incurred, and of the will, many times expressed, of the Holy Father.

On the other hand it is my duty to insist on the fact that the current procedure before our Congregation, a procedure that you accepted voluntarily, requires that everything likely to compromise its normal development should be suspended.

I invite you to consider this important point before God, and I wish to assure you of the help of my fraternal prayers.

Yours respectfully and devotedly in Our Lord,

Franc. Card. Seper
Prefect