Archbishop Lefebvre - (Famous) Sermon at Lille 1976

[Stone]

[Entire] SERMON AT LILLE
August 29, 1976

Before addressing a few words of exhortation to you, I should first like to dispel some misunderstandings, and to begin with, about this very gathering.

You can see from the simplicity of this ceremony that we made no preparations for a ceremony which would have gathered a crowd like this one in this hall. I thought I should be saying Holy Mass on the 29th of August as it had been arranged, before a few hundred of the faithful of the Lille region, as I have often done in France, Europe, and even America, with no fuss.

Yet all of a sudden this date, 29 August, through press, radio, and television, has become a kind of demonstration, resembling, so they say, a challenge. Not at all; this demonstration is not a challenge. This demonstration is what you wanted, dear Catholic brethren, who have come from long distances. Why? To manifest your Catholic Faith; to manifest your belief; to manifest your desire to pray and to sanctify yourselves as did your fathers in faith, as did generations and generations before you. That is the real object of this ceremony, during which we desire to pray, pray with all our heart, adore our Lord Jesus Christ, who in a few moments will come down on this altar and will renew the sacrifice of the Cross, which we so much need.

I should like also to dispel another misunderstanding. Here I beg your pardon, but I have to say it; it was not I who called myself head of the traditionalist. You know who did that not long ago in solemn and memorable circumstances in Rome. Archbishop Lefebvre was said to be the head of the traditionalists. I do not want to be head of the traditionalists, nor am I. Why? Because I also am a simple Catholic – a priest and a bishop, certainly; but in the very conditions which you find yourselves, reacting the same way to the destruction of the Church, to the destruction of our faith, to the ruins piling up before our eyes.

Having the same reaction, I thought it my duty to form priests, the true priests that the Church needs. I formed those priests in a “Saint Pius X Society,” which was recognized by the Church. All I was doing was what all bishops have done for centuries and centuries. That is all I did – something I have been doing for thirty years of my priestly life. It was on that account that I was made a bishop, an apostolic Delegate in Africa, a member of the central preconciliar commission, an assistant at the papal throne. What better proof could I have wanted that Rome considered my work profitable for the Church and for the good of souls? And now when I am doing the same thing, a work exactly like what I have been doing for thirty years, all of a sudden I am suspended a divinis, and perhaps I shall soon be excommunicated, separated from the Church, a renegade, or what have you! How can that be? Is what I have been doing for thirty years liable also to suspension a divinis?

I think, on the contrary, that if then I had been forming seminarians as they are being formed now in the new seminaries, I should have been excommunicated. If then I had taught the catechism which is being taught in the schools I should have been called a heretic. And if I had said Mass as it is now said I should have been called suspect of heresy and out of the Church. It is beyond my understanding. It means something has changed in the Church and it is about that that I wish to speak.

I add a parenthesis for dear Monsignor Ducaud-Bourget, who is here present. He asked me, and I well understand why, to say that it is absolutely false that he was suspended a divinis and that he was expelled from the Order of Malta. Many fabrications are to be found in the Press that do not correspond at all to reality. For instance, it was said of me that I was going to go to the Bishop's meeting at Lourdes, while I never had any intention of going.

An extremely serious attitude, I admit. To oppose the highest authorities in the Church, be suspended a divinis, is for a bishop, an extremely grave matter, a very painful state. How could one bear such a state of things, if not for excessively grave reasons. Indeed! The reasons for our attitude, and for your attitude, are very grave reasons: it concerns the defense of our faith. The defense of our faith! Is it possible, then, that the authorities at Rome should be a danger to our faith? I do not judge these authorities, I do not want to judge them personally. I would, so to speak, judge them like the Holy Office used to judge a book and put it on the Index. It sufficed to study what was contained in the statements that had been written. And if these propositions were contrary to the doctrine of the Church, the book was condemned and placed on the Index, without it being necessary to summon the author.

At the Council, certain bishops spoke out against this procedure, insisting that it was inadmissible to put a book on the Index without hearing from the author. But one has no need to see the person who wrote a book, if one has in one's hands a text that is absolutely contrary to the doctrine of the Church. It is the book which is condemned, because the words are contrary to Catholic doctrine, and not the person who wrote it. It is in this way that we must judge things, we must judge them by deeds. As our Lord Jesus Christ said very well in the Gospel that we heard a short time ago, quite apropos, wolves in sheep's clothing. “You will recognize the tree by its fruit.” The fruits are before us, evident, clear. The fruits which come from the Second Vatican Council and the postconciliar reforms are bitter fruits, fruits that destroy the Church. When someone tells me, “Do not touch the Council; speak rather of the postconciliar reforms,” I reply that those who made the reforms – it was not I who made the reforms – say themselves: “We are making them in the name of the Council.” And these are the Church's authorities. It is they, consequently, who legitimately interpret the Council.

Now, what happened at the Council? We can easily learn by reading the books of those, precisely, who have been the instruments of this change in the Church that has taken place before our eyes. Read, for example, Ecumenism as Seen by a Freemason, by Marsaudon. Read the book of the senator from the Doubs, Mr. Prelot, Liberal Catholicism, written in 1969. He will tell you that the Council is at the origin of this change; he, a liberal Catholic, says so in the first pages of his book: “We struggled for a century and a half to make our opinions prevail inside the Church, and we did not succeed. Then came the Second Vatican Council, and we triumphed. Ever since, the theses and principles of liberal Catholicism have been definitively and officially accepted by Holy Church.” If that is not a testimonial, what is? It is not I who say it. But he says it triumphantly, we say it weeping.

What have the liberal Catholics been seeking for a century and a half? To wed the Church and the Revolution, wed the Church and subversion, wed the Church and the forces that destroy society, all societies – familial, civil, and religious. This wedding of the Church is inscribed in the Council. Take the schema Gaudium et Spes, and you will find this: “It is necessary to marry the principles of the Church with the conceptions of modern man.” What does that mean? That means that it is necessary to wed the Church, the Catholic Church, the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, with principles that are contrary to this Church, that undermine it, and which have always been against the Church.

Precisely, it is this marriage that was attempted in the Council by men of the Church, and not the Church, for the Church can never permit such a thing. For a century and a half all the sovereign pontiffs have condemned liberal Catholicism, have refused this marriage with the ideas of the Revolution, of those who adored the goddess Reason. The popes have never been able to accept such things. And during this Revolution, priests were sent to the scaffold; nuns were persecuted and also executed. Remember the pontoons of Nantes; the faithful priests were assembled on the boats, which were then sunk. That is what the Revolution did. Well, dear brethren, what the Revolution did is nothing as compared to what the Second Vatican Council is doing, nothing! It would have been better for the thirty, forty, or fifty thousand priests who have left their cassocks and violated their oaths made before God to have been martyred or sent to the scaffold; at least they would have saved their souls. Now they run the risk of losing them.

We are told that among these poor married priests many are already divorced, many have sought annulments in Rome. What does all this signify? How many nuns – twenty thousand in the United States – have left their religious congregations and their vows, which were perpetual, broken this bond which they had contracted with our Lord Jesus Christ, to run into marriage. It would have been better for them to be sent to the scaffold; at least they would have witnessed to their faith.

At least when the French Revolution made martyrs it accomplished the adage of the first centuries: Sanguis martyrum, semen christianorum (the blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians). And those who persecute the Christians know it quite well: they are afraid of making martyrs. They do not want to make martyrs. It was the height of the devil's victory to destroy the Church by means of obedience. Destroy the Church by obedience. We see it destroyed every day: empty seminaries – the beautiful seminary of Lille was once filled with seminarians: where are they? Who are the seminarians? Do they know that they are going to be priests? Do they know what they are going to do when they are priests?

And all this is precisely because the union desired by these liberal Catholics, a unions between the Church and the Revolution and subversion is, for the Church, an adulterous union, adulterous. And that adulterous union can produce only bastards. And who are those bastards? They are our rites: the rite of the Mass is a bastard rite, the sacraments are bastard sacraments – we no longer know if they are sacraments which give grace or which do not give grace. We no longer know if this Mass gives the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ or if it does not give them. The priests coming out of the seminaries do not themselves know what they are. In Rome it was the Archbishop of Cincinnati who said, “Why are there no more vocations? Because the Church no longer knows what a priest is.” How then can she still form priests if she does not know what a priest is? The priests coming out of the seminaries are bastard priests. They do not know what they are. They do not know that they were made to go up to the altar to offer the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give Jesus Christ to souls, and to call souls to Jesus Christ. That is what a priest is. Our young men here know that very well. Their whole life is going to be consecrated to that, to love, adore, and serve our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist, because they believe in the Real Presence of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist.

The adulterous union of the Church with the Revolution is consolidated with dialogue. When the Church entered into dialogue it was to convert. Our Lord said: “Go, teach all nations, convert them.” But He did not say to hold dialogue with them so as not to convert them, so as to try to put us on the same footing with them. Error and truth are not compatible. We must see if we have charity towards others, as the Gospel says: he who has charity is one who serves others. But those who have charity should give our Lord, they should give the riches they possess to others and not just converse with them and enter into dialogue on an equal footing. Truth and error are not on the same footing. That would be putting God and the devil on the same footing, for the devil is the Father of Lies, the Father of Error.

We must therefore be missionaries. We must preach the Gospel, convert souls to Jesus Christ, and not engage in dialogue with them in an effort to adopt their principles. That is what this bastard Mass and these bastard rites are doing to us, for we wanted dialogue wit the Protestants and the Protestants said to us: “We will not have your Mass; we will not have it because it contains things incompatible with our Protestant faith. So change the Mass and we shall be able to pray with you. We can have intercommunication. We can receive your sacraments. You can come to our churches and we can come to yours; then it will be all finished and we shall have unity.” We shall have unity in confusion, in bastardy. That we do not want. The Church has never wanted it. We love the Protestants; we want to convert them. But it is not loving them to let them think they have the same religion as the Catholic religion.

It is the same with the Freemasons. Now they want to dialogue with Freemasons, and not only dialogue, but permit Catholics to become members of Freemasonry. This is another abominable dialogue. We know perfectly well that the people who direct Freemasonry, at least those in charge, are fundamentally against our Lord Jesus Christ. And the black masses they do, are parodies of the Mass of our Lord; and they want consecrated hosts for their black masses. They know that our Lord Jesus Christ is in the Eucharist. They don't want the hosts that come from Masses in which they do not know whether the Body of our Lord is there or not. Shall we dialogue, then, with these people who want the death of our Lord Jesus Christ a second time, in the person of His members, in the person of the Church? We cannot admit it. We know what the first dialogue with the devil brought about, the first dialogue with Eve with the devil. We were were lost; she put us in a state of sin because she dialogued with the devil. One does not dialogue with the devil. One preaches to all those who are under the devil's influence, so that they convert and come to our Lord Jesus Christ.

One does not dialogue with the Communists. One dialogues with persons, but one does not dialogue with error…

But precisely, why are we firmly resolved not to accept this adulterous union of the Church and the Revolution? Because we affirm the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Why was Peter made Peter? Recall the Gospel. Peter became Peter because he professed the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. And all the Apostles proclaimed this faith publicly after Pentecost, and immediately they were persecuted. The Sanhedrin said to them, “Do not mention this name any more, we do not want to hear the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And the Apostles answered, “Non possumus, we cannot not speak of our Lord Jesus Christ, our King.” You will say to me, “Is it possible? You seem to be accusing Rome of not believing in the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Liberalism always has two faces. It affirms the truth, which it calls the thesis, and then in practice, (the hypothesis, they say), it acts as the enemies do, and with the principles of the enemies of the Church, and in such a manner that one is always incoherent.

What does the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ signify? That our Lord is the only person in the world, the only human being who could say, “I am God.” And by the fact that He could say “I am God,” He was the unique Savior of the human race, He was the sole Priest of humanity, and its only King – by nature, and not by privilege or title; by His own nature, because He was the Son of God.

But now what do they say? That there is not salvation in Jesus Christ alone. There is salvation outside our Lord Jesus Christ. That there is not only the priesthood in our Lord Jesus Christ. All the faithful are priests, everyone is a priest, whereas it is necessary to participate sacramentally in the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ in order to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

Finally, a third error, they reject the social reign of our Lord Jesus Christ under the pretext that it is no longer feasible. I have heard this from the mouth of the Nuncio of Berne; I have heard it from the mouth of the Vatican ambassador Fr. Dhanis, former Rector of the Gregorian University, who came in the name of the Holy See to ask me not to perform the ordinations of 29 June. It was 27 June at Flavigny, and I was preaching the retreat to the seminarians. He said to me, “Why are you preaching against the Council?” I answered, “Is it possible to accept the Council, while in the name of the Council you say that all the Catholic States must be destroyed, that there must be no Catholic States left, and thus no more States where our Lord Jesus Christ reigns? Such a state is no longer possible.” But it is one thing for a thing to be no longer possible, and another to accept that as a principle, and consequently, no longer seek the social reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. But what do we say each day in the Our Father? “Thy kingdom come, They will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” What is this reign? A little while ago you sang in the Gloria “You alone are Lord, You alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ.” And are we to sing these words, and then go out and say, “No, Jesus Christ must not reign over us any longer.” Are we living illogically? Are we Catholics or not?

There will be no peace on earth except in the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ. The nations are in conflict – every day we have page after page of the newspapers about it, we have it on radio and television; and now with the change of the prime minister: What are we going to do to improve the economy? What are we going to do to improve the currency? What are we going to do so that manufacturing prospers, etc. All the newspapers in the world are full of such questions. Well, even from an economic standpoint, our Lord Jesus Christ is the reign of the principles of love and of the commandments of God, which establishes equilibrium in society, and which make justice and peace reign. It is only with order, justice, and peace in society that economy can thrive.

We see this very clearly. Take, for example, the Argentine Republic. What a state of anarchy it was in just a few months ago; complete anarchy, with bandits killing left and right, industries in ruins, the factory owners locked up or taken hostage. It was an unbelievable revolution, and in a country as beautiful, balanced, and agreeable as the Argentine Republic, a republic that could enjoy incredible prosperity with extraordinary riches. Now there is a government with principles, that has an authority that puts some order in things, that prevents the bandits from killing people, and lo and behold the economy is reviving, the workers have work, and they can go home knowing that they won't be assaulted by someone who wants them to go on strike when they do not wish to go on strike.

It is the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ that we want; and we profess our faith, saying that our Lord Jesus Christ is God.

And that is why we want the Mass of St. Pius V, because this Mass is the proclamation of the royalty of our Lord Jesus Christ. The New Mass is a sort of hybrid Mass, which is no longer hierarchical; it is democratic, where the assembly takes the place of the priest, and so it is no longer a veritable Mass that affirms the royalty of our Lord. For how did our Lord Jesus Christ become King? He affirmed His royalty by the Cross. “Regnavit a ligno Deus.” Jesus Christ reigned by the wood of the Cross. Because He vanquished sin, He vanquished the devil, and He vanquished death by the Cross: three magnificent victories of our Lord. One will say that this is triumphalism. Well, if so then yes, we do want the triumphalism of our Lord Jesus Christ.

That is why our ancestors built these magnificent cathedrals. Why did they expend so much wealth, when they were so much poorer than we? Why did they spend so much time to build these magnificent cathedrals, which we still admire, even unbelievers? Why? Because of our Lord Jesus Christ. To commemorate the triumph of the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Mass. And that is why we kneel, we love to kneel before the Blessed Sacrament. If we had the time, if we did not want to detain you too long, we would have circulated among you with the Blessed Sacrament so that you could show our Lord that you adore Him. “Lord, thou art our God! O, Jesus Christ, we adore Thee, we know that it is thanks to Thee that we were born, that by Thee we were made Christians, by Thee we were redeemed, and that it is Thou who wilt judge us at the hour of our death. It is Thou who wilt give us the glory of heaven if we have merited it.”

For our Lord Jesus Christ is present in the Holy Eucharist as He was upon the cross. That is what we must do, that is what we must ask. We are against no one. We are not commandos. We wish nobody harm. All we want is to be allowed to profess our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, for that reason, we are driven from our churches. The poor priests are driven out for saying the old Mass by which all our saints were sanctified: St. Joan of Arc, the holy Cure d'Ars, the little Theresa of the Child Jesus were sanctified by this Mass; and now priests are driven brutally, cruelly, from their parishes because they say the Mass which has sanctified saints for centuries. It is crazy. I would almost say it is a story of madmen. I ask myself if I am dreaming. How can this Mass have become some kind of horror for our bishops and for those who should preserve our faith? But we will keep the Mass of St. Pius V because the Mass of St. Pius V is the Mass of twenty centuries. It is the Mass of all time, not just the Mass of St. Pius V; and it represents our faith, it is a bulwark of our faith, and we need that bulwark.

We shall be told that we are making it a question of Latin and cassocks. Obviously, it is easy that way to discredit those you disagree with. But Latin has its importance; and when I was in Africa it was marvelous to see those crowds of Africans of different languages – we sometimes had five or six different tribes who did not understand one another – who could assist at Mass in our churches and sing the Latin chants with extraordinary fervor. Go and see them now; they quarrel in the churches because Mass is being said in a language other than theirs, so they are displeased and they want a Mass in their own language. The confusion is total, where before there was perfect unity. That is just one example. You have just heard the Epistle and Gospel read in French – I see no difficulty in that; and if more prayers in French were added, to be said all together, I still see no difficulty. But it still seems to me that the body of the Mass, which runs from the Offertory to the priest's Communion, should remain in a unique language so that all men of all nations can assist together at Mass and can feel united in that unity of faith, in that unity of prayer.

So we ask, indeed we address an appeal to the bishops and to Rome: will they, please, take into consideration our desire to pray as our ancestors did, our desire to keep the Catholic Faith, our desire to adore our Lord Jesus Christ and to want His reign. That is what I said in my last letter to the Holy Father – and I thought it really was the last, because I did not think the Holy Father would write to me again. I said to him: “Most Holy Father, give us back the pubic rights of the Church, that is to say, the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ; give us back the true Bible instead of an ecumenical Bible, the true Bible such as was the Vulgate before and which had been blessed time and time again by councils and popes. Give us back the true Mass, a dogmatic Mass that defends our faith, and which was the Mass of so many centuries, and which sanctified so many Catholics. Lastly, give us back our catechism following the model of the Catechism of the Council of Trent, for without such a precise catechism, what will become of our children tomorrow, what will become of future generations? They will no longer know the Catholic Faith; we are seeing that already.

Alas, I received no reply, except for the suspension a divinis. And that is why I do not consider the penalties as valid, either canonically or theologically. I believe in all sincerity, in peace, in all serenity, that I must not contribute to the destruction of the Catholic Church by these suspensions, by the penalties imposed against me, by the closing of my seminaries, by refusing to ordain priests. At the hour of my death, when our Lord will ask me, What have you done with the graces of your priesthood, I do not want to hear from the mouth of the Lord, You have contributed to destroying the Church with the others.

My dear brethren, I close by considering what you should do. So many groups ask us to give them priests, true priests. They say, “We need priests. We have a place to lodge them. We shall build a little chapel, they will stay with us and teach our children the true catechism, according to the true faith. We want to keep the true faith, like the Japanese for three centuries when they had no priests. Give us priests!”

Well, dear brethren, I will do all that I can to prepare them for you; and I can say that my great consolation is to feel in the seminarians a profound faith. They have understood who our Lord Jesus Christ is. They have understood what are the Mass and the sacraments. The faith is deeply rooted in their hearts. They are, if I may say, better than what we could have been fifty years ago in our seminaries, because, precisely, they live in a difficult situation. Many of them have, in fact, been to the universities. And still they throw in our face the accusation that these young men are not well adapted and will not know how to speak to the modern generations. But here are young men who have completed three, four, even five years of the university; and they do not understand their generation?

Why have they come to Econe to become priest? Precisely, in order to address their own generation. They know it will, better than we, much better than our critics. They will be quite able to speak the language necessary to convert souls. And that is why – and I am very happy to say so- we have twenty-five new recruits at the seminary of Econe, despite the difficulties. And we will have ten new seminary in the United States, and four in our German-language seminary in Switzerland.

So you see, despite the harassment, the young men understand quite well that we form true Catholic priests. And that is why we are not is schism, it is we who continue the Catholic Church. It is the innovators who are drifting into schism. As for us, we continue the tradition, and that is why we should have confidence, we should not despair even in the current crisis. We must hold fast, keep the faith, the sacraments upheld by twenty centuries of the holiness of the Church, of the faith of the Church. We have nothing to fear.

Sometimes certain journalists have asked me, “Your Excellency, don't you feel isolated?” “Not at all, I do not feel at all isolated. I am with twenty centuries of the Church; I have on my side all the saints of heaven.” Why? Because they prayed like us, they sanctified themselves as we try to do, with the same means. And so I am persuaded that they rejoice over today's assembly. They are saying, “At least here are some Catholics who pray, who pray truly, who truly have in their hearts the desire to pray and to honor our Lord Jesus Christ.” The saints of heaven rejoice. Thus, let us not be distressed, but let us pray and strive for holiness.

Now there is some advice that I wish to give you. It must not be said of the Catholics that we are – I do not like the term traditionalist Catholics, for I cannot imagine what a Catholic could be without being a traditionalist, since the Church is a Tradition, and, moreover, what would men be without some tradition? They couldn't live. We have received life from our parents, we have received the education of those who came before us, we have a tradition. The good God wanted it that way. The good God wanted that traditions be passed from generation to generation, for temporal things as well as sacred things. Consequently, not being traditional, not being traditionalist, is destruction itself; it is suicide. That is why we are just Catholics, we continue to be Catholics. There mustn’t be divisions among you, as I was saying.

Precisely because we are Catholics we are in unity of the Church, which is in the faith. They tell us: “You should be with the Pope, the pope is the sign of faith in the Church.” Yes, insofar as the pope manifests that he is the successor of Peter, insofar as he makes himself the echo of the faith of all time, insofar as he transmits the treasure he should transmit. For, once again, what is a pope if not he who gives us the treasures of tradition, and the treasure of the deposit of the faith, and supernatural life by means of the sacraments and the holy sacrifice of the Mass. The bishop, the priest is none other than the one who transmits the truth, who transmits a life that does not belong to him. The Epistle read a little while ago...truth does not belong to us. It belongs to the Pope no more than it does to me. If it should happen that the Pope were no longer the servant of the truth, he would not longer be pope. I am not saying that is he no longer – mark my words well, do no make me say what I am not saying – but if happened that that were true, then we could not follow someone who would lead us into error. That is obvious.

They tell us: “You judge the Pope.” But what is the criterion of truth? Archbishop Benelli threw in my face: “It isn't you who made the truth.” Well, of course, it isn't I who make the truth, but it isn't the Pope either. It is our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Truth; and so we must refer to what our Lord Jesus Christ has taught us, to what the Fathers of the Church and the entire Church have taught in order to know the truth. It is not I who judge the Pope but Tradition. A child of five with his catechism can answer his bishop very well. If his bishop were to tell him, “Our Lord is not present in the Holy Eucharist. It is I who am the witness to the truth, and I tell you that our Lord is not present in the Holy Eucharist.” Well, this child, despite his five years, has his catechism. He answer, “Well, my catechism says the contrary.” Who is right? The bishop or the catechism? Obviously it is the catechism which presents the faith of all time. It is simple, childlike reasoning. But we have come to this point. If they tell us nowadays that it is acceptable to have intercommunion with the Protestants, that there is no difference between us and the Protestants, well, it isn't true. There is an immense difference.

That is why we are truly dumbfounded when we consider that the Archbishop of Canterbury is invited to give his blessing, for he is not even a priest (because Anglican ordinations are not valid, Pope Leo XIII officially and definitively declared; because he is a heretic, as are all the Anglicans. I am sorry, one doesn't like to use this term any more, but that is the fact; it is not to insult him, I only ask for his conversion), so he is not a priest, he is a heretic, and he is asked to bless the crowd of cardinals and bishops present in St. Peter's with the Holy Father. It seems to me that this is something absolutely unthinkable. Unthinkable.

I conclude by thanking you for having come so numerous, and for continuing to make this ceremony profoundly pious, profoundly Catholic. We will pray together, asking the good Lord to give the means to resolve our problems. It would be so simple if every bishop would place a church of his diocese at the disposition of faithful Catholics, telling them, This church is yours. And when you consider that the Bishop of Lille has given a church to the Moslems, I do not see why there would not be a church for faithful Catholics. Ultimately, the whole matter would be resolved. And this is what I shall ask the Holy Father, should he receive me: “Holy Father, let us make an experiment of Tradition. In the midst of all the experiments that are going on today, there should at least be the experiment of what was done for twenty centuries!”

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. A BISHOP SPEAKS. 2ND ed. KANSAS CITY: ANGELUS PRESS, 2007.