Archbishop Lefebvre - On [Conciliar] Collegiality

[Stone]

Archbishop Lefebvre - On [Conciliar] Collegiality

1972

• There were time bombs in the Council. I believe there were three: collegiality, religious freedom, and ecumenism. Collegiality, which corresponds to the term Egalite of the French Revolution, has the same ideology. Collegiality means the destruction of personal authority; democracy is the destruction of the authority of God, of the authority of the pope, of the authority of the bishops. Collegiality corresponds to the equality of the Revolution of 1789. ... Every pope from the time of the French Revolution had set up an insurmountable barrier against the errors of the Revolution; the ideas of the Revolution never penetrated the Church. By these three terms-collegiality, religious liberty, and ecumenism-the modernists have got what they wanted. These, then, are the aims against which we have striven. The Church has indeed the words of eternal life, she will not perish, but who can say how small a remnant of her little flock will survive once these errors and ideologies have penetrated everywhere. (Archbishop Lefebvre, That the Church May Endure, 1972) [/url]thecatacombs.org/thread/841/arbishop-lefebvre-church-endure-1972
  

• I have made my choice: I choose Tradition. I cling to Tradition over novelty which is merely an expression of Liberalism, the very Liberalism condemned by the Holy See for a century and a half. Now this Liberalism has penetrated the Church through the Council, and its catchwords remain the same; liberty, equality and fraternity. The spirit of Liberalism permeates the Church today, though its catchwords are thinly veiled: liberty is religious freedom; fraternity is ecumenism; equality is collegiality. These are the three principles of Liberalism, the legacy of the 18th century philosophers and of the French Revolution. (Archbishop Lefebvre, On the Similarities between the New Mass and Luther’s ‘Mass’, February 1975) thecatacombs.org/thread/236/examination-new-mass-luthers-1975
  

• Everything played into their hands in demanding the instant adaptation of the Church to modern man, in other words to man eager to be freed of all shackles, in their presenting the Church as out of touch and impotent, in their confessing to the sins of their predecessors. ... the Council Fathers feel guilty at being out of the world rather than of the world. They are already blushing for their episcopal insignia; soon they will be ashamed of their cassocks. This atmosphere of liberation will soon spread to all fields, and will show in the spirit of collegiality, which will veil the shame felt at exercising a personal authority so opposed to the spirit of modern man, let us say liberal man. The pope and bishops will exercise their authority collegially in Synods, Bishops’ Conferences, Priests’ Councils. Finally, the Church is opened wide to the principles of the modern world. The liturgy too will be liberalized, adapted, subjected to experiments by Bishops’ Conferences. (Archbishop Lefebvre, Liberalism at Work, 1975) thecatacombs.org/thread/877/archbishop-lefebvre-liberalism-work-1975
  

1978

• Michael Davies, Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre – Volume I
  Those who have met him [Archbishop Lefebvre] know that he is not a man who will fight for the sake of fighting - he has always been a realist. No one could have compelled him to resign as Superior-General of the Holy Ghost Fathers - he had been elected for a term of twelve years. But he could see quite clearly that the Liberals dominated the General Chapter; that they were determined to get their way at all costs; that resistance on his part could only lead to unedifying division. "Je les ai laissés à leur collégialité," he has remarked. "I left them to their 'collegiality'." thecatacombs.org/post/6638
  

• I must confess that he [Pope John Paul II] appears to be basically in agreement with the Council and with the reforms – he just does not question them. And that is serious, because it means that he is for ecumenism, for collegiality, and for religious liberty. Those are the three capital ideas from the Council. It is they which make the spirit of the Council. They are what the progressives wanted and what in practice they obtained – watered down perhaps, but they got them, and they will not loosen their hold on them! Study those ideas, and see how serious they are! ... Collegiality: that means number against person, the law of number against the authority of the person. It is no longer the person who has authority, but number! It is democracy, or at least the democratic principle. It is no longer Our Lord Who commands through the authorities (it is Our Lord Who is the Authority, and in the Church all those who have authority – Pope, Bishops, Priests – share in the authority of Our Lord). By the very fact that number is put in the place of the person, that authority is given to number, authority is in the people, in the rank and file, in the group. That is absolutely contrary to what Our Lord wanted, to the personal authority which He always wanted to give: the Pope has a personal authority; the Bishop has a personal authority by his consecration; the Priest has a personal authority by his sacramental character, his ordination; in the Church authority is personal. The subject of authority (he who is going to exercise it) may be designated democratically, but the authority cannot be so given. That is an important principle. On a false principle Our Lord could lose His crown. (Archbishop Lefebvre, Conference to Seminarians, December 1978) thecatacombs.org/thread/2649/conference-ec-ne-december-1978
  

1982

• Puzzlement, indignation, admiration: these are the sentiments that fluctuate within me at the end of this reading [of the New Catechism published in 1982] that I had wanted however, to be benevolent. Puzzlement because I did not find the dear answers to the great questions that we can ask the Church: What is God? What is the Church? What is grace? What is a sacrament? What is the Mass? What is the priest? I found many descriptions, qualifications, and many considerations - sometimes very beautiful and true ? on these things, but not even one of those good, precise, unambiguous definitions, which the Church has always loved in order to protect Her Faith. ... Here lies the mortal sin of this which takes up again and builds on the sins of Vatican II: doctrinal ecumenism, religious liberalism, collegiality and the promotion of the common priesthood of the faithful to the detriment of the ministerial priesthood of priests (#874-933), the disappearance of propitiation which defines the sacrifice of the Mass (#1356-1381), the Judaizing of the Church. (Archbishop Lefebvre, On the Catechism of a New Age of Man, 1982) thecatacombs.org/thread/2671/abp-lefebvre-catechism-new-1982
  

• This is what happened at the Council. It is obvious that all the Council documents and texts were influenced by the liberal Cardinals and Commissions. It is hardly astonishing that we have such ambiguous texts, which favor so many changes and even a true revolution in the Church. Could we have done anything, we who represented the traditional wing of the Bishops and Cardinals? Frankly speaking, we could do little. We were 250 who favored the maintenance of Tradition and who were opposed to such major changes in the Church as false renewal, false ecumenism, false collegiality. We were opposed to all these things. These 250 bishops clearly brought some weight to bear and on certain occasions forced texts to be modified. Thus the evil was somewhat limited. But we could not succeed in preventing certain false opinions from being adopted… (Archbishop Lefebvre, Infiltration of Modernism in the Church, 1982) thecatacombs.org/thread/724/infiltration-modernism-church-1982
  

1983

• This Declaration provoked the laicizing of Catholic States which is an insult to God and to His Church, reducing the Church to the status of equality with false religions. This is exactly the spirit of adultery for which the people of Israel were so often rebuked (see Note 1, the declaration of Pope Paul VI, L'Osservatore Romano, April 24, 1969). This spirit of adultery is also made clear in the ecumenism instituted by The Secretariat for the Unity of Christians. This aberrant ecumenism has brought in its train all the reforms of the liturgy, of the Bible, of canon law, with the collegiality that destroys the personal authority of the Supreme Pontiff, of the episcopacy and of the parish priest (see Note 2 below*). This spirit is not Catholic; it is the fruit of the Modernism condemned by St. Pius X. (Archbishop Lefebvre's Public Statement against False Ecumenism, written in October 1983, it was not actually made public until June 1988 in conjunction with the Episcopal Consecrations.) thecatacombs.org/thread/196/abl-on-false-ecumenism   *Note 2: Secretariat for the Unity of Christians at the Council. It is suitable to recall the important role played by the members of the Secretariat for the Unity of Christians in the Council. ...  The harmfulness of all these Commissions is considerable. The Commissions are paralyzing all the normal activity of the Roman Curia. The Rome of the Commissions is the present active-day Rome, Modernist and Masonic. Popes Paul VI and John Paul II have wanted these commissions and have become their slaves just as they are prisoners of the Roman Synods, fruits of the collegiality recognized by the new Canon Law.
  

1988

• It seems to me, my dear brethren, that I am hearing the voices of all these Popes - since Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII - telling us: "Please, we beseech you, what are you going to do with our teachings, with our predications, with the Catholic Faith? Are you going to abandon it? Are you going to let it disappear from this earth? Please, please, continue to keep this treasure which we have given you. Do not abandon the faithful, do not abandon the Church! Continue the Church! Indeed, since the Council, what we condemned in the past the present Roman authorities have embraced and are professing. How is it possible? We have condemned them: Liberalism, Communism., Socialism, Modernism, Sillonism. All the errors which we have condemned are now professed, adopted and supported by the authorities of the Church. Is it possible? Unless you do something to continue this Tradition of the Church which we have given to you, all of it shall disappear. Souls shall be lost."
  Thus, we find ourselves in a case of necessity. We have done all we could, trying to help Rome to understand that they had to come back to the attitudes of the holy Pius XII and of all his predecessors. Bishop de Castro Mayer and myself have gone to Rome, we have spoken, we have sent letters, several times to Rome. We have tried by these talks, by all these means, to succeed in making Rome understand that, since the Council and since aggiornamento, this change which has occurred in the Church is not Catholic, is not in conformity to the doctrine of all times. This ecumenism and all these errors, this collegiality - all this is contrary to the Faith of the Church, and is in the process of destroying the Church. (Archbishop Lefebvre, Episcopal Consecration Sermon, June 1988) thecatacombs.org/thread/117/marcel-lefebvre-famous-consecration-sermon?q=Collegiality
  

1990

• The more one analyzes the documents of Vatican II, and the more one analyzes their interpretation by the authorities of the Church, the more one realizes that what is at stake is not merely superficial errors, a few mistakes, ecumenism, religious liberty, collegiality, a certain Liberalism, but rather a wholesale perversion of the mind, a whole new philosophy based on modern philosophy, on subjectivism. (Archbishop Lefebvre, Two Years after the Consecrations, September 1990) thecatacombs.org/thread/540/final-conference-priests-september-consecrations
  

***

Excerpt from Archbishop Lefebvre's 1985 book, Open Letter to Confused Catholics 

Chapter 13. Religious Liberty, Collegial Equality, Ecumenical Fraternity

How does it happen that the gates of hell are now causing us so much trouble? The Church has always been disturbed by persecution and heresies, by conflicts with temporal powers, sometimes by immoral conduct of the clergy, sometimes even of popes. But this time the crisis seems to go much deeper, since it affects the Faith itself. The Modernism we face is not a heresy like the others: it is the main drain of all heresies. Persecution now comes not only from outside but from within the Church. The scandal of dissolute living, or just giving up, has become endemic among the clergy, while the mercenaries who abandon the sheep to the wolves are encouraged and honored. I am sometimes accused of painting too black a picture of the situation, of viewing it too disapprovingly, of taking pleasure at being disgruntled over changes which are perfectly logical and necessary. Yet the same Pope who was the heart and soul of Vatican II commented several times on the decomposition on which I have commented so sadly. On December 7, 1969 Paul VI said, “The Church finds herself in a period of anxiety, of self-criticism, one could say of self-destruction. It is like an internal upheaval, serious and complex--as if the Church were flagellating herself.”

The following year he added, “In many areas the Council has not so far given us peace but rather stirred up troubles and problems that in no way serve to strengthen the the Kingdom of God within the Church or within its souls.” Then, going on to raise a cry of alarm, on June 29, 1972 (Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul), “The smoke of Satan has entered by some crack into the temple of God; doubt, uncertainty, problems, restlessness, dissatisfaction and confrontation have come to the surface... doubt has entered our consciences.”

Where is the crack? We can pinpoint the time with precision. It was 1789, and its name, the Revolution. The Masonic and anti-Catholic principles of the French Revolution have taken two hundred years to enter tonsured and mitred heads. Today this is an accomplished fact. Such is the reality and the cause of your perplexities, my confused Catholic readers. The facts had to be before our eyes for us to believe them, because we thought a priori that an undertaking of this sort was impossible and incompatible with the very nature of the Church, assisted as it is by the Spirit of God.

In a well known article written in 1877, Bishop Gaume gave us a personification of the Revolution.
“I am not what you think I am. Many speak of me but few know me. I am not Freemasonry, nor rioting, nor the changing of the monarchy into a republic, not the substitution of one dynasty for another, not temporary disturbance of public order. I am not the shouts of Jacobins, nor the fury of the Montagne, nor the fighting on the barricades, nor pillage, nor arson, nor the agricultural law, nor the guillotine, nor the drownings. I am neither Marat nor Robespierre, nor Babeuf nor Mazzini nor Kossuth. These men are my sons but they are not me. These things are my works but they are not me. These men and these things are passing objects but I am a permanent state... I am the hatred of all order not established by man and in which he himself is not both king and god.”

Here is the key to the “changes” in the Church; replacing a divine institution with one set up by man, in which man takes precedence over God. Man ruling over everything, everything having its beginning and its ending in him; to him we bow down.

Paul VI described this turnabout in his speech at the end of the Council: “Profane and secular humanism has shown itself in its own terrible stature and has in a sense defied the Council. The religion of God made Man has come up against the religion of man who makes himself God.” He immediately added that in spite of this terrible challenge, there has been no clash, no anathema. Alas! By making a display of a “boundless sympathy for all men” the Council failed in its duty to point out clearly that no compromise is possible between the two attitudes. Even the closing speech seemed to give an impetus to what we are seeing put into daily practice. “You can be grateful to it (the Council) for this merit at least, you modern humanists who deny the transcendence of the supreme things, and learn to recognize our new humanism: we too, we more than anyone else, subscribe to the cult of man.”

Afterwards we heard coming from the same lips statements developing this theme. “Men are basically good and incline towards reason, towards order and the common good” (Peace Day Message, November 14, 1970). “Both Christianity and democracy have a basic principle in common; respect for the dignity and for the value of the human person... the advancement of the complete man” (Manila, November 20, 1970). How can we not be dismayed by this comparison when democracy, which is a specifically secular system, ignores in man his characteristic as a redeemed child of God, the only quality which grants him dignity? The advancement of man is certainly not the same thing when seen by a Christian and by an unbeliever.

The pontifical message becomes more secularized on each occasion. At Sydney on December 3, 1970, we were startled to hear, “Isolation is no longer permissible; the time has come for a great solidarity amongst mankind and the establishment of a worldwide united and brotherly community.” Peace amongst all men, certainly, but Catholics are no longer acknowledging the words of Christ, “My peace I give to you, not as the world gives, give I unto you.” The bond which unites earth to heaven seems to be broken. “Ah well, we live in a democracy! That means the people are in charge; power comes from numbers, from the people” (Paul VI, January 1, 1970). Jesus said to Pilate, “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above.” Power comes from God and not from numbers, even if the choice of the leader has been made by an elective process. Pilate was the representative of a pagan nation and yet he could do nothing without the permission of the Heavenly Father.

And now we have democracy entering into the Church. The new Canon Law teaches that power resides in the “People of God.” This tendency towards bringing what they call the base into sharing the exercise of power can be found all through present structures-synod, episcopal conferences, priests’ councils, pastoral councils, Roman commissions, national commissions, etc.; and there are equivalents in the religious orders.

This democratization of the Magisterium represents a mortal danger for millions of bewildered and infected souls to whom the spiritual doctors bring no relief because it has ruined the efficacy with which the personal Magisterium of the Pope and bishops was formerly endowed. A question concerning faith or morals is submitted to numerous theological commissions, who never come up with an answer because their members are divided both in their opinions and in their methods. We need only read the procedural accounts of the assemblies at all levels to realize that collegiality of the Magisterium is equivalent to paralysis of the magisterium.

Our Lord instructed individuals, not a collectivity, to tend His sheep. The Apostles obeyed Our Lord's orders, and until the twentieth century it was thus. These days we hear of the Church being in a state of permanent council, continual collegiality. The results have become apparent. Everything is upside down, the faithful no longer know which way to turn.

The democratization of government was followed quite naturally by the democratization of the Magisterium which took place under the impulse of the famous slogan “collegiality,” spread abroad by the communist, Protestant and progressive press.

They have collegialized the pope's government and that of the bishops with a presbyterial college, that of the parish priest with a lay council, the whole broken down into innumerable commissions, councils, sessions, etc. The new Code of Canon Law is completely permeated with this concept. The pope is described as the head of the College of Bishops. We find this doctrine already suggested in the Council document Lumen Gentium, according to which the College of Bishops, together with the pope, exercises supreme power in the Church in habitual and constant manner. This is not a change for the better; this doctrine of double supremacy is contrary to the teaching and Magisterium of the Church. It is contrary to the definitions of Vatican Council I and to Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Satis Cognitum. The Pope alone has supreme power; he communicates it only to the degree he considers advisable, and only in exceptional circumstances. The pope alone has power of jurisdiction over the whole world.

We are witnessing therefore a restriction on the freedom of the Supreme Pontiff. Yes, this is a real revolution! The facts demonstrate that what we have here is not a change without practical consequences. John Paul II is the first pope to be really affected by the reform. We can quote several precise instances where he has reconsidered a decision under pressure from a bishops’ conference. The Dutch Catechism received the imprimatur from the Archbishop of Milan without the modifications requested by the Commission of Cardinals. It was the same with the Canadian Catechism. In that connection I heard someone in authority in Rome say, “What can we do when faced with a bishops’ conference?” The independence assumed by the conferences has also been illustrated in France with regard to the catechisms. The new books are contrary in almost every respect to the Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi Tradendae. The ad limina visit by the bishops of the Paris area in 1982 consisted in their getting the Pope to ratify a catechism which he openly disapproved. The allocution delivered by John Paul II at the end of the visit had all the signs of a compromise, thanks to which the bishops were able to return in triumph to their own country and continue with their pernicious practices. Cardinal Ratzinger's lectures in Paris and Lyons indicate clearly that Rome has not endorsed the reasons given by the French bishops for installing a new doctrine and orientation, but the Holy See has been reduced by this kind of pressure to proceeding by suggestions and advice, instead of issuing the orders needed to put things on the right track, and when necessary to condemn, as the popes have hitherto always done, as guardians of the deposit of faith.

The bishops, whose authority would thereby seem to be increased, are the victims of a collegiality which paralyzes the running of their dioceses. So many complaints are made on this subject by the bishops themselves, complaints which are very instructive! In theory the bishop can in a number of cases act against the wishes of the assembly. Sometimes even against the majority, if the voting has not been submitted to the Holy See for approval; but in practice this has proved impossible. Immediately after the end of the meeting its decisions are published by the secretary. They are thus known to all priests and faithful; the news media divulge all the essentials. What bishop could in fact oppose these decisions without showing his disagreement with the assembly and then immediately finding himself confronted with a number of revolutionary spirits who would appeal against him to the assembly?

The bishop has become the prisoner of collegiality, which should have been limited to a consultative group, not a decision-making body. Even for the simplest things he is no longer master of his own house.

Soon after the Council, while I was on a visitation of our communities, the bishop of a diocese in Brazil came very obligingly to meet me at the railway station. “I can't put you up at the bishop's house,” he said, “but I have had a room prepared for you at the minor seminary.” He took me there himself; the place was in an uproar--young men and girls everywhere, in the corridors and on the stairs. “These young men, are they seminarians?” I asked. “Alas, no. Believe me, I am not at all happy at having these young people at my seminary, but the Bishops' Conference has decided that we must from now on hold Catholic Action meetings in our houses. These you see are here for a week. What can I do? I can only do the same as the others.”

The powers conferred upon persons by divine right, whether pope or bishops, have been confiscated for the benefit of a group whose ascendency continues to grow. Bishops’ conferences, some will say, are not a recent thing. Pius X gave them his approval at the beginning of this century. That is correct, but that holy pope gave them a definition which justified them. “We are persuaded that these bishops’ assemblies are of the greatest importance for the maintenance and development of God’s kingdom in all regions and all provinces. Whenever the bishops, the guardians of holy things, thereby bring their lights together, the result is that not only do they better perceive their people's needs and choose the most suitable remedies, but they thereby also tighten the bonds uniting them.” Consequently, they were bodies that did not make decisions binding on their members in an authoritarian manner, any more than do congresses of scientists decide the way in which experiments must be carried out in this or that laboratory.

The bishops’ conference, however, now works like a parliament; the permanent council of the French episcopate is its executive body. The bishop is more like a prefect or a commissioner of the Republic (to use the fashionable terminology) than a successor of the Apostles charged by the pope to govern a diocese.

In these assemblies they vote; the ballots are so numerous that at Lourdes they have had to install an electronic voting system. This results inevitably in the creation of parties. The two things do not happen one without the other. Parties mean divisions. When the regular government is subjected to the consultative vote in its normal functioning, then it is rendered ineffective. Consequently the whole body suffers.

The introduction of collegiality has led to a considerable weakening in efficacy, in that the Holy Ghost is more easily impeded and saddened by an assembly than by an individual. When persons are responsible, they act, they speak, even if some say nothing. At meetings, it is the majority who decide. Yet numbers do not make for the truth. Nor do they make for efficiency, as we have learnt after twenty years of collegiality and as we might have presupposed without making the experiment. The fable-writer spoke long ago of the “many chapters which have been held for nothing.” Was it necessary to copy the political systems in which decisions are justified by voting (since they no longer have sovereign heads)? The Church possesses the immense advantage of knowing what she must do to further the Kingdom of God. Her leaders are appointed. So much time is wasted in elaborate joint statements, which are never satisfactory, because they have to take everyone’s opinion into account! So much travelling to take part in commissions and sub-commissions, in select committees and preparatory meetings! Bishop Etchegaray said at Lourdes at the close of the 1978 Assembly, “We no longer know which way to turn.”

The result is that the Church’s powers of resistance to Communism, heresy, immorality, have been considerably weakened. This is what its opponents have been hoping for and that is why they made such efforts, at the time of the Council and after it, to urge her into the ways of democracy.

If we look carefully, it is by means of its slogan that the Revolution has penetrated the Church. “Liberty”--this is the religious liberty we spoke of earlier, which confers rights on error. “Equality”--collegiality and the destruction of personal authority, the authority of God, of the pope, of the bishops; in a word, majority rule. Finally, “Fraternity” is represented by ecumenism. By these three words, the revolutionary ideology of 1789 has become the Law and the Prophets. The Modernists have achieved what they wanted. (Archbishop Lefebvre, Open Letter to Confused Catholics)

Other quotes on the error of Collegiality

• 27 August 1976
  An Appeal by Twenty-eight French Priests to Pope Paul VI
  
  During a spiritual conference on 27 August 1976, a group of twenty-eight French priests, mostly parish clergy, in no way involved in the traditionalist movement, addressed a plea to His Holiness Pope Paul VI to take the appropriate measures to calm the emotion created in France by the affair of the Seminary at Econe. Protesting their total loyalty to the Holy See, these priests point out at length to the Holy Father the disorders which the exercise of their ministry has brought to their notice in France, particularly in catechetics, in the liturgy, and in the workings of the episcopal commissions for collegiality.
  

Most Holy Father,

In the midst of the drama which has caused such disquiet among French Catholics for nearly two months, it is towards Your Holiness that we turn with filial respect to present this plea on behalf of His Grace Monseigneur Lefebvre and the young men who have gone to him to ask him to form them and lead them to the priesthood.... It is as priests and fully cognizant of the responsibilities of our priestly ministry that we wish to address Your Holiness, protesting loudly our fidelity and our submission to the Holy See. … What other reaction can the faithful and the clergy themselves manifest when, while these events are taking place, they witness the freedom and impunity enjoyed by almost all the "assassins of the faith," as His Eminence Cardinal Danielou designated them? The brutal force of such an expression may shock, but it only reflects the truth of the situation. It is hardly necessary to recall the facts that lie at the basis of this situation. Cardinal Seper and Cardinal Wright have for years been in possession of many dossiers concerning the new catechism which the official commissions of episcopal collegiality impose on the dioceses of France. These obligatory courses contain neither the "truths" nor the "means" necessary for salvation and yet years have passed without any action being taken against the authors or the propagators of this catechesis. They thus pursue their work of destroying the faith under cover of the Bishops' authority which they have usurped. ... Where can we send them, these young men who ask where they can go to receive a priestly formation? There is not a single seminary in France (and voices more authoritative than ours can confirm this) where the norms of Catholic priestly formation, such as they have recently been formulated once again by the competent authority, are truly observed. There again, Most Holy Father, it seems that the cause of the malaise is not to be found among persons -you are aware of the difficulties of our Bishops -under the burden of the structures and orientations which have followed the Council. Is not Collegiality, as it is exercised in practice by the commissions in which its authority is invested, one of the prime causes of the present situation in the seminaries of France, as it is in catechetics and the liturgy? thecatacombs.org/post/6774

• “ … without meaning to, the modernists are confessing out of their own mouths the irreconcilability of their "novelties" with Tradition. Their behavior towards Archbishop Lefebvre is no surprise to anyone who knows the system followed by the modernists during the Council and perfectly illustrated by Msgr. Colombo, Paul VI's "theologian:" "Let us now change," he said, "episcopal collegiality. Afterwards we will find the theological reasons to justify it." With these modernist methods, Archbishop Lefebvre, simply because he made a doctrinal objection, found himself to be secretly "schismatic" from 1978 on… (In Defense of Archbishop Lefebvre, The Angelus, January 1990) thecatacombs.org/thread/2288/defense-archbishop-marcel-lefebvre-articles
  

• M. Davies, Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre - Volume I
  In the Supplement-Voltigeur to ltineraires (No.40 of July 1976), Jean Madiran made it quite clear why these young priests had been treated in the manner described by Father Bruckberger. "During the days preceding the ordinations to the priesthood at Econe on 29 June, messages and envoys from the Vatican thronged about Mgr. Lefebvre, promising him that all would be well if he accepted the new missal, imposed it on his priests, and himself concelebrated the New Mass publicly with a representative of Paul VI. The promise was no doubt false, but it was significant -it showed that the assurance given to Mgr. Lefebvre all through 1975 by the official inquisitors, that in the proceedings against him liturgy was not in question, was a trick: the truth was that it was liturgy alone, or liturgy above all, that was in question -it was a question of the Mass of Article 7 which was to take the place of the traditional Mass.  A similar trickery had pretended in 1970 to correct Article 7 promulgated in 1969. The same trick, in the Council, had put forward the nota praevia explicativa on collegiality. In all these similar cases the sequel showed and the facts proved that it was an imposture designed to lull Catholic resistance with illusory, merely verbal, guarantees, destined to remain dead letters. The trick was used often enough for it to be exposed.  (M. Davies, Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre - Volume I) [url=http://thecatacombs.org/post/6774]thecatacombs.org/post/6774