So What's The Deal About This Permission To Absolve Abortion

A More Open-minded Papacy 

Pope Francis’ recent pastoral directive extending to all priests, even those of the semi-schismatic Society of Saint Pius X, the faculty to absolve the sin of abortion has created a remarkable stir on several levels. 

I must admit that I am not sure quite why this was seen to be such a huge step as, at least here in the United States and I presume through much of the world, the reservation of absolution to the bishop or his authorized confessor was largely bypassed for sound pastoral reasons.  The minor flap associated with this “temporary provision” for the upcoming Holy Year of Mercy is how many people didn’t know that there are sins beyond the authority of the priest to absolve.  I am going to use the word “absolve” here rather than “forgive” to differentiate between God’s forgiveness of sins and the Church’s authority to absolve sinners from their sin. God’s power to forgive is not limited to the Church’s sacramental system which is not to say that we should not avail ourselves of Sacramental absolution.

So much of the Second Vatican Council has been overlooked and allowed to lie somewhat dormant and unexplored.  One of these facets of our faith towards which the Council took a radically different stance than had the theologians of the previous four or five previous centuries is about the sacrament of Penance or, as some call it today, Reconciliation. Due heavily to the work of Bartolomé Xiberta, a Catalonian Carmelite professor of moral theology teaching in Rome and a peritus at the Council, there was a return to the Patristic understanding that the Sacrament of Penance reconciles the sinner to the Church. The Church, that is the Christian community itself through the ministry of the Bishop—and by extension the ministry of the priests to whom he gives “faculties” for absolving the people entrusted to his (the Bishop’s) care, forgives sin in the Name of Christ and restores the penitent to the community of the Church from which the sin had separated him (or her).  The Church is the Body of Christ and thus to be reconciled to Christ means also to be reconciled to the Church.  Perhaps even more accurate is to say that in being reconciled to his Body, the Church, we are reconciled to Christ. Christ and his Church cannot be separated; they are indissolubly united.  This puts the sacrament in a whole different context than the popular ideas created by the good Father Simplicius O’Finnegan when he came into Sister Mary Winged Seraph’s fifth grade class at Our Lady of Perpetual Suffering Academy sixty some years ago and told us of his various “magic powers.”   The priest does not—and never did—“forgive” sins in his own name or by his own authority but always as an extension of the Bishop as chief pastor of the local Church. 

When a bishop gives faculties to a priest to absolve the faithful he can hold back certain cases to himself should there be good reason.  Historically it was seen wise for the bishop to “reserve” such sins as abortion, renouncing the faith, or going into schism to himself or to a priest whom he specifically named to deal with more complicated cases.  Frankly this was done because no few priests were too ignorant to deal with the complexity of these issues and the fear that they might be too harsh on the one hand or too cavalier on the other. 

In fact, many priests have always had the faculties to absolve reserved sins.  The Holy See has granted priests of the Mendicant Orders and some other religious communities known for their work in the confessional, in particular the Jesuits, the faculties to absolve most of the sins reserved to the bishop, including abortion.  In addition, any priest—sensing that the person might not return a second time for the absolution from either him (once he had permission from the bishop to absolve the penitent) or from a designated confessor, could presume the faculty so that the sin would not go unabsolved.  This really is not such a big deal.   

There are sins reserved to the Holy See, absolution for which is not granted to priests but which must be referred to Rome for special faculties of absolution.  These are mostly sins by priests: breaking the seal of the confessional or attempting to absolve one’s accomplice in a sexual sin are two such examples.  A bishop who consecrates another bishop without the proper authorization from the Holy See or the bishop who receives such an illicit consecration are other examples.  Desecration of the Blessed Sacrament is also a sin reserved to the Holy See.  A physical attack on the person of the Pope is still another.  These sins have to be referred to Rome as there is never permission granted to any priest, or even a bishop, to absolve them except in danger of death of the penitent. 

What might be more interesting then than this extending a faculty already widely extended and even more widely presumed, is that the Pope also gave this faculty to priests of the semi-schismatic Society of Saint Pius X—the Lefebvre group that rejects the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.  This certainly makes it easier for the faithful from that movement who have had or procured for another an abortion to be given absolution.  But it also is an olive branch to the Society itself in the hopes of reconciling them to the Church.  It is, however, a blind alley as Francis can’t integrate them back into the Church unless they accept the teachings of the Church and that would require an acceptance of certain doctrines—most notably those in the Vatican II Decrees Nostra Aetate and Unitatis Reintegratio and that is most unlikely.  But where there is charity there is hope.  

After Francis, What?

Ok, so Pope Francis thinks his papal years will be short.  Of course they will be—he is 78.  He has one lung.  He often is visible exhausted by the end of his weekly audience.  He has hinted of a premonition that he will not live much longer.  Threats have been made against his life.  Even should he live another eight or nine years, he has indicated that he, like his predecessor, will retire when he can no longer fulfill the responsibilities of the job.  He himself indicates it might be three or so more years.  But we never know.  The frail and sickly Cardinal Gioacchino Pecci reigned 25 years as Leo XIII and at his death at age 93 was the oldest man to sit on the Chair of Peter.  But lightening rarely hits twice and Francis is probably right.  So what will the next pope be like?

Well, you can be sure the Cardinals are going to argue long and hard about a successor.  The actual conclave may not last long—they rarely do in this day and age—but the interregnum and the daily consistorial meetings will be filled with lively debate.  Some Cardinals, but at this point I think relatively few,  will want to push ahead with Francis’ full agenda.   Others—and I think even fewer—will want to go back to the John Paul/Benedict days and dismantle the Francis Papacy in the same spirit—and with the same spiteful energy—that Tea Party wing-nuts will want to dismantle the Obama legacy.  Much will depend on how many Cardinals Francis gets to appoint.  Should he live another three years, he will probably appoint between 30 and 35 voting Cardinals.  He has already appointed 31 voting Cardinals.  While the majority of his appointees reflect the direction in which he is taking the Church, there are some who represent a more measured, even contrary, approach.  On the other hand, many of the Cardinals who elected him will still be sitting and he certainly has his allies in prelates like Oscar Maradiaga, Rienhard Marx, Donald Wuerl, Luis Tagle, and Christoph Schönborn.   I am somewhat reluctant to put Sean O’Malley in this group for while he is a strong supporter of Francis’ reform agenda and a man of unquestioned integrity, I suspect he might be a bit slower than Francis on the issues of welcoming those in irregular unions back to the Sacraments.  Don’t get me wrong, I think he will support Francis as long as Francis is Pope, but I think he may be a bit more cautious about where the Church should so publicly go.

In fact, I think enough Cardinals will be of a more cautious mind that while many of Francis’ reforms will be embraced, there will be a backing away from the more-or-less unconditional welcoming home of those whose lives don’t match up to a somewhat more rigorous approach to Catholic moral theology.  I am sure Francis knows this and is determined to cross the Eucharistic Rubicon while he still stands in the shoes of the Fisherman.  The 2014 session of the Synod on the Family proved to be a bigger hurdle than Francis and his supporters thought and I am sure both sides will be pushing even harder this October to determine where the line of scrimmage will fall.  But should he leave the agenda unfinished, I think the Cardinals will pick a successor who will be warm and friendly but not quite so spontaneous in his suggested pastoral approaches.

The role of our old buddy Ray By-the-Grace-of-God-Cardinal Burke in the pre-conclave jockeying will be interesting.  He has taken on the role as leader of the opposition, something that the Church has not had quite so openly for several centuries.  He has pledged to “resist” any change in discipline regarding admitting the divorced and remarried (and same-sex married) people to the sacraments, though it is not clear what he means by “resist.”  If Francis gets his agenda through the Synod, any public “resistance” is highly unlikely.  He may express his dismay, even his displeasure, but it would be difficult to repudiate an official Church policy.  Some think that Burke has set himself up in opposition to establish himself as the successor to Francis in the next conclave when the Cardinals, putatively disenchanted and disillusioned by Francis, decide to swing the pendulum back.  Burke has, over the years, confided to his nearest and dearest that he would like to be “the first American Successor to Saint Peter.”  But as obtuse as he can be—and H.E. can be pretty obtuse—even he has to realize that the geo-political scene would not permit a pope from the leading world power.  The credibility of the Church, what is left of it after the sex and banking scandals, demands a pope with established political neutrality.  What Burke, if his reality co-ordinates are at all aligned,  might be hoping for as leader of the opposition is an opportunity to play king-maker and get a pope elected whom he can trust to follow his own right-wing agenda.  This too, however, is highly unlikely as Cardinal Burke is generally regarded as a bit of a buffoon even by some of his fellow authors of Remaining In The Truth of Christ, the book that Burke and others wrote to resist Cardinal Kasper’s push to change the policy regarding Holy Communion for those in irregular marriages.  Burke’s obsession with the pomp and panoply of cappae magnae and sky-high miters capping off his pontifical gorgeousness  has made him the butt of too many jokes even among his fellow Cardinals to be taken with any seriousness.  Francis’ removing him from the various Congregations and commissions pulled the few remaining teeth of the now gumming lion sitting on the Aventine amid the equally silly swords and capes of the Malta Moolanaires. 

No, what I think we can expect after Francis is a Pope who will assure us that he will be following in Francis’ footsteps but who will, in fact, create his own agenda that will step back from Francis’ willingness to rethink things from the ground up.  This will be much like John Paul II who paid great tribute at his election of John XXIII and Paul VI but went on to be very much his own man and move in a very different direction than the two Popes of Vatican II.  There will be some external conformity to Francis.  I don’t think Popes will be living in the top-floor suite of the Apostolic Palace again, at least for some time.  All due respect for Pope Francis, but I don’t believe this was a move of humility.  In this age of drones and shoulder-fired missiles  no world leader would live in a place so exposed as a suite overlooking not simply Saint Peter’s Square, but the entire city of Rome.  The successor to Francis may find Benedict’s quarters in a former monastery to be more suitable than a hotel, but future popes will continue to have a private residence. I think his successor may also favor the simpler dress code of Francis but even if he reverts to the more traditional rochet and mozetta, I think it will be more like that of other bishops than Santa Claus (who was, after all, a bishop himself—but don’t tell Mrs. Claus.  Hmm, can Santa go to Holy Communion?  Is he married in the Church? Did he get properly dispensed?  Hmmm.)  I think the efforts to reform the Curia will continue, though I am not sure with how much success and any attempt to decentralize Church government in favor of the local ordinaries will depend on the success of Curia Reform. 

It is pretty unrealistic to think that Francis’ successor will be willing to turn the clock back on Vatican II.  Unfortunately ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue is in a bit of suspended animation these days and Francis’ cordiality in particular with his Jewish friends is seen more as a personal outreach than official contact.  The pan-Orthodox Synod scheduled for next year might kick-start some serious ecumenical endeavors to which Francis and his successor will need to respond, but then again it might be a dud as far as the non-Orthodox world goes.  On the other hand, rumors that the Synod might want a serious sit-down Council with the Pope and Western Bishops to forge a common Christian (or at least Orthodox-Catholic) response to the double threat of advancing secularism and radical Islam could provide some real challenges for this Pope and future ones.  Whatever happens though it is not realistic to think that Francis successor (or his successor or his successor’s successor or his successor’s successor’s successor etc) will be able to retreat from ecumenical and inter-religious collaboration. 

It is equally out of the question that Francis’ successor can make peace with the Society of Saint Pius X without the Lefebvrists formally accepting the Conciliar decrees.  Given the intransience of Bishop Fellay and his followers  it is highly unlikely that schism will be healed.  As for the Liturgy, Francis successor will probably—like Francis—tolerate the Traditional Liturgy but not only will do nothing to advance it but find ways to discourage its use.  Most of the Cardinals who are residential Archbishops have had sufficient problems with Traditionalist groups that they do not want to foster the movement.  Down the line that may change as the current crop of conservative seminarians and younger priests climb the ecclesial ladder; it is hard to tell what the long-term survival of Traditional Latin Mass groups will be.  Actually Cardinal Burke, like Cardinals Stickler (+2007) and Castrillón Hoyos before him, has done far more to hurt the survival of the Traditional Liturgy than help it.  Their great pontifical Liturgies have associated the  TLM with eccentricity and fringe groups that are given to monarchial displays and a sort of pedantic antiquarianism.   As the Traditionalists devolve more and more into a cult the mainline Church is less and less able to integrate them into the life of the Church and they find themselves isolated from the larger Church and more and more only in their own ecclesial bubble.  Their ability to survive within the Church will be a challenge to both sides over the next quarter century. 

So, for you “liberals” who love Francis—enjoy the day; it will not last forever. And for you neo-trads, the road ahead will be bumpy and with more disappointments than successes.  All in all I think the pace will slow down to a more gentle tempo after Francis but the course will be held.  But then only God knows.  

Pope Francis and A Bridge Too Far: Danger of Schism?

Everyone I know loves Pope Francis.  Everyone in my parish loves Pope Francis.  Everyone I work with loves Pope Francis.  Everyone in the barbershop loves Pope Francis—his picture is on the wall.  We all see in him the hope of a renewed and energetic Church. Catholics love him.  Jews love him.  Protestants love him.  Non-believers love him.  He is the best Pope ever.  But I read some of the Katholic Krazy blogs and no one loves Pope Francis.  Everyone hates Pope Francis.  Everyone is convinced that Pope Francis is leading the Church on the path of self-destruction.  This is the worst pontificate ever.  Pope Francis has squandered the prestige of the Papacy.  Pope Francis has lost the respect of the Church.  In the end I realize that we all hang with people who think like we think and value what we value.  Catholicism exists in two parallel universes.

Here is the problem.  It does. 

Those of us “of a certain age” grew up in a Church that was shaped, even defined, by the Council of Trent.  The theology used by Trent was the Aristotelian based Scholasticism developed by Saint Thomas Aquinas and other medieval theologians and passed on into the Renaissance and the Catholic Reformation (aka The Counter-Reformation) of the sixteenth century.  A nineteenth century revival of scholastic thought, often referred to as Neo-Scholasticism, was given the status of official Catholic thought by Leo XIII as it was seen to be the Catholic contrast to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant which was the philosophical basis for so much of the Modernist thought that Leo and his successor, Pius X, saw as undermining Christian orthodoxy. 

In the inter-war period in European thought a new theological movement developed referred to, quite appropriately, as the nouvelle theologie  (the new theology).  It was not, in fact, new at all but a desire to re-appropriate for its time the theology of the Church Fathers (Patristic Theology) much as Neo-Scholasticism had aimed at re-appropriating the thought of Saint Thomas for its time.  Most of those involved in the movement rejected the term nouvelle theologie and preferred the appellation   ressourcement theologie (return to the sources theology, the sources being the Church Fathers).  Among the theologians involved were Henri de Lubac, Marie-Dominique Chenu, Yves Congar, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Louis Bouyer, Jean Daniélou, Romano Guardini, Odo Casal and others.  These were the minds that shaped the Second Vatican Council. 

This shift from Neo-Scholasticism to Ressourcement Theologie was a drastic step for the Church to take.  It is not unlike the decision of a nation to move from the Imperial/US Customary System to the Metric System.  There are those who cannot conceive of our Catholic Faith except in Neo-Scholastic concepts and there are those who cannot conceive of our Catholic Faith in what we might call—to avoid a constant return to the French terminology—Neo-Patristic thought.  Lest this seem as an abstraction we should look at some concrete examples. 

In Neo-Scholastic theology the Church is looked at primarily (though not exclusively) as a Hierarchial/Monarchial Institution.  The emphasis is on authority/power and the reference point is Canon Law.  (Canon Law, of course, must be aligned with doctrine so I am not excluding doctrinal orthodoxy as the main reference point but only saying that where the rubber hits the road in this model is: “what does the law say?”) The Monarchial structure of the Institution places the Pope at the head with the bishops receiving their authority from him at the local level.  The Church is One, located in the Person of the Pope and is localized in his delegates, the bishops.  There are Seven Sacraments as defined by the Fourth Lateran Council.  One of these Sacraments, indeed the chief one, is the Holy Eucharist.  The Holy Eucharist is the true Body and true Blood of Jesus Christ made physically present under the appearances of Bread and Wine by the words of the priest at Mass as he repeats the words that Jesus spoke at the Last Supper, or more precisely as Christ pronounces these words through the mouth of the priest saying the Mass, the bread and wine change to become the Body and Blood of Jesus, the same Body that hung on the Cross and the same Blood that flowed from his pierced heart. 

Ok.  No problem with that.  But let’s look at now the Neo-Patristic understanding treats the same mysteries.  The Church is primarily the Risen Body of Christ, comprised of the faithful who have been baptized into death with Christ and raised in baptism to newness of life.  As such, the Church itself is the fundamental Sacrament, the Visible Reality of the Invisible Christ who is head of the Body.  The seven sacraments flow from this fundamental Sacrament even as the Church takes its sacramental nature from Christ who is the Visible Manifestation of the Invisible God and thus the Sacrament of God even as the Church is the Sacrament of Christ.  The Holy Eucharist is the Sacramental Presence of Christ that draws the many members of this One Body (The Church) into One even as the myriad of grains become, when mixed with water (think Baptism) one Bread and how the many grapes become the one Wine.  This Church does have an institutional manifestation but it is centered primarily in the local Church gathered around its Bishop who receives his power and authority from Christ whose Symbol (think theologically here, means sacrament) he is.  The Churches are gathered into One around the Bishop and Apostolic Church of Rome whose first bishops were the Apostles Peter and Paul.  The Pope, as successor to these Apostles at Rome, is the guarantor and focus of the unity of the Churches. 

We have two very different languages.  We have two very different—though not inherently contradictory—theologies.  Granted the Neo-Scholastic formulation is simpler but the Neo-patristic is more dense in meaning.  (In theology dense in meaning is good because it preserves the mysterium, the ineffableness of the Reality.) 

The problem is the same problem we would have if we joined the rest of the world in the Metric System.  There are people who will only think in quarts and pounds and feet.  They cannot make the switch.  Of course, just like Nona spoke only Italian and Mama spoke both Italian and English, and Luigi here speaks only English despite his perfectly good Italian name—it is so disappointing that Americans insist on being monophones—one would expect that my generation of Catholics would cling to the Neo-Scholastic model, the next generation would be comfortable with the ambiguities, and the third generation would comprehend what the Second Vatican Council was envisioning.  Alas, that is not happening because a second Church has sprung up alongside the Catholic Church of Vatican II that rejects the Council.  It provides a refuge from the Neo-Patristic theology of Vatican II and clings to the Neo-Scholasticism of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.   It is not a big Church.  It may be about 3% of active Catholics in the United States with similar percentages in Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Belgium and Germany.  France might be 5-7 % of Mass attending Catholics but only because Mass attendance is so poor there.  There are minuscule representations of it Latin America, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.  It is virtually unknown in sub-Sahara Africa or most of Asia as the mission work there has introduced mainline Catholicism.  The strongest representation of this Neo-Scholastic alter-Church would be the Lefebvrist movement (The Society of Saint Pius X)  which, while its leaders are no longer excommunicate is still in formal schism.  The various Sede-Vacantist groups, while not as theologically sophisticate as the SSPX, would fall in this category as well.  But there are a considerable number of groups still within the Church that tacitly—and some openly—reject all or some of the Conciliar teaching.

I won’t name them—they are easy enough to identify—but earmarks of such individuals or groups would be

1.     Refusal under any or most circumstances to participate in the Mass, Sacraments, and Rites of the Church in the “Ordinary Form.” 

2.     Rejection of the Post-Conciliar Rites and not only the Mass but especially an insistence that Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, Matrimony, and funerals be performed according to the pre-conciliar ritual.  Some extremists would also insist that Holy Orders be administered according to the pre-conciliar rites. 

3.     An insistence that children be catechized according to the pre-conciliar catechism (in the United States, the Baltimore Catechism).

4.     A conviction that the (traditional) Catholic Church is the One True Church founded by Jesus Christ and is the exclusive channel of Christ’s grace outside of which salvation is impossible or, at the very least, unlikely. 

5.     A conviction that the Church and “the world” are at enmity and that the Catholic minimize contact with the larger culture; collaboration of the Church for some supposed “common good” with those outside of the Church, either secular or believing but non-Catholic being against the mission of the Church.

6.     A conviction that the Church, as the Kingdom of Christ, “is not of this world” and therefore has no business in politics, economics, or other social spheres. 

There are, I suppose other markers and it is not necessary that an individual subscribe to each and to all of these markers to adhere to a pre-conciliar Catholicism.  During the years immediately after Vatican II and the final years of Paul VI it looked as if some schism might result in the tension between the two differing theologies at work in Catholicism.  Indeed, under the leadership of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre such a schism did take place.  Various groups, even more extreme (and far less theologically grounded), broke with the Church and moved into sede-vacantism claiming that Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, and their successors had fallen into heresy and were not valid popes.  Under John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the papacy moved back a bit from the brink and the danger of schism became less acute.  Pope Francis has steered away from direction his two immediate predecessors had led the Church, however, and gone more in the direction of the Council and Paul VI.  Consequently the heat has been turned up and the pot is roiling.  Some voices in the Church are warning that any change in policy about the eligibility for the sacraments on the part of the divorced and remarried or those in “irregular unions” (read same-sex marriage) is a bridge too far and will lead to break. 

I think we got out this far on the limb because of some very unwise leadership of the Church in the decades following the Council.  The attempts to appease those who would not accept the Council and its changes, and especially those who rejected the liturgical changes of the Council, permitted this secondary, shall we call it “Extraordinary” Church to grow up alongside the primary “Ordinary” Church.  The dissent from the Council was allowed to coalesce and form a Church within the Church.  When that secondary Church sees something as “a bridge too far” the danger will be a formal split.  That could be perceived as Francis’ legacy, but in fact it will be the inheritance of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  

Before There Were Muslims To Hate The Jews, French Catholics Did A Pretty Good Job Of It

Archbishop Lefebvre

Anti-Semitism is as French as crepes suzette—even more so—as we can see that its roots extend deep into the history of the Gallican peoples—long before there even was a France, but as we enter into the modern era the battle lines form and we will see the development of the connection between Anti-Semitism and the Catholic “Traditionalist” movement.  

The Jews had a particularly rough road in medieval France and the French Crown played a crucial role in the harassment of the Jews. There were several episodes in which this harassment peaked into persecution and even mob violence.  The Crusades triggered several waves of mass murder of Jews.  The French Crown expelled the Jews from their domains in 1182, 1306, 1322, and 1394.   Jews were forbidden to own or hold land, had to wear distinctive clothing, were restricted in where they could live, and often saw their synagogues destroyed (or converted into churches) and their sacred books burned.  But as France entered the Enlightenment, many of a philosophically liberal persuasion began to call for the emancipation of the Jews in the Kingdom of France. One of the Enlightenment figures who was notorious for his anti-Semitism, however, was Voltaire.  On the eve of the French Revolution a number of advocates of Reform including the Count de Mirabeau and the Abbé Grégoire advocated giving the Jews full citizenship.  While the government of Louis XVI did not accede to this suggestion, there were several municipalities that enfranchised Jews.  As the Revolution began to unfold, the plight of the Jews became one of the contentious issues with the advocates of Reform (from constitutional monarchy through radical revolutionaries) supporting civil rights for the Jews and the monarchists/reactionaries opposing them.  When the papal territory of Avignon was seized by the revolutionaries and incorporated into France, the Avignonese Jews were granted full citizenship in France for their support of the annexation of the formerly papal territory by France in 1791.  Their siding with the Revolutionary (though still a constitutional monarchy) government in seizing the papal territories only further alienated the Catholic party from the Jews.  As the Revolution progressed from Constitutional Monarchy to Republic, the Jews of France embraced the anti-monarchy positions and were happy to see the Church disestablished.  However, they did not support the Jacobins and the Reign of Terror and when the Cult of Reason proscribed Christian religious worship, the ban was most often applied to Jewish worship as well.  As the dust of Revolution settled and Napoleon emerged as Emperor of the French, Jews were guaranteed full and equal rights in the Empire.  They were freed from the Ghettos wherever the French Army conquered and Judaism was recognized as an official religion of the Empire along with Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism.  Napoleon further convoked an assembly of Jewish representatives from throughout his empire known as the Grand Sanhedrin to be a sort of Jewish High Council and represent the interests of the Jewish community to the Empire.  This helped draw the line with Jews in Napoleon’s favor while the Catholics tended to be Royalists who refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Empire in hopes of a restoration of the French Bourbons to the Crown.  Throughout the nineteenth century Catholics would continue to support the Bourbon/Monarchist causes while the Jews would support the various liberal governments that came intermittently along between restorations of the monarchy and the revival of the Empire under Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III). 

When the 2^nd Empire collapsed towards the end of the Franco Prussian War the monarchists held a majority in the National Assembly but were divided between the Legitimists who favored the Comte de Chambord, grandson of Charles X and a semi-absolutist monarchy, and the Orleanists who favored the Comte de Paris, the grandson of Louis Philippe, and a constitutional monarchy.  Although a compromise was finally arranged, the monarchist party was unwilling to accept the terms on which the crown was being offered and what was meant to be a temporary Republic but ended up lasting almost seventy years was established under the monarchist Marshal of France with the improbable name of Patrice de MacMahon.  Although MacMahon was a Legitimist who favored the restoration of a strong monarchy, he took his duties as President of the Republic seriously and refused to sanction a coup by the conservatives to take over the Republic.  By the time of MacMahon’s resignation in 1879 the monarchist cause had lost popular support and the Republic was pretty firmly established. 

The Catholic Church in France strongly supported the restoration of the monarchy; therefore non-Catholics: Protestants, Jews, and Secularists supported the Republic.  Consequently the Church in France became a strong force for political and social reactionism.  French Catholics felt somewhat betrayed by Pope Leo XIII’s endorsement of the Republic.  The Catholic reactionaries mounted a strong anti-Semitic campaign and were particularly intent on purging the military of Jews.  This resulted in the infamous Dreyfus case where a French officer of Jewish blood, Alfred Dreyfus, was framed and convicted of treason and then imprisoned under appalling conditions before finally being cleared.  Catholicism and anti-Semitism became deeply linked by their common affiliation to conservative French politics in the early 20^th century. 

Following the Dreyfus affair and the anti-Semitism that surrounded it, a reactionary movement arose called Action Français.   Action Français set about undoing any and all effects of the French Revolution—it was monarchist, anti-democratic, nationalistic and very, very Catholic.    In fact is was so Catholic that Pius XI condemned the movement in 1926—in other words, Pius saw the movement as using a veneer of Catholic faith for political and socio-economic objectives that were contrary to Catholic thought.  Pius XII lifted the excommunications in 1939 when he saw Action Français as a defense against Marxist-Leninism, but the Holy See never endorsed the political or sociological objectives of the movement which ran contrary to the encyclicals of Leo XIII and Pius XI (and subsequently to the social encyclicals of John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI.) 

Despite the relative strength of Action Français in the first half of the 20^th century, monarchism never garnered enough political momentum for there to be serious consideration of restoring the French monarchy, especially in a somewhat absolutist form as advocated by the hard-line monarchists.  Action Français faded out after World War II, but its nationalistic, conservative, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic fanaticism remained in the hearts of many French reactionaries.

Among the bearers of the Action Français heritage was the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.  Lefebvre came from a monarchist family in the North of France.  Like others in the Legitimist tradition they saw the French Revolution and the end of the ancien regime as the collapse of everything Catholic.  They wanted not only to restore the Bourbons to the Throne of France, but Catholicism as the State Religion.  Lefebvre himself was an ardent supporter of the Vichy Regime during the Nazi occupation as he saw the Petain dictatorship as the womb for a reborn Monarchist France.  The Archbishop shared in the anti-immigrant, anti-Jew, anti-Muslim, anti-democratic views of Action Français and later, with the collapse of the movement as a force in French politics, shifted his political allegiance to Jean-Marie LePen and his French National Party.  Le Pen is infamous for his anti-Semitism and his skepticism about the Holocaust. 

Lefebvre’s own anti-Semitism has colored the Catholic Traditionalist movement.  Many Traditionalists have insisted on maintaining the older Good Friday Collect for the Jews, describing them as perfidis (unbelieving, but often translated perfidious).   This word had been removed from the Liturgy by John XXIII who literally stopped the Good Friday Service in 1960 and ordered the prayer recited without that word.  Benedict XVI insisted that the traditional collect be altered to avoid the word but his insistence has been ignored by many in the “Traditionalist” community and certainly by those in Lefebvre’s Society of Saint Pius X.  Among the four bishops illicitly ordained by Lefebvre, the Englishman Richard Williamson, has been a notorious Holocaust denier.  Contemporary Traditionalist literature both in France and throughout Western Europe and North America, the parts of the world where neo-Traditionalism has taken root, is often laced with anti-Semitism, sometimes subtle, sometimes virulent.  The Traditionalist communities in France are hotbeds of agitation against both Jews and Muslims.