Now That The Shoes Of The Fisherman Are On The Other Feet ...

I remember the afternoon John Paul II was elected.  I was at a committee meeting with our local auxiliary bishop.  The white smoke had already been seen and one of our number had been delegated to keep an eye on the television in the next room and let us know when the announcement was made.  The “spy” in question was an old Irish monsignor and he came into the room in a state of shock.  “It’s some Pole” (he didn’t use the politically correct term) “who I never heard of.”  The room exploded as everyone jumped up and made for the television room.  While everyone else seemed quite excited by the first non-Italian Pope in over four and a half centuries, I had an immediate feeling of foreboding.  Italians know how to do the Pope thing.  They’ve done it so long that the Pope is just the guy in the white robe who live down the block or over on the other side of Rome or a two-hour rail trip away.  They don’t take the pope all that seriously.  Even when they become pope, they take the whole thing a bit more lightly.  But a Pope from Poland—that spelled trouble.

Now don’t get me wrong.  There were aspects of John Paul’s reign that were absolutely brilliant.  He was a great communicator.  And he was a phenomenal political strategist.  But by and large, it was a troubled and troublesome papacy.  At least, I, for one, was not a happy camper during those long years of ever tightening and centralizing control.   He wrote some great encyclicals—and some not so great ones.  But most of all I saw good bishops with vision being replaced, successful innovations in pastoral practice being reversed, and a negative message edging out the Good News of salvation.   But he was the Pope.  I respected him and while in the classroom or in private conversation I might point out the flaws in his policies or thinking—and even the infallible have flaws—I only spoke with respect.  I had various opportunities to meet him—well, to be presented to him actually: needless to say we never sat down over a kielbasa and beer—and I always acted with due deference.  I was not a happy camper during his pontificate but I was—and remain—a Catholic and that means that there are boundaries regarding what and how we say what we say regarding the Pope.

I had more respect for Benedict.  He was a sort of papal Jimmy Carter.  While I think his pontificate was, aside from his precedent setting resignation, a disaster, I believe he is a man of unparalleled integrity.  I would probably agree with him on very little but he is a sound scholar in his field (which is not history, by the way; he doesn’t have a good grasp of historical data, even Church history) and I have a genuine empathy for the man who I believe sincerely desired to be pope to “fix” what he perceived to be the problems left behind by both Vatican II and his immediate predecessor, but who found that his professorial skills were not up to the shenanigans of the long-entrenched cesspool of monsignoral fuchsia that stood between him and his objectives.  All in all, I was no less unhappy with him in the chair of Peter than I was with John Paul II.  But again, I spoke only with respect of him.  The Pope is the Pope.  Ubi Petrus ibi Ecclesia.  While I was personally discontent with the direction in which these popes were taking the Church, I bore neither any animosity, personal or otherwise.  After all, they were Pope and I am not. 

Needless to say, I love Francis and feel thirty years younger with him on the Chair of Peter.  But not everybody shares my enthusiasm.  Last week it was announced that Gallup reported some serious drops in Francis’ popularity among Americans, especially since Laudato Si and its critique of our consumerist society.  Let’s face it, we all love our SUVs more than we love our Catholic Faith.  Jesus was obviously wrong: it is possible to love God and wealth, or at least to love some pious idea of God and the reality of our material obsessions. 

Criticism of Francis ranged from the ignorant to the vituperative.  Self-proclaimed authority on all things Catholic and Republican candidate for President, Rick Santorum, declared

The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we're really good at, which is theology and morality.”  

I think he would have a point if he knew science as well as those scientists the Pope turned towards for advice on the encyclical, or even as well as does the Pope himself.  His Holiness is no authority on science, of course, but he does have a stronger background than does climate-change denier and general fantasist Sanctimonious Santorum.  Nevertheless, the ex-Senator’s remarks were mild compared to some who aren’t running for President and are able to shoot from the blind the Internet offers.  (Admittedly, I too keep my identity concealed in cyberspace anonymity.).  Here is an exchange of anti-Francis buffoons from the Katholik Krazy blog Eponymous Flower:

AnonymousJuly 26, 2015 at 4:41 AM
   Pope Francis stinks.

AnonymousJuly 26, 2015 at 5:34 AM  
It's only the sheep' smell......don't you like it?


AnonymousJuly 26, 2015 at 5:51 AM  
"Pope Francis stinks."

That's for sure. He stinks from the rot of Vatican II !!!

Some of Francis’s strongest critics are both very public in their identity and ruthless in their critique.  Our Fancy Friend over at the Knight of Malta, Cardinal Burke, says that the Church under Francis “is a rudderless ship.”   It has been a long time since a Cardinal was so openly contemptuous of a reigning Pope, probably not since Cardinal Lucien Louis Joseph Napoléon Bonaparte, grand-nephew of the Emperor, who was given to open mockery of Pius IX, the Pope who both ordained him and named him a Cardinal.  (Curiously they remained friends despite Bonaparte’s well-known habit of ridiculing him to visitors.) 

Equally insulting to Pope Francis is Fox News Commentator, Steve Milloy who refers to Francis as “The Red Pope.”  The Fox News crowd caters to an audience that is rabidly opposed to any degree of self-restraint on the part of free-market capitalism and its raping of the planet’s resources and considers the sort of economic reforms Francis calls for sheer heresy.  One “Bruce,” responding to the KK blog, The Radical Catholic, says

Pope Francis is to the Catholic Church what Obama has been to America. Obama kicked the already weakened final supports out from under the country and America is NO MORE. Call it what you may but it is gone.

The Pope is well on his way to doing the same to a Church already turned Protestant by the Modernist Heresy. If they aren't already the confused Catholics will soon be Useful Idiots for the Global Elite who Francis apparently serves.

The electronic version of the British Conservative Magazine, The Spectator, recently produced an article: “Watch Out Pope Francis: the Catholic Civil War Has Begun.”   The article isn’t bad at all, other than calling Ross Douthat of the New York Times, a “moderate,” but it is a bit like Paul Revere hanging the lights in the tower of the Old North Church (actually Robert Newman, the church sexton hanged the lights to warn us about the Brits); we know that already, it ain’t news.  The article drew some pretty rabid responses however: who knew the Krazies were literate enough to read The Spectator? One “Gwenn Ap Nudd” responded to Phil Steinacker

Yes, this Pope teaches error so he is not a Pope. Sede Vacant (sic) - the Seat is empty. There have been a number of Anti-Popes. Francis is just one more.

And then to one “James M”

Legalism. As Rev Cekeda says, he was a manifest heretic before his election so it wasn't valid to begin with. The Council rejected the Holy Spirit and elected a heretic. I grant you it would be more complicated if a Pope fell from grace while in office. But he didn't fall, he never had it apparently - or at least since he's been in the public eye.  (Antony Cekada is a sedevacantist, “theologian” in residence and companion of Bishop Daniel Dolan, ersatz sede-vacantist bishop of no place in particular.  I have written about Dolan and Cekada elsewhere; you can check the Label list on the right side of the webpage.) 

Actually Francis is driving many of those who were clinging to hope of a pre-Vatican II restoration to sede-vacantism.  The KK blog, Eponymous Flower, draws a number of readers who espouse the idea that Francis is not the authentic pope.  One, writing under the universal veil of “anonymous” and who represents a sort of second wave sede vacantist theory (first wave being those who claim Pius XII was the last authentic pope) wrote:

Thanks guys! I see things in a different light. Pope Benedict XVl is still for me the Supreme Pontiff. And if I live to see the day of his death, then it will be Sede Vacante. I am a Traditional Catholic and Francis will not deprive me of that. May God forgive this fake Pope. In the meantime I am a CATHOLIC. And Francis is an anti-Catholic. Deo Gratias!!!

Then there are those who want to depose Francis.  A particularly Krazy blogger from Boston by the name of Carole McKinley who runs the Blog The Tenth Crusade (in various other reincarnations known as Throw The Bums Out 2010 and What The Pope Really Said) has not only had some of the blog-flies that feed off her ordure suggest that it is time to give Francis the boot but supports the idea herself.  One Michael Dowd wrote:

I suggest a petition be developed and circulated via blog network for the removal of Pope Francis. This kind of thing might get some more national media attention on this diabolical issue. Every day more and more souls are being lost due to him. He renders advocacy for Catholic doctrine ineffective by the carelessness of his moral attitude and confusing remarks. He has got to go. Go Francis Go.

An “Anonymous” came right in behind in support  

Michel Dowd is right. Enough of this. Are there no cardinals or bishops with a Catholic backbone left? Stand up to this man and boot him out. 


Ironically the post was titled “Catechized Catholics Upset With Our Holy Father’s Shtick”  When I suggested that really catechized Catholics know that there is no way for cardinals or bishops—even those who have backbone—much less petitions to remove a pope, Carol herself came in with one of her typically vitriolic exercises in unapprised idiocy:

If the Holy Father reveals himself to have been elected by the queens to contradict Church teaching, his See most certainly has the power to kick him to the curb. We are all waiting to see what kind if stunt is pulled at the next synod. The last one was orchestrated by the queens and had the collaboration and blessing of the Holy Father…,

I was only relieved that she referred to Francis as “Holy Father” but then I remembered in an earlier blog where she said she calls him that “tongue in cheek.”  One “Lazarus Gethsemane” then chimed in his opinion that Francis was foisted on the Church by a College of Cardials gone mad:

And yet - what we get from the politico Bergoglio is not truth, but rather, confusion, chaos, division, constant obfuscation of clear doctrine, and an unprecedented elevation of man and physical manna, and all at the detriment of immutable Truths and doctrines within the church itself. … 

Many of the corrupt liberal clerics in the college of cardinals (which is the majority) knew about Bergoglio, and that is exactly why they launched an illicit internal campaign to elect him to the papacy. Don't think for one blessed moment that this chaos and destruction wasn't pre-planned beyond Bergoglio.

So, yes—Francis is edging the Church towards a Civil War, or actually a schism.  It wasn’t his doing: it has been brewing for years.  The Lefebvre Schism was the first wave, the sede-vacantists the second.  They both had their roots in the Council and the papacy of Paul VI. The more measured track of John Paul II and Benedict XVI let the fires die down a bit but as nothing short of a rejection of the Council and post-conciliar Magisterium would appease the rebels, the fires remained smoldering.  Francis has fanned them into flame again.  Some hold the old grudges about the changes in the Liturgy or the ecumenical openings initiated by John XXIII and confirmed by the Council.  For others it was seeing their hopes of a restoration of the old rites promised in Summorum Pontificum dashed by a Pope who has no time for what I have referred to as the Colonial Williamsburg approach to worship.  There are those who grieve the “injustices” perceived to have been done by Francis to His Corpulence, Cardinal Burke. More are threatened by the more pastoral direction taken in regard to the divorced and remarried.  But the largest number of American discontents to Francis’ pontificate are bound to be those who see him as a threat to our socio-economic status quo.  Let Christopher Moncton and Sarah Palin and Senator Inhofe and Governor Parry and, of course, Rick Santorum continue to deny the effects of our economic strategies on our planet, but as for me I am a believer—both in Francis and in the fact that we gotta change.  Let me just conclude with this slice of Ashley Ahearn’s KUOW Seattle program on NPR this past Tuesday. 

Tribes and wild fish groups share Butler’s sentiments. River temperatures throughout the Northwest are entering lethal territory for salmon. The fish become stressed once river temperatures reach the 60s. When they exceed the 70s, temperatures can be lethal.

“When these fish are very hot they become lethargic and they don’t reach as large sizes as they would in more cool conditions,” says Adrian Tuohy, a biologist with the Wild Fish Conservancy. The nonprofit group analyzed water temperature data from the U.S. Geological Survey earlier this month on 54 rivers in Washington, Oregon and California. Thirty-nine of the rivers were at temperatures that can be lethal to salmon and trout.

"Their metabolic rates are so high that they just can't grow as fast," Tuohy says. “That affects their survival rates in the ocean.”

Warmer waters contain less oxygen and provide conditions for fish diseases like gill rot to thrive. So as the water levels drop and fish crowd into smaller and smaller pools, the results can be deadly.

So, say what you want about Pope Francis, but as for me and the fish, we’re believers.

Anger, Ritual, and Krazies

Jonathan Edwards

Ritual is a highly complex set of symbols that expresses—both on conscious and less-than-conscious levels our relationship with the Divine, with society, with specific others, and with ourselves.  Anthropologists can tell much about societies from their rituals and much about individuals, not only by their private rituals but also by how they relate to the communal rituals to the various societies to which they belong. 

While we are going to be looking at religious rituals in particular in this posting, ritual goes far beyond the religious.  We stand for the national anthem.  We sing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch.  We eat roast turkey for Thanksgiving.  Brides wear white for their first wedding.  We blow out candles on a cake and sing happy-birthday to mark another year of age.  When individuals deviate from these rituals, or elaborate on them, or ignore them completely, it tells us some things about them. 

Families have rituals too.  Italian families often have pasta as the first course of Sunday dinner; Portuguese have a fish plate to begin the meal.  Some families go out to breakfast after Sunday Mass, others cook a big breakfast at home.  Some families have a particular grace they say before a meal.  Some parents say night prayers with their children before they go to bed.  Some families keep an Infant of Prague or a statue of the Blessed Mother in a prominent place in their home.  Most families put up a tree at Christmas and have traditional ornaments that are particular to their family.  All these things reflect certain values and ideas, theologies even, about the various families. 

And individuals have rituals.  There are certain prayers they say in the morning or at night.  They may pray the rosary or begin a car trip with a specific prayer.  They may telephone a parent or a sibling at a specific time each week.  They may choose a certain flower for their garden or put a religious statue somewhere in their garden.  There might be a certain song they listen to when lonely or when wanting to remember a loved one.  They may visit a cemetery or go back to a specific place that holds a special memory.  

Many of these rituals which we celebrate we do without reflecting on their meaning but they each, in some way or other, bring us comfort or fulfill some meaning in our lives.  Anthropologists, psychologists, or other social scientists can tell us things about ourselves by the rituals we follow or the approach we take to social rituals.  The father of some friends of mine was raised in a very strict Polish Catholic family but in college became—or claims to have become—an atheist.  Every year on Good Friday he eats a big plate of kielbasa at three in the afternoon.  It is a ritual for him.  He says that it expresses his belief that religion is a bunch of b.s.   It may, but I think it also represents a rebellious anger against his upbringing and his desire to disassimilate himself from the Polish and Catholic heritage in which he was raised.  When I was in college—many, many years ago—I used to attend Sunday night services in the Lutheran Church up the street. It was an informal service and people could request a favorite hymn.  There was one gentleman who every week asked for “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling.”  It wasn’t church if we didn’t sing “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling.”  This song carried some specific meaning for him on which his entire relationship with God seemed to depend.  I don’t think that was particularly healthy but then rituals can, and often do, express more about our neuroses than our healthy side, especially when those rituals become compulsive behaviors. 

We wrote in the previous posting about the popularity of an angry God in certain circles.  An angry God reflects the faith of an angry believer.  Our society is riddled with anger, indeed we can talk about the “culture of anger” which is another aspect of what Pope John Paul referred to as the “culture of death.”  How much of our television and our movies are about anger, violence, and vengeance?  We are raising our children on the pornography of violence with video games that are about destruction, violence, and death.  Some people feel a need to have semi-automatic weapons in their homes and the strongest lobby in our country is the N.R.A., an organization that builds a culture of fear directed towards a host of undifferentiated “others” from Hispanic immigrants to the Federal Government to Muslims to unspecified liberals to an invasion force from Canada. 

I refer to the “Katholic Krazies” as a spectrum of wing-nuts from hausfrauen Mary Ann Kreitzer of Les Femmes and Janet Baker of Restore DC Catholicism to the genuinely sociopathic minds behind Pope Francis The Destroyer and Mundabor’s Blog to the delusional episcopal wannabes of sedevacantists Daniel Dolan and Mark Pivarunas.  What they have in common is an attraction to an angry god. 

The roots of societal anger—by which I mean those who are angry with society or because of society—are that people feel powerless and disenfranchised.  Often they feel they are not being heard, their opinions are not being respected, they have no influence over the way that the larger society in which they live is running its course.  A sense of powerlessness creates panic and panic can manifest itself in strong anger.  Religious people who feel powerless about the Church—any Church, their Church whichever Church it is—project their anger onto God to validate and make “righteous” their anger.  One can go back to Jonathan Edwards and his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” preached at Northampton Massachusetts in 1741.  Edwards had much to be unhappy about.  While Independence was thirty-five years in the future, the colonists were already feeling themselves to be second-class Englishmen, disregarded by the establishment at home in London.  Moreover, Edwards was a “dissenter”—a Congregationalist in a Congregationalist colony but an Anglican empire.  And he could see that even in his colony of Massachusetts Congregationalism was losing ground to Anglicanism on the one side and to Unitarianism on the other.  Indeed, as the Congregationalists lost their grip on control of Massachusetts, the colony—and indeed all the American colonies—were becoming less and less religious as they grew more and more prosperous.  The original Puritan vision for Massachusetts of a commonwealth was fast disappearing as the Boston merchant class grew wealthier and wealthier and the farmers in western Massachusetts (where Northampton is) worked harder and harder just to survive. 

Puritans like Edwards had certain rituals and ritualistic principles to which they clung furiously.  These principles were essentially re-active in as that they were a reaction to the liturgical principles of the Church of England which Puritans thought had not been sufficiently “purified” of Catholic practices.  (In the next several entries on the History of the Anglican Church we are going to see more about this conflict.)  The set prayers of the Anglican Prayer Book were rejected for the extempore prayer of the Puritan preacher.  The Surplice was rejected for the black academic gown.  The communion table was set aside for a dominant pulpit.  Kneeling for communion was replaced by remaining in one’s seat as the bread and cup were passed along to you in your place. 

What about our angry Catholics and how they view ritual?  An angry God needs propitiation to hold back his wrath.  The Mass, therefore, is first and foremost (and for many, exclusively) a sacrifice.  Christ the victim is offered in sacrifice to appease the Divine Wrath.  Day after day the sacrifice is repeated, the Divine Victim is offered again and again, to counter-balance the sinfulness of the world. 

A sacrifice requires a priest who offers the sacrifice on our behalf.  Because he offers it on our behalf, he goes forth from us and ascends the altar to offer his victim.  The place of sacrifice needs separation from the unholy for whom it is offered.  It is to be elevated and walled off.  Only the priest and his assistants can be in the sacred space.  The priest, since he faces God on our behalf, needs to stand between us and God, thus with his back turned towards us.  It also is necessary that he clearly be not one of us.  He must be worthy of the role of intermediary between God and us, as sinless as possible.  Thus he should have nothing to do with sex, which is the primal base of human sinfulness.  He needs to be dressed differently from us to mark that he is consecrated in a way that we are not.  He needs to speak to God in an arcane language and in a whisper we cannot, for the most part, hear.  The sacrifice must be an experience of total otherness if it is to be accepted by God who is wholly Other. 

We can see why the current liturgy is so threatening to those who have a need for their prayer to appease an angry God.  An altar that positions the priest standing in the middle of the congregation, or even with the priest facing the people across it, changes the entire dynamic.  The idea of a community of people, not huddled in fear but relaxed and comfortable and “very much themselves” in the presence of God undermines their entire concept of God as the Divine Reflection of their rage.  For the priest to celebrate the Mass—to offer the Sacrifice—not on their behalf but with them as full, conscious, and active participants requires a drastic theological—as well as psychological and anthropological—shift that is just too much for some.  We look at this in more detail in future postings.  

Introducing Katholic Krazies 5

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

Well to look at the next group of sedevacantist krazies we first have to jump ahead a little and look at Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and his Society of Saint Pius X.  Lefebvre was no sedevacantist but his anti-Vatican II rebellion attracted several followers who did eventually lapse into sedevacantism.  So let’s look at the Archbishop and his founding what is still the strongest anti-Vatican II movement in the Church and then we will look at Daniel Dolan, Anthony Cekada and others whom his rebellion spawned into rejecting not merely the Council but the last five popes. 

Our anti-hero, Marcel Lefebvre, was born November 29, 1905 in Tourcoing on the Belgian border.  The Lefebvres were well to do factory owners who were ardent monarchists with ties to Action Francaise, the arch-conservative anti-Semitic Catholic political movement.   Marcel was the third of eight children.  During the German occupation of France in World War II, Marcel’s father, Rene’s, French nationalism trumped his anti-Semitism and he was active in the Resistance and a British spy.  He had also spied for the British and against the Germans during World War I.  Arrested by the Nazi’s in 1942, Rene was sent to Berlin where he was tried and condemned to death.  Sent to Sonnenberg Concentration Camp in East Prussia, he died in 1944. 

Meanwhile, his son, Marcel had, at the insistence of his father, gone to Rome to study for the priesthood at the French College.  The Lefebvre’s were an old family and had over the eighteenth and nineteenth century given several bishops and a cardinal to the Church.  Marcel’s father wanted his sons—Marcel’s brother, René, was also packed off to the French College—to have every advantage in attaining a prelacy.  Lefebvre was required by French Law to interrupt his studies for military service from 1926-27.  Rigidly methodical and disciplined, he was a natural in the military, but when his year of compulsory service was finished, he returned to the seminary and was ordained priest for the Archdiocese of Lille in 1929.

While studying in Rome, Lefebvre fell under the influence of Henri LeFloch.  LeFloch was rector of the French College but was also a member of the Holy Ghost Fathers, today known as the Spiritans.  LeFebvre wanted to transfer from the Archdiocese to the Holy Ghost Fathers but his Archbishop, the famous Cardinal Cardinal Liénart, insisted he do parish work for a year before releasing him.  In 1931 LeFebvre entered the novitiate of the Holy Ghost Fathers and a year later made temporary profession.  Even before he took his final vows in the Holy Ghost Fathers he was made rector of their seminary in Gabon in West Africa.  Called back to France at the end of World War II he was made rector of the Holy Ghost Seminary at Mortain, but two years later Pius XII named him Vicar Apostolic in Senegal and he was consecrated a bishop in September 1947.  The following year he was named an Archbishop and Apostolic Delegate to all the French speaking countries of Africa.  In 1955 he became the first Archbishop of Dakar.  He was consulted by Pius XII when Pius, shortly before his death, wrote the missionary encyclical, Fidei Donum.  In 1960 John XXIII appointed Lefebvre to the preparatory commission for the Second Vatican Council and in 1962 translated Lefebvre to the Diocese of Tulle in France,  a bishopric but retaining the dignity and title of Archbishop as a personal honor. 

In 1962 Archbishop LeFebvre was elected Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers and resigned his diocese.  His election was not an affirmation but rather the result of a struggle within the Congregation between a conservative faction, represented by Lefebvre, and a progressive wing that wanted change.  His six years as General Superior were marked by intense infighting and factions within the Congregation.  At the 1968 Chapter, the Capitulars’ first act was to elect several moderators to preside over the Chapter rather than permit Lefebvre as General Superior, control the Chapter.  This, by the way, is not an unusual procedure.  To the contrary, the General Superior and his Council all cease in office when a Chapter opens so that the election of the Superior and Council cannot be controlled by the incumbents.  Lefebvre however saw the handwriting on the wall that he was not to be returned to office and submitted his resignation to Paul VI.  He seems to have shown some resentment that his fellow Spiritans “no longer wished to listen” to him. 

Pope Paul was a deeply empathetic man and while he undoubtedly felt sorry for the hurt that LeFebvre was suffering at the hands of his fellow Spiritans, he was probably more in sympathy with the Congregation than with the former superior.  LeFebvre had shown his colors boldly during the Council when he teamed up with Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani in an attempt to stop the decree on Religious Liberty.  Ottaviani, LeFebvre, and several other prelates were appalled at the reversal of Church policy represented in the Conciliar Decree, Dignitatis Humanae, which said—contrary to previous Church teaching—that all human persons should have the freedom to worship God according to their conscience and consequently, the civil law should guarantee a freedom of religion. 

We take freedom of religion for granted as it has long been part of our American Tradition, but it had even longer been condemned by Rome as heretical.  Indeed as late as the 1950’s American Jesuit John Courtney Murray had been silenced by Rome and forbidden to teach or publish on the subject of religious freedom for upholding the American principle.  The Conciliar reversal on this matter is the chief difficulty that Archbishop Lefebvre and his followers had (and have) to the Second Vatican Council.  It is also one of the chief “heresies” identified by the sedevacantists for their rejection of the post-conciliar papacy. 

Despite his objections to Dignitatis Humanae, Lefebvre did sign the document when it was promulgated.  He later recanted his signature. 

In the liturgical reforms after Vatican II a number of traditions in the Roman Rite were eliminated, among them the conferral of tonsure on candidates for major orders, the major order of subdeacon, the minor orders of porter and exorcist.   Moreover the minor orders of acolyte and lector were renamed “ministries.”  Several conservative seminarians from the French College in Rome approached Archbishop Lefebvre requesting to be tonsured.  Lefebvre agreed but also realized that such tradition minded seminarians would not last long in the established French seminaries.  He decided to open his own seminary at Fribourg in French-speaking Switzerland.  This seminary moved to Écone in 1971.  With permission of the Bishop of Fribourg, Lefebvre established the Society of Saint Pius X as a pious union of the faithful.  The bishop withdrew his permission, however, in 1975 and despite a mandate from the Vatican, Lefebvre did not dissolve the society; In fact, the following year he ordained the first priests for the society without permission of the local bishop. 

Just as it is forbidden to consecrate a bishop without a mandate from the Pope, so too is it forbidden a bishop or ordain a man a priest without the permission of the local bishop.  Indeed, the entire French Episcopal Conference had informed Archbishop Lefebvre that they would not accept into their dioceses any priest who had been educated at Écone.  As Archbishop Lefebvre was no longer an ordinary (the head of a diocese) he had no authority to ordain priests.  In ordaining them,  he was ordaining men to the priesthood without a Church in which they could be priests.  (A secular priest is ordained for a particular local Church, i.e. a diocese.)  Priests are not meant to be free agents, but rather to assist a Bishop in the ministry of his diocese.  Archbishop Lefebvre had been warned by a letter from the Holy See not to ordain any priests.  When he ignored this letter, he was suspended from his functions as a bishop.  He then decided to pour gasoline on the fire and stated that the Second Vatican Council had been an alliance between the highest offices of the Church and international Freemasonry.  This attack on the Council had him suspended from all priestly functions, including the saying of Mass.   He met with both Pope Paul VI and John Paul II, but his French temper only resulted in an ever-deepening schism.  In 1988 the schism became complete when Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal mandate.  Lefebvre, the two co-consecrators, and the four new bishops were all excommunicate for this act. 

We will revisit Archbishop Lefebvre and his Society of Saint Pius X again in their turn and look more in detail at the schism he caused and which continues today, but we want next to look at several members who left his society and became sedevacantists.  Lefebvre, for all his opposition to both the Council and Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, was not a sedevacantist, but to understand his disciples that fell into that aberration, we had first to look at what Archbishop Lefebvre did and represented.