Some postings have asked why Mgr Lefebvre did not lodge an appeal, if he thought he was being unjustly treated.
cameron_lansing has rightly pointed out the necessity of providing reliable, primary documents. Let Mgr Lefebvre here speak for himself.
I have pasted the first few paragraphs only. Note that each and every subsequent sanction up to 1988 was based upon alleged disobedience to the previous sanctions.
remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/archive-2006-0215-lefebvre-1975.htm
**Recalling Why He Resisted **
Letter to Friends and Benefactors
Fri, Feb 17, 2006 6:36 am
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre
Econe, Switzerland (1975)
[Editor’s Note: What follows is the official, authorized English translation of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s 1975 statement as released thirty-one years ago by the St. Pius X Seminary in Econe specifically for publication in The Remnant.* … ]
*Dear Friends and Benefactors:
It seems to me that the moment has come to bring to your knowledge the latest events concerning Econe, and the attitude which in conscience before God we believe we must take in these grave circumstances.
As far as the appeal to the Apostolic Signatura is concerned, the last attempt on the part of my lawyer to find out from the Cardinals forming the Supreme Court exactly how the Pope intervened in the proceedings being brought against us was stopped in its tracks by a hand-written letter from Cardinal Villot to Cardinal Staffa, President of the Supreme Court, ordering him to forbid my appeal.
As for my audience with the Holy Father, it has likewise been refused by Cardinal Villot.* I shall obtain an audience only when my work has disappeared and when I have conformed my way of thinking to that which reigns supreme in today’s reformed Church.
However, the most important event is undoubtedly the signed letter from the Holy Father, presented as in the Pope’s own writing by the Papal Nuncio in Bern, but in fact type-written, and which takes up again in a new form the arguments or rather the statements of the Cardinals’ letter.* This I received on July 10th.* It calls on me to make a public act of submission “to the Council, the post-conciliar reforms and the changes of direction to reject which is to reject the Pope” (orientations qui engagent le Pape luimeme).
A second letter from the Pope which I received on September 10th urgently required an answer to the first letter.
This time, through no desire of my own, my only aim being to serve the Church in the humble and very consoling task of giving Her true priests devoted to Her service, we found ourselves confronted with the Church authorities at their topmost level on earth, the Pope.* So I wrote an answer to the Holy Father, stating our submission to the successor of Peter in his essential function, that of faithfully transmitting to us the deposit of the faith.
If we consider the facts from a purely material point of view, it is a trifling matter, the suppression of a Society which has barely come into existence, with no more than a few dozen members, the closing down of a Seminary.* How little it is in reality, hardly worth anyone’s attention.
On the other hand, if for a moment we heed the reactions stirred up in Catholic and even Protestant, Orthodox, and atheist circles throughout the entire world, the countless articles in the world press, reactions of enthusiasm and true hope, reactions of spite and opposition, reactions of mere curiosity, we cannot help thinking, even against our will, that Econe is posing a problem reaching far beyond* the modest confines of the Society and its Seminary; a deep and unavoidable problem that cannot be pushed to one side with a sweep of* the hand, nor solved by any formal order, from whatever authority it may come.* For the problem of Econe is the problem of thousands and millions of Christian consciences, distressed, divided and torn for the past ten years by the agonizing dilemma:* whether to obey and risk losing one’s faith, or disobey and keep one’s faith intact; whether to obey and work for the preservation and continuation of the Church; whether to accept the reformed liberal Church, or to go on belonging to the Catholic Church.
It is because Econe is at the heart of this crucial problem, seldom till now posed with such fullness or* gravity, that* so many people are looking to this house which has resolutely made its choice of belonging to the eternal Church and of refusing to belong to the reformed liberal Church.
And now the Church, through Her official representatives, is taking up a position against Econe’s choice, thus condemning in public the traditional training of priests, in the name of the Second Vatican Council, in the name of post-conciliar reforms, and in the name of post-conciliar changes of direction, to reject which is to reject the Pope.
How can such opposition to Tradition in the name of a Council and its practical application be explained?* Can one reasonably oppose, should one in reality oppose a Council and its reforms:* What is more, can one and should one oppose the orders of a hierarchy ordering one to follow the Council and all the official post-conciliar guide-lines?
That is the grave problem today, after ten post-conciliar years, confronting our conscience as a result of the condemnation of Econe.
One cannot give a prudent answer to these questions without making a rapid survey of the history of liberalism, and Catholic liberalism over the last centuries. The present can only be explained by the past.
[Discussion of Liberalism follows]
[num : please read on]
