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What’s it all about?
In November 1970, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre officially founded the Society of Saint Pius X, in order to train traditional priests and keep the traditions of the Church. The Society was officially blessed and approved by the Church. An American, Cardinal Wright, the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, wrote of the Society of Saint Pius X: “This Association has already exceeded the frontiers of Switzerland, and several ordinaries, in different parts of the world, praise and approve it. All of this, and especially the wisdom of the norms which direct and govern this Association, give much reason to hope for its success… the Society will certainly be able to conform to the end… for the distribution of the clergy in the world.”
Eighteen years later, in June of 1988, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated four bishops in order to guarantee the continuation of a work blessed and approved by the Church. Rome had agreed in principle on the point of Episcopal consecration, but did not agree on the Archbishop’s choice of candidates. He, nevertheless, went ahead with the consecrations, despite Rome’s disapproval. As a consequence…
CARDINAL GANTIN,
the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops, wrongly declared the Archbishop Lefebvre had performed a “schismatic act” by ordaining four bishops in 1988 without papal permission and warned “the priests and the faithful…not to support the schism of Monsignor Lefebvre, otherwise they shall incur the very grave penalty of excommunication.” Cardinal Gantin erroneously quoted the Church’s Law (Canon 1364 & 1): “a schismatic act incurs automatic excommunication,” but since act incurs automatic excommunication,” but since there was no schism, there could be no excommunication.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
On the following day, the Pope made a similar, but non-juridical statement. “Everyone should be ware that formal adherence to the schism is a grave offense against God and carried the penalty of excommunication decreed by the Church’s law (Canon 1364).” Yet, as his experts later provided: there was no schism in the first place and so there could be no excommunication.
CARDINAL CASTILLO LARA, J.C.D.
President of the Pontifical Commission for the Authentic Interpretation of Canon Law, explained that, “The act of consecrating a bishop (without the Pope’s permission) is no in itself a schismatic act” and so no excommunication applies. (La Reppublica, October 7, 1988).
COUNT NERI CAPPONI, D.CN.L., LL.D
The retired Professor of Canon Law at the University of Florence, well-known in Vatican legal circles and accredited to argue cases before Rome’s highest juridical body, the Apostolic Signatura, explains that for a schismatic act, it is not enough to merely consecrate a bishop without papal permission. “He must do something more, for instance, had he set up a hierarchy of his own, then it would have been a schismatic act. The fact is that Msgr. Lefebvre simply said: ‘I am consecrating bishops in order that my priestly order can continue. They don not tale the place of other bishops. I am not creating a parallel church’ Therefore this act was not, per se, schismatic” and so he is not excommunicated. (Latin Mass Magazine, May-June 1993)
