Please provide a reference for this assertion.
Some Catholics claim that Archbishop Lefebvre was excommunicated for consecrating four bishops without a papal mandate. This is not the case:
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 not in itself a schismatic act”, and so no exommunication applies. (La Repubblica, October 7, 1988).
Count Neri Capponi, D.Cn.L., LLD, 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 creating bishops in order that my priestly order can continue. They do not take 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).
Cardinal Edward Cassidy, the President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, wrote the following reply, on May 3, 1994, to an inquiry about the status of the Society of Saint Pius X.
“Dear Mr. X…Regarding your inquiry (March 25, 1994), I would point out at once that the Directory on Ecumenism is not concerned with the Society of Saint Pius X. **The situation of the members of this Society is an internal matter of the Catholic Church.
** The Society is not another Church or Ecclesial Community in the meaning used int he Directory. Of course the Mass and Sacraments administered by the priests of the Society are valid. The Bishops are validly, but not lawfully, consecrated…I hope that this answers your letter satisfactorily. Yours sincerely in the Lord, Edward Cardinal Cassidy–President.”
Fr. Gerald E. Murray, J.C.D., of the Archdiocese of New York, received his doctorate in Canon Law at Rome’s famous Gregoryian University, probably the Church’s most prestigious institution of higher learning, in June, 1995, after a successful defense of the lenghty thesis entitled, “The Canonical Status of the Lay Faithful Associated with the Late Archbishop Lefebvre and the Society of Saint Pius X: Are they Excommunicated as Schismatics?”
“They’re not excommunicated as schismatics, because the Vatican has never said they are…You can…show that Lefebvre himself was not excommunicated and therefore no one else was…The Holy See has never stated that mere attendance at a Mass said by a priest in the Society of Saint Pius X constitutes a schismatic act. Could you go to a Society of Saint Pius X chapel to receive good doctrine? That seems better to me thatn hearing truly heretical sermons, e.g., denying hell, or that divorced and remarried people could receive communion.” (Latin Mass Magazine, Fall, 1995).
In Hawaii, Bishop Ferrario of Honolulu decided to excommunicated, on May 1, 1991, some followers of the Society of Saint Pius X, for supporting the Society and attending its Masses. Rome declared that the decision “lacks foundation and hence validity.”
Bishop Ferrario’s attempted excommunication of Society followers was overturned by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on June 28, 1993. “From the examination o fthe case, conducted on the basis of the Law of the Church, it did not result that the facts referred to in the above-mentioned Decree, are formal schismatic acts in the strict sense, as they do not constitute the offense of schism; and therefore the Congregation holds that the Decree of May 1, 1991, lacks foundation and hence validity.” (Apostolic Nunciature, Washington, D.C.)
