We can't add much more right now, but talk is growing.
The SSPX leadership will obviously request Rome's approval, as Abp. Lefebvre himself requested in 1987/1988 (with unclear, then clear, results...), but what exactly will unfold is unclear at the moment.
We'll have more to add soon.
Introductory remarks from the translator
This is an excerpt from a long article in “La Tradizione Cattolica”( Year XXXIV – n°2 (124) – 2023). It is the transcript of an address the Archbishop gave in Trent on June 17th 1979. It was difficult to translate because as the Archbishop himself says in his introductory remarks: ‘First of all, please excuse my Italian, as I do not have complete command of the language, but I think it will be easier to speak [ directly] to you myself – even if I make mistakes - rather than have someone translate for me.’
I believe this is one of the reasons that this particular speech has not been translated into English [ it may be in a book in English – but I couldn’t find a trace of it online]– as the Archbishop is not speaking from a prepared speech – but speaks from the heart - ‘off the cuff.’ So the Italian is repetitive, colloquial and delightfully to the point, without a trace of malice. The Archbishop speaks with the piercing sincerity of a man of God who loves Holy Mother Church – and is not afraid to call ‘a spade a spade’ when he speaks of how the Church [i.e. the administration of the visible institution] has been taken over by men who are devoid of the Catholic Faith. (‘They are really not good Catholics. They are really not true Churchmen’). He even names the men bent on the demolition of the Church (as a visible institution). And this is in 1979 – who knows what he’d say now.
We are pleased to present the text of an interview we recently conducted with Monsieur Christian Marquant of Paix Liturgique (“Liturgical Peace”). He belongs to the generation of extraordinary people who, as young men, acted decisively when their elders shrank from doing so: they resisted the imposition of liturgical novelty upon the people of God. Here, for the first time online, Christian recounts his adventures and misadventures from the mid-1960s to the present—above all, the establishment and work of Paix Liturgique, a multilingual, data-driven enterprise for the restoration of the usus antiquior all around the world. We are grateful for the many historic photos Mr. Marquant shared with us, most of which appear here for the first time. Dr. John Pepino kindly translated the interview from French into English.
| Christian Marquant, Summorum Pontificum Conference, October 2020, Rome |
Rorate Caeli: Dear Christian, you are the man who orchestrates Oremus-Paix Liturgique. Could you tell us about this movements and its activities?
Christian Marquant: It would hard to tell you what we are today without telling you at least some of our history as Catholic activists. It all began in the mid-1960s.
The first volume, published in 1979, recounts the years from 1905-1976, providing a comprehensive collection of source materials essential for serious research on the Archbishop. The words of Davies in his introduction have lost nothing of their timeliness:
| Count Neri Capponi (left) with Michael Davies at a FIUV meeting |
His face perfectly expresse[d] the mixed feelings which gripped him: "real satisfaction," as he would write to Ratzinger, and silent mistrust which he spoke of to the sisters in the Cenacolo convent [of the Discepole del Cenacolo, in Velletri, near Albano] at 3 PM: "If Don Putti [Fr. Francesco-Maria Putti, a Traditional Roman priest and spiritual son of Padre Pio, who guided and formed the sisters until his death in 1984] were here, what would he say? 'Your Grace, where are you going? What are you doing?' "
Yesterday it was with real satisfaction that I put my signature on the Protocol drafted during the preceding days. However, you yourself have witnessed my deep disappointment upon the reading of the letter, which you gave me, bringing the Holy Father's answer concerning the episcopal consecrations.
Practically, to postpone the episcopal consecrations to a later undetermined date would be the fourth time that it would have been postponed. The date of June 30 was clearly indicated in my previous letters as the latest possible.
I have already given you a file concerning the candidates. There are still two months to make the mandate.
Given the particular circumstances of this proposal, the Holy Father can very well shorten the procedure so that the mandate be communicated to us around mid-June.
In case the answer will be negative, I would find myself in conscience obliged to proceed with the consecrations, relying upon the agreement given by the Holy See in the Protocol for the consecration of one bishop, member of the Society.
The reticence expressed on the subject of the episcopal consecration of a member of the Society, either by writing or by word of mouth, gives me reason to fear delays. Everything is now prepared for the ceremony of June 30: hotel reservations, transportation, rental of a huge tent to house the ceremony.
The disappointment of our priests and faithful would be extreme. All of them hope that this consecration will be realized with the agreement of the Holy See; but being already disappointed by previous delays they will not understand that I would accept a further delay. They are aware and desirous above all of having truly Catholic bishops transmitting the true Faith to them, and communicating to them in a way that is certain the graces of salvation to which they aspire for themselves and for their children.
In the hope that this request shall not be an insurmountable obstacle to the reconciliation in process, please, Eminence, accept my respectful and fraternal sentiments in Christo et Maria.
+Marcel Lefebvre
Pope John Paul II today personally stepped into a dispute with one of his severest critics, urging Vatican officials to heal a rift with the ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre of France.
Six months after the Vatican began negotiations aimed at reinstating the rebel Archbishop, John Paul issued an unusual public statement voicing ''my desire that these efforts should continue.'' The statement was in the form of a letter to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who is in charge of the talks.
The necessity to distinguish that which authentically "edifies" the Church from what destroys it becomes, in this period [after the Council] a particular need of our service regarding the whole community of the faithful.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has, in the field of this ministry, a key role, as the documents on matters of faith and morals which your Dicastery has published in the last few years have been showing. Among the themes of which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has had to deal in recent times are included the problems related to the "Fraternité of Pius X", founded and guided by Archbishop M. Lefebvre.
Never has history seen the Pope turning himself into some kind of guardian of the pantheon of all religions, as I have brought it to mind, making himself the pontiff of liberalism.
Let anyone tell me whether such a situation has ever existed in the Church. What should we do in the face of such a reality? Weep, without a doubt. Oh, we mourn and our heart is broken and sorrowful. We would give our life, our blood, for the situation to change. But the situation is such, the work which the Good Lord has put into our hands is such, that in face of this darkness of Rome, this stubbornness of the Roman authorities in their error, this refusal to return to the Truth and to Tradition, it seems to me that the Good Lord is asking that the Church continue. This is why it is likely that I should, before rendering an account of my life to the Good Lord, perform some episcopal consecrations.
Many are aware of the role of French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre as the consecrator of bishops in the events that took place in Écône, Switzerland, on June 30, 1988, in a climate of extreme tension with the Holy See. What is less well known is his work as the most important character of the Church in the continent where its growth is truly explosive in our age -- Africa -- in the crucial decades of deconolization, and that he set in place around forty dioceses in the continent, before being a leading figure during the Second Vatican Council.