Between 1960 and 1962, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre served on the Central Preparatory Commission charged with producing the schemata presented at the Second Vatican Council.
Although he later professed that he approached the Council with high hopes and an open mind, his work on the Commission quickly led to disillusionment.
In 1968, Archbishop Lefebvre resigned as head of the Holy Spirit Fathers in a dispute with members of the Chapter General over reform of the order in keeping with the Council directives.
He then moved to Rome where a group of young men were looking for someone to direct them in traditional priestly formation and who were convinced that Catholic universities – like the Church itself – was “infected” with modernism.
In June 1970, as mentioned in a previous column, Archbishop Lefebvre received permission to establish a house for seminarians in a large residence belonging to the canons of St. Bernard, in Econe, Switzerland. There he founded the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X, named after the Pope known as the “scourge of modernists.”
The seminary quickly developed a reputation as a traditionalist stronghold committed to the Tridentine rite, Thomistic theology, and a general repudiation of the reforms of Vatican II.
This strict traditionalism was rejected by the Holy See, to which Archbishop Lefebvre escalated his rebellious doctrine, responding with his infamous Declaration rejecting modernism and continuing to use the then-prohibited Tridentine Mass.
During the Council debates, Archbishop Lefebvre’s opposition to the new theological currents intensified. He sided with the conservatives in all the major Council debates and refused to sign the conciliar documents on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) and the Declaration of Religious Liberty (Dignitatis Humanae).
The Priestly Society of Saint Pius X was erected ad experimentum by the Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva, and Freiburg on Nov. 1, 1970. During this time, I met often with Archbishop Lefebvre, who was under investigation by a special Pontifical Commission of three cardinals formed by Paul VI to investigate the principal difficulties of the Society. The cardinals were: Gabriel-Marie Garonne, Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education; John Wright, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy (where I was working); and Arturo Tabera Araoz, Prefect of the Congregation of the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes.
They arranged a canonical visitation to Archbishop Lefebvre’s seminary in Econe, but he affirmed his refusal to “follow the Rome of Neo-Modernist and Neo-Protestant tendencies which became clearly manifest during the Second Vatican Council and after the statements of Paul VI.”
Archbishop Lefebvre’s Declaration of Nov. 21, 1974, became the catalyst for the eventual suppression of the Society of St. Pius X and its seminary. In a letter addressed to Archbishop Lefebvre from the Commission of Cardinals, the break with the Holy See became definitive.
In February 1975, Archbishop Lefebvre was invited to Rome for a “discussion” with Curia officials. Shortly after the meeting, his Declaration was condemned as “unacceptable on all points.” In spite of this reprimand, which represented a public rebuke by Pope Paul VI, Archbishop Lefebvre continued his traditionalist initiatives. On July 22, he was officially suspended a divinis for refusing a direct Vatican order prohibiting ordinations.
Following the election of Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Lefebvre met personally with him on Nov. 18, 1978. Expectations of rapprochement were high, but negotiations between the archbishop and the Vatican remained at an impasse through the 1980s.
While appearing publicly calm and willing to reach some accommodation with the Church, Archbishop Lefebvre continued to equivocate on his position on Vatican II and on the doctrinal integrity of the new “Novus Ordo Mass.”
In October 1983, he increased pressure on the Vatican by intimating he would ordain an episcopal successor, with or without papal permission. Aging and in ill health, Archbishop Lefebvre renewed this threat again in 1987 during the June ordinations at Econe where he announced his “Operation Survival” for tradition.
He demanded a June 30 date for the ordination and the right to ordain more than one episcopal successor. After these demands were refused, and in spite of a flurry of last-minute Vatican pleas, Archbishop Lefebvre proceeded with his plan to “perpetuate tradition.” On June 30, 1988, under a tent church constructed in the shadow of his flagship seminary in Econe, he ordained four of his priests as bishops.
Archbishop Lefebvre and his new bishops incurred immediate excommunication. His contact with the Vatican diminished, although several overtures were undertaken from Rome to reopen the conversation. Through his writing and public pronouncements, Archbishop Lefebvre maintained his excommunication was “absolutely null and void.”
For his opponents and detractors, Archbishop Lefebvre was an incorrigible reactionary whose conservative religious views and rigid ecclesiology paralleled the ancien régime political thinking of right-wing elements in pre-revolutionary France. The archbishop became a recalcitrant and disobedient servant who refused to recognize an ecumenical council.
In the early hours of March 25, 1991, following surgery for the removal of an abdominal tumour, Marcel Archbishop Lefebvre died in Martigny in the Canton of Valais near Econe, Switzerland.
