VOLUME 14, Number 1 – June 2009
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Oriens Journal of the Oriens Foundation April - June 2009 Volume 14, Number 1 $4.00 Climate change On 24 January 2009 the Vatican sexual revolution. announced that it had lifted the Given the media’s lack of interest in excommunication pronounced in religion and ignorance of the Catholic 1988 on Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, This Issue Church and faith, the current editorial Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer, line could hardly have been so quickly and Bishops Bernard Fellay, Bernard Page 1 framed without help from that section Tissier de Mallerais, Alfonso de Editorial of the Church’s leadership that has been Galarreta, and Richard Williamson reeling since the election as pope, on 19 - all of them, with the exception Page 2 April 2005, of Joseph Alois Ratzinger. of Castro Mayer, members of the Lefebvre: the man and his movement Society of St Pius X (SSPX). The astonishment and pain inflicted by that unforeseen event has been The sentences were incurred compounded by subsequent papal Page 7 in connection with the episcopal actions: the Regensburg address (12 Why the Pope had to action consecration of Fellay, Tissier de the SSPX file September 2006), the liberation of the Mallerais, Galarreta, and Williamson by Martin Mosebach traditional Latin Mass (7 July 2007) performed, without papal approval, by and, worst of all, the lifting of the Lefebvre and Castro Mayer on 30 June Page 10 Lefebvre excommunication. 1988 at Ecône in Switzerland. Debacle in Linz The risks attendant upon healing the by Ralf Siebenburger discord with the Lefebvrist movement were always going to be great; and they Page 12 A crisis of Time to plug in to the were always going to be compounded by Pontificate diabolical some of the ill-formed characters among those whom Archbishop Lefebvre made Page 14 complexity bishops. Rescuing these men - and The Cross and the Crescent those attatched to them - from the peril by Fr Ken Webb FSSP of a permanent estrangement, was an This act elicited a blast from the imperative for the Pope, its dangers western media, directed at the person Page 16 not withstanding. Not even the most TriaLogos in Tallinn and office of the Pope - a campaign prudent planner, however, could have by Marija Svilans connived at by cardinals, bishops, curial foreseen how events would unfold once officials and theologians. the opening moves were made. Page 18 Church music by the The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Among Lefebvre’s picks for The Guardian, Le Monde, The Times, unchurched: Verdi episcopal consecration was an English by R.J. Stover La Repubblica, and others, joined in a eccentric, Richard Williamson, a long rolling thunder of denunciation. The time and undisguised exponent of a Page 21 message: here is a gaff-prone, crypto- crackpot “revisionist history” of the Thomism in our time Nazi who should never have been Jewish holocaust. In an extraordinary by John Lamont elected Pope and whom Catholic leaders turn of events, on the evening of 21 must now sideline while resuming, January 2009 - the same day on which Page 24 under their own command, and at the in Rome Cardinal Giovanni Battista Latin ... as I please level of their national “churches”, the Re, Prefect of the Congregation for by Dr David Daintree approved agenda of ecumenism, inter- Bishops, signed the decree lifting the religious dialogue, and baptising the continued page 3 April - June 2009 1 Oriens SSPX Oriens Lefebvre: the man Volume 14, Number 1 April - June 2009 Published by the Oriens Foundation and his movement GPO Box 2021, Canberra ACT 2601 www.oriensjournal.com Editor Oriens staff writers on the latest developments with, and the Gary Scarrabelotti background to, Archbishop Lefebvre’s movement. Sub Editor Julia Dunne It was a day many believed would never come: on 24 January 2009 the Vatican announced that it had lifted the sentences of Contributing Editors excommunication pronounced in 1988 on Archbishop Marcel Lyle Dunne Lefebvre, Bishop Antônio de Castro Mayer, and Bishops Bernard Gerard McManus Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Alfonso de Galarreta, and Stephen McInerney Richard Williamson. Save for Castro Mayer, all five belonged to Martin Sheehan the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), which Archbishop Lefebvre had founded. The 24 January proclamation was merely the latest event R.J. Stove in the extraordinary saga of a movement whose obituary has been repeatedly written, but which continues defiantly to survive. Oriens is the journal of the Oriens Foundation. The Missionary service Oriens Foundation promotes appreciation for, and understanding of, the traditional Latin liturgy as one of Archbishop Lefebvre, who died at the age of eighty-five in March the foundations of Western civilisation. Oriens traces in 1991 (a month before Bishop Castro Mayer), had a sacerdotal career history and culture, in language, art and aesthetics, in stretching back to the 1920s. A native of Tourcoing – just on the religious and moral norms, the influence of the classical French side of the border with Belgium – he undertook his priestly Western liturgy, and examines its interactions with studies at Rome’s French Seminary. Here he imbibed the deep private life and public affairs. attachment of the rector, Henri Le Floch, to the anti-revolutionary I wish to subscribe to Oriens for: and anti-liberal principles articulated by the papacy throughout the nineteenth century. No other teacher had as great an impact 1 year $30 upon the young Lefebvre as Fr Le Floch. In a 1979 sermon, he 2 years $55 paid Le Floch a heartfelt tribute: “I will never thank God enough 3 years $80 for allowing me to know that extraordinary man.” After Pius XI’s 1926 condemnation of Action Française, Le Floch became a marked and I would like to make a donation of $_______ man. His uncompromising opposition to political liberalism, and ($20.00 minimum) his suspected sympathy for the forlorn project of a monarchist Please send your cheque and this form to: restoration in France, put him offside with the French bishops and with a pontiff who shared their aversions. During a summer vacation Oriens Foundation GPO Box 2021 he was discreetly purged from the Seminary. From this blow the Canberra ACT 2601 young Marcel never recovered. Henceforward he was always en garde AUSTRALIA against what he later described as the “malice” of liberalism and its machinations at the uppermost reaches of the Church’s hierarchy. Name Beginning in 1932, he served in Africa as a missionary for the Address Holy Ghost Fathers, based mostly in Libreville, Gabon. In 1947 he became Apostolic Vicar of Dakar, Senegal’s capital; five years later Pius XII elevated this vicariate into an archdiocese, and Lefebvre Telephone remained Archbishop of Dakar until 1962, the same year that he continued page 4 Email 2 April - June 2009 Oriens Editorial continued from page 1 that the SSPX has been rehabilitated. 44 years. Either Vatican II was an Far from it. The reintegration of the unprecedented break with the past, excommunications - Swedish Television Lefebvre movement into Church life or the Council bequeathed to the put to air a November 2008 interview will depend on how the talks pan out. Catholic world a crippling enigma at with Williamson who leaped at the Until then – and the Pope could not the heart of its teaching. opportunity to broadcast his bizarre have been more clear on the point - the minimisation of Hitler’s genocide of SSPX has no canonical standing and its Meltdown Europe’s Jewish people. ministers do not exercise legitimate And here is the rub. A good many ministries within the Church. This Dangerous to know Catholics want to understand the ought to serve as a reality check to Church’s position, and have laboured, At a stroke Williamson discredited bravura and complacency within the often unheeded, to interpret Vatican himself, damaged the reputation of the Lefebvrist camp. Yet, for all that, it II and its problematic texts from a man who chose him for ordination, does not diminish the fact – shocking traditional standpoint. There are, brought into contempt the traditional to liberal bishops and theologians – however, others. These are they who liturgy movement within the Western that the SSPX has got what it asked for: are still reeling from the shock of Church, and, besides humiliating the a seat at the table where the meaning Ratzinger’s election. These are they pontiff, thrust him into a diabolically of Vatican II is discussed. who fear a climate change within the complex crisis. Whether mad or bad, Realism is needed, however, about Church that would disperse the clouds Williamson has proved dangerous to the prospects for bridging the Ecône- of ambiguity in which they move know. Rome divide. One side systematically and within which their establishment The real issue behind the resulting rejects the Enlightenment and the has its being. For these, the present hue and cry, however, was neither the Revolution, and the modern world to masters of the Catholic universe, alleged anti-semitism of Archbishop which they gave birth. The other wants merely to pose the question How Lefebvre and his followers, nor their to identify, extract, and purify the does one interpret Vatican II from the “reactionary” fervour for worship in nobler elements in the Enlightenment perspective of Catholic tradition? is a “dead” language. The real issue tradition that had been pillaged from like a thunderclap newspaper headline was that, as part of the proposed the older Christian storehouse. The reporting a sudden polar melt down. settlement, Rome had agreed to discuss talks will be based upon opposite It is an End of History moment. with the SSPX disputed questions sentiments and divergent readings Hence the rage against the Pope - a about the interpretation of Vatican II of history that profoundly influence fury sharpened by the failed attempt relating in particular to its positions on the theological orientations of both by Rome to appoint, over the heads ecumenism and religious liberty.