By John Vennari

“Considering that the Declaration of Religious Liberty is contrary to the Magisterium of the Church, we ask for a wholesale revision of the text.

“We consider likewise indispensable noteworthy revisions of documents like ‘The Church in the Modern World’, ‘Non-Christian Religions’, ‘Ecumenism’, and clarifications of numerous texts presently tending toward confusion.

“Similarly on several points of prime importance, the new Code of Canon Law is unacceptable by it opposition to the definitive Magisterium of the Church.”^[7]

The Dubia

            There is another important historic fact often buried that should be brought back to the surface.
            In the 1980s, as the disorientation of the Church was accelerating due to an increased application of the most radical aspects of the Council, Archbishop Lefebvre prayed for a sign from Providence whether or not to consecrate bishops for the SSPX.
            He explained he received two signs that it was necessary to proceed. The first was Pope John Paul II’s prayer meeting at Assisi. The second was a doctrinal response from Cardinal Ratzinger’s office that Archbishop Lefebvre considered even more serious than Assisi.
            As for the first: Pope John Paul II’s held the first interreligious prayer meeting at Assisi in 1986, wherein Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Shintos, Jains, and various pagan religions gathered in Assisi to pray for peace, according to the rituals of their own heretical or pagan practices.
            Archbishop Lefebvre denounced Assisi in strong terms. “He who now sits upon the Throne of Peter mocks publicly the first article of the Creed and the first Commandment of the Decalogue”, said the Archbishop. “The scandal given to Catholic souls cannot be measured. The Church is shaken to its very foundation.”[8]
            The “second providential sign” that Archbishop saw was in the 1987 reply Cardinal Ratzinger’s office gave to Archbishop Lefebvre’s formal theological objections to the Council document on Religious Liberty.
            Regarding this new doctrine, Archbishop Lefebvre explained:

 “The new and liberal doctrine of religious liberty was the main objective of the Council for many [progressivist] experts such as Fr. Congar, Fr. John Courtney Murray, and many others, together with the Secretariat for Christian Unity which incorporated this idea of religious liberty into its charter. Cardinal Bea, Bishop Willebrand, and Bishop de Smet were the great proponents of this thesis, with the support of the American episcopate and the encouragement of anti-Catholic associations such as the B’Nai B’rith of New York, a Jewish and Masonic group, as well as the ecumenical Council of Churches in Geneva.”[9]

            Archbishop Lefebvre quoted the progressvist Father Yves Congar, one of the most influential theologians of Vatican II and its aftermath. Father Congar admitted, “It cannot be denied that the declaration on Religious Liberty does say something else than the Syllabus of 1864; it even says just about the opposite.”[10]
            Congar said further about Vatican II in general, “It is clear that the decree on ecumenism does say, on several points something else than Pius XI’s Encyclical Mortalium Animos, and the declaration on religious Liberty says the contrary of several articles of Pius IX’s syllabus, as Lumen Gentium 16 and Ad Gentes 7 do say something else than ‘There is no salvation outside the Church’…”^[11]
            It is also well-known that the eminent theologian Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, Editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review and true expert on the doctrine of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ, had been a peritus at Vatican II. He left the Council and resigned from the American Ecclesiastical Review rather than accept the new direction of Religious Liberty.[12] As Michael Davies often noted in this regard, “Yesterday’s heresy had become today’s orthodoxy”.[13]
            Perhaps the most damning indictment of the Council’s Religious Liberty came from the synagogue of Satan itself. During the Council Archbishop Lefebvre noted:

“This very year [1965], Yves Marsaudon, the Freemason, has published the book L’oecumenisme vu par un franc-macon de tradition (Ecumenism as Seen by a Traditional Freemason). In it the author expresses hope of Freemasons that our Council will solemnly proclaim religious liberty .... What more information do we need?”[14]

            In October 1985, Archbishop Lefebvre submitted to the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith a document that contained thirty-nine doubts (dubia) concerning incongruities between Vatican II’s new doctrine on Religious Liberty and the consistent teaching of the Church from the past.
            Rome replied to the Archbishop Lefebvre’s Dubia with a fifty-page document that considered none of the doubts in particular. Cardinal Ratzinger’s office admitted that Vatican II’s doctrine of religious liberty was “inconstestably a novelty”, but claimed it was the outcome of “doctrinal development of continuity,”[15] whatever that means.
            To detail Religious Liberty’s effective overthrowing of the Church’s perennial magisterium on the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ is beyond the scope of this short article.^[16] Suffice to say that the Vatican’s response – which was, in effect, a principled adherence to the new doctrine – shook Archbishop Lefebvre to the bone.
             Archbishop Lefebvre saw Rome’s reply to the Dubia as “the sign that I was waiting for, a more serious sign than Assisi. For it is one thing to perform a serious and scandalous act, but quite another thing to affirm false principles that in practice have disastrous consequences”, which is the practical overturning of the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the “pantheon of all religions”.^[17]
             This is the background against which the doctrinal discussions between the Society of St. Pius X and the Vatican will take place. I do not pretend to forecast the outcome of these discussions, what they will accomplish or how long they will take. A conservative English-speaking Cardinal, who is glad of the lifting of the ”excommunications”, and who recently had a friendly encounter with some SSPX supporters, told them, “There is a lot that remains to discuss.”[18]

Pray a great deal…

The Society of St. Pius X credits Pope Benedict XVI for the motu proprio, and for the lifting of the “excommunications”. Indeed it is probably true that no other cardinal elected to the Papacy in 2005 would have both freed the old Mass and removed the unjust stigma laid upon the SSPX bishops.
             But the SSPX primarily credits Our Blessed Mother. The Society organized two Rosary Crusades to which SSPX supporters worldwide responded with generous enthusiasm.
             Two and a half million Rosaries were prayed in the first Rosary Crusade for the freeing of the Tridentine Mass. In the second, SSPX supporters offered one million, seven-hundred-three thousand Rosaries in less than two months. These are impressive numbers for those who are a minority in the Church.
             The SSPX’s Father David Hewko, in his February 1 homily at Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel in South Buffalo, New York, told the congregation, “Look what Our Lady did through the Rosary in only two years!”
             He urged his people to keep up the fight for Catholic Tradition, to arm themselves with the truths of the Faith and the writings of the pre-Conciliar popes, noting that we may be entering a more difficult and confusing battle.
             He also urged his people to pray hard for Superior General Bishop Fellay, as he carries all 500 SSPX priests on his back, and the devil will pull out all the stops to try to make him stumble.
             Indeed, the intense pressure Bishop Fellay must be under right now, especially due to worldwide media uproar regarding Bishop Williamson’s comments,[19] must be far beyond what most men are called upon to endure.
             I am sure all of our readers will offer many prayers for Pope Benedict XVI who is taking his share of hits for his positive moves toward the Society.[20] I am also confident our readers will offer numerous prayers, especially the Holy Rosary, for Bishop Bernard Fellay, and all bishops, priests and religious of the SSPX as they strive to maintain unswerving fidelity to the perennial magisterium and to the wise counsel of their founder, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.