More Catholic than the Pope: an inside look at extreme tradition.

More Catholic than the Pope An inside look at extreme tradition By Patrick Madrid and Pete Vere Published by Our Sunday Visitor, 2004, ISBN: 1-931-70926-2, Hardcover, pp. 186, $12.95 us

This book is concerned with Catholics who are said to be extreme traditionalists. It is not that they simply follow the Church's traditions extra faithfully but that they claim that the Church has failed to follow its own traditions in certain matters, such as in the liturgy or in ecumenism. Some of these traditionalists claim also that the Second Vatican Council taught false doctrines and that John Paul II is not a valid pope. The book deals specifically, however, with one group of these traditionalists, the Society of St. Plus the Tenth (SSPX). SSPX has 350 priests on five continents and about a million followers. The book gives a detailed history of the Society and then deals with some of its major grievances. It considers the Society to be in schism (that is, lacking in obedience to the Pope). One of the book's authors is a convert from the SSPX schism.

The Society was founded by a retired archbishop, Marcel Lefevbre (d.1991), a member of the Spiritan Community. It was founded in 1970 for the diocese of Sion, in Switzerland. (I think it is widely thought that the Society was founded as an answer to dissidence throughout the Church in the nineteen-sixties, but the effect was as bad as the cause.) SSPX started a seminary which preserved pre-Vatican-II liturgy and spiritual discipline. Several European bishops complained about it, and the society was suppressed in 1975. Archbishop Lefebvre ordained some of his seminarians though ordered not to do so, and he also accused Pope Paul V! of compromising "with the ideas of modern man, an undertaking which originates in a secret understanding between high dignitaries in the Church and those of Masonic lodges since before the Council." As a result, in 1976 he was forbidden to exercise any priestly faculties.

From 1976 to 1988 the dialoguing between the Church and Archbishop Lefebvre seemed to be finally going well, but in 1988 the Archbishop consecrated four bishops after being explicitly told not to do so, and told also that such an action would result in his excommunication. He and the four bishops were excommunicated. Members of SSPX raised many legal objections to the excommunication, which objections are described and then answered by this book.

SSPX also objected to those saying that Vatican II was supposed to be a "pastoral" council and not a "dogmatic" one and then giving liberal interpretations of Vatican II. This was deeply disturbing to them as, indeed, it was to many faithful Catholics. A council can be pastoral in certain matters while still being dogmatic. SSPX also accused the Church of teaching a weakened sense of the presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist, but, again, such a charge is refuted by the teaching of the Council, and the teaching of Pope Paul VI as well. As for ecumenism, SSPX claimed to find abuses of true ecumenism in the Council itself, abuses which led to religious indifferentism, and to a watering-down of the Church's traditional teaching that the Catholic Church alone is the Church founded by Christ. Here again the words of the Council refute the accusation.

SSPX contends that the Latin liturgy prescribed by Pope Plus V in the sixteenth century was ordered to be said for all future time. This liturgy is called the Tridentine liturgy after the Council of Trent which the Church at that time. But the Tridentine liturgy was not mandated for all members of the Latin rite, and, anyway, was a disciplinary rather than a dogmatic matter, and thus could be modified. Actually, the modification was very small in the first Canon of the Mass which in force today.

A more serious objection to the excommunication of bishops and the charge of schism is that consecrating bishops is not an act of schism. But this objection overlooks the all-important fact that the consecration was carried out despite the statement by the Church that it was absolutely forbidden and that it would lead to excommunication.

Some early followers of Archbishop Lefebvre have returned to the Church and enjoy the privilege of having Mass said in the Tridentine rite and of having religious communities which use this rite. And many Catholics who were never involved in the Lefebvre movement are able to attend Mass in this rite in a large number of churches or chapels throughout the world.

The two chief papal documents dealing with SSPX are given in the book's appendix.