Marcel Lefebvre - Clash With The Vatican

Clash With The Vatican

In January 1975 the new Bishop of Fribourg stated his wish to withdraw the SSPX's pious union status. Though Lefebvre then had two meetings with the commission of Cardinals, the Bishop put his intention into effect on 6 May 1975, thereby officially dissolving the Society. This action was subsequently upheld by Pope Paul VI, who wrote to Archbishop Lefebvre in June 1975. Lefebvre continued his work regardless. In the consistory of 24 May 1976, Pope Paul VI criticized Archbishop Lefebvre by name and appealed to him and his followers to change their minds.

On 29 June 1976, Lefebvre went ahead with planned priestly ordinations without the approval of the local Bishop and despite receiving letters from Rome forbidding them. As a result Lefebvre was suspended a collatione ordinum, i.e., forbidden to ordain any priests. A week later, the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops informed him that, to have his situation regularized, he needed to ask the Pope's pardon. Lefebvre responded with a letter claiming that the modernisation of the Church was a "compromise with the ideas of modern man" originating in a secret agreement between high dignitaries in the Church and senior Freemasons prior to the Council. Lefebvre was then notified that, since he had not apologised to the Pope, he was suspended a divinis, i.e., he could no longer legally administer any of the sacraments. Lefebvre remarked that he had been forbidden from celebrating the new rite of Mass. Pope Paul VI apparently took this seriously and stated that Lefebvre "thought he dodged the penalty by administering the sacraments using the previous formulas." In spite of his suspension, Lefebvre continued to pray Mass and to administer the other Sacraments, including the conferral of Holy Orders to the students of his seminary.

Pope Paul VI received Lefebvre in audience on 11 September 1976, and one month later wrote to him admonishing him and, repeating the appeal he had made at the audience. Pope John Paul II received Lefebvre in audience sixty days after his 1978 election, again without reaching agreement.

In his biography of Lefebvre, The Horn of the Unicorn, David Allen White said that Lefebvre received a small number of votes (variously reported as three or "several") in the August 1978 conclave that elected Pope John Paul I, a matter that, he said, caused some consternation among the cardinals, as Lefebvre was not a cardinal, and casting a vote for a non-cardinal in a papal election is unusual, although permitted by Church law.