The World of Religions, March-April 2009 —
The crisis triggered by Benedict XVI's decision to lift the excommunication imposed on the four bishops ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988 is far from over. No one can blame the Pope for doing his job by attempting to reintegrate schismatics who request it into the Church's fold. The trouble comes from elsewhere. There was, of course, the collision of this announcement with the publication of the odious Holocaust-denying remarks of one of them, Archbishop Williamson. The fact that the Roman Curia did not see fit to inform the Pope of this extremist's positions, known to informed circles since November 2008, is already not a good sign. The fact that Benedict XVI did not attach to the lifting of the excommunication (published on January 24) a condition of an immediate request for the retraction of such statements (known to all on January 22), and that it took a week for the Pope to make a firm statement on the issue, is also worrying. Not that one can suspect him of collusion with fundamentalist anti-Semites – he reiterated very clearly on February 12 that “the Church is profoundly and irrevocably committed to the rejection of anti-Semitism” – but his procrastination gave the impression that he had made the reintegration of fundamentalists an absolute, almost blinding priority, refusing to see the extent to which most of these diehards are still locked into points of view totally opposed to the Church that emerged from the Second Vatican Council.
By lifting the excommunication and initiating a process of integration that would give the Society of Saint Pius X a special status within the Church, the Pope no doubt believed that the last disciples of Archbishop Lefebvre would eventually change and accept the openness to the world advocated by the Second Vatican Council. The fundamentalists thought exactly the opposite. Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, one of the four bishops ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre, declared a few days after the lifting of the excommunication in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa: "We will not change our positions, but we intend to convert Rome, that is, to bring the Vatican to our positions." » earlier, Angelus Saint Pius X was "our perseverance in rejecting the errors of the Second Vatican Council" and predicted the advent of "Islamic republics" in France, Great Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands; and in Rome, the end of Catholicism, an "organized apostasy with the Jewish religion." The Society of Saint Pius X is today on the verge of implosion, as positions diverge on the best strategy to adopt with regard to Rome. One thing is certain: most of these sectarian extremists do not intend to renounce what has founded their identity and their struggle for forty years: rejecting the principles of openness to the world, religious freedom, and dialogue with other religions advocated by the Council. How can the Pope, on the one hand, want to include these fanatics in the Church at all costs, and at the same time pursue dialogue with other Christian denominations and non-Christian religions? John Paul II had the lucidity to choose unambiguously, and it was, moreover, the meeting in Assisi, in 1986, with the other religions that was the final straw that prompted Archbishop Lefebvre to break with Rome. Since his election, Benedict XVI has multiplied his gestures towards the fundamentalists and continues to push back ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. It is understandable that there is great unease among the many Catholics, including bishops, who are attached to the spirit of dialogue and tolerance of a council which intended to break, once and for all, with the anti-modern spirit of intransigent Catholicism, which rejects secularism, ecumenism, freedom of conscience and human rights en bloc.
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