Le Monde des religions, March-April 2009 —
The crisis triggered by Benedict XVI's decision to lift the excommunication of the four bishops ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988 is far from over. No one can fault the Pope for doing his duty by attempting to reintegrate schismatics who request it into the fold of the Church. The trouble lies elsewhere. There was, of course, the overlap of this announcement with the publication of the odious Holocaust denial statements of one of them, Bishop 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 a bad sign. The fact that Benedict XVI did not make the lifting of the excommunication (published on January 24) conditional on an immediate retraction of such remarks (which were public knowledge on January 22), and that it took a week for the Pope to deliver a firm statement on the matter, is also troubling. Not that he can be suspected of collusion with fundamentalist anti-Semites—he reiterated very clearly on February 12 that "the Church is profoundly and irrevocably committed to rejecting anti-Semitism"—but his procrastination gave the impression that he had made the reintegration of fundamentalists an absolute, almost blinding priority, refusing to see how most of these diehards are still trapped in viewpoints completely opposed to the Church established by the Second Vatican Council.
By lifting the excommunication and initiating a process of integration intended to give the Society of Saint Pius X a special status within the Church, the Pope undoubtedly 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 traditionalists 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 say, to bring the Vatican towards our positions.” Six months earlier, in the American magazine *The Angelus*, the that the priority of the Society of 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 now on the verge of implosion, so divergent are its positions on the best strategy to adopt toward Rome. One thing is certain: most of these sectarian extremists have no intention of renouncing what has formed the basis of their identity and their struggle for the past 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 clarity of vision to choose unambiguously, and it was, in fact, the 1986 Assisi meeting with other religions that was the final straw that prompted Archbishop Lefebvre to break with Rome. Since his election, Benedict XVI has made numerous gestures toward fundamentalists and continues to undermine ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. It is understandable that there is great unease among the many Catholics, including the 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, rejecting outright secularism, ecumenism, freedom of conscience and human rights.
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