Archbishop Lefebvre: Modernism's Achilles Heel and Hammer of Modernism

Praise God for Archbishop Lefebvre

Good day, All,

Note: The following text was first given as a talk last October in Atlanta. I have edited it to make it flow better as a pure-written piece. Today, March 25, is the anniversary of the death of Marcel Lefebvre, and I truly believe he is a saint. I hope you enjoy!

The Iliad

You have no doubt heard of the Iliad and by extension Achilles and Hector. Achilles was a demigod, half man, half god, and he possessed great powers, being almost invincible and Hector was a mere mortal, but a noble warrior.

Now, Greek Mythology is not black and white good versus evil, as the gods and demons of antiquity tend be a bit tricky in their dealings with humans. But, as Homer would have it, the noble Hector was plunged into battle against the virtually unbeatable Achilles. This was of course part of the Trojan War. It was a legendary battle, and Hector showed well, especially considering he was the underdog and on paper had no real chance. Of course, Hector was defeated, but it did not stop there. Achilles was incensed with wrath and took his vengeance a step further. He dragged Hector’s body around the walls of Troy, desecrating the mortal remains of the Trojan hero.

The symbolism of this battle and the subsequent actions of Achilles run deep into the nature of the human person and the effect of the passions. You see, Achilles was a great man in many ways, but he was proud and vengeful, and he let his lower nature get a hold of him to the point where he made himself the villain. As providence would have it, the name Hector seems to come from a Greek word — which I cannot pronounce — which means to “hold back”, or to “restrain.” We might say that Hector was tasked with holding back the wrath of Achilles to save Troy, but Achilles let go of all restraint and let his temper take hold of him like a demonic muse takes hold of a possessed person.

Trojan Horse

Photo by Tayla Kohler on Unsplash

Of course, when we think of Troy and the Trojans and Achilles, we no doubt think of the Trojan Horse and the eventual downfall of Achilles. You all know the story, but for a quick refresher: Achilles and his men devised a plan that they would enter the city of Troy under the cover of a wooden horse, only to escape from their hiding place and wreak havoc on Troy with the hopes of bringing down this ancient stronghold. Achilles was by all appearances unbeatable, but he was at last defeated by an arrow from Prince Paris, who struck the only place where Achilles could die; his heel. 

The rest, as they say, is history, and we all now speak of the Achilles Heel. We still use that term today to refer to a chink in the armour, or a weakness that can be exploited to bring us down. At the same time, the name Achilles, although not lost to history, was not adopted by Christians to the degree that the name Hector was. Christians have been naming their sons Hector for millennia, and we should ask ourselves why.

Well, as in all good mythology, we do see shades of Salvation history illuminated by the great poets as if they had access to an ancestral memory wherein the sons of Noah attempt to relay bits and pieces of God’s plan that have been passed down and morphed over time. Hector, although not a type of Christ in the full sense, is in many ways a type of Christian. He is good, he is moral, and he is willing to die for the sake of honour and truth. If he is not a prefigurement of Christ, he is a prefigurement of a Crusader or a Chivalric Knight. And Achilles, if I may be so bold, is like a type of Satan. He lives in the shadows of the gods, not divine as they are, living with the pain of being second best, which he cannot stand. For this reason, with impotent rage, he must bring down the archetype of heroism and valiance to destroy the honour that he cannot have for himself. And, like Satan, it is his pride that brings him down, even when it seems has conquered.

Historically, to say that someone possessed the virtues of Hector was to say that he possessed the virtues of a great warrior and a man pleasing to God.

The New Troy

GK Chesterton wrote the following:

“[The Iliad] might well be the last word as well as the first word spoken by man about his mortal lot, as seen by merely mortal vision. If the world becomes pagan and perishes, the last man left alive would do well to quote the Iliad and die.”

Summarizing the meaning of the story for the Christian mind he added:

“Hector grows greater as the ages pass; and it is his name that is the name of a Knight of the Round Table and his sword that legend puts into the hand of Roland, laying about him with the weapon of the defeated Hector in the last ruin and splendour of his own defeat. The name anticipates all the defeats through which our race and religion were to pass; that survival of a hundred defeats that is its triumph.

The tale of the end of Troy shall have no ending; for it is lifted up forever into living echoes, immortal as our hopelessness and our hope. Troy standing was a small thing that may have stood nameless for ages. But Troy falling has been caught up in a flame and suspended in an immortal instant of annihilation; and because it was destroyed with fire the fire shall never be destroyed. And as with the city so with the hero; traced in archaic lines in that primeval twilight is found the first figure of the Knight. 

A later legend, an afterthought but not an accident, said that stragglers from Troy founded a republic on the Italian shore. It was true in spirit that republican virtue had such a root. A mystery of honour, that was not born of Babylon or the Egyptian pride, there shone like the shield of Hector, defying Asia and Africa; till the light of a new day was loosened, with the rushing of the eagles and the coming of the name; the name that came like a thunderclap, when the world woke to Rome.”

How interesting, for Chesterton, the wisdom of the ancients sets up Rome as something like the New Troy, where the chivalric spirit of Hector would be perfected in Christian Rome.

Trojan Horse in the City of God

Homer wrote his epic poem around almost 3000 years before the Second Vatican Council, where the ghost of Achilles and his horse broke into the New Troy where the spirit of Hector had helped turn Rome into the great Empire of Christendom.

The great Catholic author Dietrich Von Hildebrand published a book in 1970 called Trojan Horse in the City of God wherein he warned the world that the Church had been — to steal a phrase from our friend Mr. Marshall — infiltrated by the heretical spirit of Modernism. In a follow-up book called The Devastated Vineyard, Hildebrand wrote:

“Today we can no longer call the situation in the holy Church ‘The Trojan Horse in the City of God.’ The enemies who were hidden in the Trojan Horse have stepped out of their encasement and the active work of destruction is in high gear. The epidemic has advanced from scarcely recognizable errors and falsifications of the spirit of Christ and the holy Church, up to the most flagrant heresies and blasphemies.”

Now, I formulated this talk before I knew we would have the pleasure of spending an evening with the eminent Christopher Ferrara¹. In his magnum opus The Great Facade our friend wrote the greatest summary of how the Council was hijacked. 

He wrote: 

“The virus of ecumenism can be seen entering the Church through an opening in her immune system--namely, the Second Vatican Council. One can even pinpoint the precise historical moment when the Council presented such an opening and it was instantly exploited. On October 13, 1962- the third day of the Council and the anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima- the Council Fathers met to vote on the composition of the conciliar commissions for review of the Council's preparatory schemas…

Under the Council's rules of procedure, the October 13 meeting was to be limited to a vote on the candidates the curia had proposed for the conciliar commissions, although each Father was free to write in his own choices. In violation of the procedural rules, Cardinal Achille Liénart seized the microphone and began reading a declaration demanding consultations among the electors and national bishops' conferences before any vote. The vote was postponed and Pope John was cowed into allowing entirely new slates of candidates to be proposed, after a suitable period for politicking by the conciliar liberals. The liberal bishops of the Rhine countries ultimately succeeded in packing the commissions with their candidates, achieving majorities or near-majorities on all the key commissions once the election was held. As Fr. Ralph Wiltgen observed. ‘After this election, it was not hard to see which group was well organized enough to take over leadership at the Second Vatican Council. The Rhine had begun to flow into the Tiber.’ As reported in the French journal Figaro, Liénart's seizure of the microphone ‘had deflected the course of the Council and made history.’ Amerio notes that it was "one of those points at which history is concentrated for a moment, and whence great consequences flow.’"

To say that consequences followed this hijacking of the council is an understatement, to say the least. What has followed since the Council is a disaster that has brought us the greatest crisis since the time of Arius and Athanasius. 

Now, if any French speakers are reading this, you might have caught the name of the Cardinal. His name was Achille, which in English, is of course, Achilles.

Marcel the Hammer

Von Hildebrand was not speaking in mere metaphor when he said that the Trojan Horse had entered into the City of God. Achilles and his men broke in under the cover of darkness and hijacked almost a century of the Church.

But, this Achilles — who is thought to have been a Freemason² — had his own heel. But, it was not an arrow from a prince that would undo his efforts and seek to recapture God’s kingdom and reestablish the primacy of Rome, the New Troy, no, in this instance, it was a hammer.

In the 3^rd Chapter of Genesis, we read that fateful verse that tells us there will be enmity between the serpent and the seed of the woman, and that her heel will crush his head. Well, there was a man in love with the Blessed Virgin who was to be Cardinal Achille’s proverbial heel.

On September 21, 1929 — the Feast of Saint Matthew the Apostle — Marcel Lefebvre was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Achille Liénart, and in 1947 the same bishop made Father Lefebvre a bishop.

There is a phrase in Latin, nomen est omen, which means your name is your destiny. The name Marcel means Hammer, and the name Lefebvre means blacksmith.

Did Cardinal Achilles have in his mind a plan to undermine the Tradition of the Church when he ordained Lefebvre and made him a bishop?

Was he always a modernist, a Liberal, a usurper?

Did he know that a man made a priest by his own hands would hammer at his Achilles heel, under the banner of the Hammer of Modernism — Pope Pius X?

Did Cardinal Achilles think he and his cronies had gotten away with their destruction of the New Troy?

I wonder what he would think if he saw the spiritual sons of the Lefebvre, forged by that holy blacksmith in his foundries peppered throughout the world.

Cardinal Achilles died before Lefebvre was said to be excommunicated in 1988, but I imagine he would have seen it as a victory. But then again, Achilles thought he had destroyed Troy as well, only to find out that the spirit of Hector is stronger in seeming defeat than the quasi-immortality of a living demigod. For a Christian, to die is gain, and to be reviled by the world for the sake of Christ is itself the greatest reward.

When this Cardinal ordained Archbishop Lefebvre, did he know what sort of man he was, and where he came from?

The Origin of the Hammer

Archbishop Lefebvre was born in the north of France at the turn of the last century to a pious family. In fact, to say they were pious is an understatement. Out of eight Lefebvre children, 5 entered the religious life. His mother, Gabrielle Lefebvre, was certainly a saint. In fact, she was most certainly a stigmatist, as was revealed in letters between Mrs. Lefebvre and her spiritual director. His father was a hero and a saintly man as well. A moral and successful businessman,  he died fighting the Nazis as an older man. He had volunteered to fight for the French resistance and worked in the intelligence operation and died in a camp. They never found his body. 

As a young man, Marcel Lefebvre lived through the Great War. His village was mere miles away from a theatre of war, and his town was under strict rationing for a long time. His mother was imprisoned by the occupying Germans because she would help soldiers from both sides of the war who were wounded. Her experience in prison was so severe that she developed a severe spinal problem because of malnutrition.

Both parents were third-order Franciscans and followed a rule of life, which had a profound influence on their children.

Lefebvre’s young life was filled with a combination of affluence, education, strong piety and immense suffering as a result of the war, which all uniquely prepared him for his greatest mission in life which would come in his retirement.

Many who comment on Lefebvre are not aware of his first three decades as a priest, during which he spent the majority in French Africa. He was a master missionary and stopped at nothing to save as many souls as possible. In fact, not even malaria could stop him, as he was able to beat that disease as he did the disease of modernism.

Eventually, he was named the Bishop of Dakar, and was given the title of Apostolic Delegate. In layman’s terms, this means he oversaw a massive missionary territory that was not yet under the normal diocese structure.

Again, think of the providence here. His formative years as a bishop were spent overseeing an expansive territory that did not operate under the typical diocesan circumstances due to the grave necessity to evangelize souls. We can see that through his whole life he was being prepared for his years as the founder of the SSPX.

One story that describes the love Lefebvre had for souls and the Church goes as follows: Lefebvre believed very strongly that each diocese should have contemplative nuns, preferably a Carmel. So, there came a moment when his bishop’s residence was in disrepair and needed a new roof. The leaking was so bad that when it would rain, he would wake up soaked to the bone. He had just enough money to fix his lodging, but he needed to build a Carmel. So, he chose to build the Carmel with the money instead of fixing his home. He said that he didn’t mind because it was so hot in Senegal that his clothes dried quickly.

Bishops and priests who won’t risk catching a cold call this man, the man who embraced malaria and sub-Saharan rain, a “schismatic.” Spare me.

Marcel After the Council

After a tumultuous Second Vatican Council, where Lefebvre saw his sacramental father, along with the other liberals, essentially hijack the Church, the Archbishop believed his time as a public prelate was coming to an end. After spending a couple of years as the superior general of the Holy Ghost Fathers — who were at that time unmatched in missionary zeal and vocations — he realized that the modernist rot was deep within the structure and psyche of the Church.

Some criticize the Archbishop for his initial willingness to attempt some of the reforms after the Council — mind you he did not say the New Mass, no matter what some malcontents on the internet say — but we must understand that we have the gift of clarity and perspective now, and there is no way he could have known the extent of the damage that would result from the Council. 

At any rate, he believed it was time for retirement, and perhaps he would spend his days writing books and doing retreats. If he had done that, no one would have blamed him, as his devotion and sacrifice is largely responsible for the faith of Subsaharan Africa, which, even with the decline since the council, is one of the last bastions of Catholic piety on Earth. His time in Africa alone would make him worthy of the Hall of Fame, but Providence had other plans.

He Will Not Give Them Stones if They Ask for Bread

In the late 60’s during a general election in France, at the French seminary in Rome – the seminary Lefebvre had attended –a communist flag was flown in support of a communist French party. A group of seminarians left the seminary because they wanted to become Catholic priests and not communists.

After this, a group of nine men, including some of the seminarians who left the communist French seminary, approached Lefebvre and asked him to help them become priests. 

Think of the significance of this. Why didn’t they go to someone else? Surely there was an active bishop they could have approached, no? There wasn’t anyone else, and besides Castro Meyer in Brazil, there wasn’t any other bishop who did anything proactive in a traditional sense to stop the bleeding.

By this point, Lefebvre had recognized there was a crisis in the Church, but the depths were still unknown. At first, he tried to help the men find a good place to study with the intention of mentoring them through the process. However, he realized that there was nowhere to send them.

In short order, the Society of Saint Pius X was formed following the proper canonical norms. The fact that the SSPX was formed as it was is evidence that Providence set Lefebvre’s efforts apart as a way of preserving Catholic tradition. I say this because the mechanism of how the Society was formed was perfect.

Let me explain. If a diocesan bishop had set up an order that was attached to his diocese, then when the “you know what” hit the fan, he would have had no way of going into other dioceses. As heroic as Castro Meyer was in Brazil, the limitation of the Campos solution is that it really can only apply to Campos. In the case of the Lefebvre, what we have is essentially a type of religious community that has a bishop as a superior — at least in the beginning — which has its own seminary, and is equipped with the freedom it needs to travel. Somehow we can say that — as Lefebvre said — the approval of the SSPX through the normal channels was proof that it was a work of the Church, yet the freedom that the SSPX enjoys is evidence that God had his hand in ensuring it was also a work for the universal Church. It is amazing when you think of it, and the prudence of Archbishop Lefebvre to act so perfectly given the circumstances is remarkable.

Herald of Christ the King

Eventually, after a smear campaign from various prelates in France and in Rome, the Archbishop faced a crisis: He would have to decide between ordaining the men he had trained to the priesthood or dissolving the society. If he dissolved the society, the men would not become priests, and if he ordained them, he and they would be suspended. We should also add that virtually no one was ordaining traditional priests at this time. It was not only the priesthood that suffered, but it was the faithful who had had their tradition stolen from them.

He decided to ordain the men. 

Now, as we approach the feast of the Kingship of Christ, it seems fitting to speak on that for a moment.³ Many critics look at Lefebvre in a reductionist manner, acting as if all he cared about was the Mass. Well, this mentality betrays the naivety and ignorance of the critics, as if we could suggest that caring only for the Mass would somehow be trivial.

It is impossible for someone to truly defend the true Mass without defending all that comes with it. By preserving the traditional priesthood, Lefebvre preserved the traditional Mass, and by preserving the traditional Mass, he preserved traditional piety, and by preserving traditional piety he preserved the dignity of the Catholic faith in the hearts faithful traditionalists like yourself who could never accept an equality of religions like the Conciliar Church has done'; and therefore we can truly say that by preserving the Mass, Archbishop Lefebvre ultimately preserved the Kingliness of the Catholic liturgy that is befitting and required for Christ who is King of Heaven and Earth.

Hillaire Belloc said “Europe is the Faith and the Faith is Europe.” Well, we might add that the Faith is Tradition; so if there is any hope of preserving Europe, and by extension Christendom, it will not be done by a reverent Novus Ordo but by the preservation of the Roman Canon whispered over the Host on the hills of Palestine as Crusaders prayed their last prayers before giving life and limb to preserve the Holy Land. Archbishop Lefebvre, when all is said and done, will be recognized as not only a hero and saviour of Catholic liturgy but also a hero and saviour of Christendom. That is a fact.

Counter-revolution

In the years that followed, the Archbishop led a counter-revolution against the regime of the New Springtime. He opened seminaries and set up priories, and hundreds of thousands of Catholics the world over flocked to hear him preach and to the chapels of the SSPX.

This was the age before the internet, and the only press one could find about the SSPX was negative. Why would people have done this given all the pressure and admonitions from the modernists seemingly hell-bent on crushing tradition?

Well, they had a Catholic sense, and they understood just how high the stakes truly were.

To serve the faithful he crossed oceans, navigated through life and death situations, and accepted the lies and insults from priests, bishops, and even the pope.

He did this, mind you, while in his 70’s and 80’s.

Almost 15 years after the ordinations in 1976, he consecrated 4 bishops after a long and drawn-out process of consultation with Rome. He did this because he knew that if he died, there would be no more traditional priests. Was he wrong?

Please, name one single traditional bishop in the Catholic Church outside of the SSPX? Yes, there are some excellent bishops who are defenders of Catholic orthodoxy, like Bishop Schneider, but which traditional order are they from? This is not to take away anything from these great men, but it is only to say that if the Church was going to provide traditional bishops to the Church, well, we have been waiting 35 years. In addition, when men like Schneider develop a deeper love for tradition and express this publicly, they are constantly maligned and attacked.

Post-conciliar Rome was never going to preserve the traditional priesthood, and if you believe they would, as the saying goes – I have a bridge and Brooklyn I would like to sell you.

Good Out of Evil

Michael Davies was correct when he said that Archbishop Lefebvre, by his act of courage, made it impossible for the hierarchy ever to take away the Traditional Mass. This is an act of providence, not an act of schism. Some will retort and say, “Well, God brought good out of evil,” by which they mean it was evil for Lefebvre to do what he did, and God brought good out of that.

I’m sorry, is the argument that it was evil to preserve the traditional priesthood? Is the argument that it was evil to stand up on behalf of the faithful who cried out from the deserts with Athanasius, asking the hierarchy for bread but were given stones and scorpions? 

If God pulled good out of evil in the case of Archbishop Lefebvre, it was the reverse. From the evil of Achilles and the evil of the Council, God gave us a hammer, and He used this hammer to forge living statues of Hector who fortified the battered walls of the New Troy like the Israelites did when they returned from exile to rebuild Jerusalem, holding a hammer in one hand, and and a weapon in the other. If there was any evil from which God pulled the good, it was the evil of the Conciliar Religion, which is NOT Catholicism, from which God raised up a type of Jonah to throw himself into the deep for us, lest the Barque of Peter be capsized.

It is astounding to me, and I am sure to you as well, that after 50 years of this insanity, there are still detractors of the Archbishop looking to damn our Athanasius based on legalist interpretations of Canon Law

.

In my book, I give a robust defence of his actions using both Canon Law and Church history, which I think you will find to be more than adequate. But, very quickly, there have been several highly esteemed canon lawyers and theologians who have all easily admitted the penalties levelled against Lefebvre and the four bishops were not valid. 

This is because, when you are in a crisis, you can act in ways that are not necessarily the status quo.

In fact if you look through Church history, you will find that bishops were elected and appointed without the intervention of the pope more often than not. This is not to say that the pope does not have the authority to govern the affair, but it is to say that we cannot say it is intrinsically evil to do it in a way that is consistent with over a thousand years of Church history.

Funny enough, the only reason that the notion of excommunication was considered in the case of Lefebvre is because, in the 1950s, Pope Pius XII changed canon law to penalize bishops who consecrated priests to the episcopacy without explicit permission. He did this to stop the Chinese government from having communists made into bishops. How ironic that this change was used to condemn Lefebvre some years later, who only sought to ordain priests who didn’t want to become communists. For more on the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law, see the New Testament.

Necessity Knows no Law

Furthermore, there was another bishop from Ukraine, named Cardinal Slypij who went against the express will of Pope Paul VI and consecrated bishops because of the state of necessity in the Ukrainian Catholic Church. He was not excommunicated or called a schismatic. On the contrary, Pope John Paul II, the same pope who called Lefebvre a schismatic, made the Ukrainian bishop a cardinal even though he did virtually the same thing Lefebvre did.

Now, one might reply to this scenario and say that in the East they have a custom of consecration bishops without a papal appointment, so this is a non sequitor, but in this specific case Pope Paul VI was very clear that no bishops were to be consecrated in the Eastern Bloc due to tensions with the Communists, and Cardinal Slypij didn’t even ask for permission… he just went and did it. And thank God he did because the Ukrainian Church was going to wither away because of bad Vatican politics. Also, the fact that in the East it is not customary to seek Roman approval for the consecration of bishops shows us it is absurd to suggest there is something intrinsically schismatic about doing just that in the West.

Everyone accepted that there was a state of necessity due to communism, and that necessity knows no law. But the bishops and cardinals who chose not to condemn communism at the council would not publicly acknowledge a state of necessity within the walls of the Church. 

None of this means the state of necessity does not exist. On the contrary, the fact that the powers that be will not admit that what they have done has contributed to what Paul VI called “the auto-destruction of the Church” makes the necessity all the more grave. 

It is not just a crisis, but a crisis of gaslighting. 

For the sake of argument, let’s say you will not accept that a state of necessity came into being when you went to your parish church as a child only to find out it was renovated to look like a Masonic temple. 

Let’s say you will not accept the state of necessity when thousands and thousands of priests and nuns left the religious life after the council. 

Let’s say you won’t accept the state of necessity when in 1986 Pope John Paul II stood side by side with heretics and snake worshippers as they called on their false gods for world peace at Assisi.

Imagine the horror of that event. When the demon gods vanquished by the Old Testament prophets, hacked to bits by the axe of Saint Boniface, stood in seeming equality beside the Vicar of Christ, as if the God of gods was part of a pantheon consisting of Baal, Moloch and Vishnu.

If we were to read about such an event in the Old Testament, we might expect the earth to be opened and swallow all involved.

In fact, Archbishop Lefebvre leaned heavily on the event at Assisi, which was an abomination, as one of the reasons for going through with his heroic consecrations. And, I might add, if we look to scripture, he was more than justified in doing so.

Juda Maccabee

Call to mind the Jews in the book of Maccabees who sought to follow the commandments to the letter, and therefore would not fight back on the sabbath. Well, they were of course slaughtered. But, then a hero emerged and knocked some sense into them, and led them in battle, even if it meant swinging a sword on the sabbath. 

That we keep the Lord’s Day holy does not mean that we must lose our literal heads when a hoard of pagans comes riding in at dawn. Similarly, that we must under normal circumstances accept the ordinary jurisdiction of the Pope does not mean that we must accept the auto demolition of the Church.

The following is written of Juda Maccabee, but it may as well have been written about Marcel Lefebvre:

“Then Juda appointed men to fight against them that were in the castle, till they had cleansed the holy places. And he chose priests without blemish, whose will was set upon the law of God: And they cleansed the holy places, and took away the stones that had been defiled into an unclean place. And he considered about the altar of holocausts that had been profaned, what he should do with it. And a good counsel came into their minds, to pull it down: lest it should be a reproach to them, because the Gentiles had defiled it; so they threw it down… And they built up the holy places, and the things that were within the temple: and they sanctified the temple, and the courts.” 

As our friend Taylor Marshall famously says, “Be the Maccabee,” well, I think Archbishop Lefebvre would have agreed with that advice, Taylor.

Will you accept the state of necessity that was made evident with McCarrick and Macial were promoted and praised, while Marcel and Mallerais were castigated?

Was there a state of necessity when that demoness from the Amazon paraded into Saint Peter’s as a mockery of the Queen of Angels? Or perhaps there was already a state of necessity when Pope Francis sat in the Vatican Gardens while a group of people bowed in prostration before the Pachamama. 

Is there a state of necessity when James Martin clearly has a canonical mission and praise from Pope Francis, yet you can’t get a straight answer from this or that bishop about the canonical status of the SSPX?

Most importantly, the gravest crisis we face is when our children have to ask us after Mass why Father preached something against the catechism and why that lay minister in a miniskirt was handing out the Body of Our Lord like a pez dispenser.

Notice how I didn’t say lady in a miniskirt because you never know these days.

Again, remember, in the 70s and 80s there was no Fraternity, no Institute, or anything like that at that time. There was Archbishop Lefebvre against the world, and he persisted so that everyone here could receive their spiritual inheritance.

If there is a state of necessity now, then there was a state of necessity then, because what is happening now is merely what Lefebvre said would happen before everyone would listen.

The Beloved Disciple

Recall to mind when Christ went to the Cross, who was with him?

The Virgin Mother, of course, Mary Magdalene, and John the Apostle.

Where were the other 11 apostles, which is to say bishops?

Well, Judas killed himself, Peter — who would be the first pope — committed a threefold apostasy, and the other 10 went and hid for fear of the Jews.

While Christ went through his passion it was John — a bishop, but not the pope — who comforted Our Lord and stood by Him as he was mocked, beaten, and spat upon.⁴ John was there to weep with our Saviour and console his Mother. John was there to reassure Mary Magdalene, who like us had found refuge from our sinful past under the gaze of Christ.

Similarly, almost as if ordained by scriptural typology, when we found the Mystical Body of Christ – the Catholic Church – sharing in the sufferings of Christ and going through her own passion, we saw Archbishop Lefebvre standing at the foot of the Cross, representing an episcopacy that had gone into hiding and serving a weeping faithful who had asked their pastors for bread but were given stones.

Just like Saint John, Marcel was seen as cut off from the covenant by the religious hierarchy, who were blinded by their submission to Caesar!

Let us pray that one day, the authorities and the Conciliar Church will come back to tradition, and Peter will tell Christ of his threefold love. You see, it is not Lefebvre and the SSPX who must “come back” to the Church, just like John did not need to “come back” to the Apostles when it was they who had abandoned their Lord.

Our hammer of modernism and craftsman of holy priests was rewarded for his efforts on March 25, 1991.

It was on that day, the Feast of the Annunciation – a unique feast in that it is both Christian, Marian and Angelic – that Archbishop Lefebvre was called to eternity by Our Blessed Lord. It was as if the Virgin Mother, the King of Kings, and the Angel Gabriel wanted to accompany Marcel through the end of his own passion; as if it was announced to Eternity that this devoted son of Mary, Herald of Christ the King, and Messenger of the Apostolic Faith had fought the good fight, he had run the race, and he had kept the faith; not only for himself but for the millions of Catholics who still genuflect during the Last Gospel.

There is much more that we could say, but as Saint John wrote at the end of his Gospel: “If they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written.”

Merci, Marcel. Ora pro nobis.

1. Both Chris Ferrara and Taylor Marshall spoke at this event as well

2. It is, of course, impossible to confirm this beyond reasonable doubt, but this man did “fit the bill.” He backed the Marxist-inspired “worker priest” movement, among other things.

3. Talk was given on the Saturday immediately before Christ the King Sunday in 2023

4. While it is true that the official ministry of the Church began after Calvary and John and Peter were not officially “pope” and “bishop” in the strict sense, we must admit the striking typology found in Scripture in this regard.