And I consider it, the more the crisis of the Church is progressing before our eyes, the more I am convinced that Archbishop Lefebvre’s work, his work and the Society, is a work of the Church which divine providence gave us at this extremely confused and difficult time. And as Archbishop Lefebvre repeatedly stated, and until now, the superiors of the Society do not feel themselves as a work only for them, but they consider it all as a service for the Holy Church, for the entire Church, even for the Holy See itself. And Archbishop Lefebvre, when he consecrated in 88 bishops, he said, now I am doing this for the popes, that the integrity of all what the Church, the Roman Church, did, and the popes until the council even commanded strictly to observe the entire faith, the liturgy, the priestly formation, exactly as the Church commanded it for centuries, and he said, we do not know other things than what the Church for centuries demanded and ordered. So how can we do something wrong, what the Church considered and even strictly demanded to observe for centuries, and which produced saints, this priestly formation through the centuries, how can this be now suddenly harmful or not correct?
And the Archbishop said, we did not introduce anything new, absolutely nothing new, only what the Church wanted, and this to hand over through this time of confusion, which is temporary only because we must believe firmly that decades of hell will not overcome the Holy See. And the current situation is a kind of, I would say in a spiritual way or metaphorically, it is a kind of Avignon exile, an exile where the clearness, the crystal clearness of the magisterium of the Pope, of the Chair of Peter, is obscured, and the liturgy and all these in Rome itself, which must be the light and the rock, is obscured in some way, exiled. It is not in any way sedevacantism, but it is simply obscured, as the popes were real popes in Avignon, but not in Rome. Rome was void during the 70 years. And of course, there was a real pope in Avignon, but symbolically, I mean, and in some way, it is so also now, the Holy See is partly obscured by this influence of neo modernism, which is naturalism, relativism, but it is only temporary.
The Holy See will regain the 100 percent clarity and power and strength of the Catholic faith, of the holy liturgy, and all this will come. And Archbishop Lefebvre was deeply convinced that this would come again. Even he believed that after the consecrations in 88 that he said, maybe in a short time we will have in Rome again a strong pope, a traditional one, and then you ordain bishops, you will go to him and offer your episcopate to him and say, Holy Father, take our episcopate, do with us what you want, because then our episcopate is no longer necessary, because this task will be done by the Holy Pope, the Holy See, and the pope himself. And I think in this same intention and sense this year the Society will do the same, in the same intention, to offer these new bishops for the Church, as a bridge in this very obscure time, but for the Holy Church, for Rome, for the future popes, and when they will come again, I repeat, 100 percent traditional pope, this essence of the papacy, this will come in God’s time. We do not know when, but it will come, and if so, I assume the new bishops who will be ordained in July in the Society, when they come into their life, still again, a clear 100 percent traditional pope, they will go to him and say, Holy Father, our episcopate is no longer necessary. You are doing this task; if you want, you can do with us what you want. And so this is the attitude, and such an attitude which Archbishop Lefebvre had, and I assume is still in the Society as they proclaimed it, and as the superior Father Palarani wrote to Pope Leo, this is not schismatic at all, and therefore we must correct the meaning of schismatic. In the last centuries, we had a kind of very reductive view of what is schismatic, a complete legalistic one, and we had a reductive view of what is obedience. We even had an absolutist obedience to the pope, who is a creature; he is not God. The pope is not God. And really, de facto, I must state it, in the psychology of so many people, traditional or conservative, even bishops, cardinals, until our day, there is an implicit divinization of the pope. I say implicit, not formal, not explicit; any disobedience is suddenly labeled.
You are schismatic because you are disobedient. This was alien to the large tradition of the Church. This was completely alien to the Fathers of the Church. I am a patristic scholar. And so when Saint Athanasius disobeyed the pope, he was excommunicated, and so was Populus. But I consider that excommunication, it was a formal one, of course, according to the law, it was an excommunication. But I consider this excommunication was, in the eyes of God, invalid. How could Pope Liberius, who collaborated a little bit with the Semi-Arians, ubiquity, how could he excommunicate the greatest defender of orthodoxy, and in the eyes of history, or even this excommunication of Populus or Athanasius was unjust. I think in the eyes of God, invalid. So, and therefore, I think that now the issue with the Society, with these consecrations, is in some way providential. God allows it because we are a huge family, and society belongs to our family. It is not outside the Church because they, as you repeat it, can name the pope in the canon; they named the local bishop in the canon. They have faculties to confess from Rome, still valid. How can a schismatic community possess valid faculties of confession, because this is a kind of jurisdiction? And there, even the pope, Francis, asked that the bishops and pastors grant priests to assist canonically in matrimony and marriages, and they are able, and even in various very grievous cases of priestly crimes which happened, in some way also not so much within the Society. At that time, Bishop Philet sent me during my visitation that in one case they reported it to the Holy See, and then the Holy See delegated Bishop Philet as a judge in the name of the Holy See to do a canonical investigation as a judge.
So how can a schismatic do it, and so on. And therefore, I think we must again have a more balanced view of what is schism and what is obedience in the Church. Not all disobedience to the pope is automatically, I mean, schismatic, and even a consecration of a bishop against the will of the pope, in this case, illicit, is not per se an evil act, as some representative of a traditional Ecclesia Dei community publicly states that an illicit episcopal consecration against the will of the pope is an intrinsically evil act. This is completely wrong. This was never taught in the great tradition of the Church. And for example, the Servant of God, Cardinal Josyf Slipyj of the Greek Catholic Church, is now recognized with the title of heroic virtues. And he, against the will of Pope Paul VI, secretly ordained three bishops in Rome, knowing that Pope Paul VI did not allow it. And so in this case, the Servant of God Josyf Slipyj committed an intrinsically evil act and was automatically excommunicated. So, I think we must return to the great and balanced view of the Church Fathers in the first millennium. And therefore, the intention of the Society is clearly not schismatic, repeatedly, and they only do it as a service for the Church and for the papacy. And I think later the Church will be grateful and thankful to the Society after this huge crisis.
I want to ask you a question about intention, which you recently discussed with our friends at the Confraternity of Our Lady of Fatima. But before getting there, you say you’re a patristic scholar. Of course you are. And I encourage you to answer a question that a lot of people, just regular pew people, struggle with, and that is that Archbishop Lefebvre and the Society of Saint Pius X are renegades, that they are obstreperous, that they are doing.