The Road Back to Rome

The story of the Lefebvrist battle with Rome—which reached a peak, though by no means a final resolution, with the excommunication of Archbishop Lefebvre and the four bishops he consecrated at Ecône, Switzerland, in June—is a story of the Church’s confrontation with the Aion: the World and the Times. It is also the story of three men: Marcel Lefebvre himself, the 82-year-old traditionalist archbishop; Pope Paul VI, during whose tenure the Second Vatican Council (begun under John XXIII but originally planned by Pius XII) concluded; and John Paul II, who has attempted to repair some of the damage caused by innocent or willful misunderstanding of the changes instituted by the council.

For, contrary to popular belief (among Catholics as well as non-Catholics), the council was by no means revolutionary. The decrees do not make exciting reading, but if one plows one’s way through them and the entire documentation, one sees that the council never maintained, affirmed, or prescribed anything that has not been believed or accepted ever since World War I by a large percentage of intelligent Catholics. I remember lecturing in America as early as the 1950s about the Ecumenical Movement in Germany, Austria, France, and Hungary. In these countries we had also occasionally had the Holy Mass in the vernacular, and community singing has been practiced for centuries.

EK

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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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The story of the Lefebvrist battle with Rome—which reached a peak, though by no means a final resolution, with the excommunication of Archbishop Lefebvre and the four bishops he consecrated at Ecône, Switzerland, in June—is a story of the Church’s confrontation with the Aion: the World and the Times. It is also the story of three men: Marcel Lefebvre himself, the 82-year-old traditionalist archbishop; Pope Paul VI, during whose tenure the Second Vatican Council (begun under John XXIII but originally planned by Pius XII) concluded; and John Paul II, who has attempted to repair some of the damage caused by innocent or willful misunderstanding of the changes instituted by the council.

For, contrary to popular belief (among Catholics as well as non-Catholics), the council was by no means revolutionary. The decrees do not make exciting reading, but if one plows one’s way through them and the entire documentation, one sees that the council never maintained, affirmed, or prescribed anything that has not been believed or accepted ever since World War I by a large percentage of intelligent Catholics. I remember lecturing in America as early as the 1950s about the Ecumenical Movement in Germany, Austria, France, and Hungary. In these countries we had also occasionally had the Holy Mass in the vernacular, and community singing has been practiced for centuries.