Archbishop Lefebvre might not have split, says Cardinal.

"According to a senior Vatican official, the superior general of the Society of St. Pius X once said that, if the traditionalist group's leader had seen the Mass celebrated properly, he might not have broken off from the Church.

Cardinal Antonio Canizares, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, made this statement on Jan. 15 in response to questions from reporters after he delivered an address on the Second Vatican Council at the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See.

“On one occasion,” the Spanish cardinal recalled, “Bishop [Bernard] Fellay, who is the leader of the Society of St. Pius X, came to see me and said, ‘We just came from an abbey that is near Florence. If Archbishop [Marcel] Lefebvre had seen how they celebrated there, he would not have taken the step that he did.’”

“The missal used at that celebration was the Paul VI Missal in its strictest form,” the cardinal added."

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Cathcon- begs the whole question of how the Mass of Paul VI is normally celebrated and why.

Comments

Sixupman said…
It is, of course, not just the Mass per se, but also the iconaclism and re-ordering which accompanied the introduction of the NOM. How many churches have not been re-ordered and at what cost? It also continues to this very day where altars are redesigned as "worship spaces" - engineered to accommodate both Concelebration and lay participation.

The ethos, or at least apparent ethos, of The Mass has been irrevocably damaged and no amount of tinkering with language will alter such. If the matter of 'ethos' was not an issue, surely the TLM in the vernacular would have sufficed. There is also the problem that the NOM appears to be celebrated differently one parish church to another.

Regarding Msgr. Lefebvre: who exactly created the initial split - diocesan bishops, when the local ordinary reneged upon the original agreement.
Geremia said…
This can't be true. Abp. Lefebvre didn't just criticize the disciplinary norms of the Novus Ordo (i.e., the GIRM); he especially criticized the theological issues with it, e.g., as Card. Ottaviani did in his Intervention, which stated that the Novus Ordo is in "striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent."
Dolorosa said…
That's not true! It wasn't just the Mass but the whole catholic faith and that's especially explained in the Archbishop's book about confused catholics. I'm also surprised that Bishop Fellay would make that comment. He consecrated the Bishops because of JP II's Assisi with false religions.