SSPXAsia.com: Nature of Archbishop Lefebvre's Struggle: Jan-Feb 1999 Newsletter

A new and objective look at the Society of St. Pius X... This is what we are inviting you to have through a series of three articles. In this first one, we will analyze the Society at its conception, at the time of Council Vatican II. This will be followed by the historical development of the Society, which will take us eventually to the question of the consecration of new bishops in 1988.

Introduction

Today, Archbishop Lefebvre’s work is only thought of in terms of the episcopal consecrations of 1988. These consecrations cannot be considered as an incidental event in Archbishop Lefebvre’s life, but rather as the continuation of his work, as the major deed in his struggle initiated on November 1, 1970, with Rome’s blessing, not to start a new Church, but “to preach Our Lord Jesus Christ to the whole world, the Cross, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to preach the need of grace, to give the Church priests able to preach Our Lord Jesus Christ in the same way, to preach the good, true, sound and holy Catholic teaching; to celebrate the holy Sacrifice of the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice for the forgiveness of the sins of all mankind.”

In order to explain the reasons for the consecrations, to give a justification for the Society of St. Pius X, we have to understand in what spirit Archbishop Lefebvre went through the Council, and the actual reasons which urged him to go into action. The Council broke in upon him, and those who lived it with him. It was itself a breaking point: breaking off with the pre-Conciliar Church, in its language, teachings and actions; a rupture which gave birth to the state of necessity in the Church.

That rupture was confessed, and even claimed as a victory, by those who caused it. And Cardinal Congar to begin with, who despite his condemnation under Pius XII, was appointed as one of the experts at the Council. He himself stressed the three great innovations brought about by the Council: collegiality, a new concept of the Church giving way to Ecumenism and religious liberty.

- Fr. Congar’s comment about collegiality is famous: “The Church worked out its October Revolution.”[1]

- Regarding the Church he wrote: “Lumen Gentium gave up the thesis according to which the Catholic Church would be the Church in an exclusive way.”[2] Which means the Church has given up a “thesis”, a thesis which is essential to the oneness of the Church of Christ: there is but one Catholic Church, which is visible and to which it is absolutely necessary to belong in order to be saved. Hence a new concept of ecumenism was accepted however much it was previously condemned. Fr. Congar acknowledges it: “It is clear, it would be useless to hide it, that on several issues conciliar decree Unitatis Redintagratio says something else than the “Out of the Church, no salvation” in the way that axiom has been understood for centuries.”[3] This is why he acknowledges an obvious contradiction between that decree and Pius XI’s Mortalium Animos.[4]

- And what did he say about religious liberty? “It cannot be denied that the conciliar Declaration on religious liberty does materially say something different to the Syllabus of 1864, and even almost the opposite.”[5]

In Eric Vatré’s book, he confesses: “On the pope’s request, I participated in the drafting of the last paragraphs of the Declaration on religious liberty: I was to make the point that the religious liberty theme is in the Holy Scriptures – well, it is not.”[6] Fr. Congar consequently openly confirms a total lack of bases for the religious liberty thesis as defined by the Council. Fr. Laurentin commented: “With its limits, and in spite of its imperfections, the Declaration on religious liberty shows a real progress, it confirms on the one hand a rupture with moorings of past notions symbolized by the Syllabus letter, and on the other hand the realistic insertion of the Church, and its testimony, in the only possible place in today’s world.”[7]

In a nutshell: a breaking off, a rupture. Let us quote Fr. Congar for the last time: “The Church of Vatican II with its Declaration on religious liberty and its pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes on the Church and the today’s world, clearly placed herself in today’s pluralist world, and without disowning what has been great, burst its fetters which would have chained it down to the bank of the Middle Ages. One just cannot cling to one period in history.”[8] Such is the confession of someone who received the cardinal’s purple from John Paul II for his unequaled work during the Council.

We could also interview all the great theologians of the Council; all would have the same opinion. Let us simply quote Cardinal Suenens: “One could make an astonishing list of these taught in Rome before the Council as the only acceptable ones, and which were eliminated by the conciliar Fathers.”[9] This is why Cardinal de Lubac did not hesitate to speak of a “small revolution.”[10] Hence Hans Küng’s reaction: “Lefebvre has every right to question the conciliar Declaration on religious liberty, because Vatican II completely reversed Vatican I’s position without explanation.”[11]

Cardinal Ratzinger’s analysis is in no way different. In his book on the Principles of Catholic Theology , he acknowledges, with regard to Gaudium et spes, that “if one looks for a general diagnosis about the text, one could say that it is (in connection with the text on religious liberty and on religions in the world) a reconsideration of Pius IX’s Syllabus, a sort of anti-Syllabus. (...) this text plays the part of an anti-Syllabus in so far as it stands for an attempt to officially reconcile the Church and the world such as it has become since 1789.”[12] His recent writings are in fact most enlightening when they express the state of mind that prevailed during the Council. “I found the atmosphere to be more and more excited in the Church, and among theologians. We were more and more under the impression that nothing was stable in the Church, that everything had to be reconsidered. The Council looked more and more like a grand parliament of Churches capable of modifying and reshaping everything in its own way. The Council’s debate was more and more presented in the partisan way that is typical of the modern parliamentary system. (...) There was however and even more profound process going on. If the bishops of Rome could change the Church, and possibly the faith (this is the impression they were giving), why them alone, indeed? We could – apparently – modify the faith, which is the opposite of what had been thought so far; it looked as though it no longer evaded the power of human decision, and it was the latter which seemed to define it (...). The creed no longer looked infallible, but subject to the control of specialists (...). If I had gone back home with the blithesome feeling of renewal which prevailed everywhere at the end of the first Council session, I was disturbed by the more and more glaring change in the Church.”[13]

Finally, Pope John Paul II, in his Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei adflicta “condemning” Archbishop Lefebvre (we will look at this document at another time), explicitly acknowledges the newness of conciliar theses. After explaining Archbishop Lefebvre’s “offence”, he points out the necessity for theologians “to study thoroughly the Council to bring out the continuity of the council with Tradition, especially on doctrinal points which possibly, due to their newness, have not yet been well understood in certain part of the Church.”[14]

Everyone consequently agrees that there have been novelties in the Council, theses, thoughts and considerations that had never been heard in the holy Church of God, which never been accepted in the Church. New theses following from a new state of mind, perfectly described by Paul VI himself in his speech for the closure of the Council: “The religion of God who made Himself a man has met with the religion (and it is a religion) of man who made himself God. What happened then? A clash, a fight, an anathema? That could have happened, but it did not. A boundless sympathy drove the whole Council (...). A move of affection and admiration overflowed from the Council into the modern human world (...). All the doctrinal wealth of the Council only aims at one thing: to serve man (...). the Catholic religion and human life thus confirm their alliance, their convergences towards only one human reality: the Catholic religion is for mankind.”[15] Such was the “rupture” worked out by the Vatican II Council: the Church resolutely turned away from its purely supernatural aim: sanctification of souls, to wend its way towards a human goal: serve man. Paul VI confesses it himself, it is the root of all the doctrinal novelties in the Council.

It is precisely that spirit of novelty, and its doctrinal consequences, which Archbishop Lefebvre opposed. His fundamental book “I accuse the Council”, published in 1974, must be read. Since we just cannot, within the limits of this article, show the opposition between Tradition and everyone of these Council novelties (this issue will be addressed later), we will simply show how the very spirit of novelty had earlier been condemned by the magisterium.

Council Vatican I already recalled that “the Holy Ghost was not promised to Peter’s successors in order to teach a new doctrine as the revelation.”[16] On the contrary, according to the very words of Saint Pius X, the doctrinal authority in the Church has as its first object the transmission and the defense of the deposit of the faith: “To the mission that has been bestowed upon us from on High to feed the Lord’s flock, Jesus Christ Has assigned as our first duty to keep with a jealous zeal the traditional deposit of the faith against profane novelties in language, as well as false contradictions in science.”[17] In his first encyclical, this holy pope had sounded the alarm to the clergy: “Members of the very clergy should not be deceived by the insidious scheming of a certain new science, which parades under the mask of truth, and where the odour of Jesus Christ cannot be breathed.”[18] He has condemned Modernism in his too often forgotten encyclical Pascendi. He made his own Gregory XVI’s words: “Under the sway of a blind and unrestrained love for novelty, they will overlook searching for some kind of support to the truth, and, despising the holy and apostolic traditions, they will embrace vain, futile and uncertain doctrines which have been condemned by the Church... It is deplorable to see where such wandering of human reason can lead, as soon as way is given to the spirit of novelty, as soon as, trusting oneself too much, one thinks he can look for the truth outside of the Church, where it lies without the least possible error.”[19]

Despite countless warnings from their predecessors, clergymen of our times have succumbed to that Aggiornamento temptation. Such is the evidence Archbishop Lefebvre had to face during the Council, he and other prelates, as he was not the only one to be astonished, to resist and to fight in the Council. Mgr. Adam, bishop of Sion, Switzerland, only went to the first Session. He came back home saying he would never go back there, and he did not. Others, like Cardinal Browne, died of a broken heart, only a few months after the Council, distressed as they were by that upheaval.

It is important to go back to the origin of Archbishop Lefebvre’s opposition to understand him. Looking back to these conciliar years, as many prelates have lived them, it can be realized that Archbishop Lefebvre’s fight is first and foremost a doctrinal struggle, before being a liturgical one. He did not start with opposing the liturgy, since on the contrary – surprisingly enough – he signed the decree on liturgical reform (the new mass did not exist then, only a decree on liturgy outlining modifications with which Archbishop Lefebvre agreed). But he refused the doctrinal decrees, and particularly the two newest ones: Gaudium et spes and Dignitatis humanae, to which he did not give his “placet”. It was four years later that Archbishop Lefebvre started to fight on liturgical grounds, when, in 1969, what is now known as Paul VI’s mass was drafted. It became a liturgical combat, because the new rite became the vehicle and the manifestation of the new conciliar theology.

In our combat, what do we concentrate on? Essentially the new ecclesiology, from which follow the current concept of ecumenism and religious liberty. This is the heart of our resistance. We saw, at the end of the Council, the setting up of a new Church within the Catholic Church – which Mgr. Bugnini called himself the “Conciliar Church” – the outline and boundaries of which are difficult to ascertain. What appears to define the Conciliar Church is the conscious and willful adhesion to these new theses, which are by nature evolutionary and developing from their implied contents,[20] such that the limits of the new Church are quite blurred. In consequence, one can witness a strange paradox: those who, on behalf of Tradition, dare to question the “spirit” of Vatican II, are excluded from that Conciliar Church, while those who, on behalf of that same conciliar “spirit”, tie up again with the oldest heresies so many times condemned, are supported in their theological search.

It is this Conciliar Church which we resist. We do not refuse to submit to the pope as such, but to the Conciliar Church, because it has a way of thinking which is different from that of the Catholic Church. Our combat is not only liturgical. What needs reforming is that conciliar thinking, expressed and made manifest through the new liturgy. We have to come back to the sound doctrine.

Note: The following quotes, gathered from different sources and from authoritative people, show by their clarity the true spirit of the Council. It is always good to have some of these quotes at hand when someone says that what is going wrong in the Church is merely an abuse of the real Council texts which apparently were good in themselves. Many of the quotes below come precisely from the very authors of the conciliar texts. “A good tree cannot bear bad fruits...”

“One could make an astonishing list of propositions taught yesterday, and the day before, in Rome, as the only acceptable ones, and which were eliminated by the conciliar Fathers.”

“The Council has wiped out what I would call the unconditionality of the system. By “system”, I mean a coherent set of notions conveyed by the Roman universities, codified by Canon Law, protected by a tight and rather efficient control under Pius XII, with reports, calls to order, control of writings by Roman censorship, etc. The Council just disintegrated it.”

Yves CONGAR ( O. P ) Une vie pour la verite [ A life for the truth ], p. 220, Centurion, I975, interviewed by Jean Puyo

Confession on how the Council was conducted

“Backbiters even say that the experts were the ones who actually conducted the Council. It is not totally wrong. I remember a minute but revealing episode. At the time when the Decree on the laity was to be discussed, I had noticed a paragraph still (…) inspired by a dual vision: the world on the one side, and the Church on the other. I was there with another French expert, and we agreed that it was bad. That paragraph had however already been adopted by the commission; it was consequently impossible to change it. We then drafted an additive, a second paragraph which was more or less saying the opposite. The first paragraph was in a way establishing that dualism, and the second one was saying, the action of the Church must go beyond it. Bishops from Western France proposed our new text, and it was adopted.”

M. D. CHENU ( O.P. ) Un theologien en liberte [A theologian without restraint] pp. I6-17, Centurion, 1975, interviewed by Jacques Duquesne.

“..a very efficient infiltration was carried out through notes proposed to the various commissions(…).” Ibid, p. I88 [ or I87].

Yves CONGAR ( OP) Une vie pour la verite [A life for the truth ].p. I40 (op. cit.).

Confession on Conciliar Texts

Dignitatis humanae

“It cannot be denied that a text like this [the conciliar declaration on Religious Liberty] says materially something different than the Syllabus of I864, and even almost the opposite of propositions I5, and 77 to 79 of that document.”

Yves CONGAR (OP)La Crise de I’Eglise et Mgr. Lefebvre [The Crisis in the Church and Archbishop Lefebvre],Cerf, Paris, I977, p.54.

Yves CONGAR (OP) Le Concile au jour le jour, deuxieme session [The Council day by day, second session], Cerf, Paris, I964, p. II5.

However in his subsequent book La Crise de l’Eglise [The Church’s Crisis], page 49, note 2, Congar realized his mistake and tried to rectify it:

“The conservative (integrists) have scurrilously misused a word, questionable, as a matter of fact, which we have written about a vote on the college of the Council. (…) They intended to see in it a statement on the sovietization of the Church! It was only an author’s word, neither very good, nor very adequate. To give it another meaning comes down to ascribe to it a sense which it never had and which we clearly reject.”

Gaudium et Spes

“I remember a conference which I had given to bishops in Rome. Minister Roux, who attended it as a Protestant observer, came to see me in the end. ‘This is wonderful, he said; but I disagree. You are too much of an optimist, the world is involved in a permanent tragedy, and we must speak of the Cross of Christ. The world which you are building is too beautiful.’

“We took that objection into consideration; we inserted perspectives on sin, here and there; but they looked like added parts. It is true that we have not integrated the world’s tragedy enough. But that optimism, which imbued the whole Council still appeals to me.”

M.D. CHENU (OP) UN théologien en liberté [A theologian without restraint], p. 182, Centurion, 1975, interviewed by Jacques Duquesne.

Dynamite

Fr. Congar, father of the new ecclesiology which triumphed at the Vatican II Council, received several warnings from Rome in the 1950’s. He then determined, in writing, not to submit; “Continue to write in this way to a maximum, using all these opportunities which I still have. This is what my fight is all about. I know (and ‘they’ know) that sooner or later all that I am saying and writing is just the opposite of the system. Yes, this really is my struggle: my theological, historical, ecclesiastical and pastoral labor. The class I am teaching at present, De Ecclesia, as if nothing happened, this is my real answer, this my real dynamite under the seats of the scribes”.

Yves CONGAR (OP) Handwritten notes of February 1954, quoted by Francois LEPRIEUR (OP), Quand Rome condamne [Sentenced by Rome], Plon/Cerf, Paris, 1989, p.259.

Vatican II Council: the Preliminary Conspiracy

In exchange for the coming of Russian Orthodox observers (i.e. KGB agents), a promise was made not to condemn communism. “France Nouvelle” (French Communist Party central weekly magazine), issue for January 16 –22, 1963, page 15:

“ Because the world socialist system undeniably proves to be the best and that it is supported by hundreds and hundreds of millions of men, the Church can no longer be content with vulgar anti-communism. She has even entered into an agreement with the Russian Orthodox Church that no direct attacks against the communist regime would be made during the Council.”

A confirmation of this agreement is to be found in “La Croix” (French Catholic daily newspaper) of February I5, I963, page 5:

“It is in Metz that Cardinal Tisserant met with Bishop Nicodem, archbishop in charge of foreign affairs for the Russian Church, and it is there that was prepared the message which Bishop Willebrands took to Moscow. Bishop Nicodem, who had come to Paris during the first half of August, had, as a matter of fact, wished to meet with Cardinal Tisserant. The meeting took place at Father Lagarde’s, the chaplain for the Little Sisters of the Poor, at Bordes, who has always shown interest for international problems. Subsequent to that conversation Bishop Nicodem accepted that someone would go to Moscow to bring an invitation on condition that guarantees would be given regarding the non-political attitude of the Council.”

II.- The Agreement with the Jews

Lazare Landarau, in “Tribune juive”, issue # 1001, of (December 25-31, 1957):

“On a foggy and frosty night of the 1962-63 winter, I went to an extraordinary invitation at the Community Center for Peace, in Strasbourg. The Jewish leaders were receiving secretly, an envoy of the Pope in the basement. At the end of the Sabbath, about ten of us welcome a Dominican in white garb, Rev. Fr. Yves Congar, who had received a mission from Cardinal Bea, on behalf of John XXIII, to ask us, on the threshold of the Council, what we were expecting from the Catholic Church (…).

“The Jews, held on the fringe of Christian society for nearly 20 centuries, often treated as subalterns, enemies and deicides, were asking for their total rehabilitation. Descending in direct line from Abraham’s monotheist lineage, out of which came out Christianity, they were requesting to be regarded as brothers, partners equal in dignity, of the Christian Church. (...)

“The white messenger – without any ornament or symbol – went back to Rome with innumerable requests comforting ours. After difficult proceedings (…) the Council acceded to our wishes. The Declaration Nostra Aetat, no. 4, was – as Fr. Congar and three drafters of that text confirmed to me – a true revolution in the Church’s doctrine about the Jews (…).

“Homilies and catechism books changed within a few years. In France, the flower of this renovated doctrine was offered by the Editions du Centurion under the title: La Foi des Catholiques [The Catholics’ Faith]. The French episcopate-with L.A. Elchinger, bishop of Strasbourg- had played a decisive part in the presentation during the Council of today’s ‘Jewish problem’. The clergy adopted the conciliar decisions with alacrity. That attitude had a precious guide in the Pastoral Orientations of the episcopal committee for relations with Judaism, published by the French episcopal conference on April I6, I973.

“At the Vatican itself, this trend of thought was confirmed in an exceptional way. In the very presence of the Pope John-Paul II and the bishops of the whole world, Cardinal Etchegaray, minister of the Holy See, on October 4, I983, pronounced an astonishing statement with sums up all the Jewish “problems” in two points:

Since the secret visit of Fr. Congar in a hidden location of the synagogue, on a cold winter night, the Church’s doctrine really had been through a total transformation.”

III.- An Agreement with the Protestants?

Cardinal Willebrands recounted in his work on “Vatican II – La Liberte religieuse” (coll. Unam Sanctam, Paris, Cerf, 1967) how the Ecumenical Counsel of (Protestant) Churches published, on the eve of the last conciliar session a list of its seven basic demands on religious liberty.

“On the eve of the last conciliar session, which was to adopt the Declaration, the Commission for international affairs of the Ecumenical Counsel, in July 1965, presented the seven essential demands for religious liberty as follows:

‘1. While maintaining a clearly Catholic basis for religious liberty, the civil liberty which Christians claim for themselves must be guaranteed everywhere to everyone, whatever his religion or belief may be.

‘2. Religious liberty includes freedom for everyone to change religion or belief without any effect on his political, economical and social status. This right implies the right to keep one’s belief or disbelief without incurring any constraint or incapacity

‘3. In addition, religious liberty includes freedom to express one’s religion or belief. Cult, teaching, practice and observance of rites are the basic forms of religious expression, and any elaboration of a norm on religious liberty must expressly guarantee them.

‘4. The right to express one’s religion or belief must be guaranteed to everyone, individually or collectively, publicly or privately.

‘5. Religious liberty also includes freedom to maintain individual or collective ties with religious communities or associations, whose nature transcends national boundaries. It also includes freedom to express one’s opinions and beliefs, and to communicate information and ideas through any possible media, without considering borders.

‘6. The norm of religious liberty should be international. It should not be interpreted in a restrictive way to comply with existing national laws and constitutions, but every effort should be made so that constitutions and national laws comply with the international norm.

‘7. The practice of religious liberty, like the practice of other civil laws, may be subordinated to the limitations defined by law, only in the interest of public order. Religious rights will be applied to all, without any distinction of religion or belief” (July 22, 1965)

“At the last conciliar session, the bishop of Monaco, Bishop Rupp, in a very welcomed speech, ask the Council to just make its own these seven demands and to confirm them with its authority. That request was the sign that these seven demands were perfectly acceptable to the Church. In fact, the Council did more than that. Not only did it make its own these seven demands, in equivalent terms, but it established them firmly on justifications taken from the Bible, human experience and philosophical consideration.” (pp. 241-242).

All of these seven demands were adopted in Dignitatis Humanae – through eagerness to come to an understanding with the Protestants. Had some preliminary agreement taken place with the [quite masonic] Ecumenical Counsel of Churches?

Protestant Witnesses

“With the new liturgy, non-Catholic communities will be in a position to celebrate the Last Super with the same prayers as the Catholic Church. Theologically, this is possible.”

“If one takes into account the decisive evolution of Catholic liturgy, the possibility to substitute other prayers to the canon of the mass, the obliteration of the notion according to which the mass would be a sacrifice, the possibility to communicate in both kinds, then there is no more reason for the Reformation Churches to forbid their faithful to participate in the Eucharist in the Roman Church.”

“In my parish of Hamburg, we constantly use eucharistic prayer II, with the Lutheran form of the words of the institution and omitting the prayer for the pope (…). To me, the new Roman Catholic eucharistic prayers prove an open attitude of surprising proportions.”

Ottfried Jordahn, Lutheran minister, conference of June 15, 1975 in Maria Laach.

“Nothing in the now renewed mass can really embarrass the Evangelical Christian.”

“New eucharistic prayers II and IV show ‘a structure which agrees with the Lutheran mass’.”

Pawley, Anglican archdeacon, in his book Rome and Canterbury, during four Centuries.

“Given the current forms of the eucharistic celebration in the Catholic Church and as a result of the existing theological convergence, many obstacles which might have prevented a Protestant from participating to its eucharistic celebration seem to be vanishing. It should be possible today to a Protestant to see in the Catholic eucharistic celebration the Last Supper of the Lord, i.e. the Protestant holy communion... We hold out for the new liturgical prayers which agree with us and which fortunately shade the theology of sacrifice, which we used to allot to Catholicism.”

“The re-introduction of the Pius V mass (even through the back door and in the revision of the Roman Missal of 1962) is much more than a question of language: it is a doctrinal question of utmost importance, at the heart of the debate between Catholics and Protestants, a debate which, I believed, had come to an end (…). Many of our forefathers in the faith, reformed according to the word of God, had rather die at the stake than attend such a mass which pope Pius V made official against the Reformation. Consequently we were glad to see the decisions made by Vatican II on that subject, and the steadfastness of Rome with all those who did not want to accept the Council and were continuing to use a mass which to us is contrary to the Gospel.”

Minister Michel Viot, after the October 3, 1984 indult, given for the celebration

of St. Pius V Mass under certain conditions, in the readers’ column, in Le Monde.

[1] Y. Congar, “Le Concile au jour le jour, 2º session”, le Cerf, 1964, p. 115.

[2] Y. Congar, “Essats oecumeniques”, le Centurion, 1984, p. 216.

[3] Y. Congar, ibid., p. 85.

[4] Y. Congar, ibid., Mortalium Animos is the Encyclical by which Pius XI condemned ecumenism as it is now defined by the conciliar decrees.

[5] Y. Congar, “La Crise de l’Eglise et Mgr. Lefebvre”, le Cerf, p. 54; cf. “Essais oecumeniques”, p. 85. Pius IX’s Syllabus is a list of condemned propositions.

[6] Fr. Vatré, “ A la Droite du Père”, Edition de Maismic, 1994, p. 118.

[7] F. Laurentin, “Bilan du Concile”, le Seuil, 1967, p. 207 and 213.

[8] Y. Congar, “La Crise de l’Eglise et Mgr. Lefebvre”, le Cerf, 1977, p. 54.

[9] Cardinal Suenens, Informations Catholiques Internationales, May 15, 1969.

[10] Cardinal de Lubac, “Entretiens autour de Vatican II”, le Cerf, 1985, p. 20.

[11] Hans Küng, National Catholic Reporter, October 21, 1977.

[12] Cardinal Ratzinger, “Principes de théologie catholique”, Téqui, pp. 426-427.

[13] Cardinal Ratzinger, “Ma vie mes souvenirs”, Fayard, 1998, pp. 115-118.

[14] John Paul II, Ecclesia Dei adflicta, Documantation Catholique, # 1967, August 7, 1988, p. 789.

[15] Paul VI, speech for the closure of Council Vatican II, Dec. 7, 1965, Documentation Catholique, January 2, 1966, # 1462, p. 63.

[16] Vatican I, Pastor aeternus, July 18, 1870.

[17] St. Pius X, Pascendi Domini gregis, September 8, 1907.

[18] St. Pius X, Esupremt apostolatu, October 4, 1903.

[19] Gregory XVI, Singulari nos, June 25, 1834.

[20] John Paul II, first message to the world, October 17, 1978, Documantation Catholique, # 1751, November 5, 1978, p. 902.