Excommunication Fails to Stop Archbishop’s Mission

Four months after Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, his traditionalist supporters seem largely undeterred by papal warnings that they will face the same punishment if they do not break with him.

The titular head of Lefebvre’s St. Pius X Fraternity of Priests said that a total of 15 priests and 18 seminarians--less than 10%--have left the movement since the rebel prelate consecrated four traditionalist bishops June 30 in defiance of the Vatican.

Lefebvre and his followers say that the church has embarked on a course of “auto-destruction” since the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65. They reject many reforms introduced then, including relations with Protestant churches and the replacement of Latin with local languages in the liturgy.

The archbishop argues that he continues to recognize papal authority but that the consecrations were a legitimate “emergency” act to save the church and that therefore the excommunications were not valid.

The defections leave 210 priests in the fraternity and 255 students in the fraternity’s six theological schools in Australia, the United States, France, Switzerland and West Germany, according to Father Franz Schmidberger.

“Percentagewise, the number who left us is small but every defection hurts us, of course,” said Schmidberger, who succeeded Lefebvre as superior general of the fraternity in 1984. “It hurts particularly at a time when we need more and more priests. . . .”

That need is growing, he said, because of a growing attendance at traditionalist services in the churches, chapels and other places of worship founded by the fraternity.

“We estimate that attendance at holy Mass celebrated in our 530 centers worldwide has increased between 5% to 10% since the consecration,” Schmidberger said.

“In some places, like in St. Louis, which I visited during a recent tour of the United States, the increase is even higher, the local priest told me.”

Schmidberger said Lefebvre had expected that attendance would decline by 25%, while the Vatican had figured that 80% would renounce links with the archbishop should he defy the Pope.

There is no firm figure on the number of Lefebvre’s active supporters, as they do not register. The Vatican estimated the number at between 60,000 and 80,000. But two years ago, a pro-Lefebvre petition addressed to the Vatican was backed by 135,000 signatures. Estimates have put sympathizers in the millions.

Consecration of the four bishops created the first major schism in the church in more than a century. It resulted in the automatic excommunication, or expulsion from the church, of Lefebvre and the four bishops, and of Msgr. Antonio de Castro Mayer, a Brazilian prelate who assisted Lefebvre in the ceremony at the Swiss seminary in Econe, birthplace of the fraternity.

Pope John Paul II, in an apostolic letter made public two days later, warned Lefebvre’s followers that they, too, will be excommunicated if they stay with him.