Archbishop Lefebvre and the Vatican by Fr. François Laisney [1988]

[Stone]

June 2, 1988

Rome and the “Reconciliation”

“Could Rome have not been trusted?...Had not Rome given enough signs of goodwill, and of a sincere desire for reconciliation?” Such are the questions that many asked on the occasion of the episcopal consecrations of June 30, 1988.

It is not for us to judge men’s intentions, so rather than question the goodwill of the Roman authorities we prefer to state the facts for which they are responsible.

That is why we are giving here below the extracts from a letter written by a seminarian who left Ecône to join the seminary Mater Ecclesiæ, at Rome, an establishment desired by the Holy Father and opened by him on Oct. 15, 1986, and protected by a commission of cardinals. Mater Ecclesiæ was designed to be a seminary to receive seminarians who left Ecône and any others with similar feelings.


How sorry I am! Yes! I have everything, absolutely everything to be sorry about in this “enterprise” of Mater Ecclesiæ. Firstly, my being sent away for having made insistent requests in favor, for example, of more frequent Tridentine Masses, the wearing of ecclesiastical dress, the correction within the seminary of the errors of the courses being taught us at the Angelicum University...

The reply to these requests, repeated many times, was silence, and above all, the steady and by now complete realigning of the house and of each of the seminarians on Modernist Rome. The whole enterprise is the laughing-stock of the Progressives, with the French bishops at their head, including some of the most traditional!

Day by day, we saw the situation growing worse: the seminarians taking off their habit, seminarians getting themselves accepted by the bishops by renouncing everything, being ready for anything—Then there came the time of sanctions when all those who had been given the task of helping us were ordered by the authorities to look after us no longer— Henceforth for anyone who wanted nothing to do with the bishops of France or anywhere else, there is absolutely no further solution...Vagus— Nomad....We are from now on wandering clerics, left hanging in the void.

And the Pope did nothing, and no doubt next year the house Mater Ecclesiæ will be closed, which may well be no bad thing.

Several times I had the occasion to say either to Cardinal Ratzinger or to certain monsignori of the Curia that, alas, we were forced to admit that Archbishop Lefebvre was right on most questions and that I was wrong.

It causes me much suffering to write you these lines as I think of my idiocy in having abandoned Ecône despite your advice, the cowardice of the authorities (I am weighing my words) when it comes to Tradition and their similar cowardice when it comes to “ecumenism” towards the others, the abandoning and denial on the part of almost all those who had undertaken never to let go—everything, yes, absolutely everything fills me with regret!

An ex-Seminarian
Rome