Letter to the Bishops of
the Catholic Church
Concerning the Remission of the Excommunication of the Four Bishops
Consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre
H.H. Benedict XVI
March 12, 2009
Dear Brothers in the Episcopal Ministry!
The remission of the excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated in
1988 by Archbishop Lefebvre without a mandate of the Holy See has for
many reasons caused, both within and beyond the Catholic Church, a
discussion more heated than any we have seen for a long time. Many
Bishops felt perplexed by an event which came about unexpectedly and was
difficult to view positively in the light of the issues and tasks facing
the Church today. Even though many Bishops and members of the faithful
were disposed in principle to take a positive view of the Pope’s concern
for reconciliation, the question remained whether such a gesture was
fitting in view of the genuinely urgent demands of the life of faith in
our time. Some groups, on the other hand, openly accused the Pope of
wanting to turn back the clock to before the Council: as a result, an
avalanche of protests was unleashed, whose bitterness laid bare wounds
deeper than those of the present moment. I therefore feel obliged to
offer you, dear Brothers, a word of clarification, which ought to help
you understand the concerns which led me and the competent offices of
the Holy See to take this step. In this way I hope to contribute to
peace in the Church.
An unforeseen mishap for me was the fact that the Williamson case came
on top of the remission of the excommunication. The discreet gesture of
mercy towards four Bishops ordained validly but not legitimately
suddenly appeared as something completely different: as the repudiation
of reconciliation between Christians and Jews, and thus as the reversal
of what the Council had laid down in this regard to guide the Church’s
path. A gesture of reconciliation with an ecclesial group engaged in a
process of separation thus turned into its very antithesis: an apparent
step backwards with regard to all the steps of reconciliation between
Christians and Jews taken since the Council – steps which my own work as
a theologian had sought from the beginning to take part in and support.
That this overlapping of two opposed processes took place and
momentarily upset peace between Christians and Jews, as well as peace
within the Church, is something which I can only deeply deplore. I have
been told that consulting the information available on the internet
would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on. I have
learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to
pay greater attention to that source of news. I was saddened by the fact
that even Catholics who, after all, might have had a better knowledge of
the situation, thought they had to attack me with open hostility.
Precisely for this reason I thank all the more our Jewish friends, who
quickly helped to clear up the misunderstanding and to restore the
atmosphere of friendship and trust which – as in the days of Pope John
Paul II – has also existed throughout my pontificate and, thank God,
continues to exist.
Another mistake, which I deeply regret, is the fact that the extent and
limits of the provision of 21 January 2009 were not clearly and
adequately explained at the moment of its publication. The
excommunication affects individuals, not institutions. An episcopal
ordination lacking a pontifical mandate raises the danger of a schism,
since it jeopardizes the unity of the College of Bishops with the Pope.
Consequently the Church must react by employing her most severe
punishment – excommunication – with the aim of calling those thus
punished to repent and to return to unity. Twenty years after the
ordinations, this goal has sadly not yet been attained. The remission of
the excommunication has the same aim as that of the punishment: namely,
to invite the four Bishops once more to return. This gesture was
possible once the interested parties had expressed their recognition in
principle of the Pope and his authority as Pastor, albeit with some
reservations in the area of obedience to his doctrinal authority and to
the authority of the Council. Here I return to the distinction between
individuals and institutions. The remission of the excommunication was a
measure taken in the field of ecclesiastical discipline: the individuals
were freed from the burden of conscience constituted by the most serious
of ecclesiastical penalties. This disciplinary level needs to be
distinguished from the doctrinal level. The fact that the Society of
Saint Pius X does not possess a canonical status in the Church is not,
in the end, based on disciplinary but on doctrinal reasons. As long as
the Society does not have a canonical status in the Church, its
ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries in the Church. There
needs to be a distinction, then, between the disciplinary level, which
deals with individuals as such, and the doctrinal level, at which
ministry and institution are involved. In order to make this clear once
again: until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the Society has no
canonical status in the Church, and its ministers – even though they
have been freed of the ecclesiastical penalty – do not legitimately
exercise any ministry in the Church.
In light of this situation, it is my intention henceforth to join the
Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei" – the body which has been competent
since 1988 for those communities and persons who, coming from the
Society of Saint Pius X or from similar groups, wish to return to full
communion with the Pope – to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith. This will make it clear that the problems now to be addressed are
essentially doctrinal in nature and concern primarily the acceptance of
the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar magisterium of the
Popes. The collegial bodies with which the Congregation studies
questions which arise (especially the ordinary Wednesday meeting of
Cardinals and the annual or biennial Plenary Session) ensure the
involvement of the Prefects of the different Roman Congregations and
representatives from the world’s Bishops in the process of
decision-making. The Church’s teaching authority cannot be frozen in the
year 1962 – this must be quite clear to the Society. But some of those
who put themselves forward as great defenders of the Council also need
to be reminded that Vatican II embraces the entire doctrinal history of
the Church. Anyone who wishes to be obedient to the Council has to
accept the faith professed over the centuries, and cannot sever the
roots from which the tree draws its life.
I hope, dear Brothers, that this serves to clarify the positive
significance and also the limits of the provision of 21 January 2009.
But the question still remains: Was this measure needed? Was it really a
priority? Aren’t other things perhaps more important? Of course there
are more important and urgent matters. I believe that I set forth
clearly the priorities of my pontificate in the addresses which I gave
at its beginning. Everything that I said then continues unchanged as my
plan of action. The first priority for the Successor of Peter was laid
down by the Lord in the Upper Room in the clearest of terms: "You…
strengthen your brothers" (Lk 22:32). Peter himself formulated this
priority anew in his first Letter: "Always be prepared to make a defence
to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you" (1 Pet
3:15). In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in
danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the
overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men
and women the way to God. Not just any god, but the God who spoke on
Sinai; to that God whose face we recognize in a love which presses "to
the end" (cf. Jn 13:1) – in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. The real
problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from
the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from
God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident
destructive effects.
Leading men and women to God, to the God who speaks in the Bible: this
is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the
Successor of Peter at the present time. A logical consequence of this is
that we must have at heart the unity of all believers. Their disunity,
their disagreement among themselves, calls into question the credibility
of their talk of God. Hence the effort to promote a common witness by
Christians to their faith – ecumenism – is part of the supreme priority.
Added to this is the need for all those who believe in God to join in
seeking peace, to attempt to draw closer to one another, and to journey
together, even with their differing images of God, towards the source of
Light – this is interreligious dialogue. Whoever proclaims that God is
Love "to the end" has to bear witness to love: in loving devotion to the
suffering, in the rejection of hatred and enmity – this is the social
dimension of the Christian faith, of which I spoke in the Encyclical
Deus Caritas Est.
So if the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world
is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church’s real priority,
then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and
not so small. That the quiet gesture of extending a hand gave rise to a
huge uproar, and thus became exactly the opposite of a gesture of
reconciliation, is a fact which we must accept. But I ask now: Was it,
and is it, truly wrong in this case to meet half-way the brother who
"has something against you" (cf. Mt 5:23ff.) and to seek reconciliation?
Should not civil society also try to forestall forms of extremism and to
incorporate their eventual adherents – to the extent possible – in the
great currents shaping social life, and thus avoid their being
segregated, with all its consequences? Can it be completely mistaken to
work to break down obstinacy and narrowness, and to make space for what
is positive and retrievable for the whole? I myself saw, in the years
after 1988, how the return of communities which had been separated from
Rome changed their interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger
and broader Church enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and
broke down rigidity so that positive energies could emerge for the
whole. Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491
priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level
institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands
of lay faithful? Should we casually let them drift farther from the
Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know how mixed
their motives may be. All the same, I do not think that they would have
chosen the priesthood if, alongside various distorted and unhealthy
elements, they did not have a love for Christ and a desire to proclaim
him and, with him, the living God. Can we simply exclude them, as
representatives of a radical fringe, from our pursuit of reconciliation
and unity? What would then become of them?
Certainly, for some time now, and once again on this specific occasion,
we have heard from some representatives of that community many
unpleasant things – arrogance and presumptuousness, an obsession with
one-sided positions, etc. Yet to tell the truth, I must add that I have
also received a number of touching testimonials of gratitude which
clearly showed an openness of heart. But should not the great Church
also allow herself to be generous in the knowledge of her great breadth,
in the knowledge of the promise made to her? Should not we, as good
educators, also be capable of overlooking various faults and making
every effort to open up broader vistas? And should we not admit that
some unpleasant things have also emerged in Church circles? At times one
gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to
which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate.
And should someone dare to approach them – in this case the Pope – he
too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully,
without misgiving or restraint.
Dear Brothers, during the days when I first had the idea of writing this
letter, by chance, during a visit to the Roman Seminary, I had to
interpret and comment on Galatians 5:13-15. I was surprised at the
directness with which that passage speaks to us about the present
moment: "Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but
through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled
in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’. But if you
bite and devour one another, take heed that you are not consumed by one
another." I am always tempted to see these words as another of the
rhetorical excesses which we occasionally find in Saint Paul. To some
extent that may also be the case. But sad to say, this "biting and
devouring" also exists in the Church today, as expression of a poorly
understood freedom. Should we be surprised that we too are no better
than the Galatians? That at the very least we are threatened by the same
temptations? That we must always learn anew the proper use of freedom?
And that we must always learn anew the supreme priority, which is love?
The day I spoke about this at the Major Seminary, the feast of Our Lady
of Trust was being celebrated in Rome. And so it is: Mary teaches us
trust. She leads us to her Son, in whom all of us can put our trust. He
will be our guide – even in turbulent times. And so I would like to
offer heartfelt thanks to all the many Bishops who have lately offered
me touching tokens of trust and affection, and above all assured me of
their prayers. My thanks also go to all the faithful who in these days
have given me testimony of their constant fidelity to the Successor of
Saint Peter. May the Lord protect all of us and guide our steps along
the way of peace. This is the prayer that rises up instinctively from my
heart at the beginning of this Lent, a liturgical season particularly
suited to interior purification, one which invites all of us to look
with renewed hope to the light which awaits us at Easter.
With a special Apostolic Blessing, I remain
Yours in the Lord,
BENEDICTUS PP. XVI
From the Vatican, 10 March 2009
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