DECLARATION
OF THE GENERAL CHAPTER
For the glory of God, for the salvation of souls and for the true service
of the Church, on the occasion of its Third General Chapter, held at
Ecône in Switzerland, from July 3 to 15, 2006, the Priestly Society
of Saint Pius X declares its firm resolution to continue its action,
with the help of God, along the doctrinal and practical lines laid down
by its venerated founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
Following
in his footsteps in the fight for the Catholic Faith, the Society fully
endorses his criticisms of the Second Vatican Council and its reforms,
as he expressed them in his conferences and sermons, and in particular
in his Declaration of November 21, 1974: “We adhere with all
our heart and all our soul to Catholic Rome, guardian of the Catholic
Faith and of the traditions necessary for the maintaining of that Faith,
to eternal Rome, mistress of wisdom and of truth. On the contrary, we
refuse, and we have always refused, to follow the Rome of neo-modernist
and neo-protestant tendencies, which showed itself clearly in the Second
Vatican Council and in the reforms that issued from it.”
Contacts
held with Rome over the last few years have enabled the Society to see
how right and necessary were the two pre-conditions1
that it laid down, since they would greatly benefit the Church by re-establishing,
at least in part, her rights to her own Tradition. Not only would the
treasure of graces available to the Society no longer be hidden under
a bushel, but the Mystical Body would also be given the remedy it so
needs to be healed.
If,
upon these pre-conditions being fulfilled, the Society looks to a possible
debate on doctrine, the purpose is still that of making the voice of
traditional teaching sound more clearly within the Church. Likewise,
the contacts made from time to time with the authorities in Rome have
no other purpose than to help them embrace once again that Tradition
which the Church cannot repudiate without losing her identity. The purpose
is not just to benefit the Society, nor to arrive at some merely practical
impossible agreement. When Tradition comes back into its own, “reconciliation
will no longer be a problem, and the Church will spring back to life”.2
On
this long road to re-conquest, the Chapter encourages all members of
the Society to live, as its statutes require, ever more intensely by
the grace proper to it, namely, in union with the great prayer of the
High Priest, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Let them be convinced,
along with their faithful, that in this striving for an ever greater
sanctification in the heart of the Church is to be found the only remedy
for our present misfortunes, which is the Church being restored through
the restoration of the priesthood.
In
the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.
1.Unconditional
freedom for the traditional Mass, and withdrawal of the decree of excommunication
of the Society’s four bishops.
2.
Letter from Archbishop Lefebvre to pope John-Paul II, June
2, 1988.
