Lefebvrist: "The SSPX is not in schism!"
CIC: "....schism is the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him." (Canon 751)
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Marcel Lefebvre:
“We refuse on the other hand, and have always refused, to follow the Rome of Neo-Modernist and Neo-Protestant tendencies which became clearly manifest during the Second Vatican Council, and after the Council, in all the reforms which issued from it.”
(Declaration, November 21, 1974)
“We believe that we can affirm, taking into consideration the internal and external critique on Vatican II, that is, in analysing the texts and in studying its circumstances and its consequences, that the Council, turning its back on Tradition and breaking with the Church of the past, is a schismatic council. The tree is known by its fruits. Since the Council, all the larger newspapers throughout the world, American and European, recognise that it is destroying the Catholic Church to such a degree that even the unbelievers and the secular governments are worried."
(Interview with Archbishop Lefebvre in Écône, on August 2, 1976 and published in the French magazine Le Figaro, August 4, 1976)
“All those who cooperate in the application of this overturning accept and adhere to this new ‘Conciliar Church‘, (as His Excellency Mgr. Benelli called it, in the letter that he sent me in the name of the Holy Father last June 25), [they adhere to this new ‘Conciliar Church’] and they enter into the schism.” (Ibid.)
“What is schism? It is a break, a break with the Church. But a break with the Church can also be a break with the Church of the past. If someone breaks with the Church of two thousand years, he is in schism. There has already been a council which was declared schismatic. Well, it is possible that one day, in twenty years, in thirty, in fifty years – I don’t know – the Second Vatican Council could be declared schismatic, because it professed things which are opposed to the Tradition of the Church, and which have caused a break with the Church.”
(Interview Given to the Nouvelliste of Sion, Valais, Switzerland, at Econe on August 3, 1976 and Printed on August 4, 1976)
“We are suspended a divinis by the Conciliar Church and for the Conciliar Church, to which we have no wish to belong. That Conciliar Church is a schismatic Church, because it breaks with the Catholic Church that has always been. It has its new dogmas, its new priesthood, its new institutions, its new worship, all already condemned by the Church in many a document, official and definitive…. "
(Archbishop Lefebvre, Reflections on Suspension a divinis, June 29, 1976)
“The Church that affirms such errors is at once schismatic and heretical. This Conciliar Church is, therefore, not Catholic. To whatever extent Pope, Bishops, priests, or faithful adhere to this new Church, they separate themselves from the Catholic Church.” (Ibid.)
“Exactly the same day nine years ago on the 21st of November, I drew up a manifesto which also brought down on me the persecution of Rome, in which I said I can’t accept Modernist Rome. I accept the Rome of all time with its doctrine and with its Faith. That is the Rome we are following, but the Modernist Rome which is changing religion? I refuse it and I reject it. And that is the Rome which was introduced into the Council and which is in the process of destroying the Church. I refuse that Church.”
(Press Conference, Paris, 9 December 1983)
“It is, therefore, a strict duty for every priest wanting to remain Catholic to separate himself from this Conciliar Church for as long as it does not rediscover the Tradition of the Church and of the Catholic Faith.”
(Archbishop Lefebvre, Spiritual Journey, Angelus Press, Kansas City Missouri, 1991)