Traditionalists indicate definitive break with Catholic Church

Vatican City, Jun 27, 2013 / 04:38 pm (CNA).- On the 25th anniversary of the illicit ordination of four bishops by traditionalist Bishop Marcel Lefebvre, the Society of Saint Pius X indicated a definitive break of talks with the Catholic Church.

In a statement June 27, three of the four bishops originally ordained by Lefebvre expressed “their filial gratitude towards their venerable founder who, after so many years spent serving the Church and the Sovereign Pontiff, so as to safeguard the Faith and the Catholic priesthood, did not hesitate to suffer the unjust accusation of disobedience.”

Interpretation and legacy of the Second Vatican Council was a major stumbling block for the society in their ongoing negotiations with the Vatican aimed at healing their 24-year rift.

The bishops say that the documents themselves have grave errors and that they cannot be interpreted without clashing with tradition.

The “cause of the grave errors which are in the process of demolishing the Church does not reside in a bad interpretation of the conciliar texts – a 'hermeneutic of rupture' which would be opposed to a 'hermeneutic of reform in continuity,'” they wrote, “but truly in the texts themselves, by virtue of the unheard of choice made by Vatican II.”

The group also claims that the Second Vatican Council “inaugurated a new type of magisterium, hitherto unheard of in the Church, without roots in Tradition; a magisterium resolved to reconcile Catholic doctrine with liberal ideas; a magisterium imbued with the modernist ideas of subjectivism, of immanentism and of perpetual evolution.”